Waterside And Arkhub’s Innovative Portal: Teaching, Writing, And Earning For Authors And Educators

Ready to ignite your author journey and turn your book into a powerful online course? This compelling discussion, originally a webinar with Waterside and Arkhub.io, reveals the incredible potential for authors to generate new revenue streams and expand their reach. Hear directly from Gayle Gladstone of Waterside and Johanna Maaghul, founder of Arkhub.io, as they share insights on how to monetize your intellectual property. Plus, gain expert strategies for platform building, content creation, and leveraging crucial power partners from Super Brands Publishing. This special episode offers practical advice to help you cultivate a robust author platform and maximize your impact in the digital landscape.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Waterside And Arkhub’s Innovative Portal: Teaching, Writing, And Earning For Authors And Educators

Welcome to the show. What you’re going to hear is a call, a webinar that took place with Waterside and Arkhub.io. This is an opportunity for authors to be able to turn their books into courses. Waterside has a new portal on Ark where we will be promoting people’s courses. If you don’t know anything about Arkhub, you’re about to find out. This is a great place to put your courses and collaborate with other people to have them sold. I’m going to give you an example. A lot of what we’re going to go over are my courses that Waterside is now selling.

We are in negotiations with two other larger publishers as well. This really is an opportunity for authors to be able to create bigger courses, different revenue streams, and have them sold by new power partners. Are universities, and there are medical facilities. There are all sorts of places that are looking for good courses for their patients and clients. Stay tuned. You’re going to hear Gayle Gladstone from Waterside and Johanna Maaghul, as well as our guest. Johanna is from Arkhub. Stay tuned.

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Empowering Authors And Teachers Worldwide

Gayle Gladstone. Thank you for joining us at Waterside’s webinar. This will be introducing Johanna Maaghul, who has been the creator of the portal that we will be using for our authors and students to go to, to learn more and become bigger and better. It’s also considered a marketing tool to bring to our authors and teachers another way of making revenue for themselves and exposing their talent as writers and teachers.

Thank you for joining us. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, wherever you may be. I want to introduce Johanna Maaghul, who is the founder of Arkhub. We’ve been waiting for a very long time to have this up and running because it’s worth it. It is the best system I’ve ever seen. She and her husband have spent literally years to create this ideal portal for us to create a university of education, spiritual teaching, moving forward, and sharing what you have to offer to the world.

We also have here Juliet Clark, who is the founder and owner of Super Brands Publishing. Her and Johanna, and I have been colleagues brainstorming, and I don’t think of her as Super Brand Publishing. I think of her as one of the highest-level promoters, authors, and supporters for authors and teachers worldwide to make a bigger and better world. Waterside’s mission is to be sure that everything we share with the world brings joy, knowledge, wisdom, and creates a better world universally.

Empowering Authentic Learning & Growth

I’m happy to be here with you. We are going to be sharing the different ways to be a teacher and/or an author on this program that we have at Arkhub. Now we’re launching and we’re uploading as we speak. Philip is one of the art technicians who makes sure that everything runs smoothly. We have a program that will assist you in getting everything up. We’re here to support you, guide you, and bring you to the place you want to be with your wisdom and your book.

This is providing an opportunity also to create workbooks, to support your book, and to support the person that you are and have to share here in the world. I know personally that my life has gone into many avenues, and it’s through education and specialized learning that I have been able to walk this world with Illuminaries, world leaders, and presidents. It gives you the confidence and the knowledge as you are nudged into each part of your life to have a place to come to, to find the information you need that you believe is something you want to know, and to become more authentically you.

We will be promoting this aggressively so that your books will be seen and heard and known, and your courses will be appreciated, and helping others be their better, authentic self. I’m going to be here to support the conversation. I thank you so much for being you and having the courage to step away from traditional education and find specific courses that will make you be the person that you want to be in an authentic way, be your original self, make your own decisions and find the little niches that you will find and educate you.

With publishing, we have a wonderful portal to teach you how to write books, market books, and write proposals. It’s phenomenal what’s up on Arkhun. We’re also going to have a kiddies’ corner. In other words, it’s going to be a portal for parents to have a place to have their little children. We’ll start at three years old, with little flip books teaching children how to read.

Holistic Education And Well-being

We’re also going into the understanding of how to comprehend reading and then move into helping parents who are homeschooling put dimensions into Math, Science, Geography, History, that will be for the middle school and the high school age appropriate. I just spoke with an author whom I’m very excited about. I believe she’s on. She’s offering to teach poetry and reading, and writing not only for the younger generation, but also for high school.

Poetry and writing, and knowing how to express yourself, are vital for young minds to feel confident and move forward. We’re here to support parents also in their education journey with their children and youth for having confidence, and in a world where a lot of depression and hardships are befalling them with the changing times. We will also have some AI programs that will help you use this tool responsibly and use it toward helping you promote your book and your authorship.

We have an AI program for that, and there will be just a variety of things, mind, body, spirit. How to get in touch with your inner self. It’s a holistic program that teaches you. We have doctors and scientists that will help you be healthier and happier. How to balance your life so that everything you learn and do is designed by you to be the best you can be. I thank you for being here once again, and we’ll have Johanna here to explain the portals and what Arkhub is doing.

Great intro, Gayle. Just to build on a extend what Gayle is saying before, I just introduce myself too. Basically, we started this portal for authors. Juliet will get into that. What are the tools that authors need to really thrive and build a platform and reach their audience well? As we were doing that, we also had an initiative for authors who want to turn their books into classes. That is really a second focus.

Our focus is on supporting the authors, but Waterside Publishing will also include a separate portal for you to publish your work as a course. If you want to teach, we have a couple going up on overcoming shyness and sleeping well. There are different topics that can go in that portal. The third tier or I don’t know, will be education itself, like Gayle’s talking about different primary and secondary education, which we’ll also address.

I’ve been a literary agent working with Gayle and Bill at Waterside for over a decade now. I love what I do. I love helping authors get their books into the world and reach people and change their minds, and get them to think differently. It’s a big passion for me. In addition to that, I have had a multi-decade-long career as a technologist.

My husband Rich and I, who’s probably joining the call, we’ve built this portal specifically to give people a self-service tool for education that also provided a marketplace for like-minded people to come and find education that they’re not going to find on Coursera or your Udemy, or they don’t have to go walk into a university to get it. We really want to create innovative and unique education experiences that can be in any modality.

You can have it in person, you can do it over Zoom, or it can be self-paced like a recorded video. You can do one-on-one tutoring. All of those things are possible on the platform. I’m just going to leave it there, and I’m going to let Juliet talk about what she does and how much she’s inspired Gayle and I with her teachings and her offering and coaching, helping authors specifically.

Maximize Earnings With Online Courses

Thank you. I’m Juliet Clark. I’m the owner of Superbrand Publishing. You can tell Gayle and I are in a way competitors, but we’re working together on this really important initiative because there are a couple of things authors don’t do is build their platform properly. If you’re going to put courses out there, it’s the same platform that you use for your book.

We’re hoping that not only will we be able to share some of those ways to strengthen your platform through these courses, but also have you guys out there teaching on what you do in a really effective way, because your books are important. I love Gayle’s idea of getting you guys out on the platform as well. One of the things that I’ve loved about this platform is that when I put my courses up for authors, and you guys will be able to do the same, I actually can make deals with other people in the industry to sell my courses.

That’s a big plus in passive income, because if you’ve already recorded and put the course together, then that’s just money coming in the door that you haven’t really had to go out and do as much marketing as you would if you were in the coaching space, getting that out there. It really is a good opportunity for you to be able to become an industry leader and resell your courses. There are universities on there, and there are medical practitioners on there.

Publishing And Marketing Evolution

There are all sorts of people who probably would love to have an already done course for their clientele or their patients. I’m going to pop this up, I’m not going to stick to it strictly, but if you guys want to take a picture, a screenshot, or something. When I put together, when I started the publishing company, one thing I noticed immediately, and I noticed this because I worked for a traditional publisher, then I went to a big advertising firm and worked on a billion-dollar account.

When I came back into the publishing world as my own company, I noticed that the bigger companies were no longer supporting the traditional promotion, and that left it to you to do. There was this big gap in platform-building education, and with marketing, too. We’re going through this Renaissance with AI, where a refurbishing with AI, where we’re starting to see a lot of new marketing products too. The old stuff is just not working anymore.

I want to encourage you that you need this long-term plan. What happens with a lot of authors is we jump into this, I call it magical thinking. It’s like when you’re a four-year-old. When I worked at Mattel, one of the challenges we had was that our core audience was the four-year-old that’s watching Saturday morning cartoons, but they don’t have a credit card. We had to get past that childlike thinking of “Mommy, I need that Barbie,” and Mommy saying, “I have the credit card, but what you need is food and lodging.”

Everybody who has a child knows you go through this. I think a lot of authors go through this as well. The Kevin Costner thing, if I build it, they will come. Honey, no offense, you’re probably fabulous, but you’re no Kevin Costner. Neither am I. We have to get past that. The hard truth about the book sold is that most indie authors don’t sell even 200 books. That’s where this really comes into the strategic elements of it and getting yourself out there.

What we were offering courses on is a lot of these things, crafting your authentic brand, being able to nail your author avatar. What is it? Are we trying to sell to everyone, or do we have a niche that we want to hit hard on that? There are courses on content. One of the things that comes across to me when I talk to my clients is that many of them bring me books, but they haven’t been putting content out into the world for any period of time that’s meaningful.

When you think about it, if you’re a solopreneur, that’s not out of your purview. You’re the rainmaker. You’re probably doing everything there. You’re creating the content, you’re creating the programs, you’re writing the book, you’re keeping your business going. There’s a lot for you to do. The content course here helps you decide what content is easiest for me. What content can I do on a consistent basis that will be easy and fun for me to do?

You all know, as business owners, that thing that’s not fun that you don’t like is usually the thing that gets put aside. Think IRS, think taxes at the end of the year. Most everybody procrastinates on that. I think it’s true with most things in your company that you’re not liking what’s going on, or that you don’t like doing it. The other thing is a strategic social media presence. How are you using that content? We have a course that goes over building LinkedIn newsletters.

If you’re an entrepreneur, your audience is most likely on LinkedIn, and that’s where you need to do it. LinkedIn newsletter is a fabulous tool because it drops it right into the inbox when you produce one for anybody who’s subscribed, and LinkedIn takes care of your subscriptions. They’re the ones pushing it out. You just need to connect with other people in your niche, and LinkedIn does the work.

“Build Your Own Audience Assets”

Also, having a video platform that the course goes over, that as well, whether you are on YouTube or Rumble, or one of the other platforms. A lot of people don’t even know Rumble exists, and it’s a huge free speech platform out there where you could probably pick up an audience you’re not getting over on YouTube. Also, your email list. This is another area where we have a small course about building your email list because people don’t understand that when they’re out promoting, social media doesn’t belong to you.

Your email list does. It behooves you to move those people off of social media and build that list, whether it’s through a valuable lead magnet, whether you’re running campaigns or events, it is really important. You have to remember, you probably saw back in 2020, 2021-ish, that you could actually get kicked off of Facebook, and you lost those 5,000 people following you. It is really important because you don’t own that social media, that you make sure that this list is up to date and really valuable.

We are also going to be putting on, we don’t have it yet, but it is really important in this process for you to be leveraging power partners. Those people that you can exchange ideas with. I consider Johanna and Gayle my power partners because we exchange business. We send people to each other’s businesses for specific items there. That’s a great relationship to have as well because those are people who can sell these courses that you’re putting together.

We’re going to be putting up a power partner course. I’ve got it done. I just haven’t put it up there yet. Also getting media exposure. Understanding how you do that. Do you have your speaker sheets? Do you have a tour guide? Do you have ads that are effective? Really making sure that that’s in place too. We’re going to be having some media. Johanna is excellent at booking media. That might be a course that we get up there as well. I just put up a course on how to get an Amazon bestseller.

One of the things my company does is bestseller campaigns, and we don’t cheat. We don’t do the $0.99 garbage. We don’t do any of that because you have a real business. You have a real boo,k and you should have a real campaign that attracts the right people, not somebody looking for some cheat-free information from you. We also have the book launch courses over there as well. Beyond the launch, understanding what’s out there, what’s working. We’re seeing a huge renovation in the book marketing industry. Google ads don’t seem to be working.

Facebook ads haven’t worked for a long time. Amazon’s too crowded. We’re starting to see, with AI, new ways of getting your book out, popping up. One of the things that my company created with Podetize is the app ads. Now everybody’s using their phone. Everybody has ads that are inside their phone now, as well as for books. That catches that impulse fire. That’s what we’re doing here. Gayle and Johanna have added courses as well. We have a lot of courses.

Those courses I just went over are not only for your books, but if you’re getting ready for a course launch, once you get your course in place, you’re going to need those same things to get that course launched on there. I’m really excited about this because who doesn’t like passive revenue? That’s really what this is created. Once your course is created, once it’s done, it’s up and other people are selling it for you. It’s just coming into your bank account. As I said, who doesn’t like that? Johanna, do you want to tell us how it works?

Yeah, it was a great presentation, Juliet. I just want to draw on a couple of things that you said, keeping things organic and not giving things away. One of the best marketing people I worked with in Switzerland told me once, you never want to give away your product or pay people to get your product when you’re first launching it, because you lose that valuable insight as to whether people are going to pay for it or not.

Automated Sales Platform for Authors

You’re running a business, you want to know that what you’re selling is valuable and marketable, and that you’ve found the people to sell it to. I am 100% with you on that organic concept. The other thing you emphasize, which is also important, and I don’t know if I can share, is the concept of resell. What I want to do at Arkhub is to become the network marketing hub without network marketing. In other words, I don’t know if any of you have done any network marketing. I’ve dabbled in it, and I’m not good at it because it makes me crazy.

The whole idea that you can actually sell something and have somebody else resell it and have it done automatically for you, where you just get paid your slice every time they sell a unit, is what we want to be able to offer people. We want to take all of the work out of the money side. We want to make it so you sell something, you get paid when it gets sold, you get paid when somebody else sells it, and then it’s all automatic. There’s no like tallying things up at the end of the month with affiliate codes and sending out checks, like none of that.

This is the site that we’ve put together for authors. You can see here, these are some of the great classes that Juliet has put together that she’s been teaching for a while. They range in price and in depth, I would say, in terms of you can start with a simple, less expensive class like this, where you’re building your author avatar. If people don’t know what that means, it means that you, as an author, also have an identity, and that identity you want to have consistently being portrayed throughout everything you do. That avatar is also geared to reach a particular audience. What you say, Juliet, is that an accurate description?

Yeah, so this gets in-depth. We find that with a lot of book developers, they get into the demographics. We get into psychographics. What media are your people consuming? Hashtags. What are your competitors doing? We’re doing a deep dive in here about more than just what most book developers get into and identifying that key niche audience.

Publishing Contracts And Book Proposals

That’s great. I’m offering a couple of classes here. It’s just stuff I do in my sleep, which is how to read a publishing contract. If you’re not represented by an agent and you end up with a book deal and you want to be able to advocate for yourself in that negotiation, that’s a basic class on just understanding how to read the contract. What to watch for places you can push to negotiate better terms, making sure you protect your rights. Making sure things like if the book doesn’t sell in three years, can you get your rights back?

Those kinds of issues that if you haven’t done this over and over, you’re just not going to know what to look for and what to focus on. I’m also doing a book on class on how to write a book proposal. That’s another thing I do in addition to my agenting work. I do that on a for-fee basis, too, but I’ve learned a lot about what publishers like and what they’re looking for as an agent as well. I bring that perspective. We have this great class. Gayle, maybe you want to talk a little bit about this. This is the power of publishing with our late and great Bill. This is a lifetime of wisdom from a man who saw it all. Gayle, maybe you want to talk a little bit about that.

Yes. Bill is the founder of Waterside Productions over 43 years ago. He started his career at six years old with his father in our co-publishing. Publishing, agenting were second nature to him. It was part in his DNA. He has taken all this experience, all these relationships. He started the dummy series. He was the first book to be written for the ebook to test the market. Be The Deal is the name of the book, which is very valuable about how to be in business, and all his stories about all the deals he’s made.

All this is in the power of publishing. It’s his stories, it’s his failures, it’s his successes, what he learned from both, that both are a balance in going forward. Failure is fertilizer. As Cynthia Bryan would say, and so the thing is not to be hard on yourself. Keep going forward, learn your subject. He was such a great navigator of seeing what was the value of the book was and how to present that to publishers. He was more than a reader.

“Writing Habits And Course Creation”

He could diagnose and visualize exactly what an author was and what they were promoting, sometimes more than they knew themselves. He was full of inspiration, and the power of publishing tells you these stories so that you can find what your strengths are and the amazing grace that you are as you’re promoting your book and writing your book and habits to create so that every day your book has a voice.

How to allow it to unfold so that when you’re creating your own book. You sometimes will morph into certain areas. You document them and how to do that. How to sit down and write each day so that there’s an intention of success in your writing and in your gifting to others. I was there to help film this. It was very fun to create courses with Bill. We spent about 2 or 3 months doing it. There are guests on the show, so there’ll be experts in publishing.

That might be something that you’ll want to consider to keep the entertainment of your courses by bringing in experts that have helped you showcase your success and keep the entertainment aspect of teaching and course building into your creation of your course. This is what you’ll learn from the books, the BAELS course, and you will also learn it from the perspective of someone who did it all. He started with dummies.

Elevate Success Through Expert Agents

Waterside was the leader of technology books, which we continue to be in. He had the courage to bring in the spiritual aspect of human nature and allow that to develop because it’s a holistic way of being in the world. Waterside is really at the forefront of billions of dollars and millions of authors that have become successful. That brand in itself brings value to the courses that we will be advertising and navigating. We have the expertise.

As you can see, we’ve got the agents, and you’ve been shown the agents we bring in. You’ve been shown the partnerships through Juliet. That is what you magnetize when you’re successful. You bring in the right people, you bring in the right courses, because the intention is set to make a better world, to bring the best out in people, and to support any content that they want to showcase. We have variety and understanding. Everything about who you are when you’re writing will help your book be the best and your course be the best it can be.

Not just by being a good writer, but by being in touch with your heart, by understanding what goes on in education, and how the mind thinks. All this will be part of the publishing program that Bill has brought to the forefront. All these courses are designed to make you the best you can be for your course, for your book. There’s no in-between time. It’s in constant breath. Everything you’re doing is holistically being done by taking courses and understanding exactly what are you doing and how to do it, and be the best with confidence and success.

Like Johanna brought out, Juliet’s, who you are makes a difference. Stand in that truth and go after the success. Success is water for the soul. It’s just important for you to respect yourself, know that your value is there, and that people are looking for that value to showcase and bring forward their

better selves. When you go into a college situation, or you’re in elementary school, or there is more to you than a teacher can teach.

Empowerment Through Global Knowledge Sharing

This portal provides a variety of holistic ways to find the true authentic self, to find your confidence, and to find the things that you want to learn and be. I know for myself, so I’ve gone through life. I’ve been in the rock and roll business. I have had a very big company building large custom homes and furniture. Courses have taught me the amazing grace that I can go into any situation. I can work with presidents. I can work with the Royals.

I get invited because I have the knowledge and the confidence and the language, and the education to be with my gardener, to be with people who support me, to be with people who lead me, and to stand in a leadership role. This is what this is about. It’s about becoming the best you can be. We are here to support you and bring forward your knowledge and get it out there so that people find that knowledge and become peace and a part of what you have to teach and be so that others can take that piece of your puzzle and be the better of themselves.

What this provides is a bigger and better community, a coming together and unification worldwide. Waterside Productions is in 40 countries. We plan to make sure that at one point, we are able to take your courses and bring them to the world. Everybody who is an author on this site has a universal language, and we want to support that universal language, get you showcased and brought forward into your best expression to help others be in theirs.

Great, Gayle. If I can just, and I’d love to, we’re going to take some Q&A unless Juliet has some other things she wants to talk about, but I just want to illustrate one of the stories about Bill. The one thing you said that resonated to me was to not be too hard on yourself. Bill always told me, as an agent when he was mentoring me early on, he said, “You cannot make any mistakes.” The only mistake I ever made, and I guess you could say it was not a mistake, is that I once sent a very risque humor book to a children’s publisher by accident, and they didn’t let me forget it.

That was funny. I took that to heart when he said, “You cannot make any mistakes,” because it freed me to just go out there and take risks and to try things and to reach out to people. I think one of my superpowers is that I’m not afraid to pick up the phone or send an email to anybody. That, as an agent, is important because there’s a lot of turnover in the publishing world. You got to get to know these new editors at these new houses.

The other gift that Bill had, if anybody ever corresponded with him on email, I see that Cynthia’s here, Bill would usually get back to you within ten minutes on an email. The email would have no greeting, no signature, and no punctuation. It would be a run-on sentence, but he didn’t care because his job was to communicate back to you as quickly as possible.

He said once that if he left anything in his inbox before he went to sleep at night, he’d end up dreaming about it. It was a great quality that I always aspired to. When I wake up and I see like, I still have six emails left from the day before, I was like, “Darn it.” I still think about that a lot. Lillian, do we want to start some Q&A’s or what do you think? I guess people might have questions now.

Yeah, go ahead, open it up.

It’s Cynthia Brian. I just want to say how much I miss Bill. I’m so glad, Joanna, that you brought out how quickly he was. I mean, I would just finish writing the email. He was already responding. It was just amazing. Gayle, the whole failure is fertilizer, I think I do have to do a book on that because that is like, it’s the most important thing that anybody can ever learn that there is no failure in life, that we just grow a new garden, throw it on the compost pile. There aren’t any mistakes as long as we learn from it. Anyway, thank you. You’re all doing amazing.

Thank you, Cynthia. Good to hear you.

The same. We love you all.

You too. Anybody else have any questions about the platform, what we do, what you’re trying to do, anything that wasn’t covered that you’re curious about or trying to work through as an author?

I have a question. First of all, I just want to say thank you guys for the presentation and for bringing us together and trying to help us get out there and have the best chance at reaching our audience and helping others. As far as the courses that you showed us, Juliet, are they all in video form, or are some of them written materials, or a combination of both? How does that usually look?

There’s a combination of both. There are modules. Every module has a video and a workbook. If you’re someone who, like for me, I have to learn by doing. That workbook is really helpful because I can follow the steps and mess it up, and get frustrated. You guys know how it works when you’re learning something new, but it is tempered for all three learning modalities. There’s a visual, audio, and a workbook for those who learn by doing.

As far as producing those, is that something that we should try to turn in already produced for you guys to put up and market from there? Do you guys help with production too?

Comprehensive Book Production Support

We can help with production. When I work with my clients, we take the book and do the outline first, and then expand from there and decide which modalities you’re most comfortable with. If you’re not somebody who’s comfortable on video, you may have a little bit less video and more workbook. If you’re someone who’s comfortable with it all, you’re going to have all three learning modalities in there. We can help you. Johanna’s team is amazing with helping you get it up on their platform. Me and her son, Philip, are tight now because I’m not great at tech. He was extremely helpful, walking me through how to get it up. When I couldn’t figure it out, getting me through those patches that I couldn’t figure out. There is a lot of help along the way.

“Zoom-Based Teaching Model Options”

There is also a big range of how this can be done. I tell people the low-tech model, and I’ll be doing this for the two classes I’m teaching starting in July, is like what we’re doing now. We do a Zoom call for the class, and then that Zoom call can get recorded and then the recording can get used if you want to edit it. There are some easy tools that you can edit stuff out or whatever, and then use that as a self-paced course, even like at a different price point, too. If you’re doing a live class, sometimes you can command a little more money for that. It’s self-paced, so anyone can do it. You would switch that over. That’s a way to think about that, too.

That’s actually what I do with all my courses is I offer them with one-on-one training. I don’t care if I have 3 people or if I have 30 people, it becomes my fodder and my content for these courses. That is probably the easiest way to do it is put it together, run it as a beta, charge people, and then lower the cost into a downloadable or work at your own pace. There are a lot of different ways to do it, whatever works best for you, because you’re the one that’s going to have to put that work in.

Got it. Thank you.

I had a question about that, Juliet. I’m sorry if I can, I just have a real quick question. I was using GoTo Meeting, and then I switched over because it just was more expensive to Zoom. I find GoTo Meeting that quality seemed better. What I was thinking of doing is just taking all the questions, because I’ve run this class for about five years, is taking all the questions and just trying to do like a master of it. I just wondered if there was any platform that anybody besides Zoom? I haven’t liked Zoom that much. I just wondered if you’d found some other way of recording the class that might come out better.

I always use Zoom.

Do you?

I think it helps the best.

You can stop it, start it. There’s a lot there. Plus, you get a transcription now. If you want to do that workbook, you can literally take that transcription and put it in something like Gamma, and it will make your workbook for you.

That’s really nice. I never thought of that. I should do that. Thank you.

Excellent.

I have a question. Can you hear me?

Admir, nice to see you. Thank you for coming.

Nice to see you. My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. What’s the first step once we decide or think about possibly developing the course? What’s the first step?

Turning Book Into Course: Process

I think what you can do is you can send an email to Gayle if you’re already in touch with her and tell her what your idea is for your class. If it’s a book that you already have that you want to turn into a class, then we can work with you to assess what are the steps to get it there. Is it something you feel confident taking on in terms of building a curriculum around the book? Is it something you feel like you’re going to need help with, and we would bring in?

Juliet can help with that, or we can, but it’s like a developmental process where we create the curriculum from the book because curriculum isn’t always just a direct translation of what’s in the book. There are nuances to how you might present that as a class as opposed to as a book. There would be the setup of the course, figuring out what you’d want to charge for it, and then the cadence of, like, is it a 90-minute class? Is it a four-week class? Do you do it live? Those kinds of things.

We will just step you through all of those questions with answers, and actually, just by putting it up on the platform, we’re like we need to answer those questions. We might even do like we do with the books on Waterside Publishing. We may end up having a questionnaire that people can fill in that automates that process, too. Juliet is just mentioning that there is a course creation initiative. A class in itself on how to turn your book into a course. That’s a lot of what Juliet specializes in doing with people.

That course will give you the best practices. When I say best practices, a couple of years ago, someone brought me a course from their book, and it was 35 modules over an hour long each, and I didn’t even open it. I took one look at it and said, “You’re never going to be able to sell this. People need this in a format that’s consumable.” That’s what the best practices are in that course is how to make it come across in a way that people don’t automatically look at it and go, “I’m so overwhelmed. I’m not going to open it.” There are a lot of considerations and best practices for it.

Thank you very much. We already talked a little bit about it. Gayle is the person to go to for the first step. Sounds good.

Amir, I can help you with your manuscript. We can work on how to extract the points of focus to make the best course that people will be looking for. You specialize in something so special and very few people do what you do, and you’re scientifically proven to be an expert. We will help hone in on what people will be coming to your course to learn. Of course, Juliet and Johanna, we’re all here to make that a success. We’ll hand off, fine-tune, hone in, and I’ll help you create and be a participant in your course, and then the expertise will come in to be sure it’s successful.

Great. Thank you very much. Very encouraging.

I have one quick question. I’m Lily. Thanks for all the information, and so helpful. Gayle. Is there anything specifically that you would have in place before you want to launch the course? For example, a website, just a couple of basic bullet points of like the LinkedIn newsletter, if you don’t have those things yet, is there something like a website or an Instagram page? What are the basics that you want in place before you launch the course?

“Leveraging Power Partners In Marketing”

That is a great question. Same thing as for your books. You need a landing page. You need a drip campaign. You need to have a webinar to sell the course. Of course, the drip campaign and everything will work with that. That landing page needs to have a lead magnet that’s related to the webinar. That’s probably one of the biggest mistakes I see is that you just take some lead magnet you have lying around and shove it into your campaign, and it doesn’t flow. Power partners. You’re really going to need those power and affiliate partners that are bringing their audiences as well.

I actually cannot wait to share the power partner course because I work with probably a dozen of my competitors in a way that they will promote my stuff, and I promote them. Really learning how to develop those power partners because they’re not only going to improve your courses, they’re going to sell more books, you’re going to get more business from these people when they like and trust who you are and what you do. There are some big basic things, and they’re big to build. That’s the marketing engine. It’s not just building the course. Now you need the marketing engine for it.

A lead magnet is just a valuable piece of information that you give away in exchange for an email address. Remember, I talked about the course where the email belongs to you. Get those people off to social media and into your email list. That is what a lead magnet does. I’m just going to give you guys a hot tip on this. Anything you can do in a lead magnet that will give someone instant gratification. What I mean is if you can take their problem and solve it very quickly, they will follow you because you’ve just solved step one of the problem that they’re trying to solve. You’re going to put something together, whether it’s an infographic, an ebook, or a video series, make sure you’ve got some really juicy tips in there that they can see right away that you are their person.

Thank you.

Some way we’ll all be putting that actually in every newsletter. It’ll be a constant. You can find it in the newsletter and will have its own page. You go to www.Waterside.com, and our hub will have its own page where you can go to. There’ll be instructions. We’ll be showcasing the courses, how to get there, and how to do it. Tips for everybody will be on that page. That’s going to take about a month or so to put together and get it up on the site. We’re in operation now, working on it.

In between, they can get hold of you, and you’ll get them whatever they need.

Yeah, absolutely. My email address is, you can see on the screen, GayleGladstone@gmail.com. I try and get to every email within 24 hours. I get so many. I’m not like Bill, where you could just put all the sentences once, everything into one long sentence. I have a different way of doing it.

Did you just say you’re going to be a little slower but grammatically correct?

That’s right. Johanna, do you want to put up your email contact, or shall it just be Juliet and I funneling into you?

I have a list as long as everybody’s okay that I’m sharing it and I assume you all are.

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

The link will be in the newsletter, also.

Thank you. Goodbye everyone.

Important Links

• Gayle Gladstone
• Johanna Maaghul on LinkedIn
• Arkhub
• Juliet Clark on LinkedIn
• Super Brands Publishing
• Waterside Publishing
• Rumble
• Podetize
• Be The Deal
• GayleGladstone@gmail.com

About Gayle Gladstone

Gayle Gladstone has worked as a TV and film producer and talent manager including managing the career of actor, musician, and songwriter Hoyt Axton. As a film producer, her film Tapping the Source won international acclaim and numerous awards.

Gayle focuses on publishing books from authors who are pushing the boundaries of awareness. Gayle delights in books that bring joy and wisdom to others. Gayle’s philanthropic activities include working with children and victims of sexual abuse.

Gayle is the pillar of her family which includes eight children and stepchildren and more than a dozen grandchildren and step grandchildren. Gayle has unique intuitive abilities and is dedicated to bringing kindness to the world.

About Johanna Maaghul

Johanna Maaghul brings to Waterside’s education platform over a decade of experience as a literary agent, representing influential voices in science, wellness, and social change through Waterside Productions. As co-founder of Arkhub.io, she contributes deep expertise in digital marketing, public relations, and platform strategy to help transform author content into accessible, scalable learning. She works with precision to ensure the Waterside platform delivers real-time value to authors, educators, and learners—while staying ahead of shifts in the education market.

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