I Took My Whole Business Apart (Here's What AI Changed)
This month I took my entire business apart. Sales pages, offers, what I was promoting, what I was spending money and time on. All of it went on the table.
In this behind-the-scenes episode, I walk you through the full rebuild using my own Creator Growth Flywheel. I share where I think the market is headed, why the human element is the one thing AI can't replace, and how that belief is reshaping my events, my offers, and what I chose to cut.
In this episode:
- Why this rebuild is about where the market is going, not a one-time cleanup
- The one thing AI can't replace, and how I'm building around it
- A walk through all five flywheel stages: Attract, Engage, Nurture, Retain, Advocate
- Why I'm going all in on live events
- How I'm rebuilding my lead magnets backwards from the offer
- The offer overhaul: the AI Mastermind repositioning, the new Council, and Revenue Stack Studio
- How I used AI to build personalized affiliate pages in my partners' own voice
- What I cut, including Pinterest and the HelloContent store, and why
Your turn:
- Got a question or want a hot seat on a future episode? Send it here.
- Want to speak at an upcoming event? Apply here.
- Watch for my newsletter survey and hit reply. I read every one.
Resources and offers mentioned:
- Creator's MBA Events (Beyond the PDF, Closed Door Panel Talks, AI in Action Summit, AI Newsletter Summit, Creator Pivot Summit)
- Creator's MBA AI Mastermind
- Creator's MBA Council (peer mastermind, starts January 2027)
- Revenue Stack Studio (done-for-you tier)
- Newsletter Profit Club
- Join the Creator's MBA newsletter
Want a question answered on the show? Send it in here.
This month I took my whole business apart. Not a few tweaks. The whole thing. Sales pages, offers, the names of offers, what I was promoting, what I was spending money and time on. All of it went on the table.
I didn't do it on a whim. I ran my whole business through my own framework, the Creator Growth Flywheel, one stage at a time. And what I found changed what I'm building and what I decided to let go.
Here's the behind-the-scenes. What I kept, what I cut, and what I'm still in the middle of. If you're building anything right now, some of this is going to sound like your business too.
Why I Took It All Apart
This rebuild wasn't a one-time cleanup. It's part of where I think things are headed in our market.
So let me tell you what I see. AI keeps getting better at the doing. The building, the writing, the drafting, even some of the execution. It gets faster and cheaper every month. And if the only thing you sell is that you can make stuff, that's getting harder to charge for.
But here's what AI can't do. It can't replace the human part. The judgment. A room full of people working a problem out together. The person who has been there telling you what they would do in your spot. And the more AI shows up everywhere, the more people want that human part, not less.
So that's what I'm building toward. More live events, because people want to be in the room with other people. And more offers built around human judgment, not just information.
I'm not anti-AI. Far from it. I want AI to take the execution so I'm free for the part only I can do, which is the judgment. And the judgment is what people will keep paying for.
The Creator Growth Flywheel, Quick Version
If you're new to the Creator Growth Flywheel, here's the short version. It has five stages, and each one feeds the next.
Attract is how people find you. Engage is what gets them onto your email list and the first steps you walk them through. Nurture is how you keep building the relationship once they're there. Retain is your offers and how you serve people deeper. And Advocate is how your best people turn into people who send you more people.
I sat down and went through my business one stage at a time. Here's what happened at each one.
What Changed at Each Stage
Attract: Going All In on Live Events
The best way people find me, by a mile, is live events. So I leaned in. I brought in other creators and built out a full lineup: Beyond the PDF in July, Closed Door Panel Talks in August, the AI in Action Summit in September, the AI Newsletter Summit in October, and the Creator Pivot Summit in December. An event is the one thing AI can't hand you. It's people, in real time, learning from each other.
Engage: Rebuilding Lead Magnets Backwards
I had AI pull my full lead magnet list from my landing pages and email sequences. There were about 80 of them. Way too many. So I'm sunsetting the old ones that don't point anywhere useful, and I'm building new ones backwards. I start with the offer, then build the freebie that walks someone toward it. A lead magnet that doesn't connect to an offer is a dead end.
Nurture: Asking Instead of Guessing
This is where you and I actually talk. The podcast, the newsletter, the emails. So I'm asking. I want to know which show topics you need help with, and whether my newsletters are the kind of thing you want in your inbox. My goal is for the Creator's MBA newsletter to be the best email you get that day. The one you open first and save to come back to.
Retain: The Offer Overhaul
This is where the biggest changes happened. I repositioned the Mastermind, added two new offers, and made a pricing change to Newsletter Profit Club. I'll walk through each one below.
Advocate: Making It Easy for Partners to Promote
I focused on my affiliate program. Using AI, I built each partner a personalized affiliate page written in their own voice, with their links and a personal coupon already in place. Instead of a bare link and good luck, they got a whole page ready to go. More on that below too.
The Offers I Rebuilt
The Creator's MBA AI Mastermind
I sunset the old Mastermind format and repositioned it. The core is the same, but AI is now front and center.
Here's what that means in practice. Last month inside the Mastermind we ran the Evergreen Engine Get It Done Week. Over that week I walked members through building an entire evergreen webinar funnel with AI. But I didn't teach them to build a how-to webinar. I taught them to build a belief webinar.
There's a big difference. A how-to webinar teaches people something and they leave feeling smart, but they don't buy. A belief webinar shifts what someone believes is possible, and that's what moves them to buy. The strategy came first. The belief shift, the structure, the offer, the whole funnel. Then we used AI to build all of it, fast.
That's the part that matters. Anyone can get AI to build a funnel now. What you can't get from a tool is someone who has run these for real telling you which moves matter and which ones waste your time. That's what you're in the room for. You can see the repositioned Creator's MBA AI Mastermind here.
The Creator's MBA Council
This is a new offer, and I'm excited about it. It's a peer mastermind, a small room I'm curating myself. It starts in January 2027. The reason it exists goes right back to where I think the market is going. As AI takes over more of the doing, what people want is a room of humans whose judgment they trust. That's the Council.
Revenue Stack Studio
Also new. This is my done-for-you tier, where my team does the work and runs the events for you. When AI can draft almost anything, the premium thing isn't the output. It's having real people with judgment build it for you and stand behind it. That's the Revenue Stack Studio.
Newsletter Profit Club
One change here you'll want to know about. The price goes up in July. So if Newsletter Profit Club has been sitting on your list, now is the time to get in before it does. The Lead Magnet Lab I mentioned is running inside it right now. Here's the Newsletter Profit Club.
What I Cut, and Why It Was Hard
Not everything made the cut. Two things came off the table, and neither was easy.
First, Pinterest. I had AI pull and analyze my Pinterest reports so I could see if it was still worth it. The answer was no. I'd been using it for seven or eight years, so saying goodbye stung. But the numbers made it a clear call.
Second, my HelloContent Shopify store. This one was harder. With AI giving people so much of what those products used to provide, a lot of them were no longer needed. And I didn't have room on my marketing calendar to promote a store while moving more upmarket. So I let it go. I didn't want to. But it was the right call for where things are going.
The thing about cutting
Cutting something you built is hard. You feel like stopping means you wasted the work. But the money and the time are already spent. The only real question is whether it's worth more going forward. If it isn't, you're allowed to stop.
How to Do This in Your Own Business
If your business has grown into a bit of a tangle, where you're running things and you're not even sure why anymore, here's what I'd tell you.
Pick a framework. The Creator Growth Flywheel works, but any clear framework will do. Then go through your business one stage at a time and ask a simple question at each one. Is this working? And if not, what does?
And put AI to work on the analysis. I had AI pull my full lead magnet list, read my Pinterest reports, and lay out what I had so I could make calls with real numbers instead of a gut feeling. That's AI doing what it's good at, the execution, so I could do the part only I can do, the judgment.
Running my own framework on my own business kept me honest. Every piece I kept earns its place. Every piece I cut didn't. And the whole thing pointed one direction. Toward the human part of this business. The events, the rooms, and the judgment. Because that's the part that holds its value while AI takes over the rest.
Before You Go
See where your business stands across all five stages
Run your business through the Creator Growth Flywheel and find out which stage is holding you back.
Take the Scorecard →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Creator Growth Flywheel?
It's a five-stage framework for building a creator business where each stage feeds the next. The stages are Attract (how people find you), Engage (what gets them onto your email list), Nurture (how you build the relationship), Retain (your offers and how you serve people deeper), and Advocate (how your best people send you more people).
How do you use AI in a creator business without losing the human element?
Let AI handle the execution, like drafting, building, and analysis, so you're free for the part only you can do, which is judgment. AI keeps getting better and cheaper at making things, so the value shifts to human judgment, live events, and rooms where people learn from each other. Build your offers and your attract strategy around that human part.
Should I build my lead magnet or my offer first?
Build the offer first, then build the lead magnet backwards from it. Start with what you sell, then create the freebie that walks someone straight toward that offer. A lead magnet that doesn't connect to an offer is a dead end.
What's the difference between a how-to webinar and a belief webinar?
A how-to webinar teaches people something and they leave feeling smart, but they often don't buy. A belief webinar shifts what someone believes is possible, which is what actually moves them to buy. The strategy and the belief shift come first, then you can use AI to build the funnel fast.
How do you decide what to cut when you rebuild your business?
Pick a framework like the Creator Growth Flywheel and go through your business one stage at a time, asking if each piece is working and if not, what would. Use AI to pull real numbers so you decide on data, not a gut feeling. The money and time are already gone, so the only real question is whether something is worth more going forward.
Dr. Destini Copp
Digital Product Strategist · MBA Professor · Podcast Host
Dr. Destini Copp helps digital product creators build sustainable, systems-based businesses through the Creator Growth Flywheel framework. She is the founder of Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and has been teaching online business strategy for over a decade. More about Destini →
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Transcript: Behind the Scenes: Rebuilding My Business
Hi there, and welcome back to the Creator's MBA Show. My name is Dr. Destini Copp, and I'm so glad you're joining me here today.
Today is a behind-the-scenes episode. This month, I took my entire business apart. This wasn't just a minor tweak. I took apart everything. I looked at sales pages, offers, the names of offers, what I was promoting, what I was spending money on, what I was spending time on, what my team was spending time on. Everything went on the table.
To do this, I ran my whole business through my own framework, the Creator Growth Flywheel. So I looked at one stage at a time. This is the same framework that I teach in the Creator's MBA Mastermind, and I'm going to walk you through what I found at every stage. I'm going to talk about what I kept, what I cut, and what I'm still in the middle of working on. Because if you're building anything right now, a lot of this is going to sound like your business too.
So let me get into it. This rebuild isn't a one-time fix. It's really part of my evolution, and it's me getting my business in line with where I think things are actually headed in our market.
So let me tell you what I see. AI keeps getting better at doing all of the things. The building, the writing, the drafting, and even some of the execution. It's getting faster and cheaper every single month. And if the only thing you sell is that you can make stuff, that's getting harder to charge for.
But here is what AI cannot do. It cannot replace the human element. The judgment. A room full of people working something out together. The person who's actually been there and telling you what they would do in your spot. And the more AI shows up everywhere, the more people want that human part, not less.
So that is what I'm building toward. More events, because people want to be in the room with other people. And more offers built around that human judgment, not just information. Two of my newest offers, the Creator's MBA Council and the Revenue Stack Studio, came straight out of where I see this market going, and I'm going to get to both of them.
And here's how I see AI fitting in, because I am definitely not anti-AI, not even close. I want AI to take the execution. That frees you up for the part only you can do, which is the judgment. And the judgment is what people will keep paying for.
Now, I didn't guess my way through this rebuild. Like I said, I ran my whole business through my own framework, the Creator Growth Flywheel. Quick version, in case you're new to this. The flywheel has five stages. Attract is how people find you. Engage is what gets them onto your list and the initial customer journey that you take them on. Nurture is how you continue to build that relationship with them once they're there. Retain is a large part of your offers and how you serve people deeper and keep them in your world. And the advocacy stage is how your best people turn into people who send you more people.
So I sat down and went through my business one stage at a time, and here's what happened at each one.
Attract
In looking at the attract stage, that's the first stage. That's how people find me. And this is where the human thing I just talked about shows up first, because the best way people find me by a mile is through events. Live ones. People in the room or on a call together.
So I lean in all the way here, and that's where I've brought in other creators and built out the entire Creator's MBA event lineup. Here's a summary of some of the things I have coming up. We've got the Beyond the PDF event coming in July. In August, I have the Closed Door Panel Talks. We have some really great people coming in to chat with us on those panels, and those will be live panels. We have the AI in Action Summit in September. Again, the same thing, we'll have live sessions during that event. We have the AI Newsletter Summit in October, same thing, live sessions there. And then the Creator Pivot Summit in December, which I'm so excited about.
That is a full calendar of ways to find me and get real value before you ever buy anything. And it's not an accident that I'm making a large part of these events live, because an event is the one thing that AI can't hand you. It's people in real time learning from each other, and that's the front door of the whole business that I'm building.
And every single one of these events needs speakers and contributors. So if you want to be on one of these and build up your attract stage in your business, I want to hear from you. I'm going to put the link to apply in the show notes, so you can go take a look at that after the episode and see which one aligns with what you're doing.
So that was the attract stage. I'm bringing people in through the most human thing I know how to do, which is the live events, and I'm building more of them.
Engage
The next stage is the engage stage. So when people get onto my list, what is the customer journey that I take them on? And this is the one I'm in the middle of right now, so you get to see it live here.
I'm going through every single one of my lead magnets. Some of the older ones I'm sunsetting, because they were built for a version of the business that doesn't exist anymore, and they don't point to anywhere useful now. So I'm going to say goodbye to them.
I'm building some new ones, especially for some of the new offers and new positioning that I have. But I'm not building them the way most people do, where you take a freebie and then go looking for something to sell afterwards. I'm doing it backwards. I'm starting with the offer, and then I'm building the lead magnet that walks someone straight toward it. So the freebie and the paid thing have to connect, or the freebie is just a dead end.
And that is exactly what I'm teaching this week inside the Lead Magnet Lab that we're doing inside the Newsletter Profit Club. We're starting with the offer, then working backwards, and we're going to make sure that every free gift or lead magnet is the first step of a real customer journey.
So that's the engage stage that I'm currently working on. I'm cutting the lead magnets that don't lead anywhere, and I'm building new ones backwards from the offer. And when I did the audit on this, I actually had the Kit MCP and the HTMLPub MCP go out, look at all my landing pages, look at all my sequences, and give me a list of all the lead magnets I had. I've been doing this for a long time, and there were about 80 of them. And I'm like, okay, I have got to streamline this, because this is getting out of control. So that's a big project, and I'm still working on it.
Nurture
Nurture stage. This is the stage where you continue to build the relationship with your people once they are in your world and on your email list. And this one matters to me a lot, because this is where you and I actually talk. The podcast, the newsletter, the emails.
So here's what I'm doing right now, and I'm coming to you and asking you. Number one, the show. I want to make sure that the topics I'm covering on the show are the things you actually need help with. So if there's something you're stuck on, or something you want me to dig into on a future episode, or if you just want to do a hot seat, I've got the link in the show notes where you can send in your question. So send it over. I want to help, and I will answer it in a future podcast episode.
Number two is the newsletter. I'm going to be sending out a new survey to my email list, and the question is simple. I want to know if the newsletters I'm sending are the kind of thing you actually want in your inbox. Because here is my goal, and I absolutely mean this. I want the Creator's MBA newsletter to be the best email you get that day. The first one you open, the one you save in a special Gmail folder so you can come back to it again and again. So when that survey hits your inbox, or when you get an email from me asking this, please reply. Tell me what you're working on, tell me what you want more of, and that's how I'm going to make all of this better.
So that's the nurture stage. For me, I want to stop guessing what people actually want, and I want to ask them, and I'm going to use that information to make all of my nurture content, my newsletters, my articles, my Creator's MBA Show, better.
Retain
Next is the retain stage. Now, this is a big one. This is where I really went deep into my offers and how I serve people, and this is where some of the big, visible changes happened. So I want to walk through them.
First, the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind. Here's what I wanted to change here, and I want you to hear what I actually mean, because this was something I struggled with, and I want to give you a very specific example.
Last month in the Mastermind, we ran the Evergreen Engine Get It Done Week. And over that week, I walked members through building an entire evergreen webinar funnel using AI. And here's the part that's very important. I didn't just teach them how to use AI to make a how-to webinar. I taught them how to build a belief webinar, and I think that's a huge difference.
A how-to webinar teaches people something, and they leave feeling smart, but they don't buy from you. A belief webinar actually shifts what someone believes is possible, and that's what moves them to the actual buy. So the strategy came first, the belief shift, then the webinar structure, the offer, and the whole funnel, and that's what we used AI to build all of it. That's the Mastermind.
But I wasn't focusing or talking about the AI part of it, so it was difficult for me to get attention for this offer in the marketplace, because I wasn't putting AI at the forefront of it. So what I realized as I went through and reviewed all of my offers was that I needed to bring AI more to the forefront of the sales page and reposition it.
So I'm not changing the offer itself. I did add AI into the name, so it's the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind. But the core feature of this is, yes, we're using AI in everything we're doing here, but it's more about how to do the strategy and the marketing and how AI can help us with that. And that is the human part. Anyone can get AI to build a funnel now. What you can't get from a tool, from a generic chat prompt, is someone telling you what you need to do, what moves matter, and which ones will waste your time. And that's what you're in the room for, the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind.
The next offer is a new one that I've added, and I'm going to talk more about it in a future episode. This is the Creator's MBA Council, and what this is, is a peer mastermind. I'm so excited about it. I'm going to be curating this room myself, personally. It will start in January of 2027, so it's not going to start for a few months. And the real reason this offer exists goes back to what I said earlier in this episode. As AI takes over more of what we're doing, what people want is a room of humans whose judgment they trust. And that, my friend, is the Council.
The third offer, and this is a new one I created, is the Revenue Stack Studio. Again, I'm going to be talking more about this in the future, but this is more of my done-for-you tier, where my team does the work and does the events for you. So that's what the Studio is about, and it's another bet that I'm placing on where the market is going.
The fourth offer, of course, is the Newsletter Profit Club. The main thing here is the price will be going up on this particular offer in July. So if the Newsletter Profit Club is something you've been interested in, this is something to go out and check out now. You can get in before the price goes up.
So that's the retain stage, and that's making sure every offer is the right offer, for the right person, with a clear reason to exist.
Advocate
Moving on to the advocacy stage, the last stage. That's turning your best people into people who send you more people. And this is where I've been focused on my affiliate program, and I did something really cool here that I have to tell you about, because it worked very well, and it's a perfect example of what I keep saying: strategy first, then use AI.
Here's the strategy. I wanted to make it super simple for my affiliates to promote the Newsletter Profit Club, and I know that the easier I make it for them, the more they actually do it. That's the whole game with affiliates.
So here's what I did with AI. For each partner I did a personalized outreach to, I had Claude go look at their website. And for the ones who had been on my email list, I had it pull their old emails out of my Gmail folder, so it could learn exactly how they write their emails. So it's their voice and their words. Then it built each one a personalized affiliate landing page. The copy was in their own voice. Their affiliate links were already built into it, and I gave each of them a personal coupon code so they could hand it off to their list.
So instead of just sending them a bare link and saying good luck, I sent them an entire page written like they wrote it, ready to go. And so many of them emailed me back when they got it. They loved it. They said, I want to steal it. And I said, go ahead, go ahead and steal it. Because it made promoting so much easier for them. They didn't have to write a thing.
Now, that's the advocacy stage. Make it effortless for your best people to spread the word, and use AI to do the heavy lifting.
What I Cut
So that's the rebuild. There were a couple of other things I didn't mention. One of the analyses I did was looking at Pinterest, and I realized it just wasn't serving me anymore, so we cut that.
Another thing we cut, and this is a big one, so I definitely want to mention it here, is my HelloContent Shopify store. What I realized, with AI and the information people were getting out of AI, was that it made a lot of the products I had on that Shopify store obsolete. Plus, I don't have a lot of time on my marketing calendar to promote the products on the Shopify store. So as I moved more upmarket, I decided, you know what, that is just something I'm going to have to let go. I didn't want to, but I realized it was the best decision for me and where the market was going.
The Lesson
So that is the rebuild, all five stages. The attract stage, engage, nurture, retain, and the advocacy stage.
Here's what I took from doing it this way. Running my own framework on my own business kept me honest. I wasn't making changes based on how I felt something was doing. I was looking at every single stage and asking, is this working? And if not, what does? And every piece I kept, I felt confident, okay, this is working and I should continue to do it. And every piece I cut, I was like, okay, even if this was painful, like the HelloContent decision, which was very painful to me, I feel confident that's the right decision based on where the market is going.
And the whole thing pointed in one direction, really, toward the human part of this business. The events, the rooms, and the judgment that only I can bring to that table. Because that's the part I think holds its value, while AI is taking over the rest.
If your business has grown into a bit of a tangle, what I would tell you is to pick a framework like this and go through your business one stage at a time. Have AI go out and do the analysis for you. I had AI go in and analyze my Google Analytics results so I could see if I should keep Pinterest anymore. And based on what it told me, and the reports I pulled directly from Pinterest, that was a no-brainer, even though it was a little painful to say no to something I've been using for seven or eight years. But pick that framework, go through it, and you will see exactly what to keep and what to let go.
So that's it for today. A couple of quick things before you go. If you want to be a speaker or contributor at any one of the events I mentioned today, the application link is in the show notes. And if you have a question you want me to answer on the show, or if you just want to have a hot seat on the show, that link is there too. And when my newsletter survey hits your inbox, please reply back and tell me what you want. I want that to shape everything I'm doing.
Thank you so much for being here, and thank you for letting me think out loud with you during this episode. I'll see you in the next one. Bye for now.