074: How to generate passive income using online courses with Jacques Hopkins

Intro 0:03

You're listening to the Success with Soul podcast with Kate Kordsmeier, ex-journalist turned CEO of a multi six figure blog in online business. But it wasn't that long ago that Kate was a struggling entrepreneur who lacked confidence, clarity and let's be honest money. But all those failures, experiments and lessons learned helped Kate create a thriving business that impacts 1000s and brings freedom, flexibility and fulfillment to her life. If you're ready to do the same and make something happen with holistic, soulful, step by step strategies from Kate and other experts, you're in the right place. Here's your host, writer, educator, mom, recovering perfectionist, bookworm and sushi connoisseur Kate Kordsmeier.

Kate Kordsmeier 0:52

Welcome back to the Success with Soul podcast. This is Kate Kordsmeier, your host and we are doing something a little bit different for the next few weeks. In honor of digital course Academy opening up, we are going to do an amazing series all about online courses. So to kick things off, we're actually republishing a couple of our favorite episodes on the subject of online courses, as we're leading up to open enrollment for digital course Academy which starts officially on September 7 2022. So throughout the next few weeks, you're going to hear all about digital courses, and how to create a profitable, scalable business using your course from all different kinds of experts, including Amy Porterfield herself, we've got three interviews with her, myself Yours truly, and some other experts that have come on the show. We're also going to give you the opportunity to get a bunch of freebies over the next month and a half while we're in this series of online courses. So the best place to stay up to date on what freebie we're releasing this week is to head over to Kate kordsmeier.com/DC a that's digital course Academy DCA, Kate kordsmeier.com/dca. If you have any questions or you want to learn more about how to create a profitable online course, head over to Kate kordsmeier.com/dca to learn more and get your freebies. Welcome to Success with Soul Jacques, I'm glad you're here.

Jacques Hopkins 2:12

What's up, Kate Kordsmeier Honored to be here. Always a pleasure to chat with you what's going on with you? Oh, you know, just surviving. That's the 2020 motto I think. Well, I think are you are you in Atlanta still you in the South as well. So I'm in the south like it is cold today. Like that's why I'm so bundled up like yeah, I'm so cold and I'm not good with the cold. So I'll do my best. But I'm just warning you. I'm cold over here. Okay, well, I'm it's freezing here, too. It's 38 degrees today. And I just went for a walk and my nose immediately started running. So hopefully I won't sniffle throughout the whole episode. I try to stay outside of those temperatures, I mean inside of those temperatures. So fortunately, we're recording this inside. So I'll give it my best. There we go. All right. So yeah, you have an engineering background. You teach piano. And now you have this really cool online course podcast and course of your own. So what's the journey like to get there? How do you go from engineer to piano teacher to a while you're still a piano teacher? Kind of yeah, I've got two businesses now essentially, piano in 21 days is the piano training that I have. And then I've got the smaller of the two is kind of online course consulting and coaching. The main thing, there's a podcast, which I have a lot of fun with, you've actually been on that podcast. But the main thing that I do now is my piano course. And a lot of times people will be like, Oh, that's really cool. You must have you must have gotten like a degree like I live in Baton Rouge. So I went to LSU. Here, Louisiana State University, they're like you must have a degree and don't get started with that already.

And I read a book my senior year at LSU. You may have heard of it. It's called Four Hour Workweek. Oh, yeah. heard of that one. Okay, so that was, for me, that was 2007 2008. When I read that book, and up until that point, I had zero interest in doing anything other than going to work for a company as an engineer. I had no interest in owning my own company at all, because I thought that entrepreneurship meant venture capital, lots of loans, lots of employeeis a brick and mortar store lots of things I had no interest in being a part of it sounded like a lot of headaches. But when I read that book, it's like, okay, this guy has more of a automated an outsourced model a lot of online components. He's going all over the world doing these really cool things like racing motorcycles, and winning kickboxing tournaments and learning how to dance and witness eras as like, this brand of entrepreneurship actually sounds kind of cool. So for the first time in my life, I was on board with it. But then it was like, What's my thing going to be? At the time I read that book, I actually already had my job even lined up. So I went to work. And I worked for the same company as an electrical engineer for eight years. All the while trying to figure out some kind of four hour workweek online business type thing that could work for me and helped me reach all these dreams that sounded so amazing. Sorry to interrupt you. But I'm curious, like The Four Hour Workweek. Was it just the the dream of Oh, my gosh, I could make good money and only work four hours? Yeah. So I think by the time I had read the book, I'd already had my like, post graduation trip planned to Europe. And so I went by myself to Europe, just kind of doing the backpacking the book by myself. And like, I had never been to Europe. And it was really cool. It was like, completely different cultures than I've ever experienced before. And so being able to do more things like that, while you know, checking in on your business for hours a week, and not have to go to an office eight to five every day, and be able to just have more freedom. At the time. I didn't have any kids. I have two little girls now, at the time, I wasn't married, but I was dating the girl that I've now been married to almost 10 years now. And so certainly I wanted freedom, like with the family, like I wanted kids eventually. And I wanted to be able to do really cool things with them, go on trips with them and not have to worry about asking a boss for time off. Worry about how long it would be it was just it's just freedom. Like, are you able to do what I want when I want? Not that I knew what that was exactly at the time. But just the freedom is what appealed to me about that? Yeah, for sure. I think it's like, regardless of how many hours necessarily, it ends up taking you that freedom is the biggest thing that I hear from people, even aspiring bloggers or online entrepreneurs. And they're like, Well, why do you want to do this? Freedom is always one of the first words that comes up. Yeah, but the thing is, it's not for everybody either, right? Most people don't like most people want to be employees. I heard somebody say once, that made a lot of sense. It's like, if you own your own business, you're thinking about work 24/7. Whereas if you work for somebody, you're thinking about it, like 40 hours a week, basically. And most people want that second thing where they can just go in punch the clock, and then punch out and then not think about work while they're off. I mean, I don't know about UK, but like, I'm always thinking about my business, like always the sickness. Yeah.

It is like when I'm wrestling with my girls on the rug in the living room, like, I tried to turn it off. And sometimes I guess I do, but it's really hard. It's

Kate Kordsmeier 8:00

really hard. Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of risk and responsibility. And sometimes when I think about, like, why don't more people want to do this, like I'm hiring. I just hired two people. And I'm hiring another position right now. And I'm thinking like, Well, who would want to come work for me when they could start their own business? And then I have to remember like, oh, yeah, there are some downsides to being your own boss. But for me, it far outweighs the perks and the freedom and flexibility and control and everything for me far outweighs any of the risks, which obviously, you've decided it does for you, too.

Jacques Hopkins 8:38

Yeah. And thank goodness for both types of people. Right? Yeah, I think it was Mike McCalla wits I heard say recently that 93% of people, I think I'm getting this right, will never like start or own a business of any sort. And like, as entrepreneurs as business owners, it's our job to like, employ those 93% of people, right, give them jobs, give them work, hopefully fulfilling work.

Kate Kordsmeier 8:59

Which is great, too, because I can't do this by myself. So I need people who are like, No, the dream is to work at a company like yours, but I doesn't need to be my company. But something else you said and I want to get back to your story. But something else you said that struck me already is the low startup cost of creating an online business was appealing. It was like, Well wait, in the past, I thought I had to find investors and capital and this seemed like a big deal and online business, whether it's a blog or a course or coaching, or I mean, there's so many options. They're essentially free to start if we're, you know, comparing apples to apples here, but I still get a lot of people who come to me and say, Well, I can't start a blog because Bluehost is 295 a month. Okay, maybe you're maybe you belong more than the 93% of people who you know, aren't aren't interested in running their business. How do you find the cost startup cost? I still have an online venture.

Jacques Hopkins 10:02

Well, I think that if $3 a month is not going to work for somebody, they're probably not a fit for this. You said that, but I also like to just kind of look at as a hobby or side hustle at first anyway, right. And if you look at people's hobbies, usually in one way or another, they cost money, like I play a little bit of golf rake offs, there's, you gotta have clubs, you gotta know, you gotta buy balls, like when you want to go play at a course, it's gonna cost anywhere from like 20 to 200 $120 to go play. So like, most hobbies come with some kind of costs, like my wife loves to do like stationery and like physical paper stuff, like that's probably a little cheaper than then golf, but she's got to buy the supplies, like most hobbies come with some sort of cost. So if you frame it as kind of a hobby, at least at first, then that can help with some of the expenses. And so when I was getting started, like, yeah, I spent a little bit of money, like I had to buy the domain and host it somewhere. And there was a few little software things here and there. But at first, like, I was probably spending money there and not doing some of my other hobbies, right, because I wanted to spend three hours on a Saturday morning working on my business rather than going to play golf. And so it was just like a transfer of the expense. And so it's a lot of times things can come down to just mindset. So if you just look at it as a hobby, that can really help. And for me, like I didn't know if it was ever going to replace my full time income, I didn't know if it was I was ever going to be able to quit my job. But you know, if I could get it up to like $1,000 a month. That's pretty fun spending money, at least at the very least.

Kate Kordsmeier 11:32

Yeah. Okay, so that kind of puts us back on track of your story. So you're eight years electrical engineer, continuing to think about the four hour workweek, what that could look like for you. And then what happens?

Jacques Hopkins 11:44

Well, so about every year, I would try a new idea, roughly. So I think there were six different ideas that I started to execute on. That never made a single dollar that, in my opinion is a failure, but it's a failure, and that it didn't make $1 It's not a failure, and that I learned something from each one along the way. So I'm a big fan of online courses as a business model. And to your point about low startup costs, and everything with online business, like online courses, one of the lowest, like easiest barriers to entry for most people. And one of the ideas that I had was like a physical product. And that's actually one of the recommendations he had in four hour workweek, I mean, he wrote it in like 2006 2007. So it's online courses weren't near as popular as they are now. But I started going down the path and creating this physical product. And what it was was a way to convert your existing desk into a standing desk standing desks were getting very popular. In fact, I was working as an electro engineer and I had to go to Home Depot and spend $100 on various things to be able to put this thing on my desk to have a standing desk at work. And I was like, Oh, I wonder if I could invent something that makes it easy for people to convert their existing desk into a standing desk rather than having to buy a whole new desk. But man the headaches like prototypes, like physical like inventory, there's like there's so many problems. And then we started to get into the all the reasons I didn't want to get into entrepreneurship. So I learned very quickly that some sort of physical product was not going to be a good fit. For me, that was one of the six like failed things.

Kate Kordsmeier 13:17

I love that. Because I always think the fastest path to success is failure. So it's like, just get busy failing, and you'll be succeeding before you know it.

Jacques Hopkins 13:28

Well, the fastest path is for everything to just work. Yeah, but yeah, the fastest path is just snap my fingers, and then I have a million dollars in my bank account. But that's unlikely to happen. Right. But I mean, to be honest with you, I thought that that was I mean, not literally possible, but close to it. Like it was 2011 2012. I know you've had Pat Flynn on your podcast, like I really got into Smart Passive Income. That was like the next big resource that I got into after four hour workweek. And there were some other podcasts and I would hear like you would hear all the just like crazy success stories, right? Especially I would be especially interested in hearing the the course greater success stories. And they would talk about how they would put their course together and then they would launch it. And then they would go have dinner with their wife or like go do some yard work and come back and look at their bank account, all of a sudden, there's $3.6 million sitting there. You know, and so I had this, you know, speaking of mindsets, I had this mindset of if I made a course, then I would be an instant success. Like all these stories I would hear too. And it's just not that simple. I failed so many even on the business that ended up working my only piano course I failed in so many areas. And that's early 2013 is when I got the idea for the piano course, and then had started getting a lot of failures with that.

Kate Kordsmeier 14:53

Okay, so 2013 ish, you get the idea for the piano course. I assume you launch it The same year, apparently. Okay, so what was the process like? So now you run a seven figure online course business. So how'd you get from there to here? In one sentence, you know? Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins 15:17

Well, every year has been, I mean, basically doubled every year. And if you do that, like, eventually you'll find success. Like even if you make $1, like if you just keep doubling, that's the beauty of compound interest or exponential reality. But I, you know, I was early 2013, I was I had, whatever the six business was that wasn't working, like I would come home from work, and feel like I should be working on that I was married, didn't have kids yet. But I was just drained, I was stressed. And like, it wasn't like, I worked more than 40 hours, and I would come home. And instead of working on that six business, I would find myself playing my piano. And that's like, one day in 2013. I'm like, Hmm, I wonder if like, if this is where I come to when I don't want to do anything else. Like, I wonder if there's a business here some kind of way. And I don't know if you believe in, like serendipity or fate, or whatever. But that very night, I was listening to the latest episode of Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn. And he had on a online piano teacher, like who just launched an online course, his name is Steve Nixon. And he was one of those success stories was like, Oh, I built it. And then I did this. And then all of a sudden, I'm, you know, made six figures or whatever. But for me, that was validation. I was like, like, I just got this idea. And then like, six hours later, the universe is playing for me as success story in the exact same niche. So that's events. Yeah. That yeah, so. But I didn't know what I was doing. So the little bit that I knew I learned from that podcast, I guess, there's a little bit of like techniques and for our work week, but even I mean, I've been doing this a little longer than you. We both have online courses. But even like having a course portal, where somebody gets a username and a password, they have to log in to be able to access the paid material, like that was so much more difficult in 2013 than it is today. Like teachable, Thinkific Kajabi. Like these things didn't really exist, or Kajabi. May have but it was at its infancy. And so like the amount of time I wasted just figuring that out, was unreal. And so it just took a very long time. I launched it in like, October or November of 2013. And guess how many sales I made the first day, the first day, guess how many sales? I've had my finger up? And I'm just I'm not saying how many sales it is. But I'm just saying the first day Guess how many?

Kate Kordsmeier 17:37

Okay, I thought this was one sale? No. I mean, if I had to guess I would say is zero. But I.

Jacques Hopkins 17:43

Okay, zero. And after all that time, like all the success stories I would hear, and all that time, like 678 months developing, getting this out there to the world, launching it not getting a single core sale. Like that sucks. Yeah, that sounds awful.

Kate Kordsmeier 17:59

Yeah, but because like spoiler alert, we know that you have ended up becoming a success with this. There's two things that I want to highlight about your course that I feel like come up a lot and with my audience who are interested in maybe pursuing the course route, and one is that you created a b2c course, essentially, because a lot of people have this mindset of the only people who can make money with courses are teaching other people how to make money doing something. And you're teaching people how to play piano. Right? So living proof right here, everyone listening, you don't have to teach somebody how to make money to have a successful course business. Second thing is, and you'll have to answer this for me, because I don't I don't know. But a lot of people might have said, well, you know, I didn't major in piano. I don't have fancy training or credentials. I haven't played at big music halls. I mean, I don't know if that's true or not. But you could have easily said, I'm not expert enough to teach other people piano. How did you get past that?

Jacques Hopkins 19:05

Those are two really great points, because those are two things I'm very, very proud of is that my main course is not a money making course I don't teach. I mean, I don't even teach people how to make money from their piano or anything like that. I just teach people to how to enjoy piano on their own. And that makes the marketing even more difficult because you have to convey the ROI or return on investment in forms other than monetary. It's like, and it's not a cheap course, either. My course is 497 Yeah, most most piano courses are like 20 or 40 bucks.

Kate Kordsmeier 19:36

Although I did you before that I spend more than that in three piano lessons. And yeah, so I still Yeah, I guess but

Jacques Hopkins 19:48

yeah, but the point is that like even whether it's 500 or $1,000, whatever, like, let's say $500. I have to convince you that that somehow my course is going to be worth more than that to your life. Right. And if it's a money making opportunity, I can say, Okay, well, once you make your first sale, then you've made back what you paid for the course. Whereas with piano, it's like, I have to dig a little deeper and say, Okay, if you could, in as little as three weeks from right now, if you could literally sit down and play your favorite song on the piano, or play it for your husband, or your spouse, or your kid, or, or what if three weeks from now, you could sit down and play something and have your eight year old sing along to it. How would that make you feel? And what would that be worth to you? Right? We got to we've got to get into things like that that are not monetary benefits to your life. And that's important with non money, money making niches.

Kate Kordsmeier 20:40

Yeah, for sure. But I think there's also something good here and I just read the book chill printer by Denise Duffield Thomas, I don't know if you've read that. No, I haven't. Probably I think it's relevant to all genders, but it's definitely geared towards women. She says, people always come to her with this complaint. Well, I don't teach people how to make money, so I can't make money. And she said, basically everything you could turn into a way to make or save people money. And the example I just gave was, well, what would it cost me to pay a piano teacher to come to my house? Or to go, you know, wherever? And learn piano that way? And how long would it take me your course? Is piano and 21 days, like, how much time and money? Are you going to save me by doing this course instead of doing the traditional route? So I think there are ways that you can still talk about money if you feel like that's something you want to do, even if you're not in a money make, you know, you're not teaching people how to learn piano and then charge for their services of playing piano for people

Jacques Hopkins 21:46

right now in that book that she talks about time too, or is it just about always tying things back to money? Because that's, that's obviously my big pitch is you're gonna learn faster with me than anybody else.

Kate Kordsmeier 21:56

Right? Yeah, she talks about both. But I think this, this particular chapter was kind of addressing that objection, people have to, you know, oh, I teach people how to lose weight. I can't say it's going to make them more money or something. She's like, well, you could kind of build an argument that says, if you lose weight, and you feel more confident, you might go after that new job or promotion that you wouldn't have done before. Or you might you know, things like this that can happen. So you have to maybe get creative sometimes or think about it. But I think if you're looking for like, I need a tangible benefit that I can promise to potential buyers, there is a way to get there.

Jacques Hopkins 22:38

Yeah, I mean, I will say my marketing and like my evergreen webinar, you know, hey, I've done the math. Like I took piano lessons for 12 years, my parents spent over $20,000 on those piano lessons. And guess what? You're gonna know more about the piano in 21 days than I learned in those 12 years of piano lessons. Right for far cheaper. So it's that's time and money. Right.

Kate Kordsmeier 22:59

So what about that kind of imposter syndrome question, though. How did you get past like, Well, who am I to teach piano? I'm not. Liberace?

Jacques Hopkins 23:08

Yeah, that's, I mean, I mentioned earlier, that's actually one of the things that in hindsight has made me successful. But you'd be shocked to know kind of how bad I actually am on the piano. Like, I'm not. I'm not a gamer. So we got some some fire, we're delivered. Because I want my house as hot as possible. We already established I don't like the cold. This guy comes delivers the fire already stacking it up. And he's real personable kid. And he's like, he's like, so what do you do for a living? I was like, Oh, well, I'm actually a piano teacher. That's always a hard question. By the way. Let me just start by saying, I sometimes will say online piano teacher. And his eyes line up. He's like, Oh, no way. I'm I'm a guitar and piano teacher too. And like, he gives me his card. And I'm like in a start to explain to him that it's all online. And then he starts asking me, he's like, where do you gig like, where do you play? I'm like, Yeah, I don't I don't do those things. Like, I'm just a teacher. He's like, No, he's like, man, you're probably awesome. I'm like, No, I just like I just teach like, I'm good at teaching. But I'm bad at everything else related to piano. And he was so confused. But he lives and breathes music, where I guess I'm more like living breathed the business side of things with a little bit of the piano. But as it turns out, what's made it work is just simplifying things for people, right? If you live and breathe music, then sometimes you can't explain certain concepts to the everyday person in a way they'll understand it. Whereas as far as music goes, I am an everyday person. And so if I'm explaining to you how to play a major chord, and I'm a music nerd, and I say, Well, you got to figure out the key of the song and the notes of the scale. And then we got to figure out the one three and the five, this and that. But if instead of just say, hey four, three, and then explain to you what that means. That's the way an engineer is going to explain to you how to play a major chord is just four three, and then you instantly know all the major chords as opposed to just like memorizing All of them. So I've just found a way to kind of break it down and teach it in a unique way. But that doesn't mean that I'm a piano expert.

Kate Kordsmeier 25:08

Yeah, right. But I love that because a lot of times, yeah, there are some people that want to go to the most successful person and in an industry or their nature, whatever and learn from them, I want the best. Most people can't afford the best of the best. And most people actually don't want to learn from that, because to your point, they're too far gone from what it's like to be a beginner in something. And so to have the best of the best teach you, you can't go to Nadal and say, teach me how to surf. I feel like he's too far advanced, right? Like, you got to find somebody. That's Amy Porterfield always says, like, you just have to be 10 steps ahead of whoever you're teaching. Like, you just have to know a little bit more than they do. And I think I've never heard you play piano. But it sounds like a great example of that.

Jacques Hopkins 26:01

Yeah, I mean, I'm not I'm not bad. Like I'm competent. But that's my pitch is like, Hey, if you put in the work, like in 21 days, you could play like I do, like everything I have to teach you, I can teach you in this short amount of time. And so they see me playing like I have just songs on my YouTube channel where I'm just playing. And it's not like it's good, but it's not amazing. And it's approachable. And it's like, oh, well, I kind of understand what he's doing. And I can do that. Yeah, right. Oh, watch.

Kate Kordsmeier 26:28

Gosh, there's this one guy. I love watching on YouTube play. I don't even know what his name is. He's got one of these fancy setups where you see his hands. And then he has like lights on the keys, and then it lights up the it's fascinating. But you watch that and you're like, well, I could never do that. I could never do that, either.

Jacques Hopkins 26:45

Yeah, if you like, if you want to learn to cook, right? Could you ever be Gordon Ramsay? Or would you rather learn from you know, a stay at home mom who has to cook meals for their their kids every night like that stay at home moms a lot more relatable to me, then then Gordon Ramsay would be like we would have similar resources available, we would kind of speak the same more of the same language. And so I think that's why more and more just like regular people are succeeding with online courses. And when I go to learn something like I want to learn from somebody who is approachable I relate to and not like an A list celebrity,

Kate Kordsmeier 27:23

right? And it is more inspiring as the student because you're like, Oh, they're not that far away from where I am right now. And yeah, I think it's such a good point. So I'm glad we covered that. So we're at your you've launched the course, what was the best thing you did between launching your course for the first time and where you are today,

Jacques Hopkins 27:49

Evergreen funnel?

Kate Kordsmeier 27:51

What does an evergreen funnel mean?

Jacques Hopkins 27:55

Well, we have evergreen, and then we have funnel. So the way you know I like to whether it's piano or an online course business, like I want to break things down and simplify it as much as possible into me to have a successful online course business, there's really, there's four main components, you have to have a course. All right, you have to have traffic, which is how people find out about you, and then wants to learn more from you. And then the funnel is the third piece. And that kind of sits between the traffic and the the course. And so you can't really like a lot of people want to just like buy Facebook ads and send them straight into a order form for their course. Well, that's not really nurturing them. That's not really building a relationship and building rapport with people. And that's what a funnel does, is it's a collection of videos, landing pages and emails that really just build a relationship with your potential customer and leads them to the sale in as non salesy away as possible. That's what a good funnel does. Anyway, so the funnel sits between the traffic source and the course, if we're talking about online course business, but really, it works that way for any business, it sits between your traffic and whatever your offer is, and whatever you're offering physical products, services, or so on. So that's what a funnel is, and does. And by the way, the fourth component to a successful online course business is actual students success and testimonials. But that's a funnel. Evergreen just means that it's happening all the time every day, and not the more traditional model. You know, when I was hearing all these crazy success stories back in 2012 2013, people would just like launch once, twice, three times a year and have these big, like events and launches, which are still there's a time and a place for those. But I personally rather make income like every day as opposed to twice a year. And so if you can set up a good funnel that is also evergreen, then that's a winning combination. And once I discovered evergreen funnels and then implemented my own based on somebody who was succeeding doing it that like literally took me from like $1,000 a month in my piano course, to $10,000 a month in my piano course without changing anything else, same course same traffic, and it like 10x my business and like, allowed me to quit my job stay home. That's when I knew it was working.

Kate Kordsmeier 30:19

Yeah

I need to let you in on a little secret, I get business scared, too. In fact, when I first started thinking about scaling my business with a digital course, one of my biggest fears, and I hear that you might have it too, was that I didn't think my audience would want to buy the course I created. But here's the truth. With around 4.5 7 billion Internet users, I'd venture to say there's a pretty good chance there's someone out there who wants to learn all about your expert knowledge. So if you've ever considered building a digital course, I think you're gonna love this. My go to digital course creation coach Amy Porterfield just released a sneak peek of her signature program digital course Academy. You don't want to miss this, it is literally the entire first module of her course for free. Yes, you heard that right. But it won't last long. Go to Kate kordsmeier.com Ford slash peak, that's p e k to get your sneak peak. Now. When you sign up, you'll learn how to figure out your winning course idea and nail the perfect topic that sparks interest and engagement from your community. You'll learn what to name your course based on the six different types of course names because you can't let something like getting stuck on a name hold you back. And these examples will make sure you're past that potential roadblock and off to the races. You'll also get a brainstorm session of what you'll stop doing in your business. Once you're generating revenue with your digital course. This one is extra fun to explore. I love making a not to do list. Now if you're inching close to burnout with one on one client work, or you want to expand your revenue streams are you're just ready to up your game and scale. This is the time to learn from my personal mentor about how to get started with digital courses. To get your sneak peak go to Kate kordsmeier.com/peak. That's P E K. Now to get set up with this blueprint to make some magic, I can't wait to see what's up your sleeve.

Okay, so I want to clarify this because even some peers of mine that are in this industry still get confused on on this part of the Evergreen. So if you're alive launching, like you talked about your course is closed for enrollment all day every day, except when you are live launching your course. And you say carts open for the next five to seven days, whatever it is right? You close it down. Now when you're evergreen, the first question people are like, Oh, so you can get it any time. But your courses if I went to your website right now, I can't just buy your course. So how does it work? From the back end side? How are people able to enroll every day, but also it's not available?

Jacques Hopkins 33:15

There's a difference between evergreen and evergreen funnel, right. So if you do just like a basic sales page or order form on your site, and I drive traffic to that, well, that's evergreen, because people can buy it every day. But it's not really a funnel, it doesn't do those things that I mentioned that a funnel does. And especially at the price point of 497. Really higher than any piano course I've seen, all the more important it is to really build that trust with people and get somebody I've never physically met before to pull out their credit card and pay me 500 bucks for a digital product. Very, very important. So the way it works is I essentially have 365 launches a year. So if you go to my sites and you opt in for freebie, like right now, you go in every like button, everything on my website points you to this one, place one page where you can download my workbook that's called Learn 36 popular songs in five days. That is like the top of my funnel like that's the beginning of my funnel. I want people to say yes to a free thing from me. And then just like keep saying yes to like bigger things to eventually hopefully saying yes to a $500 product, but they opt in for that free workbook. There's almost no information about the actual course on the website anywhere. But I teach beginners like Other online piano teachers, like Teach intermediate players to get advanced but like I teach total beginners, like even if you've never touched a piano before, or haven't in years, that's my forte. So if you come to my website and you want to start playing songs in your piano, and it's like oh for free, I can get this book called Learn 36 popular songs in five days. Great. You opt in for it about 150 people a day do Do that. And that's when like the automation and the Evergreen funnel starts. So if you go do that on like a Monday, then you'll get that thing. And then the next day, you'll get the second email with some value, like a video training of some sort. And the third day, you'll get this and the fifth day, you'll get something else. And then on the seventh day, the cart opens for you and you have five days to actually enroll. And then there's an email every day on the last day when it's closing, I sent out two emails. But whether you opt in for that workbook on December the first or February 27, everything is still going to happen on those exact days, like it's, the car is going to open seven days after you write in and so on. And that's what an evergreen funnel does for us.

Kate Kordsmeier 35:47

Right. So just to clarify for everybody listening, if I opt in jocks funnel on Tuesday, December 1, and you opt in to jocks funnel on Wednesday, December 2, we're on different timers, we each have our own, okay, there's these days before the card opens, and the card opens for us. So it is unique to every single individual person. What tool do you use to do that?

Jacques Hopkins 36:13

Well, deadline funnel is the main thing that keeps it the deadlines authentic. So the last thing you want to do is tell people it's going away what and it doesn't actually go away. And so before I had this, like evergreen setup, like the way you do a live launch is you just go to the page that the sales page and you can there's a setting to say like on December 13, redirect this page to something else. But you can't just you need some special software to be able to do that like every day for everybody uniquely and deadline funnel. does that for us deadline

Kate Kordsmeier 36:45

funnel, don't you? So now I use just kartra does

Jacques Hopkins 36:49

that for me? Oh, you used to use deadline funnel? I did

Kate Kordsmeier 36:53

use to use deadline funnel and I loved it. I have no complaints about deadline funnel, except it costs money that I did when I switched platforms. So yeah. But I think creating that authentic scarcity is really important. And I have a feeling that will be your answer to this question. But why not? I know. So you're saying okay, instead of just having the course available all the time for people to purchase, you put them into this funnel. But why not have the course still available all the time. And people still like you get them to opt into a freebie you still send them the same nurture emails, you create a relationship with them, but they can purchase anytime.

Jacques Hopkins 37:34

Yeah, so the only scenario where I advise people to do that is where within your evergreen funnel, you incentivize them to purchase during that window, buy maybe $100 off or something. So I could ever I could have a sales page on my site for 497. And then they could still have my exact same funnel. But like, the main reason you would want to say you would want to enroll during the five day enrollment period is not that it's going away completely. It's just that for this limited period, you can get a discount. For me, I don't like discounting my product, I'd rather just like add bonuses, or just make it available or not. And have that scarcity, like piano in 21 days is a brand like it's more and more recognizable as a brand. And if there's a limited enrollment window, then all the more reason for somebody to jump at the opportunity. It's like, I'm gonna enroll in this now because I know that if I wait like I'm gonna miss out and it's a cool party inside of there. It looks like

Kate Kordsmeier 38:31

Yeah, yeah, I think building in that scarcity is like one of the key things that a funnel needs in order to work properly. And I know a lot of people that have like, well, I built a funnel, but you can purchase all the time. And maybe they don't even offer a discount. Or some people have funnels where you can purchase anytime. But in the funnel, you get extra bonuses if you purchase during them. So there's that added incentive. The only other time I can think where that might make sense for a business, to have it available all the time is if what you sell is very timely. But it only happens during a certain window for people. So like if you sell a pregnancy course. Or if you sell a course about divorce or like something where it's like when I'm pregnant, I need the course. Now I have this limited window. I don't need it after I'm not pregnant anymore. So if you live launch and you only live launch twice a year, you're probably going to miss out on a lot of customers who are like, well, that's not gonna work for my lifestyle. But there's only a few industries that I've come up with that I've thought yeah, maybe you shouldn't do that model.

Jacques Hopkins 39:40

Yeah, but here's the thing, like if it's let's, let's take your pregnancy example. And when you say don't do that model you're talking about possibly like being able to buy it from the website.

Kate Kordsmeier 39:49

Yeah, I mean, I think you could still do an evergreen funnel and not Yeah, but it that you wouldn't want something that you wouldn't live launch I guess Is this really what I'm saying? You wouldn't live

Jacques Hopkins 40:01

launch? Yeah, exactly. And I, yeah, that's that's a whole different thing. And some people still do that model where they're live launching a couple of times a year. But that's just not the way that I like to do things. And to better answer the question you asked me about a minute ago, about, why not just make it available all the time? Well, that's the way I used to do it before I discovered evergreen funnels. Right. Remember when I said I went from like, $1,000 a month to $10,000 month? I've been there I tried it like it was, it was making a few sales, but with the same course and the same traffic I did in a really good evergreen funnel, and 10x the business?

Kate Kordsmeier 40:39

Yeah, it's yeah. So okay, I have a couple other follow up questions for you on the Evergreen. And then I kind of want to go back to the beginning again. So why you said on your website, and this is something I've noticed, because after I came on your show, you ended up teaching me a lot when I was a guest on your show. So I went and studied your website, and like, how is he doing this? I'm gonna, you know, they call it Funnel Hacking and looking at stuff like that, seeing how other people are doing things you have, and you mentioned this, you have one opt in on your site, it's for an ebook, and you promote it everywhere. But there's only one why only one? Why not say okay, I have an ebook. Here. I have this other thing here in case the ebook isn't interesting to people. Why just one?

Jacques Hopkins 41:28

Well, in some ways, I got lucky, because it turned out to be a very compelling resource. So one of the things that I did right back in 2013, when I got the idea, I got a lot of things wrong. But one of the things I did right, just from listening to Pat Flynn and whatnot, was creating like a lead magnet of some sort something of value that I can exchange for an email address, and then start doing email marketing. At the time, it was all about the ebooks, the PDFs. And so I created this at the time, it was eight days, it's like, hey, come get the first eight days of the course in a PDF. And I called it a workbook. And then the other thing I did right was when I created my YouTube channel, and started putting some piano content on my YouTube channel in 2013, and then having the call to action at the end of all my YouTube videos to the workbook. So in my YouTube videos, even the very beginning ones, I say, Hey, guys, if you enjoyed this, you want to learn more from me head over to piano in 21 days.com, I've got a free workbook waiting for you, you're going to learn this, this and this in eight days, or five days or whatever. And so my point is that ever since the beginning of my business, all of my traffic kind of has the built in call to action. Like when people go to my site, they're expecting the workbook. Right? Yeah, so So I've just kind of left it. And then the when I said I was lucky, it's like, fortunately, like the workbook works like people love the workbook. It's been downloaded 160,000 times at this point. And the feedback is very positive. And it gives people a taste and gets them to want to learn even more and more and more. So I'm getting them to say yes to come and go to my website. And then they say yes to Okay, I'll exchange my email for this workbook. And then they go through the workbook I built even more trust with them. So then at the end of the workbook, they can go within like an evergreen webinar, they'll say yes to that. And then they sit through that. And then okay, now they've said yes, a lot. I've built a lot of trust. They've learned a lot from me already. Now, I can pay you $500 for the

Kate Kordsmeier 43:27

course. Yeah. So what would you say to somebody who's maybe tried something similar? They've created a lead magnet, but it's not working? What would you have done? If you created this workbook and the conversion rate was like 5%, or something? Would you have tried something else and left the workbook replaced it with something else? I think that's the question that I hear a lot from people is, well, I tried that, but it didn't work.

Jacques Hopkins 43:54

Well, there's a lot of like, definitions of not working, right. He specifically said, conversion rate, then it's like, okay, if he's only converting a 5%, what are those 5% doing with it? Is it getting them results of any sort of that is that the part that's not working is like, people could be opting in for it, but then they don't, the content is not valuable, or it's not actionable, and they're not getting results from it. So you've got to measure a lot of different things there. For me personally, like five to start over. I wouldn't do the workbook like that wouldn't be the opposite. I would I would go a little simpler, like evergreen webinars are I mean, we're recording this at the end of 2020. I'm sure it'll aired and 2021 early right now, like that is the best funnel, the easiest, I guess the most bang for your buck. Like we can set that up within a couple of weeks. And it's really working well if you do it right. And when I say do it, right, and I know you and I have talked about this a little bit like all the fancy evergreen webinar software that exist every webinar, Stealth Seminar, DiMeo and everything. Like all the pretending that it's live. That's So 2017 now, right? But what is working right now is the opt in being some sort of free training or workshop, and they give you their email address, you want to make a compelling case on the landing page for why they should attend this workshop. And once they say yes, they opt in, like immediately present to them, the training the workshop, like on demand, there's no gimmicks, there's no fake counters for how many people are in their fake chats. Like none of that no saying it's live. And so if I was starting over from scratch, like that's, I would set up a basic evergreen webinar funnel that would be the opt in. And then to your point about, is it working? Or is it not like we don't need to think about changing what the opt in is like workbook versus this. It's like, I'm telling you evergreen webinars work. If it's not working for you, then either your landing page stinks, or your webinar stinks. And let's fix them.

Kate Kordsmeier 45:57

Right. One thing that we've done, I love that you say like there's a million reasons why something may not be working. So don't just stop at it's not working, scrap it and start over. It's like, Well, wait, wait, wait, backup, which part? Where are we losing people. And when I first went evergreen, in spring of 2020, we started looking at our video, people were converting on the landing page to sign up for the webinar really well, like 60% conversions. We're like, Okay, that's good. 60% of the people who get to this page, opt in to the webinar, but then they weren't buying. And so we're like, why are they buying what's happening? Because we offer this special bonus on the webinar, and they're not taking advantage of it? What can we do? So we looked at our stats, and we saw people were dropping off at 38 minutes. Well, I don't get to the offer until 42 minutes. So it was like, oh, shoot, people are dropping off before I'm even telling them, Hey, I have this course. And it can help you solve this problem. So we went back and in hindsight, I should have just re recorded it. But we ended up just editing it out, because I was like nine months pregnant at that point and want to deal with it. So we just edited out a few parts that were like, Okay, we could do without that we could do without that. Then we started getting to our pitch at 36 minutes instead, boom, conversion rate shot up, and it was like, Okay, same webinar, I mean, almost the same webinar, you know, I didn't, didn't redo like what I was teaching, I just cut out some of the fluff and conversion rates went up. So I like that you've talked about, you know, different ways to look at, well, where where's it breaking? Because it's not necessarily that the whole thing needs to go.

Jacques Hopkins 47:41

Once you find something that starts to work, and you want it to work even better. Change one thing at a time. Right? So let's say you made that change, and you started making sales, your conversion rate to the actual sales is up to a reasonable level. And it's like, okay, it's converting at 3%. How do we get it to 5%? Don't change six things to try to get to 5% Right, change one thing. And then let's see if that one thing work because if you change five things, and it doesn't work, it's like how do you know which of those things was the one that didn't work? learn that lesson the hard way? Too many times. I actually screwed something up with that like a week ago, even though I've been in business for almost eight years now.

Kate Kordsmeier 48:26

Sometimes we have to learn this lesson over and over again. That's definitely one that I also just went through. We just did this big migration and upgraded our funnels and I think it's gonna be great. But I realized like, man, we swapped out the webinar we wrote all new emails we have a newt like everything about it is different we'll never know exactly what it was. And Mike McCalla wits speaking of him, he in his book clockwork he has a chapter on that. And I remember reading it and highlighting the whole thing, underlining it over the highlights and being like remember this Don't do this. And here I am.

Jacques Hopkins 49:01

Really I'm gonna need to go look at that. I love Mike McCalla wits and I don't remember that specific chapter. But if you're telling me there's a chapter in clockwork on that specific thing, I could use the reminder right now that's like, that's why I started just now just like, Hey, dummy, remember this?

Kate Kordsmeier 49:15

Remember? Okay, so the other piece of the Evergreen funnel I want to talk about is traffic. So you said there's four components, you've got your offer, you've got traffic, you've got the funnel, and you have student success. How are you getting the traffic to get people to get into your funnel?

Jacques Hopkins 49:33

Hmm, yeah, cuz I mean, like, you could have the greatest evergreen funnel in the world and your course could be life changing. But then if you nobody's ever, like even entering your funnel, then what does it even matter? Right. So for me, I started with YouTube channel back in 2013. And that's how I got my initial traffic for the first few years like I didn't do any paid advertising for a while. So fortunately, I've had my youtube channel a while now and it's not huge, maybe 80,000 subscribers over It was almost eight years, though. I mean, it's been, I mean, people, there's people starting YouTube channels three months ago that have more subscribers than me. Quantity. Yeah, exactly. And that's I mean, fortunately at this point, I have two videos over a million views. There's like 38 videos on my channel. But all of my YouTube traffic comes from two of them. Yeah, so that's a traffic source for sure. But really, once I implemented my evergreen funnel, and I was bringing in like five figures a month for the first time, that's when I was like, Okay, now I can spend a little bit of money on ads. So that's when I started doing Google ads for the first time, I think at the time it was called AdWords. So this is like late 2016. Started doing some Google ads. And then eventually,

Kate Kordsmeier 50:45

anybody doing Google ads in this space? I'm fascinated. Well, here's

Jacques Hopkins 50:49

the thing, right? So Facebook ads are incredibly popular. Yeah. But Facebook ads is interruptive. Marketing, right? So for me, I was like, Alright, I could do Facebook ads. But like, I don't even know who to target, right? You've got to in Facebook ads, you have audiences. But unlike Google ads, it's like you literally are targeting people searching for specific things. Like, if people are searching for how to play piano, I can literally have an ad at the top for a solution to how to play piano, it made total sense for my business model. So that's why I started there. And then actually did Bing. Next is with Bing, you can just export everything from Google ads and import it to Bing. And my audience actually skews older. So So Bing is actually a pretty profitable advertising platform for me. So just slowly added on more platforms. So today, we advertise on Google, Facebook, Bing, and YouTube, is where we spend money. And then we have YouTube organic. And then actually, at this point, Google organic is really big, too. So SEO. And that's because three and a half, four years ago, I hired an SEO firm and still work with them today. And it took years to get results on Google. And I've spent tons of money. But at this point, it's really paid off. Because you Google very broad terms, like how to play piano, learn piano, very broad things. And piano shows up on the first page. And what's really cool,

Kate Kordsmeier 52:22

is that just your homepage, because you I'm thinking, Wait, but you're not taking them straight to your course,

Jacques Hopkins 52:28

which is why it's important that every page on my site, it's very clear that I want you to click a certain button to go to my funnel, right. So for example, how to play piano, if you type that into Google, there's probably going to be an ad somewhere at the top, there's probably going to be a YouTube video. But if we're talking just like Google search, organic, there's going to be probably the third or fourth result is going to be piano in 21 days.com/how. To play piano. Right. And it's, it's a very good article that actually didn't write myself, I have a writer on my team who's amazing. And it's a good article, it makes people like interested, it gives them actionable things. But there's very strong calls to action on that page to go download the workbook. Right. Every page is like that, whether it's the testimonials page or blog page, FAQ page homepage. So no matter what page ends up ranking in Google, the calls to action are there. So very diversified traffic at this point. But I started with one platform, YouTube and just slowly added to it.

Kate Kordsmeier 53:29

Now, if you could, if you were starting over with a brand new business, and you know, it takes a while to build up organic traffic through SEO through whether your I think weekly free content on YouTube, a podcast or a blog is pretty necessary, in my opinion. But all of those things take a while, right? You're not going to suddenly wake up tomorrow with 1000s of followers or pageviews, or whatever. Would you start with ads?

Jacques Hopkins 53:56

No, absolutely not. You're asking what Jacques would do. There's a lot of people that would, there's very successful people that would say yes to that. But more like I've, you know, 160 episodes in on my podcast. And typically I just interview successful course creators. And it's far more frequent that somebody will come on and say, Yeah, I started with releasing a YouTube video once a week or a podcast once a week, or even a blog, and just putting out consistent free content. And that's how I built my audience. I listened to where they were struggling most and then released a course solving that problem. That story is the most prevalent success story I've had. It's very rare that somebody will come on and be like, Yeah, you know, I created a course and then I immediately started running ads to it. And that's how I found success. Yeah, so while it seems like the faster path and it can be, it's not the better path, right? You talked about quantity over quality earlier. If you want to do this the right way and have built a quality business then is sometimes it takes going a little a little bit slower.

Kate Kordsmeier 55:00

Right. But the good news, as we talked about in the beginning, is that it's pretty darn cheap to go slow. Whereas other businesses, it's like, we got to start turning a profit quick, because we have overhead and employees and, you know, rent space and all of that. And here, we're just like, yeah, I gotta pay my domain fees and my time, and

Jacques Hopkins 55:20

that's about it. Yeah. But it's hard to tell people. I mean, I know you help people with business, like, that's what this podcast is. But it's hard to tell people like, Hey, start now. You might not see anything back from it for six months, eight months, right?

Kate Kordsmeier 55:31

Yeah. Oh, it's really hard. We had I had a student in the six figure blog Academy come on a coaching call recently. And she said, Okay, I did everything you told me for SEO. But I haven't gotten any traffic to it yet. So I must not be doing something right. Can you help me and show me where I'm going wrong? And I said, I won't say her name, obviously. But Miss. You launched your blog two weeks ago? Correct. And she's like, yes. So yeah, keep doing exactly what you're doing for at least six months. And then we'll start troubleshooting. If it's not working by then if you're not getting any traffic. But yeah, you got to be prepared. Like, this is not an overnight thing. Even though you can use ads, I think you're exactly right. And people can you know, somebody uses an ad to get to your site. And there's not really anything on it, besides one opt in, and then they start getting emails from you. I think they'd be probably hesitant. They've got well, who are you? I don't, you know, I need to see more of what you're about what you can do. And I know I personally get this a lot. And I'm sure you do, too, with your workbook is like people will say, when we ask them, What inspired you to buy? And they'll say, Well, your free content was so good. I figured your paid content had to be even better.

Jacques Hopkins 56:47

That's I mean, that's well said. And a lot of times people will be like, hey, but how do you decide what should be paid? And what should be free? Like, what do I put behind the course portal versus what I put on my YouTube channel or podcast or blog? And I'm like, Look, I don't hold much back at all. Because we want people to see like how great of content we're willing to just give away for free. And that's an awesome way to build trust, you know, with a course specifically like the big reason that somebody's going to pay money for a course, versus consumed content for free like on YouTube. People asked me, I was like, why? I'll just go learn piano for free on YouTube, like, okay, that's fine. But of course gives you an actual like, step by step A to Z curriculum,

Kate Kordsmeier 57:28

all in one place. Here's the order to watch it in order to do things, you don't have to go anywhere else. Here's a community that can support you along the way. I mean, what else do you offer inside your course, besides the core content itself?

Jacques Hopkins 57:43

For a long time, I just offered the core content. But I think there's, I don't know if you see this too. I mean, you specifically mentioned the community. But like, I think there's a big shift with online courses where it's getting way more interactive, way more live streams and community. And so it's great to see, because for me, like the passive income really like was a huge draw to get into this. But now that I'm in it, like, I don't want to just work for hours on it, I want to work on it all the time, because I love it. And I see the impact of my work. And an online course you're gonna get way happier students and way more success if the actual course and the pre recorded videos are just a small part of what you actually get. So for me, at this point, like they get the course and there's some bonus courses, but they also get like they can email me anytime they want. They get a couple of live lessons with me which people are scared to offer that like the people that I trained to do this. They're like, man, but Jacques, like, I don't want all my time to be booked with all these lessons. Let me tell you something in the package that I offer, with two live lessons with me, I've probably sold 2000 of them. I've done like three of those lessons. Nobody ever booked that isn't it ever does it? Like I think they liked the idea of it. So I just keep offering it even though I value my time now more than I ever have. Right? I keep offering it because I think people appreciate it being in their back pocket if they're needed, but if they need it, but my hope is that the course is just that good that they don't need it. And the communities that good like there's a Facebook group for the community, which is not going to be on Facebook very much longer. I go live there once a week to answer questions. And like I'd much rather people attend my live stream and ask their question there because then everybody can benefit from Right.

Kate Kordsmeier 59:29

Right. So good. I know we're coming up on the end here. There's a couple of things though, that I'm like, I can't let you go without having asked you this. So one of the things one of the many things that you've taught me is it goes back to the Evergreen webinar. And I just was having this conversation with a friend the other day who said okay, I got my evergreen funnel setup. And I said so how do people get in? And there was a little bit of confusion around you know, she wasn't quite sure and then I used to have it be that In order to enter my funnel, you had to register for the webinar. And then only then what I pitch you my course and give you kind of that deadline funnel timer of okay card is going to open and you're getting get into this nurture series, you taught me that you can just whether they opt in to the webinar or not, they're still going to get this pitch and they can opt out and you're not like shoving it down anyone's throat. It's a gentle invitation. But everybody gets it, no matter whether they watch the video or not. So that was like, I don't know why, because now it sounds so simple. But that was so mind blowing to me at the time, because my girlfriend who I'm talking to is saying, Well, I know how I am, I don't have time to watch a webinar, I just want to take the course. And so I thought, yeah, that's what Jacques does.

Jacques Hopkins 1:00:50

Yeah, everybody's different. And that's the one when I design a funnel, like I want to be able to appeal to as many different types of people within my niche as possible. And so some people like to buy through a webinar, some people like to buy quickly, slowly, like some people like to see a five minute presentation, some people like to see a two hour presentation. And so my evergreen funnel at this point is kind of a beast, because I've slowly tweaked and added certain components over the years. And so if you like, you know, go to funnel hack me today, like over the two week period, there's gonna be a lot of different things thrown your way. But it's for that reason, because every everybody is different than a lot of people will when they're designing a funnel, it's like they'll take, they'll send people down different paths, like, Oh, if they open this email, send them this way, if they click on this in them that way. And instead of doing that approach, I send everybody down the same path, with just different kinds of adventures along that exact same path. And so if this one didn't work for them, then then next day, then maybe this one will work for them. Or maybe the next day, this one will work for them. That's my philosophy, and it's worked pretty well. Yeah,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:01:58

I love that. And if you're interested in how to talk to different people on your list differently, because people are all different, I recommend listening to the podcast episode we did with Tarzan, Kay, where she has this kind of color coded system of how to talk to your list. And there are the people that are like I need, I'm going to read your sales page, every last word of it start to finish, I'm gonna watch the whole video, I need all the information or other people who get one email and we're like, yeah, that sounds good. I'm in. Don't send me these long emails with, you know, all this information, you got to be able to speak to both of those. So I love that you're doing that also with the types of trainings and freebies and stuff that you're offering along the way.

Jacques Hopkins 1:02:37

Oh, we'll have to listen to that one. I haven't listened to it. But I've been following Tarzan stuff for a while. I don't know her personally. But she I know. She's just a copywriting and messaging, just genius. So that sounds very interesting off to check it out.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:02:50

Yeah, Tarzan's great love that episode. It's kind of based on the disc system of Personality Typing, but she's put a fun twist on it. And it's like Game of Thrones characters. So I dig it. Taking a quick break from regular programming to share with you a new piece of software that has revolutionized my business this year. So it's called kartra. And let me just say, this is truly an all in one platform. Unlike other platforms, which promised to be a Jacques of all trades, but function more like master of none. kartra literally provides everything you need to operate your business, all in one place. So earlier this year, I was using six different tools to manage my business, I was spending a ton of money on all this software. And yet, I was still missing some of the functionality that I wanted. And it was really confusing trying to get all these different tools to communicate. So after a lot of careful research, I decided to give kartra a shot and I am so happy I did kartra has enabled us to streamline our systems, simplify our processes, easily track all of our metrics, and finally achieved the advanced functionality we needed for automations like segmenting, tracking and getting even down to subscriber value. And we saved a whopping $12,000 a year. So kartra has given me everything I needed and with no sacrificing quality. No matter what stage you're at in your business. If you're looking for an easy to use platform that has all the features you need to operate seamlessly and potentially save you 1000s of dollars at the same time. I highly recommend you give kartra a try. We've actually got a 14 day free trial for our listeners. So go to Kate kordsmeier.com/kartra. That's K a r t r a to get started today. Karcher offers a 30 day money back guarantee so don't be afraid to give it a shot. Again, that's Kate kordsmeier.com/kartra. Okay, the last thing that I have to mention is when I came on your podcast, I'm like, was I pregnant? Still? I can't remember now, how long ago this was, but earlier this year, and you asked me, So what do you do with people after they go through your funnel once? And they don't purchase? And my answer was, huh, nothing. I hadn't thought about it. I never mentioned it to them again. And obviously, that was crazy. And so you have this philosophy called relaunch magic, which is your magic. So tell us a little bit about that.

Jacques Hopkins 1:05:44

Cool. By the way, I think you had an infant at the time. Because I think you press it you were like, just warning you like I got a little baby around if anything happened. So I don't think you were you were pregnant. All right. So my main thing is piano in 21 days, but kind of the side hustle to that is I do help people with online courses. And I just get such a big kick out of that. And the main outlet. There's the online course show my podcast that you've mentioned, coming on. That was a blast. By the way, that was a fun episode. My point is that a lot of the information that I share with people about online courses I learned from other people like whether it's online course gurus like Dan Henry, or Sam ovens, Russell Brunson, David Siteman, Garland, Pat Flynn, like people like that. Or it's just like people coming on my podcast and sharing their success stories. I like to have a good mix of people like b2b or b2c, like you're talking about earlier, like you teach people to start an actual business. Like, it's fun to hear from you and your story, Kate, but that's a different story than somebody teaching basket weaving. You know,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:06:48

I think we used to,

Jacques Hopkins 1:06:51

I don't know why I just always throw out basket weaving. And so my point is that a lot of the information I share, like I've just learned or modeled after other people, but this relaunch magic thing I'm proud of, because it's like the one thing where I just like came up with it myself. Well, it's, um, I came up with it, but it's not complicated either, right now. So the beauty of

Kate Kordsmeier 1:07:14

everything you do is that you simplify it? And then once you say it, you're like, How did I not think of this? It's so simple, but it's so

Jacques Hopkins 1:07:25

thank you, I really appreciate that. And I've had multiple people say that I'm just like, to me, it was just like the natural progression of where I was, it's like, okay, now I have a really good evergreen funnel. I don't really do like the big mega, once a year, twice a year launches. But I've got all these people sitting on an email lists, like what should be done, like what's going to be best for me, and what's going to be best for them. And that's how I came up with what I call relaunch magic. And basically how it works is, and this is only once you have an evergreen funnel, this is not going to work if you don't already have an evergreen funnel. So somebody gets introduced to our world they opt in my evergreen funnel is about 14 days, some people's is three, four or five days doesn't really matter. Once the opportunity is over, like whatever you're pitching is over. It's like this is the last call. Like we're trying to get people to either buy or unsubscribe. I love that. It costs money to have a big email list like yeah, I use. I use Active Campaign, I think you may be used to use Active Campaign you're using. I guess Karcher does that for you now. Yep. The more subscribers like the more after pay. So like, I don't want people just chillin for forever, who are never going to buy. So there are some things where like, I'm good with sending two emails on the last day. Because, by the way, well, maybe I need to send four.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:08:47

I'm just saying people get afraid of sending too many emails. Tarzan has taught me not to be afraid of that.

Jacques Hopkins 1:08:55

Really? Did you learn that from her in that interview? So she

Kate Kordsmeier 1:08:59

and I were in a mastermind together. So I got a lot of good nuggets from her. But we do talk about some of that stuff in the interview. Yeah,

Jacques Hopkins 1:09:07

I know we're getting a little tangent. But like, do you ever send more than one email, besides of the cart? closing day?

Kate Kordsmeier 1:09:13

Okay, so we debate about this sometimes. And I just said, Well, I think like we have a podcast episode email announcement every Thursday. And so I said, I really don't think we should I don't want to distract anybody who's in the funnel from buying by sending him to something else they could do. And there's an argument to be made of like, well, that's nurturing them that's providing them with free value. Maybe it would be welcome, but I think overall, I try to keep it a little simpler and less distracting like only ask them to do one thing per email don't say watch this video then do this thing then subscribe here, look at this workbook and do whatever so I try now I just we like literally just had this conversation with the team about Okay, work changing all emails that go out more as one off broadcasts are excluding anybody who's currently in the funnel. What do you,

Jacques Hopkins 1:10:09

that's how I do it too. Once you're entering my evergreen funnel, and you're going through that 14 Day sequence like you are, I'm considering you like new to my world, you have got to go through that 14 Day sequence. And I'm not going to send you anything else. And the way that I, you can manage that with tags or with custom fields, or with lists, and I manage it with lists. So basically, I have a new piano in 21 days subscriber list. And then I have a piano in 21 days subscriber list. So if you opt in for the first time, you're going on that new list, and if I make a new YouTube video, and I want to send an email blast to my list, I just make sure I send it to the subscriber list and not the new list. And that's how I handle that. Right. Okay, going back to what we were saying, like, I want you to either buy or unsubscribe, ideally, like the maybes aren't aren't great, but most people are going to be maybes, right? It just is what it is.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:11:02

Conversion is like that's industry standard. You're doing great if your list converts at 1%.

Jacques Hopkins 1:11:07

Hey, great. So, so what are we going to do once they go through our evergreen funnel? And they don't buy or unsubscribe? What should we do like should we just delete them. And so I wanted to have some kind of way to re launch the course to them in a way that wasn't a lot of work on my side. That wasn't a weird experience for them. So for example, if I did, like two live launches a year, January in July, and somebody went through my evergreen funnel in June, and then they get the live launch in July. Like that's a weird experience to get a huge like pitch that close together. So I came up with this system to where basically, I'm able to pitch my course to a fourth of my list every month. And so every month, I'm doing a relaunch to a quarter of my list. And the way that I technically execute that is at the end of the Evergreen funnel. So I use Active Campaign. So like I have an automation setup to where the last thing that's happening is, before they get unsubscribed from the new list and subscribe to the subscriber list. They get tagged with, like, which month is it right now? Right. So let's say you're wrapping up, it's December right now you're wrapping up the Evergreen funnel, you'll get tagged with December. And more specifically, you could tag with March June, or like there's there's three months we'll get tagged with

Kate Kordsmeier 1:12:36

December, March, August,

Jacques Hopkins 1:12:38

something like that. So there's four buckets that I can put you in. And when I say buckets, like that's a tag, right. So that is the separate tag also has a couple of other months associated with them. So then January rolls around, and yes, I've got my evergreen funnel going. But I also have my January relaunch happening. So anybody that ever completed the Evergreen sequence in January, or January, February, March, April, or May, or the third month, like the buckets are there, and then I say okay, if you're on the subscriber list, and you have this tag, add to the January automation relaunch. And that way 1/4 of my list is going to get pitched the course. And what that does for me is it allows me even more consistent income. So I never have a massive launch. So every month is very similar because I have my evergreen sales, and my relaunch sales. But it also provides a very seamless experience for my potential students too, because they don't really realize it's happening necessarily, but they will literally get pitch to every four months, like clockwork, every four months, it's never two months, and then eight months, like it's every four months. And eventually, somebody's gonna buy or unsubscribe, eventually I have people that buy that opted in seven years ago. That's rare. But like, what if I would have unsubscribed them? Or deleted them?

Kate Kordsmeier 1:14:03

Like me, I was just paying for them to sit. I mean, I was emailing them weekly content, but it was never giving them another opportunity to buy. And maybe when I emailed them the first time about you know, the original evergreen funnel. Who knows maybe they were on vacation, maybe they weren't ready for whatever reason. Maybe they just had a baby. Maybe it's COVID. I mean, who knows what was happening at that time. So I love that like, oh, this provides them another opportunity. And it's so low maintenance on your end because I loved I was thinking okay, so you do like a whole new funnel each time. You said no, I just basically copy paste the same funnel that they already went through four months ago and send them through it again. And nobody's ever complained.

Jacques Hopkins 1:14:51

No, it takes five minutes a month probably and it's the exact same funnel the exact same material, the exact same videos and That's one of the resistances people has, it's like, I don't want to send people the exact same stuff every four months? Well, you're thinking too highly of your content, you think that everybody is just like, knows all, like they've sat through all your videos, and they remember them all. And if you send the same thing four months later, like you're that special in their mind, they're gonna remember that no, like the people that didn't buy probably didn't get that engaged in your content. And so if you rescind the stuff four months later, maybe that will be a time they'll get engaged. I have literally never had somebody complain that it was like the same exact funnel or a sequence of things being sent to them for the pitch.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:15:40

Right? Yeah, I wish that I had fully implemented this since we talked so that I could I followed it. And now look, my evergreen revenue increase from x to y. But we just implemented this this month. So I'll have to report back in a quarter and let you know how it's gone.

Jacques Hopkins 1:15:59

Yeah, that sounds good. I'm very curious to hear. But the people that I know that have implemented it is very successful. But the people that that implement it are kind of like where you were, it's like, they weren't doing anything. Yeah, with like, I know, I know, some people that kind of have a system, they're doing some kind of pitching later down the road. But it's not like quite as systemized. So if you have this big email list, and you don't have a system to pitch them the course, then there's no downside here. Like it's gonna work to some level.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:16:30

Yeah. So since you're evergreen, and have the funnel, do you ever get people who miss their window and then email you and say, oh, shoot, I miss my window window, either. When are you opening again? Or can I pay you right now and join the course?

Jacques Hopkins 1:16:46

Yeah, I just we take that as a case by case basis. I'm not involved in decisions like that anymore. But in general, like, I think it's important that a deadline is authentic, which like, I'll have people that will talk about their evergreen funnel. And it's like, yeah, the deadline happens. And I'm like, Okay, what if somebody tries to go to the page, the next day, they're like, well, they just go to the page, and then getting the timer is at zero, it's like, you know, you've got like, if you say, it's going to close at a certain time, like, please close it at a certain time. That's part of the ethics of an evergreen funnel. So it just depends on the circumstance, like if they say, like, Oh, I was at the hospital with my wife, I legit wanted to enroll, and just like, couldn't do it yesterday, like, send me the link now. And I will enroll, I'll probably like if they seem very serious about it, because I know not only am I not only am I gonna make money there, but like if somebody genuinely wants to learn how to play piano, and they feel like my system is exactly what they need. I want to give them up that opportunity. But if they, if they're like, Oh, I missed it. Can I enroll today? And they don't have a really great excused and No, no, look, we'll launch again in a few months. And you can enroll that? Yeah. The other thing this does for you is if What if you finish the Evergreen in December, and then in February you email me, hey, I'm ready to buy now is the next time it's going to be available? Well, now we can just log in Active Campaign, see when your next launch window is and I can say, Okay, stay tuned. It's coming in April, and you can buy it.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:18:16

Well, what if he's only ready to buy now? And I tell him to wait, and then he doesn't want to wait. So he goes and buys from some other teacher,

Jacques Hopkins 1:18:24

you're you're really pressing into this

Kate Kordsmeier 1:18:28

is that my husband asked me all the time. And he's like, they want to give you their money take their money and he doesn't understand some of the principle maybe and and strategy behind it. But I wondered the same thing. I heard Stu McLaren speak last year. And he was saying that, you know, he only live launches tribe, his horse, once a year, one time only. And he'll get even like friends, colleagues saying, hey, I want to join. It's June, or it's whatever. It's not the one week a year that you have your card open. And he turns him down. And I even I ended up knowing some of it. I'm like, I know his launches are insane. But I still in like, but they wanted to buy from you then. And then you're not meeting your customers where they're at?

Jacques Hopkins 1:19:16

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting discussion. And I think that a guy like Stu McLaren can get away with launching once a year because he's got probably tons of other income streams. I mean, he's got a SaaS product. He's, I know he does, he said all kinds of charities, not that that's making money. But like, he has been an online business and very high profile for a long time, that he probably doesn't rely on the income from tribe. That's just one of his many income streams. Whereas with my piano course, like that's mostly how I pay the bills for my family. So I want to keep it more consistent with an evergreen funnel. But your main point is like if somebody is like literally asking you to buy and it's not a physical product that you've literally run out of, why not just give them access and for me, like, if you're going to make The decision to have an evergreen funnel and have these certain open and closed enrollment periods, then you probably should stay true to that. And if you miss out on a sale here and there. So what like that does happen, and people will be like, Okay, I'm just gonna go buy XYZ course over here. That's a decision they have to make. And to be honest with you, chances are that course isn't as good as mine. And they still might come back and buy,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:20:27

right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, I've had same thing. I just recently had somebody email and say, All right, I didn't buy your course, because I thought I could do better for cheaper. So I can't remember their exact reasoning, and then came back and said, All right, now I paid for that other course. And I'm buying your course, because I realized I do need it. Like, I could have saved you a step. But oh, well.

Jacques Hopkins 1:20:50

Yeah. I mean, that's the part of the parts that you have to have successful in the course business, right traffic funnel, we spend most of our time talking about traffic and funnel but course is extremely important too. And you've got to have a great course that gets results. And so when people say, Oh, yours is too expensive. I'm buying, you know, simple piano or yours isn't available. Right now. I'm buying HD piano, it's like, okay, I have the confidence knowing that, first of all, that's fine. That's your decision. But second of all, there's a good chance you're gonna come back to me, because I know how good my courses especially compared to others out there.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:21:20

Yeah, exactly. Which that was the question I was going to ask you as well. I've heard a lot of people say you should live launch a couple of times before you go evergreen. Do you agree with that? Are you think you could take a course from zero to Evergreen? one fell swoop?

Jacques Hopkins 1:21:38

So there's a huge, huge factor that changes my answer to that question. If you are a beginner and don't have an audience, you need to start with Evergreen. If you have an audience already, you should probably start live, the best way to make a lot of sales and really start getting people into your course is doing like a live webinar or like live event live launch. And if you have an email list of 50,000 people already, then yes, go make that happen. But if you're starting from scratch, then you don't have anybody to launch to. Right, right. So if you're starting over, then what you want to do is you want to set up an evergreen funnel, and then start building your traffic and your audience. Do you have somewhere to send them?

Kate Kordsmeier 1:22:20

Right? Okay, interesting. I might disagree.

Jacques Hopkins 1:22:22

A little, a little,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:22:26

not fully, but I think it can be difficult to figure out what's not working, if your funnel isn't converting, if you've never live launched a course and kind of proven the concept proven people are interested in this. They want to buy it. So if you I mean, if you had a big list, I guess like even if you just had 1000 people, and you just said okay, I'm gonna launch this, but I'm gonna do it evergreen, you could just dump it all that 1000 person group into your evergreen funnel, um, start them off in it, and see how it converts. But that would be a lot of work. Like the Evergreen, I don't know, live launching is a lot of work to. But I'm just thinking, I like the kind of proof of concept that okay, this course is something people want to buy before I figure out. I don't know, Evergreen is is simple, but it also is complicated.

Jacques Hopkins 1:23:20

Yeah, I don't disagree with you in that respect. I mean, when I say for beginner, like set up your evergreen funnel, it doesn't even necessarily have to be an evergreen funnel that pitches a course. Like let's get you something right. Even if it's like one cool thing you could do, if you're just starting out is set up an evergreen funnel that leads to a phone call, even if you don't even know what you're going to sell them. Or even if you're going to sell them anything like How cool would it be to set up an evergreen funnel that just pitches, a phone call. That's just like a discovery call where you don't even have anything to sell. But you get to actually talk to somebody interested in what you like your niche, right? You don't want to just build traffic for the sake of traffic, you want to have intention about it. And so if you can set up something simple and then start driving traffic to it, then down the road, you can switch that out for some sort of offer. Of course, there's a lot of ways to do this, obviously, like, you and I have both found success to certain degrees in completely different niches. And we're certainly not going to agree on every approach. I think that there's room for a lot of different people giving advice, right? Yeah, absolutely. You are given the same advice as Amy Porterfield or Pat Flynn, or Tarzan, Kay or whatever. And people need to find who they resonate with more and model after something that's working.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:24:35

Yeah. I love that idea, though, that there's some kind of funnel that you can set up that's not necessarily pitching your course. But it could be getting them to reply to an email and answer a question or getting them to book a call or sell a $50 product or something smaller,

Jacques Hopkins 1:24:53

or one hour coaching session with you. All right, right.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:24:57

There's a lot of ways Yeah, a lot of ways you could use that. But I could talk to you for like hours more about evergreen and and all of this. But we are at time. So let's move to our lightning round questions.

Jacques Hopkins 1:25:10

Oh, I get very nervous about Lightning Rounds. All right.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:25:13

They're easy. They're easy softballs. All right? What's your favorite way to take care of yourself while running your own business?

Jacques Hopkins 1:25:21

Get enough sleep. Yeah. So,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:25:24

like, you gotta wake up early and just hustle, hustle. It's like no sleep.

Jacques Hopkins 1:25:29

Oh, no, I can do that. I can wake up early. But I still need my eight or nine hours. Like, I gotta go to bed early. Yeah, I just I just I really value sleep. And I know that it myself that I need more sleep than average person. Like, if I did nine hours. I'm good. The next eight hours. I'm pretty good. But if I get anything less than seven, like if I get if I get five hours, I'm worthless the next day? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:25:53

Okay, good. Sleep is good. I struggle with there's a very popular coach out there who has a planner that says, like, the first thing you should do is wake up an hour earlier. And I just really struggle with that advice, because I'm like, sleep is so important, though. And yeah, if you're also going to bed an hour earlier, but I don't know, I think we all operate better when we're well slept, right? What is one tool or strategy you use to help with time management

Jacques Hopkins 1:26:23

tool or strategy for time management? I would say that I use the Getting Things Done approached by David Allen, that has been around for probably 15 or 20 years. Now. I use that back when I worked as an engineer, and I use it. Absolutely use it to this day. Are you familiar with that? Now? Yeah, it's I mean, it's a thing, I promise. Yeah. But it's a it's a book like Profit First is a book meaning that it's like a whole system and philosophy behind. In this case, time management. One of the big ideas is like capture everything. And I personally have a horrible short term memory. So like, any idea, any task, anything you think about, like write it down, so that you don't forget it captured in a system. I use Evernote for that and then categorize things in terms of actual actions, projects, which have multiple actions, or anything you're waiting for from somebody else, like all those need to be on a list somewhere. And then the last big idea behind it is you got to make sure you're reviewing all these things on a weekly basis. It's called the weekly review. So getting things done by David Allen.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:27:30

Okay. Well, that might be your answer to the next question then. But what the next question is, what is the most powerful business book you've ever read?

Jacques Hopkins 1:27:39

Oh, no, it's not getting things done. So, four hour workweek had a huge impact, because it changed my perspective on things. But I would say the most powerful one business book I've ever read is probably experts secrets by Russell Brunson. Okay. Because that I mean, that book could be called, like, here's the most effective way to come up with your course idea and actually sell it and have successful students like that book is all about online courses. And I read it a few years ago and changed a lot of the things I was doing in my marketing based on that book. And it's really effective for how to how to sell a course, without being too salesy.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:28:22

Yeah, very important. You read that one. I have it on my Kindle, actually, but I haven't read it. I did read the Dan Henry book that you told me to read. And I did really

Jacques Hopkins 1:28:31

like it. Yes. Okay. So my favorite. I don't remember telling you to read that.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:28:35

Maybe you definitely told me about the book. Maybe you didn't get to read that. But you might have mentioned the book.

Jacques Hopkins 1:28:42

The problem is that the Dan Henry book is the start of a funnel, right? So he doesn't give away near as much as he could in that book, because he wants you to go through the funnel. He wants to do his webinar next and then get on a call and then they'll sell you $1,000 course. Whereas expert secrets also a funnel, but they're just trying to get you to sign up for click funnels.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:29:01

Right, right. Okay, so I don't know if you'll have one for this, I'll be curious. But we ask all the guests if they have like a quote or a mantra or an affirmation that you are using these days,

Jacques Hopkins 1:29:14

one that usually comes to mind, one of my favorite like, quotes or sayings like I don't even know who would have originally said it. But one thing that really helps me with my business is people are not against you. They're for themselves. Right? So somebody does not buy from you. Don't take it personally. Like they just for some reason. They didn't feel like it was a good fit for their life. It was their decision. It had nothing to do with like, you write more like trolls and haters, like, Hey, you suck. You're the worst piano teacher on the internet. It's like, okay, people are not against you necessarily there for themselves. So maybe they had a bad experience with a piano teacher. Maybe they were just having a bad day. Right? So I try to think about that often people are not against you. They're for themselves.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:30:00

That's good. I think it's rarely if ever about us, it's usually in any relationship, even outside of business. I feel like people are usually just dealing with their own shit. And it's not so much anything to do with you. So not taking things personally, though, is very, I think, a good skill for an entrepreneur to develop, because you need to get get pretty used to rejection, people saying no. And along the same lines, there's a quote I heard recently that was like, nobody better than you will ever criticize you. And I thought, ah, that's probably true that those trolls those haters, I don't think they're great piano players that are now coming to find you and tell all the other people in the, you know, on the internet that aren't good at piano how bad they are?

Jacques Hopkins 1:30:47

Well, that's a great quote. And I'll tell you, most of my haters and trolls actually are really good piano teachers. No way. But they're not as good as of piano teachers as me, right? So these people that have been playing classical music for 50 years all their life, like they looked down on like, Oh, look at this kid coming in saying he can teach somebody in 21 days, you suck. You're a scam? Well, yes, they're probably a better pianist than me, but not a better piano teacher or business person than I am. And still,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:31:16

I would argue that's probably more about their own thing. They're having some kind of jealousy or something of man, this guy's not even as good at me as piano and making all this money teaching people how to play piano. That's their own stuff.

Jacques Hopkins 1:31:31

Yes, one time, I have a video called eight reasons traditional piano lessons don't work. And it's one of the videos in my funnel, so you have to opt in to see it. And somebody got a hold of that and posted it in a Facebook group with 20,000 piano teachers. And man, I got hate mail for about a month for that one.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:31:51

But that's all I'm like, you know, you've made it when somebody cares enough about what you're doing to you know, I always think, Oh, that's a good sign. Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Last question. My podcast is called Success with Soul. What does Success with Soul mean to you?

Jacques Hopkins 1:32:07

Well, see, might the name of my podcast is a lot more straightforward, like the online course show, like, very straightforward. I don't get like super deep like that very often.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:32:16

Now, sorry, this is what happens when you come on a very feminine. So we want to talk about our feelings.

Jacques Hopkins 1:32:22

I've got a wife, I've got two daughters, no sons, like my dog is even a girl. So I can I can get in touch with the feminine side here and there. So I think that for me, when I hear that it's like, you can find success and be a sleazeball and do things the wrong way. And you could do people and you can have a scam. And, you know, on the surface piano in 21, days to a lot of people does sound like that, before they get into it. It's like, No, you can't actually learn piano in 21 days. Like that's a scam. No, dig into it. It's real. But one thing that I've been saying a lot lately is that I believe in transformation over information. And so if you just want to put together, you know, some information and an online course, and then like, sell it while you sleep, and never really think about your students, you know, that can actually work to some level, you can find some success there. But for me, I'd rather help people transform who they are, I want to transfer help transform them into a person who does know how to play piano and can enjoy that for the rest of their life. And share it with the people that that mean, most of them. And I believe in online courses that do that, rather than just conveying some sort of, of information. And so to me, I would say that's what it is.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:33:36

See, you did it. That was beautiful. I love it. And filibuster

Jacques Hopkins 1:33:39

for just a second. Well, it talks about girls on my life. While I while I put those thoughts together.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:33:46

Well, it was great way to multitask. Where can everybody find you Jacques?

Jacques Hopkins 1:33:50

Piano in 21 days.com, the online course guy.com. And hey, if you're already listening to this podcast, just search up the online course show as well. So those would be the places.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:34:03

That's right. And I can attest the relaunch magic brilliance that we talked about. Jacque teaches inside his own program called next level courses. I don't know if it's available, I don't know the status of thing. But check out Josh's website and get into his funnel.

Jacques Hopkins 1:34:19

This has been a lot of fun.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:34:26

Hey, y'all, Kate and Amy here wanting to jump in and tell you all about digital course Academy which as we mentioned, is opening for enrollment on September 7 2022. In the meantime, you can check out this year's brand new freebies or if you have other questions and want to know more about digital course Academy. You can get all of your questions answered when you head to Kate kordsmeier.com/DCAA. You'll be alerted when DCA opens up again this year you can learn all about our bonus suite which is absolutely incredible. Over $3,500 worth of free bonuses when you enroll through our live Think and we're giving you all the information you need about Amy's five day boot camp and all of the other incredible freebies we have coming up for this month. We'll see you over there at Kate kordsmeier.com/DCA.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai