Day One of Open Cart: Zero Sales. Day Two: Zero. Day Three: Zero. Day Four: One Person, on the Lowest Payment Plan.
Day one of open cart: nobody bought. Day two: nobody. Day three: nobody. Day four: one person, on the lowest payment plan.
Colin Boyd had spent six months preparing that course. He had hired a videographer, rented a studio, and loaded everything into Kajabi. He had done the math in his head: maybe $10,000, maybe $50,000, maybe $100,000. He had a couple hundred sign-ups. The product was genuinely good. He had proven it in companies for years.
The market said no anyway.
That failure became the question that built a career. If the product was good and nobody was buying, the problem had to be somewhere else. It took Colin a few years to find the answer, and when he did, it became the foundation of everything: a $7.3 million business on Kajabi, more than 14,000 students through his programs, and a methodology built entirely around the specific skill of helping people articulate what their work is actually worth.
One buyer on day four. More than $7 million since.
Before the Business, There Was a Corporate Marketing Job He Was Genuinely Bad At
Colin came out of university thinking he wanted to do marketing. He landed a job at a large corporate real estate office and discovered quickly that he was wrong.
"One of my superpowers is not being able to last in something I don't like," he says.
He lasted almost a year. The inability to stay in the wrong room turned out to be the most useful thing about him. He left and found teaching, starting at a local business college, moving into corporate learning and development, then discovering coaching through a youth pastor who pulled him aside and said he thought Colin would enjoy it.
He had never heard of coaching. He signed up for a 16-month, $15,000 life coaching diploma while making almost nothing. His commitment before charging a single client: 100 hours of free coaching first.
The business started small and physical. He was still in Australia, speaking at conferences, and selling a CD pack at the back of the room after his talks. Six audio CDs, physically burned at home. He started making more from the CD sales than he was being paid to speak. The first signal that a leverage product could do something a speaking fee could not.
Then Brendon Burchard came to Sydney for one of his first Expert Academy conferences. Colin arrived skeptical.
"This is not going to work," he told himself. "I have to be physically in the room with someone."
By the end of the event he was running around the room, clapping, and converted. He came home, signed up to Kajabi at the founders level, and built his first course. A productivity program he had been delivering in companies for years, now online. He hired a videographer, rented a studio, spent six months getting it right, loaded it into Kajabi, and opened the cart.
He did the math in his head. Maybe $10,000. Maybe $50,000. Maybe $100,000.
The market had other plans.
He Decided He Was a Market Leader Before He Had Any Evidence That He Was
The failure did not stop him. It redirected him.
After day four, Colin did not blame the market or the platform or the product. He asked himself what he was doing wrong. The answer came clearly: the product was good. The value articulation was not.
"I realized that the value articulation was the key to actually making the business work," he says. "When people got into the program, they were like, 'this is phenomenal.' But it was actually the value articulation that I needed to learn."
He got obsessed. He studied persuasive communication, conversion language, and the specific mechanics of how to speak in a way that moves people to act. His first webinar generated a few thousand dollars. The next month, a few thousand more. Slowly, the same $500 productivity product the market had originally ignored started selling. Over three years and more than 2,000 students, that product did over a million dollars in sales.
The market was not rejecting the product. It was telling him he had not learned to articulate its value yet.
The second pivot came from a decision rather than a result.
Colin was in a room with people who were market leaders in his space. He was not one of them. He looked around and made a choice that had no supporting evidence at the time.
"I want to be known as someone who teaches people to speak and sell from stages," he decided.
"I didn't have any evidence that I am a leader in the marketplace," he says. "But I just decided. And then the evidence showed up."
Within three months of making that decision, one of the biggest names in his entire industry came to him and asked for help building and delivering a presentation. He had not pursued it. He had not pitched for it. He had simply decided he was the kind of person that kind of opportunity came to, and then it did.
One Event, 125 of 137 Offers Taken, and the Business That Grew From There
The first event was 137 people. The organizer pulled Colin aside before he went on and told him it was the biggest event they had ever run.
That was the worst possible news.
"I was completely freaking out," he says.
He spoke anyway. He made an offer. Of the 137 people in the room, 125 took it up. He followed up and signed about 12 as full-time coaching clients.
"My income went from a couple hundred dollars a month to over $10,000 a month," he says. "Like what it felt like instantly."
That single event reframed everything. The stage was not just a place to deliver value. It was a place to create a decision. And creating decisions, helping audiences move from interested to committed, was the skill he had been building toward since the day the market ignored his first course.
He built his methodology around that realization. He distinguished between two types of content: trust-building content, the kind that warms an audience over time, and conversion content, the specific communication that moves someone from curious to paying. Most speakers only know how to do one. He built a curriculum teaching people to do both.
He also built his own trust engine. The Expert Edge Podcast launched and has not missed a single week in six years. No gaps, no breaks, no off seasons. Consistent presence in the ears of the people most likely to buy from him, long before they were ready to.
"A lot of people don't talk to their audience until they're about to sell something," he says. "They jump out of the closet and the audience is like, who are you? What is this?"
The product suite grew from there. Conversion Story Formula, teaching people to tell the specific kind of story that draws an audience toward an offer, has now seen more than 14,000 graduates. Sell From Stage Academy, the full methodology for speaking and selling from live and virtual stages, has taken more than 2,000 people through the complete system. An elite coaching tier and a mastermind sit above those. Legacy products from earlier in the business are now licensed to other companies who pay him a yearly fee for programs he produced over a decade ago and no longer actively touches.
One step ahead of the client was always the operating principle.
"I just need to be one step ahead of my client," he says.
When he launched Sell From Stage Academy, he did not have the full curriculum built. He built it week by week, staying ahead of the students moving through it. Certainty came from three places: personal experience of the transformation, a clearly articulated process in his own language, and social proof from students sharing wins. He photographs and saves every client breakthrough. Thousands of screenshots in his camera roll, read throughout the week as a reminder that the methodology works.
"People are connected with who you are. And what I mean by that, maybe it's your hobbies and your habits and your energy of who you are. People sometimes dull themselves down when they go online where they need to amplify themselves up."
The Numbers
Since joining Kajabi on its launch day in 2016, Colin has said that "Kajabi made me literally millions and millions and millions of dollars." More than 14,000 people have completed the Conversion Story Formula. More than 2,000 have gone through Sell From Stage Academy. The Expert Edge Podcast has not missed a single week in six years.
The product that sold to one person on day four of its first launch went on to sell to over 2,000 people and generate more than a million dollars in revenue.
He had been building the skill to articulate value all along. It just took a few years of practice before the market agreed.
Where Colin Is Today: A Speaking Business That Compounds
Colin now teaches from Newport Beach, California, running a full product suite for entrepreneurs, coaches, and speakers who want to use stages, live and virtual, to grow their businesses. You can follow his work on Instagram and YouTube.
At the entry level, Conversion Story Formula teaches people how to tell what Colin calls a conversion story: the specific kind of story that draws an audience toward an offer rather than just generating applause. More than 14,000 people have completed it.
Sell From Stage Academy is the full curriculum: the complete methodology for speaking and selling from live and virtual stages. About 2,000 people have gone through the program. Above that sits Sell From Stage Elite, a monthly implementation coaching experience Colin is heavily involved in week to week, and a mastermind for the highest-engagement clients. At the top he works with two or three private clients at a time.
Legacy products from earlier in the business, a productivity program and a leadership curriculum, are now licensed to other companies who pay him a yearly fee to sell them. He built them over a decade ago and no longer touches them. They still generate income. Compound interest, applied to intellectual property.
The Expert Edge Podcast is the trust engine underneath all of it. Six years. No missed weeks. Consistent presence in the ears of the right people, long before they are ready to buy anything.
"Kajabi is, I think, one of the easiest to use online platforms that allows people to have a voice in the marketplace and make money," he says.
What This Means for You
Colin's story is not really about speaking. It is about the gap between having something valuable and being able to communicate that value to the people who need it.
The first course was good. The market did not care, not because the product was wrong, but because the language around it had not been learned yet. That gap, between what something is worth and what the market hears, is the gap most creators live inside without knowing it.
"I realized that the value articulation was the key to actually making the business work. When people got into the program, they were like, 'this is phenomenal.' But it was actually the value articulation that I needed to learn."
He spent years closing that gap. The webinars, the stages, the podcast, the methodology, all of it is the accumulated result of someone who decided that if the product was good and the market was not responding, the variable was the communication.
One buyer on day four. More than $7 million since.
The product did not change. The communication did.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Colin Boyd teach?
Colin Boyd teaches entrepreneurs, coaches, and speakers how to use live and virtual stages to get clients, not just applause. His methodology focuses on two distinct skills: trust-building communication that warms an audience over time, and conversion communication that moves people from curious to committed. His programs range from entry-level mini-courses through high-ticket coaching and a mastermind.
What is the Conversion Story Formula?
Conversion Story Formula is Colin Boyd's entry-level course teaching people how to tell a conversion story: the specific kind of story that draws an audience toward an offer rather than simply generating positive reactions. More than 14,000 people have completed it since launch.
What is Sell From Stage Academy?
Sell From Stage Academy is Colin Boyd's core curriculum for speaking and selling from live and virtual stages. It teaches the full methodology for conversion communication, from how to structure a presentation through how to make an offer that converts. About 2,000 people have gone through the program.
How did Colin Boyd build a successful online course business after failing his first launch?
After his first course generated zero sales for three days and one sale on day four, Colin identified the problem as value articulation rather than product quality. He spent the following years studying persuasive communication and conversion language, rebuilt his approach to selling online, and eventually sold the same product to more than 2,000 people for over a million dollars in revenue.
How long has Colin Boyd been using Kajabi?
Colin Boyd joined Kajabi at the founding level in 2016, on the day the platform launched. He has been on the platform for over 12 years and has generated $7.3 million in revenue through it across courses, coaching programs, and funnels.
Ready to Build Something of Your Own?
Colin joined Kajabi on the day it launched, failed his first course, and spent the next 12 years building a $7 million plus business by learning to communicate the value of what he already knew.
The product was always good. The skill was the missing piece.
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