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In what is possibly the most requested interview in the history of this show, Phil Ebiner joins me today to chat about all things online course-related! Whether you’ve been looking forward to this for ages, or this is your first time hearing about how Phil is crushing it in the online course world, I think you’re going to find a lot of value in today’s episode. “Every little course is a different stream of income.” – Phil Ebiner In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:41) Catching up and thinking about pricing (5:00) The biggest ideas that affect my pricing strategy (12:02) Base-rate neglect (15:55) Order bumps vs. one-time offers (22:34) The importance of keeping your audience in mind (24:43) A good problem I’m currently having (26:25) Pros and cons to price raises (27:03) Setting the stage for today’s interview 29:30) Phil’s thoughts on managing family life and business ownership (36:42) The freedom of being your own boss (37:55) Debt, traditional education, and finding jobs (43:31) Phil’s online course journey (48:37) Platform choices (52:36) Thinking about the pros and cons of different platform structures (1:01:01) High ticket vs. low ticket (1:02:39) Thoughts on course that cost more than average (1:04:25) Passive income and urgency (1:06:12) The two paths to choose from (1:14:07) How Phil uses other instructors and shares profits (1:19:02) Making the transition to online courses (1:20:46) Deciding which content belongs in which part of Phil’s business (1:22:43) Answering questions about the online course world (1:25:15) Talking tools (1:30:19) Phil’s hardware recommendations (1:33:46) Webcam resources from Phil + an early pandemic giveaway (1:36:12) How 2020 impacted our businesses (1:40:01) Phil’s experience with obstacles (1:43:09) Why not just stop? (1:44:37) Where to find Phil online (1:47:00) David sends a bearhug + and we discuss our takeaways (1:50:23) Favorite questions and some family backstory (1:52:10) Online course alternatives to traditional problems (1:54:58) A $36,000 course? (1:58:28) My own course experiences with live components (2:00:13) Can a new instructor break into Udemy success? (2:05:29) Branching out and overcoming obstacles (2:11:02) Different strokes for different folks (2:14:49) Wrapping up and teasing next week’s episode That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Phil’s website Phil’s courses Phil’s Udemy page Online Course Masters podcast Books and Resources: Make Time Udemy Skillshare Career Quest Teachable ConvertKit ScreenFlow Canva HootSuite Buffer Edgar Brio webcam Sony A6000 Raycast lighting Aputure lights Evolved Finance course Consulting.com Dad is Fat From 6 to 7 Figures Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins: [00:00:02] Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course and they're making a living doing it. But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses. Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins and this is The Online Course Show. Jacques Hopkins: [00:00:32] And off we go. Welcome aboard. Glad you're with us. I am your host, Jacques Hopkins, and here with me as well as our co-host. What's up, Dr. K.? David Kroshe: [00:00:40] What's up? Jacques Hopkins: [00:00:41] Back for another episode of The Online Course Show. This is 164. Got an exciting guest on the on the show today. But before we get into that, what's going on with you? How are you, man? David Kroshe: [00:00:52] I've been doing fantastic up here. Just enjoying the Iowa winter. What about you? Jacques Hopkins: [00:00:58] Not enjoying the Louisiana winter. It is... It's been, it's been a cold one so far. It has to be thinking about places like Puerto Rico. You know, we had Jason Deon come on and he moved his whole family to Puerto Rico. I would imagine the winter there is not quite as bad as here, which is not quite as bad as where you are. David Kroshe: [00:01:16] Correct. Yeah, he starts to sound pretty brilliant, so. Yeah. And you're wearing your LSU football sweatshirt. So representing today. Jacques Hopkins: [00:01:22] Go Tigers, man. Yeah. David Kroshe: [00:01:25] Looks good. Jacques Hopkins: [00:01:26] So I think you had you had one thing that you would like to talk about a little bit before we jump into this, this full conversation. David Kroshe: [00:01:33] Correct. Yes. The listeners will hear in the interview with Phil Eibner, you talk about just where your pricing is today and you did a test of a test run of bumping your price up to a thousand dollars. David Kroshe: [00:01:46] And so recently I found a article, a blog post by Neil Patel called The Five Psychological Hacks That Will Make Your Pricing Page Irresistible. And I thought we could discuss that a little bit, but just also discuss pricing in general, your opinion on some of these things. So first off, before we get into the five things in Neil Patel's blog post, what do you think about just one price for your course? What are your thoughts on that? Have you ever done that? Jacques Hopkins: [00:02:16] Yeah, I've done that, in fact, I always, always, always, when I was first getting the idea, when I was first getting online courses, my idea was always $297 for my piano course, that one price. And when you say one price, I assume like it's here's what the offer is, here's what the price is. There are no other options. David Kroshe: [00:02:34] Right. Jacques Hopkins: [00:02:34] Right. And I remember, I'm sure I've told the story in the podcast before, but I remember when I got the idea for an online piano course early 2013. I was telling my wife about it and she's like, that sounds pretty cool. Like how much, how much you can charge for something like that. And I was like, I'm thinking like I'm not sure but I'm thinking like $297. Jacques Hopkins: [00:02:53] And she goes, "Who in the hell is going to pay that for that?" Jacques Hopkins: [00:02:58] I'll never I'll never forget that. And I was like, well I, I think some people might well see and I originally launched it saying, hey, this is, this is new, like early bird. You can get it for a steep discount. Ninety-seven bucks. But for the first couple of years it was just one one course, one option, it was $297 and you could do a payment plan. I think I implemented that pretty pretty quickly as well. And then it was it was several years into it that I added a higher end option and a lower end option as well. So yes, I do have experience. A long way to answer your question. David Kroshe: [00:03:38] Got it. Well, I kind of skipped over something I wanted to mention just briefly, is that when we talk about pricing, I mean, there are three different goals here. As a business owner, your true goal is to maximize profit. If we just look at it purely from a business perspective, maximize profit is it. A second goal would be serve the customer the best. So if you say I want to serve customers the best, that could mean that you want to serve more customers so you lower the price. A higher price can mean that you can offer the customers more. And then in this category of serving the customers the best, we are talking about small business and you have your own personal emotions. You're allowed to do whatever you want with your small business. So you might you might set some personal rule that you say, I would want my grandfather to be willing to sign up for this course. And you might put this top number that you say, you know, my my grandfather would not spend a $1,000 on a piano course, but he would spend $700. And you just set that number. You're allowed to do whatever you want there when you say define serve the customer the best. The third thing would be keep things simple and avoid difficult record keeping. And I know that's something that you you probably everything you think about pricing, you're like, yeah, that might increase profit a little tiny bit, but it adds all this complexity. And so that can be something that you want to avoid is just saying I don't want this like nightmare of record keeping. So with your current all the things that are offered in these additional courses that you've just offered so far, new listeners, you added, of course, Jazz Piano In 21 Days, you have Classical Piano In 21 Days, does going back to a one price option appeal to you at all? And if you did it, what would that what would the price be that would meet those criteria just out of curiosity. Jacques Hopkins: [00:05:23] Yeah. So the price, if it were just one price it would either be like $497, $697 or $997. Jacques Hopkins: [00:05:29] But I think there is great advantages to having multiple pricing options. The article that you mentioned from Neil Patel, I definitely read through it. You send it to me ahead of time and he talks about how you can have, I don't know if price anchoring is the right word for it, but just having multiple options instills certain psychological triggers in people. But what's interesting is that he talks about in the article, it's usually the middle option you're trying to drive people toward. Jacques Hopkins: [00:05:58] And at this point, you know, but back when I had the one product at $997 or excuse me, $297, I was like, OK, I want to I want to try to get a little more money per per customer. And so I added a $497 option and threw in more value over there. But at the same time I felt like I was leaving a little bit of money on the table with, with kind of a lower end as well. And so I added the $97 option. So what's interesting is that the middle option is not my most popular option like his, like Neil Patel's article suggests. Eighty percent of my buyers actually go for the the high end package. David Kroshe: [00:06:34] Ok, well, jumping into Neil Patel's article, I would say that you actually did one of his strategies, which was called the decoy effect. And I don't think you viewed it that way. David Kroshe: [00:06:44] But the decoy effect, essentially, he says if you have, you want to drive people toward your your highest end option, he says if you had just two options, they would often go for the lowest option. But he says add a mid priced option that lets lets people justify their purchase of the top option through a two-step process. So you want this mid priced option to be mispriced, essentially. And so essentially, if somebody is in your course, they're looking at your funnel and your options, they look at the $100, $100 book and they say, well, I want to do an online course like that, doesn't sound like a good option. So then they say, well, I can at least do the $297 option. That's a starting point for the course. And then they look at that and they're like, yeah, I definitely I want to join the course. And then they look at all the additional value that they get for just $200 more and all of a sudden they're saying, "Yeah but for just $200 more, I guess I get to actually hang out with Jacques one-on-one. I get the actual physical package." And so that was the decoy effect is that your $297 option was essentially low on value and it makes that highest priced option just seem like a no brainer. Like, yeah, like of course I'm going to spend $297 more to get all this additional value. So yeah, I would say that you definitely did the decoy effect. Jacques Hopkins: [00:08:06] Yes, I agree completely. And that's that, that was my intent. And it works because for the for the low end package they get they get one thing and I have a pricing table that looks good. Jacques Hopkins: [00:08:17] It's very clear the value you're getting that the middle option, you get two things. You get the book and the basic course. But then on the on the $497 package, you get like eleven things. David Kroshe: [00:08:26] Right. Jacques Hopkins: [00:08:26] So you described it perfectly where it's like you're walking through your options. It's like, OK, well maybe I could do $297 but but for just another $200 I get all this extra stuff. Holy smokes. I'm really trying to stack on the value on that top end package while also being able to offer something to the people that just can't afford the $500. David Kroshe: [00:08:49] Right. And so that saying that like the middle option is a psychological effect, he calls out in the center stage effect. And I would say you could do that more just on the actual page. So if you if you create your new options, they gave the example that they say some gas stations put premium gas in the middle. So that's clearly by far the most expensive option. But they put it in the middle because they know psychologically people go toward the middle one. And so the other thing that he recommends is you point out the most popular option. And so I would say, yes, you are still, no matter what you do with your new pricing, you're going to drive people toward that highest end option. But when you put it on, like you show these three options, you would put the most expensive one in the middle on the actual physical page without really long list of things. You'd make it like a different shade of gray where and put at the bottom and the top Most Popular Option, because your most expensive option is the most popular. So even though it's a little bit different version of your of your highest end package, you say most popular and that's going to be the center stage effect and the bandwagon effect still put in place, even though you're driving people toward not the middle option as far as pricing. Jacques Hopkins: [00:10:06] Very, very interesting. That's not something I guess I kind of miss that point in the article. Jacques Hopkins: [00:10:11] But now that you say that they did have an image of like a gas pump where the the highest what's it called octane level, like the 93 level most expensive, but it's in the middle of the three choices that you press. And so what you're saying is that right now on my sales page, I've got them in order of of lease to most of price. So let's try moving that $497 package. Just the graphic, the way it looks, let's move it to the middle instead of all the way to the right. And this article is suggesting it might perform even better than it is now. That is something that I would love to split test. I wouldn't want to just do it. But that's that's a prime candidate for a split test. And if you're using something like ClickFunnels, it's pretty easy to do a split test like that. You can, I don't know if listeners have done many split tests, but with with ClickFunnels specifically, I know there's a little slider and you don't have to just do fifty-fifty traffic. You can you can say, OK, send fifty percent of the traffic to this sales page, this version and fifty percent of this version. Jacques Hopkins: [00:11:14] But you can also split it differently. You can say seventy two percent versus twenty eight percent and so on. So I'm just creating two different versions of the sales page that are very similar except for that pricing table and split testing. It would be a really interesting thing to do. David Kroshe: [00:11:29] Correct. Yeah, I do think that the results would be pretty, pretty minimal. I mean, that's not going to be the biggest thing because also verbally, verbally, you should be doing this as well, is especially that bandwagon effect, just emphasizing most people, most people choose this highest end option because as you can see, it's so loaded with additional value and it only costs $200 more. So just just most people look at this and just say, I'm going to go with that. So the effects of just moving the highest price to the middle one, I think would have just a small effect. One of the other things from Neil Patel's Five Psychological Hacks, he recommends using something called base rate neglect. And this base rate neglect says that when people are only confronted with with pricing options that are fairly similar, they kind of forget the context of kind of like what they could do if they were just out shopping around. And so an example in that article is they say let's say that you go to a small mechanic and the options for an oil change are $69.99, $69.99 or $79.99. You know, you're there already. You're like, yeah, let's go ahead. Let's, let's actually do the $79.99 one. And so you kind of forget that you could go to Wal-Mart and get an oil change for twenty-five bucks because it's like you're already in that situation. I would say the most, most vivid example of this would be movie theater popcorn. David Kroshe: [00:13:00] So once you walk in there, assuming that you're not like supersaver kind of person who stopped by Walgreen's before and bought some Mike & Ike's, but once you're at the movie theater, you you kind of are just like, OK, you know, popcorn starts at $8. There's a $12 option and then a $15 option. And, you know, you just you're like, OK, I'm here, I smell the smells. I'm going to go ahead and buy this. And I did actually do some research on movie theater popcorn because it's a good example and it's a bad example because a lot of people would say, well, that's extortionist, The deal with movie theater popcorn is that movies, movie theaters make almost no money on the movies. And so the movies are in a way, a loss leader. They make like $2 a ticket. And so then the food ends up being where they can actually become profitable and survive. But, I would say that's an example of why a funnel works if you just, if you just put your price there, the $497, before people are in your world by giving you the email and starting to build the relationship with you, they say, "Woah, that seems really expensive." But once they're in your funnel, once they're getting to know you, then that doesn't seem, it doesn't seem expensive. And they kind of forget that, yeah, well, hey, I could actually look and see what what what I could get as far as a piano course for $10. Jacques Hopkins: [00:14:19] Yeah. I didn't I was having trouble kind of applying this one, this base rate neglect, which is I think the last one that he mentioned. I didn't quite know where you're going with it because you brought a popcorn example. And then and then you say, well, this is why we need funnels. Jacques Hopkins: [00:14:34] Like I'm trying to figure out exactly how to apply this to course creators. And I thought where we were going is, is the fact that I've got my $97 option and it is just a book and people do tell me that it's like I'm not going to pay $97 for just a book. That's fine. You're probably not going to be a good, a good customer for me anyway. But that is, that is higher price for just like for text. Right. But I want it higher price because everything that I offer on on Piano In 21 Days is higher priced. Is that a fair application? David Kroshe: [00:15:05] Yes, I think so. But just conceptually, you, you have decided that you're a premium. You are offering a premium product. You know, you're driven to transform people's lives. And so you're comfortable with charging more. And I think that, that that just highlights, you know, yes, once people are in your world, in general, they're experiencing that relationship. And so they tend to just forget that, yes, they could probably find a $20 piano course or a $10 piano course. And they just say, "I really enjoy this guy's style. And I can see that that it's a premium product and I can see all the testimonials." So just being comfortable with with having a higher end option. Jacques Hopkins: [00:15:49] Very cool. David Kroshe: [00:15:50] So before we got into Neil Patel's article, the other thing I wanted to ask you about, what would you think about one price with an order bump? What is your feelings and emotions about order bumps? Jacques Hopkins: [00:16:02] I do like order bumps. I don't, because I don't think they're very aggressive, but they are effective, right? I don't. I like order bumps way more than like, like OTOs, right? One-time-offers. Upsells. Downsells. Right? When, when you fill out an order form and then you click buy and then you don't and then the next page is not, "Hey, successful! Thank you! Welcome!" It's, "Wait! Add this super special deal to your cart!" Right. I've never done that. I've just there's always feel just really slimy to me for the most part. I mean, there's ways you could probably do it more effectively than others. But I do like the order bumps, which is just a little checkbox at the bottom of the order form. It's like, "Hey, you can add this to your cart." And so for all of my packages, each one actually does have an order bump associated with it. And a fair amount of people do do select that. So I am a fan of order bumps. David Kroshe: [00:16:55] Wait, so you said there's the order bump is on the main sales page and then upsell is like the second, the follow up page is how you defined it. Jacques Hopkins: [00:17:04] Yes, yeah. Definition of an order bump is on the main order form page and it's just like a little, usually there, it's a, it's a rectangular section that has a dotted line around it. I'm not sure why, but that's kind of usually what it looks like. That is what an order bump is. It just bumps up the amount of the order a little bit, all on the same page. [00:17:25] OK, Well, yeah. And so interestingly, there was a discussion just just this week in the Facebook group, your Online Course Community. And this lady, she joined your Online Course Accelerator, which, again, the steps to do that is that a person, all they have to do is get Expert Secrets, a free book, and then they have to pay for shipping. But you and I both know as soon as you say, yes, I want this free book, plus shipping. And then on the next page it says, "Hey, you know, would you like to join the One Funnel Away Challenge and just goes from there? Correct. Jacques Hopkins: [00:18:00] Yeah, if and that's one of the things, one of the reasons that offer is going to go away, because I'm sending you to somebody else's ecosystem and they... We've been over this. Like ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson, and they can be pretty aggressive in what they're trying to sell to you. Yeah, that that's how it works in this particular example that rub this person the wrong way. David Kroshe: [00:18:20] Well, I was thinking of a little analogy and just trying to reflect on these this idea of upsells or order bumps and and what feels actually helpful and what actually leaves the person with the bad taste in their mouth. And so personally, I'm really into biking. And I was thinking of a bike store analogy. So let's say that I walk into a bike store, I'd be buying a bike somewhere in the $3000-$4000 price range. So I go in there and the salesperson helps me find this like perfect bike and I get it all all zeroed in. OK, here's the color. I got the right size and and I'm like, yes, OK, I'm definitely getting this bike. Well, then let's say they say, OK, now you have to buy a chain. And again, I'm spending $3200 on a bike and they're like, I have to buy the chain again. The chain is something that's 100% essential to the bike. And so I'd be like this bike doesn't come with a chain. And so that would be kind of in this nickel and dime category. So if you're going to do the main offer and then you were going to do an upsell, you would want it to not feel like your nickel and diming the person. Some other offers, let's imagine that I say, yes, I want the $3200 bike and they say, OK, you know, we got the bike taken care of now you know, really good with this bike, is a Subaru. David Kroshe: [00:19:38] So let's go and pick you out a Subaru. Well again, if I just spent $3200 on a bike, I'm kind of probably going to be now. I'm not going to I'm not ready to spend $20,000 or $28,000 on a Subaru. And so some, that would kind of fall into the same category as the Expert Secrets. So you get your book for free plus $7.99. And then they're like, "Oh, while you're here, you know, buy this $300 product. And that would leave some people saying like "Woah, like this, all I signed up for was this, this relatively cheap book." The way that the bike store analogy could actually work right. Let's say I buy the bike so I got everything picked out on the bike and then the salesperson says, OK, just to let you know, when somebody buys a new bike, any of the other things that you want to pick out in the store just today while you buy your bike, we would offer a 25% discount. And so here's a list of the ten most common things that people pick out when they get their bikes. So a lot of people get a pair of shoes. A lot of people will get a kit, a helmet. David Kroshe: [00:20:40] And basically, you know, if anything on this list you don't already have, you can get 25% off today. And if I had just bought the book, I mean, I would definitely say, "Wow, this is like really great service because they're offering me this really exceptional deal." And so with your new, with your new course offerings, I was reflecting that you could actually, you have these two to three additional courses, and so let's say you were to say, you know, your whole sales pitch is to drive people to just one offer. A $697 for the course that you get the live teaching and the physical product for like $697. And then this would actually be in the upsell category. But let's say after they do that, then the next page they say, OK, just to let you know, a lot of people who do this do ultimately decide that they want to do Jazz In 21 or learn some jazz piano, they want to learn classical piano, and a lot of people want to be able to play the melodies as well. And so I've price these courses at $100 each. If you want to buy this today with your purchase of Piano In 21 Days, you can add it to your cart for just $150, and if you decide that you want one of these courses in the future, they're each $100 individually. But if you want to take advantage of this today, you know, go ahead and add that to your course or to your full purchase. And so to me, that would be an upsell that those are, in a sense, standalone courses. And I think most people would say that it would just feel synergistic. Not not like you're taking advantage of them. Jacques Hopkins: [00:22:22] Yeah, it's not like the chain example where it's obviously something you need. But in this example, personally, I would just rather have that be the order bump than actually go to another page. You've also got to really keep in mind your audience too, right? So ClickFunnels, you go through, you go through and you sign up for ClickFunnels or Expert Secrets like they're very heavy on the upsells and the downsells. But that's, that's, the type of audience that that is coming there. Right? For me, it's older people, not techie people. They just want to learn piano, right? So I don't, I don't want to do a lot of this marketing salesy stuff for for my particular audience. David Kroshe: [00:23:03] Right. I think, I mean, there's a rule of selling that a confused mind doesn't buy. Jacques Hopkins: [00:23:09] When you're confused, you lose. David Kroshe: [00:23:10] Right. In in that bike example, like there's no way that they should be... While we're talking about the bike, they should not be talking to me about shoes. They should not be talking to me about a kid or a helmet. It's like our first priority is getting you the new bike. If you don't buy the bike, nothing else matters. And so that is the step-by-step process by the bike. OK, now, what else do you need to enjoy your bike? And so I think that's where the upsell lets you focus on one thing at a time. Jacques Hopkins: [00:23:44] Yeah, I think it, it could be done. It could be done right. I'm just from for my experience over the last about eight years now of selling an online course, I do like bumps a lot, but I've never successfully implemented an upsell that I felt good about. David Kroshe: [00:24:00] Sure. So yeah, the main thing I don't, I don't actually think that a bump is the right thing for you, but I think that, but I think there is a way to do it properly. And I do see those, those three courses, the Melody In 21 Days and the Jazz Piano In 21 Days and the Classical Piano In 21 Days... Those would make sense as a bump offer but... David Kroshe: [00:24:27] So ultimately, after talking about this, like what, what are you looking at doing for your pricing? Like, I definitely think that you're due, I mean, you've added so much additional value to your course. And so, do you really have things kind of zeroed in on what you're going to do? Jacques Hopkins: [00:24:41] So the problem is and this is, this is a good problem, but the problem is that my current pricing works, right? The three levels: $97, $297, $497. A couple of months ago, I experimented with a $997 package. Jacques Hopkins: [00:24:54] I shared some of those results. It was OK. It was mixed results. But my existing structure, it just works. Right? So something, something's going to have to work better for me to switch over to it. And the only true way to know that is a proper split test. And I just simply haven't done it, done that yet. We've put a lot of time and effort into this new platform, into updating the courses, and we're just, we're just not to that point yet. And so at this point, we're still, we're still humming along at our existing pricing model that's been working for us for years now. But this is going to be an ongoing conversation because I do plan to to test and optimize pricing overall as we are now in 2021 and hopefully by the end of 2021, I do have a kind of a newer pricing model that's outperforming what I'm doing now. At some point during this year in 2021, hopefully sooner rather than later, we will be testing, doing proper split testing on a new pricing model. And we, by the end of the year we could be right where we are now or we could find something that outperforms where we are now. But the only way to to know that is to do a proper split test. And until we have all the courses finished and all the new pages in the platform finished, ready, our beta testers have finished their testing. I'm not going to worry about that yet because what I have now is working. David Kroshe: [00:26:16] Got it. Jacques Hopkins: [00:26:18] Does that makes sense? David Kroshe: [00:26:19] Got it. Well, I definitely, one other lesson, I guess I would say is that prices do just go up. And so I did have this really wise older accountant come in as a patient at one or, yes, as a patient at one point. And he did tell me, you know, it gets in our heads as a business owner that it's scary to raise prices. And his advice was actually for business just to at the very least, raise their prices like 2% each year. And that's a way, just a smaller bump. So I guess. I guess if I was giving you advice, at the very least, I would think trying raising the book to $150 and then raising the two courses $100 each and seeing how that performs. But it's an interesting discussion, I enjoyed discussing this. Jacques Hopkins: [00:27:03] Yeah, well, let me ask you this. Would you rather, would you rather try to sell one course for like $500 or $1,000? Or would you rather try to sell a hundred courses at like $10 each? David Kroshe: [00:27:15] I'd rather sell just the the smaller amount at a higher price point. Jacques Hopkins: [00:27:20] There's pros and cons to both, and that's one of the things that Phil Eibner and I discussed in this conversation it's really interesting, because as you know and as we've kind of talked about, I basically have one course, like, OK, I've got some bonuses and I, I have ways that I can split it up into three different pricing models. But for the most part, it's the Piano In 21 Days course and all my effort goes into to that. Phil, Phil is interesting, that's not his model at all. He is cranking out courses and it's working really well for him. I'm sure a lot of listeners know who Phil is already. I've had multiple people request me having him on. And it's funny because I've actually been trying to have him on for a while. If you're not familiar with Phil Eibner, he's, he's, he's huge on Udemy. He's been around there for a long time. I've actually taken a couple of courses from him on there. I bought a YouTube course years ago for $10 and I was just learning some some things on YouTube with my YouTube channel, you know, thumbnails, proper descriptions and titles, and and even some tips on filming and lighting and so on. And Phil was the instructor on that course, but I reached out to him a couple of years ago, actually, about coming on the podcast, because he's just, he's such a big time course creator. And the timing just never really worked out he was having twins, you know, growing a family and whatnot. And so fortunately, we finally made it happen. But we're both course creators. Phil and I are both course creators. But take a completely different approach and I don't think either one is wrong. So I think that's, that's one of my big takeaways. And we'll obviously talk about it more. That was my way of kind of transitioning from the pricing discussion into this is conversation, as well. David Kroshe: [00:29:10] Right. And it's, you provide such a good contrast, you and Phil, a lot of things in common, but that pricing is probably the single biggest difference. Jacques Hopkins: [00:29:19] There we go. Jacques Hopkins: [00:29:20] All right. Well, let's, let's, let's play it for the audience and then we'll come back on the back end and talk about it. So without further ado, here's the full conversation between myself and Phil Eibner. Jacques Hopkins: [00:29:31] What's up, Phil? Welcome to the podcast. How are you? Phil Eibner: [00:29:34] I am doing really well. Super excited to be here and make the time to get to know you, to share my story, advice or whatever else I can talk about. Jacques Hopkins: [00:29:46] That sounds great. You know, I got it. I got to tell you, you probably win the award for longest time between when I first reached out to you. And we're actually recording the podcast. Phil Eibner: [00:29:55] That's so funny. Did you look up when you first reached out to me? Because I can't remember when it was it was. Jacques Hopkins: [00:30:01] It was sometime in 2018. So it's definitely been over two years. And I know at the time when I first reach out you're like, "Yeah, I would like to look..." I don't know, you were either about to have twins or you just had twins, you were like, "It's not a good time man. Reach back out later." So I do. I want to start there like managing an online business, young family, I mean, I've got two, two young kids as well, three and five over here. How's that been going for you and how is that different than before having kids? Phil Eibner: [00:30:30] Well, yeah. So you know how hard it is to have kids and 2018 exactly was when we had the twins and then you probably reached out like, I don't know, like nine months ago, and I was like, actually, we're having another baby, so and we were like in the midst of this, like, pandemic, my schedule's crazy. So I'm sorry. Jacques. I'm going to have to delay another time. Phil Eibner: [00:30:53] And so we squeeze this in between our next kid, which I hope is not going to happen because my hands are full with the three kids. But it's definitely changed a lot. I think before having kids, I, you just don't know what it's like to have kids. You don't know how time consuming it can be. And just, I don't know if I was naïve, but I think in my mind I was like, OK, well, yeah, if you have kids or wherever you are in your life, just make time, you know, on the weekend to get started, make time in the evenings to get started. But now that I have kids, I'm like, wow, that would be really, really tough. Way tougher than it was for me, someone out of college, living by myself, I was working full-time when I started teaching online, but I had the evenings free, I had the weekends free to get started, and you're just not that drained. Just, my schedule right now is crazy, too. I'm working mostly in the evenings, and by the end of the day, it's tough to get on camera and to feel like I'm ready to turn it on and teach online. And it's tough, you know. And I think, again, naively in the beginning, I was like, OK, it's going to get easier, it's going to get easier. But the more I talk to parents, I don't know if it ever really gets easier. It might just get different. Jacques Hopkins: [00:32:23] Different. Phil Eibner: [00:32:24] Yeah. So I don't know. I work from home and the kids are here, my wife now, she quit her job or she got laid off actually when we first had kids. And so she's helping watch the kids a lot. But I don't know what your situation is with the kids. Do you have a set schedule or are you working from home or do you have like a studio outside? Jacques Hopkins: [00:32:48] No, this is this is my home. What you're seeing right now is my home. It's like all the way in the corner of our house. I try to get as far away from as possible. But, you know, both both my kids are now in school full-time. That is when we're not quarantining or something, because that has happened multiple times since we started back to school in August. But my wife, fortunately, is able to be a stay at home mom. She's got her own little business as well. But it's, it's not the main source of income for our family either. So she doesn't work full-time on it by any means. So this is the this is how we pay the bills, mostly Piano In 21 Days and Online Course Guy, Online Course Show is kind of a side hustle to that, mostly because I enjoy it so much. Being able to meet people like you, I probably, probably would have never met you if I just was the piano guy, even though, I mean, I've taken one of your courses, not that you don't have a million courses out there, but, you know, I've got like 80,000 YouTube subscribers on my Piano In 21 Days channel and back when I had like 5,000, I remember taking one of your YouTube marketing courses, which was awesome. I think you did it with, which I know you team up with people a lot, but Mike... Phil Eibner: [00:33:57] Mike & Lauren. Jacques Hopkins: [00:33:58] I think you did that one with Mike. Mike & Lauren. I've actually had Mike on the podcast. Phil Eibner: [00:34:01] Oh nice. Nice. Yeah, that was a while ago and I think we've likely updated that course once since you took it. Phil Eibner: [00:34:11] But yeah, that's I feel like we have a very similar path, because I obviously had my Online Course Masters podcast, as well. Phil Eibner: [00:34:19] But I've kind of taken a break from that just to focus on other things, but it's cool to see that you've continued with the podcast and I know I have a lot of friends...I know Jason Deon was just on your show and he was like, "OK, Jacques wants you to be on your show, his show. Can you get back to him again?" Like, OK. Jacques Hopkins: [00:34:40] Oh, Jason. He was like, you know, I can make a connection for you. I was like, don't worry, man. I've got, I've got the thread open. He's just, we just got to find time. Yeah, but yeah, as far as kids go, man, it's crazy how much you take that for granted. What it's like before, like you just like you said, you never really know. And I just you know, for people listening to this that don't have kids yet, it's like, what are you waiting for? Like, get on it. I wish I could go back before kids. It's not that I don't love my kids, but I just, all that time I would have had and like to put even more into the business then so that I could focus less on the business and more on the kids now that they exist. But you'll never really know. You got to experience it to know. Phil Eibner: [00:35:19] Now, it's like you look back on your life... I look back and I don't think I have like, major regrets. But I think, man, when I didn't have kids, why didn't I just do all the stuff that I wanted to do, like on the weekend, go on trips, go, you know, now I'm like, oh, I wish I could go backpacking or camping with my friends or by myself. And I'm like, well, I could have done that before, but I just didn't. And it's just, yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I'll look back on this time and be like, why didn't I do this or that? So it's, it's tough. I think once the kids are in school, that will open up a little bit of time. But at the same time, what am I complaining about? I am working from home making a great living. I can be here for my kids. And that was that was honestly the goal when I started, was figuring out a way that I could, once we did have kids. Be at home with them and to be able to decide, OK, do I want to work these hours or later? I grew up with my dad just working a normal job, like 99% of kids and, you know, just wanting him to be home more. He had a long commute and growing up I was like, man, I want something different. And so, yeah, I'm very fortunate to to be here in the situation. I can't really complain at all. Jacques Hopkins: [00:36:42] Yes. I mean, same for me, the freedom, if there's one word, like just the freedom of not having a boss, being able to to call the shots and do things, cool things is, is what really was the allure to have an online business and specifically an online course for me. Is there something that really jumps out at you is like something really cool, like one of your favorite things that you've been able to do, whether it is with your family or not, as a result of you getting into this line of work? Phil Eibner: [00:37:13] I think, the I mean, there's... Just like the freedom, like you said, is like awesome and not having to ask for time off from work to go on vacations and to be able to go on, be fortunate to be able to take the family to Hawaii for a week or a couple of weeks last year. That was really fun. We're not traveling right now, obviously, during the pandemic. But travel has always been something that I've really loved. I'm not like a travel influencer who wants to go travel full-time or work as a digital nomad in Thailand or anything crazy like that. But I love traveling. I think the one thing that changed my life the most because of online courses was being able to pay off my student loans rather quickly. I graduated with $100,000 in student loan debt, which is really crazy. It's crazy that that's normal, though, for a lot of people. But I just remember going to sleep every night after graduation, just like stressed like with that weight on my shoulder. And I have friends who are in somewhat similar situations and they can just like just like live their life without worrying about it. But I would go to bed every night just just worried and stressed about that. And so, since college, I was always looking for ways, extra ways to make money, started doing wedding videography, doing side video projects. But it wasn't till creating online classes and income started to multiply and ramp up over the first few years that I just decided to go full force with paying off the student loan debt. And so we did that in four years or so after school, which is again really fortunate, very lucky to have been able to do that. But since then, I feel like my life just like, just haven't been as stressed. And anyone with debt or obligations like that knows how stressful and how draining that can be. But that's probably the best thing. Jacques Hopkins: [00:39:29] Yeah. I mean, we were talking about taking things for granted, like before kids. But this is this is the same thing in terms of when you're like 18, 19 years old, you don't understand what it means to have $100,000 in debt like that. I mean, that's, that's a mortgage. You know, it's crazy. Phil Eibner: [00:39:44] I went to school, you know, and love my parents. And who knows, they'll they'll listen to this. And they don't have any other kids that are going to go into school. But their, their opinion was like a lot of people was like, oh, it's going to work out. And they just lived with their, their debts as well. Mortgages, credit card debt, like a lot of people. And it was just like, oh well, yeah, just go to the school you want and it's going to work out. And thankfully it did work out, but I don't know if that was like that was like just like the most optimistic view of going into the school where I was going to be taking out $20-30,000 in loans every year. So I'm so thankful that it worked out. My parents did raise me to be a hard worker and be creative and dedicated. So I thank them for that. But yeah, just yeah, you just don't know what it's like. So anybody going into school, I would suggest trying to be a little bit more financially smart, going to community college first and and then also trying side hustles like this and maybe work. You do your own thing. It's, it's worked out for the both of us pretty well. Jacques Hopkins: [00:40:58] Yeah. Creating something of your own to make money that you don't necessarily need a college degree for, but also taking online courses or certifications as a different path versus a normal undergraduate degree. And by the way, I mean, you're definitely the outlier. When you said once you graduated like you had trouble sleeping, like you just you were constantly thinking about the debt. I think that's not normal. Like even when you do graduate, you still don't fully understand the negative impact that much debt can have. And I could talk probably a long time about all the problems with that. That's that just I'm not a fan of debt at all. And the crazy amount that people end up having to spend for a college education and then and a lot of cases not even ending up with job in that field. What was your major and what was that job that you ended up getting? Phil Eibner: [00:41:49] Yeah, so I felt I studied Film and Television, again, like, OK, you're going to go to school and get $100,000 in debt and come out with like a Film major. And I don't, I don't think that's like, the best idea. But I always focused on more the digital media, new sort of online video compared to the like, Hollywood style of film production. So now I look back and I'm like, wow, that was actually a pretty good skill to have. It is this good skill to have. Everyone needs online video and that's the way of the future. And so out of school, I was just looking for anybody that would hire me full-time because I didn't have the luxury of just trying to do the freelance thing as a film creative, which a lot of people can can try to do that to break into the industry. But my first couple of full-time jobs were actually at colleges. One was like a tiny school down in Southern California, a tech school in their C0ommunications Department. And then I moved up to Berkeley when my wife was getting her master's degree. And I got a job at UC Berkeley again in there, sort of like Media Communications Department. So putting use, being able to use my skills that I learned in school and making videos. And also that's when I discovered online education through both of those jobs because both of those schools were involved with creating their own online classes. So that was when I discovered Udemy and first started making my own online courses. Jacques Hopkins: [00:43:32] Give me an idea of timeframe, when was this when you discovered that world of online courses? Phil Eibner: [00:43:36] My first course came out in October of 2012, and so it was probably a few months before that when I landed on the Udemy.com website as part of researching for my job, just looking at other platforms, trying to, you know, show my boss like what platforms are out there. What could our schools platform look like? It's like, man, this is cool. Udemy can take all these lessons. You have a notes section and all is kind of cool stuff. And then I just realize, wow, you could teach your own online classes. That's cool. At that time I had discovered Pat Flynn and he had written his eBook, that was like his big claim to fame back then with Smart Passive Income was his, his eBooks. And so my idea before creating an online course was actually to write a an eBook. And I had this idea of The Diary of a Film Student and I had outlined a bunch of it. I had written a bunch of the journals through college. And my idea was I was going to put this together in this eBook for for people wanting to go to film school, like just this story of what film school was like. But then I found out about online courses and kind of jumped over to that, that type of content. And I never, I never finished that. But I think the online courses worked out. Jacques Hopkins: [00:44:57] Yeah, it's it seems to be. We got started around the same time. I was about 2013 and certainly was a big fan and still am of Pat Flynn. And I know the eBook was like that architecture exam, that the lead exam, he sold it for maybe $100, probably less than that, but was bringing in like 20 grand a month. So you're hearing that and it's, it's like, wow, what could I write an eBook on? And that's what I heard. And I remember writing my eBook like, I, that's, that's where I actually started was, the first thing I did for my course was I wrote the book version, like the eBook version, knowing all the while that I was going to sell that. And an online course. kind of have two tiers. And I've actually done that ever since. I even to this day, you can buy the the eBook version or the online course. Now I have an even more premium version of that, but I totally did it like that. That message of the eBook really resonating. So for you, you didn't stick with that eBook approach and the only course you jumped full force ahead into online courses. Now, how many how, many courses have you created and what was that first one that you created? Phil Eibner: [00:46:09] And I should have come up with the number. All I know is that if you go to my Udemy profile, I have over 100 courses under my brand now, that includes, like you mentioned early on, that I do a lot of partnership. So I would say now seventy-five or more percent of my courses are partnerships, and that could be where I am on camera helping teach the topic or it could be where I'm... It's a topic that I don't know myself, so I'm more the producer behind the class giving advice to the instructor, figuring out how to structure it, what kind of things to add to the course to make it better, helping to write all the copy, sell it, promote it, all of that kind of stuff. And then some of the courses are just translations of the courses, so, for example, our big photography master class now we have in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Mandarin, so you'll see over 100 courses, but different, unique courses, I think it's probably, it still is up there. It's probably over 70-75 courses that we've created and I've, put I've actually unpublished quite a few as well, so, yeah. Jacques Hopkins: [00:47:27] You breaking all kinds of records, Phil. I think that might be a record for this podcast, too. Over, over 160 episodes in and I don't think anybody's said they've hit the three figure mark as far as quantity of courses, that's, that's quite impressive. But, but, but an interesting business model, too, because, like you said, you're not necessarily the face or the main driver behind all of them, but you find these great partnerships. Phil Eibner: [00:47:49] Yeah. And I think the my strength or what I figured out was most of my income still comes from the courses on Udemy and to have a lot of success on Udemy and to make a decent income. Most people need to have a handful of courses. And with Udemy you're not going to, unless you have like a knock out course, there again, like maybe a handful of people that can have one course on Udemy and make it a decent income. Most people need a series of courses and I just kind of expanded upon that and just kept making courses that have courses in different buckets from photography to video production, expanding into design and art now, and then some business and marketing as well. Jacques Hopkins: [00:48:38] So let's let's get into Udemy a little bit. I've only dipped my toe in the water, and I think that was based on Jeremy Deegan's recommendation, who I know you know well. He's he's been on the podcast before. And he he mentioned it could possibly be like a legion tactic as well. I've since I've since removed that. It didn't work as well as I was necessarily hoping, but also wanted to just check out Udemy. At this point you... And by the way, Jason Deon, Scott Duffy, like big Udemy guys I've talked to and know the pros and cons of it. Do you have courses elsewhere or just on Udemy at this point? Phil Eibner: [00:49:14] Yeah. And I forgot to mention my very first course was a video editing course in Final Cut Pro. You had asked that. Jacques Hopkins: [00:49:20] Cool, OK. Phil Eibner: [00:49:21] And that one's still make some sales actually. But... Jacques Hopkins: [00:49:25] Nice. Phil Eibner: [00:49:25] I have put my courses on Udemy. I put most of my courses on Skillshare as well and I do have my courses hosted on my own school using Teachable. The way I market that course, those courses, is as a membership, though, so you can buy my courses on my own platform and get access to all 100 plus courses for $12 a month, or if you want to go individual you can get them on... I usually drive people to to Udemy. And then I have them on several other platforms as well. Smaller platforms, StackCommerce promotes my courses. I have a couple of courses on Fiverr's new platform; I think it's learn.fiverr. But yeah, that's the beauty of the having. Putting them on platforms that don't require exclusivity is being able to put them everywhere. And so every little course is a little stream of income itself. And on every platform it's a different stream of income. So I feel like it's a pretty solid business model. Of course, though, there's that constant debate of, OK, do you want to sign up for more premium price on your own platform or or the marketplace platforms like Udemy and I always say, if you have an audience and you really feel like your course is you want to charge more and you can build the funnels and you could drive the traffic, you have put it on your own platform and have control of the entire process. Phil Eibner: [00:51:01] But if you're just getting started out and you don't have any audience, it's going to be really hard to sell a class. Like you can't just put it on a website and hope that someone finds it in a Google search. That's just not going to happen nowadays. You either have to do all of the work to build up an audience and... I mean, maybe you can use things like paid advertising to drive traffic and lead markets and all that... Lead magnets, but that's a lot of work and effort. And it costs costs money up front to to do that. I think for people just getting started out, Udemy and Skillshare and these platforms still are very viable place to put your courses, see how it goes, and use the power of the marketplace to to sell your classes, the name of the game with the marketplace is ranking well in the search. So all of these platforms are basically search engines. Most of them, the search results are based off of good reviews, number of students, how engaging in classes, how much of a class that someone watches. So SEO and your course title, subtitle, description. I mean, we could dive into all of that, but with a marketplace, the name of the game is getting your your course ranking well and if you can do that, that's when you start to make money on these platforms. Jacques Hopkins: [00:52:25] Yeah. There's a quote that from Jason Deon that I remember that really jumps out at me said, you know, if you want to go with the marketplace route, the reason you would do that, because here's the quote: "They handle the marketing, you handle the content." Right? So so it falls right in line with what you're saying. If you're just starting out, you don't have an audience yet, you know, if you want these guys to handle the marketing and you just focus on an awesome course, could be the way to go. If I could push back on that a little bit. What would you say to the person that that takes that advice? They put a course out there, but then it never ranks on the first page and they really don't make any sales like should they just give up or what would you recommend they do next? Phil Eibner: [00:53:07] I think nowadays it's it is harder to... Unless it's like a topic that just doesn't have many courses, which isn't really the case anymore on a platform like Udemy, there is a lot of competition. So you will have to put in some initial work to drive some traffic to a course on Udemy to get that in those initial reviews, that initial juice, that SEO juice to to try to rank it, so maybe you do have to start a YouTube channel and start driving traffic to Udemy through YouTube, start a website, blog, drive traffic back to the courses on Udemy put out the course for free and build up an email list. Either... You can't do that really technically on Udemy, but putting out a course for free on your own platform or or even putting it out for free on Udemy just to get your name out there and you can use that as sort of a lead generation. You mentioned that something that Jeremy Deegan mentioned, you can put out a free course on Udemy, at the end of a course on Udemy, you can drive people to your email list. So that's why I do continue to drive traffic to my courses on Udemy. I mean, some people would be like, well, why don't you on all of your social media, YouTube, your website, why don't you just focus on sending traffic back to your own platform? But I continue to drive traffic whenever I launch a course and long term I drive my own traffic back to Udemy, because that traffic just helps helps those courses rank rank higher. And that's going to... I've just seen the power. You can make a lot of money on Udemy if you if you rank well. Phil Eibner: [00:55:06] Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jacques Hopkins: [00:55:10] Well, clearly you can, I mean, you've been very successful with me. I've mentioned a lot of other people have and there's a there's a lot of people that have been very successful with it. And I find it interesting when you can find a way to make both work, as Jason has and as you have in your model is interesting where it's like, hey, if you want to buy an individual course for me, then go over here, go to Udemy, pay ten bucks for it, or you can come over here to my site and it's a membership. So is it just like a monthly fee and then they get access to all your courses? Is that how it works? Phil Eibner: [00:55:42] Yeah, that's basically it. I think the thing that I learned early on is you can't try to do both if it's exactly the same offering. You can't. It's not going to work if I'm trying to sell my courses on my own platform individually for, you know, 15, 20 bucks and then on Udemy, it's 15, 20 bucks. At that point, I would have to decide, am I going to drive my traffic to one or the other? But if you have either, like me, a membership where it's simply just. Access to all of my courses and people, because I have enough courses to keep it interesting for people that has worked, if you don't have a ton of courses, I would say in a membership model you would need to add. Some kind of bonus to keep those people in your membership, maybe its monthly updates, maybe it's a monthly coaching call or office hours or things like that where they get extra access to you. But I don't think the monthly recurring sort of membership model works unless you have just enough content to keep it interesting or you're adding content to it. And so, yeah, or like what Jason does is he has a more premium offering so he doesn't do the monthly membership. But if you have more premium offerings, he does things like. Yeah. Study vouchers for some of the certification vouchers and things like that guarantees that you'll pass your certification, those kinds of things that you can offer off of you. To me, that is what works for someone like Jason. So, yeah, it's got to be something a different offering. I still do. I know a lot of people, though, that just they don't host on their own platform and they just sell on Udemy. Phil Eibner: [00:57:26] And that's where their entire businesses and I mean, I think that's viable. Phil Eibner: [00:57:33] In the beginning, I thought, oh, man, Udemy, who knows when you miss what's going to happen with Udemy in the next couple of years. And I always have that mindset of kind of like, well, this has been a good run and maybe in a couple of years Udemy is going to disappear. But I don't know. I've been doing it for eight years now and Udemy has continued to grow. And unless they do like an IPO and someone buys it out and says, oh, we're just going to shut this down or convert it to something crazy, we're only going to hire like professional actors and people to teach these classes, I have confidence that Udemy is going to be here for the long run, but it's always nice to have that backup. And so it's nice for me to have my members on my teach school that, hey, if Udemy disappeared, I would be fine. I mean, I would take a dramatic cut to my income, but I could probably grow it on my own platform and I'd be fine for a while anyways. Jacques Hopkins: [00:58:33] So I just I just went to your website, just kind of see how you're positioning the membership itself. It's VideoSchool.com, right? And at the top says learn creative skills, 90 plus courses and thousands of hours of lessons. Learn video, photography, art, design, business and more. Unlimited access for $12. So that's to me, that's almost insinuating I could pay $12 one time and get all of this. But is it a $12 per month membership. Phil Eibner: [00:59:01] Yeah. Yeah. And I have to update that to be over 100 courses. But yes it's you get an unlimited access for $12. Right? But then yeah. You've got to pay every month to keep that unlimited access, so... Jacques Hopkins: [00:59:13] Which is still insanely cheap, like, it's still an insanely good deal. [00:59:17] Yeah. I think it makes sense for a lot of people who, who end up liking a lot of my courses and rather than deciding if they want to pay every time I launch a new course, which we are continuing to launch new courses every month or so, so you can also pay instead of the monthly fee, you can do like a year. We have a yearly option or a lifetime option. And so during our Black Friday sale, we do it once a year discount. The only time I discount our membership is during Black Friday, which just happened. But people take me up on that lifetime offer offer because they get access to all of our future courses as well for that one fee. And I think for me, it's made sense. I'm not someone who, like, runs the numbers specifically, but I have a sense that the lifetime value of a typical customer of mine is, I don't know, likely less than what they're going to... On Udemy... Let me let me back up. So the lifetime value of a customer on Udemy, who knows what it's going to be, but it would take a lot, of course sales for me to make $100 on Udemy from an individual person. So if someone can sign up for my lifetime offer on my site for $250, then I think it's they're getting a good, good offer. It's cheaper than they would to have to pay for individual courses. But I'm also getting a lot more than I would probably make if they were buying my courses on Udemy, if that makes sense. So I feel like it's a pretty good deal for for everyone. Jacques Hopkins: [01:00:53] Yeah, one of the buzzwords the past few years is high ticket. And you've got your selling over 100 courses. I can get it all for $250. Right. Some people are selling single courses for like $10,000. Like, what are your thoughts on high ticket versus low ticket? Phil Eibner: [01:01:13] I've tried the high ticket approach and I've done it with Online Course Masters, the podcast and the brand. It was just so much work for me to put in the time and effort to feel like I was delivering on that price. And it was... We were charging we did everything between like $300 and $500. So it wasn't even close to that $10,000 price. I honestly don't know how. I think a lot of people who charge $10,000, they just have either the confidence to be on a charge that. I don't know if, like any course is really that valuable, unless it truly is helping someone make that money in return. It's helping them to to grow and their careers start their own business. But there's so many people out there that sell courses like that that it really is just a scam. And there's... Most people who go through that, those kinds of courses aren't going to make that money. So high ticket sounds nice, but it's a lot, it's a lot of work to to deliver on that promise. And for me, someone just personally, it's it's hard for me to, like, feel comfortable even getting close to th

I can vouch firsthand for the awesome course that today’s guest created: not because I took her course myself, but because of the impact her resources have had on my team! Natalie Gingrich has an inspiring story to share about her online course journey and why she is so passionate about all things operations. We’re talking legacy, certification, and so much more. Enjoy! “Knowing the transformation I was able to make… all came back to a skill set. And I knew I could apply that.” – Natalie Gingrich In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) David and I discuss our duo name and podcast roles (3:00) The theme of today’s episode (6:35) David’s business operations (7:47) An example of recent changes to my business workflow (10:15) Introducing Natalie and her take on operations (13:08) Thinking about systems and operations versus lead generation and funnels (15:26) Where Natalie focuses her business offerings and how she delivers her training (18:43) Trusting and hiring other people to teach (21:21) Thinking about how to bring in qualified trainers (24:51) How Natalie and her team have created growth while maintaining a personal feel (29:16) Why she offers certification (35:19) “How do I find somebody who does this?” (39:39) What I’m appreciating about having my own OBM (40:16) Why certification isn’t an issue for my courses (40:40) How Natalie facilitates her program (42:57) OBM vs. DOO (45:57) Natalie’s recommendations on structure (51:25) What if you don’t want to hire a long-term OBM? (53:44) Visionaries vs. implementers (55:55) My history with project management software (57:19) Full-time vs. part-time OBM’s (1:00:42) Natalie’s “why” story (1:09:18) Talking legacy (1:10:42) The difference between operations roles in business (1:13:30) Where to find Natalie’s resources online (1:14:33) Why David and I appreciate operations-minded people (1:16:00) Getting into the weeds on how Natalie runs her program (1:19:13) Bringing on more instructors and offering live training (1:22:02) High vs. low touch-point choices (1:23:58) The hiring process for virtual employees or contractors (1:29:31) Gauging people’s long-term compatibility with your business (1:30:59) The likeability factor (1:36:10) David’s story about personality types (1:39:52) The Wonderlic test and other types of verification (1:47:45) “Wounded boyfriend expectations” (1:50:44) The importance of documenting standard operating procedures (1:53:07) Wrapping up and teasing next week’s interview That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Active Campaign Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Natalie’s website Resources and Recommendations: By the Book podcast Happier podcast Voxer Fix This First Loom Life as Paper “Favorite Things” printable Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins  00:02 Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course, and they're making a living doing it.   Jacques Hopkins  00:12 But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses. Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins, and this is The Online Course Show.   Jacques Hopkins  00:32 And off we go, welcome aboard glad you're with us. I am your host, Jacques Hopkins. And there's our co-host, what's going on Dr. K?   David Krohse  00:40 Oh, I'm just living the dream up here. How are you doing?   Jacques Hopkins  00:42 Doing well, you know, I was thinking about, you know, my relationship with you in this podcast. And I'm surprised. I thought of, like, a nickname for the two of us, like our tandem. And I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this before. Or maybe they have, and I just forgot, but we're Jacques and the Doc.   David Krohse  00:59 Jacques and the Doc. Nice. I like it.   Jacques Hopkins  01:02 You're not as impressed as I thought you would be.   David Krohse  01:05 No. It's good. It's clever. I like that. I read a book about podcasts and the lady has a podcast, it's By the Book. I don't know if you've ever heard of this one.   Jacques Hopkins  01:16 No.   David Krohse  01:17 And so, By the Book, she and these two co-hosts read a self-help book, or a personal growth book, and then they try to live by that book for two weeks. And they do these experiments on their husbands and then they get together and report how things went. And they're both comedians, it's pretty funny. So, I listened to that. But she wrote a book on starting a podcast and she said, "When you have two hosts, it can be good to have the main host and then a foil." And the foil is the guy, or the other hosts that, like if the first person is really good at getting things done, then the foil is the one that's like, doesn't get anything done. So, I guess there's a podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. And so, Gretchen is like this super woman gets everything done, and then her sister is on there, and it's like, "Yeah, she knows it's a good idea, but she doesn't get things done as much." And I'm like, alright. So, I told my wife the other day, we were in the kitchen working on a project and I pulled a piece of foil and I said, "I learned that I'm this."   Jacques Hopkins  02:18 No. So, you're the A player, and I'm the total screw up. That's what this is, right?   David Krohse  02:22 Well, not majority of the time.   Jacques Hopkins  02:25 Well, I think a lot of aspects of life, that would be the case. But if we're just talking about online courses, then maybe we can switch roles for just that. And look, I want to talk a lot about operations here in this episode. And that goes along with that a little bit because and a lot of times in companies, online course businesses, you'll find that the two people, in successful ones, the two people most kind of at the top of the organization, you have kind of the higher-level visionary, and then the other person is more focused on the day to day more operations type activity. And to be honest with you, I don't think we spent enough time on this podcast, talking about the operations within an online course business. You know, we had Abbey Ashley on a few episodes ago, she talked about it a bit. And that's a huge component to her success. Jason Dion, a few episodes before that. Both of those are $2 million a year course creators, and both admittedly gave a lot of credit to operations there. And so, this episode is going to be all about operations. What do you think of, Mr. Doc, when you think of operations?   David Krohse  03:37 Oh, I mean, it's so important. Just, I mean, you have to have an organized business. And, yeah, it's just hard to do everything when you're a solopreneur. It's hard to put your focus in all the spots, and all of us have our things that we are best at. So, it's a shame when somebody who has a really great focus on being a visionary, or loves the marketing is spending tons of time on things like paperwork.   Jacques Hopkins  04:04 Yeah, yeah, I'm going to try to define it. Like, I don't want to do like Webster's dictionary definition, but if I had to define operations, and by the way, there's, you know, I like to keep this podcast pretty PG, just in case people want to listen around their kids or whatever. You know, I've got young kids, and I'm sensitive to that, for sure. But in my definition, it just happens to have a curse word in it. So, I'm going to replace that curse word with something I love. And I'll replace it with coffee. Okay? So, my definition is the day-to-day activities that get coffee done.   David Krohse  04:40 Okay   Jacques Hopkins  04:41 Okay. I mean, plain and simple. Like, that is what it is. And so, when I'm telling people like, what does a successful online course business looks like, a lot of times, I'll leave out the operations piece. I've shown this diagram to you and to the audience on video plenty of times, but in general, there's like four components to a successful online course business. So, you've got to have traffic. Right? You actually have people coming into your world. Then you've got to have a funnel because that's what really builds the relationship and rapport with leads and turns them into paying customers. Then you've got to have a course because we're talking about an online course business. You've got to have that deliverable, that experience, and in this case, it's a course. And then you've also got to have students access and testimonials. But within each piece, and then over on top of each piece is operations, we've got to actually get that coffee done, right? We got to execute on all those things. And if you're the only person in your business doing those things, then it takes you away from other things you could be doing.   Jacques Hopkins  05:46 And so, in today's episode, and in the conversation of the day, I spoke with Natalie Gingrich, who is an expert in operations, and she trains what's called Directors of Operations. And as you know, I've got a Director of Operations in my business as of the past four months. And Natalie trained her. Natalie trained Colleen. Colleen went through her program. And it was a great conversation. We got into the weeds, a little bit of operations, but because this is a topic that we don't talk about much this is one that's completely focused on operations, but also, the way Natalie runs her program is different than I've seen, as well. So that's kind of what we're getting into today. Now, my definition here, do you agree with my definition of operations?   David Krohse  06:34 Yeah, that sounds great.   Jacques Hopkins  06:35 So, you have... how many businesses do you have?   David Krohse  06:38 Well, essentially, I have my chiropractic practice, and then the online course is currently in side hustle status. So...   Jacques Hopkins  06:45 Right, so your online course business, that's just you, right? You don't have a team around that, correct? So, you do everything, including operations there.   David Krohse  06:55 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  06:55 But what about your in-person chiropractic business? I'm sure there's some operations going on there.   David Krohse  06:59 Right. Yes. And currently, it's primarily just me and one other employee. She's a superwoman, she's incredible. She's doing a little bit more than she should. But one of the things, I mean, being a manager, you just learn things as a manager or business owner that you don't anticipate. One of the things that I learned is that I experienced a ton of stress if somebody in my team is twiddling their thumbs. And I could not have known that. But sometimes I'd hire and then somebody's kind of killing time. And that I mean, like my blood pressure and my heart rate, I just felt it rise, because I was like, looking around, what can I have them do? I know how much I hate twiddling my thumbs and trying to look busy when I'm not. So yeah, we run a little bit lean. But the days go super-fast.   Jacques Hopkins  07:46 Very cool. Before we get into the conversation with Natalie, I wanted to give one example of some operational, like efficiencies that we've implemented recently, and kind of what it would have looked like before college, and before I had placed an importance on operations. So, right now we're working on some new initiatives in Piano In 21 Days. We're working on some new courses. One of those courses is called Jazz In 21 Days. It's a new full program meant for graduates of my first course that didn't want to start learning jazz as well, and blues piano. And so, we've got a video editor on the team. And before Colleen, before Asana, before I thought about any of this stuff, I just would have been like, "Hey Zoltan, here's the raw files. Here's the goal, like make it happen." And that kind of would have been it. But now, the way we're doing it is we have like 21 little tasks in Asana. And within... which is the project management software that we use. And then within each one, there's several like statuses or phases of the task, right? So, if Zoltan is currently working on it, like that's the status. If he's finished, and it needs my review, like he changes it to that status, and then the task automatically gets assigned to me instead of him. And then I can either approve it or request edits. Right? And if I click Request Edits, I put in my edits, and then it automatically assigns it back to him. So, you know, if I'm reviewing the first video, and he's editing the second video, then then I have edits on the first one, as soon as he's done editing the second video, he can jump back to the first one, and apply those edits. Whereas before, it just would have been a lot of confusion. It would have been very inefficient. But this is a very much more efficient way to do things. And I think it's better for everybody, right? It's better for me, it's better for Zoltan, it's better for my company, and it's better for my students as well.   David Krohse  09:50 Yeah, that sounds slick.   Jacques Hopkins  09:51 Yeah, it's good. And so, we've done that a lot of that type of stuff. I mean, getting these podcast episodes out, getting YouTube videos out, getting new courses out, and so on. And so, I've really been geeking out on operations lately, and it was fun to geek out on it with Natalie as well. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and play the full conversation between me and Natalie Gingrich.   Jacques Hopkins  10:15 Hi, Natalie, welcome to The Online Course Show.   Natalie Gingrich  10:17 Hello, hello, I'm super excited to be here and to get to connect with you.   Jacques Hopkins  10:21 Same here. So, we talk on this podcast a lot about funnels, and courses, and marketing, and automation, and all that. We rarely talk about operations. So, why don't we start there? Like, what is operations?   Natalie Gingrich  10:34 Such as sexy... It's such a sexy topic isn't it?   Jacques Hopkins  10:36 And I'm sure you've never gotten that question from people before either.   Natalie Gingrich  10:39 You know what, Jacques, in my own experiences, I would have never called this “Operations” until I had to do a lot of work and really refining and communicating. So of course, I get the question. And I am absolutely happy to share my learnings with you and your audience about that. We all have a collectively better understanding of what operations looks like and what it really is, but I'll tell you a little story as to how I kind of derived this. When we talk about business, there's two sides of business, you've got the front side, and you've got the back side. And that's about as granular as we kind of get before we start building these businesses. The front side is the marketing side, and that's everything before the sell. And then after the sell is where operations comes in. And so, the back of the business, or the backside of business, whatever it is, whatever technical term you want to use, that's the operational side. And so, I like to look at this as what does it take for your business to be able to deliver on the promises that you have sold?   Natalie Gingrich  11:39 So, we are looking at project management: How are we going to deliver the product? Fulfillment of the product. The financials: How do we keep the foundation of the business set up in a really strong way? And then oh, yeah, that whole team component where you need people to help you to deliver the products that you have promised and are working on. So, operations is really a big, generalized topic. But the specific disciplines underneath that: project management, human resources, which has like 19 different tentacles, but as a broad category, financials, and some reporting is underneath there, technology, and fulfillment. So, if you have ever thought about any of those, which I know if you're in business, you thought about all of them. But that's what operations looks like. And that's what it's comprised of.   Jacques Hopkins  12:27 So, I want to question one thing that you said. I like how you're talking about it frontside backside, and what you said was the backside was after the sale, and that's where the operations comes in. I'm confused at why operations doesn't come in pre-sale, or maybe I misunderstood something.   Natalie Gingrich  12:42 For the most part. I mean, you've got some underlying components, like technology. Technology usually falls underneath the operational side of business. But it's really I mean, you're going to see that in both the tech heavy and the front, but it's going to be more marketing, operational tech, right. So, we can get really, really nitpicky, but for like, really high level, the operations is really in the fulfillment. So, after the sell.   Jacques Hopkins  13:07 Okay, so I'm biased, obviously. And I've had an operations person in my business for only about three and a half months at this point. So, I'm new to it. But I feel like the majority of what we've done so far is more frontside. But maybe I'm just thinking of it that way because it's she's mostly done like setup stuff since I've never really had an operations person before.   Natalie Gingrich  13:27 So, systems, because you're probably thinking of systems processes. And so all of those are skill sets that fall under the discipline of project management. But a lot of the lead generation that we're going to do is one big, possibly complex system that we're going to set up or one process that we're going to execute on. So, I bet that's where you're coming from as to “Wait! How is this operations?” But the discipline of project management extends marketing to operations. So, whether it's setting up a process to hire somebody organizing your inbox, or creating a funnel, what does the project look like to create a funnel? You've got project management from front to back, but that person typically sits in the operational side.   Jacques Hopkins  14:11 Got it. So, why is it do you think that as online business owners, course creators, like why do we think way more about and discuss way more about the funnels and the marketing and things like that, and from what I've seen, I mean, operations is an operational efficiencies is more of an afterthought? Why do you think that is?   Natalie Gingrich  14:31 Because we're in business to make money, and marketing generates revenue. And even back to my corporate experience, you know, on the operational side, we're typically cost centers, right? So, it's harder to get a return on investment from the operational work. And let's face it, it's a lot less sexy, it's a lot less fun. The game of operations does not even compare to the game of marketing or winning a sell. So, I think naturally if you go into business, if you look at where your skill set as the leader of your business falls into, a lot of the people that I work with, and partner with are going to be heavier and natural on the marketing side. So of course, I mean, that's what you like, it's kind of like, you hang around the people that you like that you're going to do the kind of business or the kind of work in your business that you like, which is most of the time on the front side of business.   Jacques Hopkins  15:21 So, I do want to go kind of to your backstory eventually, but like, where is your business  right now? Like, what is it that you and your business are doing for people today?   Natalie Gingrich  15:30 Yeah, so we run a certification program for people who are natural-born operators who have that project management skill set and are looking to up-level and serve online and remote businesses in a higher, stronger, better capacity. And so, we run a certification program for Directors of Operations. And it looks very much like an online course to the consumer.   Jacques Hopkins  15:53 So, it's prerecorded training, but it's also direct coaching as well, isn't it?   Natalie Gingrich  15:59 Sure. Yeah. So, I'm a giver. I'm a big connector. I'm a big relator. And so, I cannot even imagine doing a completely passive course. I know they exist; I've been a part of plenty of them. And I've tried it to be frank, I've tried that model. And where I seem to have the greatest value and the greatest return both personally and also financially to the to the students, is when I'm able to combine both that prerecorded with a strong heavy coaching component that can almost feel 1:1 but is absolutely not, because there's no way I could scale it that way. So, the way our format today is, we do not run an evergreen model, which is an opportunity that we possibly have. And lots of great marketers try to teach me to do that and try to, to coach me on doing that. And I'm being bullheaded about it because I love the idea of cohorts coming through because of the connection that they make. I target all females. And so, I mean, let's just face it, chicks like community. They like being in small communities. And that's been really, really helpful for us. But we launch six different times a year. And so, we have six cohorts coming through at each time, which of course brings more complexity to me. But the results are so much bigger than what I can see from an evergreen model. But from the layout or the format of the way that we deliver today. We have once a week, we have prerecorded content that comes out. We have a support session every week. And then we also have strategic advisory which I am specifically leading for each of the cohorts. And so lots and lots of touch points. We've got accountability coaches; we've got expert coaches. And it's just really important for me these women are, we typically are fact finders. And so, we have lots of questions. We suffer from perfectionism, it's a blessing and a curse. And so, having live support to be able to walk through to get hands on coaching has made a big, big difference in the outcome for these women.   Jacques Hopkins  18:04 I'm really glad that you're talking about your program because I definitely wanted to hit this conversation from two angles, because you are a course creator as well. So, I want to talk about that and how you run an online course business. But of course, dive into your knowledge and experience on operations itself, too. So, let's stick on your stay on your course. I completely agree with you about the not just prerecorded videos, my audience will know that I've hammered on that a lot lately. And mine's not really a group coaching program but there's a ton of interaction, right? I do. I go live once a week with my piano students. You can't see it here but there's my keyboard. I actually just went live with them right before this call to answer their questions. They can email me. One thing that I'm missing in my piano business that sounds like you definitely have is like other trainers, right? I have a team around me but nobody else on my team, like, plays or teaches piano? How did you get to a point where you could trust and hire other people to convey and help and coach your students on what originally was your I guess your ideas and concepts?   Natalie Gingrich  19:08 All of my coaches have come through my program. And so, you know, there is some risk to that, but it has lent me... I've tried people who are not in the program, and they were fine. They were fine. Average. And average doesn't work for me or you. And so, what it came back to is these people who had come to the program, they already had the knowledge. They already knew. They could speak for me. They really could complete my sentences because it wasn't like they had just come through the program. They had been through the program, you know, a year or two ago and had continued to follow me, listen to every podcast. They believe in the program. And so, when somebody was asking them questions, they weren't coming back to me to ask me, "So, how would you answer this?" And so, I really cultivated a group and it's a… I would look at it like they want to be asked to come into this program. They want to. They love it and they're able to support me in a completely different way.   Jacques Hopkins  20:02 So, if I'm actively trying to find like other piano teachers, other people that can come in and lead the weekly Q&A or be there for students, sounds like you'd recommend I start with my existing student base.   Natalie Gingrich  20:02 And so, the other thing that I loved, and I'm really passionate about is, I am one operator in the world, I have had the guts to create something and turn it into a certification. However, this doesn't mean that this is the only way to be an operator in an online business. So, I love pulling in discipline experts. I mean, I'm not a financial wizard. I do not have a background in accounting, but we teach the basics of financials and how to support somebody at a strategic level. And so, it makes all the difference in the world to have someone for me, even me to directionally be able to point someone to when they're having a financial question or something like that. And so, it's taken a lot of, I would say, pressure off of me to have all the answers and to do it right, and to direct them to somebody who's an expert who's got lots and lots of experience and being able to solve that question. And so, it gives them another perspective, and it also provides them an expertise in something I may or may not have. I pride myself in being a generalist. And so, having these specific functions, and support underneath me has been, it's been really helpful for me, and then also helpful for the student.   Natalie Gingrich  21:25 Absolutely. And it's another revenue stream for them. It's not, you know, it's, it's a small revenue stream, like, it doesn't have to be huge, but these are all people who have a passion for developing people. So, this is not their full-time gig, this is something that they are now, we are transitioning into that in the upcoming quarters, and to be able to have full time support in this capacity, but as I was growing this over the last two years, and adding this component to it, this was very fractional. I mean, we're talking like 12 hours a month. We're not talking about, you know, 12 hours a week, even so, you know, it was just another way of highlighting a star student who had an expertise, who also loved developing the brand that I have built. And so, it's really been a win-win.   Jacques Hopkins  22:12 When they're not full-time employees, they're 12 hours a month, in some cases, like you just pay them an hourly rate? Is that how it works?   Natalie Gingrich  22:19 Yeah. Actually, I'm a big flat fee person. So, we just charge one flat fee for the entire month and it makes it very easy logistically. I'm not a big hourly person. I'm not a fan of hourly work. I think that the commitment level looks very different for somebody who just has ownership over an outcome. We've moved into incentivizing these roles as well. So, if we've defined milestones, and what success looks like for our students, and instead of me as the leader of this business, feeling like I am the only person who's supporting at this place, and maybe small to some of your students who are listening to this right now, but I have 90 people going through a certification just a year and a half ago. I had 20 over the entire year. And so, it's big growth, and feels like big growth to me, but at the same time, I cannot be responsible for tracking, for following up, for knowing where these people are. And so now we've got these, you know, these leaders who take ownership of making sure that you complete XYZ, and I'm big on getting their investment back and so they're tracking how much of the investment that they have gotten back.   Natalie Gingrich  23:25 So, these three criteria that are very, very important to me that I know create a strong brand for a Director of Operations, if I've got an advocate inside the business who's following up with them, and who is ultimately incentivized for making sure that we do everything that we possibly can, if that's creating, if that's me going live, if that's me creating a PDF, like, those are so small, and if that's what helps them to get over the line, and to get their investment back or whatever the criteria may be, I want to incentivize the coach to do that. And so that's another thing that we added this year.   Jacques Hopkins  24:01 Do you think that most course creators could learn something from that, like, literally have people, whether it's yourself or somebody else, like, continue to follow up with people? Reach out, initiate that contact and be like, "Hey, I could tell you didn't log in for a month, what's happening with your piano lessons?" Like is that something that you recommend that more course creators do?   Natalie Gingrich  24:20 If you want to create... I'm really big into legacy and I believe that this work is my legacy. And so, if that's what I feel I'm called to do, it makes it really, really valuable to make sure that other people are finding value out of what I'm putting out there. So, I think that in my own experiences, that's been a big gap from the other courses that I have taken. It's just my little way of making it a little different and stronger for my students.   Jacques Hopkins  24:49 Really cool. I love that so much. So, you've experienced some pretty massive growth, it sounds like, in the past year and a half. You said, like, 20 people all of last year. Now this particular cohort, you have, like, 90 people?   Natalie Gingrich  24:59 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  25:00 That's insane growth. What do you attribute to that growth mostly?   Natalie Gingrich  25:04 A lot of mindset work, Jacques, to be really frank. A lot of mindset work. I used to tell myself that there was no way I could deliver such a great experience if I had multiple cohorts running at one time. And I had a coach who really, really challenged me and said, she really wanted me to go to the Evergreen route, to be honest, and at that time, I was like, "There's no way. I can't do it." And I still really, really emphatically believe that I cannot do an Evergreen model and I can't see it for myself yet, but what I was willing to try was to have multiple cohorts. But I knew I couldn't do multiple cohorts until I had this team of people to help me. And so, we started out with a support team, the real fractional, you know, 12 hours a month. And then the other thing that has led to my growth is just building internally my team to be able to support Natalie, the leader, not only from the student perspective, but how do we build this brand. Being able to add a Director of Marketing and, you know, an operator in the backside, which, I mean, mentally as a business owner, those are big, big blocks to overcome. The financial separation of those dollars that you've been bringing in, and also the moving into true leadership, not management, but leadership and leading. You know, something that I can be really proud of, and stand in great authenticity and integrity with.   Jacques Hopkins  26:23 So, are you still able to have, like, a direct relationship with all of the people coming through your program given that? I mean, everybody, like, you speak to everybody individually at some point?   Natalie Gingrich  26:34 All the time. Yeah, everybody has...   Jacques Hopkins  26:37 You think that would be able to... I mean, that can't scale.   Natalie Gingrich  26:39 Everybody has Voxer access to me, but not everybody uses it.   Jacques Hopkins  26:42 Really?   Natalie Gingrich  26:43 Absolutely.   Jacques Hopkins  26:44 So, six cohorts a year right now, and 90 in this one. So... I can't do the math that quickly, but roughly 90 times six people going through it a year, and they all get Voxer access to you. That's amazing.   Natalie Gingrich  26:57 Yeah, they do.   Jacques Hopkins  26:58 Is that one of those things where it's like, people really don't abuse it? Take advantage of it that much?   Natalie Gingrich  27:04 I'm amazed by how much they... I feel like every single message starts with, "Hey, this is so and so. Just answer this whenever you have a free minute." I'm like, I'm not going to look at it, let's I have a free minute. Now, Jacques the stage of life that I am in, I've got teenage kids, they're very athletic, I spent a lot of time in a car, I live in rural Texas, I drive my kids at least three to four hours every single day. So, I spend a lot of time in a vehicle. And so Voxer is a very great medium for me to be able to have this connection. And I'm a massive people person. And so, it's... I'm a verbal processor, too. So, you know, I probably enabled them to be able to reach out to me, but it really never feels abused. And when it does, I have no problem telling. I have no problem being the leader who says like, "Hey, this is getting a little excessive, make sure you use your accountability coach." And you know, if you've got a pointed question that they can't answer, that's when you utilize me. So, I set that stage at the very beginning of our relationship. We just started another cohort just a few weeks ago. And that's in my introduction call. It's like you've got this opportunity. You've got ample support; you will find an answer in this community. Here's the first place you go, the second place you go, I'm the third place. But if it's ever an independent issue that somebody can't solve, you're going to get help. And I think that, you know, these are respectful people. They're, you know, I really don't find anyone taking massive advantage of it.   Jacques Hopkins  28:24 Well, my D.O.O speaks very, very highly of you, and I'm beginning to see why for sure. I mean, if you have those are the types of things you're offering within a program, and I think the wheels are probably spinning for a lot of listeners in terms of "Oh, you know, I've always wanted to have other coaches. Well, let me dive into my current student pool first." "Oh, I could offer Voxer support to my students." And by the way, for those listening, that's just like a kind of a walkie-talkie app. It's like a texting app, but you communicate via voice. It's very cool.   Natalie Gingrich  28:54 Yeah. And you can use this in different ways. Your accountability coaches could be the person that has Voxer access with individuals. It doesn't have to be you. It works, like I said, it works for me at this stage in my life, because I spend so much time being quote unquote, free. And you know, being able to have that plus it's something that just makes... it really fires me up.   Jacques Hopkins  29:15 The next question I have for you is I've had over a hundred  successful course creators on the podcast, and it's very rare I come across somebody who not only has a course but like, part of what you get with that course is you're certified by the end, right? Why don't you just have a program where they learn to operate a business or be an operations manager? How do we get to that point of actually certifying people?   Natalie Gingrich  29:40 Yeah. So, when I first started down this path, I did do a course. It was very difficult for me to sell. And granted, I was immature as a business owner. And in this capacity and marketing is not my strong suit - to this day - very heavily in the backside of business and in the delivery part. So, I was challenged in the marketing space as far as getting this course into the hands of people, and there's plenty of things that we could do to dissect where the breakdown was, but what I really sat with, and I remember it was in November, I was speaking at a conference in California, and I was at the beach, like I can paint the picture, because the breakthrough literally happened at that moment. But I realized that I couldn't see and track the success. And I'm very connected to that. So, I couldn't see the people who were coming in, where they could be curious. They could be a lot of things. But were they really headed in the direction that I was teaching them? And so, I started to think like, how can I make sure that they are truly going to go down this path and that my brand doesn't get watered down? Because of course there are competitive products to what I have. And how do I ensure that? And so, I thought, first of all, I'll create an agency. And that was a miserable thought, for me, and it didn't work out very well. But how can I do this and amplify, multiply, and scale? What is working so well? And the two things that came up were I'll turn this into an agency, or I will turn this into a certification. Because the course wasn't really profitable. I had spent a lot of money in production, I spent a lot of money in marketing, and I was not having success in the conversion. And so, I had good content. And people would tell me, it's so good, it's changing my life. But the scale was not going to happen in the way that I wanted it to. And so, agency or certification were the two ways where I could really go all in on this and the certification has been completely transformational. From a marketing perspective, there's a scarcity, there's an exclusivity...   Jacques Hopkins  31:41 That's true.   Natalie Gingrich  31:41 ...in the certification. Yeah. Which has been, you know, helpful from a marketing perspective. From a delivery perspective and a success perspective, it's deep because I'm really, really connected. Nobody can hide here. If they're going to hide, I'm going to give them their money back, because I don't want them associated with me. At the end of the day, when I look at my competitors, when I look at just competitive products on the market, it's the brand. And so, I have been very intentional about making sure that this brand is not diluted. And I find that when you have people coming through, who can take your concepts and do whatever they want to with them, they can become watered down, which ultimately makes me nervous because I've got great IP inside of this program. And so that's where the certification came up. And so then with a certification, if you guys are considering a certification, I started at the content level. What is the certification going to be? Making sure it wasn't too broad, and it wasn't too narrow. And then next, what makes when I look at the product of becoming a Director of Operations, what really makes that person who is successful? And what are the criteria? What are the criteria that we can look for in this person? And so, there's a lot of impostor, by the way. Insert massive Imposter Syndrome at this point, because you're like, "Who are you, Natalie Nicole to be telling people that they are qualified, or not qualified to become a Director of Operations? But we did some work, and you know what? Our criteria have not changed from day one. It's still the same criteria. The hardest part for me as an empathic leader is telling people that they don't fit. And if you don't fit today, you don't like to get to go work on it and get more experience and come back two years later. Like, if you don't fit, you never fit. And there are just some things that we internally look at to qualify this. And, you know, we have an advisory board who helps me make that decision, because I'm way too connected to people. I feel like I'm really breaking your hearts whenever I tell them no. But really, we're allowing them to go deeper into other things if they are. And we can go deep into the criteria that we have come up with. But that's a really important part if you're thinking about doing this. What are the criteria that makes your most successful person successful? That's how we design a criteria.   Jacques Hopkins  31:43 Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to lean into this more. I'm talking to Natalie, the course creator right now and really getting a sense of where your passions lie around all this. You mentioned November. Are we talking November 2019, when this whole kind of epiphany happened or is it before that?   Natalie Gingrich  34:21 2018.   Jacques Hopkins  34:22 2018. So, at this point in time, November 2018, you had a course on becoming an operations person, but it was simply a course like nothing, no interaction at all?   Natalie Gingrich  34:34 With a Facebook group.   Jacques Hopkins  34:36 Facebook group, and then just a course hosted on like a Teachable or something.   Natalie Gingrich  34:40 Yes. And at that time, I had four Director of Operations clients that I was serving, so I really didn't have capacity and I didn't want it to be confusing to my clients either. And so, you know, I think as we pivot and as we grow and we do these little, you know, I was, I had four clients, I went down to three clients so that I could spend time developing the core. And then I had this course moving in the background, but I was still serving three clients like, I mean, come on. I'm a working woman, working wife, a working mother, like, I just couldn't do it all. And I was still serving three clients in a very large capacity. So, there wasn't a lot of hands-on training or support to this.   Jacques Hopkins  35:19 Well, I'm still confused on one thing, and that is I get the epiphany, you just wanted to serve people at a different level, you wanted far higher success rates, you wanted to know that these people going through your program are successful. So, why not just a group coaching program that looks a lot like yours does now? I'm missing the part why it has to be an actual certification.   Natalie Gingrich  35:41 I did the group program as well. We did go through the group program. The group program was attracting a lot of people that were my peers. A lot of people who were in that five figure a year earner bracket. And so, they were coming to me and I was able to walk them through, but most business owners are not operators, they are marketers who love and are passionate about their product or about getting the sell. And so, teaching them operations was unsexy. And so, you know, I love the group program, but it was also not the best use of me when I really, people would come through that program and say, "Okay, I've learned all about it. Now, how do I find somebody who..." This is getting to the root of your question, and I missed it, but how do I find somebody who can just do this in my business? Like we've grown my business enough to where I've got enough revenue coming in that I can actually pay somebody to do this. So how do I find somebody just like you because you're full. You've got this group program, you've got this course, now you've got two pretty much heavy, you know, part time clients, and how do we get Natalie into my business? And that was the confirmation that I was referring, and I was really burned, Jacques, because I was referring people who I thought I was seeing online, they were kind of having the same, you know, they were serving clients, like I was serving clients, but I don't really know them. I just saw "Oh, Betty Sue would be great for you I bet. She does the same thing I do. So, Jacques, can I introduce you to my friend Betty?" Betty would come in. You would trust her because I told you that Betty was good. And then Betty came in and maybe was not a great culture fit for you or didn't deliver on what she said. And then I just felt terrible that Betty did not work out for you. And so, I thought, "How can I really ensure that this person when I refer them to my friends or the people that are coming to me, how can I ensure that they're quality? What do I need to do?" I can't make Betty take a course. But if Betty wants to be in touch with people that I have access to - because I have no problem speaking to lots of lots of people, and building relationships in that way - how can I make sure that this is really a win-win for everybody? And that's exactly... I think that answers your question.   Jacques Hopkins  37:55 Yes, I get it now. I get it.   Natalie Gingrich  37:57 Yes, yes. So, there's been some very interesting legal things to go along with that. So, if you're going to go down this path, I would also caution you that I've had to separate Church and State legally to make sure that I didn't have a franchise, but that's getting very, very nerdy, but just to let you know that you want to, if you go down this route, and this all makes sense to you to having a good legal helping, in consultation has been invaluable to me.   Jacques Hopkins  38:25 So, when you're certifying people, you're basically giving them your personal stamp of approval. Like, "Hey, hey, business owners out there, like I approve of this person to be a D.O.O in your business. And there are certain things that you have to do in your program to make sure that you believe in that person and you're not if it's just a group coaching program, if it's just a program where there's no actual certification at the end, then then you're just not going to get that.   Natalie Gingrich  38:50 Yeah, the other thing was the protection of the IP. Right? Like, I have had to license some of my, you know, I've licensed now, we've licensed two different parts of the intellectual property, because I didn't want it to get lost in translation. And so, there's another, you know, layer of exclusivity, that has been very, very rich and helpful. But when business owners come to me, they now asked me for strategic mapping, and I'm assuming that you guys went through strategic mapping...   Jacques Hopkins  39:17 We did.   Natalie Gingrich  39:18 ...in your own business, but that was transformational for my clients. I couldn't see it for myself but that could literally be its own standalone product. And you know, you live, and you learn, but giving that IP is a part of the certification has allowed them to create an independent business, if they wanted to, they could just do strategic mapping for a living.   Jacques Hopkins  39:38 Yeah. And that's one of one of the many great things about having a D.O.O on our team, is like, it's not somebody that I just give tasks to - "Here. We need to do this task. When you do this task." She's coming to me. It's like, "Okay, Jacques, now it's time to do our strategic planning." I'm like, what? What are you talking about? You know, she's coming to me with all these new things, and in a lot of ways, like the opposite relationship that I'm used to. And when she'll like call me out for not completing a certain task when I said I was it's like, for the first time in my business, I've been in business for eight years, like I've never had that. It's an amazing, like, new type of person in my business. It's really cool.   Jacques Hopkins  40:14 So, I get the certification thing now. That makes a lot of sense. I don't think it applies to say, my business, but I'm sure there are people listening that are getting it now too, could apply to them. Like for me, like I don't need to certify anybody in being able to play piano because nobody's coming looking for certified, like, they can play the Piano In 21 Days way. Like, that doesn't apply but I'm sure there are people listening, who it does.   Natalie Gingrich  40:39 Sure.   Jacques Hopkins  40:39 So, let's get into a little bit more about how the program works- how you structure it. So, let's say I... it looks like you've got to apply. So, I apply. You accept me, I know I'm not a woman, but let's just say hypothetically. The program starts, like do I immediately get access to a library videos? Or is it like dripped out? Are there meetings once a week? Like how do you facilitate the actual program?   Natalie Gingrich  41:01 Ah, you're in my head. Because I struggle with this all the time, I want to make it just so perfect. And so, we're always revising. But as of now, as we're recording this, when someone signs up, they get the first two modules, which is actually Module Zero, which is kind of an Introduction Module, and then Module 1, which is the goal. That's the greatest Aha, and monetizable product that we're going to be talking about throughout the eight different modules that we go over. So, they get instant access to that. And then when we officially kick off because they may pay me now and the next cohort may not start for another four weeks or so. And so, once we start meeting, we drip every single week. They get new content, and our coaches for that particular discipline, if we're talking about project management this week, and that's the content that was dripped, our project management expert coach comes up and she supports that week in the content in the Facebook group. She leads what we call a Get It Done Session, which is like active accountability. So, we have homework assignments, with homework suggestions, I don't actually... I'm not grading homework; these are all adults. They're all leaders, if they're going to be leaders and other businesses, I'm not going to be doing that. But if they do that, if they do that, and they complete the suggested homework, they bring it. We do live reviews of the homework to see what they're doing, what their obstacles are, what questions they have. And that's what the expert coach does throughout the week. And then on Thursdays or Fridays, depending on the cohort, I show up and do a strategic advisory. So, for any question that was not answered, or came up through the accountability coaches, they aggregate all of that information, and that's what we talk about on Fridays.   Jacques Hopkins  42:42 What's the software stack that you're using to execute on all of that?   Natalie Gingrich  42:46 We use Thinkific for our course platform. And we do all, I mean, everything is through Zoom. And we have our Facebook group.   Jacques Hopkins  42:55 Cool, pretty simple. I like it. Alright, so I was first introduced to something called an Online Business Manager, OBM, about six months ago, way before I knew about you and D.O.Os clothes and all of that. So, I kind of started going down that path a little bit. What is the difference between an OBM and a D.O.O?   Natalie Gingrich  43:15 There's a lot. I'm going to start by saying there's a lot of overlapping skillsets. There's an incredible amount of overlapping skill sets. The difference is that a director is more of a strategic partner in your business, and the Online Business Manager is excellent for lots and lots and lots of businesses out there. So, if you as the business owner are not necessarily... you need somebody to be more of a project manager, and potentially an implementer, then you're probably looking at the Online Business Manager. If you're looking at someone to come in, and to really be kind of what you were just talking about, Jacques, about having that person who's a strategic partner, who's also a project manager and in charge of people, developing talent on your team, really specific when it comes to helping you, you know, grow and scale your team, a director, I mean, just even in the name business, you know, a manager versus a director, there is a lot more leadership. I specifically am looking at past leadership experiences to... that's part of our criteria. And so, I need to make sure that they are leaders, it's very, very difficult to quantify by the way. That has been a big challenge and a lot of... it's given me a lot to think about.   Natalie Gingrich  44:28 The other thing is in the online business management space, a lot of people come through the Virtual Assistant path, and so these people have been having a lot of experience in the implementation space. That is fantastic for a lot of businesses, but your Director of Operations is typically not going to be an implementer, they're going to be more of a strategist and potentially a project manager or people manager in your business. Whereas only OBM space you've got a lot of technical skill sets that are rising into the management layer of the business, and it tends to be very marketing heavy. I mean, in the certification, they do a lot of training in the marketing space, I don't touch marketing. I don't believe that it's fair to have somebody who is going to be overseeing both marketing and operations. There's a big, you know, there's a big division when it comes to strategy of marketing, and strategy of operations. So, I don't go into... I'm not going to be teaching funnels. We support funnels all day long from a project management perspective but we actually, we may not know, and this is a, this is a generalized statement. So, every person, every one's experience can be different. But from a DOO perspective, we're not going to be telling you how to set up a funnel. That knowledge is going to come from a strategist and that strategist may be you as the business owner, and it could be a consultant, it could be a director of marketing, whatever that looks like in your business. But the place where we as operators step out of isn't the marketing strategy.   Jacques Hopkins  45:57 So, the kind of overall organizational structure has vaguely come up a couple of times. So, I'm curious what you recommend as an overall structure, and I know that's going to greatly depend on the size of the business and the goals and whatnot. But is there? Is there a kind of a general answer? Would you like me to give a specific example of a type of company?   Natalie Gingrich  46:13 I teach about this, so I'm happy to share it with you guys. I've already talked about the front side and the back side of business being marketing in the front, operations in the back. Underneath there, there are four different layers, I'm totally going into teacher mode really quick. But there are four different layers of responsibilities that needs to happen. Before you tune me out, this does not mean that you need four different people on both the front and the back side of business that is not scalable, and I am all about the leanest team possible. So, in those four different layers, starting from the bottom, the most necessary are going to be the implementers. So, you may have a marketing implementer and you also need someone to implement processes, procedures, projects on the backside of business. Okay, so you have the implementer. Above that, you've got the management level. Above that you have strategy. And then at the very top, you've got vision. So as a business owner, just all of us, like, think back to when you first started this business and if that's where you are right now, and you are experiencing overwhelm, or you don't know what to do next, or you have so many questions, you feel like you need so much support. It's because you're trying to do both the front side and the back side of business, and also manage those four layers because as a solopreneur, that's what you're doing. You're managing front and back, top to bottom. And it gets extremely overwhelming and there's a lot of challenges. And so, the natural thing at that moment is, "Ah, I need help." Where do I need help? I get questions all the time, when I am working in the HR discipline of businesses, they'll come to me and they'll say, "I need to hire, I need to scale this team. And I have no idea where to go." This is the exact framework that those people pay lots of money to be able to determine. But if you just, looking at you, Jacques, you are strong in the marketing space. You've done a lot of development, and I'm assuming a lot of training and education, and getting better and better and refining that. And so, your natural ability is in the front side of business. It's not hard for you to show up on camera, it's not hard for you to record a podcast or to build relationships with your students, or with your potential students, or peers. So, you naturally slant yourself into marketing. So, you hold the vision right now. I'm assuming you hold the vision for both the marketing and the operations of the business. Underneath that, because you've done so much development, you also own the strategy. I don't know your... by the way, just P.S. I'm putting...   Jacques Hopkins  48:41 You're making great assumptions.   Natalie Gingrich  48:43 Okay, good.   Jacques Hopkins  48:43 You're doing a great job.   Natalie Gingrich  48:45 Because I don't know the format of your business, but this, this will apply. And I think this can be helpful. The strategy of marketing is owned by you as the CEO, because that's where you have developed, that's where you feel natural, you say, this is the funnel, I am going to develop. But at that point in your business, you're like, I need a manager to make sure that this happens that nothing breaks, and that we're optimizing. And so that's the management layer. And so, you have chosen to get support in that management layer. And then underneath that is the implementation, and that's where we see lots and lots of contractors where we see maybe a funnel builder, a copywriter, a graphic designer, a... I mean those, we can go on and on and on. So that's on the marketing side. On the operation side, you still have the same things, but a lot of us in business, we hold both the vision, the strategy and even the management for a really long time because it's not sexy, it's scary. It's overwhelming. There's not a big return, I've heard it all. And we'll bring in maybe an implementer at the entry level to help us with, we call these people virtual assistants, operational assistants. You know, that's the titles that you see in that space that will help us do, hashtag, all the things or to help us get our calendar set up, or help us to do with, you know, email management or loading emails into ConvertKit or whatever, you know, tool you're going to be using. But I think that that framework really helps people with understanding that you're not going to have eight people on a team. That you as the leader of the business is going to likely hold vision and strategy, until it makes sense financially for you to bring somebody in. In your business, you have brought in somebody in the backside, and that operational strategic level, who is owning both strategy and management. And I believe everybody that's on your team needs to hold, I mean, to make it financially profitable for you, they need to hold more than one layer. I don't believe that we have big enough businesses to say that you're only going to do this, even if I bring in an implementer into my business, I want to be able to see capacity and development. I want to be able to see capacity and their desire to grow into that next layer of management. If I can't see them being managers in the business, I'm probably not going to hire that person. So, I believe just to kind of sum this up, I believe everybody in your business should have, should own two layers. But nobody should be responsible for three layers.   Jacques Hopkins  51:15 I got it. I mean, it makes a lot of sense and I can totally picture like a really pretty diagram with these layers and the front end and the back end, I'm sure that exists.   Natalie Gingrich  51:23 You guessed it.   Jacques Hopkins  51:24 I'm sure you made that. Yeah. So, like, I'm learning so much about this from you. Like, I know that I'm assuming most people come to you because they want to be a certified D.O.O., but if somebody's listening to this, they just want to learn more about how to operate their company, do you have resources for that type of person?   Natalie Gingrich  51:37 Yeah, we, I mean, we've got a ton of blogs out there. We've got lots and obviously I have a podcast called The Ops Authority. And there's a lot of great content out there that you can find. But if you're looking for somebody to come in and just do maybe you don't need an ongoing retainer, Director of Operations, I mean, we have over 160 certified Directors of Operations, and some of them really are passionate about organizational design, which we teach inside of the program. But if you're looking for a consultant to do that, it doesn't have to be me, we've got an army of women who can do that as well. So, we have a hiring forum on our website, TheOpsAuthority.com/hiring. So, if you're looking to hire any in any capacity, whether it's consulting, whether it's full time, you can always go there, and we're going to point you to the right, to a good resource.   Jacques Hopkins  52:24 Okay. So, if somebody's listening, and they feel, like, Director of Operations might be a good fit for them. Not sure about long term, like that's an okay thing to do? To have somebody come in for, say, three months, and just kind of optimize things and then part ways?   Natalie Gingrich  52:37 I mean, people, we build businesses just like you guys build businesses. So, we build businesses in lots of different ways. Sometimes people are just coming in in a project, or in a project consultancy way. Some are just consultants who just come in, give you strategy and walk out. Some come in in a retainer capacity. We get lots of people who like the retainer model because we are givers, we're servants, we enjoy being able to contribute to something and we're not visionaries. So, you're not going to find my people being big visionaries. We get great joy, from latching on to somebody else's vision. And we have felt really devalued for a long time. And I'm just giving you the mental state of the person, maybe not mental state, but the way that we think. We have felt

Welcome to the very first episode of the year! Here’s to hoping that 2021 is one where the days are a bit brighter. And I’m feeling great about starting off the year with today’s interview: Mike Greenfield and I had a great conversation about how he’s helping home cooks up their game at a time when more people than ever are making their meals at home. “Don’t listen to anyone who says there is one perfect way… Trust yourself. Do it.” – Mike Greenfield In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) Gearing up for the new year with a book recommendation I’m very excited about (9:05) Our take on New Year resolutions (10:26) Reading goals (12:16) David’s first virtual lunch-and-learn and the importance of live feedback (15:50) Setting the stage for today’s interview (17:21) Introducing Mike Greenfield and thinking about modern “celebrity” (21:22) When courses came into the picture for Mike (24:55) His business structure and timeline (27:45) Talking sponsorships (30:10) How Mike created his first course (33:09) Mindset and why his approach resonates with me (37:55) Cook vs. chef (38:59) Launching and learning lessons along the way (45:22) Where he crossed paths with people who could help (47:07) Pricing and revenue decisions (50:49) Thoughts on social media (51:55) Mike’s upcoming launch (54:14) Why I’m interested in his course offerings (57:12) What he’s doing differently this time (59:37) Funnels and email lists (1:02:46) Talking Active Campaign (1:03:53) Teams and evolving work responsibilities (1:08:43) Our roles as course creators (1:13:04) Risk and entrepreneurship (1:16:12) The one thing that made the biggest difference for my business (1:18:24) Talking parenting, balance, and creating space for breaks (1:21:47) Being in the right place at the right time (1:24:40) Mike’s advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:26:46) License to do things (1:28:11) Where to find Mike outside of YouTube (1:28:43) Why I appreciate hearing David’s perspective on interviews (1:29:22) Who gets a pass on marketing? (1:30:36) Building assets (1:32:26) Am I still doing personalized coaching? (1:34:14) YouTube revenue (1:35:51) The best way to contact celebrities (1:37:35) Takeaways from Social Dilemma (1:39:43) Transitioning a community from one platform to another (1:43:24) A rabbit hole that led David to my long-defunct music podcast (1:48:48) Our potluck dishes of choice (1:50:02) Why I now have a full-time transcriptionist (1:52:54) Email lists, funnels, and design inspiration (1:56:02) Enjoying different stages of life and business + teasing for an upcoming episode (1:58:57) Wrapping up with how you can help the podcast That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Active Campaign Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Mike’s website Resources and Recommendations: From 6 to 7 Figures E-Myth Revisited 2X Business Coaching The 12-Week Year The 90-Day Life Think and Grow Rich Traction Clockwork 12 Rules for Life Love You Forever Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins  00:02 Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course, and they're making a living doing it.   Jacques Hopkins  00:12 But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses. Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins, and this is The Online Course Show.   Jacques Hopkins  00:33 And off we go, welcome aboard!. Glad you're with us. I'm your host, Jacques Hopkins. And right over there is our co-host. What is going on Dr.K.?   David Krohse  00:41 Oh, I'm better than I deserve. How are you doing?   Jacques Hopkins  00:43 2021, man. We made it out of the craziness of 2020. Well, not that there's not still craziness going on but here we go, first episode of hopefully 52 in 2021. Welcome to the new year, sir!   David Krohse  00:58 Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. I feel totally confident that everything is going to be perfect in 2021. So, glad we made it through 2020.   Jacques Hopkins  01:07 I sense a little bit of sarcasm.   David Krohse  01:10 Maybe.   Jacques Hopkins  01:10 So, I read a good book recently. I want to tell you about it, and I actually made a couple posts in The Online Course Community, our Facebook group, which is right at about a thousand people now. So, if you haven't checked that out, if you're listening to this, a lot of podcast listeners are there, search up The Online Course Community on Facebook, go to TheOnlineCourseGuy.com and click on Community at the top and you can join the conversation there. But... I read an awesome, awesome book. From 6 To 7 Figures: that's the name of it. And I've made a couple posts, you've seen me talk about it. Man, did you pick up a copy yet? Have you dived in?   David Krohse  01:50 Yeah, I did dive in. Let's see here. I... Well, I got a Kindle copy. And then, within five days, you put out and you said, "Hey, it's available on audiobook now." So, I returned the Kindle copy, and I'll get the audio book within the next few days.   Jacques Hopkins  02:03 Nice. Man, I love audiobooks. That's my primary way of consuming a book content. I do appreciate Kindle versions, as well. I've got one of those really nice Kindle Oasises. Man, I'm struggling with, like, plurality today. Maybe it's an Oasii. But it's a really nice one, and so I read this book on my Kindle Oasis. It was really nice, very quick read, pretty short, very succinct sections. The subtitle is "Simplify Your Business, Gain Your Time Back, Scale Faster Than Ever.” So, you haven't read it yet. This isn't like a fiction book where I could be possibly spoiling something. Let me just give you my synopsis and why I enjoyed it so much. The core concept is that the things that you do in your business... and look, we probably have a lot of six-figure course creators that listen to this podcast, very few seven-figure course creators, if I had to guess. So, the point of the book, the overarching point is - the things that you did to take you to build a six-figure business, are not the same things that you need to do to go from six-figures to seven-figures.   Jacques Hopkins  03:17 To get to six figures: there's a lot of grit, there's a lot of working long hours, just brute force. And the things that the author, Austin, has found that work best to go to seven figures are systems. Like, that's the big thing: systems and then also team. And in the book, he actually walks you through very specific systems that they recommend, why systems are so great, like they systematize as much as possible. And then they also talk about how important a really, really great team is. And they even go so far as to walk you through their exact hiring process. And just to give you an example of that, which they do differently is when they go to hire somebody, they don't just post your standard stuff on a ZipRecruiter or whatever they go about hiring much like we as course creators think about going about like, selling a course. They'll make a landing page, they'll put a sales video why somebody would want to come work for them, they'll have a one call to action button to apply, and then that whole process is very automated in terms of getting applicants' responses, like onto a spreadsheet to make it so you can easily review. They'll even run ads! They'll pay for ads, to run ads to that landing page where they're advertising the job. That's how much importance they place on actually hiring and finding the right people for them. What do you think about all that?   David Krohse  04:48 Well, I mean, it sounds great. Obviously, I read books like The E-Myth Revisited. And some other ones that kind of highlight these same things, but yet, I respect your opinion enough to say like, "Okay, this must frame it in a different way or have specific steps,” that I'm like, "Okay, I'm intrigued."   Jacques Hopkins  05:07 I love short and simple, like, straight to the point, right? And that's what this book is. It's not a long book, it's to the point, and it's not that any one thing is like crazy revolutionary, but when you put it all together, to me, it just makes sense. It's like, okay, I've got this high six-figure, on the edge of seven-figure, online course business, and I totally resonate with what they're saying, and going into 2021 I really want to do a better job of the systems, for sure. We're pretty good at it. We're getting better every day and reading this triggered some new ideas there. And then the team as well. And I want to go through this hiring process and see how it works. You know, I haven't mentioned yet, but the reason I read this book is because of, I think it was Episode 160 - Abbey Ashley, right? - pretty recent episode, this company, 2X, is who Abbey's uses for her coaching.  Like, who she's using to help scale her business, and she's already $2 million per year. So, they have a coaching program that Abbey mentioned, but they also have a $10 book, you could start there because not every - I think she said was like $3,000 a month, which for her, it's totally worth it - but not everybody can afford that for sure.   David Krohse  06:24 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  06:25 Man, I'm excited for you to get into because I think you could even apply this to your in-person chiropractic business.   David Krohse  06:31 Oh, for sure. Yeah, systems are huge, growing the team - it's everything.   Jacques Hopkins  06:35 There was also something in there called their 72 Hour Rule. That was really cool. So, I measure a lot of things. We talked about something called KPIs - Key Performance Indicators - that's important as a business owner to look at KPIs every now and then: course sales, for me, I look at podcast downloads, I look at, you know, how much of my traffic comes from SEO. There's like 15 different KPIs I look at and one thing in the book was they actually look at reactivity as a KPI metric, meaning that their team should be working very proactively and not reactively. And so, what this 72 Hour Rule is, is that as a team, like, you should never request something for somebody else, and need it back within 72 hours. Right? You got to plan better than that. I thought that's really cool. And they measure that. If somebody needs something within 72 hours, that's something they measure as the reactivity within the business.   David Krohse  07:37 Wow. How do they measure that?   Jacques Hopkins  07:38 It's powerful. Well, I think if they just... I don't know specifically, but in my head, I'm thinking, "Okay, if somebody does need something within 72 hours, then they'll do it, but then that's a demerit or whatever you want to call it, and it's like how many times did we break the 72 Hour Rule this week, this month, this year, and so on? That's my understanding.   David Krohse  08:00 Yeah, and just getting everybody on the team to constantly be thinking like, "Okay, we had this thing [that] didn't go quite right. How can we develop a system where it doesn't happen again? And that's constantly something I talk about with my in-person team is like, "Here's the thing that went wrong. I'm not like, not blaming you on any level for what went wrong in the past. I just want us to get into collaborative mode to figure out the system where we get it right in the future."   Jacques Hopkins  08:23 Yeah, exactly. And so, if somebody is constantly coming to you needing things last minute, and you can be like, "Look, I need you to stop asking for things so last minute." That's a very vague request. But they have a system in place where it's like, "Look, if instead, you could be like, we have this 72-hour rule. And as a part of the team, I need you to abide by this rule." And it's not a vague request. It's like, literally to the hour, don't request things within this. And I think that's just one example of the system and the team working together. I haven't really implemented much from this book yet, but as we go into the new year, I feel like it was just the right message at just the right time for me and my business.   David Krohse  09:06 Very nice.   Jacques Hopkins  09:06 So, speaking of the new year, and whatnot, did you make any resolutions?   David Krohse  09:10 Ah...   Jacques Hopkins  09:11 Or the better question: How do you feel about resolutions? Is that something you're for?   David Krohse  09:16 Oh yeah, I'm for it in the sense of, yeah, just anytime that you get a chance to really be in the mindset that you're going to improve your life, you should. But no, I haven't chosen any specific ones just yet.   Jacques Hopkins  09:27 Learn piano?   David Krohse  09:28 Ha!   Jacques Hopkins  09:31 And January is usually...   David Krohse  09:31 I've been playing guitar. So...   Jacques Hopkins  09:33 Oh, good. January is usually the best month for my online piano course business I would assume because of New Year's resolutions, but I'm not a huge fan, in general. I don't think we need to wait until a new year to try to make better habits for ourselves. I usually try to set yearly goals, but I haven't actually read this book yet, but have you heard of The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran?   David Krohse  09:56 No, I haven't heard of that specific book. I have heard of the Ninety Day, kind of, Goals.   Jacques Hopkins  10:01 Yeah, yeah, same concept. The point of that is simply that a lot of times it's more effective to break things down into quarters instead of years. I think we've talked about that on the podcast even. And I want to be doing more and more of that, thinking in terms of what are we going to accomplish this quarter versus this whole year? And so, that's going to be one of my focuses, but overall, I mean, one of my things is, I would like to read more books. I think there are just so many people out there that are so much smarter than me, that I can learn from, and I haven't been reading a ton, but reading this book was awesome. I'm reading more, as well. So, other than that, just keep chugging along into 2021.   David Krohse  10:47 Nice. Yeah, you sent me a message yesterday that you said that you were going to have a goal of reading 52 books. You're considering setting that goal and then talking about one each week. And I was a little pessimistic over here, I was like, I want to set a goal for 12 to actually talk about on the podcast, but maybe land somewhere in between.   Jacques Hopkins  11:07 There's a fine line between pessimistic and realistic. And that's why I came to you and I was like, I was proposing, and I wasn't saying here, David, this is exactly what we're doing. Because I would love, I love the idea of reading 52 nonfiction books in 2021, but can I do that with all the other stuff I have going on? It's very hard to commit to right now. I've read basically one, we've talked about it. Let's find out next week, if I've read another, if not, maybe it'll be an every few weeks type of a segment where I just get my little book review.   David Krohse  11:37 Sure. And one of my concerns is finding 52 great books. So, you might end up with doing a disservice to the great books because you're spending time trying to make it through some mediocre ones.   Jacques Hopkins  11:49 I just do not think that would be the problem. There's just so many books out there that I want to read or even reread. Like if I go through 52 books this year, I promise you one of them will be Expert Secrets, one of them will be Story Brand, just like the ones that I want to keep reminding myself of the great principles in certain books. So, that's not my concern. My concern is just making sure I have 5 to 10 hours a week to dedicate it to reading a new book.   David Krohse  12:16 Right. Well, so last week, I got to do my first Virtual Lunch and Learn, is my little update. So again, my course is How to Do Lunch and Learns and Health Fairs for In-Person Businesses, and that kind of got shut down with the pandemic. Now the ironic thing, I'm super comfortable going and speaking in-person, and I know that a lot of people in this podcast audience are comfortable going live, putting their content out there, but the thought of going and speaking in-person would probably still make their blood pressure and heart rate spike huge. For me, like it's just so nice when you're in-person. You can see how people are reacting, you can see when their eyes kind of glaze over and know that you need to add something in there - some comedic element - or in-person, I mean, at a certain point, if somebody's starting to fall asleep, I can go and like stand right next to them, like a foot away from them, and like instantly, that person is perked up, they're back awake. Or, I can demonstrate somebody on the manager that's sitting in the third row, I can be like, hey, stand up and let's demonstrate this on you, and everybody starts to pay attention.   David Krohse  13:20 Doing it virtual, I wasn't able to see my audience at all, and that threw me for a loop. It was like, "Oh, man, I hope my jokes are making people laugh." The thing that I would say for the listeners is if you're trying to develop a course maybe you've got Version 1 out, but you want to make Version 2 better, somehow being able to see how your content goes on a live audience is a huge help. That could be asking your family like, "Hey, can I do this webinar for you live?" And you're going to see where their eyes glaze over. I mean, you're going to see, okay, I went one minute too long on that point. And you'll see their eyes glaze over. You make a note of that, and you make it better. And if you ask your family like, "Hey, would you sit through this 45 Minute Webinar?" And they all are like, "Oh, my God, no." Like, clearly you have your work cut out for you.   David Krohse  14:07 But Jacques, you've done that you actually taught a group not live in-person, but through Zoom. And yeah, that gave you feedback about where you were going too long, correct?   Jacques Hopkins  14:16 Yeah, it was invaluable, and to your point, like, what I did was a Zoom with eight other people, and it was a nice nine-person grid, and it was like we were all just hanging out. And as soon as I said something, or did something, somebody could immediately stop me and be like, "Hey, wait, show me that again." Whereas, you know, you compare that to like my weekly live streams that I do for my piano students, they're just chiming in via the chat, right? They're not actually on camera. I can't hear them or see them. And that's a totally, totally different vibe, and you're not getting that direct feedback. You're not getting the tone when people say things. And it sounds like maybe that's more of the format you did for this live presentation here recently?   David Krohse  14:57 Yes, I couldn't see a single person's face or reactions. I was just talking to the webcam.   Jacques Hopkins  15:02 But were they chatting at least?   David Krohse  15:04 No, because... no, I mean, there were time constraints. And so, basically it was largely a presentation, so, I just had to imagine that my jokes were landing, and I didn't have multiple patients come in. And so, they were like, "Yeah, it was one of the best presentations." But, I heard about that three days after it happened.   Jacques Hopkins  15:22 But see, if you're going to do it that way, you might as well just have a prerecorded video that you're airing for them. I mean, if there's going to be no interaction, then what's the point of even presenting it live?   David Krohse  15:32 Right? Well, I mean, the company invited me to come and talk to their team and their team loved it. But, yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  15:39 Just playing devil's advocate there a little bit, but it sounds like it went well overall. I know you were a little nervous going into it just because it's different than you normally do. But, it sounds like it went well.   David Krohse  15:49 Yes, it was a success.   Jacques Hopkins  15:50 All right, let's, uh, shall we talk about Mike Greenfield?   David Krohse  15:54 Definitely.   Jacques Hopkins  15:55 The conversation of the day, Mike Greenfield. Were you familiar with him before this conversation?   David Krohse  16:01 Had no clue.   Jacques Hopkins  16:02 Well, a lot of people are, right? He's got 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube. I wasn't either. You know, my assistant does a lot of the finding of guests. Not everybody. But you know, somebody like Mike Greenfield I wasn't familiar with. She found them. We made it happen. And so, just a couple minutes before we started recording the conversation that you're about to hear is when I met Mike Greenfield. And I was doing research before the conversation, and I was like, holy smokes, this guy has had an MTV show. This guy, he had a show on another network. Like he's been doing this for years and years and years. Huge following. Huge Instagram following, has the blue checkmark on Instagram. I was like, "This guy is big time. Amazing." Not that that's the requirement to come on this podcast, but I like to hear all the different perspectives. And we'll talk about some of the details here on the back end, but it was, you know, that's kind of what happened for me as I was leading into this conversation. And it didn't disappoint. Mike's a great guy. He's doing some cool things. He's got a little baby now, too. So, it was a lot of fun. You ready to hear it?   David Krohse  17:12 I'd love to hear it.   Jacques Hopkins  17:13 All right so, without further ado, here's the full conversation between myself and Mike Greenfield.   Jacques Hopkins  17:22 Mike Greenfield, welcome to The Online Course Show.   Mike Greenfield  17:25 Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.   Jacques Hopkins  17:27 It's a pleasure to meet you, get to talk to you. You got a lot of stuff going on. Some people might consider you a celebrity. I don't know how you feel about that word.   Mike Greenfield  17:37 Oh, boy.   Jacques Hopkins  17:37 But...   Mike Greenfield  17:38 A YouTube celeb. I mean, my brother, like, I think one of the most genius things my brother ever said was that the world is getting to a point, or there will be a point where everyone has some type of celebrity status, because everyone who has social media, they have their own brand, or, you know, their own followers, to the point where, and you can see this happening now I think he called it like years ago, where being a celebrity just, the value is kind of gone. And it's starting to happen now where it's like, everyone, you know, you have an account with 1000 followers, like your celebrity in like, your own way to those people following you. And I think it's the world changing, and the idea of celebrity is changing. Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  18:24 What if we just define it as verified on Instagram? Can we define it as that?   Mike Greenfield  18:29 That could be it for sure. Yeah, so I'm verified. I'm celeb status on Instagram.   Jacques Hopkins  18:34 Do you get like recognized in person very often?   Mike Greenfield  18:36 You know, it's funny, because post-COVID, that has not happened since COVID. When I was living in New York, it happened pretty often. It also, depending on like, where I was, like, I started realizing, you know, if I was in a farmer's market, or like a Whole Foods, you know, my potential for being spotted went up like 1,000%. So, like, depending on the demographic, if I'm by food, you know, markets or something, but COVID, it's like everyone's wearing a mask. No one's interacting. Also, I'm living out now in Long Island, so I don't really, yeah, I'm just like, in my neighborhood.   Jacques Hopkins  19:15 Has it gotten like, pre-COVID, does it start to get old? Like, I can tell you I've been recognized, like in the wild twice. And in both times, like my head got so big. Like, this is like I've made it like, people have recognized me. Once was about a year and a half ago, and then once was more recently, when I've been in other cities. Yeah, but I'm sure you've been recognized far more than two times, like, has it gotten old at all?   Mike Greenfield  19:37 I don't think it gets old unless you're like, Johnny Depp, you know.   Jacques Hopkins  19:42 Yeah. And, The Rock.   Mike Greenfield  19:42 Then you're like, yeah, like, you can't do anything and then, it's a nuisance. But for me, the biggest thing is, you know, also what you do for people because for me, I'm educating people on how to cook, so ultimately, if someone recognizes me, and they say something, I'm like, "Oh, this is cool, because I probably inspired them in some way on how to cook." So, like, it's not this, like, oh, you're an actor and like I know you from the movie screen, but that's not actually your real role and you're this big, like celebrity. Social media is a little different. It's more intimate. So, I've never had an experience that I didn't enjoy, that I wasn't happy about getting spotted, and it definitely didn't happen enough where I'm like, "Ugh!" Like, and it definitely got to my head probably a little bit every time for like, a few hours. And, yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  20:34 Yeah,  that makes sense. It's different than when we think of like, just your A-list celebrities, maybe it's hard to just be in public at all, because you're just constantly getting recognized. I know, the two times that I'm talking about, both times it was like paying students - people that had signed up for my program.   Mike Greenfield  20:49 Exactly.   Jacques Hopkins  20:50 So, they had seen hours of content of me, actually teaching them piano. So, they felt like they knew me really well, even though I didn't really know who that person was.   Mike Greenfield  20:59 Yeah, so I'm sure those experiences were all great. And you know, and felt somewhat personal, like you had a real, like, somewhat of a real connection, not just like, again, you're some actor and like, you know, you're in this big movie, or yeah, so I always enjoy those. But again, it's been a while. I'm alright, with not getting spotted anymore. It's, it's fine.   Jacques Hopkins  21:21 So, this is called The Online Course Show. So obviously, we talk about online courses, but we don't have to just limit ourselves to that topic. Obviously, we've gotten off the rails a little bit already, the audience here, just for your benefit, it’s course creators and aspiring course creators. So, I'm a course creator, you're a course creator; you're more than a course creator. So, we'll talk about courses, but we'll talk about other things, as well. But, let's kind of start with courses and see where it goes with everything that you've done, when did courses come into the picture for you?   Mike Greenfield  21:54 So yeah, I was, you know, pretty much making a living on social media, and, you know, my brother and I, when we had a show together on TV. So, it was always that style of content, hosting cooking shows, you could say. Educating and entertaining people through cooking shows. And that's what I always aspired to create. And once I created that, especially on, you know, YouTube, such a unique platform, I start putting out content, and I think what I realized at some point, I started putting out fermentation content. And I was one of the first people on YouTube to really put some high-quality production and education into fermentation. Whereas before, it was, you know, the hippie in the basement making kombucha and like five parts on their iPhone, or whatever.   Mike Greenfield  22:45 So, I started getting into it, and I'm like, I'm very inspired by this. I love it. I didn't know that other people would enjoy it. I didn't go into it thinking that it would do well on YouTube, it was just... usually that's the stuff that does do well, when you're just inspired. And I started putting out content. And fermentation is, well, I guess specifically with sourdough, I put out a few videos on sourdough, and I kept getting the same questions over and over again. And you know, from being a sourdough baker and getting so into it, I realized, okay, YouTube isn't necessarily the best platform. It's a great starting point and I've, you know, I've got sourdough videos with millions and millions of people that have seen it and probably have gotten into breadmaking, but again, these same questions kept coming up, you know, or, you know, I watched your video a hundred times, like, I would get that. I've watched the sourdough video a hundred times trying to like, get it right, and I'm still struggling. So, that's when I think I started having this idea of, well, maybe I could create something bigger, where I could just focus more on the educational aspect and get out all of the information, because for something like sourdough, I would never, you know, do 40 videos on YouTube, or an entire video just covering the science of sourdough because YouTube has a specific marketing setup, and you need to stick to that if you're going to create a successful channel. You don't have to, but that's what I choose to do. You know, I've got to play the game of YouTube. And if I'm playing that game, I'll never be able to get out the proper information.   Mike Greenfield  24:28 So, that was the beginning of like, let me just go in and take some time off YouTube. And also, just do something different, that was fun and exciting after just being, you know, creating content for years and years. So, I made a course on sourdough. That was kind of... I knew nothing, you know, I didn't know how to make a course curriculum. I knew nothing about marketing at all. And I just kind of went in and took the risk and that was Phase 1.   Jacques Hopkins  24:56 YouTube channel started what year? The Sourdough University Course came out what year?   Mike Greenfield  25:00 So, YouTube, my brother and I started the channel Brothers Green probably 2013, and I think Sourdough probably came out 2017, I'm guessing. Yeah, because it was about three years ago.   Jacques Hopkins  25:14 And when you decided, "Okay, I'm going to make my first online course," at that point in your business you were making... it was a business like, where was the majority of your revenue coming from before the courses?   Mike Greenfield  25:26 So, we had an interesting run. Again, so just for people that don't know, which I'm sure a lot of people, my brother and I had a show together called Brothers Green. We had TV shows, we had a YouTube channel. I recently, about a year ago, year and a half ago, took over the channel and rebranded it Pro Home Cooks. We split creatively, together. We're still brothers, still friends, but just decided not to be in business after like, seven years together, or eight years, or it was a pretty long run. So, we started on Vimeo, and then we got picked up by this official cooking channel of YouTube that got us into YouTube. That channel ended up going out of business. Then we started our own YouTube channel, finally, and we also had a show on MTV. So, there were a few different revenue streams coming in at that time, but mainly after the TV show was over, it was our YouTube channel, which is bringing in you know, AdSense, and then branded deals, branded sponsorships on those videos. So, that was the business.   Jacques Hopkins  26:39 My YouTube channel isn't big enough to have any experience with, like, branded deals, right? I certainly make some from ad revenue, but my end game is to get my viewers to then eventually buy my course. I've got like 80,000 subscribers, which is like, 1/100th of yours.   Mike Greenfield  26:56 That's not bad. That's a solid group.   Jacques Hopkins  26:59 It's most of my traffic to a very, very healthy business, but my entire business model is the course. Right? Whereas for you, it sounds like, is it fair to say that at this point in time, ad revenue, sponsorship deals on videos, plus course revenue is like kind of the big three for you?   Mike Greenfield  27:17 That's the big three. And you know, it's interesting, because every business is always evolving and shifting, and mine has changed so much, and especially in the last year, as I've taken over the YouTube channel and rebranded. And I'm still figuring out the flow of those, I know that those right now are the big three. But it's like figuring out the balance of those things, where you want to put your effort, but yeah, to answer your question simply, that those are the big three.   Jacques Hopkins  27:46 Well, I'd love to talk about the sponsorship deals, and let's get back to the courses, because I don't have any experience, like I said, with the sponsorship deal. So, how does that usually work? Like, do you reach out to people? Do you have somebody in your team that reaches out to people, or are people constantly coming to you asking if they can make a deal with you?   Mike Greenfield  28:02 For the most part, people are reaching out to me. There are times where you know, I just say, I really love this brand, let me reach out and see what happens. I have an agent, so they would generally reach out, or just through Instagram. Instagram is one of the best ways to connect the brands, I might tag someone and just kind of put it out there and then they might come back at some point, but most of the time, it's a brand reaching out to me, because they've seen the content in some form.   Jacques Hopkins  28:29 Yeah, and is it typically just like a one-time fee, or do you get compensated based on how much the video ends up getting viewed? How does that work?   Mike Greenfield  28:38 Generally, it's... and I think all sponsorships are different. For me, I like working within the confines of you know, this is a one-time fee for this or it's like, you know, we want you to produce three videos, and here's the fee. I don't really work with view counts and things like that. Some brands will. You see this more and more, they want to require like you hit a certain amount of views, but that doesn't mean they're going to pay you less or more. It's just like, alright, you might owe us something extra. But, I generally just do you know, here's what we're going to pay you, and this is what you need to do.   Mike Greenfield  29:18 Okay, and at this point, over 2 million YouTube subscribers still consistently putting content out there, do you ever release a video that is not sponsored by somebody?   Mike Greenfield  29:28 I do. And, I definitely do. It depends on the time, you know, it's like the season of branding and you know, when things are hot and brands are coming in, it might fill up my production schedule. But you know, moving forward, that's actually something I want to focus on really figuring out a tighter production schedule where I'm just doing straight up releases - releases that are promoting my course - and then branded content. So again, it all comes down to balance. I've made a lot of mistakes in the past: branded content and with just how my production schedule works, but this is the type of game I'm in and you just kind of live and learn.   Jacques Hopkins  30:10 Alright, so let's go back to online courses. You get the idea around 2017. First course is Sourdough, I guess because you kind of got into this with fermentation. And so, you wanted to start there. You said you didn't know what you're doing? Like, how did you even go about from idea...   Mike Greenfield  30:27 No idea.   Jacques Hopkins  30:27 ...to actually launching the course. What were those steps from you?   Mike Greenfield  30:30 I think the beginning was just intuition of like, alright, I'm making a course on sourdough. Like, I know how to produce content. So, that was a bonus, I knew how to produce content, which I feel like a lot of course creators, you know, maybe they're coming from the opposite perspective of like, maybe they know how to do the marketing or, you know, the curriculum or something, but like, the production could be a tougher aspect of what they're doing. So, for me, I knew how to produce content, could tell a story, and just kind of started putting together a curriculum, you know, with Sourdough. So, it was like, it was a nice first course, because it was simple enough, you know. You follow this is what you need to know - the equipment, and then I put in stuff that I was interested in: science, and you know, milling flowers, so like a few other extra elements to the course. And then just the process of making it. And I tried to do it in my own style, and, you know, just keeping in mind of the Sourdough.   Mike Greenfield  31:28 And also like, I was learning along the way, getting more confidence, because that was a big thing when I went into it, it's like, why should I be teaching people to make sourdough? I'm not an expert. So, I would go to like, I would go to baking classes and things like this. And they actually gave me more confidence because I realized, like, I, you know, I am, I did a little internship with this bakery, and what I, what I started to realize was like, alright, you can be the best baker in the world, but you don't necessarily know how to teach it. Or teach it in a way that someone's going to go out and try it. So, that like, was very helpful for me to just kind of go in with this attitude of like, alright, I'm not here to be the ultimate master in sourdough, I'm here to get you over some type of barrier. So, I'm sure you know, maybe it's similar with you, with the piano course. You know, I need to be the best at getting you over your fears, so you go on your own journey in some form, because that's what all of these things are. All these skills - piano, sourdough bread - there is no perfect way to do it but if I can get you started, you're hopefully going to become obsessed.   Mike Greenfield  32:44 And then so like, that's what I tried to do and that's what I kind of learned over time as a teacher and just went for it. And then as far as like, I made the course, knew nothing about marketing, started reading, of course, started reading books, and then I was working...   Jacques Hopkins  33:03 Let me stop you real quick, Mike...   Mike Greenfield  33:03 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  33:03 ...because I want to dig into that a little bit, and then let's talk about like, what it looked like to actually launch it, but what you just said really speaks to me, because I know you don't know much about me, but I don't have any music degrees. Like, I'm not a world class pianist. In fact,...   Mike Greenfield  33:20 Just talking to you, I could tell, I'm like, "I bet your course is probably a similar attitude as mine."   Jacques Hopkins  33:25 Yeah, for sure. Like, I don't have all these credentials to teach piano and it's interesting to hear so many different people, yourself included, that have the same limiting belief. For some people it lasts like a minute, for some people it lasts for years, like, "Who am I to teach this?" Right? "Who am I to make a course on this subject?" And I think that's a big sticking point for people. You had it. It sounds like you got through it pretty quickly.   Mike Greenfield  33:51 Well, you know...   Jacques Hopkins  33:51 I certainly had it.   Mike Greenfield  33:52 ...I think that timeline was not super quick. Maybe that sounded quicker, it did take me time. I think I made the course with like my attitude of just like, "Let me make a great course." And then through like marketing, figuring out the price of it, that's when I started getting probably more insecure, and then I realized maybe like within a year of like, okay, this is my role. This is what people are paying for and that's valuable. So, I did need some self-esteem building over time to get to that point.   Jacques Hopkins  34:25 Okay, well, you got there obviously and...   Mike Greenfield  34:27 I got there.   Jacques Hopkins  34:27 ...you didn't have to know every single last detail there is to know about making sourdough bread to launch your course. You just had something. You had information/knowledge that you knew that a lot of other people didn't know that you were able to package up and sell in a digital product.   Mike Greenfield  34:44 There's a book, I'm sure you know it - Think and Grow Rich. It's like the original...   Jacques Hopkins  34:50 Yeah. Napoleon Hill.   Mike Greenfield  34:51 Yeah, exactly. And there's a page, I'm reading it for the first time, there's a page in there early on, and it's talking about this idea of knowledge and like, you know, to get rich to be successful, it has nothing to do with like how much knowledge you have. It's really about how you package that knowledge up, how you share that knowledge with other people. And it's just like, when I read that I'm like, that's like so spot on, you know. It's so true. That's what I've learned over these years with course building specifically. It's like, that's what you're doing as a course creator, you're just, you know, you're just doing your best to package up knowledge that can help people, but you don't need to be the best at that knowledge.   Jacques Hopkins  35:39 Yeah, exactly. And so, somebody that has played piano for 40 years, and is classically trained, and they were the long coattails and everything, like, if they try to explain a chord, to somebody that doesn't know what a chord is, or me over here, who is okay at the piano and was an electrical engineer for eight years, tries to explain a chord, like I can probably break it down for a beginner much, much better, right? And for you, and that, maybe, tell me if this ties into your brand. Your brand now is Pro Home Cooks, like you're not trying to teach people to be world class cooks, or chefs like you're trying to teach people to be able to utilize what they have in their kitchen better and cook better home cooked meals for their family. Is that fair?   Mike Greenfield  36:24 That's very fair. And that's something I had to learn over time, because even when I got into cooking, I had these ideas of being respected for cooking. I'm actually creating a course right now that is all about this, which we can talk about later. But, that was something that I had to break down within myself and kind of the journey I went on with cooking, which was starting, thinking that there was a certain way to cook, certain techniques that you needed to follow. And also, that like, getting respect for it was going to like do something for my ego or whatever.   Mike Greenfield  37:03 So, this idea of opening a restaurant and getting, you know, respect for that, that was stuff I broke down over time because I started to realize what cooking meant for me. And for me, it was really just about being the best cook for the people around me. And you know, it doesn't need to be amazing, it doesn't need to be perfect. You don't need to do it a certain way to feed your family, to feed your friends. But that took me years to really understand. And that's how the Pro Home Cooks ran, developed of just like, and also putting out YouTube videos and seeing how other people responded. But I really had to like, break down this idea of how, you know, what cooking is to me, and then how I want to teach people, or you know, how I want to spread that sort of philosophy to other people.   Jacques Hopkins  37:54 And it's obviously working. Now you keep saying the word cook. That's obviously in your brand name. What's there between a cook and a chef?   Mike Greenfield  38:01 I mean, a chef to me, I kind of used to call myself a chef, because that's what people know. That's what you know, they associate like, legitimate cooking with chef. So, the easiest way when I would tell people what I do, or what I am is just a chef. Now I don't because it's obviously not part of my brand. I think a cook is someone that isn't working in a restaurant, really. I would say that's the basics of it. I don't even think it has to do with training or anything like that. It's you know, you work in a restaurant, and you're a chef. I would say that is the basic definition.   Jacques Hopkins  38:42 Well, I think it makes you more relatable to like if it's Pro Home Chefs, it's like, "Okay, well, I don't really want to be a chef. I just want to cook for my family." So, it's Pro Home Cooks. Okay, that's more relatable.   Mike Greenfield  38:52 Exactly. And that's who I'm trying to connect with.   Jacques Hopkins  38:56 So, let's go back to where I cut you off, and you said you had an advantage and that you knew how to make videos. And typically, online courses, the content is packaged up in video form 99% of the time. So, you knew how to make videos, you kind of put together a step-by-step curriculum, then what? How did you launch it?   Mike Greenfield  39:17 I partnered with a marketing guy at first. And, you know, he was helping me, but he wasn't full on. At the time, I couldn't really pay someone to just like come in and really, you know, give me the help I needed to write up emails and just do the marketing base of the sales page. So, he was kind of coaching me into what to do. And I was putting together... and I was learning, I was reading books. He was telling me books to read that would help. And I really was just doing everything from scratch. Building out the sales page myself, building out all of the emails, building out automations and things on a very basic level obviously, because you know, I was a beginner at all of this. And that's how I launched. And yeah, that was pretty much the early days just doing every single element myself.   Jacques Hopkins  40:12 How'd the launch go?   Mike Greenfield  40:13 Not great. I think I put in more money than I made on the launch, you know, three years ago, I would say.   Jacques Hopkins  40:23 In terms of like ads or just in terms of like, time, and resources?   Mike Greenfield  40:28 In time and resources, hiring an editor. Yeah, time and resources. Like, you know, there wasn't this payoff that I was like, "That was worth it." And then I started questioning a lot of things. You know, over time, I knew I was happy, I built the course. One thing that I knew, and I still know, today, that's such a great experience about building a course, is that, you know, I live in a world of social media, of YouTube, of instant gratification of making a video, you know, thinking of an idea, making the video all within like two weeks, putting it out, seeing how it does, moving on. A course you know, there's something that it's just bringing together so many elements, especially now as I start working with other people. You're kind of writing a book in a way. That takes time. You're building out a curriculum, there's so many pieces that come together, and you have more time to really think about it. You have more time to build up self-esteem around it and confidence. And just the idea that like, "Alright, I made this. No one can take it away from me, I don't care how it does."   Mike Greenfield  41:37 So, that's one thing that I knew right away, even though it didn't do great at first, I was happy that like I took the risk and went through the process, or at least I enjoyed a bigger, piecing together of content, a bigger process of content generation, you could say. So that was nice. I felt that, for sure, compared to like this world of just YouTube videos every week.   Jacques Hopkins  42:03 Okay, so it was nice. You enjoyed the process. You took a risk. You launched it, but didn't really pay off like you wanted it to, so why not just throw that idea away and give up on courses?   Mike Greenfield  42:15 I almost... I don't think I gave up on courses, but I kind of gave up on like, I was really, you know, as a creator on YouTube as well, you are giving away content for free, so my first thought was like, I've got millions of fans, like they should all have this, you know, like maybe I could give it away for a much cheaper price or something. That was kind of the original idea. Like my self-esteem went down on the value of the course. So, I had to battle through that for sure. So, that was part of the journey. And yeah, so I kept, do you want me to kind of tell you how it developed into?   Jacques Hopkins  42:52 Yeah, really quickly. I see today, it looks like I can enroll for $197. Is that the price that you launched it in 2017?   Mike Greenfield  42:59 The price I launched that was... so you can enroll for $147. I think I launched at $97, I believe.   Jacques Hopkins  43:09 So, pretty close. Okay, I just wanted to get some context on the price.   Mike Greenfield  43:13 Yeah, and I've added things to the course. But yeah, it was somewhat close.   Jacques Hopkins  43:20 Keep going. I didn't want to stop you, but I wanted to add that little bit of context to when you're talking about "Should I make it cheaper?" Like you've got all these things going through your head.   Mike Greenfield  43:29 Yeah, because I don't know, you know, I've seen... the thing is there's other sourdough courses that are 10 bucks, you know, or whatever. So, like, that's all I had never seen a high-quality sourdough course out there or food course, really. So, I didn't know. I was confused. Definitely close to giving up. And then I met, I think what really changed it was I met, while I was going to work with this other marketing guy and that didn't work out for whatever reason, you know. He crunched some numbers, and it just didn't seem like it was the right fit. And then I met another partner. Now he's my partner in the courses. And he saw the potential of what was happening on the backend, even though it wasn't really bringing in that much money. I think just with the amount of emails coming in from funnels and things like that he could instantly spot potential of turning it into something that was at least you know, bringing in whatever passive income and we started working together to really optimize the entire marketing, just back end experience. The course was already made. And we also build out another course on kombucha at the same time, but I did it with his support with the curriculum. He knew more about this stuff. And again, just continued to optimize create a system that works within my YouTube videos and build that out. And that took some time, and then the big thing was, you know, COVID, lockdown happened, everyone was making sourdough bread, my system was already there, and the course took off from that point. So, it was like years of effort and optimizing and figuring out to kind of be set up for, for something like that to happen.   Jacques Hopkins  45:22 I feel very fortunate that I'm the piano guy in my business, and I'm also the marketing guy. Like, I probably like the marketing stuff more than the piano stuff, which is why we create a podcast like this, but most people are not like that. They want to stay in their lane of bird watching, or basket weaving, or cooking, or whatever their thing is, and they don't necessarily like the business and marketing stuff. Sounds like you're more in that category but as you tell your story, these like marketing guys keep popping up and like it's almost easy. Whereas a lot of people would probably really appreciate having somebody like that. How did these people come into your life seemingly so easily?   Mike Greenfield  46:06 Oh, I think it's like anything I wouldn't say was easily. I think, you know, my intentions were set and that they came in that way, but I ultimately, you know, I am a business guy. I love business. I'm not just the food guy. So, that is a passion of mine. But marketing is not. I know marketing, you know, you can't avoid it. I know how essential it is. So, I'm not like, in denial, especially now seeing how it works. But I definitely knew that my life would be better if I found someone that was passionate about it, that could dedicate all this time. Because in the beginning, when I was doing it all, it was just way too much for me with everything else I've got going on. I just wasn't good enough at it. And I didn't like it enough. So yeah, it was kind of putting my attentions out and, you know, hoping that someone would come through. And again, it wasn't like me, I went through different people. Now I have a partner in it that is great. But it took time.   Jacques Hopkins  47:07 So, now I know you're working on a new course that I want to talk about here in a little bit, but right now if I go to your site, there's two courses I can buy. The two we've talked about, Sourdough University, Kombucha University. I see now where it's Sourdough is $147. Looking now, Kombucha is the same, $147. So, like, how this going now? Like, fast forward today like, are new people enrolling every day? Like, a few a week? Like, how's it going?   Mike Greenfield  47:34 Yeah, it um, ultimately, it's going great. It took time. The COVID was kind of the initial blast off of like, again, all the hard work of putting in these systems building out these courses to like, alright, now this thing is selling great and I don't have to worry about like, is the cost right, or something like that. So, that was the initial payoff. And now it's just about continuing to optimize, but you know, it's selling. I'm enrolling students every single day, and the University continues to build. And that's really my goal, I think, as a YouTube creator, like you talked about, when I got into it, how I got into it, probably something deep inside of me was like, and I still fight with this, you know, getting out of the social media world. Like, we need social media, like you, obviously, you're taking advantage of all these subscribers you have on YouTube. But, social media can be a bit toxic, and it's very out of your control of just, you know, what the algorithms are going to do, and what people are going to like, and what's going to be trendy or whatever. And I think deep down inside, you know, this course business and building out from Cook's University was a chance to take back a little more control and build something that was just out of this social media system.   Mike Greenfield  49:05 So, I always wanted to build something out bigger. A place where I could educate and do what I wanted to do. Whereas, like I said before, with YouTube, there's a specific way, you have to play that game in some degree. And that's like, that can grind you down a bit. So, I love this space where I can, you know, do what I want and teach people how I want and say what I want. I don't know if that answered your... I know your question is more specific on how it's doing, but yeah, I kind of just went on a tangent there.   Jacques Hopkins  49:34 No, it's good. It's good. It's good stuff. I mean, you're, what you're saying is that if all of your revenue is generated via your YouTube channel, then it's kind of putting all your eggs in the Google basket.   Mike Greenfield  49:45 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  49:45 And you don't really have full ownership of anything that way. And by diversifying these courses, putting them on your own domain, it's another revenue stream, but this time, like you just own it all. You can call all the shots you can play by your own rules. And that makes you feel good.   Mike Greenfield  50:02 It definitely feels... I always suggest this to people on social media that they have their own business outside of it, or they're selling something outside of it. And I know that was actually very hard for me to accept when I was, you know, getting into this, or when I wasn't in courses and building out courses, but it just is nice knowing that, yeah, like you said, all your eggs aren't in that basket, because you just never really know what's going to happen. I mean, it could shut down tomorrow, and I feel like now I'd be alright, you know, I would be able to financially work my way around it.   Jacques Hopkins  50:43 Because you're a course creator now, Mike!   Mike Greenfield  50:45 Because I'm a course creator. Yeah, exactly.   Jacques Hopkins  50:49 So, you're kind of talking as if you've seen The Social Dilemma.   Mike Greenfield  50:52 I have seen The Social Dilemma.   Jacques Hopkins  50:54 Thoughts? Other than what you've said already.   Mike Greenfield  50:57 You know, at first, it's like, you have these negative thoughts. I think it's definitely a hit piece on social media and a lot of ways because you're focusing on the negative aspects. And then you're going to react in that way. So, at first, that's how I reacted like, "Oh, my God, this is awful." Obviously, it's not all awful. I, you know, I can't hate on it too much considering I play these algorithms. This is how I make a business. This is how I inspire people. But everything is a balance and there are a lot of unhealthy aspects about it. And there are unhealthy aspects that I take, you know, that I live for sure just being a creator. Every creator is dealing with that, too. It's not just people watching social media, which I do as well. So, I have mixed feelings on it, but I do feel like, you know, mixed feelings to the point where I don't want to dedicate my life to this and like, think that it's going to last forever.   Jacques Hopkins  51:54 Got it. Okay, so you are now an established course creator, and you've got two courses, and you have a new course coming out. I'm looking at your website right now, it says, new course ready to break free of recipes for good and cook new, unique, delicious meals every night. Sounds good.   Mike Greenfield  52:11 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  52:12 Stay tuned for the launch of my new course, Conquer the Kitchen, on January 19. So, that'll be right around when this episode comes out, probably. So, I definitely advise listeners to go check that out. But now that you are an experienced course creator, what is this launch going to look like for you?   Mike Greenfield  52:31 Yeah, that's a good question. I… what’s it going to look like…  Well, first, I'm creating the course right now. It's been a beast of a course to create, and I think the most exciting part about this journey is that I have some more resources now. So, I can create a course. I can, you know, get proper branding and animations, and in my production has gotten better. I'm working with more people for the course so that's been awesome. What's being created, I'm very proud of and I think it's very unique. Ultimately, these other courses like Sourdough, Kombucha, they had a specific, you know, a specific thing that I was trying to teach people how to do. So, you can build a curriculum pretty easily around that. This course was more of a scary challenge, you could say. This course was more of a challenge, I always knew is something that I would want to do, kind of like my cooking manifesto, like my own culinary school. But to do that, it's like, I'm making this completely from scratch. So, it's been a very fun challenge to build out the curriculum, and figure out how it works, and really pump up the production value, but I'm just excited. So yeah, so I'm just very excited about the launch. Yeah, I think it's unique, and there's other cooking style classes out there, but I feel like it just has its own unique place in the world of online education.   Jacques Hopkins  54:14 It sounds like it's going to be great and I'm interested to be honest with you. I'm an amateur cook myself, like that's one of my favorite hobbies and I've seen several of your YouTube videos, and I'm excited to see what that's going to look like, a course like that. But...   Mike Greenfield  54:28 You say you're an amateur cook so like how do you feel in the kitchen? Are you confident in the kitchen? Like, you can go in and kind of just whip some stuff up?   Jacques Hopkins  54:38 Yeah, I can. That's actually like, so my wife and I probably split the cooking duties pretty 50/50, but we're completely different styles like she's got to have a recipe, right? Whereas, I can just kind of whip something up. She's like, that's not me, like, I don't understand how you do that. But I have a lot to learn, as well. And look, I'm down here in South Louisiana, like a lot of what I cook is like Cajun style.   Jacques Hopkins  55:00 Like, I can whip up a gumbo and a jambalaya, and étouffée pretty quickly, but there's certainly a lot of cuisines that I would just have no idea what to do.   Mike Greenfield  55:00 Yeah, great food.   Mike Greenfield  55:01 Yeah, yeah, interesting now, because I think you know, one of the main goals is really someone like your wife, to kind of get them over that barrier of like breaking free of the recipe, but at the same time, there's so much skill also that I'm sure you can learn from things in the course, as well.   Jacques Hopkins  55:25 Well, I mean, just this morning, I watched a video from you about salad that was like, 20 minutes long. And like, you talk

Today, on our 49th episode of 2020, it’s finally time: I’m ready to reveal exactly what platform I’m moving my piano course to! This has been a topic of much debate and it definitely took me some time to sort through my options. So many course platforms exist, old and new, and there are pros and cons to each. But I’m happy with my choice, and had a great time discussing this journey with David on our final episode of the year. “It’s overwhelming, but I really wanted to find the best option for me and my students.” – Jacques Hopkins In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) Setting the stage for today’s topic and looking back on another year of podcasting (3:06) Why my platform switch is not a one-size-fits-all decision (4:52) My history (and beef) with course platforms so far (8:44) Talking pros and cons of ClickFunnels (13:42) The three types of online course platforms (17:04) Top features I was searching for (20:05) A few disclaimers (21:30) Some creative reveal ideas courtesy of David (24:31) The top two contenders and why I chose one over the other (29:29) Why I’m happy with my customization and community options for my new platform (31:52) The announcement that tipped the scales for me (33:54) Pros and cons of my choice (37:48) Apps, Apple, and transition (39:15) What I’ve said no to – and why (47:00) Does price reflect features? (48:08) Best choices for different categories (54:23) Disclaimers and slogans (1:02:15) Reviewing options and a recommendation (1:05:31) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Active Campaign Trial Deadline Funnel Trial Thinkific Trial BossBuddy Trial LearnDash Trial Mighty Networks Trial MembersPro Trial Xperiencify Trial Win of the Week Resources and Recommendations: Expert Secrets Dotcom Secrets Sensei WooCommerce OptimizePress Wistia Udemy Skillshare Kajabi Thinkific LearnDash LifterLMS Circle Mighty Networks BuddyBoss Teachable New Zenler Podia Xperiencify EverWebinar Mastermind Kartra 10XPro Disciple MembersPRO Jumi The Social Dilemma Episode 145 Episode 146 Episode 154 Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins  00:02 Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course, and they're making a living doing. But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses. Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins, and this is the Online Course Show.   Jacques Hopkins  00:32 And off we go, welcome aboard. Glad you're with us. I'm your host, Jacques Hopkins, and we have our cohost, what's going on Dr.K.?   David Krohse  00:40 Oh, I'm sitting here, shivering in anticipation to find out which course platform you went with.   Jacques Hopkins  00:47 Well, that's what this is about. This is about which course platform that I've chosen. Plus, just an honest, hopefully honest, and unbiased review of a lot of the options out there because there's a reason there's so many options out there and no one is right for everybody. And that's what we're getting into today. This is also I don't know, if you're aware, the very last episode of 2020.   David Krohse  01:07 Excellent!   Jacques Hopkins  01:07 Episode 161 here. And I went back and looked, and it will be our 49th episode of the year.   David Krohse  01:15 Wow!   Jacques Hopkins  01:15 So, we missed three. We missed three, but 49 is not bad. I was hoping to get to 52.   David Krohse  01:21 That's pretty great.   Jacques Hopkins  01:22 But there were three times throughout the year where we just could not get out a weekly episode, but I feel very good about going into 2021, compared to 2020. My business is just in such a better place. The team is much bigger and better than it ever has been, and I feel pretty good about that 52 episodes going into 2021.   David Krohse  01:45 Fun! But yeah, I think that I can speak for all the listeners that it's just fun to follow on your journey.   Jacques Hopkins  01:49 Man, I appreciate that so much. And among those episodes, there's been several where you kind of came to the table with some awesome information as well. So, it's been a lot of fun. In this particular episode, we are talking about online course platforms. So, here's the plan; and I know you didn't... I didn't share any of this with you ahead of time, so stop me at any point, ask questions, you be the voice of the audience throughout this presentation, throughout this discussion.   Jacques Hopkins  02:16 So, my plan is this: I want to talk about kind of my history as it goes with course platforms - where I started, where I've been, where I am now and why I've been considering changing which course platform I'm on. I'm going to talk about all the different options that are out there. I'll tell you what I've picked and why that is. I'm going to try to be as unbiased as possible as we go through this process, right? When I get a, you know, a kickback from ClickFunnels - when you sign up for ClickFunnels - that causes me to be a little unbiased, and I acknowledge that. So, I'm going to do my best to take out any bias, not skew these opinions based on how good somebody's affiliate program is or not, and so on. You can stop me if you feel like I'm being biased in any way.   Jacques Hopkins  03:08 Also want to mention that what platform you pick is not the most important thing here. This is not the be-all-end-all that's going to define your success. What's more important is the content that you put out there, the overall experience you're providing for your students, the hopefully transformative nature of what we're doing - I've talked about it many times, but transformation over information - and at the end of the day actual student results. To me, that's the most important thing. And I think no matter which platform I pick, because there's a lot of good ones out there, I could make my course and courses successful, my students successful. Is that a fair disclaimer?   David Krohse  03:50 That sounds great.   Jacques Hopkins  03:51 And then we're going to look into what platform might be... once I tell you which one mine is and go through some of the big ones out there, we'll go over which platform might be right for you, the listener out there, depending on your needs, and your students’ needs and so on, and then I kind of want to wrap it up; I want to look at the USP - Unique Selling Proposition - of each one. And I want to go through this exercise where we actually go to the website of each of these platforms that I looked into and see what's their pitch, what makes them different. You know, I really encourage listeners to read the book Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson, and one of the big messages in there is you want to give your audience and your students a "new" opportunity, not an "improvement" opportunity. So, with all these different course platforms out there, are any truly like unique and trying to do something that others are not, or they all just kind of the same thing? You know?   Jacques Hopkins  04:48 So that's my plan. Does that sound good?   David Krohse  04:50 That sounds great.   Jacques Hopkins  04:51 So, we'll start with my history with course platforms. So, I started Piano In 21 Days in 2013, and as you know, David, it wasn't all just rainbows and butterflies, there was a lot of obstacles, especially at first. It took me about eight months to go from idea to actual launch of my course. Most people heard my story by now I didn't actually make a sale that first day. Made one sale the next day and it was like one of the happiest moments of my life. Even though I only made one sale. It was like 100 bucks but for the first time, somebody had actually paid me money that wasn't like my paycheck for my job. It was amazing.   Jacques Hopkins  05:22 So, one of the biggest obstacles in 2013 was simply the course platform, like I could not figure out having content behind a kind of a paywall, and then having users have a username and password. And that sounds crazy in late 2020, because of all the platforms out there. I mean, there's hundreds...   David Krohse  05:45 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  05:45 There are hundreds of options out there. Whereas in 2013, there were very few options out there. And most of the ones we're going to talk about today didn't even exist in 2013. So that was a huge, huge, huge headache. I ended up using something called Sensei, which was a WordPress plugin. It was actually a WooCommerce plugin, which is like the number one E-commerce plugin for WordPress. And then they have this E-learning plugin as well called Sensei. It wasn't great. There were things I just at the end of the day couldn't figure out. And when I was going to launch, I realized that there was like, I don't remember specifically what it was, but there was something about it that just wasn't going to work. And so, I had to scramble at the last minute and find something else. I ended up using something called Optimize Press. And then their membership plugin, which is what allows you to have like, username, password, have certain pages that you can't get to unless you're logged in - that part of it was called Optimized Member. That's what I used for a couple of years, was Optimized press,   Optimized Member. That was pretty good. Pretty good. I think it's still around, but it's not near as popular as it was back then.   Jacques Hopkins  06:56 And then, in about 2016 a friend of mine was like, "Hey, have you read DotCom Secrets, this book, it's pretty awesome. It talks all about funnels and stuff." And I was like "No," but it was a guy that I trusted. In fact, I think his name is Dean Dwyer. I think the first person I ever interviewed on this podcast way back, I want to say like Episode 16, possibly. And so, I picked up the book and it was fascinating just learning about all these different types of funnels. And of course, I realized now like the book itself was a funnel and it makes you really want to sign up for ClickFunnels. So, that's when I switched over from Optimized Press to ClickFunnels. And it was great, because I could easily make funnels, I was making all these cool funnels, and it was a lot easier than in Optimized Press. And it was just a bonus that you could also host your membership, your course inside of ClickFunnels. So, this is 2016. And I moved everything over to ClickFunnels. And I liked it so much, I even moved my whole website over to there: my homepage, my about page, my FAQ, and like my whole business, other than emails was over in ClickFunnels for a couple of years. And I realized that email was not what ClickFunnels did best, so I pulled that out and put that on ActiveCampaign, which I absolutely love.   Jacques Hopkins  08:18 But ever since then, since 2016, my funnels and my course - my piano course - have been on ClickFunnels. Even today, we haven't fully moved over yet to this new platform yet. So that's where we stand now. And that's how I ended up on ClickFunnels. And it served me well and I think it's still a great option for beginners. It's probably the simplest course platform that exists.   Jacques Hopkins  08:45 I was talking to Nate Dotson yesterday, and I told him which platform I picked. And I was asking him if he, you know, maybe wanted to try that or some of these other options out there. And he's like, "Man, I just, I love the simplicity of my course in ClickFunnels." So, it's still viable. In fact, David, your course, it's in ClickFunnels, is it not?   David Krohse  09:11 It is, yes.   Jacques Hopkins  09:12 Thoughts? You like it there?   David Krohse  09:14 Well, yeah, I mean, it's fine for my audience. I mean, again, there's the whole, there's all these factors: there's user-friendliness, but also your audience. So, let's say you're making a course specifically for graphic designers, you know, serving that course in ClickFunnels would be kind of like serving SpaghettiOs in a fine dining restaurant, right? It's like the aesthetics are not there. I mean, you can try to fancy it up, but at the end of the day, it doesn't have the user experience and the design elements that somebody that's making a01 course for graphic designer's needs.   Jacques Hopkins  09:45 Well, to piggyback off that example, imagine a course for course creators, and I've definitely gotten complaints from people inside of my programs on The Online Course Guy side of my business it's like, "Dude, this is not a great looking course, like there's not many features," and I get that. Whereas my piano students have never complained about it. It gets the job done for the most part, but they're probably also not as aware of the possibilities, as well. So, with just right at 6000 students now, like I said, ClickFunnels, the membership site there has served me well, but it's time to move on.   Jacques Hopkins  10:25 So, here's the reason. Here's what I don't like about ClickFunnels as a course platform. It's limited in its features. And for some people that's a plus, right? We were talking about that. There's lessons, there's sections, there's lessons, and then within each lesson, you can put some text and some downloads and videos, like it's the bare bones, minimal, viable course software you could possibly have. And for me at this point, that is a con. For some people, it could be a pro.   Jacques Hopkins  10:56 This drives me crazy. For some reason, the password reset function almost never works. So, if my students go to try to log in, and they forgot their password, or whatever, there's a forgot your password link and it just like, less than half of the time actually works and their support is no help. And maybe other people don't have that problem but that drives me crazy because students' success and their experience and everything, that's my number one factor here and if they can't even log into the course, that's a huge problem.   Jacques Hopkins  11:29 Next that I don't like is that they don't seem to be actively developing the platform. It seems like they made it and it's like, "Okay, now we're going to put our whole development team on funnels," which is fine. They're good at funnels. That's what they do best. And so, I'm going to continue to use ClickFunnels for its sales funnels, and probably move to something else for the course, because they're not actively developing the course platform, at least from what I see.   Jacques Hopkins  12:01 They don't have video hosting. A lot of these platforms we'll discuss today, you can actually upload your videos right to the platform, and you don't have to use like a Wistia or Vimeo to host your videos. So ClickFunnels doesn't have that.   Jacques Hopkins  12:12 It is not mobile optimized. A lot of people access my course from a mobile device. Let me give an example of a problem there: They have this big navigation, there's this big navigation menu on the left, and then your course content appears on the right. But if you access it from a phone, then the navigation is so wide that it fillls the width of the phone. And if you click on a lesson, the lesson information actually pops up below the navigation instead of on the right. Well, when you do that, and the content appears below the navigation, if somebody doesn't realize they need to scroll down, they think it's just not working. That has caused so many problems. Fortunately, I had a coder on Upwork code it to where anytime you click on a lesson, the screen automatically will scroll to the top of that lesson. So, it hasn't been a problem. But that's kind of ridiculous that I have to go get some custom code put in to make something that silly work.   Jacques Hopkins  13:11 And then there's no, so this kind of ties into limited features, but there's no community element at all. And there's no events, like it's just information. So those are my, those are what I don't like about ClickFunnels. Did I miss anything? Is there anything you don't like about your course in ClickFunnels that I didn't hit?   David Krohse  13:28 No. I mean, there's workarounds and jerry-rigs that can be done. I mean, I think that you could add a Facebook conversation below your lessons. I mean, there's these workarounds, but they look like workarounds.   Jacques Hopkins  13:40 And they absolutely are workarounds. So earlier this year, I decided it was time to look around. Like, I'm sure there's better options for me out there. Let's figure out what's going to be best for me. And look, that's daunting, because there are so many options out there. You know, the Online Course Community - the Facebook group that we have for this audience - I remember polling them earlier this year, "Hey, which platform are you using?" and I left it so they could add their own options. And there were like 25 different, you know, I started like 10 and by the end of it, there were like 25 different things in there. And so, it's overwhelming but I also really wanted to find the best option for me and my business and my students.   Jacques Hopkins  14:28 So, I've really been going on a deep dive the past six months and looking at as many of them as possible. And it's not possible to look at every single one for sure but in my opinion, there's basically three categories of course platforms and some people will call them LMS - Learning Management Systems - that's kind of a technical term for this. And, Jason Dion and I talked about these three categories a little bit back in 154, which Jason's got a good perspective on this stuff. So, if you want to hear more details about like, kind of these categories, you can go back and listen to that episode. One category is these marketplaces like Udemy, Skillshare; the newest one that I've seen is Mastermind which is like Tony Robbins and Russell Brunson, where they do the marketing, and you provide the content. That's what these marketplaces do. So that's, that's one category. And, that's not for me, but it is for some people.    Jacques Hopkins  15:28 The second category is what I'll call fully hosted SaaS. Okay, that's kind of what I'm calling it. SaaS stands for Software as a Service, meaning that they take care of any server hosting, like everything is on them. You use their software, their service, and you don't have to really worry about anything else from like a hosting and uptime and that type of thing perspective. So, these are your Kajabis, Thinkific, ClickFunnels, and so on. That makes sense?   Jacques Hopkins  16:02 Third category self-hosted SaaS. Typically, self-hosted SaaS is going to be some kind of WordPress plugin. There are others, Moodle has something, but in general your self-hosted stuff is going to be on WordPress. So, the most popular one out there is called LearnDash. There's also LifterLMS. There's a lot of WordPress plugins that you can use; I mentioned two earlier: Sensei, OptimizeMember, and so on. With these, there's a lot more like customization but there's a lot more potential headaches and problems too because you have to pay for the server you're hosting all this stuff on. And then the more users, the more bandwidth used, you got to have bigger and better servers, and so on. So, there's pros and cons, but those are the three categories: marketplaces, fully hosted SaaS, self-hosted SaaS.   David Krohse  17:01 Got it, I got it.   Jacques Hopkins  17:03 Alright, so for me, the most important features that I'm looking for are... Well, first of all, the ones that I mentioned about not liking about ClickFunnels, it'd be ideal if whatever I choose didn't have those problems, but then, in addition to that, there's three things: one is course and community in the same place. I'm trying to get off of Facebook with my communities. The reasons - there's a lot of reasons- one is distraction. There's ads on Facebook, there's notifications, you go there with the intention to get into the piano group and ask a question or see if you can help somebody else or see when the next live stream is and then you just get pulled into the latest fad that's being advertised to you, this and that, or, or some political debate you get roped into, and it's not necessarily serving you very well, in that way.   Jacques Hopkins  17:54 I do recognize it can work the other way around, meaning you jump on Facebook, like maybe to kill some time, and then you get pulled into the piano group. It's not all bad on Facebook, but I think the cons, it outweighs the pros at this point. And then there's privacy concerns and just overall contributing to bad habits and for that, man, have you watched The Social Dilemma yet?   David Krohse  18:19 No, I haven't.   Jacques Hopkins  18:22 Watch the Social Dilemma. It will make you want to get off of Facebook. I’ll just say that, as well. So that's a documentary on Netflix, highly recommended for anybody out there. But there are pros to being on Facebook, but like I said, I think the cons outweigh the pros. So, course and community in the same place. I've said this before, like, I could move to something like Circle, which is just a community, but I don't want users to have to go to one place for the course and another place for the community. I want it in the same place.   Jacques Hopkins  18:53 Two is I would like events and the ability to do live streams inside of the platform, because right now I do go live with my students once a week in Facebook. So, I need an alternative to that.   Jacques Hopkins  19:05 And three is I would like to be able to wrap all of this up and have it be in a branded mobile app, as well. I think that's especially important for my particular audience because piano apps are a thing - piano learning apps. And the demographic of my students also skews older, and older people typically prefer apps as well.   Jacques Hopkins  19:29 So those are kind of the three main things I'm looking for. Not as important, but something that I've been looking at as I evaluate things is it'd be nice to have video hosting, so I don't have to host it on Wistia or Vimeo. It would be nice to have some sort of gamification features, and so on. So, that's my list. Let me stop and give you the floor if you have any questions or comments and then we'll move forward.   David Krohse  19:59 No, I think I think that sounds great. I agree with all those lists. I think that'll greatly enhance the experience.   Jacques Hopkins  20:05 Okay, there's a few disclaimers throughout this and here's one: I'm going to tell you what I pick shortly, but what I pick doesn't mean that you should pick it too. I'm talking to you, David, I'm talking to everybody listening. There may be a lot of people who it might be a good fit for, but just because I picked it doesn't mean you should, too. And somebody in the Facebook group I think said it best. Neil said, "I know I'm in the minority here, but I don't really care what platform you pick. I'm sure you'll pick the right for your students in your business, but it will have no impact on me and mine."   David Krohse  20:36 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  20:38 Fair.   David Krohse  20:38 Right. But, I got to say that that particular Facebook comment feed was really interesting, just in the way that people have enjoyed watching your journey.   Jacques Hopkins  20:50 Yeah.   David Krohse  20:51 There's a lesson for other people that have their own communities is that people like, I don't know, I think people are invested in your decision, even though they're not planning on changing their hosting anytime soon, but they've enjoyed kind of watching a horse race and just kind of wondering and doing their own research about which direction you're going to go. So, I was really amazed at just the way that people have gotten excited.   Jacques Hopkins  21:15 Same here. And I've kind of leaned into that a little bit, dragged it out a little bit, teased it, and so on, just because I know people were excited about it. But, I don't want to drag it out any longer. So, are you, are you ready to hear what I think?   David Krohse  21:28 Well, no, no, I got to, I got to, I got to say like, the way that people are excited, we got to take the reveal to the next level. So...   Jacques Hopkins  21:34 Oh gosh.   David Krohse  21:35 I have a... you know, I'm always brainstorming, but your mission, should you choose to accept it: we got to take the reveal multimedia, and so this is kind of inspired by all these baby reveals. But I've got three different video reveals that you could choose from, or you could come up with your own. And if you decide to take my instructions here, if somebody goes into the actual show notes, they'd be able to click in and watch the video.   David Krohse  22:05 So, option number one, Jacques, is you would get two different pies. So, what's your favorite kind of pie?   Jacques Hopkins  22:13 Pecan.   David Krohse  22:14 Pecan.   Jacques Hopkins  22:14 No doubt. Pecan.   David Krohse  22:14 I was wondering how you pronounce it. I guessed that. So, pecan. So, get a pecan and a cherry pie, assign each one as one of these top two choices, and then take two pieces from each, set the one that you didn't choose off to the side, and then cover the other in whipped cream, get your daughters there and let them smash pies on dad. And we'd be able to see which one you went with. So, option number two, we've had a recurring theme in the last couple episodes about a cold shower. So, option number two is you get to get some Kool-Aid packets, cherry and like a green apple, and then you got to take a shower head off in your house and stick some Kool-Aid in it...   Jacques Hopkins  22:18 Oh, my goodness.   David Krohse  22:25 ...and then you got to get in your swimsuit and a white shirt, and then we get to see your daughters turn on the cold shower on you and see if your shirt turns green or red.    David Krohse  23:05 Alright, so option number three: you might appeal, or you might like this one the best since you're the big sports fan, but you can actually get these baby reveal baseballs. And so, we design...   David Krohse  23:15 ...sign pink as one of the top two choices, blue as the other. You get to throw the ball up in the air and swing like you're trying to win the Stanley Cup and just see that thing explode to the color that you chose.   Jacques Hopkins  23:15 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  23:28 So, are you suggesting that we actually do one of these three? Because you know, we're recording this three weeks before it'll actually air. So, are you saying in the next three weeks, we need to record something like this?   David Krohse  23:38 In the next three weeks, you, and the kids, record it and then just put it in the show notes as the top one. And if somebody wants to watch the reveal, as a video, they can do that. Hey, it's next level! That's your thing.   Jacques Hopkins  23:51 It is next level. You never make it, you never make it easy on me, man. I was ready to just tell you what I picked and now you got to go do all this. So...   David Krohse  23:59 That third one is doable, though.   Jacques Hopkins  24:00 The third one is pretty doable. You know, you got to remember, I've done two baby gender reveals before. And one we did balloons where I think it was a certain color confetti inside of the balloon that we popped. And then the other one was eggs. Once again, I think it was confetti, but you had to crack the egg open to see what color was on the inside. In both cases, it was pink. And now I'm a girl dad, which is fine. But I know, I know about these reveals and so if I end up doing something like that, which I don't appreciate you adding work to my plates, the top two would be Mighty Networks and BuddyBoss.   David Krohse  24:01 Very nice.    Jacques Hopkins  24:06 Okay. And it's interesting because I put a poll in the, in the Online Course Community on what people think or thought I would pick, and I've certainly dropped hints here and there and I've been somewhat transparent without blatantly saying what I picked but you know, the community has done a good job. And those are the top two vote getters. I think Mighty Networks is the top vote getter that people think I'm going to go with. And so those are the top two. You care to guess which one it is?   David Krohse  25:16 Uhm, well, I think, well, you got to remember BuddyBoss, you'll explain it more, but BuddyBoss sits on top of LearnDash. So, if you combine those two... doesn't it?   Jacques Hopkins  25:25 Yeah. It does. Yes.   David Krohse  25:27 All right. Well, yeah, my guess is definitely BuddyBoss.   Jacques Hopkins  25:30 Correct. That's the one. So, here's what happened; I fell absolutely in love with Mighty Networks. Absolutely. Especially after talking to Gina, I don't remember what episode that was, but we'll link to it in the show notes. And there was so much to like about it. I love that it was a community platform first and then they added courses later. And it was really nice. They released this new events feature that was super slick and I started playing around with it. There's certainly people in the audience that use it and they informed me of the kind of the pros and cons of it. There's one lady in Next Level Courses, Celia, shout out to Celia, because she loves Mighty Networks. She let me be a student inside of her Mighty Network, and I got to play around with it there.   Jacques Hopkins  26:21 But as it turned out, there was just a couple things about it that I just couldn't get past. They do charge like a transaction fee. If somebody purchases through your course through their system, they charge like a 2% transaction fee. Now, that does vary depending on what level you sign up for. And then also, they have... Their really high tier plan is the one that comes with branded apps, which is what I was looking for. And it's very expensive. I don't know if they would want me to say exactly how expensive but it's definitely in the five-figure range, and that's a yearly fee for this particular level.   Jacques Hopkins  27:04 And I'm telling you, David, I was so close to signing a contract for that, but they're in Apple's pocket, like or maybe the other way around, like they're... I was going to have to charge a price for my course that ended in 99 cents. Like, they're tied to Apple's pricing model for their App Store because of the app situation. So, I was going to have to charge like $299.99, or $399.99, or $499.99. And I just didn't like being limited in that. Like one of the things I'm looking for is customization and not being held back in any way.   Jacques Hopkins  27:39 And then the last thing I didn't like about Mighty Networks was they didn't have a tagging system, which I found very strange. Like, I like being able to tag my students with certain things, for certain access restrictions and they just didn't really have that. And so, for some people, that won't be a problem. For some people, none of those things will be a problem. Mighty Networks could be a good fit for you. But those kind of three things really, really made me not want to sign the contract. I'm telling you, I had it like printed out, I was ready to sign it. I just kept not signing it because I'm like, "Oh, but there's these things." Right?   David Krohse  28:12 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  28:13 And then all of a sudden, I came across BuddyBoss. I never heard of it other than a few past guests actually briefly mentioning it on the podcast. Had you heard about it until recently?   David Krohse  28:25 No. Again, I think I shared a clue with the podcast listeners because I was listening in your Next Level Courses, and somehow you mentioned BuddyBoss when you were talking with one of the students in there. And I was like, "What is that?" And I looked it up and all of a sudden in my Facebook feed it started saying our new BuddyBoss app is coming soon, AppBoss. I'm like, "Oh, wait, this is a clue." So, I asked you about that back in the - Oh, it was just one of the episodes where we talked about the things that were going on in the next level Q&A.   Jacques Hopkins  29:00 Yeah. So, there's just a lot to like about BuddyBoss. There's a lot of downsides, too, and I'll certainly talk about those, because now I'm talking about getting back into the WordPress plugin side of things. And I did have not the greatest experiences before. There's a lot of problems with that. But the reason I'm going with BuddyBoss is, first of all, the sheer amount of possible customization. I can get it just almost exactly like I particularly want it to be because it's WordPress. It's like, that's one of the cool things; WordPress is like the number one website platform in the world. So, there's just like, probably millions of WordPress plugins out there and just about anything you want to do, you can probably do. For a lot of people that's not a good idea because you could break stuff, right? And even with me, like I understand that I could do some customization and then BuddyBoss updates, the plugin updates, and it doesn't jive with some of the customization we did. So, I mean, I wasn't going to go down this path unless I had a like dedicated person kind of owning that, because I understand that the problems that come with that as well. So that's one of the disclaimers that I'll give is if you're going to go this route with BuddyBoss, and you got to have LearnDash, as well, and I'll talk about that. But you're going to need somebody who knows servers, knows WordPress, that could kind of manage this for you. You don't need a full-time person, but you need somebody dedicated and responsible for it. For the updates, for the upkeep.   Jacques Hopkins  30:33 I mentioned that some past guests had mentioned using it, and I didn't really know what it was at the time, so I couldn't really lean into that. But Dr. Marnie Ginsburg from Episode 147, she uses it - loves it. Tim Topham from Episode 69 uses it - loves it. Both of them are actually extremely, extremely successful course creators. And as I say that I'm looking at their names, they're actually both more membership sites to be honest with you. That's because BuddyBoss is actually so social. Like it's built to be this big social -  it's like installing your own social network.   David Krohse  31:09 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  31:10 That's what BuddyBoss is. It's kind of creating your own, white-labeled Social Network. Gina, the founder of Mighty Networks kind of talked about that in our episode. She was talking about how you could with Mighty Networks, you can be your own Mark Zuckerberg of your own network. And I think this takes it even a step further, because you're not tied to all of Mighty Networks's features that you just cannot change or customize in any way. But, BuddyBoss is a lot more open because it's on WordPress.   Jacques Hopkins  31:40 So, the customization is one of the main reasons I went there. Community obviously is very, very important to me and it's got that. And then, just the icing on the cake was the app. Right? So, when I first discovered BuddyBoss, they had this announcement, it's like, the next big thing for BuddyBoss, the BuddyBoss app coming soon. You know, sign up here to get informed. So, I didn't know exactly what it was going to be when I first came across BuddyBoss but when they announced it, I think it was the beginning of November, they announced what it was, it was exactly what I was looking for, like, literally packaged this whole thing up and turned it into branded apps. And it wasn't... it was like $100 a month or something and they had an add on package for like, around $800, where they would like do it all for you and they would submit it to the App Stores and make sure it all works for you. So, I bought that as well. And so, my investment is going to be far, far, far, far less than Mighty Networks. Plus, hopefully I'll be able to do the extra things that I wasn't able to do in Mighty Networks.   Jacques Hopkins  32:44 So, BuddyBoss is the social network, right? It's not the... technically it's not the LMS, right? It's not the course part. So, it integrates seamlessly with LearnDash. So, BuddyBoss and LearnDash go together, as far as I'm concerned. Some people I guess, like anybody that's come on and had a membership site where they didn't necessarily have an online course could use BuddyBoss without LearnDash. It does work without LearnDash but most of the listeners here would want both. So, you install both and they seamlessly integrate together. So, in my poll in the community, I separated them out. And I think the guesses we're like Mighty Networks, number one. BuddyBoss, number two. LearnDash, number three. So, a lot of people were on to me, but nobody called me out. I mean, you just did on the podcast a few minutes ago, but nobody was like, wait, when you need BuddyBoss and LearnDash? Like nobody said that in the comments.   David Krohse  33:38 Oh, yeah, somebody did.   Jacques Hopkins  33:40 Okay, well, maybe I just missed that. But that's... it was kind of a trick question because I say I'm going with BuddyBoss, but I'm going with BuddyBoss and LearnDash. I'm going with both of them. And I had kind of made up my mind several weeks ago and then I talked to Jason Dion, from episode was it 154? I mentioned earlier. And if you guys listen to that episode, you know that Jason is moving off of LearnDash on to Thinkific. And I kind of made up my mind going into that conversation and that's why kind of presented it. It's like, "Wait, tell me about all the downsides of LearnDash?" Like, give me, I needed all the details from him. And a lot of times I'll use this podcast as an outlet for like getting information for my actual business. And so that's why I pressed in them so hard, and we've actually had a lot of conversations off-air about it, and he supports it - he feels pretty good about it. His business is so different than mine. But, that's what I have chosen to do. What do you think?   David Krohse  34:47 That sounds great. So yeah, I guess I just like to learn more about, like the costs of LearnDash. And then now you're going, to you're still going to be paying for your video hosting through Wistia. It's just a lot of moving parts, but...   Jacques Hopkins  35:02 Yeah, so the one big thing it doesn't have is the video hosting. And I said that's kind of one of the things I was looking for, but the category I ended up picking was that third category, the self-hosted SaaS, right? And you're just not going to get video hosting on something like that. That's just not... it's not congruent with being self-hosted. But I'm able to get just about everything else. For gamification, there's a WordPress plugin called GamiPress, G-A-M-I, which seamlessly integrates with BuddyBoss. And we've already done a ton of customization to it to where it doesn't even look like other BuddyBoss sites, like it's my own thing. It's like this white labeled platform. Some people asked me months ago, like, "Are you going to develop your own platform?" I have no interest in doing that. Like that sounds like such a headache. That's not something that I particularly would want to do. And there's so many out there. But with BuddyBoss, and LearnDash, and WordPress, I kind of am able to do that but not be near as difficult.   Jacques Hopkins  36:06 So, why should somebody not choose this option? I mean, I've alluded to it already. It could be an absolute nightmare for you. I do not recommend you start here. If you're a beginner, don't start there. I promise you, please do not start there. You have got to have not only... I recommend, if you go this route, like have a person dedicated, like even if you find somebody on Upwork, who's just like, "Hey, five hours a week, forever. You're responsible for this installation in this server." Like, I'm suggesting you do that. But you also have to worry about where you host it as well. Right? If you go sign up for Teachable, then you have an account and you upload things to Teachable, your Teachable account. You don't worry about like, "Okay, what server is this actually living on." But with this you do. Like, you got to figure out where this stuff is going to live. Just like you would a WordPress site but it's more important because you have to worry about server load, and all your users and how many users are playing a video at one time, and so on. And then, as you mentioned, it also doesn't include video hosting.   Jacques Hopkins  37:09 So, there's the downside, so please take this with a huge, huge grain of salt.   David Krohse  37:15 So, you're saying that it doesn't pass the Nate Dotson test, right?   Jacques Hopkins  37:18 Ooh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, it does not pass the Nate Dotson test. And as you know, I'm pretty technical. Like, I'm not a big server nerd or that. I know some coding. I'm not a coder. But I'm pretty technical. So, that's another reason I feel comfortable with this solution is because minor things I can troubleshoot and fix myself, not that that's the goal, by any means, but for somebody super non techie, all the more reason you would need somebody available to help you with this.   David Krohse  37:48 How confident are you that you are not going to have to pay Apple the 30%? Or there was an update that maybe it would drop to 15%. But, how confident are you that that's not going to happen at some point here? Or what is the workaround where you don't have to pay Apple?   Jacques Hopkins  38:04 Yeah, so we'll get into that in future episodes, because here's another disclaimer, right? We haven't actually launched yet. We're getting very, very close. We're populating all the content. It's looking great. It's working great, so far. We're beta testing it a little bit so far, but we haven't actually launched yet. And we certainly haven't launched the app yet, because BuddyBoss made the announcement in November, but they're not rolling out the first apps for people until like, February. Right.   Jacques Hopkins  38:31 So, I'll keep everybody updated along the way as we go. I'll keep you updated. They say that they have ways around that, like they're going to help me... that's one of the reasons I paid the extra for them to help me. That's non-negotiable. I'm not going to pay Apple 30% of my revenue on sales. We're going to find a way around, it for sure.   David Krohse  38:54 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  38:55 So, remember that, like I haven't actually launched yet. And, I will be completely honest. It's possible that it doesn't work out and six months down the road, I'm not using BuddyBoss. Right. Keep that in mind. We're not actually on it yet. This is the path we're going down. We're launching soon. And I'll keep you guys posted on how it's going.   David Krohse  39:14 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  39:15 so, let's talk about what else is out there. We talked about Mighty Networks, we talked about BuddyBoss, and LearnDash a little bit. What other options are out there? It seems like the options are endless. It seems like new ones are popping up all the time and I'm sure in a year from now there'll be fifty more that come out. And so, I certainly can't mention them all right now, right? So, you know, if you're listening to this and I don't say one you're thinking of, or I didn't look into one you're thinking of like please don't email me like saying, "Hey, why didn't you mention or talk about this one?" Like, that's almost impossible. I tried to talk about the most popular ones out there for the most part but just keep in mind this is not exhaustive, by means. Okay. So historically on this podcast, I've kind of talked about the Big Four of course platforms. You know what they are?   David Krohse  40:08 Thinkific, Teachable, Kajabi...   Jacques Hopkins  40:11 And ClickFunnels. Yeah, those are... I've called those like the Big Four, historically. Here's the New Big Four: BuddyBoss, Kajabi, Thinkific, and Mighty Networks.   David Krohse  40:24 Teachable. You're not... Yo, come on. Teachable...   Jacques Hopkins  40:26 I do not like Teachable.   David Krohse  40:27 You don't think so?   Jacques Hopkins  40:28 I do not...   Jacques Hopkins  40:28 ...like Teachable. I do not like it. That is one of my least favorite ones I've evaluated of all the ones we're going to talk about. And I might get to Teachable. But I do not like Teachable. I like these others. I like these others a lot. Okay, so these are my new, like, top four, Big Four that I'll recommend to people.   David Krohse  40:29 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  40:46 Kajabi is awesome. In fact, you asked me a few episodes ago, if you thought maybe that's the one I picked. I think.   David Krohse  40:54 I think so, I mean, it all comes down to the value of the branded app. And whether that's really worth it. Which I was thinking, I mean like, if you... let's say that you... I mean, you could assess the value that if you asked every customer, like, okay, you know, the price is $497 with a Kajabi app, or it's $547 if you get a Piano in 21 Days app. I mean, you could actually... it's interesting just like, mental, kind of, like, exercise to say what's the value of the custom branded app? Where people actually pay $50 more to see the app say Piano in 21 Days.   Jacques Hopkins  41:31 That's fair. I am as you know, dead set on this branded app idea. It could blow up in my face, but I just think my students would really appreciate that. So, Kajabi’s great. It has everything, okay, that's the thing about Kajabi. It's got the email in there. It's got community. It's got... you can even, you know, they pitch it as you can build your whole website, you can have a blog there. It's the best, in my opinion, like, all-in-one platform. For that you pay for it. It's one of the most expensive, as well, but you got to keep in mind everything you're getting, too. To me, the biggest downside with Kajabi, other than you can't have a branded app, but this kind of goes hand-in-hand with that, is that there's not from what I've seen, there's not really an open API, meaning that it's kind of closed down. You can't really tie other things into it, which is unlike Thinkific, which I'll talk about in a second. That's the biggest downside. They do have a mobile app, there's a Kajabi app that you could get your students to download and access your course through that, but it's not a branded app. So, there's a lot to like about Kajabi. You look at a guy like Graham Cochrane, from RecordingRevolution.com - we'll link to in the show notes what episode he was on - but he runs his whole business on there. In fact, he's got two businesses, because he does kind of what I do, where I've got the music course business, but then he also teaches online business, as well. And for that, he just uses his name, GrahamCochrane.com, and he runs both businesses entirely in Kajabi. From the website, to the blog, to the emails, to the courses, to the membership, to the community; everything is Kajabi. He's a huge fan of it. He promotes it, you know, they have a good affiliate program, too. In fact, I was recommending Kajabi to somebody the other day, like, they came to me, somebody I know personally, and was like, "Hey, here's my needs." I was like, "You know what, I think Kajabi is actually a good fit for you."   Jacques Hopkins  43:28 Thinkific is another great one. Okay.   David Krohse  43:31 Jacques, could we talk a little bit more about Kajabi?   Jacques Hopkins  43:32 Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.   David Krohse  43:34 All right. Well, a couple questions with the Kajabi. I know that you're appropriately, like geeky about email deliverability and you want an appropriate amount of automation. Is your assessment of Kajabi's email that it's adequate for somebody that wants their emails to actually hit people's inboxes?   Jacques Hopkins  43:52 Yes, it is. It's not as feature rich as ActiveCampaign, which I use for my emails, but overall, it's good enough for most people. And, I seriously considered Kajabi. There's a lot to like about it.   David Krohse  44:08 Yeah. And the other thing I'd mentioned is that there was a conversation somewhere in the Facebook group about branded versus non-branded app and like two people chimed in and said that they now have four or five courses all in Kajabi. And they view that as a huge benefit, is that they can jump in there and go to whichever course that they like, so it's just hard to anticipate all of your members' needs and obviously this whole online course space just keeps growing.   Jacques Hopkins  44:36 Yeah. Have you ever tried to like, read more than one book at one time?   David Krohse  44:43 Sure.   Jacques Hopkins  44:43 I don't know about you, but it doesn't usually end well for me. Like, if I start reading a book and I get a third of the way through and then it's like, "Okay, wait, I really want to read this other book." I start that other book. I usually don't finish the first book. Right? And I think courses are the same way. You don't want to go through multiple different types of courses at the same time. And that's what I want to do for my piano students, I want them to be fully ingrained and immersed in piano and learn as quickly as possible. And so, if they go to their app, and there's the piano app, but there's also the coding app and the brewing your own beer at home app, it's like, no, like, let's not learn all these things at the same time, like let's learn piano and then move on to something else.   David Krohse  45:23 That's fair.   Jacques Hopkins  45:24 That's my opinion.   David Krohse  45:25 Usually, I have like one fun book and one nonfiction book.   Jacques Hopkins  45:26 That's what I do, too. I'm usually reading one fiction and nonfiction at a time, but when I start getting into like multiple nonfiction books at the same time, then I'm not going to finish it all.   David Krohse  45:35 Right.   Jacques Hopkins  45:37 You ready to move on?   David Krohse  45:38 Yes.   Jacques Hopkins  45:39 Thinkific. It's a big... in fact, when I polled the audience earlier this year about which platforms they're using, this was, this was number one. This is probably the biggest one. Really cool. This is what Jason Dion's moving on to. It does have more of an open API, so technically, like some sort of custom app/branded app that then ties into everything that's inside of Thinkific seems like it's possible, but it would cost a lot in development to be able to do that. And it also doesn't have the email system from what I've seen. So, it's not quite as all-in-one as Kajabi. And I don't think that it's meant to be an all-in-one platform, I think it's meant to be focused on online courses.   Jacques Hopkins  46:24 So Kajabi, you would choose if all-in-one is important to you. Whereas the Thinkific, it's maybe more if open API is important to you. And then, Mighty Networks, the biggest thing about that, for me is like community first. It was a community platform first; it's very focused on community. The community elements in Mighty Networks are far superior to Thinkific and Kajabi. And so, if that's important to you, then consider Mighty Networks because they also have courses, as well. It also does events really well, too. But, I've told you the disappointing things about Mighty Networks as well. Those are the Big Four, the New Big Four.   David Krohse  47:01 Got it.   Jacques Hopkins  47:01 As far as price goes, with these and the others, from what I've seen, for the most part price reflects features. For example, Kajabi is probably the most expensive one, but it's got the most features overall. Now, we'll get into some more budget options, but in general I'm not like, I'm not going to rank things on a scale of 1 to 10 on a bunch of different factors like price, but just in general, you kind of get what you pay for. That makes sense?   David Krohse  47:31 Well give us a rough idea of what a beginning course creator might spend on Kajabi.   Jacques Hopkins  47:35 A hundred and sixty dollars a month. Right. They have multiple plans, multiple tiers - don't quote me on that - and then you could pay up to $350-400 a month, depending on how many courses, how many students, and so on. But you look at like, a MembersPRO, which is just the course software, right? Just the course side of things, it's a lot cheaper than Kajabi, but it doesn't have the email and the community and website and blogging and all that. So, I just wanted to give that little disclaimer about price.   Jacques Hopkins  48:06 So, I think, let's get into some categories here. Best choice for established course creators: I would say either BuddyBoss or Thinkific.   David Krohse  48:16 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  48:16 That's my recommendation. Maybe Kajabi, but I would say either BuddyBoss or Thinkific. Okay?   David Krohse  48:21 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  48:22 Bootstrappers on a budget. Okay, I got few for you here. So, ClickFunnels is still viable. And especially if you're already using ClickFunnels for your funnels, and you're trying to bootstrap things, then use the, use the ClickFunnels course platform. You're using it, Nate's using it, a lot of successful course creators are still using it. It works for what it is. So, consider that if you're bootstrapping things, and you have a ClickFunnels account already.   Jacques Hopkins  48:49 MembersPRO. I think their lowest tiered plan, I think is $40. Thirty-nine dollars a month and it's one of the best just course platforms. I had one of the creators on an earlier episode, Chris Benetti. Love them. Love those guys. They're doing awesome things and I'm really excited to see where MembersPRO goes. I could be on MembersPRO in five years, or in three years, you know if they add some of these features that I would love to see. But, if you're bootstrapping things, you just need a course platform, MembersPRO - I'm looking at it now, starts at $39 a month. I know people that use it and love it. It could be a good option.   Jacques Hopkins  49:28 A couple more like bootstrapping options: New Zenler. Right? Jono talked about that in a previous episode, how it doesn't do everything like, really, really well, but it does it good enough. And it's pretty inexpensive because it's new. It's the new version of Zenler and they're kind of still beta testing it so you can get in on a lot lower price than it's going to be. And that's kind of an all-in-one system. They have a lot of components inside of there. So, it's worth checking out if you're on a budget and want that all in one thing. Also, Podia. Podia also pitches itself as kind of all-in-one, but it's a lower priced option for that. Probably not going to get as good as stuff as Kajabi, but if you don't want to pay $160 a month and you want to pay $60 a month for kind of the same features, then Podia, New Zenler might be a good option.   Jacques Hopkins  50:25 If community is most important to you, consider Mighty Networks. If a personal touch is most important to you, I'd recommend MembersPRO. I think that's one of the big things you're getting there is you will probably get to know the creators if you sign up for MembersPRO.   Jacques Hopkins  50:42 This is a category you suggested, and I have a good option for it - Rookie of the Year. Kind of a newer one, one to keep an eye on. Have you heard of this one: Xperiencify?   David Krohse  50:53 I think I saw it in the list, but no, I haven't.   Jacques Hopkins   50:56 XP, it's like "experience-ify" but it starts with an X. X-P-E-R-I-E-N-C-I-F-Y. Very interesting, because their big pitch is "Hey, in general, people buy courses and don't finish them." Their big thing is we have AI technology that like 3X’s actual completion rates, which is really cool. It's really cool. I looked into it. They certainly don't have community or an app or any of that, but it was very interesting and something worth checking out and worth keeping an eye on.   Jacques Hopkins  51:33 Others that I looked into at least a little bit, or people have mentioned in the community: Teachable. I just don't think it's anything special. I don't love the environment. I don't know why you would ever go with Teachable over say a MembersPRO. They're both just course platforms. MembersPRO is a lot less expensive and in my opinion, it's better. I don't know why anybody would ever use Teachable.   David Krohse  52:00 Okay. It's got a pretty huge user base though. So, I don't know.   Jacques Hopkins  52:05 It was one of the early ones and then people like Pat Flynn getting behind it certainly helped. This is just my opinion, but I don't like Teachable.   David Krohse  52:16 Got it. But they do... do they have an app?   Jacques Hopkins  52:19 They do. I don't know if they have a mobile app. They have the whole myTeachable thing where like, you were talking about with Kajabi, you can log in and see all the courses you bought on Teachable. I don't know if they have a mobile app or not. I would like to think they do since they have that feature already. Ok.   Jacques Hopkins  52:35 Circle, which is actually like an offshoot of Teachable. People left Teachable, started Circle. People asked me if I was considering that. The thing is, it's just community. It doesn't have the course features in there, but from what I've seen on the community aspects, it looks amazing. And I think if they add course features, it could be pretty awesome. And I have to think they're working on that. Maybe not, I don't know.   Jacques Hopkins  52:59 Kartra is another popular one. Pretty sure it's made by the same people that made like, WebinarJam, EverWebinar. I just don't really like those. WebinarJam and EverWebinar are very clunky. Support is not great. Like, I just don't love those, so therefore, I don't even want to try Kartra. I know that may not be fair. I've heard from other users that their support is not great. But it is another all-in-one platform.   Jacques Hopkins  53:26 And then we have something called 10XPRO, another all-in-one platform. I don't know why you would go with 10XPRO over Kajabi if you're looking for all-in-one, just my opinion.   Jacques Hopkins  53:39 Disciple. This is an interesting one. I actually looked into this pretty hard. Disciple is actually a community first platform, but they don't have courses. They had some features in there that made me think I could kind of put a course in there; they had something called folders and you could put content in there. And they also will make you a branded app too. So, Disciple is very interesting. I don't understand why they don't have courses, but Disciple looks pretty cool, too.   Jacques Hopkins  54:06 And then I think I mentioned Podia already in the bootstrappers. So, a couple more disclaimers here. And we need to wrap up soon because I have a pretty fun masterclass coming up for Next Level Courses on evergreen webinars. But customer support, in my opinion, is a very important part of this. And I just am not able to rate the customer support of all of these in a format like that. So, take this once again with a grain of salt. You know, let's just say hypothetically, like, a Podia. If they have world class customer support, that could possibly put them in the top four. I just don't know, right? I think customer support is huge. DeadlineFunnel, right? This is not a course platform, but DeadlineFunnel support is probably the best support that I've seen for any software platform ever. I've reached out to Jack Born, the creator before and be like, "How do you hire people? Because your support people are so amazing." So, I have not evaluated customer support here so that could easily jump somebody way up the list if they have really, really good support. And if you're on a platform that has great support, then you might want to stay there because not everybody does. Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  55:19 I mentioned that I haven't actually launched yet, so in six months now you might find me on Thinkific or Mighty Networks or something. Not likely. But, you know, keep that in mind too. I want to look at some of the USPs of these. So, like if I go to Mighty Networks, right now, it says on the homepage, like, I believe that when you go to somebody's homepage, you should be able to really tell what they're about and how they can help you within the first like, five seconds. They say it's, "A new kind of website builder that grows with you." Website builder? Okay, interesting. The sub headline says, "Bring together your website, online cour

It’s time to catch up with another course creator friend! Abbey Ashley is no stranger to this show, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard what she’s up to. And she does not disappoint: Abbey’s been killing it this year! We chatted about how her business is evolving, where she sees herself focusing her energy in the future, and much more. Enjoy! “You will pivot. Things will shift, and that’s totally okay.” -Abbey Ashley In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) Why I’m excited about today’s episode + a teaser for next week! (3:07) Thoughts on lead magnets and “getting to know” course creators (5:18) Working out in 2020 (8:36) Talking Facebook ads and group interaction (10:03) Setting the stage for today’s interview (11:09) Welcoming Abbey back and hearing her online course business update (14:07) Keeping the train rolling in 2020 (16:33) Abbey’s growing team (18:24) How she’s making an impact on students’ lives (including my own team) (21:17) Charting metrics and looking for areas to improve (26:41) Project management tools (28:38) “Extreme ownership” and applying common leadership principles (30:12) What it takes to succeed (31:55) The evolution of Abbey’s funnel and how learning from others has influenced it (38:46) The importance of finding your audience (42:00) Abbey’s Facebook groups and the importance of honesty (44:44) Thoughts on leaving Facebook – or not (47:39) Course platform decisions (49:54) The importance of listening to your audience (52:49) Why Abbey’s enjoying learning from a new mentor (55:55) Hiring and running a team (58:53) Thinking about team culture and efficiency (1:03:36) Making the transition from contractors to employees (1:07:55) Surprise, delight, and… shots? (1:12:45) Handling hiring in the U.S. (1:13:44) Delegating and getting out of day-to-day operations (1:17:12) Lynch-pin redundancy (1:20:56) What’s next for Abbey (1:26:13) Is a podcast in the works for Abbey? (1:27:42) Where to find her online and why it’s okay to copy (1:30:23) How much fun it would be to be on Abbey’s team? + How we first connected (1:33:04) Emotions and shareable moments (1:34:52) Updates and differences in teams (1:37:48) How things are going with my OBM + David’s singing solo (1:39:02) Upsells vs. downsells, tortoises vs. hares (1:41:41) A high-ticket program without a sales call? (1:44:10) Funnel hacking and evolving with the times (1:46:40) “There is no secret sauce” + Pinterest myth-busting (1:49:00) The importance of a learning mindset (1:50:54) Wrapping up with a plug for next week’s episode That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: The Virtual Savvy VA Checklist and Starter Kit Resources and Recommendations: Betty Rocker Dr. John Jaquish ClickUp Trello Asana Evolved Finance Extreme Ownership 2X Business Coaching Mariah Coz Teachable Kajabi SamCart Fix This Next The Pumpkin Plan Clockwork Good to Great Gusto Side Hustle Nation Consulting.com Episode 37 Episode 79 Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins   00:02 Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course, and they're making a living doing it.   Jacques Hopkins   00:12 But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses. Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins, and this is the Online Course Show.    Jacques Hopkins   00:32 And off we go, welcome aboard. Glad you're with us. I'm your host, Jacques Hopkins. And over there is our cohost. What's going on Dr. K?   David Krohse   00:40 Not too much. I'm doing fantastic here.   Jacques Hopkins   00:42 I am ready for another episode. This is 160. And in just a little bit, we're going to hear from a returning guest. This will be her third time on and she is such an inspiration. Abbey Ashley. Her business is up to about 2 million a year. She's got like 14 or 15 full time employees. Doing very little into the business now. Really excited to share that conversation with you and with the audience, but I would like to tease something. I would like to tease something to next week.   David Krohse   00:53 All right. What?   Jacques Hopkins   01:12 I don't do this often. So, what's the big thing that you keep asking me about, and everybody keeps asking me about?   David Krohse   01:18 Yeah, I think we want to know what the best course platform in the world is.   Jacques Hopkins   01:23 Best course platform in the world is. Yeah. So, past, what, six months probably, I've been doing a deep dive on a lot of different course platforms. It's probably impossible to evaluate all of them because there's new ones cropping up every day. And so, I've looked at the big ones, I've looked at some smaller ones as well, and I have made a decision on where I'm going to be hosting my course - my piano course - going forward. And so next week, I'm going to reveal what I've picked, if you should pick the same thing, and we're going to talk about a lot of other platforms, as well. Pros and cons of each, and kind of what which one would be a good fit for certain types of people. Because I promise, the one that I have selected is not the right fit for everyone. It's going to be the right fit for a lot of people, but not for everyone. And we'll talk about that next week. How does that sound?   David Krohse   02:19 Got it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that conversation.   Jacques Hopkins   02:21 Cool. So, it'll just be me and you. No interview next week. And I'll kind of walk you through my process and you can ask questions and whatnot. So that's what's coming up next week. So, everybody stay tuned for 161 next week, which will be our last episode of the year.  Last episode of December.   David Krohse   02:41 Nice. Yeah, we got a lot in this year. We didn't quite get one every week but pretty close.   Jacques Hopkins   02:47 It'll probably end up at like 49. We probably missed two or three weeks. We didn't release one on Thanksgiving week. There was one or two other times throughout the year. And you say we like if it were up to you, you would release them every week. It's definitely on me that we missed a couple. So, you do your part. You show up every week and I really appreciate that.   David Krohse   03:05 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   03:06 So that's what's going on next week with platforms. Before we get into the conversation with Abbey, you got any updates for us? Anything of note that seems off the wall, but somehow you magically tie it in the courses like you do every week?   David Krohse   03:18 Yeah, I do. So, I started a new workout program. And you know, one of the common questions for course creators is what should my lead magnet be? And also, a question, how much should you give away before people actually join your course or join a community? And so, I have started doing a workout called The Betty Rocker. And I actually invited you to join it. I don't know. You turned me down. But this Betty Rocker it's, I mean, I think it's a huge, huge membership. A huge community of people that do these workouts. But she has a 30-day challenge. And so, what attracted me to it, I mean, first off, I have a female chiropractor friend that posted this picture of herself with these biceps that were just popping huge. And I knew that her only workout was doing Betty Rocker. So, number one, I mean, it was just seeing visual proof of what that could do for a female friend. But ultimately, the workouts are 15 minutes a day. All bodyweight, no tools, nothing needed, except for a mat on the floor. And so, I'm like five days into it. And you know, I mean, she's given away a ton of value. So far, the only thing I've been pitched is a meal plan for like, $39 or there's like a smaller meal planning a little info product for $9. But other than that, I mean, heck of a huge lead magnet. And yeah, we should get her on the podcast at some point.   Jacques Hopkins   04:41 There you go. David Krohse   04:42 The Betty Rocker.   Jacques Hopkins   04:43 There's always an upsell, man.   David Krohse   04:45 Oh, yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   04:45 There's always an upsell.   David Krohse   04:47 By the end of it I'm going to feel like friends with Betty. So...   Jacques Hopkins   04:50 Yeah, I bet you are. I'm sure a lot of people feel like they know me so well, you know, going through my course or heck, even listening to this podcast. It's like they're spending so much time with you when you have a platform like this, but you're not necessarily spending time with them. It's a very interesting relationship. I mean, listeners of this feel like they know you so well. But you don't know all the thousands of people that are listening to this podcast. You know a few of them, but you certainly don't know everybody.   David Krohse   05:18 Right? So, did you look into the workout at all? Did you consider doing it all with me?   Jacques Hopkins   05:22 I looked at it briefly, but I recently started something myself, as well, that I don't want to get off. I don't want to get off that train. What I succumb to... So, I'm a Crossfitter. I've been doing CrossFit for like three plus years, but I haven't... that kind of stopped when the first lockdowns came in middle of March. And I supported my gym, I still paid my membership for several months. And then they open back up and I went like two or three times, but it just wasn't the same. It was it felt weird being there. And to be honest with you, they kind of for some reason fired my favorite coach that was there as well. So, I decided to just okay, now's the time for me to just back out for now. And so, I stopped going completely. And all the while just kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do, as far as working out goes, because resistance training is important to me. And my brother-in-law recommended something to me that I've been using and really, really digging. It's called the X3 System. Have you heard of that?   David Krohse   06:24 I have not.   Jacques Hopkins   06:26 So, let me... this is we're getting a little off tangent here, but you know, health and wellness goes along with success in online business, for sure. And this system was created by a guy named  Dr. John Jaquish, and he's been in the wellness space for a long time. He's got some sort of partnership or business with Tony Robbins. He invented some sort of bone density medical device that was like his big claim to fame. And through that research, he discovered that variable resistance training was actually incredibly effective, meaning that it's not the same amount of tension or force the whole movement while you're pushing or pulling weights. And so, he invented a product that could - for most bang for the buck - help you accomplish that variable resistance training. And that's bands. Right? But he had to invent these really, really powerful bands that don't break ever. And the unique thing about the system too, is its bands with like an Olympic bar. So, you're not just holding the band, you're holding the bar, and then the weight is the bands.   Jacques Hopkins   07:34 So, it's really cool. I've been doing it for probably six weeks now. My brother-in-law actually bought it about a year ago, because he succumbed to these Facebook ads. And every time we talk about it, he's like, "I can't believe I gave in to those ads." But he loves it. And if anybody's listening to this, like not just in your headphones and your phone is listening to you, you might start getting advertised to buy X3 because we keep saying X3, X3, or I keep saying it, but I've been enjoying it. It's about 10 minutes a day. The guy recently wrote a book, also, called Weightlifting Is a Waste of Time. And it's clickbaity title but it goes into the science. It's very, very good. As a chiropractor, you might really enjoy the science behind it. But it just talks about why variable resistance training is so much more superior to constant resistance training. I don't know when the opposite of that would be. So that's what I've been doing. And I'm sure your program is great, too. But I wanted to stick with mine.   David Krohse   08:27 Nice. Well, yeah, I'm sure I'll see those Facebook ads shortly here and I'll probably interact with one and then I'll see it for the next 30 years or whatever. But yeah, and regarding courses, I mean, there was actually a question in your Next Level Courses this morning with somebody that just started running Facebook ads, and was disappointed in their results one week in and you know, I got in there and I just said, "Hey, like retargeting is the biggest thing. Like you have to have those touch points multiple times before people make a decision." So, there's lessons there.   Jacques Hopkins   08:59 Definitely. And you know, speaking of courses, once again, I think there's room for X3 to have a course. When you buy it, they send you a link to a collection of videos on how to use the product but there's no login, there's no, they're not updating the information. What I would love to see is a little area inside of a member portal where other extra users are giving their best tips and tricks on how to use it instead of just the creator because he's obviously very biased. And that's actually something that I would love to have as a part of my course. Now that I say that. You know, every video pretty much except for the ones that have outsourced to other piano teachers is the expert. But I would love to have a section of like students who have been through the program, offering tips and tricks and advice. It's a totally different perspective and I think that a lot of courses could be doing something like.   David Krohse   09:55 Yeah, that sounds awesome.   Jacques Hopkins   09:56 Well, let's get back on the train tracks and not just about our working out goals. So, like I said, this was an excellent conversation with Abbey Ashley. She is killing it as usual. She's been in business since like 2016 and has basically doubled every year. She's going to be doing over $2 million in sales this year in 2020. And, of course, this is one of the businesses like mine, that has done really well with the pandemic. Right? More people are staying home, more people are looking to work from home, and that's exactly what she promises with her course. But like mine, you know,  it actually produces results. And the goodwill associated with her course; I know several people that have been through her program, including my new OBM/Director of Operations. She started out as a VA and took Abbey's course years ago. And then I've got a newer VA on the team who also took Abbey's course, and they speak very highly of Abbey and the course.   Jacques Hopkins   11:00 So, this was a true delight. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and play the full conversation with Abbey Ashley right now.   Jacques Hopkins   11:10 Abbey, freakin, Ashley. What's up?   Abbey Ashley   11:12 Hey!   Jacques Hopkins   11:13 I'm so pumped to have you back on. It actually feels like we haven't talked in quite some time now. I mean, we've talked plenty times on the podcast and off the podcast, too. I'm excited to dive into what's been going on the past few months and heck, probably year.   Abbey Ashley   11:26 I know. I'm definitely, we're like, it's gab time. It's just time to catch up time and everyone gets to listen to it.    Jacques Hopkins   11:33 That's perfect. You know, I've had I've had people come back on, like repeat guests, and they didn't really have a lot of updates. I've been watching your stuff from the outside, even though we haven't communicated directly a whole bunch lately. But it seems like a lot of cool things have been happening. So, let's just start with your main course that you offer. What's the latest? Have you updated it? Updated pricing? And how's that going?   Abbey Ashley   11:55 Yeah,. So, things are going great. So, we, you know. For those who don't know me - Hi! I teach people how to become virtual assistants. And we have our signature training program, it's called the Savvy System. And the Savvy System is, it's our core product. Right. And that's where we send the majority of our traffic. It's kind of where we want everyone to start. And so that has been going really well. We're still, you know, we do two launches a year, our evergreen funnel that's running all the time, we finally started doing some paid ads to that. So that's starting to go and again we're not, that's kind of next year is, is paid and partnering small... And we can talk about that a little bit, but we've really just been right in the organic train for a long time. And so that organic train definitely picked up. And, you know, I'm almost cautious of who I tell people this too. But you know, for us, I know that, you know, March of 2020 was really, really hard for a lot of businesses. But for us, we teach people how to work from home. And, what a time to, you know, teach people how to work from home. So, we actually, internally, you know, we employ a lot of moms, too. So, we, you know, 90% of our team instantly became homeschooling moms in March. And so, we said, “You know what, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your list of tasks for everyone on the team  - we just did it across the board - let's highlight the things that have to be done, and if you can get your job done in five hours a week, cool, do that.” And March was the month that we doubled without doing anything else externally. And it was like so now of course, all my employees are like, "We sold! We only worked five hours a week." I'm like, "No, not quite." But you know, so definitely, we've just been on kind of an onward track. So just looking backwards, you know, 2018, we did about $600,000 in revenue. Last year, 2019, was our first million-dollar year, and we are going to hit 2 million this year. And then now we're like, "Well, let's go ahead and go for four next year. That's the... We're on the track to double each year." So that's kind of what we're shooting for and what we've, you know, ran projections and everything for next year.   Jacques Hopkins   14:08 That's all... Yeah, once you're doubling every year, it's like why not keep the train rolling?   Abbey Ashley   14:12 Just keep this going.   Jacques Hopkins   14:13 Yeah, I'm kind of... mine's kind of doubling every year too. It sounds like, I'm kind of one year behind you. I'm probably going to hit right at a million dollars in revenue this year, about 500k last year, and so on. So, I'm going to try to just do everything that you're doing with just one year behind you and I think I'll be successful if I do that.   Abbey Ashley   14:29 That's amazing though. That's huge. Congratulations!   Jacques Hopkins   14:33 Thank you and congratulations to you, as well. I think actually around the pandemic time... Well, I guess we're still in a pandemic but around the original lockdowns is probably the last time I had messaged you because I was thinking about the course creators that I knew. And you know, some people like my friend, Nate Dotson, who you know, he teaches people to start in person, like, sell microgreens at the farmer’s market. Like, his went down, right? I have a friend who teaches musicians to get higher paying gigs, right? All of a sudden, there were no musical gigs. His went down. But mine went very well, because everybody has learning piano on their bucket list, or a lot of people do. And so, staying home, have extra time. My course did very well. And I was like, man, I bet Abbey's killing it, too. So, I remember messaging you, I was like, "You're doing well during this, this, this time, too, huh? Cause everybody...   Abbey Ashley   15:23 Yeah...   Jacques Hopkins   15:23  ...opportunity to work from home.   Abbey Ashley   15:24 It's hard because you know, you don't, I don't know. You want to be sensitive, because I know, like, so many people are hurting during that time. And so, you know, I think that's why it's cool to have these conversations too. And just see, like, what works and there are so many businesses that were planning, you know, like, they should have done poorly. Right?   Jacques Hopkins   15:43 Yeah.   Abbey Ashley   15:43 And then they pivoted, and I've seen that, too. My husband...   Jacques Hopkins   15:46 Yeah.   Abbey Ashley   15:47 ...my husband used to work in the entertainment industry. He was in the circus. I don't know if we've ever even talked about that. But so, he knows a lot of people in the entertainment industry and I mean, that's just gone, right? But there's this one company that they were doing, like a touring show. And they had the, you know, the idea of like, could we make this a drive thru experience, rather than...   Abbey Ashley   16:07 ...they are killing it. Like, they're just hiring like, crazy. It's like 60 bucks a car or something, that they're just. And they're just absolutely killing it, right? So, I think that there's definitely, um, you know, it definitely tested a lot of us in the area of innovation, and alright, let's test our tech and innovation and whatever skills so yeah, crazy.   Jacques Hopkins   16:07 Wow.   Jacques Hopkins   16:32 Yeah. But it takes... Not everybody's willing to pivot like that and it's cool to see that a lot of people are doing that. Whenever it looked like we were going to be locking down there was like a day, where I made very few, if any sales. And I was like, "Oh, no, here it is. Here's the decline of my business. And I was freaking out a little bit. But I also didn't, and still don't have any actual employees. Did you reach a point where you're like, "Oh, no, like, I'm responsible for all these people's livelihoods.”? Were you ever worried about it back in early March?   Abbey Ashley   17:04 Yeah. So, we were still a smaller team, then. I mean, smaller for us. So, we, I think we had six full time employees. And now we're at, we're hiring 14 and 15 right now, which has been...   Jacques Hopkins   17:16 Feel like you just you were just at like, 11 last week.   Abbey Ashley   17:19 I know. It's, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. And that's about a lot of our business model too, is really, we spend on team more than other avenues. So, but yeah, that, you know, I think we had our emergency fund in the bank. So, I knew that no matter what, we had been planning, growth and hiring, so the conversations never really got to the point of like, "Oh, are we going to have to let people go?" But in my head, I was like, "Okay, well, we're definitely holding off on hiring." Which is what we did, you know, until we saw, "Oh, this is actually causing us to grow." And then yeah, so I didn't necessarily get to that point where was just like, "Oh, no!" But I don't know, I'm definitely probably a half glass full type of person, I'm sure my COO was like, "Ugh!", and I'm like, "It's fine! We're good." You know, she's the one that that helps bring me down sometimes from total optimism.   Jacques Hopkins   18:18 Yeah. And to piggyback off of what we're talking about, a little while ago, it's like, if you have if you're genuinely helping people to, then it's a good thing like you, you genuinely help people to quit their job, work from home, do work that they love on their own schedule. And so, you are just in the right place at the right time. You we're already making sales, but just like that your sales doubled. But it's not just you making money, like, you are having a direct impact and positive change on other people's lives.   Abbey Ashley   18:44 For sure.   Jacques Hopkins   18:44 And how does that make you feel? First of all.   Abbey Ashley   18:48 I mean, we've started sharing more testimonies in our like, our social media and stuff and that it's so it's, it's cool, because they come in, but just like, I don't know, just getting to really see them and see the impact, and so many people just quitting their jobs or paying off debt or doing you know, getting to be with their kids and not feel bad for it. And I don't know, it's been really cool. It's been really cool.   Jacques Hopkins   19:13 The last three people that I've hired have been through your training.   Abbey Ashley   19:18 Hey, that's cool!   Jacques Hopkins   19:20 Do you just have like a complete monopoly on this market or what?   Abbey Ashley   19:24 No, there's other people. And there's other people who do what I do really great, too. Honestly. Um, there's, I definitely, I have competitors and some of them do a good job. No, there are some that are turning out really great VAs as well. But no, I'm glad that that's worked out for you and that it's good to know that we're training awesome people. I of course, think that they're awesome, but it's always great to hear and that's, you know, my next endeavor is definitely I'll be chatting with you and we're really, really have the wheels rolling on it because we want to create an opportunity for virtual assistants and clients to connect, and so we're going to be building out kind of a marketplace for that. But that's on the horizon. So, it's cool. It's cool to hear that that's, you know, kind of organically happening anyways.   Jacques Hopkins   20:13 Yes, absolutely. So, the first of those three is now my D.O.O., Director of Operations. Which I think Melissa is. Is she's your D.O.O.?   Abbey Ashley   20:23 Yeah, she started as my D.O.O., we ended up once she became an employee, we call her my COO, and that's literally, girl basically runs the company.  I mean, she's phenomenal.   Jacques Hopkins   20:34 Yeah, so I've interacted with her a lot. In fact, she gave me a lot of tips a few months ago, on hiring and how you guys do some of that. So, thank you so much for putting her in contact with me about that. But yeah, I hired a D.O.O. and she started as a VA a few years ago, went through your program, worked her way up till  she got a certified OBM, and now she's a certified D.O.O. And she, through her connections, found a couple of other VAs. And I guess connections is like your community, probably. And that's probably why the next two went through your program as well. But every time it seems like every time that somebody new is coming on, it's like they went through your program. And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I know. I know, Abbey, you know, personally." And they're like, "What?! You know, Abbey? That's amazing."   Abbey Ashley   21:15 That's so cool. That makes me happy.   Jacques Hopkins   21:17 So, let's talk about, I want to talk about your evergreen funnel. Okay? I know, we talked about that a lot last time you're on a long time ago. And it's a basic evergreen webinar funnel? Is that a fair way to label it?   Abbey Ashley   21:31 Yeah, it is. I mean, honestly, our funnel, it does amazing. I love it, I love that we, you know, we had a funnel that, gosh, that was back in 2018, we had a funnel that was doing fine. It was making like $4,000 a month in sales. And then I went through a program by Mariah Coz where I learned her system for developing an evergreen funnel, and it was amazing. And I flipped it on, and we basically tripled our revenue with the same amount of traffic just from this funnel. And it's literally the same funnel we have now. We need to do some tweaks to it honestly, like it's, we've learned some things. It's like, "Oh, yeah, we need to do that." But we've just been hiring so much like crazy that we don't fully have the margin, but we're going to this next year, that's going to be one of the levers we pull is just kind of increasing our conversion rates even more on that funnel.   Abbey Ashley   22:25 But even that, I mean, this year for us, like if I was to put a like a word to this year, it was definitely like the year of the metrics and, you know, becoming an operational machine and starting to like to record data, and record metrics, and to do projections. And we have like an actual org chart. We know what our org chart looks like now,  what it's going to look like in three months, and then six months, and we're planning like, "Okay, based off with these projections, will we be able to pay for these people? And how much can we spend on these different areas? And what our expense caps like? How much can we spend on team this next year and having percentages for those?" So, it's definitely been the year of the metrics and starting to track things. And now that we have all that now we're seeing, oh, my goodness, look at all these areas, we can improve on now that we're actually tracking them, you know. So, I think that kind of this year was just that. It was definitely a data year, operational machine metrics year. Whereas next year, I think is going to be more of like an exponential growth year where it's, you know, taking the things that we've learned from our data, and making tweaks and testing and things like that.   Jacques Hopkins   23:33 That's really next level. You mentioned earlier that you really invest in your team more than anything else. So, to collect that data, is it more of a manual process from human or are you using actual software to do that?   Abbey Ashley   23:45 Most of its manual, I mean, we have a great bookkeeper. We love our bookkeeper, and so he lets us know how much we're spending on team, percentage wise, you know, and in all these different areas. So..   Jacques Hopkins   23:57 Are you still using Evolved? Or is it...   Abbey Ashley   23:59 Yeah.    Jacques Hopkins   23:59 Okay, so we share the same bookkeeper. Parker's been on the podcast.   Abbey Ashley   24:03 I mean, they're just the best.   Jacques Hopkins   24:05 They're great. Yeah.   Abbey Ashley   24:05 They're literally the best. I was just actually on the phone with him right before this call. He's so great. So yeah, we use Evolved for bookkeeping, and that, you know, once we got to where we couldn't do it in house anymore, and we made that transition, man, that was that was really awesome. To have a bookkeeper we could... That was kind of our level one. You know? Level two for us was coming up with a, like a project management software. So, for us, we made the switch this past year over to ClickUp and I really, really have enjoyed that. It was a learning curve for me. I'm so resistant to tech change, like it's ridiculous, but my team was driving for it. They're like, "Abbey, this is going to be so amazing." And now that I'm used to it, I'm like, "Yes!" We love our project management software now.   Abbey Ashley   24:08 Then we moved on and we created a KPI dashboard. So, we have key performance indicators for every member of the team. So, every week they're reporting on the major areas in their role. So, you know, "What is the...? How much did our list grow by? What was our goal and what was the actual?" You know. "How much? What were our conversion rates on our funnel, the goal and the actual? And so, every single person has kind of a KPI right or multiple KPIs that they're doing and then that way, and then it's literally just like black or red, right? Black, we're doing great, everything's in the black, we're fine. Red means that, "Hey, this needs some attention." Right? We're not quite hitting our goal on this KPI. And so that's where we spend some time attending to that thing. So that's been really cool, too. And we've even integrated like, our project management software. So, one of the KPIs is how many overdue tasks do you have, right? And so, we can kind of make sure that the team is keeping up with their tasks and everything like that. Yeah.   Abbey Ashley   24:33 So then step three. So, I was like, phase one... What was phase one again? But like getting the  bookkeeping, project management software, KPIs, and then now we're really working to develop like a financial dashboard and making actual projections for next year. And that was pretty much the most fun thing in the world was coming up with projections and being like, "Oh, we actually, you know, this is how much our list is growing by. This is what we should be able to do based on how well we convert our list." And we came up with numbers, and we're like, "Oh, this is actually possible. Okay, that's cool." Like, I don't know, it's just every part of it's just fun.   Jacques Hopkins   25:11 I mean, you're making me so jealous that I now understand why you're a year ahead of me. So, we're going to, I'm going to share this with this episode with my team. I'll be like, "Look, this is where we need to be in a year." Now what we're using before ClickUp? Abbey Ashley   26:43 Trello.   Jacques Hopkins   26:43 Trello. Okay, so we're on Asana now. All right. And I think... So, the last time you were in the podcast was actually a focused episode and just talking about tools. So, I think I first learned about ClickUp from you. I think you were just starting to maybe move over to it. And I wasn't really using any project management software at the time. I think I was doing a lot of spreadsheets. Like, alright, I'm going to convert all my spreadsheets over to ClickUp because Abbey recommended it. And I spent maybe four hours with it, I'm just ripping my hair out. And I'm like, screw it. My spreadsheets are better. But then Colleen comes in about three months ago, Director of Operations, right. And she is an Asana expert. So, she comes in and puts the entire company in Asana. And now using the project management software is great. But setting it up was awesome.     Abbey Ashley   27:28 Oh yeah. Well, that's the thing is that I think that we didn't switch to ClickUp because I wanted to switch to ClickUp, or I felt we needed to do it. It was my team that was like, Abbey, you need to get your stuff together. We need to get this, you know, and so they set it up. And so, I think that's perfect. Like, and I don't think it's not a like is Asana or ClickUp better. It's like, what works best for your team, and what are they going to be able to own. Because that's been a real shift that we've been trying to make this year to is this idea of Extreme Ownership. And like, you know, my team owns their areas now. And they make decisions, and they have decision making power. And they are the ones that are, you know, so if they say, we're moving to ClickUp, like, obviously, I want to hear about it and stuff like that, but for the most part, alright, you guys want to do this? Let's do it. And so that's been, yeah, that's been really, really cool. So, I think that it's not so much the what tool you're using, as is your team on board and are they going to be able to really take the ownership with it.   Jacques Hopkins   28:37 That's really cool. You mentioned the words Extreme Ownership. That's, hey, have you read that book? Jocko Willink?   Abbey Ashley   28:43 I actually haven't. No. So, I'm in I'm in a coaching program right now. It's called 2X Scale. Yeah. And it's so good. Oh my gosh. And so, they use a lot of just like these common principles. And just, it's almost like a... every, like leadership and business book you can read, they just basically make you apply the principles. So, it's almost like what they teach isn't necessarily even like, this whole new, like, secret sauce. And that's what I feel like... You know, what is this? I started this business in 2016. So, we're four years in, coming on five years. Like, I feel like at this point, I finally realized it's like, there's not really this like magic bullet. It's like, there's not like this just secret sauce that I was missing out on the whole time. It's literally just taking the ideas that work and just doing them like day in and day out, and just actually doing the thing and being consistent with it. And, and just, I don't know. And so, that's a lot of what I've been learning in that coaching program is just like, alright, here's just like, I mean, an org chart and dashboards and things like that. So...   Jacques Hopkins   29:54 Are you suggesting that this whole online business world is not that hard?   Abbey Ashley   29:58 I mean, I'm now at the point where I'm like, "Everyone needs to do this," although, I do realize that it's not necessarily conducive to every personality type. But yeah, I just like, “Come on guys, you can do this.” It's not that hard.   Jacques Hopkins   30:11 What I'm hearing from you is like, there's not these, there's not these big secrets that a few people are hiding, like, most people probably know what it takes to succeed. You just got to, you got to execute on the simple things over and over and over again.   Abbey Ashley   30:26 Yeah. And it's so funny, because like I mentioned, so I'm finally, I mean, for years, and I guess it's not that long. But like, I've been saying no to so many things, right? Like, there's so many like, "Oh, I should do this, I should do that." And it's like, "No, no, no, like, I just got it, I got to stick to the plan, stick to the plan, stick to the plan." And so now we're at the point where my team is doing so much of the work that I'm like, "Oh, I actually have margin to do something else now." And so, I am, you know, I'm starting a second business. And I'm so excited for it. But it's so funny how I'm like, I'm finding myself being, it's almost, I'm like a new entrepreneur with the knowledge of what I have. But starting from scratch again, and I, I'm going through all the same things where I'm like, Squirrel Syndrome, and like, "Ooh, maybe this course or maybe this course. And maybe I should do this, and maybe I should do this" and I'm like all over the place again, and I've just had to go back to like, nope, zero in one thing at a time. Like, you know, build my audience. Like, just go just simplify, simplify, simplify. Do it really well, consistently and this thing is going to work. But man, I get the struggle. And like a new fresh way again, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, it is really hard to just be consistent and stick to the path when you're a new entrepreneur."   Jacques Hopkins   31:43 That's well said, I mean, because look at you and your success. And you're kind of taking a step back and starting a second business now. And you're even struggling, but you got to remind yourself of those things. Now, you've mentioned two programs so far, in the short time we spent together already. And that's one thing I really admire about you is you're always learning from people that are doing bigger, more things than you. So, let's jump back to 2018, I think it was, when you first sign up for Mariah Coz's. I think that's called The Accelerator. Right?   Abbey Ashley   32:14 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   32:14 I know, multiple people have come on and said that that was a big catalyst to their success. You specifically said that changing over to the evergreen funnel that you have now that you learn from her tripled your revenue, was it?   Abbey Ashley   32:29 Yeah. Yeah. Like our funnel revenue.   Jacques Hopkins   32:33 The revenue coming from the funnel. So, what did, what did your funnel look like before?   Abbey Ashley   32:37 So, there was not really urgency or scarcity, there was just a lot of emails, and you know, the big, I mean, honestly, just adding deadlines to the funnel I think was a huge part of it too. We're big, big deadline, funnel fans. So, you know, having a really great, she kind of refined my webinar a little bit, my emails that follow up, but it I mean, it is a pretty simple process. It's the, you know, it's download my freebie, on the thank you page "Hey, here's this webinar, you can access it immediately." If they don't, I'll send them some follow up emails about the webinar. In that webinar, I pitch. So that webinar, the format of the webinar is really similar to the, it's like condensed, not quite as pushy version of the like, Expert Secrets, like ClickFunnels-webinar style. So that's at least the way that I've done my webinars - tons of social proof, tons of like, and here's all this other stuff that you get to you know - and then they have, you know, an actual deadline of when it's going to go away, and there's a timer, and it really does go away. And so that's where we have the funnel that's running all the time. And then if it ends, they have to wait till one of our live launches to purchase. So, we do two live launches a year. And so, and then we have a secondary product that they can, once they purchase, it's like, "Oh, here's a really natural upsell." So, 50% of our people who buy our program end up doing our upsell, because they just, they really go hand in hand.   Jacques Hopkins   34:09 Very, very cool. Yeah, I was, I opted in for your funnel a few weeks ago, just to get caught up on what it was looking like these days. And it really is simple. Right? And, you know, I'll have people come through my world and I'll be coaching them a little bit. And they don't have any sort of evergreen funnel set up. And I'm like, "Look, the simplest funnel is also like one of the most effective." Like a simple evergreen webinar funnel. Like, they're like, "Okay, what should the opt in be?" I'm like "The opt in is the webinar." Like it's free training. Then you take them straight to that training, don't have them schedule a time like we used to do with EverWebinar and all that.   Abbey Ashley   34:44 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   34:44 Take them straight to the free training and then it doesn't end there. Like if they don't buy you have a few days where you send out emails and then have a deadline and that's exactly what yours looks like. One thing that really jumped out at me about yours that I'm not doing with mine: You let people skip around the video even. You've got like an hour video, and I'm pretty sure they can fast, you know, skip ahead and all that. What's the thought process there? Because normally people say just, you don't want them to be able to do that.   Abbey Ashley   35:10 I mean, my methodology... I am, so again, Mariah, she's a good friend/mentor of mine. She talks about this whole idea of like, the tortoise, and the hare, right? And so, your buyers, your customers are, some of them are tortoises and some of them are hares. And so, some of them are the people that are going to, they just need time, they're going to go through your launch four or five times. And then finally, after they've been on your list for two and a half years, they take the leap, and probably after like asking 1000 questions on tap, right? They're the hares, they just really need to like take, or they're the tortoises, they need to take the time to make that decision.   Abbey Ashley   35:46 And then there's the hares. They're the people that are - and I am so a hare, oh my gosh, like, I know, like, I bought so many programs that people have contacted me afterwards and they're like, "How did you even find this? I'm not even selling this anymore. You found a way to buy it." And I'm like, I just heard about you on a podcast, and I googled the crap out of you until I found a link to buy. And that is me. So, I definitely am a, you know, like, if somebody wants to buy my thing, like buy my thing. Now, I think that there is an element of still having urgency. And that's why we don't have a, you know, you can't just go to my website and buy my course necessarily, but like, really quickly, you can find it. I mean, there's so many avenues to get to the course that way. And in fact, I need to, we have like a waitlist instead. And so, one of the things that it's on my list to do I just haven't done yet is like, basically right after somebody does the waitlist, saying like, "Oh, actually you can buy now." You know, because again, if you're a hare and you just want to buy it, then like, give them the chance. Just there you go.   Jacques Hopkins   36:54 Very interesting. Yeah. And Mariah’s program, The Accelerator, I want to say it's like a $10,000, ballpark...   Abbey Ashley   36:59 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   37:00 It's not a cheap program by any means. But my understanding about it as well, is that it's not just a course, like it's group coaching even. Did you have somebody actually, like review your funnel?   Abbey Ashley   37:12 Yeah, so when I started with her back in 2018, she had a, like, a really like, high touch program, that was, I paid a lot more for. And there were four of us in it. And so, we like I actually, like, flew up to Boston...   Jacques Hopkins   37:27 Holy smokes!   Abbey Ashley   37:27 ...and went out with her and like, did the whole, like, thing. And so that's what I did with her. So, it was a really quick turnaround. And it was a yearlong program. And so, that: she does not offer that anymore, but you know, and but I've still I've stayed in the group, and I hang out in her program still a lot. And it's your, it's the exact same information that she taught to us during that, like, it's literally the exact same exercises and stuff that's in there. So yeah, I think that it's definitely an investment. And I know that that's where I think, and I know that you have like, like your course and all of that kind of stuff too. So, I feel like it would be a really good progression for a lot of people. It's like kind of start here, then you know, develop that course, get your idea, your audience, all of that kind of stuff. Move on to evergreen engines, then once you've, you know, gone on beyond that, then there's, you know, this 2X Scale that I'm in once you're at like, a million dollars or whatever. I mean, that's at least what I've gone through.     Abbey Ashley   38:24 There are other programs out there too, but if someone's just like, "Abbey, I want to do what you did" like I would literally... You probably teach the stuff that I just kind of figured out on my own and I wish I would have had a course to go through and then you know advance on to these other programs. So that would probably be someone's like "Give me the path." That's the path I would tell people to go down.   Jacques Hopkins   38:20 Yeah, excellent. No, I go through a lot of people's funnels; the people that I know are crushing it. I go through their funnel, so you know I was going through yours not just for research for this this episode coming out but also just like "Hey, I know you're killing it. Let me see if you're doing something I'm not doing" and I'd certainly have done the same with say Mariah Coz and one thing that was interesting going through her funnel is like your testimonials throughout,  seeing you in her in her funnel talking about her program. Abbey Ashley   39:14 And then I think that there's a huge element, too, of just, man, just all the funnel and all the right strategies and all of that is great, but if you don't have the audience, I think that it's just where we just miss so much too is just pick. Like for me like we picked an organic traffic source and went all in on it. I guess technically too for us we went I would do really in depth, SEO-rich, thousand-word blog posts and put them on Pinterest, and I kind of feel like I did that a little bit more in like the wild, wild west days of Pinterest. I feel like maybe it would be a little harder, but I don't know like Pinterest to me is still just so amazing. Like I love Pinterest. We still get great results with our Pinterest strategy. And then for me, I started a Facebook group too. And so those, we just hit 50,000 members in that group. So, like we, and it just brings us so many leads. So, Facebook and Pinterest were the ones we went all in on. Right?   Jacques Hopkins   40:13 Yeah.   Abbey Ashley   40:14 And just having that good, organic strategy is amazing. And then you can... and so what we're doing is we have this rich organic strategy. And then now we're finally like, adding, so good organic audience. And awesome, you know, evergreen funnel, and then you can use the like the fuel of paid advertising to kind of add to that flame that's already going. And I think that's at least what has worked for us and I'm so glad that we did it because I had my ads account shut down earlier this year. And it's like, man, that's like Our... we didn't have a blip in sales, because we weren't really doing many ads. I was actually, I hired somebody to do ads and that was, uh, yeah, when we got shut down, and I was just like, "Meh. Okay, well, let's try this again." So, we you know, it wasn't, it was really not that big of a deal but like, um, yeah, it's, it's like, gosh, to have some kind of organic method. If I were starting all over today, I would probably do like, a good Pinterest strategy paired with either a podcast or YouTube. Like, I think that those are kind of the hot ones right now, in my opinion, to be able to grow an audience organically really quickly.   Jacques Hopkins   41:30 Yeah, I completely agree. I recommend people when they're starting out, you know that you've got to build the audience. They're... people skip that step. I don't know why. But pick one, one platform, don't pick six. Pick one: YouTube, podcast. Your audience was probably all over Pinterest, that's why it worked so well. A good strategy and the people were there, right? A lot of a lot just like stay-at-home moms, I'm guessing.   Abbey Ashley   41:53 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   41:54 I know my wife uses Pinterest a ton and so yeah, I'm completely in agreement with you there. I want to ask you a little bit about the Facebook group: You said you just cross over 50,000 people there.   Abbey Ashley   42:04 Yep.   Jacques Hopkins   42:05 That's, that's free. Do you have a separate Facebook group once somebody purchases the course?   Abbey Ashley   42:10 We do. Yeah. So, we host our communities for our paid programs on Facebook as well. So, since we have two products, each one of them has their own separate Facebook group and that's where we'll do live streams and things like that.   Jacques Hopkins   42:22 So, the free group, I for my piano audience, I just have one group for the paid members, I've always resisted creating a free one. And it's because of my evergreen funnel, right? How do you get around the fact that everybody's got a different deadline and interacting with each other in the free group?   Abbey Ashley   42:38 You know what? We just tell people, like, we don't really make it a secret. Like, it's just a, like, "Hey, we launch our course twice a year. If you missed the last launch, then you get a one time opportunity through this webinar." And someone's like, I want to join now we're like, "Cool, here's the webinar. This is how you join." And if someone's like, "Hey, that link didn't work." It's like, "Cool, because you've already been through the webinar" or like, email us, and we'll see if we can reset it for you. But it's, yeah, we're just really transparent with it. I don't know. It's not a like, this, like secret thing. I feel like.   Jacques Hopkins   43:13 It's interesting. It's amazing how far just honesty can get you, right?   Abbey Ashley   43:17 Oh, my gosh, I literally the other day, I signed up for a webinar and it was one of those, like, pick the time and it's in 15 minutes. And like, oh, there's going to there's a thousand people max on here. And she's like, literally, like, in the webinar being like, "Oh, ha-ha, Rick, that's hilarious in the comments." And I'm like, “This is not real, like, what are you doing?" Like, it's just now, like, I remember, you know, like two years ago when that was like, really, really a thing. But now it just feels so icky to me. I'm just like, "Why are you doing this? This is not real. It's so weird."   Jacques Hopkins   43:53 It got really popular. I did it for like a year and a half, not, maybe not quite to that extreme but I was using EverWebinar. People had to schedule the time slot. I never directly said it was live. And I thought that, that, just that alone would mean that what I was doing was okay. But when I switched over, I think it was the beginning of this year to a system that's very similar to yours, where it's just like you opt in and then you get the video and it plays, I actually had obviously far less complaints and then conversion rate was, actually went up.   Abbey Ashley   44:25 Yeah. Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   44:27 It's amazing.   Abbey Ashley   44:28 Yeah, it's just it's an on-demand training. Like I don't expect webinars to be live, like, I don't know.    Jacques Hopkins   44:35 But you know! But you're on the inside.   Abbey Ashley   44:37 I know. And so maybe, I don't know. I don't know.   Jacques Hopkins   44:40 Yeah. So, Facebook groups, any plans in the future to maybe move your paid groups off of Facebook?   Abbey Ashley   44:49 No way, Jose.   Jacques Hopkins   44:50 Why not? I do.   Abbey Ashley   44:52 I mean I... Do you?   Jacques Hopkins   44:54 Yeah.   Abbey Ashley   44:55 I know people who have done it and their engagement just dropped so much because they... like it's just another platform like, I won't check a group if it's not on Facebook. And I understand some people don't have Facebook, which is why we say our group is a bonus. It also means that we can remove people from the group if we need to, which we had to do in the past, because it's a bonus. It's not something you pay for. It's a bonus. So, um, and all the live streams that happen in there and everything are a bonus. And so no, it's working now and it’s, so I don't have I don't have any plans to change. It's interesting that you've switched over.   Jacques Hopkins   45:33 No, I haven't yet. I haven't yet. I'm going to.   Abbey Ashley   45:36 Oh, I was going to say, to the dark side. I'm just kidding.    Jacques Hopkins   45:38 No, I don't know.    Abbey Ashley   45:39 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins   45:40 I haven't I haven't, you know, we haven't moved over yet. So, I'll tell you, I'll tell you my vision. By the way, have you seen like, have you seen the Social Dilemma?   Abbey Ashley   45:47 I have not watched it.   Jacques Hopkins   45:49 You know what it is though, right?   Abbey Ashley   45:50 Yes, I know what it is. I just don't want to watch it.   Jacques Hopkins   45:53 Yeah, you need to watch it.   Abbey Ashley   45:54 I know. Okay, I'll do it.   Jacques Hopkins   45:56 First of all, I had these plans to move off Facebook even before watching the Social Dilemma. And if anybody's listening to this, it's just a documentary on Netflix about some of the kind of evil things that these social media companies do.   Abbey Ashley   46:08 Oh yeah. And I believe it.   Jacques Hopkins   46:10 Yeah, they don't if I could go on a whole tangent there and it's probably not wise for this particular discussion, especially since you haven't seen it. But my thing is I want people to learn piano. Like that's my goal. And I know for me, like, if I go to Facebook for a particular purpose, it gets very, very, very easy to get distracted: notifications, ads, messages, whatever. And so, if somebody has the good intention of logging in, to go to the Facebook group to interact with piano students, but then gets distracted to me that takes away from the program. There is the other side of the coin, I recognize that somebody could be on Facebook, goofing off, and then see the piano group and be like, "Oh, yeah, I got to get back to my piano lessons." I get that part of it. But to me, the more focus the better.   Jacques Hopkins   46:58 So, my vision is to have my course and community in the same place.   Abbey Ashley   47:02 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   47:03 Right. I don't want to do like a Circle or Mighty Networks, where it's like, okay, now, you've got the course over here, and then you've got your community over here. And both are separate from Facebook. I want it all in the same place. And then I want to be able to wrap that up and people access that from the web and a mobile app.   Abbey Ashley   47:18 That's pretty cool. No, I could see that. I could see that being beneficial. Let me know how it goes.   Jacques Hopkins   47:24 Keep you posted. Yeah, we're working on it right now. I keep teasing it to the audience because I won't tell them what platform I'm using.   Abbey Ashley   47:30 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins   47:30 Because it's, it's actually like I make it sound simple. But it's actually like, hardly anybody allows you to do that.   Abbey Ashley   47:37 Yeah, it's true.   Jacques Hopkins   47:38 Yeah. Where's your course hosted?   Abbey Ashley   47:41 We...   Jacques Hopkins   47:42 Teachable?   Abbey Ashley   47:43 Err, it is Teachable but we're switching. You know, I haven't publicly told anyone that.   Jacques Hopkins   47:49 What does it rhyme with? What is the new one rhyme... no, I'm just kidding.   Abbey Ashley   47:52 It rhymes with hajabi.   Jacques Hopkins   47:57 So many, so many possibilities. It could be wujabi, it could be yajabi. So, the platform we won't name has community built in.   Abbey Ashley   48:09 Huh. Interesting.   Jacques Hopkins   48:11 Can you tell us why you're moving over?   Abbey Ashley   48:13 Honestly, it was a, yeah, two things. Number one, again it was my team, my Senior Director of Product said, we need to switch this. Here's all the reasons why. And she's like, this is how we'll do it. She came up with a plan. And I said, flip the switch. Um, the biggest thing for us even though it's going to be it's.. we're getting really close to switching over. The biggest thing is that we use SamCart for our payment processing, and Teachable just won't integrate with SamCart, despite our many, many requests not to not for at least cancellations. It's fine for getting people in but if somebody does fail out, or you know, we let them cancel for whatever reason, or a membership where we're having, you know, more cancellations, because it's, it is a cancel anytime thing; we still have to do that manually, like, I mean, there's some apps that can do some of it, but it's just like, it literally could be like one click of a button on Kajabi where we can do the cancellation. So yeah, that's going to free up a lot of our time because we, you know, we're letting in so many students a month that obviously, our refund rate isn't huge or cancellation rate isn't huge but the amount that we do have, we're just we're going to save time on that cancellation process. So that's why we're switching   Jacques Hopkins   49:34 Kajabi is a good choice. I've done a deep dive. The past like six months, I've researched all of them because I want to not only make the best choice for my piano students, but also share these findings with the audience too. And so, I think you're making a wise choice there. Not a huge fan of teachable. I've actually heard about a lot of people switching off of it lately to various platforms.   Abbey Ashley   49:54 You know, and this is where you know, my new business is going to be, you know, more tech. It's, you know, a SAS marketplace. And the more than I'm learning and observing, and I mean, this is good for my own business too, and I don't know if I do this as well as I should but gosh, i

Thanksgiving is behind us and the end of the year approaching fast! Our guest today is Chris Liepe, who is all about helping people find their voice through his online singing course. Chris had some great insights on the legacy and long-term thinking that make so much sense to consider at this introspective time of year. He also has had some unique success with a very unusual approach to ads and marketing. We get into all that and much more in the interview, so buckle up and enjoy! “Find a mentor, and do it! Just go for it.” – Chris Liepe In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) Did David do his homework? (2:29) A post-mortem on some live piano webinars I recently did (8:23) Thoughts on pricing model experiments (10:09) An update on my new platform (12:22) Setting the stage for today’s interview (12:56) How Chris got into the online course world (25:00) An unusual strategy that yielded surprising results (29:34) Drilling down into different ads and outcomes (33:44) Active vs. passive interactions (35:12) How Chris’s strategy is evolving (39:27) Building a strong CTA and figuring out what to promote where (43:16) Walking through Chris’s funnel (47:30) Comparing scarcity and framing (55:05) What I love about Chris’s approach to value (59:16) Pricing considerations (1:01:26) Tools, teams, and content (1:07:46) The importance of mindset (1:15:52) Asking the right questions (1:17:17) Thinking about legacy (1:19:05) Hindsight on branding choices Chris made early on (1:23:53) Feedback from Chris’s students (1:27:23) Can anyone learn to sing? (1:34:24) Advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:37:40) Where to find Chris online (1:38:19) Thoughts on being willing to do something embarrassing (1:39:46) Mindset and marketing (1:41:48) Winning long-term customers (1:42:18) “Ring the bell” moments (1:47:19) Go-to karaoke songs (1:48:39) Learning from other course creators + leveraging YouTube (1:51:36) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Chris’s website Discover Your Voice Resources and Recommendations Elementor Teachable JamPlay Fix This Next Episode 104 Granola Face Skincare Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins 00:02 Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course and they're making a living doing it. Jacques Hopkins 00:12 But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses. Jacques Hopkins 00:24 Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins, and this is the Online Course Show. Jacques Hopkins 00:33 And off we go, welcome aboard glad you're with us. This is the Online Course Show and I'm your host, Jacques Hopkins. And here with me is our cohost. What's going on Dr. K? David Krohse 00:42 Dude, I'm still up here shivering from my cold shower this morning. Jacques Hopkins 00:45 You did your homework? David Krohse 00:47 Yeah, but I left it till the last minute. So, I'm talking about like, 40 minutes ago, Jacques Hopkins 00:51 Alright, a little context... David Krohse 00:53 Worst idea ever. Jacques Hopkins 00:54 A little context. I gave you some homework last week on the last episode. There's a lot of benefits to cold showers. So, what did you do? Which protocol did you do? Just a few seconds? David Krohse 01:05 Uhm no. I tried to do yours and so just all cold. And it's pretty cold up here in Iowa. I think the water might be colder up here than down where you're at. But... Jacques Hopkins 01:16 Probably. David Krohse 01:16 So basically, yeah, I mean, I just to be totally honest, today, like my head and face are clean and my armpits are clean. The rest was like water only. I was just like, I'm done. Jacques Hopkins 01:22 And you feel amazing now, don't you? David Krohse 01:30 No. I'm like, my teeth are still chattering. No, no, but I will say like, I mean, it was kind of this PTSD moment. So, I mean, my sport, I was “Swimmer Dave,” I mean, that was who I was up through all of high school. And my high school swimming team, we had practice 5:45 every morning, three days a week. We had to jump into this pool and our coach had to have kept it at like 65 or something. So, four years of jumping into 65-degree pool three days a week, and at 5:45 in the morning, it was like, it was a bad, bad memory of those moments. Jacques Hopkins 02:08 Okay, so it sounds like this is not going to be part of your regular routine, but you tried it. Now you can say you've done it. David Krohse 02:14 Yes. Jacques Hopkins 02:15 Okay. David Krohse 02:15 And maybe the day will be easier. Like you say. Jacques Hopkins 02:18 You got to keep us posted because you just did it, right? There are advantages that are beyond actually being in the cold water. But let's move forward. Let's talk a little bit about courses. I have a little update I want to share with the audience. Last time I mentioned that I had some upcoming live webinars. Sure, you remember that. Well, it didn't go so well. David Krohse 02:39 Alright, I jumped on for a little bit of the stack in one of them. Jacques Hopkins 02:43 Okay. So, I'll say the first one didn't go so well. When I do live webinars, I like to do two to cover, really, all time zones. So, I did one in the evening and then the next day kind of midday. The first one did not go so well. And it didn't go so well purely from the metric of zero sales actually. None. No sales. The second one, I had four sales. What's the difference? There was actually less people on the second, okay. So, here's a huge lesson learned and I, I mean, I'm not sure why I did this, it was kind of a silly mistake, but let me ask you this, David, when you are testing something, how many variables should there be? David Krohse 03:23 Well, ideally, just one. Jacques Hopkins 03:24 Ideally, one, right? You want as few variables as possible because if you have multiple variables, then you don't really know what, either, what worked or what didn't work, right? And the problem with my first webinars, I had two variables instead of one. Okay so a little more context, I was preselling kind of my new offer. I'm redoing my course right now I have a couple of new courses, new features to my offer. Not everything's ready yet, but I wanted to presell it, get a little market validation. So, I kind of packaged everything up and gave it a new name for the package and a new price point, $997. I've never sold my piano course for that much. And this was a test to see if I could sell it for that much and if it was worth it, and how people responded to that. Jacques Hopkins 04:10 So, I had a whole new stack with that price. But I also really redid how I presented the webinar too. Okay, so I presented it for the first time I was live and on camera the entire time. The problem with that is I couldn't read from a script at all. So, is it winged or wanged? I wanged the whole thing. I winged the whole thing. I'm not sure which was proper English, if either one of those is David Krohse 04:36 it's definitely not wanged. Jacques Hopkins 04:38 I'm going with it, David. I'm going to say wanged the whole thing. But I've presented this so many times that I thought I had it, but I didn't. I didn't have it. I left out so much good stuff, when I got to the point where I was at my keyboard I didn't execute it as near as well as I had when I prerecorded it. I used Webinar Jam, which allows you to do what they call video injections. So normally when I do a live webinar, there's several parts where I inject a video, and I'm still there, I'm still watching and looking at the comments go through but I'm able to pre-do a few things, and it makes it a lot easier on me. It also allows me some really nice built-in, like, water breaks. And I'm just talking for two, two and a half hours straight. Jacques Hopkins 05:23 So, I finished the webinar on I think it was a Wednesday night maybe and didn't make any sales. It had been a while since I hadn't made a sale on a webinar. But it was weird. I wasn't really, I wasn't discouraged or anything. I was just, I was very intent on figuring out what the problem was. And I was like, man, you goofball! You change the price, but you also completely changed what you did. And so, I went back and watched my last live webinar that night from April and watched it. And I was like, this is so much better than what I just did, like so much better, so much more compelling. And I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody watching, it's like, I want to buy this so much better based on this presentation than what I just did. So that night, I was like, "Okay, I've got to go back for tomorrow's webinar, I've got to go back and present it exactly like I did in April, other than the offer and the price." And I did and I made four sales, even though there was only like 60 people on. I think there was 90 on the first one, 60 on the second one. So, what do you think about all that? David Krohse 06:25 Yeah, it's very interesting. So, the four sales that second day, were at that $997 price point? Jacques Hopkins 06:30 Yes. I think three of them were the full price and then one of them was a payment plan. David Krohse 06:36 Okay. Jacques Hopkins 06:36 But it was all for that big, big package. David Krohse 06:39 I mean, that's double your current top-level package, correct? Jacques Hopkins 06:43 Right. Current top-level package is $497. David Krohse 06:46 Yeah. Jacques Hopkins 06:47 Interesting, though, right? David Krohse 06:48 So, what do you think going forward? Like, what... Jacques Hopkins 06:50 Well, I have a plan going forward and that's a little bit different than this. But the main takeaway I wanted for the audience is that, you know, I just one thing I do with this podcast is I just peel back the curtain, I'm very transparent about how I run and the things I'm doing with my online piano course. And people seem to get value out of that. So, the main lesson is, hey, when you're testing something new, one variable, you goofball! And that's, that was my problem. Jacques Hopkins 07:15 Going forward, I'm just going to do a basic split test. So, I have my funnel in place that's working, that's still making sale, I mean, it's made sales this morning. So, I'm going to create a new version of my evergreen webinar, and sales video sales page, and some of the emails that go out. And when somebody opts into my funnel, 50%, will go down the existing path unchanged, 50% will go down the new path. And with the new path of the funnel, I'm going to change as little as possible, I'm just going to change anything related to the offer and the price. And then let that run for a month, six weeks, collect the data, right? And it's not as simple as necessarily quantity of sales or even revenue, you got to look at the big picture, I'm expecting revenue to actually be similar. I mean, I would expect to get less students at the higher price point. But then it's like, how engaged and interactive are those new people and just really, really look at it and make a good decision on the price going forward. I've never tried to sell it at $997 before. And if the answer is no, $497 is better, I'm good with that answer, but I won't know until I fully test it. David Krohse 08:22 Okay. I mean, do you want to know what I basically thought you were heading toward as far as the main options? Jacques Hopkins 08:28 Yeah, go ahead. David Krohse 08:29 I mean, I thought that the lowest package was going to be the $497. That would include, like, let's say, three or six months in your community, and then I thought there would be like a $700 or $800 package that would have lifetime access to the community and all the extra courses. Jacques Hopkins 08:50 Yeah, so I pitched the, the... David Krohse 08:53 And I thought, actually, you were going to start to charge for your community. If somebody just bought the six month one that you might actually charge. Jacques Hopkins 08:59 Yeah, it's a fair point, a fair idea. It's something I've flirted with. But that's certainly more complicated. And I'm not quite ready to try that yet. That might be something I try down the road. But right now, we just want to see can I offer something, can I offer a piano learning experience that people will buy and use and succeed with at $997? I actually made sales, which is good. Now I'm ready to go to the next step, which is to split test it with my existing working funnel - evergreen. And then once I come out of that, not to say I won't, you know, ideally, I would always kind of have a split test of some sort going. And that's, that's it's easy to get lazy with that and I certainly have but doing something where you're kind of charging for the community, charging for the interaction more on a monthly basis subscription, that could be something I split-test down the road as well. David Krohse 09:46 Gotcha. Well, I mean, I definitely feel like I mean, the way that I look at the price is that anybody that can spend $500 on a piano course can spend $1000. So... Jacques Hopkins 09:55 Theoretically. David Krohse 09:56 I mean, it's definitely... What's that? Jacques Hopkins 09:57 Theoretically, but then where do you draw the line? David Krohse 10:00 Right. Jacques Hopkins 10:02 That's a little bit of a slippery slope, right? If they can pay $1000, they could pay $2000. David Krohse 10:07 Right. So, are these new people going straight into your new platform? Jacques Hopkins 10:10 No. David Krohse 10:12 No? Are you ready to announce that? Jacques Hopkins 10:14 No, I'm close, man. We're still, we're still building it up. People are constantly asking me, what is the new platform? No, I feel, I feel pretty good about it at this point. I think one of the reasons people keep asking me is some people are either new and want to make sure they're starting with the right platform for them, or other people are actually thinking about switching. So, they want to see what I'm going with, because they know I've looked into all of them at a very deep level. And so, I feel bad that people are maybe waiting to launch or waiting to do certain things until I announce, but I want to make it clear that the platform that I pick, just because I pick it, doesn't mean it's the right fit for you, especially if you're more on the beginner side of things. I have just about 6,000 total students, getting more every day. And I've been doing this for almost eight years as well. And so, I'm, what I'm using is actually not going to be a good thing for beginners. It's not Teachable. It's not Kajabi. Those are great for beginners. It's not one of those. And if you're a beginner, then look into one of those. There's some others. MembersPRO is great. I'm not using MembersPRO. MembersPRO is great, though. There's some, man, there's a lot out there. A lot of people are using like Podia, and New Zenler and even Kartra - I have been hearing a lot of people using Kartra lately. David Krohse 11:34 Sure. Jacques Hopkins 11:36 There's a lot of good ones out there. And none of those are the ones I'm using but... Within a couple of weeks, I'll actually say what I'm using, and we'll be rolling new students onto the new platform, probably early January. David Krohse 11:51 All right. Well, at some point, you'll have to tell us your top pick, like for the two different types of people like... Jacques Hopkins 11:57 Yeah. David Krohse 11:57 ...number one, somebody that already has an audience. So, we're pretty sure that they're going to like, they already have the ball rolling, and then somebody that's just truly like bootstrapping mode just starting, doesn't have the audience yet. Jacques Hopkins 12:09 Perfect. David Krohse 12:10 You should give us those two recommendations, and actually tell us what you would choose if you were in those shoes. Jacques Hopkins 12:17 I love it. Let's plan for that in a couple of weeks. We'll do that for sure. Okay, well, let's go ahead and transition to our main conversation of the day. I got to talk with Chris Liepe, fellow music niche person. And he has found success with his online course very fast, very, very, very fast. Did a lot of lot of things right. Also got a little lucky with something that's really cool. So, so we'll talk about it as usual, you and I will talk about it on the back end. So, without further ado, here is the full conversation between myself and Chris Liepe. Jacques Hopkins 12:57 Hey, Chris, welcome to the Online Course Show. Chris Liepe 13:00 Thank you. Jacques Hopkins 13:01 My understanding is that you, you haven't really been doing this all that long and actually found success pretty quickly. Like, what's your background and when did you get the idea to start an online course? Chris Liepe 13:13 Yeah, well, I've been, I've been teaching online for a long time. I started back in 2009, working with a company called JamPlay. And I was one of their early instructors teaching guitar. And that was kind of funny too, because prior to working with them, I had worked at a big recording studio in Indiana. It was the recording wing of Sweetwater Sound, which is, they're the biggest music technology retailer out there. And I was one of their lead studio engineers. And I got that job right out of college. And one of my main jobs was jingle writing, as well as producing other acts which included working with lots of vocalists. And during that time, I honed my vocal abilities, you know, like crazy there. Also got to play a lot of guitar, do a lot of writing. And, you know, that was a great job, but it was far away from where I grew up, which is in Colorado, and my wife and I really wanted to get back to Colorado. So, we moved back there, and I met through some mutual friends, the guys who were starting JamPlay, and they had started a year earlier, and we're looking for guitar teachers. And up to that point, I taught guitar, you know, in music stores and kind of at side gig kinds of things. But I hadn't done any sort of video instruction. As a matter of fact, the Sweetwater guys tried to get me to do some of that stuff on their, you know, on their platform, and I was just horrible at it. I was nervous and I had too many people feeding me ideas at the same time and just wasn't, wasn't good. So, I kind of considered that a failure there. But when JamPlay asked me to do it, it's like I could use some extra money. So, I started teaching video guitar lessons for them and they ended up putting them on their subscription website. And this was back in 2009. And I did that for three years for them. I was one of their main teachers. And then I came on full time with them, helping them produce other guitar players’ courses. And so, I would, I would film them, I would help them come up with ideas, and I got to work with some awesome guitar players, and you know, Brent Mason, Phil Keaggy, lots of, you know, guitars from famous bands, as they started to do their artists series, I was the guy heading all that up, and helping these guys who are not teachers come up with cool things to do for JamPlay. Chris Liepe 15:41 And then, about three years after I went full time, JamPlay was looking pretty seriously at selling their company. And I was like, man, you know, I don't own any of this company and I've put in a lot of time, I feel like I've really helped build this place. And I was seeing a bit more of the online climate, you know, I mean, more and more people were doing their own courses, and a good friend of mine, David Wallimann, who I met through JamPlay, had already done his own website, and has already started his own YouTube channel. And we had kept up a little bit over the years, but it was at a live event that we were doing for JamPlay, he had let me know that, you know, some of the things he was doing really took off. And it was at that point I was I just told myself, man, now's the time, I've got to, I've got to do this. Chris Liepe 16:36 And so, I put in my notice at JamPlay, I started doing part time stuff for them. And I was doing other side work primarily in radio voiceover and radio production. And so, I leaned on that for a while and reached out to David Walliman, who generously said, "Hey, you know, if you want to do a course, together, we'll collaborate, and we can, we can launch it to my list. And you know, you're well known from JamPlay. And you don't have a list yet, but I think this could be good for me and good for you." So, we did, we did an ear training course together. And this was, at the time when, when David Walliman's traffic was just really high in terms of YouTube subscriber ads, and his list was doing great, and his course was doing really well. And we launched this course as one of his first non-evergreen launches. And it did really, really well. And it made both of us really excited. Chris Liepe 17:30 And so shortly after that, I started my own YouTube channel. Of course, I had nothing except for the presence on JamPlay's YouTube channel, which wasn't really all that regular. But I said, "Okay, I'm going to do two videos a week." And initially, I launched the channel, as I'm going to do guitar video a week, a voice video per week, and a recording tips video per week. Or those are going to be my three videos, and I was going to do two videos a week but rotate between those. And I started in February of 2019, I officially launched the channel, and it did terribly. Chris Liepe 18:08 It was, you know, I worked really hard on a video and get, you know, a hundred views or less, even with, you know, the little bit of a list that I had started based on the work I'd done with Wallimann. You know, every time I'd email the list, I'd get a bunch of unsubscribes. And you know, the list was shrinking. The videos were not doing well. And even after, you know, a few months, I was struggling, because I'd spent so much time on the videos and not, I wasn't getting good response. And I was running out of ideas. Already. Really discouraged. Chris Liepe 18:45 And that previous fall, I had created the first version of Discover Your Voice, which is now my flagship course offering. And I offer a lot of different packages, additional packs that come along with Discover Your Voice now as well. But I had made that first version of it and we'd done a small launch, an affiliate-based launch to David Wallimann's list at that point. And so, I had that already in some form of existence. And it was designed very much at the type of person that I would teach at JamPlay and consequently the same type of person that was on David Wallimann list, because he was very guitar-oriented. Chris Liepe 19:31 And so, I had that course, I had my YouTube videos that were not doing well, and I was ready to give up during the summer of 2019. Then my family and I were looking to move houses and we, were under contract on a house. We had gone out to see some friends and I just did not have peace about moving this other house. It didn't have an immediate studio solution. So, we're going to have to move in and I was going to have to, in the midst of, you know, trying to get into YouTube and be, you know, my own thing, we, were going to move. And that just, it wasn't working in my mind, although I love the house. And so, I ended up, we ended up backing out of the contract last minute. And I had this, you know, I had money saved for the down payment. And we, were, I was frustrated at that point. And YouTube videos aren't doing well, I have to stay in this house. And so, I thought, you know, I'm going to dump some money on some videos that I've already done that aren't, you know, they're not that successful, but they're the most successful on my channel. They each had, you know, upper hundreds in the views. And one of the videos that I did that spring, I did a cover of Chris Cornell's The Day I Tried to Live, or Sound Garden's The Day I Tried to Live. And then right after that, I did a video on how to sing like Chris Cornell, which it was one of those throwaway videos where I decided that after doing this cover that I would, you know, do this thing took me 12 minutes to make and, and just put it up and see what happens. And it was really a video of 12 minutes of me doing dying cat noises. And it is talking about how this dying cat noise can be used as a gateway to unlock things in your voice. And it had several 100 views. And then I had another one, which was how to scream, yell and sing aggressively without hurting your voice. Those two videos done pretty, pretty good for my channel, at least. At that time, it had around 500-600 subs. And so, I said, "Okay, I'm going to run Facebook ads, and I don't even care, I'm not going to point to my course, I'm not going to... I just want people to see these videos. You know, if more people saw these videos, they would like me, and they would, you know, subscribe to my channel, and then maybe I'd sell a few courses. Chris Liepe 21:58 So, all the videos, I went back, and I pasted a link to my course, even the ones that had nothing to do with, with voice lessons. And I ran those ads. And I ran them for about three weeks or so. And then I started checking the analytics on YouTube. And the Chris Cornell video had just gone exponentially up in terms of views and audience participation and comments. And way more than the ad was suggesting that it should. I mean, I was definitely getting a boost from this external source. It was Facebook, pointing to YouTube, and just an ad saying, "Hey, watch this video." That's it. Then I also noticed a week later that the aggressive vocal one had started to do the same thing. And even more so. And I got an email the week after that. So, this was late August from Google saying, "Shh, don't tell anybody right now but we're going to feature your channel for 24 hours as a creator on the rise. And it's going to be on the front page of the YouTube trending section for 24 hours." That's it. And I... The first thing I did was I called David Wallimann. I was like, "What does this mean?" I did... I have no idea. I couldn't even imagine, you know, I tried to get less excited because, you know, you just you just never know. And David was he said, "Oh, you know, I bet you'll shoot up really, really quick. This is really neat." So, I just, I got busy. And I started filming extra videos. So, I could, because I had not been all that did, I still done my two videos a week, but I hadn't really done vocal stuff. It was, I was in the midst of a pivot, because I've done vocals, guitar and recording and nobody seemed to care. And then these two vocal videos really took off. So, it's like, "Okay, I got it, I got to do this." Chris Liepe 23:44 So, I, I filmed a bunch of videos. And at that point, I had also gotten this really bad cold. So, I was trying to film in the midst of having a cold in the midst of this. So, I shot up from, you know, five 600 subscribers to 30,000 subscribers, within two months, I believe it was. And because I already had my links, I already had my funnel, my email funnel design, I already had my, you know, the course at least the first version of it there. I started selling courses. And the courses came in, I mean really, really well for someone, and I think that a lot of that was just that the growth was so strong. And that's how I got started. And so, I really went from selling, you know, a few courses per month to having you know, in August was you know, that few courses per month. And then in September, I completely replaced all other forms of income and it became my main focus. Jacques Hopkins 24:47 September 2019. Chris Liepe 24:48 September of 2019. Yes. Jacques Hopkins 24:51 Yeah, not, not this past September. Okay. Chris Liepe 24:53 No. No, a year ago pretty much or a little over a year. Jacques Hopkins 24:56 This is amazing. This is amazing. Congratulations on... Chris Liepe 24:58 Thank you. Jacques Hopkins 24:59 ...on all of that. That is such a cool sequence of events when you were talking about, you know, you're about to give up on the YouTube channel, you're like, let me just throw some money at it. Of course, I'm thinking, "Okay, he's going to spend money on YouTube ads." And then you started saying Facebook, I'm like, "Okay, so he's going to upload the videos to Facebook and run ads there." But you literally pay for ads, from Facebook, to YouTube. I've never heard anybody do that before. Chris Liepe 25:21 Yeah, and I didn't even upload the videos to Facebook, right? I just pasted a YouTube link with a little write up that was stating a problem. You know, well with these first two videos, I didn't really even know what I was doing. I have kind of a funny story about that because I had run a couple ads before that, I mean I did not understand how Facebook advertising worked at all. And I did a cover of the Star-Spangled Banner for the Fourth of July in the US. And it was an acapella version of me doing this. So, me doing the bass and the, you know, all the high notes and stuff like that. But four-part harmony, just me. And I was really proud of this video, and I thought, "Oh, I'll run an ad on it." And I didn't understand how the cost per click and demographic targeting and everything. So, I ended up setting up the algorithm wrong on the Facebook ad pointing to this video, which started a little bit late. So, it didn't even start like on the Fourth of July, it started after the Fourth of July. And nobody in the US saw it. It was really like everybody in the Middle East saw this video of me performing the national anthem. And it just was, it was you know, that was discouraging, but kind of funny too, in retrospect. Chris Liepe 26:27 So, when I did these other videos, I at least had enough wherewithal to, I ran two different versions of each video, or of each ad. One was targeted at a US audience only. And one was targeted at a worldwide audience leaving out areas that I didn't think would be interested in the course. So just simply a YouTube link going over watching and that's, it was careless, but I think it worked. Jacques Hopkins 26:52 Well, it worked but it indirectly worked from what I'm hearing. And I'd love to get clarification there. Because there's plenty of people that are going to be listening to this that are struggling with YouTube, like you were and I don't necessarily think, "Hey, a Facebook ad to a YouTube video is the solution." I think that it was an amazing sequence of events for you. And correct me if I'm wrong, but would it be true to say that the Facebook ads themselves were not profitable? It's just that... Chris Liepe 27:18 No. Jacques Hopkins 27:18 ...the Facebook ads then bumping up the traffic to YouTube is what then led to Google wanting to feature you and then that's what ultimately turned everything profitable. Chris Liepe 27:28 Yeah, absolutely. And I just felt like I needed something. And, you know, I had lots of friends, you know, David Wallimann, he had been doing his YouTube channel for, you know, almost a decade... Jacques Hopkins 27:41 Right. Chris Liepe 27:41 ...when, maybe even longer before I got into it. And his growth has been, you know, this awesome, steady... Jacques Hopkins 27:50 Yes. Chris Liepe 27:51 ...loyal, you know, thing. And I knew I was getting into the game late. And I thought I just need something, you know, I mean, David can, I can guest on David's channel, but I don't really know anybody else. And I need some vehicle to show people what I'm doing. And since YouTube wasn't given me any love, I thought, "Well, I'll just, I'll just pay for it." You know, take that risk. And it was expensive, but it was kind of like, I was telling a guy, as I was getting into this, you know, lots of people have hobbies that are really expensive, you know, woodworking or... Jacques Hopkins 28:26 Golf. Chris Liepe 28:26 ...you know, golf... Jacques Hopkins 28:28 Buying airplanes. Chris Liepe 28:29 ...you know, car collecting, whatever, you know, and these things initially are not profitable at all, right? And I so I told this, this friend that, you know, YouTube is a hobby. I've got this studio down there, I've got, you know, at the time, I had my basic income needs covered from, you know, contract work that I was doing and part time work from JamPlay. And, and so I thought, you know, this is just going to be an expensive hobby for a little bit. And instead of buying, you know, tools or cars or golf clubs, I don't play golf anyway, but you know, that kind of thing. It was going to be Facebook ads, and it was going to take time and it was going to take money. And it didn't, I mean I still I still do that same thing. I'm scaling back on my Facebook ad approach now in that way, but I still run Facebook ads. They're still very expensive. But it does it, it fueled and continues to fuel the business. Jacques Hopkins 29:21 That's a, it's a very interesting mindset to have behind the paying for traffic. I haven't heard anybody put it quite that way before where it's like, this is my hobby, you know, and other hobbies cost money. Now, it makes sense. But why wouldn't you have done YouTube ads? Why did you go Facebook ads instead of YouTube ads? Chris Liepe 29:41 Interestingly enough, after the success of the Facebook ads, the following spring, I started to run YouTube ads and, and literally, you know, promote a video that had something interesting and then I also did some, I also did a short video that was basically saying, "Hey, come check out my YouTube channel if you want to learn how to sing" in a little bit more eloquent way with some shots of the things I do on YouTube to try to get people fired up to, to do it, and that they should come check out the channel. And that was the only ad for a while it was, you know, you click on a YouTube video about something and you have me coming up saying, "Hey, I'm not selling you anything, I just want you to come watch my YouTube channel." That's all I did. Chris Liepe 30:20 And then I ran another campaign, which was pointing directly to the opportunity to request an invitation to my course, and that's something we can get into later. My course is only available by invite. And the YouTube thing didn't have near the impact that I felt like the Facebook approach did. And my theory is this: With a Facebook ad, you're going through and you're, you're scrolling through your feed, and you're looking for something to engage in. You aren't currently engaged in any one specific thing, but you're looking for something to engage in. Maybe it's the picture of the hamburger that your friend took, maybe it's some vacation that another family took that you want to learn about, or maybe you're looking for something to do, and you're bored. And you come across a video with a neat thumb, and you happen to be a singer or recording guy, and oh, "I'm going to click on that." Pulls you out of Facebook sends you over to YouTube, and you have chosen, you've chosen to watch that video. And so, you're going to engage in it at least to some degree. And then if you like what you see in the first minute or so you might keep watching, but you chose it. With YouTube ads, you do not choose them. The only initial call to action is that you skip it. Right? Chris Liepe 31:39 So, with Facebook ads, my potential viewers were being asked to choose to watch. So, they chose, and they would go over and watch. With YouTube ads, if they were going to engage in my video, they didn't have to do anything, they didn't have to go over to my channel, they would just sit there and not skip the ad and then eventually skip it, you know, or they'd click the learn more, but in order to actually engage with me, they weren't required to do anything. So even if they really liked my video, they'd watch it. You know, the YouTube videos got really good views, but it wouldn't kick them over to the channel. Because inherently we as humans, especially when we're sitting there on our phones in the evening, scrolling through something to do, we're lazy. So, YouTube ads did not take advantage of the fact that people could choose to watch me and then go over to my channel. Even YouTube itself, if they were engaged in my, in my video, my video ad didn't go to my channel. So, they weren't going to subscribe, they weren't going to check out other videos, they were going to skip after that video ended and watch the video they actually wanted to watch. And this has been true. I still run YouTube ads only for the course, though, requesting an invitation to the course. But I don't think they work for what I was wanting to do, which is traffic. They have not worked. It's not an I don't think I know from looking at the, the analytics and looking at the, you know, external traffic on Google Analytics, they don't work for generating traffic, like the Facebook approach that I took did. Jacques Hopkins 33:08 Well, it's a very interesting theory about the user actually choosing and clicking on it, whereas it's an interesting take to say, you know, the YouTube ad the call to action, or the first call to action is basically skip ad. Right? Chris Liepe 33:22 Right. Jacques Hopkins 33:22 But I would push back to you on only one point there is that there's really my understanding is I think there's four different types of YouTube ads, actually. And before we get into that, this style of marketing and advertising, I don't remember the exact technical terms, but I think the words like active and passive will probably suffice for this conversation. But when I first succeeded with advertising, I think sometime in 2017, probably, I was like, you know, Facebook ads hasn't really worked. It's like Google when people do Google searches, right? Not even YouTube but Google search. They're like they're actively searching for how to play piano. Like, why wouldn't I want an ad right at the top... Chris Liepe 34:03 Right. Jacques Hopkins 34:03 ...and to give people access to something, or answers and solutions to exactly what they're searching for versus Facebook, where you're literally having to interrupt what they're doing? Chris Liepe 34:13 Right. Jacques Hopkins 34:13 And so, I initially found great success with Google ads because I was jumping in front of people that were searching for exactly what I had to offer. Chris Liepe 34:20 Right. Jacques Hopkins 34:21 And, and I would guess that, you know, it's some kind of active marketing, whereas Facebook, you're, you're, they're not necessarily searching for how to play piano, you've got to catch their attention. Chris Liepe 34:31 Right. And that's a really good point. What I'm doing with Google is specifically video ads at the beginning of videos currently. Jacques Hopkins 34:40 Which are the ones that have that quote, unquote, call to action to skip. Chris Liepe 34:44 Right. Jacques Hopkins 34:44 But what about the ones that appear, like, there's ones where they could go to YouTube and type in how to play piano and then there could be an ad at the top? That would be somebody choosing to click on a YouTube ad. Chris Liepe 34:55 Absolutely. Yeah, I've not experimented there yet. Definitely. Between That and then the SEO style ads, right where you're not even in YouTube, you're just in Google, and you have a paid ad that that comes up, those are on my list for sure. And the last two months of my business has been continue to experiment with different types of advertising. And I've gone away a little bit from the let's just get traffic, to let's go directly to the course. Or my course offerings, my website, ChrisLiepe.com. Chris Liepe 35:34 And what's interesting is, you know, when we talk about list addition, and, you know, building your email list, this approach of, you know, paying for Facebook ads to point to my YouTube, and then get people to subscribe to YouTube, on my YouTube videos, every single one of my YouTube videos from August 2019 until now, every single one has a call to action within the first 30 seconds, and the last 30 seconds that encourages people to go to the lead magnet, "Hey, the things that we're going to be working on in this video are somewhat advanced. And if you want to learn how to sing, like some of the ways that I'm going to show you in this video, click the link below and join my free voice course." In the very end recap, "Hey, I hope you enjoyed this video. Again, if you want to take your voice to another level and let me help you rebuild your voice from the ground up, click the link below and join my free vocal course." Every. Single. One. of my videos does that. Chris Liepe 36:32 And I've had conversations with other YouTube guys who you know, they're doing affiliate, you know, they got microphones and they've got ,you know, software, and they've got all sorts of other things that they link to in their video info. And I don't do that currently, I may do that eventually. But what I noticed with this system is that I was creating very, very warm leads to my email. You know, not that I will not pursue, and I am in the process of pursuing some of these other forms of advertising. But even in doing that, so far over the last two months, the leads that I generate from that type of advertising, where they go directly to my website, they're cold. They're much colder. So, I have averaged for a whole year, well over 100 emails per day into my, into my list, my list is currently at around 25,000. And I clean it every month, like I get rid of the cold, I save them off and clean them every month so that things remain fairly, fairly warm. But the engagement from the list, the amount of people who join the free course, and then elect to request an invitation into the Discover Your Voice environment or suite of courses has been well beyond, has gone well beyond the expectations that I would have had for a list or channel of my size. And I think that the, this lead-warming process that I kind of stumbled upon, I think it's worked really well. And it's, I have sold some courses off of the, the direct to website ads, but they are exponentially less than those who are warmed up. I mean, the number one sort of comment that I get is, "Aw man, I've been following your YouTube channel for a little while. I just I love what you do. Thank you so much for giving all your time to helping me improve my voice. I just had to sign up for the course." And that brings in... Jacques Hopkins 38:29 The free course or the paid course? Chris Liepe 38:31 Well free course but they can't get to the paid course in any other way than going to the free course. So, there's they're specifically talking about the paid course at that point. Jacques Hopkins 38:38 Okay. Chris Liepe 38:39 Like, I'm really excited to be here, you know, I'll get in the course. You know? Because I have a little forum in there. And that's the, the general story. "I was so impressed with what happened with my voice on YouTube, just on your YouTube videos, that I signed up for the free course and my mind was blown in three days. And then I just decided that, Okay, it's time it's time for me to join this 12-week journey, Discover Your Voice and really take my voice to the next level." It's this, this idea that we are we're giving away and we're providing so much value to people who aren't giving us any money that ultimately by the time they get presented with an offer from you. They are they trust you and appropriately so and are excited to continue a relationship with you as opposed to start a relationship with you. Jacques Hopkins 39:25 I mean, I agree completely, it makes total sense to me. You know, my recommended steps for people to start an online course business is not step one, make the online course, step two run ads to it by any, by any means. Chris Liepe 39:37 Right. Jacques Hopkins 39:38 My first advice is if you don't have an audience, you don't have a list, like ,you... You're talking about how you're getting started getting him a list, right? You started teaming up with David, who by the way, that's who recommended you to come on and he's been on this podcast a couple of times. He's one of my favorite... Chris Liepe 39:52 It's great. Jacques Hopkins 39:53 ...YouTube success stories. But I recommend people get started, they got to start building the audience and I pick one platform and put out content on a consistent schedule. Chris Liepe 40:03 Right. Jacques Hopkins 40:04 I recommend YouTube for the most part, it doesn't have to be YouTube, it could be a podcast, it could be other platforms. But in general, for course creators, especially those of us in the music niche, it's YouTube is a great place to get started. And that's what you did. And you said, from the very first video, you had that same call to action, I mean, if I go back to your very first video, you upload it to YouTube, I will see that same call to action? Chris Liepe 40:27 Maybe not the very first video. Some of the early guitar videos and recording videos don't have that on there, at least in video form with me making the pitch. I started out, when I had less focus it was sometimes it was like download the track I'm using here or go to you know, there was always some lead magnet. But once I figured out vocals was the thing that was going to be the, the main thing, every single one. Join my free course. Jacques Hopkins 40:54 So, once you figured out vocals was going to be your main niche, I'm guessing you created, here's my guess is that you created the free course so that you'd have a lead magnet, then you started having the calls to action in the new videos you create, and then you made the paid course? Is that the sequence of events? Chris Liepe 41:11 No. I actually made the paid course before I started my YouTube channel. Jacques Hopkins 41:15 Why? Chris Liepe 41:16 Because I thought with this ear training course that I did with David Wallimann did really well. And I'm going to make this course and I'm going to have it in place. Maybe I'll pitch it, you know, I'll do an affiliate split with David Wallimann. You know, so he didn't have to come up with another course, people knew me from the ear training, people knew me from JamPlay. And we did an initial launch before and I had done a little bit of YouTube stuff but, right, it was, there was that six-month period where I didn't, I wasn't getting any traction. And I was doing sort of aimless things on YouTube, right? Where I was doing a recording video and a vocal video and a guitar video and building my voice course for Wallimann's list, essentially. And so, I had the paid course, done at least the first version of it, before YouTube took off. And then I had the lead magnet, which is the free course, which actually includes David Wallimann as a guest. I'm walking him through how to discover things about his voice. That's a lead magnet, which is super cool, because people on my YouTube videos, it's just me, and they join the free course. And they go, "Oh, here's a guy, like, here's me being goofy and doing all these weird things with my voice as a teacher, and the student is doing the same thing. Oh, and that student’s also YouTuber." It's just this really neat thing. It's very valuable. But all of that existed prior to YouTube taking off and even prior, well, not prior to but at the same time that vocals became my focus. Jacques Hopkins 42:43 Because you had had that success with the ear training course with David. Chris Liepe 42:48 Yeah. Jacques Hopkins 42:48 Right? Chris Liepe 42:48 And, and yeah, yeah. Jacques Hopkins 42:50 So that went well. You're like, "Okay, let's do it again. So, let me make another course Let's promote it over here." And then that's when you started, then then you're like, "Okay, I need to build my own audience. I need to build my own list." And that's when you started getting into YouTube. Chris Liepe 43:02 Yeah, Jacques Hopkins 43:03 So, for just about any singing video, especially the most recent several months on your YouTube channel, I could expect that call to action over to your free course. And that seems to be going very well. Chris Liepe 43:14 Yeah. Jacques Hopkins 43:15 Right? So, I'm going to go ahead. I'm doing that right now. I'm on one of your most recent videos. I'm sure there's a call to action in the video in the description. It says Free Voice Lessons. ChrisLiepe.com/FreeYourVoice. That's the free gifts. Chris Liepe 43:28 Yep. Uh huh. Jacques Hopkins 43:29 Okay. So, I'm going to click on that, and now I'm on a landing page. By the way, what software are you using to build your landing pages? Chris Liepe 43:35 Elementor. I have a guy who's helping me. Jacques Hopkins 43:38 Okay, so just WordPress? Chris Liepe 43:39 Yeah, yeah. Jacques Hopkins 43:40 WordPress, no funnel software, no ClickFunnels, no Thrive or anything like that? Chris Liepe 43:45 We're using, I don't manage that part of it. I've hired a guy to help me. You know, with SEO and retargeting and all that stuff. I'm not sure exactly what he's using for that. But I know we're tied into Facebook Pixel. Yeah. Jacques Hopkins 43:59 But if I log, so let's say I opt in here. It's a very, very well designed, opt in page and I see a picture of you and David here. Right? And if I opt in, then is it do I get a username and password or is it just a page with some videos? Chris Liepe 44:14 No. Okay, so what it does is they opt in, and then they get emails, they get added to my list and they get entered into a sequence. I use ConvertKit... Jacques Hopkins 44:24 Okay. Chris Liepe 44:24 ..for that. And they get the course delivered to them over the next three days as just different landing pages. They don't have to resign-in. All they have to do is give me their first name and their email and then they get the course delivered over the next day. So, it requires consistent engagement with the list or with their emails. Chris Liepe 44:44 And then on the fourth email in that sequence is a thing that says, you know, "Hey, you guys, if you've really enjoyed this free course, I have a special invitation for you that's coming soon." And I have it set up so that it's paced, whereas people are completing because Discover Your Voice is a 12-week journey. It's a drip course that people are, they're engaged every week, they get new material every week, for 12 weeks. They can get behind because they have lifetime access to the course but they're not going to be able to work ahead. They're going to have to go every week for 12 weeks. And so, it varies. But I look at my course completion rates, and I look at my conversion rate and I said, I tweak my evergreen funnel every once in a while to keep up with that pacing, and it creates this by-invitation-only, "Man, I hope I can get in on this enrollment period." And it's good because it creates this relationship too with the students, I want to open and close enrollment for you because I want to be available. Chris Liepe 45:53 Voice lessons are not like any other lessons. You need the ability to have access to your instructor. And if I just leave the course open all the time, and just have a, you know, big price tag on the front of my website saying, "Here join for this" I'm going to get large, you know, and then run a sale on it or whatever, here and there, I'm going to get massive people signing up all at the same time. And then I'm not going to have anybody in the course for a while, I would rather have a steady stream of people joining so that I know that I can walk through the course with these people that want to learn about their voice. They're not just wanting to spend money for the sake of spending money. They want to go to a deeper level. If they want to engage with me on a shallow level, they can watch my YouTube stuff. But what differentiates my YouTube or my course offerings from my YouTube is that it is a journey. It is a handheld journey. And you can even opt to get private face to face instruction in that journey once you have joined the course. Jacques Hopkins 46:52 So, if I opt in right now, I'll get an email, same day with the first of three lessons? Chris Liepe 46:57 Yes. And then the following day, the next video, following day the next video. And then you'll get... Jacques Hopkins 47:01 Following day, the next video. Chris Liepe 47:03 Yep. And then you'll get the, there is an invitation coming soon... Jacques Hopkins 47:07 On the fourth day. Chris Liepe 47:08 And then that on the fourth day, there's an invitation coming soon. Yep. And while they're still warm, again, I tweak this depending on how the evergreen traffic is going. It could be the next day, it could be a few days could be a week, but I still want them to be excited and warm when it comes to you know, “I really want to get in.” So yeah, that’s, that’s how that works. Jacques Hopkins 47:30 Okay, so let's, let's talk about how that looks in terms of the framing because I mean, my funnel is not that, from what we talked about my funnel is not that far off from, from yours. Right? They opt in for the free material, I take them through some free videos. And then for me the way that I phrase it, everything is like I literally have an email that goes out that doesn't have any links that says enrollment is opening tomorrow, you know. Mark your calendar. Chris Liepe 47:52 Right? Jacques Hopkins 47:52 Right, but I call it enrolment. It's all about the availability. It's not, hey... Chris Liepe 47:57 Yeah. Mine too. Jacques Hopkins 47:57 ...your invitation is coming. So, "Hey your invitation is coming." And then once that invitation actually shows up, what does it look like? Is it a sales page? Is it basically, "Hey enrollment is open?" Or is it like an application? Is it truly an invitation? Chris Liepe 48:11 It is, well for the first instantiation, so I've got two things going on here. For the first instantiation, it is enrollment is open. You were invited. Then they, they click the link, and then it goes to a landing page. It has the current offerings, and it has the course copy that tells them, you know, about the course and gets them excited. And then there's multiple tiers that they can opt to, to engage with, and enroll in. If they and then of course, they'll get emails multiple times for five days, and then enrollment will close. And they're on, [and] enrollment will close for, for that group of people. Chris Liepe 48:47 Then they sit on my list with every single email that I send out with free content. You know, it's an announcement of a new YouTube video that I've released. I'll regularly email at least once a week about the new videos that I put up on the channel. With every one of those, the people that are not currently able to enroll in the evergreen sequence, they are then given an opportunity to request an invitation to the course. So, they missed it. Enrollment was open for them. They missed it. Well, if you haven't done so already, and you are still getting huge value out of these YouTube videos and you'd like to take your voice to another level but didn't get in on your initial enrollment period, click the link below to request another invitation to my course. That then re-enters them into a different funnel with a separate set of engaging emails that is delayed and what I would say is it enters them into a segment and then I will manually tick on that open enrollment when enrollment is open. Chris Liepe 49:54 And so, then those people who missed the first time they get another offer. Usually within a month, or something like that to get back into the course. So, it supports the idea that enrollment opens and closes, and that I only allow a certain amount of people in so that I can be engaged with the people going through the material. And at the same time gives people other opportunities throughout the year to get in. And that's worked marvelously well. Really, really well. Jacques Hopkins 50:21 So just to make sure I'm understanding, when you send out these, let's call them value emails to your, to your list that has already been through the evergreen funnel, you’re, you made a new video, you're emailing them out, in the body of that email, it also says something like, if you would like to request an invitation to the course, click here. Chris Liepe 50:39 Yeah, that's it. That's just it's a PS or, and... Jacques Hopkins 50:42 Yeah. Chris Liepe 50:43 You know, thanks for checking out this video on Freddie Mercury. If you want to take your voice to another level and you missed out, you know, request an invitation to the course. Jacques Hopkins 50:52 Interesting. So, you have this powerful evergreen funnel that is working. And then once somebody goes through the evergreen funnel, and doesn't unsubscribe or buy, that's your way of handling those people going into the future. Chris Liepe 51:05 Yeah, I'll retarget them in that way, I'll re engage them in that way through the value emails. And then of course, when I launch a new course, or have a special, you know, holiday thing, then the, the whole list is reengaged at that point as well. Jacques Hopkins 51:22 Did you, where did you learn that approach? Did you come up with it yourself? Chris Liepe 51:25 Ah, yeah, that one was one that I just thought, oh, there's because I always liked the idea of the I'm sure other people are doing it, you know, this isn't something that, you know, I invented. But I had this, this idea that my course is a, it's a premium offering, that is by invitation-only, a12-week journey. It's designed to be not just more videos, because we don't just need more videos, I have plenty of videos on YouTube, and so does the rest of the world, we need an environment, we need a journey. And so, this idea of having an opportunity to request an invitation, it's another way to give to your, your engaged audience. I'm giving you an opportunity to request an invitation. Chris Liepe 52:10 And any time you know all the business entrepreneur business things that I've read, how many different ways can you provide value can provide value with you know that that's the question we always need to be answering and looking for different ways to answer, right? And so sometimes that's through free content. Sometimes that's through an offer, right? I'm not just offering, I'm not just asking for money, I'm just, I'm not just asking for you to enroll in my course, I'm offering you an opportunity. Chris Liepe 52:38 And so, the other reason I like the invitation thing is that they are making a decision that they want to engage with the 12-week journey before they're being asked to make the decision to purchase it. And I feel like, it's kind of like, you know, when you are - I like, I like cars. And I don't have you know, I own two cars, you know, one, one for my wife and one for me, but I love renting cars. And I like taking my kids out. And you know, getting this really crazy, amazing car and going on a mountain drive with it or whatever. And then, but before we, we go and we find a car to rent, we experience it through a book or research online or whatever. And you know, oh, you know, it's got this many horsepower in it, you know, here's the history of this car, whatever. We experience it. And we have this experience, that doesn't cost me anything. It just allows me to dream. And think about what would it be like? What will it be like when I get into that car and take it up, you know, into, you know, around Rocky Mountain National Park, you know? I'm on those windy roads, and I'm, you know, downshifting out of the curve. And you know, you start imagining all these things that you can, you can do, and there's no sticker shock at all. There's, there's nothing. I've made already made my decision and I'm going to rent that car. And I really don't, you know, I don't want to pay thousands of dollars for a few hours or whatever, you know, I don't want to, I want to, I still want to be a good deal. I want to feel like it's valuable when I go and rent that car, right? But I don't, I'm not going to quibble over a certain range of price, because I've already decided something I want to do. And that's how I want to treat every, every student, every potential student. I want them to already decide that they're ready before they know how much anything costs. Chris Liepe 54:30 And the other thing is that gives me some flexibility. I, you know, when I first started the option to enroll in the course, with a single private consult, the price was much lower. And when and I was, I was getting a lot of people signing up for this course with the private consult. And I thought, well, this is great. I like engaging with people one to one. But as you know, things continue to grow. I'm not going to be able to handle as many students in this way. And so, it allowed me to raise the price of that offering, because I don't advertise my prices anywhere. Yeah Jacques Hopkins 55:05 You're a wise man, Chris Liepe. Chris Liepe 55:07 Well, thank you. Jacques Hopkins 55:08 And kind of the evolution that I see in course creators in terms of like, launch models, if you will. It's like, everybody knows about launches, right? It's like, I'm going to do a big launch. I'm going to, I'm going to get as many students as one time and then they go launch and then it's like, okay, well, now what? Because I'm not making any money right now. I've just, I've just did my launch. So then, then people start transitioning to evergreen funnels, which is what you've got now, obviously. And once you get that up and dialed in and working, okay, that's amazing. But hey, what about these people that go through the funnel, and they didn't unsubscribe or buy? Right? Your approach is interesting. It's not one I've heard before. The way that I do it. I'll try to put as simple as possible, because I've talked about the podcast several times but when somebody goes to the evergreen funnel, they don't unsubscribe or buy, I'll put them in one of four buckets based on what month it currently is. And then that allows me to just do a relaunch to my list to a quarter of my list every four months. So, every month, every month, I'm relaunching to a quarter of my list. Chris Liepe 56:08 That's a great idea. Yeah. Jacques Hopkins 56:09 Well, it's not that far different than what you're doing. Chris Liepe 56:12 No. It's really not. Jacques Hopkins 56:13 It's, it's, I like your approach, because it's, it's a little more active for the email subscriber, because you're, you're sending them value you're sending in more value emails than I typically do. You're sitting in once a week and so they're continuing to get more and more value from you. And when they are ready, they're the ones that have to click, "Hey, I want an invitation." Right? You're not actively relaunching to them until they take that action if I'm hearing you correctly. Chris Liepe 56:37 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there is that that aspect that they will if they don't request an invitation, or even if they do request invitation, and don't buy, they will still get put into like you're saying, they'll get put into a bucket for another relaunch. So, I'll relaunch and also, my relaunches will always, they'll always be an additional value to the relaunch. And so, you know, this time, there's this new mini pack, that, you know, the Energy and Agility Practice Pack or the Mixed Voice in Madness Practice Pack, or the Aggressive Vocalist Master Plan of Attack, or the 31 Wellness Warm Ups for Your Voice. There's always another course, when I relaunch that will help, you know, "Oh, wow, I should get in." And I always will, I'll relaunch with a bundle for all the non-buyers with another valuable thing that hopefully will pique their interest in a way that the first offer didn't. And then, but before I do that, I'll take that new course and I'll offer it as a special student discount for those people who have already enrolled in the course. Chris Liepe 57:40 And so, it's essentially a two-week launch that I'll do and I'll do these once every month. It's also new, right, but it's been about once a month, once every other month. And I will have an additional small course, this one will be launched to my current Discover Your Voice students, "Hey, I'm happy you're working your way through Discover Your Voice. Sounds like things are going great. Here's something that will supercharge your journey, and it's brand new. And for this week, you can take advantage of a special student discount." And it's drastically discounted from where it's going to be if they just, you know, get it somewhere, somewhere else, or after this week's special student discount. And then that window closes, and then

Dr. David and I are on our own this week, but that’s not because I forgot to book a guest. It’s because David himself is leading the discussion on today’s topic: taking healthy control of your life and reducing stress. Whether or not you’re a successful course creator, there’s something in this episode for you to consider, because who doesn’t have stress? “If you ask me what is the single most important thing… the one single word is “momentum.” – Dr. David Krohse In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) Why I’m unprepared for this episode (and why that’s okay) (1:37) The backstory for today’s topic (6:58) David’s single most important word (8:17) Cold showers and choosing discomfort (9:42) Step 1: Rate your stressors (11:25) Step 2: Envisioning a stress-free life (14:52) Step 3: Hack your stressors and your goals (17:01) Step 4: Use effective goal-setting to take control (19:39) Simplicity versus confusion (22:05) Goal-setting and penalties (24:58) Figuring out timeframes (28:04) An interesting relationship hack + how David meet his wife (34:21) Finding a good fit (36:56) Top tips for family and communication (45:04) Our favorite resource for work relationships (48:01) Reading recommendations and how to handle people who drag you down (49:36) Health hacks and homework for David (57:37) My favorite supplements (59:24) David’s recommendations for anxiety and depression + a plug for chiropractic (1:03:18) Our “Baby Steps” financial journeys (1:08:28) My investment influencers (1:14:58) David’s best career advice (1:16:05) Influencing others and the positive impact online courses can have (1:20:06) Looking back at early goals and where they’ve led (1:23:03) The motto to put on your mirror (1:24:22) Where to find everything we mentioned on the show + my online course creator community (1:25:47) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Resources and Recommendations: 4 Steps to Eliminate Stress Establish your Goal Handout Episode 23 Episode 98 Episode 111 The Art of Charm The 5 Love Languages How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen How to Win Friends and Influence People The 4-Hour Workweek Good to Great Expert Secrets Building a StoryBrand Boundaries The Obesity Code podcast Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It Uplift desk How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Mint I Will Teach You to Be Rich ChooseFI Profit First Talent Stacker Lombardi Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Jacques Hopkins  00:02 Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course, and they're making a living doing it.   Jacques Hopkins  00:12 But not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. And I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses.   Jacques Hopkins  00:24 Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins. And this is the Online Course Show.   Jacques Hopkins  00:32 And off we go, welcome aboard. Glad you're with us. I am your host, Jacques Hopkins. and here with me is our cohost as well. What's going on Dr. K?   David Krohse  00:41 Oh, I'm doing fantastic here. How are you doing?   Jacques Hopkins  00:44 I'm doing well. I feel a little unprepared to be honest with you because normally I've got a good amount of notes. I like... I'm a planner. I'm a planner. Right? And I don't have many today because today's episode was your idea. You've come to the table with plenty of ideas for even whole episodes before. And it's a nice little break because you're kind of in the driver's seat here. So, man, what's going on? And tell us what we're going to learn about today?   David Krohse  01:10 Oh, well, I mean, what you talked about planning. What I'm excited to share with everybody is a talk that I hope surely changes some lives. Essentially a goal setting, vision board, resolution-type exercise that people can actually sit down, they can listen through it once.  And then maybe sit down in a quiet space and actually plan out what they want the next couple years of their life to look like and just make big changes.   Jacques Hopkins  01:35 Man, it sounds good. Like, what give me the backstory of this. Like, is this something you've come up with all on your own?   David Krohse  01:42 Yeah, it's an interesting story. So again, you know, my thing, my online course is How to Do Lunch and Learns for Chiropractors and other professions. And my first lunch and learn was like, "How to Stay Young: the First 100 Years." Then I did one called "4 Stretches for a Pain-free Day." And these businesses, they wanted me to come back each year and keep talking to them. And so, I was like, I'm going to do a talk on how to reduce stress and how to manage stress. And my first thought was that I was to be sharing like meditation tips, some stretching routines of self-talk. I mean, basically, what's the Post-it note that you put up on your mirror that's like, "you are a good person, you try hard."   David Krohse  02:25 And as I thought about that stress talk, I reflected back. So, when I was a junior in college, I was getting a coaching minor. I was considering becoming a full-time swim coach as a career, and I ended up in a class called Dynamics of Human Development. And I had to give a presentation with my friend/buddy, and we chose the topic "How to Raise Kids' Self-Esteem." And when we first picked that topic, we thought it was going to be all the things that teachers need to tell kids. Encourage them. You know, "you're a good kid, you try hard." And that ways that that teachers would coach parents to say the same types of things - these encouraging words.   David Krohse  03:06 And we started digging into the research and we learned that that kind of talk is a load of crap. It's like worthless. As far as, like picture for a second: you're the, you know that Jacques here is, he's 10 years old. You know, he's not passing his classes at school, you know...   Jacques Hopkins  03:21 Little chubby. A little chubby.   David Krohse  03:23 He's a little chubby. Kids make fun of him because the only songs he knows how to play on piano are like classical songs that no one even recognizes. He's given wedgies in the locker room. And he comes home one day, and his mom is like, you know, "How did your day at school go?" And little Jacques, he says, you know, "It's terrible." And his mom says, look, you know, "You're a good kid. You try hard." It's like, what would you do? You'd roll your eyes, right? I mean, you'd be like, "Mom, my life sucks!"   Jacques Hopkins  03:24 Yeah.   David Krohse  03:37 Like, I don't have any friends. I'm not passing my classes. And...   Jacques Hopkins  03:57 This is what I get for trying hard? Seriously?   David Krohse  03:59 Right, exactly. And so, what the research says is that this low self-esteem is caused by lack of control. And so, if you want to raise a kid's self-esteem, it's not something you say to them, it's giving them this clear action plan that helps them take control of their life. And then when they have control, you know, when little Jacques has friends, when he's playing songs that kids actually recognize, and they're crowded around him on the piano, it's like, all of a sudden, the kid doesn't have low self-esteem.   David Krohse  04:26 And so, again, this is back in 2012, maybe 2013, but as I was planning to do a talk on stress, I was like, you know, what we call low self-esteem in kids, when we're an adult, we're standing in front of the mirrors looking into our eyes, and we're just like, "I feel stressed!", it's almost like this exact synonym for that low self-esteem in kids. And once we say that, then how do you fix that stress feeling? It's like there's not there's not the Post-it note on the mirror, right? That says you're trying hard. It's like you actually have to change your life. And so, at that point I was like, alright, like what are our steps to really take control of our life [and] experience less stress as a result.   Jacques Hopkins  05:06 So it's, it's interesting because you have had your course for four years now - couple years - and I've always known that you helped other chiropractors, and now you branched out to other wellness professionals, to get more business, get more clients through lunch and learns, right? And I know what lunch and learns are from my time as an electrical engineer. We have these people come in, and talk about their products: their different, you know, hardware, little devices that that, you know, we as engineers would program and whatnot. But I don't know if I've ever thought to ask you like, "Hey, what types of things are you even talking about, David, in these Lunch and learns?" So that's some new insights on my side. I know, typically, chiropractors are just big into overall wellness, right? Not just alignments, but helping people with stress, anxiety, you know, doing things like meditation. And so this falls right in line with, you know, who, what I know about you as a person I just never thought about, okay, what is he actually talking about at these Lunch and learn? So, it sounds like this is this particular thing where you're talking about how to eliminate certain stressful things in your life by planning and control. This is something that you've done in the lunch and learn setting, which is what you teach about many times before.   David Krohse  06:25 Exactly, yeah. And this is the most fun one. I mean, people get this like starry eyed look in their eyes. Again, like years after giving this talk, this random lady walked up to me in tears and said, "You know, this talk you gave on goal setting, she's like, I realized that was when I decided I was going to change my career." You know, I gave her this awkward hug. So, this talk, I mean, it can change your life, if you let it. So, the one thing I'll say, I mean, a portion of this talk is going to feel really off-topic for courses; like you said, a holistic view. If you ask me, what's the single most important thing in business and kind of in life in general, the one single word is momentum. You know, I mean, if your business or if your life is going the wrong direction, it can take intense action to change that momentum. But what I'd say, and I've observed in a lot of people's lives is like, momentum can start at any spot in your life, and then it can trickle over to all these other things. So I mean, if we look at your situation, Jacques, we would say that you being here today is the online course guru and changing all these people's lives around the world, one of the critical steps was a personal finance decision for you and your wife paid off your house. Without that step, you wouldn't necessarily be here today as the Online Course Guy.   Jacques Hopkins  07:41 Yeah, you can, I definitely recognize that you can apply certain things to one area of your life to other completely unrelated ways. Momentum is a good word for it. I mean, it's a pretty big example you just brought up is that, you know, that I might still be working my job and none of this would have happened if I had never, say, paid off my mortgage. And I didn't foresee all of this, but you know, we had a plan. We knew that we wanted certain freedoms that existed when you didn't owe anybody any money, including on your house. But even little things, man. So, let me give you a smaller example. Like, when there's times where I do... You ever done a like cold shower?   David Krohse  08:21 No. Terrible idea. Only when I'm forced.   Jacques Hopkins  08:25 Come on, man. You're the health and wellness guy.   David Krohse  08:28 My wife does it. I don't, no...   Jacques Hopkins  08:30 She does? So, there's a lot of research that [says] cold therapy is very, very good for you in a lot of different ways. And the best way to do it is like an ice bath. There's also these cryo chambers, but if you want to 80/20 it, you can just take a cold shower. A couple minutes, or just kind of cycle between hot and cold. Anyway, I've gone through periods of doing it. I've done it for up to like a month straight up doing a cold shower every day. Let me tell you, it's painful. Okay, but it got me used to being uncomfortable. Right? And I could see that going about my day and through that entire month when I did it, I could see myself more comfortable with other things in life that we're on some level painful too. Some things that I just didn't want to do, I found myself more willing to do them because, hey, I took a cold shower, I can do anything. You know?   David Krohse  09:23 Definitely. Alright, so yeah, so listeners grab a pen, find a quiet space, either now or on a second listen, you know, maybe alone, maybe with your partner, and I'd encourage you to really use this opportunity to kind of plan out what you want your life to look like. I will put together a download that we can put in the show notes that can kind of walk you through some of this. Alright, so let's jump into these four steps to eliminate stress and take control of your life. So, step one, I'm going to have you rate your stressors. So, you could write down on a sheet of paper these four different main categories of your life: so, relationships, health, finances, and career. And I want you to just take a second here, and rate each of those on a zero to 10 scale as far as how much stress they are. So, zero would be no stress, 10 would be like put me out of my misery and just put a number next to each of those.   Jacques Hopkins  10:14 I'm guessing you want me to do this...   David Krohse  10:16 Yeah. Do it.   Jacques Hopkins  10:16 ...as were talking about it? Okay.   David Krohse  10:17 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  10:17 I'm writing this down over here. Alright, so...   David Krohse  10:20 Relationships, health, finances, career,   Jacques Hopkins  10:22 You always hear about like the three, like health, wealth, and relationships. Right? So, you're kind of adding a fourth one of career, which, okay, because it could kind of fall into find it into finances to an extent, but I guess you're breaking that out.   David Krohse  10:36 Mm hmm. All right. So, what most people are going to see is that right away, there's like one or two of these categories that are, you know, way higher than the rest. And you want to share which one jumps out is the highest on yours, Jacques?   Jacques Hopkins  10:49 Yeah,I mean, I would say, I would say career is probably top for me. Yeah.   David Krohse  10:55 It is for me too.   Jacques Hopkins  10:56 I've got a pretty low, low stress job here. I mean, I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. But I could imagine that that one's probably low on a lot of people's lists, too. But that's it sounds like, but you said yours is high for career as well?   David Krohse  11:09 Yeah, I would say I would say at some point here, I need to add another doctor to my practice and, and just kind of like right on that edge of where, you know, I want to do it, but I want to be all set. So yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  11:19 Okay, great. Yeah. And then finances is right there. Relationships is right there as well. My lowest is probably health.   David Krohse  11:25 Gotcha. Alright, so step two is going to be to paint the picture of your stress-free life. So, think about two to five years down the road, what do you want your life to look like? And I would say start with the highest stress areas. So, look at that one that's the highest - the career - and say, "What do you want your career, your finances to look like two to five years down the road." And obviously included in this, I'd say include any goals and like these bucket list activities that you say, okay, two or five years down the road, what do you want to have checked off your list? And so, I'll give you a few of these statements that I would have you write down, statements similar to this. "I don't have to check my bank account five times a day to make sure my husband doesn't cause an overdraft. I'm in a loving, fulfilling relationship. I go skiing in Colorado every winter. I'm as thin as I like to be. I look forward to a weekly date night. Credit card payments don't make me sick to my stomach. I love my job. My mortgage is my only payment and it'll be paid off in a year. Headaches still keep me from quality time with my family. I have a plan to retire with dignity and a large nest egg. And I have a thriving course and membership community."   Jacques Hopkins  12:37 I bet when you when you give these talks in person, that one wasn't in there.   David Krohse  12:40 That wasn't on there. No. So yeah, I mean, when I'm in person, I actually totally silent for like a minute and a half and people just write out a few of these things.   Jacques Hopkins  12:50 Man, that's great. A couple that come to mind, you know, I've put on the old Quarantine 15.   David Krohse  12:57 Is that right?   Jacques Hopkins  12:58 Yeah, yeah. So...   David Krohse  12:59 What caused it?   Jacques Hopkins  13:00 Man...   David Krohse  13:01 What was the guilty pleasure?   Jacques Hopkins  13:02 Well, not going to the gym. Right? And, you know, we talked about momentum earlier, it’s for me, like, if I'm going to the gym, it's easier to eat healthfully, right. And if I'm not, like it kind of goes. Some people, when they go to the gym, they feel like that's a card to be able to eat whatever they want. I'm the opposite. Like, I'm either doing 20 healthy things in a day or none, right? And so, it's important for me to get the day off to a good start. You know. If I have an unhealthy breakfast, and the day is just shot, that's just what I've recognized about myself. And so, I got into a really good gym routine, working it through my day, five days a week. And then, you know, lockdowns happened. COVID in March and [I] couldn't go to the gym anymore. And I really haven't been back since. So, you know, not to make excuses but that's the big thing for me.   David Krohse  13:52 Mm hmm. Yeah, for me, it's just again, it's this concept that right now, you know, physically, I have to be present taking care of patients for my main job. And that's kind of a, it creates stress, because I'm just so critical to my family's financial stability. And so, getting another doctor on, number one would create that stability, decrease stress. And then number two, that would free me up to work on things that I'm passionate about. Put more effort into the courses. I've got other ideas. I'm a little bit like Nate, I've got an idea for a YouTube channel. And I've got... I have an idea for a podcast that probably I couldn't do them all, but I think I could have these other passionate things that I'd be passionate about.   Jacques Hopkins  14:33 Yeah, well, you know, things like you bringing on another doctor would be huge in your in your practice, but if you bring on the wrong one, that's even more stress than not having them at all. So, it's very important that you, you do the proper vetting and whatnot, and hopefully it can serve that make things less stressful, not more.   David Krohse  14:50 Yeah, well Jacques that leads right into my next step. So, step number three is to hack your stressors in your goals. And so, I mean, just time and again in life I see where what seems like the obvious best answer is not. But I mean, in today's day and age, we have unlimited access to dig into what actually works on the internet and just find out: What is the crowdsourced best practices by people that actually geek out and try to fix their lives. Reading books, obviously, the best example in the books at an overall level would be 4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body. I mean, like that guy. He says, yeah, you think this is the best way to do something, but is it? Let's actually test the hypothesis. Talk to people who have had success. So, finding a mentor, finding that exact person, that's three steps ahead of you that had the exact same problem that you had. And just talking to them, you know, like Nate said, back on his most recent visit, he said, he had an idea to start, like, an actual plant business in his town. And he's like, before I would do that, I would find people doing exactly what I'm doing. I want to do in the same size town and call them. He's like, I'd pay them $100 an hour to just tell me what the mistakes were what the best practices were. You know, I mean, the deal is, if you if you keep making a cake, and every time it comes out of the oven, it looks terrible and tastes bad. Like, what are you going to do?   Jacques Hopkins  16:13 That reminds me of...   David Krohse  16:15 You got to change the recipe, right?   Jacques Hopkins  16:16 Well, yeah, sorry. Yeah, you don't want to just keep doing it. But that reminds me of Andrew, the 18-year-old from Next Level Courses we've talked about many times here. He, you know, not to toot my horn, but he saw that I was doing things that he wanted to be doing, right? Teaching people music, he has a guitar, and he modeled his entire business and funnel off of mine, he calls his packages the same thing. And that's, that's great.   David Krohse  16:43 It's working.   Jacques Hopkins  16:44 It's working. You know what, now that it's working, he can probably tweak certain things and he can try things that he thinks about. Ideas that he's got. But now that he's got it working, it's so much less stressful to try to get it to work. Now. He's just got to keep making it better and better and better.   David Krohse  17:01 Okay, so step number four is going to be to use effective goal setting to take control of your life. And so, with effective goal setting, I mean, there's the whole S.M.A.R.T. acronym, - so Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The two things that I find to be most important is in setting goals. So first off, I would say that effective goal setting is focused and intense. So again, I mean, you, you rate your stressors, you find one area is the problem, then you paint this picture of where you want that problem to be. I mean, for a period of time, putting all your energy into improving that spot, can have a huge effect. My favorite quote on this is by this guy, he's a football coach. I don't know you might have heard of him, Jacques. His name is Vince Lombardi. And have you heard him?   Jacques Hopkins  17:51 Yeah, I know a thing or two about Vince Lombardi. Yes.   David Krohse  17:54 Okay.   Jacques Hopkins  17:54 I'm a sports guy. You're not.   David Krohse  17:56 That's right. So, I don't I don't follow sports at all but the story, as I understand it, is that Vince Lombardi had this amazing amount of success. during a time when a lot of the other football coaches were developing these really complicated playbooks. And Vince Lombardi, he just had this really small number of plays, but they ran them just flawlessly on a consistent basis. And he had this amazing record. Jacques would know more about that. He was being interviewed, and somebody said, you know, "Why don't you have more plays?" so to speak. And he said, "You know, it's hard to be aggressive when you're confused." It's hard to be aggressive when you're confused. And I don't think there's a better quote for the life that we live in. I mean, we have so many distractions, when you really are in a bad place, or when you really want to reach a goal, it's time to take that attitude and just really focus on that most important goal. There are a couple examples of that in the podcast, obviously. Jacques and Nate, you guys did a review of the book The One Thing back in Episode 7 and 8. And kudos to you, Jacques. I mean, that's an episode that I'll go back and listen to I bet every six months, I put into my top 10 podcast episodes I've heard. So...   Jacques Hopkins  19:05 Wow. Thank you.   David Krohse  19:07 That is a valuable episode. So, Episode 7 and 8 of this Online Course Show Podcast where you guys talk about The One Thing. On the other example, this Stephanie Taylor's episode with Episode 144. You know, Stephanie said when she really wanted to reach a goal, she'd go on one of these green juice retreats, and she just hammer out a project over a few days. And, you know, here she is, with the super successful online course podcast, you know, Dream Business. So.   Jacques Hopkins  19:39 I was trying to write this down. Remind me of that quote from Vince Lombardi "It's hard to be aggressive when...?"   David Krohse  19:44 When you're confused   Jacques Hopkins  19:45 "...when you're confused." I like that a lot because I've been you know, the more time that passes, the more big I am into simplicity. So, I really resonate with... I didn't know that that's one of Vince Lombardi's things was fewer plays but done well. And that's, you know, that's my thing, one really good funnel, right? One really good course, you see these people that have, you know, twenty courses, and they're all very inexpensive and they don't really have much of a funnel. And you can, in a lot of cases, make a lot more money and help a lot more people by simplifying way down. One course, one offer. That's something I try to help people within Next Level Courses a lot, is I look at their business I'm like, "Man, this is confusing."   Jacques Hopkins  20:30 Like if I'm, if I'm visiting your website, if I'm a potential customer, this is just way too confusing for me, I've got, there's these seven different courses, and I don't know which one I would be a fit for, if any of them. And so, I try to get people to get down as close to one funnel in one offer as possible. And then the other thing I want to mention, just for a little context for you as a non-sports guy, Vince Lombardi, you know, though, are you familiar with like the Super Bowl? You know, what that is like the winner [of] the Super Bowl is the… what you win in the NFL, the trophy you get for winning the Super Bowl is the Lombardi Trophy.   David Krohse  21:07 Okay. No, I wouldn't have known that.   Jacques Hopkins  21:09 The trophy is named after him.   David Krohse  21:11 I did look up he was at Green Bay coach, correct?   Jacques Hopkins  21:14 Yes, he was the Green Bay coach. You know...   David Krohse  21:16 I got that part.   Jacques Hopkins  21:17 I have a cousin who started this big construction company about 10 years ago. And I remember when it was just in its infancy, he would I would talk to him. And he would watch this documentary, or I guess documentaries are a word, about Vince Lombardi. He'd watched it like every week. He said, "Dude, it's the most motivating thing. Like, I watch it and then I just go in and I crush it at work." It was just his story...   David Krohse  21:40 No way.   Jacques Hopkins  21:40 ...was so inspiring for my cousin. He just really resonated with that huge guy, but you know, played football. And yeah, it's really inspiring to hear stories like that. And I just really, really love that quote, and I appreciate you sharing it. "It's hard to be aggressive when you're confused." I think we can use that in marketing.   David Krohse  21:58 All right, well, Hey, can you track down that exact movie and share that in the show notes?   Jacques Hopkins  22:02 Yeah, I'll do my best to do that. Yep.   David Krohse  22:05 Okay. The other thing, effective goal setting has penalties for not getting things done. So especially as we talk about starting a side hustle, you actually retired from your career, and you're doing courses on full time. You know, this is a technique that I learned from you, Jacques, is just this concept of actually putting a penalty in place if you don't accomplish the goal, whether it's $100, that you have to pay your friend just calling up a friend and saying, hey, if I don't get this job done, I'm going to give you $100. You know, we talked in the past that you could do something kind of funny you could, you could make a commitment that if you don't get something done, you're going to have to give $100 to an organization that you can't stand, so joked about the Westboro Baptist Church, that's this terrible organization that like boycotts at funerals. If you said, if I don't get this important goal done, I have to send $100 to them. I mean, that's going to keep you motivated to get that goal done.   Jacques Hopkins  22:58 Yeah. So, I've got some updated thoughts on the penalty goals, by the way.   David Krohse  23:02 Oh, yeah. How's it going? Are you having to pay? Or you have to pay Nate more often?   Jacques Hopkins  23:05 No, I haven't set a penalty goal in a few months, honestly. A couple months.   David Krohse  23:09 Really?   Jacques Hopkins  23:10 Yeah. And real quick, this documentary, it's called, it's just called Simply Lombardi. It was on HBO, literally 10 years ago. It came out in 2010. And we'll link to it in the show notes. So, you know, Nate's my accountability partner, right? He has been for years, and we do these penalty goals we've talked about many times, that's what you just brought up. But ever since hiring Colleen, and in growing my team, I haven't felt the need to do that. And my thought is that when you don't have anybody else holding you accountable, you need things like penalty goals, to, to build that in. And I still highly recommend doing them if you don't have anybody else holding you accountable. But Colleen, you know, she's, she's essentially, in charge of operations for my whole business now. And if I don't get something done, I need to get done. She's all over me. Which is great!   David Krohse  24:06 Nice! That's perfect.   Jacques Hopkins  24:07 Which is what I need, right? So, we plan together, we figure out what I in the business need to do over the next week, month, quarter, year, and so on, we have a plan. And before her like I had plans before her, but if I didn't execute on those plans, there was nobody holding me accountable. Nobody. And so, I would have to go to Nate and be like, "Look, Nate, I need to get this done by this date. And if I don't, I'm going to pay you $100 or more." Right? But so, I haven't felt the need to do that since having her on board.   David Krohse  24:38 Did you do somewhere you put more than $100?   Jacques Hopkins  24:41 I think there was. There was a couple maybe one where it was it was like five different things I needed to get done all within the same project. So, each one was 100. And there was a couple of times where we had to do kind of double or nothing, but for the most part we just did $100.   David Krohse  24:55 Okay. Gotcha. Alright. Do you have any other things that are most important when you set goals?   Jacques Hopkins  25:01 Well, I wanted to ask you about this a little bit. And I'm curious about time framing in general, because you mentioned S.M.A.R.T. goals and the T is Timeframe, but typically, you know, like over here, I know listeners can't see me right now, but over here I have my 2020 goals posted that I posted just before the year started. And I did that last year as well. I posted it right above my monitor. And so, the biggest goal setting I do is yearly, but what is your recommendation on if our main goal should be yearly, quarterly, weekly, daily? What do you think?   David Krohse  25:37 Well, I mean, they're definitely, I mean, I think that a lot of people should be looking at the two to five year point and saying, you know, I know that when I first did this, this exercise, I mean, I was kind of down in a hole, especially financially, it wasn't going to be better in months, it was going to be a multi-year process. And so, a lot of us have things that, yeah, it's a two to five-year time period to really change your life. As far as how often you reevaluate, yeah, I mean, essentially, daily, weekly, monthly, would be best. Am I graded out all the time? No, not necessarily. But I will say just that, that idea of focusing on that one biggest thing. I mean, that's, that's a little bit more where I'm at when I really want to make progress.   Jacques Hopkins  26:25 Yeah.   David Krohse  26:26 The other things kind of fall by the wayside for a bit.   Jacques Hopkins  26:27 Yeah. And look, it's November right now, man, and I have not accomplished all these goals or six things up here. Fortunately, I would say the top one, I certainly have accomplished but about half of 'em I haven't. And I haven't, I probably haven't done a great job of reevaluating these goals as we move on. I mean, it's exact same piece of paper that's been out there. And there's a couple of them that aren't as relevant even anymore. Right? And I think that there's a lot of very successful business owners, people that I follow and look up to, that do things on a quarterly basis, like they'll meet before a quarter happens, and like plan out the whole quarter, and then execute on it the whole quarter. And I think there's a lot of power in that, I need to look into that more. I know, that's something that Colleen wants to be doing, as well, and starting to a little bit. But I think, from what I've seen on the outside, I think quarterly planning and goals is pretty powerful.   David Krohse  27:24 Exactly. And that is something you have to actually put it on the calendar. So that...   Jacques Hopkins  27:27 Yeah.   David Krohse  27:27 Otherwise, I mean, time just goes so fast. But along those lines of really time lining, where you want to be in the specific when you want to get the smaller steps done and when you're going to reach the bigger steps, I'll have a worksheet in this download that you can get through the show notes or over in the Online Course Community Facebook group. And it takes you through every step. So at the conclusion of this, you know, you sit down and you say, okay, clearly my biggest goal, my biggest stress point that I need to fix is this thing, you're going to work through that. And you might do two or three of those and put these exact timelines on that.   David Krohse  28:01 So, what I'd like to jump into next is basically, Jacques and I just sharing some of the hacks on these things that we found in our life that actually worked. Jacques, you already shared one, which is cold showers. I didn't know that that was something that you did. But I'd like to hear just, you know, how you basically have made your life as good as possible. And so, I wanted to start with relationships, just this category of relationships. And I'll go ahead and start by sharing just a couple little hacks on how to find your ideal soulmate. So, again, a little bit off topic. Some of these you're going to hear and then you might say, "Yeah, it does actually kind of apply to a course."   David Krohse  28:43 So, this really wise, wise, wise older guy, he told me the story a while back long before I met Val, and he said that he had two sons. And when each son turned 18, he had them sit down, and he said, I'm going to have you make four lists. And the first list he had them write out he said, "I want you to write down everything you look for in your, your life partner, your spouse." And so, they made that whole list. And then he said, "Okay, I want you to look really closely at that. I want you to imagine that that ideal soulmate is sitting there, and they're making their list of what they look for in their soulmate." And he's like that's the second list write down everything they're looking for. So, they finish that list. Then he says, "Okay, the third list is going to be what do you need to do to become the person that you just described in that list number two? So, what classes do you need to take? Is there some incongruence in how you dress, your financial situation? What do you need to do to become the ideal person for who you just described? And it says, "Okay, the fourth list is where are you going to meet that person? And write it out. Where are all the places that that person is hanging out?" And, you know, this is goal setting for finding love.   David Krohse  29:57 But, you know, I was single you know, 2009, and I sat there, and I made the list. And the first three were pretty clear. But then I got to the where am I going to meet this person. And again, I'm a chiropractor, I'm like, not going to meet it at my team, as far as staff. No patients, and I'm like, you know, looking back at past relationships, I'm like, the main places that would be natural for me to meet one of these ladies would be yoga classes, or the dog park, just because I'm generally going to connect with somebody that's a more natural, holistic person. But I remember just thinking, like, I would look terrible in some Lululemon spandex. And, you know, the idea of trying to hit on a lady at the end of a yoga class, I'm like, that just is not going to work. And then my dog at the time, his name was George, but he was a super-aggressive dog. So, I remember just looking at George across the room, it just totally given him the hairy eyeball, because I'm like, the dog park would be a perfect place to meet my ideal woman. But here, my dog would end up attacking their dog. It's like, I'd have to get a second dog just to meet a woman.   David Krohse  31:04 The one thing that I would say, like I shared that at these at these actual talks, and somebody came up to me afterwards, or she actually came as an in as a patient. And she said, "You know, I have a husband, I'm set there, but she's like, I don't have any actual female friends." And she said, "I'm going to do that exercise." And she said, "I can see like, I'm not spending time in the place where my kindred spirits are hanging out." She's like, "I'm going to find friends." The third thing is that if you look at Russell Brunson, and his Traffic Secrets, his idea of finding your dream 100 [is a] very similar process to this.   Jacques Hopkins  31:43 So, did you meet your wife at a dog park?   David Krohse  31:47 No.   Jacques Hopkins  31:48 I thought this is where we're going with this.   David Krohse  31:50 No, no, after doing that, I was like, it's going to have to be online dating. So yeah, it would have to be online dating. And actually, that does lead into I was going to make another little interesting advice for anybody who's out there single. After doing this exercise, I was, like, I'm going to have to do online dating. And so, I joined a few different sites. And I set up this date, and it was like this entire evening planned, went, and met the lady. And within five minutes, I'm like, "Oh, no, like, this was terrible, because I got like, a five hour, you know, thing planned here, and I want out already." And so, I told my friend Matt, and Matt was like, "Dude, you never plan an entire evening, you got to plan the online date first date?" And I was like, "What's that?" And he said, he said, "That's where you like, tell them that you want to meet for coffee at like 4 o'clock. And, you know, you just meet for coffee and you tell him you have to meet some other people at like 6." And so, there's, there's a deadline, he says "If it goes great, then you plan a real day. If it doesn't go great, then you know, you're only out an hour." And I was like, okay, so I did that for like all these dates. And it was a big mistake because these dates felt like an interview. And at the end of the hour, I'd be like, I don't know if I want to see this this person again. I'd be like, just kind of be like awkward. I'd be like, "well, maybe I'll see you around." So anyways, I was like this is not working. I started listening to the Art of Charm podcast.   Jacques Hopkins  33:18 Yep.   David Krohse  33:19 You've listened to it before?   Jacques Hopkins  33:20 Yeah, it's I think it is still around. But Jordan Harbinger, right? And..   David Krohse  33:24 Yeah.   Jacques Hopkins  33:24 ...who's not part of it anymore. He's got his own podcast now. Jordan Harbinger Show.   David Krohse  33:28 Right. Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger. And somewhere on there, this guy was saying he's like, even if you just do that copy date, he's like, you have to bring, you have to have something that builds chemistry, some activity that can build a connection. And this guy said that he actually brought a Connect 4 playing game. And he'd be like, he planned an online date, and he'd be like, "Oh, by the way, you're going to get your butt kicked at Connect 4." And, you know, the next date. I like, the lady actually said that she liked playing board games, but I brought a Scrabble board. And the date had so much more chemistry. So, when I met Val, it was actually the idea was, we met outside a coffee shop. And then we were going to get coffee, and then go for a walk around the sculpture park. And the rest is history. But...   Jacques Hopkins  34:14 Nicely done. That reminds me of this very podcast and finding guests for the podcast because, you know, my assistant, Emily is the primary person that kind of does research and sees who might be a good fit. Obviously, I've got other connections too. And I usually ask for guest of the podcast for recommendations to but I'm, I'm always trying to find new people to come on interview other successful course graders and all kinds of niches. And what I found was, you know, she would go find somebody, we would agree that it seemed like a fit. And then the first time I would meet that person would be the interview, right? And I found one, one thing I've been doing lately, and I don't think you know this, is I've been doing more of a 10-minute chat to meet the person first and then we schedule the hour podcast interview. And that's been going really well because it's not the first time I'm meeting that person. We already have a little bit of rapport. Because I was finding that it would take the first 10-15 minutes of the hour conversation to really click and build that rapport. But now you're making me think that I should do like virtual Connect 4 with person on that first meeting.   David Krohse  35:22 No.   Jacques Hopkins  35:22 No?   David Krohse  35:23 Well, and to draw a parallel to something more real to course creators, I mean, some people still want to do like a sales page and just let people buy their course. I mean, just the advantages of a funnel, and, you know, a sales page. The thing I'd say about those first online or the in-person coffee dates, if you said on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best date that you could possibly imagine in your life, how good can sitting at a coffee shop for an hour be? It's like, for me, even if I was sitting across the coolest person in the world, it's still like a 3 out of 10 because it's just sitting there having coffee. We're not sharing an experience. And so, some people want to sell a course through just a sales page. People can buy any time. When you compare that with the funnel, I mean, again, you know, go through one of Jacques' funnels to go through his Piano in 21 days funnel and experience that relationship that you build. I mean, again, when Jacques, let's see here, when I decided to buy Jacques's course, on how to make online courses, it was $700. But I've been following his podcast I got through his funnel, which at the time was like a Product Launch Formula sequence with the videos. I was out on a bike ride on a Saturday morning at eight o'clock, I got your email, I stopped on a gravel road and gave you $700 to join your course on online courses. I mean, you had you had wined and dined me Jacques and I was ready to go.   Jacques Hopkins  36:44 Yeah, we hadn't.. We had never spoken at that point.   David Krohse  36:47 No.   Jacques Hopkins  36:47 It was just my funnel doing its thing.   David Krohse  36:49 Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, funnel, and just that building the relationship. Huge.   David Krohse  36:55 All right. So family, do you have any advice or any what are your top tips on relationship with your spouse, relationship with your kids?   Jacques Hopkins  37:04 Yeah, the biggest thing with my wife, I think is, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, but the Five Love Languages, I think is a total game-changer. And it's, it's something that really 80/20 a relationship with your significant other is, you've got to at least know what each other's love languages are. I think it's just important to know what your own is as your spouse's so you can understand why you get upset or disappointed about certain things, versus others. And so, I'm sure it's so popular now, but I guess there probably are plenty of people that haven't either read it or, you can just Google the Five Love Languages and understand what they are. But there's tools and things in the book to help you determine what yours is what your spouse's is, but that's, that's always on my mind when I'm interacting with my wife because our love languages are so different than each other.   Jacques Hopkins  37:57 And as far as you know, as far as the kids go, you know, relationships, my biggest thing with relationships is intentionality, right? Actually, having intention behind the things you're doing, the things you want to do. And so, things like knowing the Five Love Languages with my wife, well, with the kids, you know, my kids are three and five, that those are tough ages. There's a lot of, there's a lot of emotions, there's a lot of, you know, their big thing right now is tattling. Like they're constantly just telling us, she touched me, she did this, she did like so most of us are not just naturally good at how to handle three-year-olds and five-year-olds. And that you know what, next year, there'll be four and six, and there's a whole different set of problems that come with that. And so, learning from people that know what they're talking about, have been there before.   Jacques Hopkins  38:43 A few months ago, I read an amazing book called How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Little Kids Will Talk. I think there's a the original version drops the title It was called How To Talk So Kids Will Listen How To Listen So Kids Will Talk and then they came back, I think it's the original author's daughter actually wrote the second version, which is more for two, it says on the cover from two to seven years old. I'm like, this is perfect. And it gave me all kinds of tips and strategies on how to deal with these little minds. And it opened, it just it opened my mind. You know, if I could give you an example of there's just so many tactics in it. And my daughter, my five year old was upset about something a couple weeks ago, I don't even remember, but one of the tactics in the book was to kind of, like draw it, like draw what you're feeling, draw what you're thinking. It's like, it's like, oh, man, that must be so rough. Can we like, can we draw a picture of it? And like, I would never tell my wife to do that. But that's just a tactic that works for that age group. And she drew this picture and we and I sat down with her and, and I was like, Well, what about this? What about that and you 10 minutes later, we had drawn this picture and she forgot about whatever the problem was, and I would have never known to do something like that without having read this book. And I think a lot of people when they're struggling with something or they're stressed about something, they just try to figure out completely on their own. When there's people out there, you just got to find them that that have the solution for you.   David Krohse  40:10 Yeah, well, I 100% agree on those, the five love languages. For listeners, we actually did an entire episode focused on the five love languages for course creators. Jacques and I shared how it works in our own families. So that's Episode 111. And yeah, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to that. As far as like a single rule for our household, I would say that the one little rule that we try to follow is "be easy to impress, and hard to depress." So be easy to impress, and hard to depress. So, I mean, it's be easy to impress. It's like, you know, Jacques, if you're there working on one of your online course projects, and your daughter, Annecy, see, she's four years old. She's been over there, like, working on this picture for a long time. And she brings it up to you, you know, do you say like, "Oh, that's nice." It's like, No, I mean, you got to be like, "This is amazing!" Like, Annecy, this is awesome! I'm so proud of you." And like, in your head, you're like, I hope I'm holding it up right. But like, you know.   Jacques Hopkins  41:10 So, you know what's funny? Let me, I know you don't have kids. But that what you just said is actually goes against what's in this book I just mentioned,   David Krohse  41:19 Oh, man. Well. You know. I don't have children.   Jacques Hopkins  41:22 You said, you said two things. And that's the title. It's, it's you would never think that telling somebody their art is amazing and I'm proud of you intuitively that that's a problem. And this this may be controversial but if you've got young kids to seven, I highly recommend this book. But the thought is that we as parents tell our kids they're doing like, every little thing is amazing and it's a great job, like, I'll catch myself like my, my three year old goes down the side, I'm like, oh, great job. It's like, because she put her booty down and let gravity do something like, we need to save those things for things that are truly amazing, truly a great job. And we're building up false, like false, I don't know their self-esteem, maybe I don't, that's not the right word, but it's not genuine either. Like, if it's not amazing, like, don't say that it's amazing. But to your point in the book that the way they want to, they want you to interact with that. Because would you say you want to impress and not depress?   David Krohse  41:23 Be easy to impress, and hard to depress.   Jacques Hopkins  41:25 Right? So, what you do, you don't want to just like, blow it off. And you'd also don't want to just say it's the world's greatest piece of art. What you do is you look at you be like, "Oh, my goodness, like, look at those red lines over there. Like, tell me about that. What are those? Why do you think to do this over here? Oh, wow. Okay, that's interesting. And what is this over here? Okay. And then, you know, what, if you added a little more blue over here?" Just like really get into it like that. That's kind of how the book recommended doing.   David Krohse  42:51 Okay, I can see that. Yeah, interact with. Yeah, you show you show how you're impressed you are by interacting with what they're doing.   Jacques Hopkins  42:59 Yeah. And then they can see that you are genuinely interested in it and it opens up a conversation. And it's a fun way to just get to know your kid even more as well and understand what they were thinking when they did certain things. Right now, my five-year-old is drawing things you can pretty much tell what they are. My three-year-old is still doing wavy lines, but it's the same conversation either way. It's like, oh, why don't you do these lines blue and these sides pink? Tell me about that?   David Krohse  43:24 Mm hmm. Exactly. Yeah, and certainly with our wives, too. I mean, it's like, you know, my wife and I have way different interests. In the last couple days Val, you know, we all go off on these research tangents on the internet, at least I think most of us do. And she has become, like just this researcher of the different types of wool. And so, so she sat there for like, 45 minutes telling me about alpaca wool and yak wool. And I was just like, oh, my goodness, but, you know, it's I'm like, okay, I'm interested, I actively engage and just share her enthusiasm on these alpaca wool types that she wants for Christmas.   Jacques Hopkins  44:08 Well, if it, yeah, if it if it excites her...   David Krohse  44:10 But it is reciprocated as well because she does that. You know, if I come home, and I'm excited, you know, she, she returns that for me.   Jacques Hopkins  44:17 Yeah, well said.   David Krohse  44:19 The other thing that the be hard to depress, I mean, it's like, especially as parents, I think, you know, you guys can get hung up on one little thing, like, again, the tattling it's like, or where the kids put their shoes. It's like in the scheme of the child's life that's not the end of the world thing. So and certainly yeah, in our relationship with my wife and I, it's like, you know, kind of another rule is like "never let one sentence ruin the night" and so I don't know, we work on that. I stick my foot in my mouth and then it takes things the wrong direction and it's like,"Oh, honey, let's not let this entire evening go south. Let's get back on the same page." And we have mixed results with that.   David Krohse  45:02 Alright. As far as work, the book for me that to have better relationships at work would be the How to Win Friends and Influence People, which the biggest, the biggest takeaway with that is just become actively interested in the people around you. What they're into, you know, ask people like, ask people that you've never really talked to very much what's your thing? You know, what do you get excited about? What's your thing? It’s just, learn about those people and you'll find that you'll enjoy, enjoy anyone you interact with more as a result.   Jacques Hopkins  45:34 You know, that's the first self-help book I've ever read. Back in 2000, I think 2007, I was just going through something and I picked up to I went on I guess I went on Amazon, maybe and I just did a little research and I bought two self-helpy type books, and I'd never done that before. Okay. One was, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And if anybody if you've never read that it's one of the most popular books of all time, right? Dale Carnegie, is it?   David Krohse  46:00 Yes.   Jacques Hopkins  46:01 It's very, very old. But a lot of it still applies. You know what the second book was?   David Krohse  46:05 Seven Habits, I guess.   Jacques Hopkins  46:07 4-Hour Workweek.   David Krohse  46:09 Oh, wow. Talk about a checkpoint.   Jacques Hopkins  46:12 Yeah.   David Krohse  46:12 Or an induction point.   Jacques Hopkins  46:13 Absolutely. Books are powerful man.   David Krohse  46:15 Oh, man.   Jacques Hopkins  46:15 You know. And my biggest takeaway that I still use to this day from that book, the first one - How to Win Friends and Influence People - was I forget exactly how he put it, but just remembering people's names. How important that is. And in so that's, that's really... my wife... One of my pet peeves is when people say I'm bad at names. It's like, no, you're not bad at names, you just don't try. My wife will say that I'm just bad at people's names. And I pride myself on remembering people's names when I meet them. Like you, the trick is to say their name a couple of times in the conversation. It's like, Hey, I'm Jacques. Oh, hey, I'm John. Oh, Hi, John. It's nice to meet you. Now, John, what you know what brings you here? You know, you say it a couple of times. And that's what helps you remember. And then I'll see, I'll see people that I met one time and a year later, that's not always, but I'll remember their name. And my wife will be like, "how do you do that?" So that's what I was my biggest takeaway from that book.   David Krohse  47:08 Yeah, the one thing that book has such a sleazy title, I mean, there might be people out in the audience that are like, "Man, these two guys, I used to respect them. But now I think they're a couple of sleaze-balls." If you read the book, if you read the book like that, an appropriate title, but one that wouldn't be near as good at sales would be How to Build Up Those Around You and Enjoy Life More Because Of It. I mean you, when you follow the tactics in this book, you build people up. You make them, you bring them joy, you make them happier, and you enjoy life more because of it. And then these people want to reciprocate. And basically, you know, they want to help you. You end up with all these loyal fans if you just put the book in action. But it's not a sleazy book. You know, there's a lesson in marketing there, because the title is totally scammy. But it's sleazy.   Jacques Hopkins  47:56 Yeah, agree. It's been many years since I've read it. So, you're making me want to go back through it for sure.   David Krohse  48:01 Now, you were a project manager. Are there any other books, I know you've shared Good to Great, is there any other like business book that really jumps out?   Jacques Hopkins  48:09 Good to Great. But see, here's the thing, like, are we talking about helping you in your existing job or helping you get out of that and get into some sort of online business?   David Krohse  48:20 I mean, the best books probably do both. But is there one that comes to mind?   Jacques Hopkins  48:24 No, not really, I mean, Good to Great is good, because it can actually help with both areas. It's about why, why some companies are just good, and what's the difference between just good versus great companies. And so I certainly read that back when I was working, trying to improve what I was doing because I you know, I didn't own the company, but I was trying to rise, rise up the ranks. Nothing else comes to mind. I mean, as far as career like if somebody says, "Hey, what's your, what do you recommend?" I would say, okay, Experts Secrets, 4-Hour Workweek, Story brand. You know, that's, that's my online course books recommendations.   David Krohse  48:58 Yeah. So the last thing I mentioned, if you download the handout on how to establish your goals, one of them is there anybody that you need to handle as far as somebody that's going to keep you from reaching your goals? And so, there are books I mean, if you have somebody in your life that drags you down, keeps you from happiness, there's a book called Boundaries that Dave Ramsey recommends really highly. That one is very religious, has a lot of religious stuff, so, but find that book and see what else is there. I mean, there are best practices for actually handling people that don't let you reach your goals.   David Krohse  49:33 So, let's jump into some health hacks. So, I'd really like to share my personal story. You were talking about dropping your Quarantine 15, and I think my little story about basically becoming healthy, it has some instructive value. So essentially, in 2009, I was 40 pounds heavier than I am right now.   Jacques Hopkins  49:52 No.   David Krohse  49:53 Yeah, I was I was a little chunky monkey. But uh, you know, essentially I thought I was eating pretty good diet. Well, and that's a lot. I'm only 5'7," so how tall are you, Jacques, anyway?   Jacques Hopkins  50:05 Six feet even.   David Krohse  50:06 No way.   Jacques Hopkins  50:07 Why? You thought I was shorter?   David Krohse  50:08 I thought you're 5'10"   Jacques Hopkins  50:10 I mean two inches. Yeah, I'm right at six feet, man.   David Krohse  50:13 Alright, very good. Alright. So, I was frustrated here. I was trying to be a sports chiropractor and I was significantly overweight. Went into this other chiropractor's office, and the last time I'd seen him, he'd been overweight - looked kind of like me - and I went in there and this guy was lean and mean. Asked him what he done, and he said he'd done this thing called the Standard Process Purification Program. He's like, I dropped 21 pounds at 21 days, and then I just kept doing it essentially. He's like, I'm down 60 pounds. And he's like, I remember the quote, he said, he said, "You know, I feel better than I have in years, I'm running 15 miles a week. And when I when I give advice to patients, he's like, it's congruent with who I am now." And so, I went home, I researched this thing, and I did it. It basically had the same result. I dropped 15 pounds in 21 days. Added in like eggs and cottage cheese and dropped in another 10 pounds. And essentially, I was down 25 pounds from 175 pounds. I've maintained that ever since. And the rules of this thing are basically going to be whole thirties. So, it's a few simple rules. It's like unlimited vegetables and fruit, but in a two to one ratio. You know, some healthy proteins, healthy fats. You know, a little bit of quinoa or lentils, but you cut out all the grains, dairy, processed foods, extra sugars.   David Krohse  51:32 So, a couple years went by and I found this book. I don't, I think I heard about it on Ben Greenfield's fitness podcast, but the book is called Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.   Jacques Hopkins  51:41 Gary Taubes?   David Krohse  51:43 Have you read it?   Jacques Hopkins  51:43 I've read it, man.   Jacques Hopkins  51:44 Gary Taubes? Have you? Oh, man. Okay, so I'd like to just talk through the key takeaways from this book because the thing is, all the common knowledge says calorie in versus calorie out, if you want to lose weight, all you have to do is eat less and exercise more. In this book says there's this third factor that's way more important. So, I'm going to ask a couple questions to you Jacques here and go ahead and play along with me. So, I want you to imagine like a 12-year-old girl hits puberty, and her hips get wider, her breasts get bigger. She got more fat. What caused her to get more fat?   Jacques Hopkins  52:20 Well, obviously, it's because she, she took in more calories than she burned. Hormones. So.   David Krohse  52:27 Hormones, exactly. Alright, so imagine that this aspiring bodybuilder starts injecting himself with some testosterone? Is he going to gain weight?   Jacques Hopkins  52:40 Most likely he would gain muscle. Yes.   David Krohse  52:43 Yes. And is he going to be more hungry?   Jacques Hopkins  52:46 Yes, he is.   David Krohse  52:48 Okay, so he's going to gain weight? And what caused both the weight gain and the hunger?   Jacques Hopkins  52:52 Well, I think the answer is going to be the hormone testosterone.   David Krohse  52:57 Hormones. Exactly. Alright. And then this actually happened in my office. I have this 11-year-old girl in my office. She's an elite gymnast. She's practicing 16 hours a week, and she's getting injured as a result. Her mom comes in her mom is 5'10". Her dad comes in and drops her off one night or comes in with her. He's six, four. So, let me ask you a question. Do you think this girl is going to the Olympics for gymnastics?   Jacques Hopkins  53:21 No.   David Krohse  53:22 I don't think so either. What's going to keep her from going to the Olympics?   Jacques Hopkins  53:27 Height.   David Krohse  53:28 Her height. At some point hormones are going to kick in.   Jacques Hopkins  53:31 Yeah.   David Krohse  53:32 So even if she works out, you know, 16, 20 hours a week, even if she starves herself, when those hormones kick in, it's going to pull her up to where she's destined to be. So, I mean, what we just said is that hormones can make you fat, they can make you gain weight, they can make you hungry. And hormones are more powerful than eating less and exercising more. Again, that gymnast starves herself, works out 20 hours a week. They're going to pull her kicking and screaming. It's so yeah, powerful book. Once I read that book, it's like everything clicked on how to be as slim as I wanted to be.   Jacques Hopkins  54:03 Yeah, I think the biggest problem with that book is that people will read it and say that calories don't matter at all.   David Krohse  54:11 No.   Jacques Hopkins  54:12 And my opinion is that they just maybe aren't quite as important as we thought. So, I agree hormones play a huge role. It's not quite as simple as calories in calories out. But that does not mean that that doesn't matter. And we're getting way into the weeds right now. And nutrition and health can be extremely controversial. Right?   David Krohse  54:32 Sure.   Jacques Hopkins  54:35 So that that's my opinion there. But I'm glad you brought it up as well.   David Krohse  54:39 Okay. Do you have any other health hacks? You already shared about cold showers.   Jacques Hopkins  54:42 Yeah, I'll share a few. Yeah, and by the way, I would love to give you some homework, man. If you've never tried a cold shower, I would try it. I don't do it every day. But you feel amazing afterwards.   David Krohse  54:55 Well, Val does. She does a hot shower and then the last minute she turned on to cold.   Jacques Hopkins  54:59 That's a good way to it.   David Krohse  55:00 Is that how you do it?   Jacques Hopkins  55:01 No, I just do, I just do it cold. I just turn it on cold from the start. And then I slowly get in there, wash my hair and stuff really quickly and then and then get out.   David Krohse  55:11 It sounds horrific.   Jacques Hopkins  55:13 It is horrific. But I you know, I in 2020 Well,

Today we’re doing a few things differently, so get ready: we have two guests and zero “traditional” online courses involved. But don’t worry, because my discussion with Craig and Zach of Fraternity of Excellence is still super-relevant to many aspects of having a more typical online course business or membership model. “Don’t let the fear of not being perfect when you launch keep you from launching.” – Craig James “Inside a membership community, it’s all about relationships.” – Zach Small In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:40) Dr. K is back: where was he and what do lizards have to do with it? (6:18) Our Asheville, NC recommendations + David’s ideal Instagrammer (8:47) Getting recognized “in the wild” (10:27) An update on my quest for the ultimate course platform (11:37) Creating course content with other teachers and how I’ve set up compensation (14:25) Setting the stage for today’s interview (17:09) Why and how Craig and Zach partnered to create their membership site (21:06) The 4-Hour Workweek mindset versus the community-based membership model (21:35) Bootstrapping and their early business models (24:35) Figuring out pricing with nothing to compare to (27:38) The challenge of communicating value in exclusivity (28:56) How Craig and Zach would change their approach to pricing if they were starting over (30:27) Who their audience is and how they provide value to their niche (33:18) How Craig and Zach’s offer has evolved (36:25) A favorite story of how their group impacted one of their members (39:11) How Zach quit his day job as their membership grew (42:53) Getting started with their site and figuring out best tools and software (46:21) Slack, “babies,” and focusing on the end goal (50:47) Is the paid version of Slack worth it? (53:00) How Craig and Zach make sure their membership never gets too big for its own good? (55:32) The pen name dilemma (1:03:41) Live events: how important are they? (1:07:19) What Craig and Zach do to prevent member churn and encourage community-building (1:10:35) Dealing with trolls and naysayers (1:15:40) Making partnerships work (1:18:43) Advice for new and aspiring course or membership creators (1:22:19) David’s questions about the appeal of membership to me (1:24:08) App development stories (plus an AI interruption) (1:31:25) A not-so-shocking reveal (1:34:36) Thinking about the challenges inherent to partnerships (1:38:26) How I handle trolling plus how David avoided impersonating Michael Scott (1:48:46) Finding the line between trolling and constructive criticism (1:50:14) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Fraternity of Excellence Family Alpha Masculine by Design Resources and Recommendations: Chandler Corbin Tupelo Honey Cafe Pizza Mind Upwork Fiverr Paid Memberships Pro Slack Zoom Episode 95 David’s video about running Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

Among the many perks of being an online course creator, something that never ceases to delight me is how amazing the course creator community can be and how much we can all learn from each other! That’s why I’m loving my Next Level Courses group and the course creators who are there teaching in every niche imaginable. Today’s episode showcases a live Q&A with my Next Level Courses students. Every week we meet online and dig into all things online courses together. Some are new to the online course world, others have been doing this for some time But no matter where each member of the group is at, it’s awesome to be able to put our heads together and encourage each other to take things to the next level. “It’s not just for passive income… we genuinely want to help people.” – Jacques Hopkins In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:32) What makes today’s episode different (2:17) The premise behind my advice (2:46) Bringing on my first guest and regular Next Level Courses Q&A attendee, Kristi (4:19) Growth and transitions (8:46) What makes Kristi’s approach unique (10:37) How we initially connected and started working together (12:07) Thinking about how processes evolve (14:23) Priorities and scheduling (19:12) Kristi’s takeaways from a previous podcast episode (21:48) Bringing on my next guest, Renato, for questions about webinar engagement (27:48) Cleaning up email lists (30:14) Advice and questions for Renato (33:01) Implementing Profit First (34:58) Bringing on Andrew, and thoughts on how to pronounce a very common word from the online course world (36:10) How to improve storytelling and demonstrating value (41:16) Thoughts on Andrew’s webinar (42:59) What he’ll be working on next (44:08) Bringing on Liz for questions about showing social proof (50:47) How to frame the opportunity (56:24) Transitioning from in-person teaching to online community-building (58:04) Bringing on Matt to discuss evergreen funnels and cold traffic conversions (1:02:31) Evaluating ups and downs in sales (1:05:42) How important is consistency vs. flagship content on YouTube? (1:11:00) Building trust without revealing too much of the “secret sauce” early on (1:16:54) Wrapping up + why you shouldn’t procrastinate on signing up for Next Level Courses That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Books and Resources: Episode 31 Episode 148 Profit First Expert Secrets Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

What’s an acronym that strikes fear in the heart of just about anyone with an online presence? If you guessed SEO, you were right – and I definitely count myself among the many who are intimidated by the topic of search engine optimization! But today’s guest is Matthew Woodward, and he’s here to demystify SEO and share how online course creators can make smart SEO choices: no matter what stage of the online course business journey they are on. I learned a lot during our conversation, and I think you will, too! “If you build something that humans love, Google will usually love it as well.” – Matthew Woodward In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:42) Thoughts on busyness and what I’ve been working on (6:43) An update from David and why I don’t currently teach kids (8:30) Getting lighting audits (11:22) Where I’m at with platform decisions (12:25) David’s latest suggestion for my Facebook ads (16:44) The deeper meaning of Next Level Courses (20:32) Why I was interested in today’s guest pitch (22:03) Introducing Matthew and our topic of the day (24:15) How a new course creator should approach SEO (27:36) Different ways to handle the pros and cons of LearnDash (31:05) Should I use multiple subdomains? (33:46) Why WordPress is still the gold standard (35:34) Matthew’s recommended funnel resources for new course creators (38:52) How he handles his launches and similarities with my own funnel (41:21) Building good SEO – how complicated is it really? (43:47) What’s behind the smoke and mirrors of SEO strategy (45:08) Why load-time matters (48:12) Ranking for specific keywords (52:54) Tailoring content for SEO (54:59) What about other search engines besides Google? (58:04) The importance of link-building (1:02:00) A risk of incautious link-building (1:04:25) What do SEO agencies do? (1:07:27) Is Matthew against running ads? (1:08:43) How SEO evolves over time (1:12:31) Matthew’s course and who it’s for (1:15:00) His calls-to-action and scarcity (1:16:26) Thoughts on the power of observation (1:18:13) How get in touch with Matthew personally (1:19:19) David and I discuss takeaways from today’s interview (1:20:27) Is SEO addictive? (1:22:19) Developing quality content for SEO (1:24:47) Affiliates, Reddit, and top-ranking results for Piano In 21 Days (1:30:31) Will I ever do SEO fully in-house? (1:33:11) Our ever-evolving catchphrase (1:34:04) A shoutout for one of my youngest Next Level Courses members (1:36:14) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Matthew’s website 90-Day SEO 6x Ways to Increase Website Speed How to Write Killer Website Content That Attracts People Podcast-Jacking for Links, Traffic, and Authority Link-Building Services: What You REALLY Need to Know Books and Resources: Make Time The Miracle Morning BuddyBoss LearnDash Master Fingerstyle Guitar Perfmatters Product Launch Formula Thrive Architect ULKU Logistics Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

We’re back with another “where are they now?” episode, this time with Jason Dion of Dion Training. Time flies: I interviewed Jason for the first time all the way back in episode 79! While many aspects of his business are still the same, he also has brought things forward in some very interesting (and successful!) ways. It was great to catch up with him and hear the latest about his online courses, the future of his business, and how he manages to stay on track while also working full-time overseas. “There is no magic pill for this online course thing… It’s about student success, over and over again.” – Jason Dion In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:39) Black eyes and thoughts on truthfulness (5:45) Something I realized while doing live training recently (6:43) Hitting a new income milestone and perspective on what it means (10:39) Working with Nick Loper of the Side Hustle Show to sponsor a series (13:30) The Win of the Week (15:47) Setting the stage for today’s interview (16:33) How Jason works full-time while juggling hugely successful courses (18:16) The big tipping point since our first interview (20:37) Student success and advertising (24:15) The power of automated referrals, or, is Jason crazy? (25:32) Branching out from Udemy (28:59) How having multiple offers works for Jason’s business on different platforms (33:27) His thoughts on competing with yourself on Udemy (34:45) Does the 80/20 principle work for Jason? (36:45) Platform pros and cons (42:12) Course community options on Thinkific (43:36) Platforms and their categories (48:45) My course platform holy grail and the problem with how companies like Apple handle apps (53:39) Jason’s recommendation for my online piano course (56:44) What a platform move looks like for Jason (1:00:16) How he runs a successful company while working full time (1:17:40) Why he’s planning on retiring in Puerto Rico (1:07:50) Talking teams and online business managers (OBM’s) (1:13:13) An important task Jason’s OBM now manages for him (1:15:16) The difference between OBM’s vs. VA’s (1:16:39) Unexpected aspects of having a part-time OBM (1:20:46) The importance of mindset and timing when hiring (1:23:20) Where we found our OBM’s and decided on the right candidates (1:26:44) Hiring a second VA and creating more accountability (1:29:13) Project management tools (1:35:42) How Jason profit-shares with his team (1:38:18) Is there anything else Jason needs to turn over to his team? (1:40:57) A mistake I made and why my OBM is going to help prevent me doing that again (1:41:39) Does Jason recommend people start online courses in more than one place? (1:44:39) Thoughts on success and misconceptions in the online course world (1:50:08) Changes to my podcast format (1:51:42) Jason’s advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:53:17) Thoughts from David on Jason’s interview (1:54:45) Would I advise people to stick with Udemy? (1:58:20) What platform am I leaning towards? (2:01:02) Why I want my own piano course app (2:02:49) If we could move anywhere, it would be… (2:05:16) Hiring my OBM (2:08:16) How my team is evolving (2:10:19) Our thoughts on Jason’s profit-sharing model (2:14:49) Getting the right people “on the bus.” (2:16:42) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Win of the Week Guest Links: Jason’s Website: Dion Training Books and Resources: Episode 98 Episode 79 CoffeeZilla Snacks Daily Udemy Thinkific LearnDash Skillshare Lynda LinkedIn Learning Packt Publishing Vimeo Wistia LifterLMS TutorLMS Mighty Networks Teachable Kajabi onlinebusinessmanager.com Asana Slack Good to Great Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

For those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I’ve been on the hunt researching a ton of new platforms for the reboot of my online piano course. On today’s episode, I interviewed with Chris Benetti from Members Pro – one of these many platforms I’ve been looking into. Chris and I had a great chat about what it takes to create a new online course-focused platform, how to ensure student success, the pain of creating Apple apps, and much more. “If you don’t have people coming through your course and having success, you don’t really have a proper business… Do everything you can help people to have success with your programs and to create raving fans with what you’ve built for them.” -Chris Benetti In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:42) What I’m excited about for rebooting vs. relaunching (2:16) How my live bootcamp is going (3:55) Thoughts from David on his friend’s course journey (8:04) Will we watch The Social Dilemma? (9:07) Staying on the lookout for and inspiration best practices (12:40) The Win of the Week and our thoughts (20:12) How you can submit your own Win of the Week (20:58) Setting the stage for today’s video (24:07) Chris’s entry into the online course world (28:59) Why Chris’s focus resonates with me (31:51) Talking ClickFunnels cons and my journey (33:53) Why Chris created Members Pro (35:19) Comparing Members Pro to other platforms (38:11) What Members Pro is working on now (43:31) Future features vs. current selling points (46:03) Customizable course themes (47:32) Platform self-promotion and my dream app wishlist (49:03) When Members Pro is rolling out new features (52:11) Chris’s thoughts on apps with Apple integration vs. Google (58:51) How Chris and his business partner started working together (1:02:43) His advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:04:12) Where to find Chris online (1:05:29) Thoughts on online course fulfillment (1:07:07) David’s thoughts on affiliate opportunities (1:08:43) Community and platforms (1:11:17) Our perspectives on gamification (1:13:30) The obstacles to selling an app through Apple (1:15:32) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Guest Links: Chris’s Website Members Pro Members Pro Roadmap Books and Resources: Cristers Media Tim Shields interview Circle Honeycommb Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

If you know anything about how I run my online course business, you know I love automation, segmentation, and all the behind-the-scenes processes that lead to having a successful online course. Brennan Dunn is a master of these topics and has done extremely well in his niche, so I’ve been looking forward to interviewing him. But Brennan is not a one-trick pony: in his “spare time” he has a successful Saas business and flies planes for fun! It was great to get his perspective on what works for him, how he juggles different passions, and hear his advice for new and aspiring course creators. “The best courses are reactions to what people are already telling you.” – Brennan Dunn In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:40) Thoughts on an honor my business recently received + how I got my face on TV (4:15) How things are going with my new hire (6:32) Is David selling my piano course? And what my affiliate structure looks like (10:00) The backstory for today’s interview (12:57) Flying vs. working on Brennan’s online course business (15:10) Where Brennan spends most of his time (18:15) Getting off the hamster wheel while keeping things running smoothly (21:46) Comparing funnel strategies (25:34) How Brennan creates text-based courses (26:46) His very first course sale (29:39) Do older models still work? (31:26) How I heard about Brennan and Right Message (32:44) Who is a good fit for RightMessage? (43:06) The importance of split-testing for targeted marketing (48:49) Brennan’s thoughts on SaaS businesses versus online courses (52:33) Lifestyle considerations (54:46) How Brennan handles using brand names in his course names (57:52) Platforms and tools he loves (59:56) Community building for online courses (1:02:22) Brennan’s advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:06:24) Why live course components are underrated (1:08:00) Where to find Brennan and his products (1:08:53) David and I discuss Brennan’s story (1:10:02) Improving systems and planning for “2nd resolution season” (1:14:06) Creating scarcity (1:15:34) Thoughts on pivoting and recognizing needs (1:19:10) Audience segmentation and personalization (1:23:34) Why I refuse to get into SaaS products (1:26:26) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Deadline Funnel Trial Guest Links: Brennan’s Website Right Message Books and Resources: Sensei WooCommerce ConvertKit Drip Tim Ferris interview with Guy Raz Elise Darma’s Instagram Course Nathan Rice’s AirBnB Course Khalid Hamada Facebook Marketing School Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expertrategic Coach Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

If you’re an online course creator, you know that hearing from successful students about their progress is one of the best feelings in the world! Today’s interview wasn’t originally destined for this show, but talking to my former student Ken Richard reminded me how powerful it is to hear when your resources have made an impact on someone’s life. At the end of the day, student success is the most important goal of any online course, so I hope you feel inspired by what you hear today. “With all the noise in our lives, you just don’t know what you can do… Push yourself. If it’s uncomfortable, that’s where you’ve got to go.” – Ken Richard In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:45) Why today’s episode is different (1:24) Thoughts from David on helping people go further and trying new ways of doing things (9:48) Setting the stage for today’s conversation (11:54) The experience that inspired Ken to get into piano (16:54) Why he chose Piano In 21 Days (23:02) Where to find Ken’s original music and what his endgame is (26:33) The highlight of his piano journey so far (30:52) Unlocking potential and why it doesn’t have to be so hard (36:09) The power of being able to share your passion (40:07) How Ken got over his reluctance to start composing (43:50) Learning from different teachers and branching out (48:12) Is it possible to learn piano so quickly? (51:03) Our thoughts on Ken’s journey (52:51) Why David thinks I should share certain success stories even more (54:34) Living the lives we want to live (56:48) The “bomb and gauge” technique (59:06) Favorite concert experiences (1:01:38) Do we have famous doppelgangers? (1:03:10) Composition vs. improvisation (1:06:14) Wrapping up (1:08:59) A song from Ken That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Guest Links: Ken’s Website Books and Resources: Episode 119 Cool Tone Records Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expert Strategic Coach Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that my first online course was not an instant success. That’s why I love hearing from other course creators about the highs and lows of their own online course journeys. Guest Kate Kordsmeier has a fascinating tale of successful blogging, making money, losing money, and turning it all around. “What I liked about courses was that it was a way to reach many more people, i.e. have a bigger impact but without having to do more work. I was trying to find something that was a little bit more scaleable, a little bit more passive…” – Kate Kordsmeier In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:47) Catching up with David on getting traction with your content (2:49) Reflecting on who’s inspired us and how co-hosting is going (5:01) Why David’s learning about standup comedy (7:46) What I’ve been working on lately (9:06) Celebrating progress with my Next Level Course students (11:23) Introducing Kate and how she got started in online courses (14:21) Why online courses instead of a book or a blog post? (18:09) Going beyond basic content (19:59) How Kate handles video coaching (25:30) What about students who aren’t on social media? (29:00) Value propositions + success stories (34:11) How Kate has structured her course content (35:32) Taking the course from idea to finished product (38:39) Learning from a low point (43:18) How Kate’s launch style has evolved (44:59) Does passive income really exist? (48:55) How the pandemic has affected her family and business (54:39) Transitioning into an evergreen marketing model (1:00:41) My suggestions for how Kate could relaunch to people on her list (1:08:44) Conversion rates and traffic sources (1:11:06) Making decisions based on niche and personality (1:19:01) Kate’s favorite tools and platforms (1:28:31) Advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:30:52) David and I discuss the launch rollercoaster (1:34:14) Recent changes in my business (1:42:08) The value of analytics (1:44:07) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Active Campaign Guest Links: Kate’s Website Books and Resources: MoveU Owen Video Blog to Biz Hive Digital Course Academy Mariah Coz Rocket Fuel The Obstacle is the Way Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expertrategic Coach Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

Hands down, today’s guest has been the most-requested by my podcast listeners for quite some time. Way back when I first started The Online Course Show, Nate Dodson joined me each week as co-host and new course creator. The rest is history! And at long last here we are with an update of where Nate’s at with his course business, what’s changed for him (and what hasn’t), plus a fun bonus story that may call into question the definition of “takeout.” “There was a huge demand for this, and no one was filling the demand. I jumped right in… If you’re going to get started in an online business, being smart about it, doing some research, and finding areas of unfulfilled demand will make it feel more like luck.” – Nate Dodson In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:43) Bringing back a much-requested guest to the show (1:50) Milestones and different ways of measuring success (8:50) How Nate discovered his niche and how it works (10:23) Radical personal finance and failing to succeed (15:43) Has having a profitable business changed Nate’s lifestyle? (17:44) A question from David’s wife (19:20) Ideas vs. money (21:53) A typical week for Nate now that his business is mostly automated (24:16) Accountability and maintenance (25:38) Perks of having an online business (27:24) Considerations about hiring employees vs. contractors (29:52) Success stories from Nate’s students (32:10) Exciting moments in the online course journey (33:48) How Nate and I met (35:36) Burning out and looking to the future (41:30) Are physical product offerings worth it? (43:06) (Not so) embarrassing stories from early on (46:38) Favorite podcast recommendations (47:37) Nate’s advice for new and aspiring course creators (50:37) Thoughts on passive income (53:46) His favorite software and tools (54:40) Motivation and mentorship (56:55) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show.   Links Offers and Tools: Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Active Campaign Guest Links: Nate’s Course: Microgreens Farmer Books and Resources: Goodbye Things Who Expert Secrets Blue Ocean Strategy Strategic Coach Podcasts: Joe Rogan Mind of George Think Like a CEO Making Sense Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Courses: Wellness Program Expertrategic Coach Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

Just like anything else in life, not everyone in the online course community is the same or does things the same way. And that’s a good thing, because it means I get to interview other course creators and find how they’ve achieved success – even if their approach differs in some ways than mine. Today’s guest Tim Shields is the perfect example of this, and we had a great discussion about what works for him and his business. “You have to take the first step… Stop dreaming and start taking action.” – Tim Shields This episode is chock-full of interesting tidbits and inspiring stories, so I hope you enjoy tuning in! In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:37) Upgrading and re-recording my course content (2:43) Will my course always be on ClickFunnels? (3:58) Expanding my team (9:14) Backstory for today’s interview (10:22) The Two Comma Club and what it means to Tim (13:24) Digital vs. physical products (16:35) How Tim found his passion and why he didn’t start sooner (20:02) His “origin story” (24:04) Where Tim’s audience came from (26:39) How his lead magnet works (28:31) The secret of successful masterclasses (32:20) Transformation vs. information (35:20) Communicating the concept of why his course is different (37:09) Success stories from Tim’s students (41: 23) Why we initially connected (42:26) The value of awarding students for their achievements (51:26) Incentives and tie-ins (53:07) How Tim handles his student community (52:10) Webinar systems and strategies (1:04:38) Tim’s thoughts on selling additional products beyond an online course (1:05:35) An aside on synergy and Tim’s work schedule (1:06:29) Selling something new with tangible scarcity (1:08:41) The circle of focus (1:11:39) Tim’s course offerings with multiple launch funnels (1:17:23) The importance of testing ideas (1:20:11) Tim’s right-hand man for video editing and how he uses that video content (1:21:57) His wife’s role in his work (1:23:39) The beauty of outsourcing after bootstrapping early on (1:25:42) Thinking about platforms, strategies, and ads (1:33:19) Strengths and weaknesses of popular platforms (1:38:47) Tim’s love/hate relationship with his email management software (1:41:35) His thoughts on taking action on dreams (1:45:33) David and I discuss Tim’s rapid success and The Two Comma Club (1:49:35) The importance of reaching out and building credibility (1:52:03) Thinking about how YouTube benefits different people differently (1:55:45) How my advice to course creators is evolving (1:57:56) The difference between information and transformation (2:01:51) Do music skills give people an edge in attracting the opposite sex (2:04:40) Thinking about how to help my students showcase their progress (2:06:26) Discussing Tim’s “webinar sandwich” and work schedule (2:08:46) Why I haven’t focused on hiring people who live near me (2:11:11) Simplicity and freebies (2:17:05) Re-recording and re-evaluating as I prepare for a re-launch (2:17:13) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show. Links Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Tim Shield’s website Kajabi Fivver Active Campaign The Online Course Guy Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Course – Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

When I first started researching Dr. Marnie Ginsberg’s story, I was blown away by the success she’d had in helping teachers help their students improve their reading literacy. It was a no-brainer that I had to have her on The Online Course Show to talk about how her membership model course has worked, what she’s learned on her online course journey, and why she’s so passionate about what she does. “Don’t get overwhelmed by all the things. No one can do all the things, [so] focus on finding the core things… Consistency and persistence and listening to your community will teach you to provide what they want.” – Dr. Marnie Ginsberg It was fantastic to hear about the impact that Dr. Marnie’s resources are making on the world. Chatting with her was super-inspiring, and I think you’re going to really enjoy hearing what has worked for her business as it’s grown! In This Episode, We Talked About: (0:44) Upgrades and updates (4:11) Engaging an audience while giving presentations virtually (8:41) Relaunch magic (9:45) Setting the stage for today’s interview (11:45) Introducing Dr. Marnie and why she created her course (14:53) Why this niche is so important both for families and teachers (21:12) Dr. Marnie’s membership model (23:47) How she set up her course + membership business (28:17) Group coaching considerations (30:37) Building a community and platform choices (33:54) How does Dr. Marnie keep retention rates up? (37:06) Learning from bingeable shows like Stranger Things (39:10) Can a membership site get too big? (41:04) What led Dr. Marnie to dive deeper into her niche and share it with the world (45:38) First sales, breakthroughs, and passion (50:07) Her response to skeptics (plus parallels and contrasts with piano learning) (52:21) Stories of how her resources have impacted people’s lives (56:24) Being a guide for students on their learning journey (1:00:09) Where does Dr. Marnie’s traffic come from? (1:02:43) How much is too much to spend on Facebook leads? (1:04:52) Funnels, freebies, and webinar evolution (1:09:29) Creating scarcity (1:10:38) Systems and struggles (1:15:04) How the pandemic has affected Dr. Marnie’s business (1:17:56) Her advice for new and aspiring course creators (1:19:15) David and I discuss different course models (1:28:21) Community options and the Facebook debate That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show. Links Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Dr. Marnie Course: Reading Simplified Uplift desk Smart Passive Income interview LearnDash BuddyBoard Platform Storybrand Moolah Marketing Active Campaign Traction Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Course – Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

We’re back with another exciting interview from a successful online course creator! Guest Jono Petrohilos has an amazing story of bootstrapping his way from a tiny course investment to a thriving business in his fitness education niche. I loved hearing how Jono’s openness and drive made all the difference in his online course’s success, and we had a great chat on best practices for people at different stages in their own journey. “‘Build it and they will come’… is just about the worst marketing strategy there is.” – Jono Petrohilos Without further ado, it’s time for a deep dive into what has worked for Jono and his online course business. Get your notebook and pen ready – there’s lots of great food for thought here! In This Episode, We Talked About: (1:04) Why David is so excited about Next Level Courses (3:27) An epiphany I had on what platform to use for group coaching (6:04) Observations and feedback on how the podcast is evolving (10:15) My fanboy expectations being met and exceeded (13:51) Favorite takeaways from a recent learning opportunity (23:14) Setup for today’s interview (24:40) Getting to know Jono (27:10) How a learning mindset led Jono to success and prepared him for his online course journey (35:19) How he realized he could avoid a lot of upfront costs (39:56) Jono’s very first launch (47:22) Building up a contact list (50:14) Going where your audience is (56:49) Course validation and pre-selling (1:01:36) What about course creators who don’t have an audience? (1:15:14) The power of giving value away for free (1:17:08) Having fun… and avoiding being called a stalker? (1:19:56) How Jono’s business is currently structured (1:24:02) Turning points that led to success (1:30:51) The theme throughout Jono’s journey (1:36:37) A favorite student success story (1:41:28) Jono’s platforms of choice (1:47:53) Dave’s thoughts on Jono’s story (1:52:26) What we assume our audience is vs. who they really are (1:53:42) Starting where you are (1:58:26) Am I too cool for David’s latest suggestion? (2:01:41) The Online Course Guy catchphrase… maybe (2:05:17) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show. Links Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Jono’s Course: Fitness Education Online Jono’s Facebook Group Fix This Next Chop Wood, Carry Water: How to Fall in Love with the Process of Becoming Great The 5 Love Languages Teachable New Zenler Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Course – Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by

We’re back with another exciting interview from a successful online course creator! Guest Jono Petrohilos has an amazing story of bootstrapping his way from a tiny course investment to a thriving business in his fitness education niche. I loved hearing how Jono’s openness and drive made all the difference in his online course’s success, and we had a great chat on best practices for people at different stages in their own journey. “‘Build it and they will come’… is just about the worst marketing strategy there is.” – Jono Petrohilos Without further ado, it’s time for a deep dive into what has worked for Jono and his online course business. Get your notebook and pen ready – there’s lots of great food for thought here! In This Episode, We Talked About: (1:04) Why David is so excited about Next Level Courses (3:27) An epiphany I had on what platform to use for group coaching (6:04) Observations and feedback on how the podcast is evolving (10:15) My fanboy expectations being met and exceeded (13:51) Favorite takeaways from a recent learning opportunity (23:14) Setup for today’s interview (24:40) Getting to know Jono (27:10) How a learning mindset led Jono to success and prepared him for his online course journey (35:19) How he realized he could avoid a lot of upfront costs (39:56) Jono’s very first launch (47:22) Building up a contact list (50:14) Going where your audience is (56:49) Course validation and pre-selling (1:01:36) What about course creators who don’t have an audience? (1:15:14) The power of giving value away for free (1:17:08) Having fun… and avoiding being called a stalker? (1:19:56) How Jono’s business is currently structured (1:24:02) Turning points that led to success (1:30:51) The theme throughout Jono’s journey (1:36:37) A favorite student success story (1:41:28) Jono’s platforms of choice (1:47:53) Dave’s thoughts on Jono’s story (1:52:26) What we assume our audience is vs. who they really are (1:53:42) Starting where you are (1:58:26) Am I too cool for David’s latest suggestion? (2:01:41) The Online Course Guy catchphrase… maybe (2:05:17) Wrapping up That’s all for now, folks! See you on the next episode of The Online Course Show. Links Bonjoro Free Trial ClickFunnels Free Trial Jono’s Course: Fitness Education Online Jono’s Facebook Group Fix This Next Chop Wood, Carry Water: How to Fall in Love with the Process of Becoming Great The 5 Love Languages Teachable New Zenler Jacques’ Courses: The Online Course Accelerator Next Level Courses Piano in 21 Days David’s Course – Wellness Program Expert Transcript Email Download New Tab Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by