Use my teaching to win work instead of selling it
Some teaching was never meant to be sold. It exists to show that you know your subject — so the right person reads it, recognises their own problem in it, and gets in touch. If that's you, a course sitting behind a price and a login is working against you: the people you want are the ones who never got past the checkout.
A shop window course is the opposite arrangement. Everything is readable by anyone, there's no price and no sign-up, and where the enrol button would be there's an invitation to talk to you instead.
Turning a course into a shop window
- Ask Bernard to open it. "Open up my onboarding course as a shop window" is enough. Every lesson becomes public — video, notes and any worksheets (Give learners files with each lesson) — and the checkout comes off the page.
- Give him your words for the invitation. What stands where the price was is a sentence, not a button: "Talk to me about this", "Ask me how this applies to your team". Bernard uses your wording, never his own guess at it.
- Publish it. A shop window needs no price, so the usual "this course has no price" objection doesn't apply (Charge once, or sell a year of access). Everything drafts privately first and goes live when you approve it.
What happens when it works
An enquiry from an open course lands in your contacts like any other, tagged to that specific course. That tag is worth more than it sounds: it tells you which piece of your teaching is actually bringing people in, so you can write more of that and less of the rest. From there the enquiry can be followed up by hand, or by a sequence you've approved that stops as soon as you mark it handled.
Then let the teaching travel further
The course is the proof, but most people won't start there — they arrive looking for the problem, not the syllabus. So the second half of this is writing public pages from the material: an article built around the part of lesson four where you explain the thing everyone gets wrong, quoting you exactly, and linking into the open course so a reader can go and see the whole thing.
Ask Bernard for it and he'll read the actual lessons — the transcripts and the strongest moments in them — and draft from what you really said. The rule he works to is worth knowing, because it's your name on the page: anything published has to be supported by what the lesson actually says. If the material doesn't support a claim, he asks you rather than filling the gap. A thinner page that's entirely true is worth more to you than a fuller one you'd have to defend.
Is this instead of selling, or as well?
As well, if you like. The door is a setting on each course, so a practice might open its foundations course as the shop window and keep the advanced one priced (Sell a course from my own website), or run everything open because the work it brings in is the business. Switching back is a setting too — nothing about opening a course is permanent.
The prompt
“My courses should be winning me work, not sitting behind a login. Open up my [course name] course as a shop window and put an enquiry form on it.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Doesn't giving it all away mean nobody hires me?
- It tends to work the other way round. Someone who reads three of your lessons and thinks 'this person knows exactly what I'm dealing with' is a far warmer enquiry than someone who read a services page. You're not selling the teaching — it's the evidence. The people who want to do it themselves were never going to hire you; the ones who want it done arrive already convinced.
- What happens when someone gets in touch?
- Their message becomes an enquiry in your contacts, tagged to that particular course, so you can see which teaching is actually bringing people in. If you've switched on the enquiry follow-up sequence it starts chasing politely on your behalf, and stops the moment you mark the enquiry handled. Nothing goes out under your name until you've approved the wording.
- Can I go back to selling it later?
- Yes, any time — it's a setting on the course, not a one-way door. Switch it back to selling and the checkout returns, or open one course as a shop window while the rest stay priced. Anyone who read it while it was open simply read it; nothing was given away permanently.
- What exactly becomes public when I open a course?
- All of it: every lesson's video, the written notes, and any worksheets or files attached to lessons. That's the point — but it's worth knowing before you click. If the course has a price or people already enrolled, you'll be asked to confirm rather than have it happen quietly, and existing students keep their access either way.
- Will search engines and AI assistants actually find it?
- That's what it's for. An open course publishes as ordinary readable pages with the right markings to say it's free to read, so search engines index it and AI assistants can quote it when someone asks about your subject — with your name and your site attached.