Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

What if you could build a business that makes money every single day without trading your time for dollars? That's exactly what Gemma Bonham Carter did back when she was working a nine to five in public health. Stuck in traffic at eight months pregnant, she knew that she needed more freedom. She launched her first online course in 2017 and made $13,000. But fast forward to today, that number has skyrocketed and her course business now generates over seven figures a year. And she hasn't had a $0 day since 2020. Gemma helped over 10,000 students launch and scale their profitable courses. And now she's integrating AI to help creators move even faster.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:00:32]:

And if you are just selling information at some stage, that is going to die. I think there's like two ways to compete in the new world of AI. One is like integrating it fully. Like, what are the tools? What can I be building? How can I help my students implement faster? And then the other is today, she's.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:49]:

Here to share her best strategies for turning what, you know, into a thriving course business, how AI is reshaping the industry, and what it really takes to build a business that runs on autopilot. Welcome to the Creator's Adventure where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Brian McNulty, the founder of Heights platform. Let's get into it. Hey, Gemma, welcome to the show.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:01:18]:

Hey Brian, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:21]:

Yeah. My first question for you is, what would you say is the biggest thing either that you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:01:30]:

Oh, yeah, great question to start off with. Um, honestly, I think it was really like betting on myself and going all in on like the digital courses and digital products kind of model for my online business. Um, when I started, I could talk for this entire episode about the many business models I tried of like, you know, doing services. I was doing DIY workshops, like cra, you know, craft workshops. I was, I had an Etsy shop, I was a blogger. I did all of these different things and it wasn't until I, I actually gave like a talk at a conference about blogging and it was, you know, basically me teaching about blogging. Right. And I had all of these people come up to me afterwards asking follow up questions, like, really wanting to pick my brain about, about what I had been sharing.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:02:21]:

And a light bulb moment went off for me of like, oh my gosh, okay, this is it. Like, I love teaching about. And at the time it was about blogging strategy. It's since shifted to teaching about like online course marketing strategy. But it was at that moment that I realized, okay, I actually want to lean all the way in to this model of creating online courses and digital products. Something that can generate revenue for me without requiring me to show up live every single day. And that shift really changed everything in terms of what I was building in my business. And so now, yeah, I have this business that, you know, largely runs on.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:03:01]:

I talk about this in when I teach marketing of like the marriage of evergreen funnels and live campaigns. And so we really maximize our sales by leveraging those two kind of marketing strategies. Um, but it means like, I have a pretty flexible schedule. My calendar is full of white space. I can take time away from my business without worrying that that's going to have a really detrimental effect on my income. I actually like my family and I moved to France all of last year because I can take the business with me. Right. And do it from anywhere.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:03:33]:

So that's really the biggest thing was like making that decision and going all in one on building the kind of the systems, the infrastructure that were required to make that happen.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:45]:

Yeah, that's a great point because I was thinking about that for myself recently too. There's definitely a difference in business of like, okay, I have a business, it's doing things. Maybe I'm trying a bunch of different things like you said, but when you really decide for yourself, like, okay, this is really what I believe in, what I care about and like, I'm really going to go all in on that. It definitely does make a change, I think, in everything for sure.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:04:12]:

And I was also working, I mean, just to give you like personal life stuff. At the time I was working in kind of the nap times. I had babies at home at the time I was off on maternity leave and I had this really clear vision of like, okay, I really do want to turn this into a full time income so I don't have to go back to my 9 to 5 job after my mat leaves were over. And. And so I had that like fire under me. Right. To figure it out. And yeah, really went for it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:39]:

Yeah. Well, the next question I have here, maybe I'm going to kind of answer it for myself already. And we kind of talked about it and hinted at it that like online courses, part of the reason I think it's such an incredible business is it does give you that freedom. You do have that potential. And I think most of us like starting a business as entrepreneurs, a big Driver of that is that we want to be able to have this freedom in our life and in our business. And some people get confused and think they want to make a bunch of money. But the reason you want to make money is to be able to have that freedom for yourself. And like online courses are really great at being able to provide that for yourself.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:19]:

Would you say there's any, any other different, like number one benefit of being a full time course?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:05:25]:

I mean, I think you've kind of nailed it. Like for me it's that piece of leverage, you know. So when you're selling courses, you're not stuck in this cycle anymore of trading your time for money like you would be if you were offering one on one services as a coach or consultant or service provider. Right. You can only take on so many clients before you're going to max out your time and then you're kind of having to make a decision about going like, am I going to build out an agency and have actual like staff and team members? It becomes a whole different business model. But it's completely different when you build an online course or some sort of digital product because obviously you can build it once and, and sell it hundreds or thousands of times. And what's really amazing is like I have programs now that I created back in 2019, 2020 that I'm still selling today. And while we have updated them, of course we've updated the curriculum over time.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:06:19]:

Like I continue to sell these same flagship programs and we have thousands of students who've taken them. So the leverage piece is just really incredible there. And the, any impact, like I can impact more people by selling this as an online program or course than I could if I was doing this one on one. Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:06:41]:

That's exactly what I was just going to add to it because I had the same moment when I had this small web design studio and I realized that I don't want to only be able to have this leverage to be able to have the time freedom for myself. But ideally I want to be able to impact more people too and not just be like, okay, well I helped this client. That's really nice, but I wish I could help more people. And that's another reason why this model is so great.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:07:06]:

Totally agree. It's amazing to me now that I've been running my business for as long as I have, like the different people in different industries that have come through our doors, like from all, like parenting, real estate, nutritionists, artists, you know, wellness experts. The fact that I feel like I've Been able to touch so many people in these different industries and the ripple effect from that is very fulfilling.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:31]:

Yeah. So I think our audience is. They're probably sold on the idea now, if not already. I want to touch on what you mentioned about the combining the live and evergreen. I want to hear more about that, of how you do that because I think this is a point where people get stuck. They hear, they hear all these things from different people. Like, oh, evergreen's a way to do it. Oh, you've got to do live stuff.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:56]:

And I think it's pretty. A pretty common problem for people either to not know which to do or which to do when.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:08:03]:

Yeah. So it's all sort of part of this like, I think of it as like a big machine with cogs and the wheels are turning and they all kind of can help support one another. You can't necessarily build the machine all at once. Right. It's like you do one thing, you get it working and then you add in more and more layers to it. So I just want to like preface by, by saying that because it can feel a little overwhelming when I talk about this system, but. Exactly. You're exactly right.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:08:29]:

So the idea is they can all work and they can all work together. So if you're hearing voices of people you know in your, in your feed, like you're seeing ads all the time or you're on email lists of people who are really promoting one over the other. In my experience of doing this for as many years as I have, the real magic happens when they work in conjunction with each other. So you can have something like an evergreen funnel, whether that is a webinar based funnel, whether it's a funnel that kicks off from some sort of freebie you have with an email sequence afterwards, whether it's a little challenge, like it doesn't really matter and it probably aligns with. You're going to have to think about how it best aligns with your audience in the program you're trying to sell to like develop the right evergreen funnel for you. But you can have that running 24, 7, 365 so that as new leads find you, this is what you direct them to. And the idea is that the people who are ready, the people who are fast action buyers, the people who know that they want the solution now, they're going to be the people who buy in that evergreen funnel. But what it also does for the, you know, a standard conversion rate is 2%.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:09:40]:

So let's say 98% of those people don't buy. What you've done in that funnel is you have positioned yourself as an expert in your niche. You have dropped a lot of great content for them. Because when I teach Evergreen funnels, it's not at all just like, here's a bunch of really salesy, push it down your throat emails. It's like we're actually providing really thoughtful content in those emails and in that webinar or whatever it might be. And you've established a really strong understanding of your offer. So then two months down the line, six months down the line, a year later, you know, whenever it is that you run a live promotion, those people on your list already know about that program because they've gone through that funnel. And so then what happens is you've got all of this baseline know like and trust already there and they're so much more likely to jump into the program when you're doing that live campaign that has that hype and that energy and that real time feel.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:10:38]:

And like you actually can connect with people on like throughout that live campaign, whatever that looks like. And it's really interesting. When we brought these things together, we have found and it has remained true to this day, like years later. When we look at our live launches, our live campaigns, over 50% of the buyers have gone through the funnel before. So it's like they went through that funnel, built that baseline with me, and then purchased in the live launch. And I just can't like stress it enough that these things work so incredibly well together. And the live launch also attracts different buyer types. Right.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:11:16]:

If you got the fast action people in your funnel, you're getting the people in your live launch who maybe need more of those touch points. They need the longer Runway, they need more of that warming with you to, to make the purchase.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:28]:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Okay, that, that's very clear. I'm curious next for AI, like, why can't course creators ignore AI in 2025? I'm really big on AI. I want to kind of hear your take on that.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:11:44]:

Yeah, well, oh my gosh. We could spend the whole episode talking about different ways we're using AI, I feel like. So I think that there's like nuance here because AI can be from a course creator's perspective, AI can obviously be really incredible at helping you produce elements of your course that you're building. I think what's important to understand is like the legality point of view. This is all still very gray area of like, can you really copyright and sell something that AI has produced. And as far as I understand right now, the answer is no. So if you want to retain copyright of your and have it really be like your intellectual property in your program, I still really am a big believer that this needs to come from you. Like this needs to be your experience, your skill set, your thoughtful, you know, expertise that leads the creation of this course that you're putting together.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:12:49]:

But then use AI to help you build certain things out. Like for example, a really simple example would be like, let's say I'm recording videos that teach something for my program. Well then I can take the transcripts of those videos and have AI help me put together all like the welcome stuff for the each lesson. It can help me put together like the additional like tools or workbooks or accompanying downloads that go with each of those courses. Right. And then the other aspect that I think is really interesting and important as we move into 2025 and beyond is like integrating AI into the offer itself. Meaning if I'm building out, if I'm teaching you something. So let me give you a really tangible example.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:13:34]:

I have a program where I teach about email marketing and I'm teaching you about email marketing. I can actually build public facing tools using AI. So I use ChatGPT in this case via like custom GPTs. I can build them to be trained on my frameworks and methodologies like my ip and hand those over to my students so that they can implement what I'm teaching so much more quickly. So I have, you know, a custom AI assistant that is trained on my way of doing subject lines and it spits out subject lines for them. I have a custom AI assistant that's trained on my way of doing email marketing and they can use that AI assistant to write the emails for their business. Right. So integrating AI, I think into our courses and into our offers is this next iteration of like the online course model and world.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:14:30]:

And, and if you are just selling information at some stage that is going to die. Like I feel like this is we're in a moment where like things are shifting. So you really want to think about usable. I think there's like two ways to compete in the new world of AI. One is like integrating it fully. Like what are the tools, what can I be building? How can I help my students implement faster? And then the other is leaning into human connection. So it's like human connection over everything else. Like I'll give you the information and have curriculum for you, but we're going to be doing coaching or we're going to be doing.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:15:02]:

We're offering, you know, one on one stuff or we're auditing your things. There's a community or there's whatever it might look like where we're leveraging actual human connection. And I think that those two things are going to be more and more important in this field. And then as an aside, just because I can't, we can't have this question. I can't not talk about it. But like as a course creator or frankly any online entrepreneur, if you're not using AI to run the backend operations and systems in your business, you are like leaving a huge amount of, I don't even know how to put this, like you're not leveraging the efficiency and time saving that you could be. And I am a huge believer in the way that I don't think you need to be up on every latest AI development, frankly. There's new things coming out every day.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:15:48]:

It can be a full time job just to like stay on top of it. But what I have gotten most value from are building these AI assistants. I do them on ChatGPT and Cloud for like two different functionalities. But I have these little assistants that are trained on very specific things for my brand and my business and my operations. And those assistants now do like, they have saved us countless hours per week and save me so much expenses when it comes to like team as well. So absolute game changer. Had to mention it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:23]:

Yeah, I completely agree. And like, like there was so much hype and everybody talking about the idea of like, oh, you want to get a virtual assistant for your course business or whatever. And yeah, that can be so powerful. But like you can get a lot of that now from AI essentially for free. And yeah, you don't have to say like, I'm going to take all this time to understand all of it and implement it with everything. But I always say like think of one tedious thing that you do repetitively, like how can you involve AI in that? Because there's probably some things where, or even if, if not something that you do repetitively, something that you wish you could do repetitively but you just don't have time for. And there's probably some things like that that it's just a small little thing that you've gotta do all the time, but if AI could take care of it for you, it would save you hours every week or month or even every day.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:17:13]:

So yeah, yeah, the operational things also like copywriting stuff, there's just so many avenues for time saving. It's wild.

Bryan McAnulty [00:17:21]:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I agree with all of your. Your points there. I think creators should either realize, like, the way I say it is that if you're making courses, like the idea of like a mini course for like $9 or something like that, I think that's kind of going away because, like, you can still, you should still try to make, like, great lead magnets and all of that. But if somebody can just go to, like, ChatGPT and ask them to explain it, they can pretty much just get it there. But where your value comes as a course creator is your unique message and your unique experience. And that's why people want to learn from you and would purchase from you and not somebody else.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:03]:

And they can't get that from ChatGPT because ChatGPT is not you, for sure.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:18:08]:

Yeah. And this also ties into the whole conversation around building your business on your personal brand. I think as a course creator, that's more important than ever because to your point, if you want to stand out and compete in the marketplace, if you're just behind like a faceless logo, you're really not able to build that same, like, relationship with your audience that you can with a personal brand. And people will buy. People buy from people. Right. Like, all of that really matters. And so if that's not something that you have thought about or put much time into thinking about in terms of how am I really, how is my personal brand really coming through? In all the content I'm publishing and everything that I'm touching in my business, now's the time to be thinking about it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:53]:

Yeah, yeah. So to be really clear, I think a good example of maybe what not to do is to think like, okay, like, I heard Brian and Gemma talking about this. So that means I'm gonna go make 1000 AI generated courses and go sell them all. That's how I'm gonna use it. No, don't do that. And it's all going to be at this faceless brand that is. I'm just going to build that that has little value. And the value that it does have is only kind of going to go down.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:22]:

So, yeah, it's got to be yourself. You don't have to, like, share everything about your personal life, but having some way for people to connect with you, that's really going to change a lot and help you impact more people with that. And then the other point about, well, how can you then integrate AI with what you're offering? I like that point as well. We've done some of the same things with custom GPTs. I did that when we made like an AI course at the, not last year, but the end of the year before that and right when the custom GPTs came out, we included a couple things that could help you with things like that and told our creators like, you guys should do that too, like build a GPT you can offer with your course. And I think a good way to think of this is you mentioned, I think you mentioned like the idea of having like a formula. Like this is the way you would write an email or you would write a subject line and you can tell that to AI and then it can help implement that for people and even if it doesn't do it as good, which it's probably of course going to be better to just get it from you directly and get like actual coaching from you directly to do that. What's really powerful about it is wherever you do have some kind of formula of some certain specific steps, you would tell somebody the AI by the fact of it being able to say like, okay, you give me this information now, here's what I'm going to like transform and give back to you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:42]:

Just being able to see that as like the potential customer or student, it can really help you learn and move along a lot faster. So it's really valuable to your customers in that way.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:20:52]:

Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:55]:

Awesome. So yeah, I've talked about my opinions on, on AI a lot here and Heights platform. We already offer a bunch of AI tools for our creators. Like our, our view in like the course creation process is the AI is not making the content for you, but it's helping you with different parts of that. So it's helping you set up all your products and like configure the settings, the technical part. So like you get to focus on creating and not like learning software. And then when you have made the lesson, it can go and review the lesson and let you know like, hey, here's some questions your students might actually answer about this. So you've got that like first, first initial feedback if you're not ready to put it in front of real people yet.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:21:35]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:35]:

And so I'm curious, is There any other AI tools that you swear by besides like ChatGPT?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:21:42]:

Oh, I've kept it really lean in terms of using ChatGPT and Claude are my two big ones. I use cloud when I need, usually when I need more like longer form writing done or kind of deeper thinking, that's when I'll use Claude. And then ChatGPT is more of My, like, my hype girl, she's really good at like the more like peppy stuff and she's really good at like quick tasks. So yeah, I kind of think of them like a little bit differently, but I really use those two the most. And then we use Zapier and make a lot and they kind of do similar things in terms of like building workflows and automating workflows, but they just are in their own lane a little bit in terms of like the style of workflows that they build. So sometimes we've had to use like one versus the other, but we have both and we've also used that. So we've used Zapier for this. But to build almost like a clone of me so that when my students are inside of my program and it's been.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:22:46]:

That clone has been trained on all of my content for that program, they can go and ask it questions. And so it's kind of like a 24.7chatbot for them. And if it, if it gets stumped, then the question can come to me, but it's like the thing that they can use to get their answer more quickly. So we, and that's built out on Zap. You're in connection with OpenAI. So yeah, we. But generally keeping it quite lean in terms of. I don't think you need to be subscribed to like 17 different pieces of software.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:14]:

I think you can get a lot from a few.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:17]:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah. ChatGPT, I would say, is a good first one for everybody. Like if you're not paying for at least the 20amonth plan, like, it's definitely worth it.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:25]:

Oh my gosh.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:26]:

Yeah, so, yeah, I agree with that. I don't think there's too many tools you need. I'm curious actually, have you tried the new, the deep research feature in ChatGPT?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:37]:

I haven't, but I, when I saw it come out, I, I was like, okay, well maybe this is going to dethrone cloud for me in terms of thinking that cloud is my deep thinker. Like, maybe ChatGPT is going to come to the playing field now with, with more capacity in that way. So we'll see.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:54]:

Yeah, so it, it's at the time of recording here, it's like less than two days old.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:23:59]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:59]:

Um, but I've tried it a little bit and it is really powerful. So here's my idea of like how to use it for course creation. Like we tell everybody that you've got to go and like validate what you're trying to do and do some research, but most people don't, like, enjoy doing that. Right? You want to just build the thing that you're trying to build. And so I think that this deep research can potentially do a lot of that for you. And I think you could probably come up with a really great prompt to share with your students and customers about what they should ask it. But essentially what I tried is I said like, okay, I want to make an online course teaching people how to use AI to produce music. I'm a musician and I've been looking into like, AI for music, right? So I told it that and I told it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:24:46]:

What I wanted to know was like, what. What are people asking about online? And because you want to figure out, like, well, what's the questions that people actually have? Because you need to address those in the course. You need to address that in your landing pages, your emails. And I wanted to know, like, is there a competition? Like, what does that look like? Who else is doing something like this? And like, what's like, how can I learn more about, like, the actual result that this should provide people? What are they actually looking for to learn? And I had it run. It took like, I think about 20 minutes to like run and do its. All its research. It went through 30 different sites and it shows you all the sites. It's like reading on the side and then its response.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:26]:

I had to like copy and paste it to check how many words it was. It was over 11,000 words that it gave me back in one message. So is this really, really detailed report. I probably should like, keep it to like this length at least. But I told it like, after it gave the report to send like these specific details at the end, so at least I could like, read that quicker. And yeah, it was really powerful. Like, I found I didn't do too much manual research myself yet thinking about that, but it gave me tons of great questions that, like, I never thought people would be asking but, like, made complete sense. And like, yeah, it was basically like, what I would say is, if you have a bunch of ideas for a course and you're not sure, like, well, what's the one I should actually move forward with? Just run every single one through deep research and then look through those reports that you get back and then you can decide.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:26:18]:

I love that suggestion. That really changes everything about how one does market research.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:25]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's. I think it's such a fun time for creators because basically you just get to create. You get to do like, all the Fun parts now is like where you can spend your time more instead of all the, like the research and the technical side and, and all of these things.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:26:43]:

Love that. Yeah. And the copywriting even like. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:49]:

Yeah. So let's see, what else should we talk about with. With. I think there's a lot of other things we can cover with this still before we get on to anything else, any, anything else you, you feel that you want to just mention related to AI or like how you see people use it or maybe how they can first start using it if they're not already.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:27:12]:

Yeah, I mean I think people are getting a little bit nervous about figuring out the AI assistant piece. So like the custom GPT piece and I guess I would just say it's not as scary as you might think it is. Like just start to explore creating one and in terms of like actual tactical tips, when you go into ChatGPT to create your first custom GPT, I wouldn't necessarily use the. It kind of takes you through like a little chat bot to try and configure your like instructions and things like that. And I actually think it's better to do it away from that. I feel like sometimes it can like lead you in the wrong direction. And so my inclination and the way that I've built a lot of mine out have been to start just with like a simple Google Doc of like putting ideas on paper of like, what is if I want to create, let's say an AI assistant that is going to help me write captions for my social media posts. Like I just want to kind of brain dump on paper everything that it will need to know about caption writing and then take that to just regular ChatGPT and have ChatGPT help you flush those out as really comprehensive instructions.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:28:22]:

And the more I think people will like build a custom GPT and then it doesn't work that well. And so they're kind of like, eh, forget it, like it's not that great. And just like anything with AI, the more specific you can be in your instructions and the more like knowledge files. That's basically like the, the library that you can upload to the custom GPT to give it the background information it needs. The more you can do that, the better the output will be. And I made the mistake at the beginning of like trying to build a custom GPT that would do everything right. It was like, it was like from a social media perspective, it'd be like, okay, well write the text overlay for those carousels and then also do the captions and then also turn it into an email. And, and, and, and I found that the more specific I was and kept each one to one like it being hyper knowledgeable on doing the one thing really well that was definitely like the best play and it was when I started to get the best output from them.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:29:22]:

And then you can always build them into a workflow. Right. If you want some one to produce something and then it gives it to the next and it produces something gives it to the next. Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:30]:

So yeah, a cool thing that I wish OpenAI talked about more is like you can ention in a chat the other GPTs and so you could have the one like help you with a subject line or something and then you can say like at mention like this other one now can you do this? And it's, it can be confusing because as humans like if we were going to work with another human, we would expect they can do a bunch of different things for us.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:29:56]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:56]:

So it's natural to think like oh, I'm going to make this assistant. It's of kind going to do all my stuff. But the current models, yeah they excel at like doing one very specific thing and then you got to make different ones for those different tasks.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:30:08]:

Totally. And then the last thing I'll say is that the other thing that's been really useful across almost all of my AI assistants has been to develop a really strong brand book at the beginning. So I actually have this as like a little mini offer that I sell to my audience and it has all of these very in depth prompts inside of it to take you through a conversation with ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever tool is your, is your preference to pull out like back to our conversation early about personal brand like to really pull out what your brand is all about, who your target audience is. And we're not just talking about these like baseline things, we're talking about really deep like what are their emotional desires, what are the trigger events that are going to get them to make a purchase? What you know, all of these like I think this section on my target audience is like seven or eight pages long in my brand book. So it's like in depth. And then you're gonna also put in things like the offers that you have in your business and maybe some writing samples or things like I do say this or I don't ever say this. And if you have it all in one brand book, that brand book can be attached as a knowledge file to every single AI assistant that you build and you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel and it becomes this, like, one source of truth, of like everything about your brand or your company in one document. It's also incredibly helpful if ever you are bringing on team members or, you know, need something that kind of gives people the overview of what your business is all about.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:31:43]:

It's. I waited way too long to create one and should have done it ages ago.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:49]:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, having having this extra documentation that's really helpful to AI is also going to be helpful to your team or like, anybody who's going to work with you in the future. Yeah, I would say that that was a great way to describe it because, like, AI isn't going to, like, be able to, like, reason through and understand, like, those fundamental, really important things that it needs to know about you. But if you can tell it those things, and if you can tell it like, this is how I work, or this is how the formula works, then it's really able to, like, transform and use that.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:32:24]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:24]:

And so that's the way you've got to think of treating it. Not saying like, hey, you're going to write a really good subject line for me. Go do it. If you do that, it's going to say the same words that it says for everybody else. Like, it's going to say unleash, unlock, and like, all of that kind of thing.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:32:38]:

And it's going to have the rocket emoji it loves.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:41]:

Yeah, it's going to have a rocket emoji after it. And so that's not what you want to do, but if you can tell it like, like, I specifically do these things for when I write a subject line. And like, this is how it has to be and like, this is what words you choose, you're going to get a much better result.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:32:56]:

100%.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:58]:

Awesome. I'm curious, is there anything like that you're working on now that's new that you're excited to share?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:33:06]:

Sure. It's funny, it's based on our conversation that we've just been talking about. So I have a new offer that I kind of beta sold in Black Friday of 2024. And so we've been dripping it out to those beta buyers this month, so at the beginning of 2025, and it's going really well. It's a. It's an offer called AI Dream Team. And it's all about this. It's all about building, like utilizing AI to build these very customized AI assistants to really help you run the back end of your business and your operations.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:33:40]:

And I have been like, head down building all of this out and has been so fun. I haven't been this like lit up about anything in a while. So yeah, that's kind of the new area for me. And I think in 2025, like I'll. This will. I'll publicly launch it and then sort of develop more like marketing around this offer and get more people into it. But it was a runaway success. When we did this beta round in, in Black Friday, it blew us away.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:34:09]:

Like it was almost six figures in sales just on one day during Black Friday. Yeah. So it was. You can. The appetite is there. People want to learn about this stuff. And I think it, for me it really lines up with what I've always talked about, which is how to run a successful, ambitious big business, but in part time hours. Right.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:34:32]:

Like, or in the way, like in within the boundaries of your life and giving you that freedom that you really want to be able to hang with your family, to travel, to pursue your hobbies. Right. To like live your life the way you want to live it, not be chained to your computer all the time. And I think this is why, like, I'm just so excited about it because we, I've talked about that in terms of marketing strategies, but this is like a whole new area for me to be able to really teach about this stuff and it's changed the way I've run my own business. So.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:06]:

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I, I have similar feelings about everything with AI and all that. It's really such an exciting time to be a creator.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:35:14]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:16]:

All right, awesome. Well, I've got one more question for you and that's on this show. I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or just want to get people thinking about, what would that be?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:35:29]:

I mean, I think it would be back to our original part or what we talked about sort of when we opened this, this episode, which was back to the idea of developing a business around your expertise. And so the one question I would have would be like, if you could teach a group of people one thing. So that could be something you've learned in your career, it could be something you've learned in your business. It could be something to do with your life experience. Like, what would that one thing be? And have you pursued it? Like, is, are you building it? Is it out into the world? And if it's not. This is maybe me giving you your, you know, kick in the behind to, to get building and to put it out there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:10]:

Awesome. All right. Well, Gemma, thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going. Where else can people find you online?

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:36:16]:

Yeah. So if you're, if you love listening to podcasts, you can head on over to the course creator show and hit subscribe. We also publish episodes weekly, or at least we try to weekly. And you can find me on social media at Gemma Bonham Carter or on my website, Gemma Bonham Carter.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:35]:

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Gemma Bonham Carter [00:36:36]:

Thanks, Brian.