In 2025, Andrew Lane posted a video on his YouTube channel. That video pulled in over 60,000 views (without any paid ads or affiliate magic), and on one particularly good day, 700 people opted into his email list within 24 hours.
By the end of the year, that video and a few more like it had helped drive roughly 1,000 course sales. His top four videos have now passed 440,000 views.
Andrew is the founder of Design Hacker, where he teaches entrepreneurs how to build their brand, create content, and set up sales funnels. He also runs Brand Builder Pros, an agency that offers those same services for clients.
Andrew’s course sales success didn’t happen by accident, and it wasn’t really about a lucky YouTube break either. It all happened because of a funnel Andrew has been running for years, one built on simplicity, community, and making things that help people get results fast.
Here's how he built it.
(If you’re looking for a tool to build your business, Podia is an all-in-one home base with your website, community, courses, products, and email. Start a 14-day free trial today.)
Inside Andrew’s course launch playbook
For years, Andrew built the same kind of funnel for himself and his clients.
- Record a free video training
- Gate it behind an email opt-in form
- Run ads to get people to sign up and watch
- Promote a related paid product over email to everyone who subscribes
This model works well, but it also depends on ad spend to keep working.
In 2025, he tried something different on a whim.
"I recorded a video, and my wife asked me, 'Why don't you just put that on YouTube?'" Andrew remembers.
So instead of gating the video as a free lead magnet, he posted it publicly.
"It got over 60,000 views," Andrew says.
Normally Andrew’s videos would only be available after someone joined his email list. But for this one, he pointed people to the video caption where they could click a link, enter their email address, and download a related free resource.
When they did that, visitors would be redirected to Andrew’s course sales page, which included the first lesson of the paid course. This gave his prospective customers a taste of what the full product would be like.
As the views crept up, Andrew noticed something in his analytics. Between 30 and 40% of viewers were watching his video on a TV, meaning they couldn't click any link he mentioned in the caption. To fix this, he added a large QR code on screen whenever he talked about his offer.
Both the QR code and the link would give people information about how to join the course, and they would also be added to Andrew’s email list.
From there, a short automated sequence of 4 to 5 emails would follow, reinforcing the offer and why it mattered. He circled back roughly once a month with course updates, sales, or other promotions.
The new playbook worked. Nearly every lead that year came from YouTube videos, and about 10% of those leads became paying customers.
A unique way to combine community with your online courses
With course sales coming in, Andrew’s next strategy was to expand on the offer by giving existing customers more value.
He got the idea from his first-ever digital product, a $10-a-month branding and design membership he ran through a Facebook group in 2015. This was back before design tools like Canva were widely available, so there were a lot of technical tutorials alongside the creative elements.
"The first training where I tried to teach someone else how to do what I was doing, that was a huge shift in my mindset," Andrew says. "When you teach it, it makes you way better at your craft."
Month after month, people kept paying for access to his content, as well as the ongoing support.
Using that 2015 example as a guide, Andrew offered his new course buyers an upsell into a higher-ticket community, his Brand Builder Club, with a special lifetime-access promo in 2025.
Because he wasn’t sure exactly what this community would look like long-term, he guaranteed that he would be active in the group for the first six months. "After that, any extra time would be gravy!" he says.
Launching the community upsell gave Andrew one of his biggest months of the year, while still keeping things simple. Sell the course first, then add on a community upsell for people who want to keep learning.
"People want to be in a community. They're looking for people who can guide them and mentor them," he says. "It's a win-win, because you get recurring revenue, and they get to continue moving towards their goal."
Quick results, not perfect production
Andrew's course content has changed shape over time too, moving away from long video modules toward prompts, workflows, and FAQ-style answers.
Ideally, his courses should give customers quick answers that they can put into practice right away. Andrew explains that there’s no reason to drag things out when, "in 5 minutes, I can just give you the stuff."
When a customer runs into a question, Andrew records a quick Loom video answering it, then adds it to the course for everyone. It's technically course content, but it makes the course feel more interactive and adaptable since it can move with the needs of the students.
"It's not about making the perfect course, it's about giving students a quick result and then continuing to support them as challenges come up," he says.
A big part of adapting quickly is having a tech stack that you can lean on.
In 2019, Andrew spent six months trying to build a fully custom system on WordPress, confident his own technical background would make it manageable. But it ended up being more trouble than it was worth.
"I felt so deflated, because I had the skill set of design, branding, web design, tech, and it was still such a pain," he says.
When he found Podia, it became easier to get things up and running fast while figuring out his content, offers, and sales funnels.
"It just felt good. I liked the customer journey. I liked how it looked," he says, remembering what it felt like to join another creator’s course through their sales page. "It was just simple, easy."
Podia works well for anyone building courses, email campaigns, and an engaged online community. Andrew specifically likes that Podia cuts out the extra tools that creators often have to stitch together themselves.
"I've always hated having to pay for Zapier and extra third-party tools," he says. "When you can do more in one platform, it's so much easier."
That simplicity makes it easier to run parts of the business on autopilot. Lead magnets can be built in Podia. Freebies can be delivered automatically. Email sequences run in the background. And community updates live in the same place as the course itself, freeing Andrew up to support his students when they need him.
Marketing, messaging, monetization
When Andrew zooms out and thinks about what it actually takes to grow a business, he comes back to three things.
"Building a business is basically attracting leads, converting sales, and then delivering more value at scale. I call it marketing, messaging, and monetization," he says. "If you're ever stuck, the problem is probably one of those three things."
Messaging
On messaging, Andrew observes that most creators aren't struggling because their offer is weak. They're struggling to explain it clearly.
"A lot of people have great stuff to offer, but they don't know how to explain it or showcase the value," he says. His fix is to make a simple page with clear credibility (like testimonials and reviews), a clear transformation, and a clear next step.
Marketing
On the marketing side, there are three main ways you can get more eyes on your work.
- Pay to get in front of an audience
- Spend the time to build your own
- Borrow someone else's through partnerships and affiliates
He's leaned on partnerships throughout his career.
His approach starts by giving before asking. He looks for people who already have the audience he wants, ideally people who are themselves his ideal customer, and leads with something useful before ever mentioning a partnership.
"I always lead with value first," Andrew says. When approaching a creator, he'll say something like, "I bet you and your audience have this problem, and I'm building something that can solve that. Could we get on a call? I could show you, maybe help you with this."
Once someone sees the value for themselves, the partnership tends to follow naturally, and it multiplies fast.
"If I can just sell it to that one person, they can go sell it to 100 people for me, and they get a win out of that," he says. A win because their audience gets something helpful, and because they can earn a commission as an affiliate.
Monetization
Monetization, for Andrew, is about how many ways one piece of expertise can serve people. He describes it as delivering more value at scale, and his own year is a good example.
He turned the same knowledge into a few YouTube videos, a free lead magnet, a course, and a community. Each one delivered the transformation to more people and got them closer to making a purchase without taking up more of his time.
"Find better ways to package up your knowledge and give it to people," he says. "Give them the value of the transformation faster and easier."
That's why he stacks his offers instead of making customers choose between them. In his business, the course gives someone a quick result, and the community keeps supporting them after.
One brings in profit up front, the other builds recurring revenue, and together they let him earn more from the same audience he already worked hard to reach.
Keep it simple, and point everything in one direction
Andrew's strategy worked because he didn't try to do too much at once. He took a training he'd normally gate behind an email sign-up form, put it on YouTube, and sent everyone to one simple funnel with a freebie, a sales page, and a short email sequence.
From there, he promoted his course and gave people quick wins with new content based on customer questions. He gave students the option to add on community access for more ongoing support.
He let a few free YouTube videos do the heavy lifting, then used partnerships to reach even more people. And he used Podia to get things up and running fast, so he could stay focused on his people, not his tech stack.
As Andrew puts it, "That simplicity has helped me make a lot more money, just because I can focus on what really matters."
If you're ready to build a great course, sales funnel, lead magnet, and online community all in one straightforward tool, Podia can help. Start your free trial today.
Andrew Lane is a Podia Pro who has built multiple 7-figure brands from scratch over the past 15 years. You can learn more about his work on Design Hacker and Brand Builder Pros.
