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Hey rebel solopreneurs 🦸♀️🦸♂️
A solopreneur spends three weeks building a free guide. Designs it. Writes it. Uploads it. Watches 8 people download it — and never open their emails again.
Another solopreneur spends 10 minutes building a 5-day email crash course. Gets 70% of visitors to hand over their email. Has paying customers by the end of the week.
Same expertise. Completely different result.
Here's how the second path works:
⛳️ Here's the scenario
Meet Nina.
She'd spent 12 years as an HR manager — hiring, coaching, firing, onboarding. She knew everything about finding and keeping great employees. She left her 9-5 to help small business owners hire their first team members without getting burned.
She had the knowledge. She had the LinkedIn page. She even had a free guide — "The 10-question interview checklist."
Nobody was signing up.
She'd tried posting the link on LinkedIn three times. 46 views. 4 downloads. Zero replies. The guide just sat there.
One Tuesday afternoon, she was at her usual coffee shop — corner table, oat milk latte, staring at her laptop.
A woman at the next table glanced over. Quiet. Mid-40s. Reading something on her phone.
"Email list not growing?" she said.
Nina laughed. "That obvious?"
Turns out she'd built three educational email businesses over 15 years. Her last crash course had pulled 4,000 subscribers in a month with zero ad spend.
She looked at Nina's guide.
❌ What Nina had: "The 10-question interview checklist — download it free!"
✅ What it became: "5-day free crash course: How to hire your first team member without getting burned — day 1 lands in your inbox today."
Same knowledge. Completely different offer.
"How did you do that?"
The woman leaned back.
"People don't want your checklist. They want to feel smarter before they spend money. A crash course does two things a PDF can't."
💡 First — it builds trust over five days, not five seconds.
A PDF gets downloaded and forgotten. A crash course shows up in their inbox every day. Each email builds on the last. By day 5, they know you, they like you, and they trust you. That's when people buy.
💡 Second — it lets you teach before you pitch.
You're not selling on day 1. You're solving a real problem. By the time your offer shows up, it feels like the obvious next step — not a sales pitch.
"Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole built this crash course structure," she said. "It's what I used to get my first 4,000 subscribers."
Then she wrote two prompts on a napkin.
"These two go in order. Run them back to back. You'll have a full crash course outline before you finish your coffee."
Here's what each prompt does:
▶️ Prompt 1 — Find your topic: Takes what you know and turns it into a sharp, specific crash course topic your reader will actually want.
▶️ Prompt 2 — Build the full outline: Takes your topic and creates a complete 5-day crash course outline — every day, every point under each day, ready to hand to your email tool.
Nina opened her AI sidekick and got to work.
🎯 Step 1: Find your crash course topic
⏱️ 5 minutes
Before you build anything, you need a topic people actually want.
This prompt helps you find it — by connecting what you know to a painful problem your reader is trying to escape.
I'm a solopreneur helping {e.g. small business owners hire their first employee}.
My audience's biggest struggle is: {e.g. they don't know how to write a job post,
screen candidates, or run an interview without wasting weeks on the wrong hire}.
Their biggest desired outcome is: {e.g. a confident first hire who shows up and gets things done}.
Their most common questions are:
- {e.g. Where do I even post the job?}
- {e.g. How do I know if someone will actually be reliable?}
- {e.g. What do I do if it goes wrong?}
Using this, create 3 email crash course topic options using this exact format:
"How to [get specific outcome] without [specific painful problem]"
For each option, write:
1. The topic in that format
2. One sentence: who this is for
3. One sentence: why someone would give their email for this
Make the language plain and specific. No jargon. Write like a human talking to another human.
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "The 10-question interview checklist — download it free!"
✅ After: "How to hire your first team member in 30 days without wasting money on the wrong person"
"This is for small business owners making their first hire — no HR background needed."
"Someone would give their email for this because it promises a specific result in a specific timeframe, and names the exact fear they have."
Nina read the three options her AI sidekick produced.
One of them hit so close to home it felt like her ideal client had written it herself.
She picked it and moved straight to prompt 2.
Topic locked. Now it needed to become an actual course.
🗂️ Step 2: Build your full 5-day course outline
⏱️ 5 minutes
A crash course follows a proven 5-day structure.
Day 0 sets expectations. Days 1 through 5 teach one thing per day — building from basics to best practices.
This prompt creates the complete outline in one shot, with every day and every point filled in.
I'm creating a 5-day educational email crash course.
My topic: {e.g. How to hire your first team member in 30 days without wasting money on the wrong person}
My audience: {e.g. first-time business owners making their first hire}
Build me a complete crash course outline using this structure:
Day 0: Introduction — "Here's what you'll learn"
- What the course covers
- What they'll be able to do by day 5
- What to expect in each email
Day 1: The [X] Most Important Things To Know
- Point 1
- Point 2
- Point 3
Day 2: The [X] Mistakes Most People Make
- Mistake 1
- Mistake 2
- Mistake 3
Day 3: The Steps To Go From Zero to Your First Win
- Step 1
- Step 2
- Step 3
Day 4: [X] Simple Upgrades To Get There Faster
- Tip 1
- Tip 2
- Tip 3
Day 5: [X] Best Practices To Keep It Going
- Practice 1
- Practice 2
- Practice 3
Rules:
- Each point is 8-12 words — short, direct, action-oriented
- Plain language — no jargon, no buzzwords
- Write like you're explaining to a smart friend who knows nothing about this topic
- Make every point feel like something worth opening an email for
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "Day 1: Important things to know about hiring Day 2: Mistakes to avoid Day 3: How to get started Day 4: Tips for growth Day 5: Best practices"
✅ After: "Day 1: 3 things every new business owner gets wrong before posting a single job ad
→ Why the job title is the first place most hires fall apart → The one question your job post must answer before anyone applies → Why 'culture fit' is a guess — and what to look for instead
Day 2: 3 mistakes that cost first-time hirers weeks of their life
→ Posting to five platforms and getting 200 applications with no way to filter them → Skipping the work sample because it felt awkward to ask
[Nina's AI sidekick filled in the remaining sections...]"
Nina had a full 5-day crash course outline in under 10 minutes.
Every day had a clear subject. Every point felt like something worth opening an email for.
She set it up in ConvertKit that afternoon. Posted the link on LinkedIn the next morning.
🏆 Nina's results
Before:
A free checklist nobody was downloading
4 email subscribers after 3 weeks of posting
No idea why her offer wasn't landing
After:
A complete 5-day crash course outline — every day mapped, every point filled in
31 new subscribers in the first week
Two discovery calls booked from people who finished the course
Total time: 10 minutes. Not 3 weeks.
Her AI sidekick surfaced the right topic and built the full outline. Nina made the final call on which one to run. BAM.
Two prompts. 10 minutes. You go from "I have something to teach" to a complete 5-day crash course outline your ideal reader will happily give their email to receive.
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'finding high-potent AI shortcuts so you work less' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️