How Course Businesses Work & How Irish Pubs as a Service is Making Millions | My First Million #183

About this video

Sam and Shaan explore the course business across four distinct categories: individual creators building audiences and selling courses, platform companies like Udemy, massive consumer libraries like MasterClass, and B2B corporate training at scale. They discuss completion rates, business models, and revenue potential for each category, then brainstorm adjacent ‘in a box’ business concepts like the Irish Pub Company.

Key takeaways

• Individual creators with credibility and an audience can realistically reach $1M/year in profit through course sales, though scaling beyond $10M becomes difficult without diversifying into coaching or consulting services
• Course completion rates are notoriously low (6% on Udemy, single digits even for paid courses), but cohort-based live classes dramatically improve completion to 75%+, suggesting format matters more than content quality
• MasterClass succeeds through celebrity talent, high production value ($500K+ per course), and aspirational positioning that keeps subscribers even with low course completion, treating education as a consumer subscription product rather than a learning outcome business
• B2B corporate training is primarily a sales-driven business, not an education business—companies buy for benefits/recruiting rather than actual employee learning, making it susceptible to budget cuts
• The ‘in a box’ franchise model (Irish Pub Company generating $2B+ over 30 years) works by licensing a proven concept with clear ROI to bar owners, and could be replicated across niches from gaming bars to themed restaurants

Episode details: published May 20, 2021 · 12K views · 1:06:23 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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