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Don Crosby on Building a Mission-Driven Relationship Course Business (Without the Hype)

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Don Crosby sharing his experience and knowledge about behavioral science and how his mission-driven course business helps people building better relationships

Somewhere around 35 years ago, Don Crosby started working in behavioral science. But his mission didn't truly begin until he watched his 12-year-old brother sitting in a tree, watching their mother move out of the house after 28 years of marriage.

“Part of that child never comes back,” Don says.

That moment shaped everything that followed. Today, Don runs Global Behavior and Pairfection, launching course business spanning relationship recovery, teen development, and corporate training. His stated goal: reduce the divorce rate in America by 10%.

It's an audacious target. But after spending time with Don on the MemberFix Radio podcast, it's clear he's not interested in playing small.

The Problem Most People Don't Talk About

Don's observation about modern relationships is straightforward: divorce has become a default option.

“If it doesn't work, let's just check out, shake hands, divide the money and move on.”

He's watched couples cycle through two, three, even four marriages. He's seen the financial toll, the emotional damage to children, and the systemic normalization of relationship failure.

But the deeper issue isn't that relationships are hard. It's that most people enter them completely unprepared.

“We navigate relationships based on feeling and attraction. We were never taught relationship principles.”

Think about it: Your parents probably gave you some version of “the talk” (or didn't). Schools teach biology but not commitment. Society celebrates $30-50K weddings and divorces three years later.

The gap between expectation and reality is enormous.

Teaching Prevention, Not Just Repair

Don's approach differs from most relationship experts. Rather than only helping couples in crisis, he's focused on prevention.

His flagship course targets teenagers – teaching them about honor, commitment, and character before they start dating.

“The way to achieve the goal of reducing the divorce rate by 10% is to teach the children. Teach them how to respect the relationship when they're growing up as teens.”

This is counterintuitive in a market that profits from crisis intervention. Divorce recovery programs, marriage counseling, emergency couples therapy – these all serve people after problems start.

Don's betting that reaching people earlier, before patterns solidify, creates better outcomes.

The Marketing Challenge Nobody Talks About

Don created nine courses across three vertical markets: relationship courses (dating, honeymoon, divorce recovery), personal development (teens, young adults, mastery), and corporate training.

Then he hit a wall.

“I threw a bunch of money at marketing relationship courses and learned that people were interested, but they had to think about it for a long time.”

Unlike impulse purchases, relationship courses require consideration. People need to acknowledge they have a problem, decide to address it, convince a partner (maybe), and commit to doing the work.

That's not a 24-hour sales cycle.

So Don pivoted. He now focuses marketing primarily on his teens course, using it as an entry point. Parents who see results with their teenagers naturally explore other offerings.

“If we can help a parent with their teenager, that parent is going to see how extraordinary these other courses are and probably engage one for themselves.”

The Gifting Strategy

One of Don's more creative approaches: positioning relationship courses as wedding gifts.

Instead of crystal wine glasses that sit unused, give newlyweds a honeymoon course featuring romantic poems, commitment discussions, and framework for navigating the first year of marriage.

“There's a commitment creed identifying what each person's needs are in a way that they can talk about it at the beginning.”

The concept challenges wedding gift conventions while serving a real need. Most couples spend enormous energy planning a wedding and almost zero time preparing for the marriage.

What “Mission-Driven” Actually Costs

Don talks openly about the unglamorous side of course creation.

He spent five years developing content. He woke up at 4 AM regularly, thinking about the person who would need his divorce recovery course. He wrote 75-100 video scripts, created accompanying workbooks, and acquired content from mentors.

“If anybody has ever considered doing a course, it's like writing a book. It's freeing, but there's a lot to it.”

This contradicts the prevailing narrative in online course marketing: “Create a course in 45 minutes!” “Make $10K/month with reoccurring revenue!”

Don's response to that hype:

“Is your content going to change someone's life? Is it going to make such an impression that it's priceless takeaway? Probably not.”

The difference between content that gets consumed and content that creates transformation is immense. And it requires time most people aren't willing to invest.

The Dual-Market Model

Don's business model solves a crucial tension: How do you price courses affordably enough to reach people who need help while still building a sustainable business?

His answer: serve two markets simultaneously.

For individual consumers, courses are priced annually with six-month payment plans available. This keeps them accessible to single moms, teenagers, and people in crisis who can't afford traditional therapy.

For corporate clients, Don offers premium workforce development services. He's worked with manufacturers, hospitals, construction companies, and associations for 25+ years, using PDP (Professional Diametric Programs) behavioral assessments to optimize team performance.

One manufacturing story illustrates the value: Don looked at 11 employees on a production line, swapped two people based on their behavioral profiles (moving a high-energy person from the end of the line to the beginning), and saved the company about $156,000 over 18 months.

“It's not about people being bad. It's just people that are wired differently.”

Corporate revenue funds the mission-driven consumer work. It's a structure that allows Don to pursue his legacy goal without sacrificing business viability.

The MemberFix Partnership

After five years creating content, Don needed a platform that could handle his complex requirements:

  • Multiple course structures (annual access, payment plans, free trials)
  • Gifting functionality for relationship courses
  • Integration of proprietary PDP assessment tools
  • Support for both B2C and B2B markets

He specifically credits Risto and the MemberFix team for “taking it from an idea to what I believe will be a legacy project.”

The technical infrastructure matters because Don's work isn't about quick wins. His courses run for a full year. There are no certificates, no artificial deadlines. Students work at their own pace because real behavior change doesn't happen in 30 days.

More details on what MemberFix did for Don here.

What's Next

Don's marketing company in Maine is targeting the homeschooling market for his teens course. He's preparing to roll out corporate offerings to his existing workforce development clients. And he's developing a PTSD course for veterans.

At this stage in his career, Don's operating on a different timeline than most entrepreneurs. He's not building for an exit or chasing quarterly growth targets. He's building something he hopes his grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren will see the impact of.

Whether he reaches his goal of reducing divorce by 10% remains to be seen. But the work itself – helping people understand themselves, teaching relationship principles most people never learn, preventing pain before it starts – that work is already making a difference.


About MemberFix Radio:

We interview experts and share insights for membership site owners and subscription business leaders building sustainable, profitable recurring revenue models.

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