MANITOWOC, Wis. — MCM Digital Products has opened the MCM360 Academy, a free online training library built for the people who actually run local businesses. The Academy is live now at academy.mcmdigitalproducts.com with 21 on-demand courses covering artificial intelligence, local search, reputation, and lead follow-up. There is no cost, no credit card, and no trial clock.

The promise is deliberately short: learn it today, use it Monday.

"Most AI training is written for marketers, and a business owner can tell within about thirty seconds," said Michael Cummings, founder of MCM Digital Products. "The owner of a heating company doesn't need a lecture on how the technology works. He needs to know which tool to open, what to type into it, and what he's going to do with the answer. That's what every course here does."

Cummings built the Academy after spending the past year teaching AI workshops to members of the Manitowoc County Chamber of Commerce. "The same three questions came up in every single room," he said. "Which one of these AI tools should I use? Is it safe to put my customer information into it? And what do I actually do with it on Monday morning? The courses are just those answers, written down and organized so nobody has to sit through a workshop to get them."

What's Inside

The 21 courses are grouped into four tracks, each aimed at a different problem an owner is trying to solve.

Pick Your AI Tool walks through the major AI assistants one at a time — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, and Perplexity — covering what each one is genuinely good at, how to set it up for a business, and what is and isn't safe to paste into it. The track includes a course for owners who don't know where to begin and an honest side-by-side comparison for owners deciding which one to commit to.

Get Found Locally covers the two things that decide whether a local business shows up when a neighbor searches for it: local search visibility on Google, and reviews. The reputation course treats customer reviews as a sales asset rather than a scoreboard, including how to ask for them and how to answer the bad ones.

Convert Leads Into Customers deals with what happens after the phone rings. It covers sending different visitors to different pages instead of pointing everyone at a homepage, and setting up a simple system so quotes and callbacks stop getting lost in an inbox.

Message & Brand is about the words. It covers finding the language customers already use to describe their own problem, deciding what a business should be known for, and building a brand around the owner's own voice — which, for most local businesses, is the strongest asset they have.

Free, With No Catch Attached

Every course in the Academy is free to watch, in any order, at any time. There is no credit card, no trial period that quietly ends, and no requirement to book a call before getting access.

"I get asked what the catch is, and there isn't one," Cummings said. "Some owners will go through these courses, do the work themselves, and never spend a dollar with me. That's fine — that's what it's built for. And when somebody decides they'd rather hand it off, that's when I hope they call me, because I've already given them something honest and they know exactly what they'd be buying. Either way the local business is better off, and that's good for a town like this one."

The Academy is open to any business owner, anywhere. The material is aimed at local service and trades businesses — heating and cooling, plumbing, construction, landscaping, flooring, and moving companies among them — but the AI courses apply to any small business owner who has been told they should be using AI and has not been given a straight answer about how.

Courses are available now at academy.mcmdigitalproducts.com.

About MCM Digital Products

MCM Digital Products is a digital marketing and AI consulting company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, serving local service and trades businesses since 2011. The company provides done-for-you local SEO, website design, AI receptionist and chatbot setup, automated follow-up, reputation management, and online booking. Founder Michael Cummings has been elected to the Manitowoc City Council three times and chairs the Salvation Army of Manitowoc County.

Media Contact

Michael Cummings
MCM Digital Products
621 N. 10th Street, Manitowoc, WI 54220
Phone: (920) 383-3387
Email: contact@mcmdigitalproducts.com
Web: mcmdigitalproducts.com

Contact Information:

MCM Digital Products

621 N. 10th Street
Manitowoc, WI 54220
United States

Michael Cummings
+1 920-383-3387
https://mcmdigitalproducts.com