Amy Porterfield, online marketing expert and host of Online Marketing Made Easy, joins Sam and Shaan to pull back the curtain on the digital course business — from a single mom making $260K selling caramel candy apple tutorials to Marie Forleo running the same $2,500 course for 13 years and printing millions annually. They also riff on Tony Robbins backstage rituals, Eben Pagan’s origin story, affiliate strategy, and podcast growth tactics.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Amy Porterfield (guest, online course expert)
Amy’s Student Who Made $260K Selling Candy Apple Tutorials [00:00:00]
Amy: I have this student — her name is Danira. She lives in LA, single mom, three kids, really small house, not enough rooms for everybody. She was definitely doing it herself. She was working two jobs, and she was baking. People would come to her house, pick up a birthday cake or a celebration cake or whatever — that’s one of the ways she was making money.
Long story short: she started creating a digital course. She became really good at caramel candy apples — how to make caramel candy apples. The thing is, the caramel was store-bought. It wasn’t some special recipe. People just didn’t know what store to go to or what to buy. So she started creating these and selling a digital course.
Now, a lot of my students have made seven figures and beyond, but I want to talk about her because she’s a woman who never made over $100,000 a year — and then in one digital course launch she made $260,000 selling how to make caramel candy apples. She was literally just doing live videos in a private Facebook group.
I always tell that story because a lot of people listening have never created anything online in their life. They think, “My idea can’t be good enough” or “It’s not original enough.” And then I think of Danira — single mom in LA, making $260,000 the first time she launched anything. Now she’s making way more than that. But that’s the kind of stuff I live for, because it has to start somewhere.
Introducing Amy Porterfield [00:02:00]
Sam: So Amy, what’s going on? Amy Porterfield — you’re part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, you’re a newish addition, right?
Amy: Yeah, just about two months in.
Sam: So what would you say you do? I’ve read your blog for years and years, but we had John Lee Dumas on the other day and I was like, “I actually don’t know how to describe him.” Is he a podcaster? Is he a blogger? How would you describe yourself? Because you kind of do a bunch of stuff.
Amy: I sound like my mom and dad who have no clue what I do — 13 years in, so I totally get it. I always say that I am an internet marketing expert and I help entrepreneurs build businesses online. My expertise is taking your knowledge and know-how and turning it into a profitable digital course. Digital courses are my area of expertise.
Sam: Amazing. What kind of digital courses do you have? Do you have your own course about courses?
Amy: I do, which is so meta, I know. So basically — 13 years ago I worked in corporate. I worked for Tony Robbins. I was the Director of Content Development. Got to travel the world and work on the content he did on stage at Unleash the Power Within, Date with Destiny, all those events.
I was called into this meeting — so humbling — to take notes. I walk into this meeting in this big San Diego corporate office, and it’s a bunch of internet marketers. In my world these are like the grandfathers of internet marketing. It’s Frank Kern, Brendan Bouchard, Eben Pagan, Jeff Walker — big name internet marketers who are still doing really big things. They were the leaders in the industry. I had no idea who these guys were, and there I am at a side table taking notes. Tony is going around asking them about their businesses — what do they do, how are they making money online — and all I heard was freedom. These guys were running their own businesses, creating digital courses on tons of different topics. I wanted a piece of that.
That was my first entry into a world I knew nothing about. About six months later I had left my corporate job and started creating my own digital courses. I’ve got courses teaching people how to grow email lists, how to create digital courses — but ultimately my mission is to help people leave their nine-to-five jobs, start their own online businesses, and I believe digital courses are the vehicle to do that.
Tony Robbins Backstage [00:05:30]
Shaan: Forget courses — let’s talk about Tony Robbins.
Sam: I was going to say that exact same thing. I was going to ask you about a couple of the people you mentioned, including Tony. How much does this empire bring in, you think? Does this guy just knock it out of the park?
Amy: I mean, seriously — have you guys ever been to one of his events? Have you ever seen him on stage?
Sam: I’ve been to two. Two Unleash the Power Within.
Amy: I’m a Kool-Aid drinker. I love Tony Robbins. I’m a fan, but I’m also super curious. And how he is on stage — that huge personality, all the energy, super intense — is exactly how he is backstage as well. I often joke that I might have lost a few years off my life because that was the most intense job I ever had. But I wouldn’t change it for the world because I literally got to learn from the master.
Sam: Give me an intensity story. Tony Robbins intensity — what do you got?
Amy: So before Tony goes on stage, he preps for Unleash the Power Within like it’s the first time he ever stepped on a stage. I’ve never seen anyone prepare more in my entire life. We have to write these stage signs — everything he’s going to talk about, the stories he’s going to touch on — and they’re all handwritten. I don’t know why we hand-wrote these things every time, but they were handwritten. He goes over all of them. Then he gets on this rebounder and he’s jumping behind the stage, getting the energy going in his body.
Shaan: What’s a rebounder?
Amy: It’s like a trampoline.
Sam: Like a trampoline, yeah.
Amy: It kind of gets the energy going in your body. He’s reading his stage signs, making sure he’s got everything down — and then he just throws the stage sign, runs on stage, and does his thing.
But the intense part is when he gets off. He looks at whoever is in his proximity and goes, “All right, let’s download.” He downloads every single time he comes off stage: what worked, what didn’t, what we could make better, what he liked, what he didn’t. He wants feedback from everyone. You are on the entire time. I’m still nervous talking about it.
Sam: You sound like it!
Shaan: He’s been doing this for 40 years. That’s crazy to me, because I went to two events and he does the same thing — pretty much the same script. So I assume he knows it like the back of his hand by now. It’s probably not the material he’s trying to remember. He’s just getting himself into state.
Sam: What about besides the performances — just like the office, on a normal day?
Amy: On a normal day, Tony’s not in the office — he was at his house, doing everything from home. But he’s always on. One thing I took from Tony and brought into my own business: always be prepared. Over-prepare. Care deeply about what you’re creating. He cares deeply about his content — that’s why he’s always getting it in his body even though they’ve done it a hundred times. And when he’s not in the office, he’s still always learning, always meeting with people. That meeting we had? He just wanted to know how these guys were selling their digital courses online because he was going to start doing that in a bigger way. He’s always pulling from different places. It was an incredible experience.
Eben Pagan and Coining Your Content [00:10:00]
Sam: Shaan, I’ve told you about this guy before — his name’s Eben Pagan. And Amy, you’re good friends with Craig Clemons. We had John Lee Dumas on the other day and I was like, “Tell me about some of these marketers.” You just named a bunch of them — Eben Pagan’s the most interesting to me.
Basically, for the listeners: I knew Eben Pagan as David D’Angelo when I was 14 years old. I was a nerd, I wanted to learn how to meet girls. He had an e-book called Double Your Dating. He’d send these really long emails — felt like 10,000-word, text-based emails — about how to meet women, and at the end you could buy like a $14 book. Craig told us he was selling like $30 million a year of that book. Have you heard about this?
Amy: Absolutely. He’s a legend. When he came to the table I think he had moved on from that part of his business, but that’s how he was put on the map.
The one thing I learned from Eben really early on is: you’ve got to coin your own content. You’ve got to name it. You’ve got to put a title to it. You’ve got to own it. One of the things I’ve always done in my business is — I’ve got the “Porta-Field Process” for outlining your digital course, the “Sweet Spot” for finding what topic to create. I name everything and own it. It sets you up as an expert. That absolutely came from Eben.
Shaan: It’s so true. Me and Sam both teach courses on Maven, and Wes, who runs the course platform there, she has one she calls “your spiky point of view.” It’s a point of view that stands out, that not everybody would agree with — it’ll poke some people the wrong way because it’s different from what they’ve heard before. If you’re going to teach a course, you’ve got to have a spiky point of view, otherwise your course doesn’t have an angle or a hook that other people will attach to.
Amy: I love that.
Sam Evans and the $10M Profit Business [00:12:30]
Sam: The other day Shaan and I were talking about this guy named Sam Evans. He has a business called Consulting.com and he revealed all of his numbers — he was like, “We got to $30 million in revenue and then decided to just be really profitable. We do $10 million in sales with $5 million in profit with a team of four people.” We were fascinated because that’s just a great business to own.
What are some other people you’ve worked with or know of who you’d tell people about — like you can’t believe what this person does, you can’t believe how much revenue they make from selling a course?
Danira, the Caramel Candy Apple Queen [00:13:30]
Amy: One of the ones that has always shocked me — I told you about Danira. Single mom in LA, $260,000 on her first launch.
Sam: What’s her course name? How do I Google her?
Amy: If you Google “Danira caramel candy apples” you’ll absolutely find her. She spells it D-A-N-I-R-A. We call her the Caramel Candy Apple Queen. She’s got tons of press written up about her. She’s a big deal.
Sam: How did she get her customers? Who bought this course?
Amy: How much is the course?
Sam: A couple hundred dollars, I think.
Amy: The way she got her customers — this is what’s cool. She made a lot of videos. She did a lot of social media showing what she was doing in her tiny little kitchen — not a fancy camera, not fancy lighting. If you own a bakery, a caramel candy apple is like $10 or more to sell, which is really good profit for a bakery. These bakers wanted to find more ways to make money. So she appealed to small business owners with bakeries or sweets shops — but she also appealed to hobbyists. A lot of people were like, “I just want to do that, that’s cool.” So she had a mesh of two different audiences. She basically just made free content — tons of videos.
Sam: Wow.
Amy: And then the way I teach people to sell courses is with webinars. She started doing webinars, and webinars were a new vehicle to sell more. She’s gone on to do even more launches.
Sam: You would do a webinar for a $200 or $300 thing?
Amy: Absolutely. My very first successful course was called FB Influence — I did it with Lewis Howes, and together we launched it at $97. I probably did 200 webinars to sell that $97 course. It was a huge success because we had tons of affiliates, but I would do a webinar even for a $97 course.
Marie Forleo and B-School [00:17:00]
Sam: Who’s the largest course business you’ve ever heard of?
Amy: Oh geez. Who crushes it the most?
Sam: That’s a different way to vote, but yeah.
Amy: My girl Marie Forleo. Do you guys know Marie Forleo? She has a program called B-School and she’s been crushing it for 10 years. Here’s what’s unique: she’s had the same course — obviously she makes it a little bit better every year, makes the marketing better — but it’s literally the same course she has sold for I think 13 years now. Once a year. It was $2,000, now it’s $2,500.
She’s been in the game for 13 years with the same course. To me that is badass, because she’s probably made like $3 million a year in profit for 10 years.
Sam: You think that’s crazy?
Amy: Yes. She’s very quiet about her numbers, so I don’t know exactly, but I’ve seen the numbers — the affiliates. I’ve been an affiliate for her for a long time. She’s absolutely crushing it. And what I learned from Tony Robbins: you do not always want to reinvent the wheel. Find something that works, double down on it, stop starting from scratch all the time. That’s literally what Marie has mastered. She’s someone I’ve always followed from the get-go.
Sam: Is there anyone else?
Amy: Here’s the thing — sometimes I don’t think people are totally forthcoming with their numbers. I’ve been in internet marketing for a long time, and sometimes I trust what I hear and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes people throw out numbers and I’m like, “Yeah, but what’s the profit margin on that?” So I’m always a little unsure about what the real numbers are.
Affiliate Strategy [00:20:00]
Sam: The affiliate strategy — I think most people creating their first course wouldn’t even think, “I should use affiliates.” Explain how it works and how big of a tool it is. Do you even use affiliates, Shaan?
Shaan: No.
Amy: I have made millions in my own business being an affiliate for other people, and I’ve also had affiliates sell my own courses. To me, it’s one of the most powerful ways to build a business — or at least supplement your income — if you have courses and memberships.
I think 50/50 is what people should be offering. I’ve seen a trend recently where it’s gone down to 30 or 40 percent — I’m old school, so I really do believe the 50/50 model is the way to go. And if you find a course that either you’ve taken or you know your students will get massive value from, but you don’t offer something like that yourself, absolutely add an affiliate offer to the mix. It can supplement your revenue.
I have different streams of revenue. One of my second biggest streams is being an affiliate for other people.
Sam: Who’s your biggest affiliate?
Amy: The most money I’ve made as an affiliate is through Marie Forleo’s B-School — that’s why I’m really close to it. And then Jenna Kutcher, Gabby Bernstein, and Stu McLaren are huge affiliates for my program, Digital Course Academy. They do really, really well.
Shaan: I think we need to do that, Sam.
Sam: It makes a huge difference — it’s like a whole other stream of revenue.
Inside Amy’s Business: Team, Structure, and the Four-Day Work Week [00:22:30]
Sam: How many people work at your company?
Amy: We’ve got 20 full-time employees and then some contractors on the side. Everyone’s virtual. We do a four-day work week — Monday through Thursday. It feels like a big team; I feel like that’s a lot of people. But I know it’s still a small business.
Sam: I think that’s a lot. Why do you need so many people?
Amy: I have three digital courses, one membership, and we do a lot of affiliate marketing. Everybody just stays in their lane. I’ve got one person 100% focused on my podcast — that’s all she does. She’s my podcast producer, Kylie. So we have a lot of people in specialized roles.
Sam: Are you running the company and being the front person, or do you have someone helping run it while you focus on content?
Amy: Great question. For seven years I had a sidekick helping me run the company — she was my CMO. She recently transitioned out as a contractor, so I’m running it more than I normally do. When she was running marketing I didn’t have my hands in all of that. That’s a lot of work.
Sam: God damn.
Amy: Right now it feels like a lot of work, but it doesn’t always feel that way.
Podcast Numbers and Growth Tactics [00:25:30]
Sam: What’s the name of your podcast, so people can go check it out?
Amy: Online Marketing Made Easy.
Sam: How big are you guys? We’re getting into a pissing contest with John Lee Dumas. I’m a little jealous of Jenna Kutcher — she’s totally magic. How many downloads do you have?
Amy: I think in December we had 1.3 million on podcast platforms, and then another 400,000 on YouTube — just for that month.
Sam: Just for the month? That’s huge. We had a million in January, which was our recent milestone. How many total downloads overall?
Amy: We’ve had 35 million total downloads. Publishing twice a week has changed things for us. I do a 15-minute one on Tuesday and a longer one on Thursday — that changed the game. I’m glad we made that switch.
Sam: So you were once a week before that?
Amy: Once a week before December I think, when we made the change.
Shaan: We get between 50,000 to 100,000 per episode probably on average. We do three episodes a week sometimes, four sometimes. But downloads per episode is the more important metric — that’s the real metric. It’s not the one you brag about, but if you actually want to grow, that’s the one you care about.
Amy: It sounds like yours is really big. That’s how you move up in the charts. I’ve studied this enough — I’m competitive enough — to know I’m not moving up in the charts unless my weekly downloads are strong. And you guys are doing better than me because you’re always above me in the charts. I pay attention to those things. Anyone who says they don’t, I think they’re lying.
Sam: Oh, we totally do. I take a lot of pride in the chart numbers. But it sounds like you get more downloads per episode than us for sure, at least in the back catalog.
Amy: We do a lot of promoting to our own community. We embed the podcast in a lot of things. We did something really cool in January — we had a quiz where you figure out where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, and then we gave you 10 episodes that are going to help you along that path. That blew up.
Sam: Okay, gotcha. You’re smart. You do smart things and you get good results. I understand now.
TikTok Clip Contest and the MFM Cuts Experiment [00:29:30]
Sam: The best promotion we did recently — we announced we’re going to give $5,000 to someone who takes our clips, turns them into TikTok videos, and gets popular on TikTok. We got 30 million impressions on TikTok in about 20 days.
Amy: That is incredible. That is super smart.
Sam: That was the only smart thing we’ve ever done. Whose idea was that, even?
Shaan: Neither of us, actually. Ben — our producer — just popped in. This is my chance to give credit. It was his idea. Shout out to MFM Cuts, who is killing it. I follow them all now on TikTok. My TikTok feed is just clips of Sam and me over and over again. It’s great.
Amy: That’s awesome. I’m going to check that out. How do I find it?
Shaan: So we kind of screwed up — or I screwed up. The hashtag is MFM Clips with an S. If you go on TikTok and search MFM Clips with an S you’ll find it, but you’ll also find some without the S because I accidentally said it both ways when announcing it. And just to warn you — if you Google “MFM clip” you’re going to get something different because it stands for, well, something else. So you’ll get a whole different set of results. There’s something for everybody over here.
Amy: When I was just starting out — 13 years ago — my maiden name was a porn star name. Someone named Amy Ballard was a porn star, and every time I searched my name, there she was. I was mortified.
Sam: Ben, does that ring a bell?
Shaan: Ben says “no comment.”
Amy: Yeah. Not an issue anymore — I’ve got a new last name.
Sam: I used to follow this guy on Twitter named Jeff F-Stein. I tweeted at him like, “Brutal name,” and he got so mad at me. I was like, “I can’t be the first person to point this out to you. Don’t be mad at me, I didn’t do it to you.”
Amy: Oh my gosh.
Sam: Well, thanks for coming on, Amy. This is awesome.
Amy: Thanks so much, guys. It’s great to talk to you. And I know you’re both coming on my podcast, so I’m looking forward to chatting with you there too.
Sam: Sounds good. Take care.
Amy: Bye, guys.