A $300 AI Workshop for Your Newsletter Readers

TJ Larkin jumped on for a solo episode to talk through something he is working on. He wants to run an in-person workshop that teaches small business owners the basics of AI, sell it for $300, and fill it through his local newsletter and Facebook ads. He covers why the timing finally works, how he built the landing page, and why the room matters more than the ticket sales.

Why the idea stalled the first time

TJ had this idea somewhere between a year and a year and a half before recording. He was serious enough to start a Facebook page. It went nowhere, for two reasons.

First, he had no audience, because he did not yet have a local newsletter. Second, he did not know how to run Facebook ads. He says his answer to "how do I get the word out" was "I have no idea," so he stopped.

Now he has the newsletter and the ad skills. He also thinks he was too early on AI back then, and that people are ready now.

Who it is for, and why $300

The workshop is marketed to business owners and professionals, but TJ expects it to be mostly small business owners who are scared of AI because they know it is coming. They keep hearing about it and keep putting it off. They do not want to take online courses or research it themselves.

They want to sit in front of a real person and ask questions, without paying a consultant thousands of dollars. That is the middle tier TJ is aiming at: pay $300 for a couple of hours and learn AI "from zero to one."

He is not talking about people who already use ChatGPT. As he puts it, there are a lot of people who do not know how to use it at even the most basic level, and that is the audience.

Why the room matters more than the ticket

Say 20 small business owners show up. TJ points out that he has just built relationships with 20 people who could advertise in his newsletter, or who might hire him for more AI work.

He also wants to move into digital marketing: Facebook ads for companies, plus SEO and Google ads. His rule is that it always comes back to relationships, and standing in front of people in person, giving them something useful, is the best way he knows to build them.

The publisher who landed city work

Earlier that day TJ talked privately with another local newsletter operator, a past guest of the show. TJ asked if he had thought about an AI workshop. The answer was that he was already doing it and it was working very well. TJ did not name him, because he did not know whether the guy wanted it public.

TJ says he does not remember every detail, but the story went like this. The publisher had built a relationship, through the newsletter, with someone tied to his city's government. He did something for them very quickly, they asked how, and he said he used AI. They asked him to show them, and that turned into an offer to come teach their team.

TJ's read is that a city has real budget, so they will pay. He also says that contact gave the publisher a referral to someone in another government department, a second job that cost him nothing to land.

Building the workshop site in V0

TJ needed somewhere to send ad traffic, and he did not want one of those generic site builders that look terrible. He used V0 (vzero.dev), which he lists alongside Replit, Lovable and Bolt as the big AI app builders. He also notes that Google has Firebase, which is free.

He walks through the site on screen. It has a hero section reading AI101 for local business owners, a "why should you attend" section with cards covering what you will learn, a pricing page, and an event details section. The venue just says it comes upon registration, since he will sort that out if people sign up.

It also has an FAQ, and an email signup for people who are not ready to commit, so he can sell to them later. An about section says what city he lives in and that he runs the local newsletters there, so no one mistakes it for a national company claiming to be local.

Fixing the small things V0 got wrong took him about an hour. He says the pricing page looks like something a million-dollar business would use. He also built an app with V0 that was better than this site, and that took 15 minutes. He built the first version without paying, then paid because he wanted to keep making changes.

His other point: launch before you make the full plan. He has wasted time on full plans before.

Have ChatGPT write the prompt first

TJ does not type "build me a website called AI101" into V0. He starts in ChatGPT, usually on the o3 model, which he says is worth paying for.

He shows the prompt on screen. It is long, with details he says he did not understand, and it hit some errors that ChatGPT rewrote. He says it does not matter that he cannot read every line.

For a course outline, the starting point is just as simple. Tell ChatGPT you need to teach a three-hour course to beginners on AI and ask for an outline.

Three more ideas from Twitter

TJ also shares a few ideas he saw or has been thinking about.

A local newsletter, which he thinks was in Milwaukee, ran a dating profile. TJ is unsure whether it was paid. He likes it because dating apps are broken, and a newsletter with 10,000 subscribers can put someone in front of a lot of people. Brian, on Twitter, said speed dating events always get a ton of clicks in his newsletter.

His second idea is a billboard. He says it will not pay back in subscribers like a Meta ad at 50 cents or a dollar. But for a newsletter at a minimum of 10,000 subscribers, maybe 20,000 or 30,000, it shows advertisers and readers that you are a legitimate local institution.

He also wonders about a co-branding deal, where another business puts your brand on the billboard and you give them free ads.

What is next

TJ hopes to start running ads for the workshop the following week. He had the site built but no venue yet, and said it may not work. What pushed him to share it was the confirmation from a publisher already doing it.

He also had guests lined up for the following week: Tim Stoddart on local directories, which TJ called "killer," and Alec from Beehiiv. If you are struggling with Facebook ads, TJ says to reach out. He has been getting subscribers for 15 to 30 cents for the people he works with.