CLIENT
Mel Dorman / Seller Finance Academy
ENGAGEMENT
Q4 2024 – Q3 2025
SMG ROLE
Product Development
Executive Production
Media Strategy
MEDIA
Course
Audiobook
Podcast
Email Marketing
STATUS
Completed / Product Still Active
SELLER FINANCE ACADEMY · MEL DORMAN
They hired us to produce an audiobook.
We helped Them build an education business.
Mel Dorman already had the expertise. SMG turned that expertise into a connected media and product ecosystem... from audiobook and podcast to email infrastructure, curriculum, course delivery, and a $25K+ inaugural pilot.
50+ PILOT STUDENTS · $25K+ PILOT REVENUE · $497 → $6,000 OFFER EVOLUTION
THE ASSIGNMENT
It started with an audiobook.
In Q4 2024, Mel Dorman came to Mary Williams with a relatively contained production problem.
Their book, Bank on Your Neighbor, was nearing publication. A TEDx talk they had delivered earlier that year had been selected as a TED Editor's Pick and was awaiting release. Mel wanted to narrate their own audiobook... and they knew they needed a producer who could coach them through the performance.
That was the assignment.
Then we started talking.
Mel also had years of hard-earned expertise in seller financing and an idea for teaching it. What they didn't have was experience building an online educational product.
No curriculum architecture. No learning platform. No student experience. No launch infrastructure. No established email marketing system.
The audiobook wasn't a standalone production project anymore. It was one piece of a much larger opportunity.
THE STARTING POINT
Mel had expertise.
they didn't have the machinery around it.
WHAT ALREADY EXISTED
A completed book manuscript in editing.
A TEDx talk awaiting release.
Years of real-world seller-finance expertise.
A modest list of people who had volunteered to support the TEDx launch.
A new website being developed by another firm.
WHAT DIDN'T
A structured educational product.
Learning objectives or curriculum architecture.
A course or community platform.
Student onboarding and support systems.
Course handouts and accessible learning assets.
An established email marketing system.
A sales funnel.
A tested delivery model.
We weren't inventing Mel's expertise.
We were building the infrastructure that would allow other people to learn from it
... and eventually buy it.
Knowing something deeply and teaching it effectively are different skills.
Over several weeks of coaching and structured interviews, SMG extracted Mel's knowledge and began turning it into something another human could actually move through.
Mel remained the subject-matter expert. She supplied the methodology, examples, exercises, stories, and raw instructional material.
SMG designed the educational product around it.
We established learning objectives, identified gaps, sequenced twelve modules, structured individual lessons, edited and organized exercises, and designed the student handouts.
Mel recorded lesson videos remotely while traveling. SMG turned those recordings into course-ready media with editing, captions, transcripts, supporting materials, and consistent delivery inside Kajabi.
Then we built the environment around them.
Expertise isn't a curriculum.
12 MODULES
KAJABI COURSE + COMMUNITY
MULTIPLE LESSONS + HANDOUTS PER MODULE
VIDEO + TRANSCRIPTS + CAPTIONS
Mel’s expertise was the raw material.
Product design turned it into something teachable.
THE REAL PROBLEM
Mel did need media.
They needed an audiobook.
They needed video lessons.
They needed audio editing, captions, transcripts, course assets, landing pages, email, and a place for everything to live.
But producing those files wouldn't create the business outcome.
A recording studio can give you a recording.
A videographer can give you a beautiful video.
A contractor can put that video inside a course platform.
None of those things, by themselves, give you a product.
Seller Finance Academy also needed curriculum architecture, customer research, positioning, pricing, student experience, sales infrastructure, onboarding, accessibility, community, feedback loops, and a plan for what happened after somebody clicked BUY.
Production was one layer of the work. Product development was the job.
Recording wasn't the problem.
THE AUDIOBOOK
Sixteen hours in a sound booth changed the assignment again.
Mel wanted to narrate Bank on Your Neighbor in their own voice.
Over three days, they spent approximately 16 hours in a professional sound booth discovering something almost every first-time narrator learns:
Reading your own writing aloud is a performance skill.
SMG provided live direction and narration coaching throughout the recording, managed pickups, supervised post-production, and worked with our audio editor through editing and mastering.
We also developed the technical specifications and an SOP Mel's team could use to complete audiobook distribution.
The objective wasn't to make Mel sound like somebody else.
It was to help the person who had written the words learn how to deliver them effectively behind a microphone.
16 HOURS · 3 DAYS · FULL-LENGTH AUDIOBOOK
THE DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM
Then we turned the audiobook into a podcast.
Because Mel wanted something Audible alone couldn't provide.
They wanted the audio freely accessible.
They wanted people to share it without buying anything.
They wanted to direct listeners toward free resources and email opt-ins.
And they wanted the material to contribute to their discoverability online.
So SMG recommended publishing Bank on Your Neighbor in a second format.
Each chapter became an episode of a limited-series podcast.
The Audiobook
A professionally produced audio edition of Mel's book.
THE PODCAST
A free, shareable, searchable entry point into Mel's ideas and business.
Distribution isn't the step that happens after production.
Distribution changes what you should produce in the first place.
THE ECOSYSTEM
One body of expertise. Multiple ways in.
TEDx TALK
Attention
↓
BANK ON YOUR NEIGHBOR
Book + intellectual property
↓
AUDIOBOOK + LIMITED-SERIES PODCAST
Paid/traditional + free/shareable distribution
↓
FREE CHAPTER + OPT-INS
Audience capture
↓
Welcome sequences + launch campaigns + monthly communication
↓
SELLER FINANCE ACADEMY
Monetized educational product
↓
LIVE PILOT
Product validation
↓
12-MONTH PROGRAM
Expanded high-ticket delivery
When Mel's TEDx talk finally went live, SMG had already built somewhere for the attention to go.
We set up Kit, created her email templates, wrote launch and nurture campaigns, built landing pages around free book chapters and podcast access, developed welcome sequences, and eventually created separate communication rhythms for Mel's broader audience and Seller Finance Academy students.
The TEDx launch campaign documented the talk climbing from 22,000 views in its first days to 49,000+ after roughly a week. By July, Mel's email campaign reported more than 142,000 views.
We didn't create the TEDx attention.
We built infrastructure designed to make that attention useful.
THE PILOT
We launched the unfinished version on purpose.
$497
per seat
50+ STUDENTS
$25K+
PILOT REVENUE
90
DAYS
Before Seller Finance Academy became a mature offer, it needed to survive contact with actual students.
SMG advocated for a live pilot because experts have a predictable blind spot: they know too much.
The expert knows which concepts connect. Which steps feel obvious. Which vocabulary has become second nature.
The beginner doesn't.
The inaugural Seller Finance Academy pilot launched as a 90-day program at $497, combining twelve modules of educational content with worksheets, community, accountability, workshops, and live coaching. Contemporary launch materials confirm the pilot structure and pricing.
More than 50 students joined the inaugural cohort, generating more than $25,000 in pilot revenue.
But revenue wasn't the only thing the pilot produced.
It produced evidence.
WHAT THE STUDENTS TAUGHT US
The bottleneck wasn't information. It was execution.
By Module 2, students were already showing signs of overwhelm.
That's common in first-generation educational products. Experts naturally underestimate how much cognitive load their subject creates for a beginner.
But the live environment showed us exactly where Seller Finance Academy needed to change.
Students repeatedly returned to the worksheets.
Cold outreach was difficult.
Starting conversations with prospective sellers created friction.
Live coaching around prospecting letters became particularly valuable.
And the biggest discovery was structural:
For many students, learning seller financing and actually completing a seller-financed transaction were not going to happen neatly inside 90 days.
So the product changed.
Pilot students received extended access.
The self-study curriculum continued as a separate offer.
And the next live iteration expanded into a year-long program centered around continued learning, deal support, feedback, and community.
By July, the expanded live program was being offered at $6,000.
Later sales messaging explicitly identified connection, coaching, deal feedback, accountability, and peer support as the gap between self-study and supported implementation.
The pilot didn't simply prove people would buy the product.
It taught us what the product needed to become.
This wasn't course-launch advice.
SMG operated the launch.
LAUNCH + SALES
Pricing · sales pages · email campaigns · launch strategy · customer communications
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Curriculum interviews · learning objectives · module architecture · product iteration
COURSE PRODUCTION
Video processing · captions · transcripts · handouts · accessible learning assets
LIVE DELIVERY
Zoom production · call facilitation · replay processing · delivery coaching
AUDIENCE INFRASTRUCTURE
Kit · landing pages · opt-ins · welcome sequences · monthly communication
PLATFORM + OPERATIONS
Kajabi setup · community · checkout · enrollment · onboarding · student support
CUSTOMER RESEARCH
Student behavior · feedback · testimonial collection · product refinement
MEDIA PRODUCTION
Audiobook direction · performance coaching · post-production · podcast distribution strategy
The deliverables were media.
The engagement was business infrastructure.
SOCIAL PROOF AS PRODUCT DATA
Testimonials weren't decoration.
SMG built a simple before/current/after testimonial framework and collected student feedback through forms, email reminders, and direct requests.
The goal wasn't simply to collect nice things people said.
Testimonials helped document where students began, what changed, and which parts of the experience were producing value... giving future sales material evidence grounded in actual customer experience.
BUILD → SELL → DELIVER → OBSERVE → COLLECT EVIDENCE → REFINE → SELL AGAIN
WHAT KEPT WORKING
The most interesting result happened after we left.
SMG's engagement eventually ended. Mel continued developing Seller Finance Academy independently. This is one of the most ideal outcomes with any client… no lingering dependency upon the executive producer to scale & grow.
We don't take credit for the audience growth, sales, product development, team building, or business decisions that happened afterward.
We can point to something simpler.
The product survived.
Today, Seller Finance Academy remains an active business. Its public offer still reflects the foundational curriculum, coaching, community, and implementation-support model developed and validated during the original engagement.
Bank on Your Neighbor still exists as both intellectual property and media.
The audiobook podcast remains publicly available.
The educational framework created during the original pilot continues to form the recognizable foundation of the Academy.
DURABLE CURRICULUM
The original educational architecture continues to underpin the product.
VALIDATED DELIVERY MODEL
The pilot exposed the need for longer-term support before the product expanded.
REUSABLE MEDIA
Book, audiobook, podcast, course lessons, transcripts, and handouts remain usable assets.
OWNED INFRASTRUCTURE
Course, community, audience, and email systems were built to continue beyond SMG's engagement.
A good production delivers an asset.
Good infrastructure leaves behind something capable of continuing without the producer.
CASE STUDY UPDATED · SEPTEMBER 2026
The product kept going.
Seller Finance Academy has continued to evolve since SMG's engagement ended.
That's exactly the point.
The goal of this work wasn't to make a client permanently dependent on our production team. It was to transform expertise into media, products, and systems capable of doing useful work after the original build was complete.
Mel brought the expertise.
SMG helped turn it into curriculum people could learn from, media people could discover and share, infrastructure capable of capturing attention, and an educational product customers were willing to buy.
The first pilot generated more than $25,000.
The more durable result is that the product didn't disappear when the pilot ended.
HAVE EXPERTISE PEOPLE KEEP ASKING YOU TO TEACH?
You might not need someone to make your course videos.
You might need someone to figure out what you're actually building.
SMG works with founders, experts, and emerging talent to turn human expertise into media and products that have a job to do... before we worry about making them look pretty.
Because recording the thing is production.
Building something capable of making money, teaching people, growing an audience, or opening the next door is the work.