Dom Wells·January 19, 2023

How to Buy a $3m Course Business | Dom Wells Interview

Dom Wells, CEO of Onfolio — a company that acquires and operates internet businesses — describes Onfolio's acquisition of Proofread Anywhere, a premium online course teaching people to build careers as proofreaders, founded in 2014 by Caitlyn Pyle and serving roughly 15,000 students. The central challenge of the deal was that Caitlyn was the public face of the brand, raising key-person risk, but Dom explains why this risk was manageable: she was not operationally involved, the business already had a hired CEO (Cody) whose salary was baked into the P&L, and most marketing ran via Facebook ads that would continue without her. Caitlyn agreed to provide pre-recorded ad creatives and license her image for roughly two years, allowing a gradual brand transition toward successful students who completed the course. Dom outlines a playbook for acquiring founder-centric courses: the face is manageable if the founder is not also driving sales, fulfilling the product, and running operations — and the real operational moat in online courses is funnel mastery, not content quality. Onfolio plans to add lower-priced entry offers, fix funnel friction, and introduce student success stories as new brand evangelists, positioning the acquisition as a platform for long-term growth rather than a flip.

Deal facts

notes: Episode title references '$3m' likely as approximate purchase price or valuation; not stated explicitly in transcript. Business acquired is Proofread Anywhere, a course teaching proofreading careers. Main course price point is $497-$500 (with other tiers in the hundreds). Business founded 2014, ~15,000 students over 7-8 years. Acquisition closed around October 2022 per transcript context.

Why this business

Onfolio was already familiar with the Proofread Anywhere brand through the ClickFunnels community. Dom saw it as a premium, market-leading course in a stable niche where the founder (Caitlyn Pyle) was the face but not operationally involved in running the business — meaning the key-person risk was manageable. He viewed it less as a proofreading course and more as a career-opportunity course teaching people to build income online, fitting Onfolio's thesis around internet businesses.

What's working

The business already had a hired CEO (Cody) doing back-end operations, and his salary was built into the P&L — so no additional expense was needed to run the company post-acquisition.
Caitlyn was the face of the brand but was not actively marketing or fulfilling the course; a large portion of sales came from Facebook ads that could continue without her.
Caitlyn agreed to provide six to twelve months of pre-recorded ad creatives and videos, and granted rights to use her image for approximately two years post-acquisition, enabling a gradual transition.
The course is market-leading with strong brand recognition, roughly 15,000 students, and premium $497+ price points that reflect perceived quality.
Plan to introduce successful students as new brand ambassadors — seen as potentially more persuasive than the original founder because they are proof of the course's results.
Onfolio identified product and funnel improvements, including adding a lower-priced entry offer to reduce friction in the buyer journey.

What's hard

Key-person / key-face risk: Caitlyn Pyle's identity is deeply embedded in the brand, requiring a careful multi-month transition strategy to introduce new faces without losing customer trust.
The customer journey creates some dissonance — free webinar/ebook leading to a sudden $500 ask — and some students felt misled, requiring funnel improvements.
Some brand messaging was seen as antagonistic in FAQs, which needed softening.
No recurring revenue; the business is entirely transaction-based on one-time course sales, unlike SaaS.
Uncertainty around whether new product ideas (e.g., a lower-tier offer, a job-placement partnership) will prove viable.
Dom notes they have only been running the business since October (2022), so many initiatives are still in R&D phase.

Notable quotes

We don't really think of it as a kind of how to be a proofreader course even though that's what it is — we think of it more as a career opportunity course, something that can teach people to build an income online, which is part of the reason it appealed to us.

With proofread anywhere, Caitlyn was the face and she recorded all the videos, but she's not really doing anything else. She wasn't running the business. There's a guy called Cody on the back end who was the CEO, and actually the cost of replacing him as CEO were built into the P&L, which is very rare in an online business.

The fear of what happens is actually often greater than — like, most people don't care. And of course people who bought the course because of Caitlyn, if she left they might be like 'oh, Caitlyn's left, that sucks,' but new people, a year from now, a lot of people won't necessarily know that Caitlyn ever existed.

If I was considering taking a course and the course was now being taught by three or four people who had gone through the course and had success with it, I'd actually be more encouraged by that.