Matt Easton spent more than thirty years in sales, most of it inside Fortune 500 companies. In that time, he went through pretty much every sales coaching program in the book, but he kept feeling like something was missing.
"I just always left feeling a little bit let down, like there was a lot to be desired," he says.
That gap is what eventually became Easton University, an on-demand sales coaching membership that Matt built from scratch and runs almost entirely on his own. Today, it's a library of hundreds of short lessons, a twice-weekly live coaching call, and a growing community of salespeople who love the craft.
In this story, Matt shares how he:
- Created his $499/month membership around a single, simple offer
- Boosts member engagement and retention by teaching in short, digestible bites
- Keeps his tech low-maintenance and easy to update with Podia
- Grows his audience with authentic social content instead of a big ad spend
If you're thinking about turning your own expertise into a business like Matt's, start your 30-day free trial of Podia today.
From the sales floor to a coaching business of his own
Matt's path into sales started with a piece of advice he received as a kid.
"My mom was a single mom. She made $4,000 a year, which was tough. I had a chance encounter with a sales professional from a company called Texas Instruments when I was 8 years old. He told me that I had to learn sales. So, I've devoted myself to the craft my entire life," he says.
That devotion turned into a career across large B2B sales and financial services, from individual contributor to account executive to VP of sales. But the whole time, Matt kept feeling this pull to build something that addressed the gaps he was seeing in sales coaching.
"My passion was always that there has to be a better way for other people to learn sales skills. I wanted to design something that would help them skip ahead of all of the struggles and mistakes that I made, and be more effective in their sales career," Matt says.
It had been on his mind for a while, but what held him back was the scale it seemed to require. He figured he would need a pile of complicated software, developers, production people, and a team to get things off the ground, and he wasn't ready to walk away from his career and raise millions in investor money to build what he thought he needed.
Then one night, that changed.
"I had a seven-figure W2 career, and I wasn't going to walk away from all that to build my own learning management system. But by luck of the draw, I was poking around Google one night, and I found Podia," he says. "I thought, hey, this seems kind of easy."
Finding Podia, and building his idea himself
Matt was skeptical at first. He'd seen how the big companies launch, and he wasn't sure one person could pull it off.
"I know a lot of the big companies start with a social media person, they've got a videographer, they've got all this huge machine already built, and what I really loved about my journey with Podia is that I was able to follow my passion," Matt remembers.
"All I needed was a camera, a light, a microphone, and a background, and I decided that I was going to just start putting content together and see what happened. It was so easy to design my coaching portal in Podia on my own," he says.
So he built the first version of his business by himself, and that practice is now something he recommends to every entrepreneur.
"It is invaluable for you to build the first iteration of your program on your own, because then you understand at a granular level how things are organized, what the material is all about, and how a customer is going to navigate it. When you understand that, it's very easy for you to make decisions about your business," Matt says.
He compares it to opening a sandwich shop without knowing how a sandwich is made.
"Imagine if you wanted to open a sandwich shop, and you had no clue how to put two pieces of bread together with stuff in the middle. It would be very difficult for you to understand why one particular sandwich is delicious, and another isn't," he says.
Because he understood his membership portal end to end, he could keep his focus on coaching.
"It's not a full-time job for me to manage my technical setup in Podia, and I'm not a tech person. I'm a coach," Matt says.
A simple membership, built to keep people around
As a result of the time he spent getting to know his business, his membership tool, and the space he was building for his people, a clear signature product emerged.
"We keep it pretty simple at Easton University," he shares. "We have individual products and courses, but my core offer is a membership with unlimited access to everything. Someone joins, and they get on-demand access to my entire learning portal. They get 30 different products about all kinds of topics, like prospecting, closing, and going to trade shows."
The library works like an on-demand catalog that people dip into based on whatever they're facing that week.
"It's 100% on-demand, there for them on their phone, their tablet, or their computer," Matt says. "They can jump around and work on courses depending on what's going on in their world. If they're having trouble closing a deal, they can go to the closing course. If they want to go to a trade show, they go to the trade show course."
Whenever someone completes a course in the coaching portal, they get a certificate of completion, automatically delivered by Podia. This satisfies corporate clients who buy seats for their teams. When they want proof that their people are learning, students can show their certificate to confirm their progress.
In addition to a full library of sales content, members get access to live coaching calls too.
"Members have the ability to join live coaching with me twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday," Matt explains.
To get access to everything, members sign up for a $499/month subscription with no strings attached. They can start at any time and stop at any time, but most of Matt's students stick around because of his teaching style. His approach is to break things down into short, digestible bites.
Teaching lessons in short, digestible bites
Ask Matt for his advice on keeping students engaged, and he answers right away.
"Short, digestible bites. My membership has wonderful courses, very comprehensive courses, but they are broken into short, digestible bites. I have lessons on Podia that are 2 minutes long," he says.
For example, in one of his courses, he has a lesson about what to say in a voicemail to a client who already has a contract in front of them.
"That does not need to be a one-hour animated video with full visual effects," Matt says. "It can literally be you in front of the camera for a few minutes saying, 'In this situation, here is the voicemail that you want to leave,' with a short quiz after to make sure they understand."
This approach often works better than traditional long-form video courses because people are busy, and shorter bite-sized content helps them get what they need and get out fast.
"Most people don't have hours and hours to devote to your thing, whether it's sales coaching, or music, or yoga, or breathwork, or tax accounting. Nobody wants to go into a membership knowing they have to commit hours at a time. That's how universities are taught, and that's why some people don't learn a lot at universities," he says.
Short lessons also let Matt move fast when the market shifts. While updating a highly produced, hours-long video course could take months, Matt was able to fully update one of his core programs to reflect new trends on Instagram and TikTok in a matter of days.
"We changed our entire prospecting module," Matt explains. "The old one was great, but the world has changed, so we needed to make updates. What would take a normal company a year, I was able to do in less than a week."
The format is a big part of why members stay.
"It's very rare that somebody cancels their membership with Easton University, and I believe that's because we offer very good coaching, but also the learning portal makes it easy for them to come back, grab something, learn something new, and go back to the rest of their life," he says.
What started as a few small products has now grown into a robust resource library. "If you took all of our short, digestible bites and put them together, there's 53 hours of stuff in there," Matt says. "There was maybe 4 hours when I started."
Growing an audience without a big ad budget
Before Matt took the plunge, he thought he would need a big custom tech setup and an even bigger budget to throw at ads. It turned out he didn't need either. He built his membership portal himself using Podia, and he grew his audience with the same DIY spirit by creating free content.
"I don't take the corporate mindset of going out and spending $500,000 a month on advertising. I spend my day coaching people, taking my phone, pointing it at my face, delivering actionable, quality social media content, and then I link that back to my Podia membership," he says.
For followers who aren't ready for the full membership yet, Matt also offers a lower-commitment way to sample his work.
"I created a little mini masterclass on closing deals. It's normally $300. I promote that on social media, and sometimes I'll even cover the cost for people so they can get access for free and see what we teach. Then when they're ready to be a part of the community, when they're ready to get access to everything else, they can sign up for the all-access membership," Matt says.
Free social content builds trust, the masterclass gives people a taste of his coaching, and the unlimited membership is there when they're ready to go deeper. By this point, people have seen what Matt offers for free, so they're confident in his work and excited to learn more, so paying for access isn't usually an obstacle.
"Don't be afraid to charge for your membership," he advises. "When people pay me every month, they have skin in the game. When they show up to our learning portal, they've made an investment in this, and they want that return on their investment. And they take it seriously, and they learn, and they implement."
What happened when Matt stopped waiting for perfect
Today, Matt runs a streamlined membership packed with content, coaches thousands of salespeople, and reaches new people every day through his free social content. He's grown his business into one of the biggest sales coaching memberships out there, but none of it would have happened if he'd waited until everything was perfect.
"The one thing that kills any business is this concept of perfection," he says. "There are so many wonderful ideas out there right now that can help the world. There are so many great coaches with really valuable stuff, and they're waiting for perfection."
His advice to anyone sitting on an idea is to put it out there anyway.
"Put your content out there. You can always refilm it, you can always redo it. Podia makes that part easy for you. So don't be afraid and feel like this has to be perfect," Matt says.
That willingness to publish imperfect content has paid off. Matt estimates Easton University has collected thousands of unprompted video testimonials, many of them about lessons he almost talked himself out of filming.
"We have 2,600 video testimonials from people who went through the prospecting course, people who closed $200,000 deals based on what we taught. And I remember wondering if it was even worth making that course. I thought, 'Wouldn't everyone already know this? Should I even film this?'" Matt says. "But that stuff ends up being gold."
Today, Matt encourages any aspiring coach, teacher, or creator to forget about making things perfect and start sharing their story, their advice, that thing they can help people with. Because there are people out there who need to learn from them, who are waiting to see what they make.
"Forget about the money. The money will come. Your memberships will come. Your sign-ups will come," Matt says. "Think about the mark that you want to leave on the world."
If you're sitting on an idea the way Matt once was, start your free trial of Podia. We can't wait to see how quickly you can turn what's in your head into your first digestible bite.
Matt Easton is a sales expert and the founder of Easton University, an on-demand sales coaching membership built on Podia.
