11:31Dan Henry · Tutorial
How I Made $9.2M From One Online Course (Copy My Exact System)
The three-rule beta launch method that turned a stripped-down Zoom training into a multi-million-dollar course product.
June 17thThe argument in one line.
Every physical-skill expert already has enough material for a digital product — the entire curriculum lives in the answers they give students every week, and the only work is organizing it.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You teach a physical skill (martial arts, fitness, music, sport) and cannot figure out how to translate in-person instruction into something digital.
- You know your subject deeply but keep telling yourself students need to see it in person to learn it.
- You have tried to outline a course and gotten stuck at deciding what actually goes inside it.
- You have a small existing student base and want to turn your weekly teaching into a product you can sell asynchronously.
SKIP IF…
- You want a production tutorial covering platforms, camera gear, or course hosting — this is pure strategy.
- You are building a high-ticket coaching offer rather than a scalable self-serve digital product.
The full version, fast.
Every physical-skill practitioner already has a digital product — they just have not written it down yet. The framework starts by picking one audience rung on the experience ladder (beginner through near-expert), listing 10 specific problems that person faces, drilling into each problem until you have 2-3 observable failure modes, and then pairing each failure mode with a concrete action and a tangible asset the buyer keeps. The hardest mental shift is accepting that you do not need to be in the room: experts only ever catch 2-3 mistakes at a time anyway, and those are fully explainable in text, video, and diagrams.
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00:00 – 01:06
01 · Cross-industry analogy hook
How personal trainers already solved the digital product problem for physical-skill niches — the answer is right in front of you.
01:07 – 02:07
02 · Step 1: Choose your audience by experience level
Map the four rungs of the experience ladder before choosing any topic.
02:08 – 04:33
03 · TAM trade-off: passion vs. market size
The further up the expertise chain you go, the smaller the audience. Beginners are the whole planet; black-belt candidates are a few hundred people.
04:34 – 06:44
04 · Step 2: List the problems per archetype
Write 10 problems for each experience level — the exercise often reveals you connect better with a different audience than you assumed.
06:45 – 09:55
05 · Step 3: Drill into one problem
Isolate a single failure mode (foot positioning), name the 2-3 ways it goes wrong, and describe how a practitioner would recognize it.
09:56 – 11:16
06 · The expert's curse
Practitioners take their own knowledge for granted; the unlock is realizing you only ever catch 2-3 mistakes at a time, and all of them are fully explainable without being in the room.
11:17 – 13:37
07 · Information to Action to Asset
The formula that takes a digital product from helpful to excellent: pair every problem explanation with a concrete action and a downloadable asset.
13:38 – 15:53
08 · Closing synthesis and transcription tip
Everything you teach weekly is already the product. Record your classes, transcribe them, and let AI extract the curriculum.
15:54 – 16:28
09 · Book CTA
Plug for The Art and Business of Online Writing.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- You already own the content of your digital product — it is every answer you have ever given a student, just not yet organized.
- Beginners represent the largest total addressable market in any physical-skill niche; targeting near-experts is a deliberate trade of scale for fulfillment.
- Experts can only notice 2-3 mistakes at a time when watching someone perform a skill — that finite list is exactly what makes a digital product possible without being in the room.
- The gap between a helpful digital product and an excellent one is the move from information to action: tell people not just what is wrong but what to do about it.
- Every action lesson compounds in value when paired with a concrete asset — a checklist, drill video, or training routine the buyer keeps and revisits.
- Choosing one experience-level audience before picking a topic saves you from building a product no one can find themselves in.
- Writing 10 problems per audience archetype often reveals you are better equipped to help a different level than you first assumed.
- Practitioners systematically underestimate their own expertise because mastery makes complexity feel invisible.
- Transcription tools have made in-person coaching sessions self-converting: record the class, transcribe it, and the curriculum writes itself.
- A digital product is not a reimagining of what you teach — it is a more organized version of what you already explain every week.
Your coaching sessions are already a digital product.
WHAT TO LEARN
The content you need for a digital product is sitting inside every correction you make during a session — the only work is pulling it out and organizing it.
- Start by choosing a single experience level before deciding what goes in the product — without this anchor, the scope never closes.
- Write 10 specific problems for your chosen audience archetype; the act of listing them often reveals a better audience than your first instinct.
- Any physical skill only has 2-3 observable failure modes per technique — you do not need to be in the room to teach correction, because you are already cataloguing a short list.
- A good explanation becomes a great product when you add the action layer: not just what is wrong, but the exact step the student takes to fix it.
- The asset layer (checklist, drill video, training routine) is what converts a one-time purchase into something the buyer revisits — and what justifies the price.
- Recording and transcribing your existing in-person sessions is the fastest path to a first draft: the curriculum is already happening, you are just not capturing it yet.
Terms worth knowing.
- TAM
- Total Addressable Market — the total pool of potential buyers for a product. Used here to contrast the large beginner audience against the narrow near-expert audience in any skill niche.
- Experience level ladder
- A four-rung audience segmentation: (1) has not started yet, (2) started but not seeing traction, (3) been at it a while with specific problems, (4) near-expert seeking the next level.
- Information to Action to Asset
- A digital product formula: explain the problem (information), tell the student what to do about it (action), and give them something tangible to practice with (asset such as a checklist, drill, or video).
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
09:57
“You take for granted all the information that you have.”
10:41
“It's not like you're gonna notice between 500 different mistakes. You're gonna maybe notice between three different mistakes.”
04:02
“If what you're really optimizing for is I wanna make money selling digital products, you should always go further down the chain to more beginners.”
13:56
“The skill with digital products is realizing all it really is is a more organized version of all the stuff you're probably already explaining in person.”
Word for word.
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00:00Whenever I find myself, um, stuck on how to execute something, the question I always ask is, what is a metaphorical equivalent of someone in a different industry who has solved this problem?
00:16So martial arts is really just another physical activity. And so how do personal trainers solve this problem?
00:26You know? How do how do weightlifters solve the digital product problem?
00:31How do nutritionists solve the digital product problem? And, like, if you just start thinking about different, uh, categories of people, like, the digital products are they're they're all kinda staring at you in your face.
00:47They're all like like, how does a how does a personal trainer like, a personal trainer, you gotta train within person. Right? So, like, how does a personal trainer solve this?
00:55Well, they have digital products around like, here are routines you can do on your own. Here are specific problems that you have, and here's step by step instructions on how to overcome them. So we we sorta just, like, go down the list.
01:10Like, I think, first of all, the first big decision to make is if you go digital products for martial arts, the first big question is experience level.
01:23Like, are you creating digital products for a complete beginner who hasn't even started yet or a beginner who has been doing this for less than a year but wants to take it more seriously or someone who is more intermediate and has been training for over a year and wants to get better or solve a very specific type of problem, or is this someone who has been doing this for a long time and this year is the year they're determined to get a black belt?
02:04Like, these are all completely different people. Yeah. Right?
02:08So the first question is, who do you wanna help? You can pick any one of those. You you absolutely could.
02:14So is there one is there one that jumps out to you? Maybe someone trying to get their black belt. Okay.
02:19If you yeah. If you like if you like, you know, working with that type of person, then great. The thing I do wanna point out, okay, and this is this is important to to think about and understand depending on what your goal is.
02:32And there's no right or wrong answer. It's just being aware of these different variables. The further up the chain you go with experience level, the smaller the group of people.
02:43Yes. Right? So, like, complete like, what is the what's the TAM?
02:48What's the total addressable market of people who haven't started martial arts yet? It's, like, everyone. Yeah.
02:56Right? Huge plan. It's, like, the whole planet.
03:00And then it's like a beginner. Maybe the TAM is, like, a lot of people.
03:06And then someone who's more proficient, the TAM is, like, less people. And then someone who wants to get a back vault, the TAM is, like, a few people.
03:16So you just I that's just worth keeping in mind because what you don't want to have happen is you don't wanna spend a bunch of time creating a digital product, and then you go, wait a second. How come it's not as popular as someone who's targeting the broadest possible you know what I mean?
03:30So it's just it's just a goals a goals thing. Then So is it better to start at the bottom of the ladder than build up? It it it depends on what your goal is.
03:38Like, if your if your goal is, hey, Cole. I'm really passionate about working with, like, close to expert level people, and I just really wanna help them, like, master the craft, then if you're if you're optimizing more for enjoyment and working with that type of person, then that's what you should do.
03:59But if you what you're really optimizing for is I wanna make money selling digital products, you should always go further down the chain to more beginners. The miss the mistake that people make is they go, I'm really no.
04:12No. No, Cole. I'm really passionate about working with expert level people, and they say they're making the decision from a place of fulfillment.
04:20And then two seconds later, they're like, how come I'm not selling as much as the person who's catering to beginners? So it's it's just about being conscious of like why you're picking what you're picking. Yeah.
04:29Okay. That makes sense. Okay.
04:31So then let's say we pick this one. The next step is, so what problems does this person have?
04:39So give give me a couple problems that this person's running into. So they're they're running into
04:46making it functional, so trying to make it when they're sparring with people or fighting, They want it to work.
04:53Can you expand on what you mean by that? So a lot of the time,
04:57a lot of people learn it just as techniques, and they don't get to the point where it's actually functional because of how they've trained it.
05:06So meaning,
05:08like, they just sort of repeat
05:12patterns? Repeat patterns Okay.
05:14Without getting they don't learn to read the situation. Okay.
05:17So they don't apply the appropriate context.
05:20Okay.
05:22The same as I'm doing with this. I'm a white belt.
05:26Okay. So what's another problem that people have?
05:29There's gonna be some technical problems as well a lot of the time in terms of, like, how they perform their techniques.
05:42Okay. So let's let's just pick so first of all, I would encourage you and for everyone here. When creating digital products, I think this is a very helpful exercise.
05:52Start with experience level. Map out what are the three or four different experience levels. It's always the same.
06:00It's like I haven't started yet. I started, but I'm not seeing traction. I've been doing it a for a while, but I'm running into these problems.
06:07I'm almost an expert, and I wanna go to the next level. It's like it's always those same ones. Map those out for your niche, and then actually go through the exercise and write out what are the 10 different problems that each one of these different archetypes has.
06:23Because what you might find is as you do that exercise, you might find, okay. I thought I wanted to work with this person, but actually, it's the it's the person who's kinda just getting started that I'm actually can help even more because I'm even more aware of their problems.
06:40So I would I would encourage you to go through that exercise, and everyone, you should do that. Yeah. Okay.
06:45So then Definitely do that. Yeah. So then the third question, if you sort of notice like what's what we're doing right now, like this is actually what a digital product ends up being.
06:56Because let's say you wanna work with someone who's determined to get their black belt and you isolate this problem.
07:03They they have some technical problems. Okay. So then you go inside that problem.
07:09What is what is a technical problem that you could point out, and how would you tell someone to work on it? So how are we trans see, this is where if I looked at someone doing it,
07:21I could give you 10 things straight away just by watching.
07:26Okay. So let's yeah. So let's just picking, like, sorry.
07:30Go on. Yeah. Let's let's pause for a second.
07:31So so you say if I watch someone doing it, you could you could point out what they're doing wrong.
07:39Yeah. In reality, how many different things could they really do with a specific like like, I know nothing about martial arts, but let's let's say I go to, I don't know, throw a punch or do a kick or something.
07:53There are probably only, like, a couple things that I do wrong in that motion. Yeah. No.
07:59That's true. Okay. So let's pick one.
08:01So what what is like one motion and you isolate what are a couple things that I might be doing wrong?
08:10So okay. So, yeah, it's gonna be the foot positioning. It's gonna be how they rotate.
08:18And then yeah. And then their hand positioning. And then there's gonna be, like, three or four different things that are gonna be wrong in one of each of those.
08:28Okay. Great. So let's go Yeah.
08:29So we're really food
08:31or foot positioning. What are what are like the couple things that might be wrong there?
08:36So they'll either be too narrow or too wide.
08:41So they won't have any balance. Okay. And can you point out or can you say, how does someone know if it's too narrow or too wide?
08:54Because of what happens when they throw the shot. Okay. So you know So that if it's too narrow or too wide when and what what happens.
09:04Yeah. Okay. So can you tell me what happens?
09:08So they'll either fall. They'll fall forward.
09:13Okay. Or Or they will not be able to retract their technique quickly, and they'll get hit. Okay.
09:24So here's now now let's just pause for a second. Let's just look at this. We went technical problems.
09:33We went into one technical problem. We isolated what are the one or two or three things that could go wrong, and then we talked about and here's how you know if it went wrong.
09:46Every everyone else, drop in the chat. Did everyone else here just learn something about martial arts? I'd I did.
09:52I didn't know any of these things. I didn't even know foot positioning was so important. Sweep the leg.
09:57Like it. Okay? So this this is like this is the whole this is the is this is what the digital product is.
10:05The digital product is is because you are a practitioner, you take for granted all the information that you have.
10:14Mhmm. And second, this is like the the even more this is the the harder skill to build, is oftentimes with education of any kind, people think I have to be in person or I have to see it.
10:31But the reality is if you just sit there and ask yourself, Hypothetically, if I couldn't be there, how many different things are there really for me to pay attention to?
10:43Like, I saw someone do something, it's not like you're gonna notice between, like, 500 different mistakes. You're gonna maybe notice between, like, three different mistakes.
10:54Right? And as you become more aware of that, you realize, oh, I can explain all of this.
11:02I just need to isolate each individual variable. Now all of this is helpful because because it's it it is helpful information, but I will I will tell you where digital products go to the next level.
11:17The next level for digital products is when you can connect information to action and information to assets.
11:28So what this means is let's let's just go technical problems. Let's just go one single problem, foot positioning. You're explaining, you're giving information of it could it could be too wide, it could be too narrow.
11:42You'll either fall forward, you'll have a hard time retracting back. All of that stuff makes sense. But the most helpful thing you can do is then tell the person, now here's what you should do, aka action, to fix it or to improve it.
12:00And ideally pair it with some sort of asset. So what's an asset that we could give someone here? Could we give them a training routine to work on foot positioning?
12:14Could we give them morning stretches or exercises to work on foot mobility?
12:23Could we give them a checklist of different actions as they adjust their foot positioning to know if they're doing it right or wrong?
12:39Could we give them a pair like a a training regimen with a partner to practice just foot positioning?
12:53Like, how how regimen. Like, what this is the most important part is you go, yes.
13:01I'm explaining this thing to you, but now I have to tell you what to do about it. And and this is where you pair actions with assets.
13:12And of course, because you're teaching something visual, like maybe it makes sense to pair all of these things with a training video. Maybe it makes sense to pair all these things with like a cartoon diagram showing different people doing the different actions.
13:27You know what I mean? Yeah.
13:32Yeah. That makes sense. That's the drills that I do in class.
13:35Exactly. Video them. Yeah.
13:38The the the skill with digital products is realizing all it really is is a more organized version of all the stuff you're probably already explaining in person.
13:50You already know all the answer. Like, I if I ask you the questions, like, you tell me all the answers. Right?
13:56And so the digital product is really just you sitting down and going, okay. Let's just take this slowly step by step. What problems does this person have?
14:06Let's isolate each problem. If I saw someone making this problem, what would I notice?
14:13What are the three different things I would notice? What would I tell them to do in each situation? And if the person wanted to get better at any of those individual things, what would I give them?
14:26What would I tell them to do? What little training exercise or what? You know what I mean?
14:31And you're sort of just repeating that loop in your brain over and over again.
14:36Yeah. That makes sense.
14:39Cool. Any follow ups? Awesome.
14:41No. That makes complete sense. I just need to, like you say, pay attention to what I say every week.
14:48Yeah. Yeah. I would I mean take it for granted.
14:51I would encourage too for you and for anyone else here. I think one of the the most underrated technologies that has happened in the past five years has been transcription software.
15:03When I was running my ghostwriting agency ten years ago, I used to have to pay thousands of dollars every month to get our client calls transcribed from, like, a transcription service. Now you could literally just run an entire martial arts training program for an hour and just put your phone nearby and record the whole thing.
15:23You could record it in Otter. You could record it in Fathom. And then at the end, you take the recording, and most of these AI platforms will transcribe the entire thing for you in real time.
15:34And then you could take the transcription and upload it to Claude and just say, hey, Claude. Like, summarize for me what are the the things that I taught today. Like, you you already are creating all the content.
15:46Just record it. That's a good idea. You know?
15:50Awesome. It's a great question. Thanks for asking.
15:52Thank you very much. Yeah. Really good question.
15:55By the way, if you're brand new to writing online and want a really easy place to start, I recommend reading the art and business of online writing. I wrote this book after I'd been writing online for over a decade and accumulated over a billion views on my work, monetizing my writing in all sorts of unconventional ways.
16:11And I wrote this book to give other writers like you a way to skip all the lessons that I had to learn the hard way and start seeing success from your writing a whole lot faster than I did. So if writing online is something you're thinking about or something you're actively practicing, I recommend picking up a copy of the art and business of online writing.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The question is not what to put in the product — it is who the product is for. In this live coaching session, a martial arts instructor discovers that the content of his digital product already exists in every correction he makes during class; the only work left is organizing it.
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:07model
Experience Level Ladder
- Has not started yet (largest TAM)
- Started but not seeing traction
- Been doing it a while, hitting specific problems
- Near-expert, wants the next level (smallest TAM)
Four audience rungs that apply universally to any physical-skill niche. Pick one before choosing a topic.
Steal forAny skill-based digital product: fitness, music, photography, coding, writing
11:17model
Information to Action to Asset
- Information: explain the failure mode and how to recognize it
- Action: tell the student exactly what to do to fix it
- Asset: provide a checklist, drill video, training routine, or diagram
The three layers that turn a helpful explanation into a sellable digital product.
Steal forAny instructional product or course module
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
15:54book
“By the way, if you are brand new to writing online and want a really easy place to start, I recommend reading the art and business of online writing.”
Soft verbal plug at the end, no screen overlay or link shown. Low friction but also low conversion — no URL, no urgency.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
Visual structure at a glance.
