Graham Cochrane (00:02.786)
I've made over $15 million selling online courses, just online courses. But here's the thing, I've stopped selling them. And no, it's not because courses don't work, it's bigger than that. It's because the business model has changed. Buyers have changed. And honestly, I changed. So in this video, I'm gonna break down.
So today, I'm gonna break down the three reasons I've walked away from online courses, what I'm doing instead, and most importantly, how to know if courses still make sense for your business in 2026 and beyond.
Graham Cochrane (01:17.08)
Now I've been talking about the business online coaching course info product space shifting for the last year or so. We've talked about how to future proof your online business, how you need to move away from relying only on courses to include communities and coaching, all these other things. This has been something that's been happening for the last three years easily and this is not new. It depends on who you listen to and if your head's in the sand or what, but this is not a new thing.
What I wanna share today is that I literally do not sell online courses anymore. It's not something I promote. I don't do any launches to my list for courses anymore. And it is a big deal because that's all I did for the last 16 years, if you really wanna include everything I've done. I've been in the online course space. I wrote the book on this, How to Get Paid for What You Know. I literally have built my business around online courses. But things have changed.
And so I get asked a lot by my clients, by people that come to my challenge, by people on YouTube, like, are you still doing online courses? Do online courses still work? I'm filming my course. And I can't like not tell you what's happening. So we've been talking about this off and on for the last year and a half, but let me just say from the get out, it's 2026 as I'm taping this, I do not sell online courses anymore. And there's three major reasons why you might have a different
because everyone's business is a little bit different. But I have a suspicion that if I had to put money on it, you probably shouldn't be building an online course business. Let me explain why and what that looks like and what to build instead, which is the most important thing. What do we build instead? First of all, why the shift? Because this is really, really important. A lot has happened. I got my start in 2009, just so you know. Your boy's been slinging courses since 2009 before anyone knew what an online course was.
They were great and they worked and people loved them and they got results from my clients and they put money in my account. I mean, it's a beautiful model. It's a beautiful model or it was. Three major reasons and it all starts with a pandemic. It all starts with a pandemic. In 2020, when we had the global pandemic and everyone was at home because they had to be and the government was giving people free money,
Graham Cochrane (03:44.268)
which is debatable whether it was a good idea or not. And we were just trying to get by and figure out what to do. People went to the internet to fill their time. And because they had time and money and excess, they spent that money and that time learning new things. Which is really cool, by the way. Can we just pause and say how cool that is? That there was a moment in history where people had to pause and then got to pursue other interests.
because they had time and money to pursue them. What a gift that was. Now, if you were selling online courses back then, what's crazy is that everybody that was in the online course space thought it was the end of our businesses. Like, I was running a paid community at the time where my clients and members were like, are we allowed to sell? People don't have money. It's a pandemic. And I was like, are you kidding me? They're all at home. It sounds like the government's gonna send them checks. Keep selling. What else are they gonna do?
We were afraid nobody would buy. We were afraid it was unethical to sell at the time. These were the real conversations my clients were having, which is so funny to me that that was even a thought because what became a reality was 2020 kicked off the biggest online course boom we've ever seen and we probably will ever see. And so it was a great time to be alive if you were selling online courses. Just gobs of money were made. And so what that did for so many people was A, change their lives financially.
which is great, but be on the negative side is it made people think that they were really, really smart when they, they might be smart, but doesn't mean they were successful because they were smart. They were successful because they happened to be in the right place at the right time, selling the right thing. Myself included, and I was already there long before COVID, but just saying, if you had an online course and somewhat of a following, you could make a lot of money in 2020. Same thing in 2021. And still into 2022, it was a nice wave that we were riding. That changed in 2023.
And the reason it changed in 2023 was twofold. Number one, course saturation. We had now three years of so many people coming online, being like, wow, what's an online course? I could make an online course. Everyone was selling online courses. And people like me were helping them, right? But I had been helping them long before the pandemic. So it wasn't like I was jumping on some new opportunity. I was just doing what I did. There's just more people that are interested in what I did. was great for me.
Graham Cochrane (06:05.59)
It was great for my clients. They made great businesses. So the problem though is that now everyone's got a course, everyone's selling a course. Now there's course fatigue because they're everywhere, but also because we're tired of being in courses. So they no longer carry the value they once did because we've watched a bunch, we bought a bunch, we kind of did that thing. It was almost like a fad.
But on top of that in 2023, so you got course fatigue, is one reason why people don't value courses anymore. But then 2023, ChatGPT goes mainstream. And it's the first full year that everyone's using ChatGPT. And you might not even start using it till 2025, but people were using it like crazy starting in 2023. And then now you have a tool that can give you every answer you'd ever need without having to watch a video, without having to buy a course. AI.
and whatever tool you prefer has rendered the online course even less valuable because what was a beautifully curated collection of the best information, just what you need, no fluff, which is an online course, now you can get with AI. Now it's not exactly the same thing, I'll give them that, but it's people don't care. People are using ChatGPT to learn whatever they want to learn, whatever they used to pay you for your course for or pay me for my course for.
So between the pandemic and course fatigue and saturation and AI, those two things made the value, the perceived value of an online course plummet. This is reason number one I moved away from online courses. Because people do not value them the way they once did. It used to be that people valued an online course with a range between $100 and $3,000. And I know that's a wide range because it depends on
what you're selling and depends on your credibility and depends on what the outcome is that the course would promise, but you could sell all day, every day courses between $97 and $2,997 without blinking an eye, without having to jump on a sales call, without having to do anything hard. If you had clear messaging for a program that solved a clear problem for a clear avatar, you could win. People don't value courses at that price point like they once did.
Graham Cochrane (08:34.766)
I'm not saying they're not buying courses. I'm not saying you're not selling courses. I actually still have people that find courses of mine that are still somehow for sale somewhere and they're buying them. I'm not saying that they're not selling. I'm just saying people don't value them like they once did. Okay? That's reason number one. I stop selling courses. Reason number two is that it's getting harder to get enough leads to sell enough copies of your course to make serious coin.
My first business, the Recording Revolution, at its peak, I was doing $1.2, $1.3 million a year, selling primarily $97 to $297 courses. Yeah, it was possible. And still is if you get the lead flow. But I had great lead flow because YouTube and Google search,
were so generous to me. Now I still believe YouTube is the best place to be if you want leads, but it's not like it was back then for a lot of reasons. Number one, algorithm shifts. The algorithms shifting majorly. In 2023, you had a major Google shift the way, again, that Google search algorithm shift was in response to AI, it was response to chat GPT. When Google saw,
OpenAI's chat GPT taking over, they panicked because they read the writing on the wall, which is people are gonna stop searching on Google and start typing in searching on chat GPT, which I know you do, right? So Google's like that's a problem for us. So what they did is they went hard to work on their own AI, Gemini, and they started to create these AI summaries at the top of Google search. And then that's useful if you're searching, but that's not useful if you're a content creator because now that pushes
the search results further down, because now the top thing is their own AI summary of stuff, which might be all people need. But even if people scroll down, now they have to scroll down to see the search results. But now you've got more people sponsoring their content and their links on Google search because they're not getting the organic search that they once were. So now you've got AI summary at the top, sponsored Google links, sponsored links below that. So then any hope of getting on the first page of Google search
Graham Cochrane (10:50.776)
You have to be the top, top, top, top, top result and there's not even that many available on the first page because no one's gonna go to page two. So now people who have had blog posts or even YouTube videos that Google would search, because Alphabet owns both Google and YouTube, if you were once on the first page of results, you're getting pushed out. And so if you had longstanding lead flow from this content you made, you're not getting those leads anymore, which means you're not making as many sales as you once did.
for the same amount of work and content that you once had. So now you have to find other ways to get the leads. So if lead flow drops in half, and you're still selling the same $500 course or $1,000 course or $150 course, well, your income just drops in half. And it's not a momentary blip in the algorithm. It is the future of lead generation on the internet. It's gonna be harder to get the amount of leads that some of us once got.
back in the day. Okay, so when I see that, I'm like, I can't make the same money selling a $500 course that I once did, so we have to do something different. That's reason number two, I stopped selling courses. Is there's just not enough lead flow to justify it? Okay, and then reason number three, and this is more of a shift I'm making because I've changed, is online courses at those price points sub $3,000 cheapen your brand.
And I don't want my brand to be the cheap brand anymore. There's so many people that have come online, all slinging the same $500 course, that I'm like, I don't want to be associated with them. I'm sure they're great people, and I'm sure they're valuable. But I want to be a premium provider. I want to be one of the top dogs in the space. I believe I can transform your business, and I have value to offer that's way more than everyone else that's at a race to the bottom. So in a way to...
distance myself from everyone else that's racing to the bottom with cheap courses that are running flash sales on top of those cheap courses and discounts on top of those flash sales. I want to go the opposite direction. So I've moved up the value chain, as they say. I no longer sell $500 courses. I sell $25,000, $55,000, $100,000, $250,000 coaching programs. Okay? Very different. Well, Graham, well, that's very cost prohibitive for a lot of people. Yeah.
Graham Cochrane (13:15.598)
I know. So I'm not gonna sell as many as I was selling on my courses. But when you go 10 times to 100 times the cost of your previous online course, you don't need that many people to make the same amount or more than before. Last year, 2025, was my best year yet in business, right? So the reason why, even though leads were down, is because my prices were way up and my positioning was way up. And I'm not selling courses anymore.
And that's the path moving forward is no more courses. So let's recap real quick before I tell you what to sell instead. And again, this is just a suggestion. I will caveat all of this with the six magic words of how I coach people is do more of what is working. If what is working for your company is online courses at those price points and you're very happy, then keep doing that until further notice. So do not take what I say as if it's gospel. I'm just telling you.
I've been in this business for 16 years now. I've seen a lot come and go. These are the shifts I'm making and these are the shifts I'm teaching my clients to make. So, recap. Pandemic surge on content. Now we have way too much course fatigue, course saturation, so people don't value. When there's a lot of supply, the demand goes down. Supply, demand is a real thing. Tons of supply, demand goes down. And then AI has replaced what an online course can do because it's
faster and it's free virtually. So those two things have cheapened the value of courses. People don't value courses like they once were. Number two is that it's getting harder and harder to get enough leads to justify selling the courses at those price points because you have to sell and you won't sell enough courses to make what you've made. So traffic has changed on the internet. Number three, I believe they cheapen your brand and I want to be a premium provider, not a bargain basement Walmart of the online coaching world. Does that make sense?
That's the recap of why I no longer sell courses. Okay, well what do you sell instead, Graham? Well, you heard me say it. You sell a coaching program. Well, what's the difference, Graham? The difference is huge, both in functionality and perceived value, and if I may say, results for your clients, which only boosts your business more. So.
Graham Cochrane (15:36.468)
Here is the future. Like here is the future of online business. If you teach something, if you are an expert in a field and you want to profit from what you know, like my first book, How to Get Paid for What You Know, the key is to package it differently. It's as simple as this. You need a high ticket or premium priced group coaching program. Okay, let me simplify this for you.
There are three core elements that will go into this group coaching program. Number one is your online course. Hey, how about that? You don't have to throw that puppy away. And you mean you might, because you might want to go in a different direction. But my point is online video training isn't going anywhere. It is incredibly valuable. People love watching and learning content. Like content isn't going anywhere. So your online course doesn't have to go anywhere. But selling videos is no longer enough.
So what we wanna do is make the videos one component of your offer, one component of your coaching program. It is the curriculum. So we don't call it a course anymore, because that language doesn't connotate value or premium. Okay, so we wanna say we have a 12 week curriculum, or an eight week curriculum, or a 10 week curriculum, and each week is a video, right?
That's a core component of it. That should be the playbook that if they watch it and do it, they get the results, just like an online course. Fancy that. But then we're gonna add two other things minimum, and I'm gonna give you bonus one. Second thing you're gonna add is online group coaching calls. Yes, live, good old-fashioned coaching calls. These do not have to be one-on-one. Group coaching calls are almost more valuable than one-on-one for two reasons. One,
They create a lot of energy and excitement and social proof when people see that there's other people in the room, even if it's just three other people on the call. Two, people don't know what questions to ask. So someone else will ask a question that your client didn't even think to ask herself. Therefore, she gets more value because, that's a great question. I'm glad he asked that question. So it creates a ton of value for your clients and it's incredibly scalable and leveraged for you. You just do a weekly call or a bi-weekly call or a monthly call or whatever.
Graham Cochrane (17:58.722)
cadence you want, and whether there's 10 people in your group or 100 people in your group, it's the same amount of work for you. It's the same time on the call. This allows people to watch the videos, but then come get coached by you. We are in a world now where people actually want to talk to a live human. That's gonna become more more valuable as we get into this AI slop and content bonanza that we're in. So real people.
Being able to answer real questions in real time is gonna become incredibly valuable. So just having an online group coaching call component to your offer is huge. That alone takes your course to 10x the value. And then the third component is a community. People used to sell membership sites is one thing, online courses is another thing. Some people had them combined. I've seen both work in the past. Now I'm seeing put it all together into one coaching program where there is a
They play that they run, which is your curriculum. They can come to the group coaching calls to get their questions answered after they've watched the videos. You don't teach in those calls. You answer questions in those calls. They're nuanced questions. And then there's 24-7 private community where people can vent, they can share wins, they can ask questions. It's more like a chat. It's more like a Reddit. It's something just private.
and you can be in there whenever you want to, the other members can be in there whenever they want to, it creates a safe place for all these people who are going in the same direction, sharing the same goals, same pain points and problems to be together 24-7. Now this is very basic, but at its core, this is your coaching program. And instead of selling it for 500 bucks, you sell it for 5,000. Or instead of selling it for 250 bucks, you sell it for $10,000. The price...
all depends on the value of the transformation you get. If you need help creating your offer in terms of knowing what to charge and how to present it so it's irresistible, you need to come to my next 10K Offer Challenge. I'm gonna link to it below. It's a live five-day coaching experience. Notice how it's not a course, by the way. It's not videos you watch. You come live and hang out with me, and I'll teach you how to build a $10,000 offer or whatever price point you land at.
Graham Cochrane (20:08.63)
and how to make it what I call a magic offer where it's irresistible. You just describe it to people and they want it. And then how to sell it without having to do sales calls. Just come get a ticket and get a VIP ticket so you can come an hour early each day and I can answer your questions in a group coaching format. And that's insanely valuable because I already charged $25,000 an hour for coaching. So it's way more affordable than that. Plus, if you're paying attention, you can watch how I handle a group coaching room and learn how it's done. So I'm gonna link to that below or go to 10koffertchallenge.com.
So that at its core could be your offer. Now here's a bonus component. If you really wanna price it premium and you really wanna wow your customers, and I think this is gonna be the lever. If you pull this moving forward, you're gonna crush and don't freak out when I say this, but it's add a live event. Add a live event to your offer. That can be like a traditional, hey, we're gonna book a ballroom at a hotel. Like I do this for my inner circle. We have live events in Tampa. we say to the JW Marriott, I book a.
a ballroom, there's food, I mean, it's another thing to book, but they're paying a lot to be part of the group, I wanna give them a great experience. It could be that, or it could be you rent an Airbnb and people come, or it could be in a co-working space and you just get a boardroom together. It could be a weekend, it could be a one day, it could be like, I've done retreats in Nashville when I was in the music space and we...
we rented out a recording studio and people just came in and we recorded a band in person. It's the same stuff I taught on Zoom and YouTube. We just did it in person. A lot of ways to think about it, but moving forward, yes, you can sell live events as a separate offer, but I'm talking about bundling it in so people are joining your year-long group coaching program that has a video curriculum, coaching calls with you as a group, a private community, and an annual meetup.
or a biannual event, whatever. You add the live retreat element, the live event element into it, they get a free ticket to this event, that's how I would position it inside the offer stack, the price goes way up. Because A, you have hard costs for that event, so the price should go up to pay for those, but the value goes up tremendously because now you're doing what everyone wants in this AI digital world moving forward is real human touch and connection. They might not even believe that you're a real person because AI is so good until they meet you in person, right?
Graham Cochrane (22:29.72)
That's a bonus, you don't have to do that. Not all my offers have that. But my most premium group coaching program, my Inner Circle, absolutely has live in-person events. that's what you wanna build out instead. Notice how I set a 12-month group coaching program.
You don't have to do 12 months. The timeframe is less important. That's more specific to how much time will it take to get the result and give people the transformation they really want. But the fact that there is a timeframe is what matters. They pay to be in your group for a period of time and then they're out. And if they wanna come back in, they gotta pay again.
And it's not month to month, although you could have a monthly payment option, but they are committed for the whole 12 months or the whole six months or whatever you choose. We're not creating a membership site. It is a ticket price. Like this thing costs $10,000. Now I might chop it up. You can pay me $1,000 a month for 12 months if you want to finance it over that way or 10,000 upfront or whatever you do. But you were in this for a year. Now this is a big, leaning into this, this is a big part of why
this works is because you're not saying, hey, here's a course, watch it whenever you want. Although when they join your program, they can binge your videos whenever they want. You're actually requiring more of an investment from them than they realize. It's not just the higher dollar amount investment, the price, it is the time investment. Like, hey, I'm not gonna just let you buy a course and watch it whenever you want and disappear. Or I'm not gonna let you jump in and out of a membership month to month. You're committed to this thing for a year or you're not.
Either be in for the year with me or don't be in for the year with me. And this is an important play because if you want your clients to win, and you should, like you should, you're not in this just to make money, you're in this to change people's lives, right? If you want your client to win, they need to have skin in the game. That's one reason why you charge high prices, because when people pay, they pay attention. When people pay a lot, they pay a lot of attention. And the only way for them to get results is to pay attention to you. And what you're saying, because you're teaching them good stuff.
Graham Cochrane (24:38.434)
So you raise the price, become a premium provider, but then you raise the level of time commitment, which creates a bit of friction for them. It's not easy for them to say yes to this. That's by design. You don't want to make it easy for them. You want to make them have to stop and think, do I want to commit to this or not? That's one way you serve them. That's one way you coach them is by creating a container that they have to really jump in or don't jump in. Now I don't make it a ton of work for my people.
My coaching programs are very easy to fit into your life. It's not a college degree, right? It's way more valuable than my college degree and way less expensive than a college degree. But it's doable, but I want them to know you're in it or you're not. here how the language is different than an online course. Back in the day, part of the messaging, part of the...
The benefit was that it's so easy, you could buy it right now, you can watch it whenever you want. It's easy, it's easy. We're going in the opposite direction. Make it harder for them so that they have to think about, I really want this transformation or not? That's part of how they're gonna get the transformation is because now they have money involved, they've invested a lot of money, so they're gonna do the work. There's time commitment involved, I'm in this group, I'm committed to it. That's actually what's gonna make them watch all your videos, take notes,
Implement within your videos come to your calls ask thoughtful questions take your advice Post in the community and all of these things are going to help them get results Which is insane to think about and then what are they gonna do? They're gonna sing your praises. They're gonna sing your praises now I just taught you a lot and And honestly, I'm gonna give you two options here number one is I'm gonna be three options number one is you could just watch this video and be like great that's a good idea I'm gonna go think about it and and
Great, I hope this served you. Number two is come to my 10K Offer Challenge. I the next one's coming up in a couple weeks. But the dates are on there. Just go to 10KOfferChallenge.com and you'll see when the next ones are coming up. If you want help with the offer side of things, right? Come to that. If you're like, I don't even know if I can come to that or I don't really know if I wanna do that. If you're not even sure, then start with my book. I literally just dropped this new book, The Effortless Business, last week. Like it's fresh.
Graham Cochrane (27:01.026)
Go to effortlessbusiness.com and get your copy. It's the only place you can pick up a copy. And this book is the playbook. this is the future of online business. And it's the future of any business, by the way. There's frameworks in here that just apply to any kind of business. But if you're a coach, if you're a content creator, if you're an expert, if you teach people stuff and get clients results or you want to,
This book is your playbook for the next 10, 20 years. Like this is the future. I wrote this because what used to work is no longer working. And also this is the fastest way to build a high income, low maintenance business, which is the whole subtitle of the book, build a high income, low maintenance business in life. So this is the blueprint, my friend. I'm gonna link to that below as well. that'll serve you. Effortlessbusiness.com. I'm trying to give you a couple of options here. If you're serious,
not curious about building a multi six figure and seven figure business this year, the new way, the right way, you're gonna buy my book and come to the challenge. That's what I would recommend you do. It's the best money you'll spend all year to get things going. Yes, down the road, if you wanna work with me at a deeper capacity and we can like turbocharge your results, great, you can do that. But this is a great place to start because the old model is no longer gonna work.
It's gonna get harder and harder to work. If courses are crushing for you, then please ignore everything I said and just rock them. I would just say have a backup plan if and when that play no longer works for you. Start to think about how you can play a different game, which is ironically just an evolution of the game we've all been playing. This is not a hard pivot as much as you think it is. This is just the next step. I hate change.
but I am not gonna stay stuck doing the same thing I did, even though I've made millions doing this play. I spent the last three years reworking my business and coaching private clients to figure out what's gonna work for them. And all that's gone into the book, by the way, because I saw the writing on the wall. Like 2023, things started to change. I was like, don't have the exact answer yet, so I'm not gonna just start preaching it from the rooftops as if I know the answer. I now know the answer.
Graham Cochrane (29:25.154)
high ticket, leveraged group coaching programs is the way forward. You're work with fewer people, yes, in terms of paid people, but you're gonna work with them at a deeper level. They're gonna get better results, faster results. You're gonna have actually more fun, and you're not gonna give up a lot of your time. Again, I average between five and 10 hours of work a week max. Most weeks it's five. And I don't sell courses. So it's not about you need courses to do.
Low hours, I sell group coaching programs. And these are high level group coaching programs. Okay, they get great results. People come into my program, they do 50K in their first 30 days. People come into my program, they go from 6K a month to 72K a month. One of my clients, Vetla, just had another $100,000 month in December. He finished the year with like, you couldn't even believe it. $100,000 a month. One of my clients just posted in the community today, in my inner circle, that the biggest month he ever had
In the past was 44,000 a month, which is a great month. It's only 14 days into the month as of my taping and he's already done 55K in the month because he's implementing the stuff. We're going a higher ticket, we're going more premium, we're changing the brand perception and the level of service that we're serving people at. And it's the way forward. It's the way to be algorithm proof.
AI proof, it's a shift and we gotta do it, we gotta talk about it. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below if you're watching the YouTube version of this episode. Are you in the shift from online courses to high end group coaching programs? Where are you on the shift? What's working for you, what's not working for you? If you are listening to the podcast version of this, make sure you pick up the book effortlessbusiness.com. You'll probably also like the audiobook. There is an audiobook version of that.
as an upgrade to the books. When you pick up a copy, you can get both. That way can continue to listen if you like that and you can implement stuff right away while the book is shipped to you. But always message me on Instagram as well if you're a listener on that side of things and you don't engage in the comments. Let me know what's working in your business or not. I'd love to hear from you. I always want to keep a pulse on my listeners and my viewers and my students. Okay, I hope this served you today. Like no hyperbole, this is literally what I'm doing. I will always tell you what I'm doing in my business.
Graham Cochrane (31:46.446)
I will always pull back the curtain. That's how I coach. That's how I live. So hope this serves you as you move into 2026 and 2027 and beyond. Have a great rest of your day, my friend, and I'll see you on another episode real soon.
