SPI 430: Passive Income Success Story: How Jacques Hopkins Finally Made (Significant) Money Online

SPI 427: Passive Income Success Story_ How Jacques Hopkins Finally Made (Significant) Money Online

Pat Flynn:
Can you relate to the following? You have an idea for a business, you put in the effort to try and make it work, and then you lose the momentum or you find another idea that might seem a little bit better, and then you focus on that idea. You work on it a little bit, things get a little tough, or you just don’t see the results that you want, and then you put it aside. And you either go back to that first one or you try a third idea. And then you try that one, give it a little bit of effort, it starts to get a little bit hard, then you think maybe the second idea was actually the better one, but it was actually the first one. And then you go back and forth, and then there’s this other new idea that came in. Can you relate to this scenario?

Pat:
I think a lot of us entrepreneurs can absolutely relate to this, because it’s very difficult to find that niche to get into. And even when we find that niche, how do we know if we’ve given it enough time to success? How do we know if it’s the right one? Now I’ve written books about selecting an idea. Will It Fly?, Which was published in 2016, How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money, nearly 1,000 reviews on Amazon, which is really cool. Thank you so much for supporting that, if you have already.

Pat:
But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I wanted to showcase a success story from somebody who is a part of the SPI community, who now has passive income, has generated over $1 million with an online course, but it was not his first idea. Definitely not his first idea. And I wanted to have Jacques Hopkins, from Piano in 21 Days, come on to share his story about how he found this niche, how he built it out, how he trudged through a lot of the failures that were there at the beginning. And there were a lot of things happening in his life at the same time that made it even more difficult.

Pat:
But what has happened since, how his business has grown, and what he’s doing in the online course space that’s working really well. He’s actually become known for how he’s helping others in the online course space. You can find him at pianoin21days.com, on Piano in 21 Days, same channel name, and theonlinecourseguy.com. Great guy. Oh man. This is going to be awesome. And he has a podcast too, The Online Course Show, with over 100 episodes. He’s a student of Power Up Podcasting. Just incredible success. Cannot wait to share it with you. He’s going to give us all the things. But first, the intro.

Announcer:
Welcome to The Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he wants Tesla to design an electric DeLorean, Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to session 427 of The Smart Passive Income Podcast. Very thankful you’re here today. My name is Pat Flynn, here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. Today we’re talking with Jacques Hopkins from theonlinecourseguy.com. And his business, the one that succeeded, Piano In 21 Days.

Pat:
Yes, he made over $1 million with a piano course. And he’s going to give us the rundown: How this started. Was it $1 million overnight? Well in most cases it never happens overnight, and he’s going to tell us exactly how it all happened, how long it took, the steps that he took, to hopefully inspire you to find that niche that will work for you too, just like he finally found one that worked for him. So here he is. Let’s not wait any further. Jacques Hopkins.

Pat:
Jacques, welcome to The Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks for being here today.

Jacques Hopkins:
Oh Pat, what an honor man. There’s probably no other resource out there that has had such a positive impact on me and my business over the years than this very podcast. Such an honor on my side to be on here.

Pat:
I’m thankful for that. How early on did you start listening? I’m curious. Do you remember?

Jacques:
I think it was about 2012. I read Four Hour Work Week back in 2008, and I’ve been working on some sort of online business ever since then. I think I found your podcast, I didn’t know when you started it, but it was pretty early on. Probably 2012.

Pat:
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. That’s really cool. Before you discovered the podcast and then started doing all this amazing stuff online, which we’ll get into in a moment, what were you doing beforehand?

Jacques:
Oh man, engineering. All my life everything pointed to be being an engineer. Ever since, I think it was first grade. I was maybe a little better at math than the other kids in class. And so even before I knew what that was, an engineer, my first grade teacher was like, “You know, you should be an engineer one day. You should be an engineer.” So ever since then all my life pointed to me being an engineer.

Jacques:
So I went to college in electrical engineering. And up until my point in my life, until my senior year of college, picking up The Four Hour [Work] Week, I thought that to be an entrepreneur, that meant that you had to have a brick and mortar presence, you had to have a lot of employees, you had to probably take out a bunch of debt, some venture capital, something like that. It was a lot of things that had zero appeal to me.

Jacques:
But reading that book, around 2008, my senior year of college, getting my engineering degree, completely changed that paradigm for me as to what being an entrepreneur was. For the first time I realized, “Look at this guy, Tim Ferriss, he’s got an online business. He does a lot of automation and outsourcing to where he’s not working crazy hours. He’s doing all these cool things all over the world.” And so by reading that book, and I don’t even know why I would’ve picked up that book, it just had this paradigm shift for me about what it meant to be an entrepreneur. And that was the first time in my life where I thought I could do that. And not only did I think I could do it, but I thought it was going to be the coolest life ever for me to be able to do that.

Jacques:
Now it took several years of failure to find something that actually did work for me. But that’s how I got into entrepreneurship myself, get into online business. But I did go ahead and become an electrical engineer. I was an electrical engineer for eight years before what I do now allowed me to quit that.

Pat:
Okay. So you still got inspiration, but yet still continued the path that you were thought to be on. While you were an engineer did you attempt to start something on the side? You’ve talked a little bit about these failures. I’m just curious about when those were and what you tried?

Jacques:
So the paradigm shift for me happened when I already had my engineering job lined up. So it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to go ahead and do that, go ahead and accept that high paying job, or pretty good paying job as an electrical engineer. So I went ahead and did that, all the while trying to start something on the side. There were six different things that I tried, while following your podcast and other things, trying to do some passive income type things. And I had six different failures. But fortunately I learned something from each one. And I never made a dollar from any of those.

Jacques:
I tried creating a physical product I could potentially sell. I tried blogs. I tried several different things and nothing worked until I tried an online course teaching piano, which was about 2013 when I got that idea.

Pat:
So engineer to teaching piano.

Jacques:
Yeah, natural progression, right?

Pat:
Totally natural progression. I guess there’s math involved in that, of course with sound waves and frequencies and stuff. But anyway, curious—your biggest lessons learned from your failures? Before we dive into piano and all that great stuff.

Jacques:
Well at this point in my life, hindsight’s 20/20, but I absolutely love online courses. I think it’s one of the best businesses that you can start, because you literally just take something that you know, you’re good at, that you can help other people. It’s in your head. You package it up and sell it through the internet as a digital product. So a lot of my failures were things that I tried that I just realized were not for me.

Jacques:
So creating some sort of physical product, there was just way too many headaches with that. I had to get something designed and then manufactured and prototypes and inventory. And there’s was just a lot of pieces and parts, and it’s not as high of margins as something like an online course.

Jacques:
With blogging I learned that I just wasn’t good at writing, and hated writing, to be honest with you. So I got into online courses. I realized that I actually did enjoy video. I enjoyed teaching over video and I enjoyed putting together step by step programs that actually transform people from wherever they were entering your course, to wherever they were going to be exiting your course.

Pat:
Where does piano fit into this?

Jacques:
My parents put me in piano lessons when I was five years old. There’s a lot of people that took piano lessons when they were a kid. That’s just the thing you do. You put your kids in piano lessons, right.

Pat:
Our kids are in piano lessons.

Jacques:
There you go. Do they like their piano lessons?

Pat:
They didn’t at first. But focusing on the little incremental improvements every week is getting them excited. So yes, they’re starting to enjoy it now.

Jacques:
I am very left brain. I am very engineering, analytical. And so piano lessons never resonated for me, because I had these concert pianists, these classical trained pianists trying to teach me piano. And it just did not resonate with me. But at the same time, I was a good kid. I wanted to please my parents. They wanted me in piano lessons so I stuck with it even though I very rarely practiced between my piano lessons. But I stuck with it for twelve years, just to make my parents happy.

Jacques:
So I took piano lessons from five years old to seventeen years old. I look up at seventeen years old and I actually go on this retreat with my church up to Toronto, Canada. And we were staying at this school and there was a gym where everybody was hanging out one night. And there was a piano there, and somebody knew that I took piano lessons so they asked me to play a song. And so I got up, sat down, and played a song that I knew. It was a classical piece written hundreds of years ago. And nobody was very impressed. Because we’re seventeen, nobody’s super impressed by Mozart when you’re seventeen years old.

Jacques:
When I finished they were like, “Do you know anything else?” So I played another song that was written like 300 years ago. And they were like, “Do you know anything else?” I realized for the first time, I was like, “Wow, I literally only know these two songs on the piano at this point in my life. And I don’t even like these two songs.” So it was at that point, that realization that I had taken twelve years, wasted all this time for very little to show for it. But at that point I didn’t quit piano, I quit the piano lessons. And I used my engineering brain. I decided, okay this thing cannot be that complicated. There’s eighty-eight keys. They’re all just sitting here.

Jacques:
I know you’re musical as well, Pat. And so I just reverse engineered the piano and the piano learning process a little bit, and figured out a better way to learn and play piano, at least for people that are not naturally gifted in music. So I broke it down. And I started playing that way for myself at seventeen- eighteen-years old. I wasn’t very entrepreneurial at that time, so it took years and years later to realize, “Huh, I have this different way that I play piano in my spare time. I wonder if other people want to learn this way as well.” So it wasn’t until I had six failed ventures that I finally got the idea that worked for me, to take this unique way that I play piano and put it out there on the internet and see if other people wanted to learn this way as well.

Pat:
And when you say you put it out there on the internet, what platform did you choose? And how did you get started with that?

Jacques:
Man, it was a mess. How much easier is it to create an online course today than it was back in 2013?

Pat:
All the tools eventually get you to the point that you need to go. Back then, there was nothing. You had to code things yourself. It was the worst.

Jacques:
It was hard. It was very difficult. Lots of struggles. Lots of roadblocks. I want to tell one story about 2013, and one specific podcast episode that you released in 2013, from a guy who had an online piano course. Because that was one of the validating things for me with the idea. I came up with the idea because I was working on probably the sixth business at the time, that wasn’t really working. And I was working my job as an electrical engineer. I would come home from work, and usually I had pretty stressful days at work. And instead of working on my side businesses, I found myself procrastinating on that by playing my piano.

Jacques:
This was early 2013. One day I’m sitting at my piano playing, and I realize, if this is what I want to come to when I don’t really want to do anything else, I wonder if I could make a business out of this somehow. I wonder if I could make a business out of the piano. I didn’t know exactly what that would look like, but I knew I had a unique spin on the piano. So that very night, I kid you not, that very night I was listening … I had to look back to see what episode it was, but it was session fifty-two, way back when, when you had Steve Nixon on.

Pat:
Steve, yeah.

Jacques:
Yeah, Steve Nixon. We’re good friends today. But that episode and his story on that episode had a big impact, because I listened to that episode that very night that I had that realization. And listening to that episode was just validation for me that this was possible. Because I remember hearing his story. He played piano and he was teaching some piano. And then he got the idea for an online piano course and went to launch and he sold 100 copies. I was just so inspired. I was like, “Yes. This is it. This can work. I am going to make an online piano course.”

Jacques:
To actually answer your question now, it wasn’t super easy. It took me about eight months, while I was working my job, to go from idea to actually launching it. Because even something as simple as where do I put these videos behind a password protected wall, as an online course, hours and hours of research I had to spend doing that because I wasn’t aware of tools that we have today like Teachable and Thinkific and Click Funnels and all that. A lot of those didn’t even exist at the time.

Pat:
That’s crazy. And shout out to Steve, for sure. Episode 52. And that’s incredible. It’s one thing to create a course. It’s another thing to find an audience to sell it to. I’m curious how you were able to go about finding people to get in front of?

Jacques:
I knew very little about this whole thing. Almost everything I knew about marketing I really learned from your podcast, and maybe a handful of other podcasts at the time. But my background was engineering. I didn’t know much about this stuff. But I will say that one big misconception I had was that if I built it, it would be a success just by me building it. Because I heard Steve’s story, and he built it and he launched it, sold 100 copies. I listened to other podcasts and there’d be success stories of these crazy launches. I just assumed that if I build a landing page, had an opt-in and so on, that I could build something, launch it, and it would be an instant success as well. Because that’s the only stories I would hear.

Jacques:
That’s certainly not how it happened for me. I launched. I didn’t really make a sale that very first day. It was slow going for me, but eventually I found my audience and what to say to my audience through Piano in 21 Days. And YouTube was big for my early success, and is still my number one traffic driver, is just my organic traffic coming from Piano in 21 Days.

Pat:
So YouTube, yes. And pianoin21days is where to go to get more info related to your piano teachings. And I know YouTube’s been huge for you too. I’ve been trying to dive into that a lot lately as well. And I think I randomly stumbled upon you by looking for piano information on YouTube at one point. And you have this really amazing video, I don’t know if it was ever your top, top video, but it must be up there. It was how to learn piano in three minutes or five minutes or something.

Jacques:
Four minutes.

Pat:
Four minutes. The one minute that I didn’t choose. And going through the comments there, there’s thousands of people who are like, “This actually works. Oh my gosh.” Where did you get the idea for that video? And was it purposeful in creating just traffic to get to the course? I’d love your thinking about that, because little video’s like that, that pop. Sometimes it’s just those single videos alone that can do a lot of work for you. And obviously you’ve created several more since then that are grabbing more attention. I would love to talk about that video and how you put that together. You’re giving people quick results so fast. And it was just so impressive what you were able to do.

Jacques:
Thank you. I’m a big fan of people having YouTube channels if they’re also going to be selling an online course. Because the type of person looking for solutions inside of a YouTube video is also going to be a very similar type of person looking for solutions to pay for inside of an online course. Because it’s teaching you something via video, both those things have that in common. So that’s one of the reasons that YouTube has been so big for me.

Jacques:
But if you are going to start a YouTube channel, whether you’re a course creator or not, I’m really big on consistency. Because you never know which ones are really going to blow up for you and create all that traffic. So yeah, that is a video I made three- four-years ago. It’s called, Learn Piano in Four Minutes. You’re not actually going to learn everything you could possibly learn about piano in four minutes. It’s a little bit of a click-baity title, but there’s really valuable content in there. And I provide most of my very best tips in there.

Jacques:
And like you said, if you look in the comments, a lot of the comments are, “Wow. I thought this was going to be click-bait, but it was actually amazing information.” So like I said, it’s a matter of that consistency, because I didn’t necessarily know that that was going to be the one that really blew up. I think it’s got over 1.3 million views at this point. And it’s probably the single biggest traffic driver back to my course at this point.

Pat:
Yeah. That’s crazy. I was just doing some research and I popped up that Steve Nixon episode, 52. Episode 51 was Tim Ferriss.

Jacques:
Oh wow.

Pat:
Interestingly enough. And it’s funny, because you had mentioned Tim earlier. When it comes to YouTube and online courses, it’s interesting because as I’ve dug deeper into YouTube the best practice for YouTube is keep people on YouTube. Keep them watching longer. Keep them watching more videos on YouTube. Do not get them off the platform, because that can hurt your algorithm and all that sort of stuff. Yet obviously if you’re going to sell an online course you need to tell people to go somewhere. How are you moving people from YouTube to your online course?

Jacques:
Good question. And this is one thing that I think I learned very early on from your podcast. I had no idea what an email list was, a squeeze page, all that, until listening to your podcast. So early on I did set up just a very basic landing page, and put together the first few days of my course. My course is called, Piano In 21 Days. So it’s twenty-one days worth of lessons. But I put together the first few days in a little downloadable PDF workbook that people could opt in for. So I put that up on the website in 2013, even before the full course was ready to launch.

Jacques:
I did a lot wrong at the beginning. But another thing I did right, and probably listening to your podcast, was every single YouTube video that I’ve ever put on my channel, I pitch that workbook at the end of the video. So every video it’s like, “Hey guys. If you enjoyed this, you want to learn more, I’ve got this free workbook waiting for you. Learn the first five days absolutely free. Just click the link below this video and you can get that.”

Jacques:
So you’ll find that call to action at the end of every video. So that’s how I’m pretty easily getting the traffic off of YouTube and on to my site. I don’t have a ton of subscribers. I think in seven years I now have 60,000 subscribers. So it’s definitely growing, even though the YouTube algorithm I’m sure sees that a lot of people leave YouTube and go over to my site.

Pat:
Right. But you also have to think about what your purpose is on YouTube. And you’re very good at knowing exactly what you want the customer journey to be. Versus I think a lot of people, myself included, are very confused on YouTube in terms of, “Well, I want my subscriber base to grow and I want people to watch all my videos, but I also want people to come to the website and get my courses too.” So it’s a different balance. And like you said, people are on YouTube to look for answers. And if you have the best answer in a video and then further information to help them with what they’re looking for, the best customer journey would be to actually take them off of YouTube at that point and bring them into your email list and what have you.

Pat:
So your course is pianoin21days. Just give us a sense of how its been going and the number of customers, whatever you’re willing to share to just give us some perspective on what this has now done for you. Because a high paying engineer job is really good, but how does this compare?

Jacques:
Today it’s far exceeded what I was making as an engineer, but it was certainly not an overnight success for me. At this point I’ve just crossed over 4,000 total students over the years. Last year I crossed over the seven figure mark, the two comma club, right Mark, last year.

Pat:
Congrats, man.

Jacques:
Thank you so much. So revenue wise it’s brought in about $1.4 million, which still blows my mind to think about something that I created and put together has generated that much in revenue. And of course, that’s revenue, not profit. But that’s how much its generated over the past seven years. But that very first year was probably $100. And then the next year was a few hundred dollars. So it’s been very much an exponential growth over the time.

Jacques:
And it allowed me to quit my job back in … my last day of work was December 31, 2015. It was an interesting time, because at the time I had a six-month old. My oldest daughter was six months old. My wife, she was also an electrical engineer as well. So we did a good job. We both had good incomes. We did a good job of saving and what not while we didn’t have kids. But the plan was for her to always quit whenever we started having kids, so she could be a stay at home mom. So we’re going through this. I had started Piano In 21 Days. Throughout that year I was making about $1,000 a month. But we both wanted me to be able to quit and just focus on it to make it work.

Jacques:
So what we did was we paid off our mortgage and we built up some savings. And we had a six month old at home. My wife wasn’t working anymore. But we decided to just go for it. Piano In 21 Days was bringing in about $1,000 a month at the time and we had some savings. So that’s when I quit my job, going into 2016, because it was kind of a Catch-22 situation. I felt like I needed that time to be able to focus on it and grow it. But I wasn’t making enough to supplement my income. So fortunately we had the savings to live very, very, very frugally for an entire year.

Jacques:
I think learned this from Tim Ferriss, is he likes to look at things in a very best case/worst case scenario. He probably wrote that in the Four Hour Work Week. And the way I was looking at it is, if I do quit my job what’s the worst case scenario? I’ve got an engineering degree. I’ve got some good experience. Worst case scenario, I go through this a year, never works, never makes more than the $1,000 a month, maybe it goes down, and I got to go back to work. I could probably find a job. That’s worst case scenario. That’s probably a five or six out of ten.

Jacques:
Well what’s the best case scenario? Best case scenario it works, I’m doing something I absolutely love with my time and my life, I’m impacting other people all over the world. That’s a ten out of ten. I can spend more time with my family. I can travel. All this. So it was worth, for me, risking a five or a six out of ten in order to possibly get a ten out of ten.

Jacques:
And it almost didn’t work though. Month eight or nine into 2016 I was still at that $1,000 a month mark. It hadn’t quite worked yet. And I remember like it was yesterday, my daughter, she was probably one and a half at the time, she comes to me. We’re sitting in the living room, she comes to me with a book. And she probably wasn’t speaking all that much at that point, but it was very clear that she wanted me to read this book. And she sits in my lap, we start reading it. And it was called Little Miss Big Sis. So we read two pages in. The book’s all about being a big sister. And I looked at my wife starting to tear in my eye and I’m like, “Are you seriously pregnant and this is how you’re telling me?” So we were officially pregnant with our second kid, and it was a big surprise because we struggled for a while to get pregnant the first time. And very much didn’t struggle the second time.

Jacques:
So there was a lot of pressure on me at that point, and I actually started looking for jobs again. But fortunately there, toward the end of 2016, is when things started working. And there’s some things I was able to implement in the business, finally. It’s amazing how timing works out. So by the end of 2016, going into 2017 revenue for Piano In 21 Days in January of 2017 was $22,000. And since then it hasn’t brought in below $20,000 in revenue. So that was the point where it officially started working for me.

Pat:
What happened? What, in the business, was the turning point for you?

Jacques:
The biggest thing, the biggest turning point was implementing an evergreen funnel. And to be honest with you, the core of what I learned about that was from another episode of Smart Passive Income. And that’s one of the reasons I told you at the beginning how big of an impact has had on me and my business. You had on David Siteman Garland. And I know you probably had him on several times, so I didn’t remember exactly which one it was. But it was one where he was sharing his exact evergreen webinar formula. And it was very much the three part video series, pre-launch, going into an open card and a closed card. And he shared in that episode exactly how he laid his out and how other people could too.

Jacques:
And I know you guys were pitching a webinar at the end, and his course and all that. I never even bought his course. I think I probably watched the webinar, but I was able to implement. A big shout out to David Siteman Garland. I don’t know him personally, but you and he helped me tremendously with that one episode. Because I went to work and for the first time implemented an evergreen funnel into my business. And literally that took 10X-ed the business. Same course. Similar offer. It’s just now I had a really nice evergreen funnel and that took me from $1,000 a month to $10,000. It was amazing.

Pat:
That’s crazy, dude. That’s so cool. Thank you for all the love for the podcast, too. And definitely big shout out to David Siteman Garland. We’ll link to all the stuff in the show notes for sure. And now you’re all in on online courses, so much that you now help others with it too, because it’s just made that much of a big impact. You have a website, thetheonlinecourseguy.com, which also has a podcast that’s now something that you’re getting involved with. So I’m curious, before we start to get into a few tips for online courses, what’s it been like for you to transition from or add on, excuse me, a podcast? And how is it different than the YouTube stuff that you’ve been doing?

Jacques:
Yeah, totally. It started working for me in 2017. And I just remember going to my wife, “Babe, this is working. This is finally working. Four years of struggle, it’s working.” But I also found myself working like a crazy person again, because with all that success and core sales and all that, there was added customer support, and more demand for content and video production, and all this and that. So I was killing myself. So that’s when I finally started to automate and outsource. And fortunately I stumbled on some excellent, excellent people that still work for me to this day. That’s when I hired my executive assistant, and I really appreciated listening to the episode recently with you and Jess, your executive assistant. That was very, very insightful and definitely gave me some pointers for how I work and interact with my executive assistant.

Pat:
How did you find yours? By the way, before we go on.

Jacques:
I got so lucky. I put a post on Upwork and I got a lot of stinkers, a lot of poor applications. And I was ready to close it down and at the last minute I got this glowing application. It was like, “Wow, this could be an amazing fit.” And we did a little trial period and she just knocked it out of the park. And she has been knocking it out of the park ever since. I can not imagine my business without her today. Her name is Emily and she’s been working with me for three years now, and she’s just unbelievable.

Pat:
That’s awesome.

Jacques:
So I started outsourcing, doing a lot more automation, back then. And by the end of 2017 we’re making good money with Piano In 21 Days, I’ve automated and outsourced to a point where I was working probably sixty to eighty hours a week on it, down to six or eight hours a week on it. So it was an incredible position I was in. For the first in my life really I’m like, “Okay, now what do I want to do with my life?” I’ve got things where I want them and. And I found that I just had this newfound passion for online courses. And I didn’t really know what I wanted to do that. I just felt like I was even more passionate about online courses than even piano. And it’s probably because I struggled for so long with my online course.

Jacques:
And I felt like I had something to share, because I had an online course that was being successful in a non money making niche. I’m just teaching people how to play piano, and I was able to make that successful. So I started a podcast. I was like, this is the podcast that I wish would’ve existed, other than Smart Passive Income of course. And I wanted to make it focused solely on online courses. And I wanted to interview other course creators and that was it. That would be my niche. So I signed up for Power Up Podcasting, because obviously you had built up a lot of trust with me, even though we didn’t really know each other. And that’s how I started my podcast back in, I guess it was late 2017. And so I’ve been doing the Online Course Show ever since, just interviewing other course creators, trying to provide motivations and ideas and tips out there. And over 100 episodes into that now, and I’m just having so much fun running both sides of my business now.

Pat:
That’s really cool. And I love that you’re now running two, but you had to remove yourself, in a way, from the first one. A lot of people want to go into two or three at the same time, and you’ve done it the right way in my opinion, of getting one done. Yes, very manual, very much a lot of work. And then you hired, you’ve taken yourself out of that process and now you’re devoting even more energy and more excitement into this new realm with something that you’ve just now experienced and can offer help with, which I think is fantastic. Thanks for the shout out for Power Up Podcasting by the way. A hundred episodes in, that’s really fantastic. What’s been the best thing that’s happened since starting your show?

Jacques:
Oh man, it’s just the connections. You know this, people will respond to you much better if you have an outlet like that. I’m not just reaching out to you because I’m Jacques and I created Piano In 21 Days. I’m reaching out to you because I respect you. I have this podcast called The Online Course Show, and I really want my listeners to hear your story. Most of the time when I send out pitches for people to come on my show, they’re thrilled to do it. And fortunately I’ve been able to grow it to where it’s a decent size and to where people know when they come on they’re going to get some exposure. But just being able to talk to people that I would’ve been so scared to reach out to before.

Jacques:
I remember just very, very early on somebody told me that I should reach out to the creator of Deadline Funnel. Do you use Deadline Funnel?

Pat:
Yeah, I do. Deadline Funnel, a great tool for evergreen.

Jacques:
It’s a great tool for evergreen. I’ve been using it for years. And the creator, Jack Born, I remember somebody reached out to me really early on and was like, “You should have Jack Born on the show.” And that scared me. I’m like, “Jack Born, are you serious. No. I’m not going to reach out to Jack Born.” But fortunately several episodes behind me and starting to build up some clout there, and some brand recognition, I finally was able to reach out to Jack Born and he was on, I think, episode 96. And it was a fantastic conversation. It was one of my favorite episodes. And now Jack Born and I have a phenomenal relationship. He’s such a good guy. And Deadline Funnel actually sponsors my podcast now.

Pat:
No way. That’s awesome, man.

Jacques:
So cool.

Pat:
That’s really incredible. Yeah, the relationship part is my favorite part too. Not just the relationship with the guest, but the relationship with your audience—it’s completely different. You know this, retention time on YouTube versus retention time on podcasts is just unmatched.

Jacques:
It’s insane. Yes.

Pat:
Incredibly unmatched. But then there’s also the ability to continue those relationships, and like you and Jack, turn them into partnerships. I know Jack, he and I have swapped emails before. He’s great. His tool is fantastic, Deadline Funnel. And I’m sure you’re an affiliate for these companies now, and you’re making money through that way, whilst providing information, whilst building these relationships. It’s an amazing win and I think that’s huge.

Pat:
In your experience as a course creator, plus all the course creators that you’ve interviewed, what are the things that are working right now for online course creators?

Jacques:
Audience first. You know this. You had an audience well before you launched your online course. The biggest mistake I say I see people do when they want to get into online courses, I get a lot of beginners coming to me, “Hey Jacques, I’m inspired by your story. I want to start an online course.” The biggest make I see is they start right from the course creation process. And I’m like, “Guys, you have got to build an audience first. Don’t do what I did and launch to crickets.” That’s the last thing you want to do because you put in all this hard work, you put it out there. And then if you don’t make any sales it’s so demoralizing. It feels like such wasted work. Plus, you don’t really know what direction you should truly go with an online course. So really genuinely, authentically work on building that audience first.

Jacques:
I think starting a YouTube channel would be a great place to start for course creators in general. But it doesn’t have to be a YouTube channel. It could be a podcast. I know you’re a big fan of podcasts. It can be a blog. I’ve even had people that I’ve seen, there’s one person I coached who is an artist who his entire following is on Instagram. And he’s got over 100,000 Instagram followers and he puts out paintings every day on Instagram. And he launched his course just with Instagram. But what he did right was he built his audience first, on Instagram, posted consistent content, and then later down the road released a course and has been very, very successful with it. So building that audience first and putting out that authentic, free, really high quality content consistently is, I think, the very best place to start.

Pat:
Follow up question, how big does the audience need to be, in your eyes, before we launch a course.

Jacques:
Well it depends on you and your niche. Everybody’s conversion rates are going to be different. I know people that … One of my good friends now, Abbey Ashley, she teaches people to be virtual assistants. I’m always blown away by her conversion rates, because her list is smaller than mine but she sells way more than I do. So her list didn’t need to be very big to have success. Mine needed to be a little bigger. But when I first launched, my list was probably 200 people. And I did make a sale. And then the more my list grew, the more sales I was making. So as long as you’re starting to build that audience, you’re starting to get feedback from your audience … That’s one of the keys about building audience is you’ve got to continually monitor what they are most struggling with, so that you can provide those solutions, via courses or maybe other content, to them.

Jacques:
So once you start getting feedback, whether negative or positive, just as long as you’re getting that feedback. I think that’s when you know you have an audience big enough to start pitching courses to.

Pat:
Yeah. Absolutely. I’ve been pretty bullish on courses lately. I finally started creating my own courses just a few years back. I know I should’ve done it sooner. And I’m so thankful for all the students, because a lot of them, in addition to investing in the course and in themselves, they come back and they go, “Okay. I finished this. I’m here. What do I do next? Tell me what I can buy next?” And it’s the most incredible thing to me. They’re almost automatic because when you give them those kinds of results and they see that, they want to go further with you.

Pat:
And this is why one of my courses,Power Up Podcasting, led into the creation of essentially a 201 course called Amped-Up Podcasting, which has been doing very well too. And even some of those graduates are asking me, “Okay, is there a third one I can take now?” It’s kind of incredible, your best customers are your existing customers. So you don’t have to guess anymore. And when it comes to not guessing anymore, it’s easier, obviously, when you have customers, because you can reach out to them, you’ve given them success and you can ask back, “Okay, what do you need next?” But how might you recommend when a person builds that audience, do they remove the guesswork as much as possible, in terms of what to create? Do you have a special process for validating courses or customer research?

Jacques:
Well it’s just a matter of asking. I know you’re familiar with Ryan Levesque, ASK Method.

Pat:
For sure. Yeah.

Jacques:
That’s what I’ve done. So even after the second version of … Well after the very first version, maybe 10 people bought it. And I made sure to ask every one of them, “Hey, can you provide me any feedback?” And maybe only two of them responded, but you’re darn right that I applied all of that feedback to version two. And version two was better than version one, but it wasn’t near as good as version three, because I got even more feedback and more feedback. And it was probably after version three or so that I actually implemented the actual strategies from Ryan Levesque. He’s got just phenomenal survey questions there.

Jacques:
And one thing that came out of that is I noticed that … I polled my existing students and the people on my list that hadn’t bought. Well one interesting thing that kept coming back from my existing students over and over again is even though they had been through my course and they were doing pretty well, they were struggling with this concept of hand coordination. And they were just struggling with doing something different in their left and their right hand. I was like, “Huh. That’s a good point. I do address it a little bit in the course. I don’t know how I would address it even further.” But without asking, I didn’t know that that was such a big struggle for my students.

Jacques:
So I was able to then go out and find another piano teacher who was very, very good at helping people with hand coordination, collaborate with him. And now that is a bonus inside of my offer, which people love. They love the hand coordination course, that’s a big value add to the course. Now I’m curious, Pat, were you resistant to putting courses out there for a while?

Pat:
I was, for the reason that I didn’t feel I was qualified or that my course was just a copy of somebody else’s. I was doing so well with affiliate marketing too. I felt like if I launched a course it would be like I’m just trying to squeeze as much money from my audience as possible. I do got to give a big shout out to Derek Halpern, who is the one who came to me one day and he said, “Pat, what are you doing? You’re letting your audience down.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And he said, “Well they want to hear and learn from you, and you keep handing them off to these other people who yeah they’re great, but they want to learn from you.” And I knew he was right. I was just making up a lot of excuses and using my success from affiliate marketing to go, “Well I don’t need to create an online course,” when really I wasn’t serving my audience in the best way that I could.

Jacques:
Yeah. I feel online courses are such a great way to serve your audience. Even higher price points. I’ve experimented with price points of my online piano course, and my most popular package that I sell today is $497. I don’t know of another piano course out there that is that much or even close to that much. And I just get a higher quality student. I get a higher completion rate, a higher happiness rate overall. So I think there’s so much to be shared, there’s so much value there, especially at higher priced products.

Jacques:
And going back to what you were asking earlier, about when’s the right time and what kind of audience should you have? What should you be listening from, from your audience? I have a good friend, Dr. Ryan Gray, who has a massive audience. He teaches people to get into medical school, college students to get into medical school with their applications and whatnot. Well he doesn’t have a course. He’s got podcasts. He’s even written some books. But most of what he offers out there is free. He’s got a few coaching products. He’s relying a lot on affiliate income. I’m like, “Ryan, you’re missing serving your audience in a whole new and possibly even better way by not offering a course to them.” So I think a course just has something in and of itself. And obviously you agree, with how hard you’ve been hitting courses lately. That can just really serve people on a whole nother level.

Pat:
Ryan’s great. I see him at all the podcasting events. His podcast led to him quitting his job and helping other people get into medical school, like you said, which is cool. I’m surprised he didn’t have a course before, but it was funny that his reservations were the same as mine. On your price point, $497, I’d love for you to answer this. How can you justify … Not that I don’t agree with the course, I’m just setting up the question here. How can you justify $497 for a piano course when there’s a lot of others that are even under $100?

Jacques:
Oh yeah. Most piano courses are probably under $100. In fact, most courses where you’re not directly teaching people to make money are more on the lower end. If you’re teaching people to make money to start a business, start an online business, typically you can charge higher prices because you can convey the direct ROI on that.

Pat:
What’s the ROI of piano? Unless you’re teaching them how to be an entertainer and make money off of that, right.

Jacques:
No I’m not. My main demographic, and I didn’t really realize this when I started, but 80 percent of my students are above fifty years old. My main customer is somebody that has always wanted to learn piano. They are nearing retirement or maybe freshly retired, have some additional time on their hand. They’ve got a little extra money as well. And it’s just something they’ve always wanted to do, but was always just so intimated by how long it would take and how complicated it would be. So that’s why they’re drawn to my product.

Jacques:
I think that having a very compelling offer, having a very good funnel, having great messaging. I’ve been through StoryBrand by Donald Miller. There’s a lot of my messaging like that. A lot of that is how I’m able to charge such a high price point. But then once they get in, obviously I’ve got a thirty-day refund policy. So if they got in just because of my marketing and my pitch, well once they get in they could always request the refund. So then you actually have to have an amazing course, and also a lot of success stories too. I know this works because I get very positive feedback. I’ve got tons of video testimonials on my site. I think that’s very important, that people can go see my students actually playing the piano on my site.

Jacques:
And so I’m able to charge a higher price for all those reasons. People can really see the value there. And on my site, like I said earlier, I get a higher quality student, I get a more motivated student. They’ve got more skin in the game. If I were charging $20 for the same course it would be so much easier to just set it aside and say, “I’ll get to it one day. I only paid $20 for it.” But because they paid $497 for a piano course, most people, you’re darn right, are actually going to go through it.

Pat:
Yeah. And you don’t get the people who come in who expect magic to happen. They know it’s going to be … There’s higher perceived value, right? This is like a university level education that I’m getting here, versus just some scrappy book that I found at the library or something like that. You had mentioned Donald Miller, he’s been on the show before. One of the fan favorites in the last 100 episodes for sure. How are you, in your sales copy, in your messaging for this avatar that I think is fantastic and I think that’s obviously something that’s really important. Who is it that you’re serving? How are you positioning your messaging so that they look like a hero? How are you selling this to that audience? What’s the messaging? How do you use StoryBrand around that?

Jacques:
One of the biggest things I changed after reading that book is I really like to use this line in particular. In fact, you’ll find it at the bottom of every page of my site and throughout my evergreen webinar as well. I say this, “You have the ability to play piano inside of you. I’m just the guy that’s going to help you reach down and unlock it.”

Pat:
Oh that’s good.

Jacques:
Yeah. And that never came to me until after I read StoryBrand. It’s like, “You’re right. I’m not the guy that’s super special here. I need to empower other people to really believe that they’re the hero in the story and that they have this inside of them.” I’m just somebody that’s been there and I know how to reach down and unlock what they already have inside of them. And I think that really resonates with people.

Pat:
I just literally got goosebumps when you said that. I love that. You’re the Yoda. You’re making some Luke Skywalkers that can play the piano at the Star Wars bar apparently. This is cool man. Online courses are … I’m all in on it, you are too. For people who want to learn more about that from you, where should they go?

Jacques:
Just The Online Course Show. That’s my biggest platform as far as sharing this message that I love. The Online Course Show. You can find it on all the platforms or it’s obviously on my site as well. Well I guess you recently changed the name of it, The Fusebox Plug-In, thetheonlinecourseguy.com/podcast will be where you can find the episodes there with your awesome plug-in as well.

Pat:
Thanks man. Dude, I appreciate you. And then the piano recommendation one more time, in case now people are inspired to learn from you.

Jacques:
Yeah, excellent. It’s pianoin21days.com. There’s tons of testimonials on there, and then there’s a free resource, the same free resource that’s been up there since 2013, since Pat inspired me through the podcast to put up a lead magnet. I didn’t know what that was before. But it’s called Learn 36 Popular Songs in Five Days. It’s essentially the first five days of my course, in a workbook, completely free. Been downloaded over 100,000 times, which just boggles my mind. But that’s the free opt-in there at pianoin21days. So if anybody is interested, then check out the free resource. That might be good enough for you, alone, to learn piano without buying the $500 program.

Pat:
Love it. And at least go there to see how Jacques does the thing to help people get inspired to take action with him. Check out his YouTube channel as well. And then also, of course, The Online Course Show, wherever you are listening to podcasts. Jacques, thanks so much for coming on, telling us some great advice and telling some great stories too. I appreciate you, and keep up the great work man. Thank you.

Jacques:
Thank you so much, Pat. It’s been truly an honor.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Jacques Hopkins. You can check him out on his podcast really easily from where you’re at right now, The Online Course Show. Go ahead and check that out. You can, of course, find him at theonlinecourseguy.com, and also Piano In 21 Days. Check out the show notes too, because he also gave me an affiliate link for pianoin21days if you want to check that out and perhaps try that. I get a little kickback for that, in case you want to tickle the ivories a little bit and impress your friends. Just head on over to smartpassiveincome.com/session427. You’ll see all the links mentioned in this episode, including that affiliate link for Piano in 21 Days as well.

Pat:
And I just want to thank you so much for sticking all the way through. We have a lot of great content coming your way. Make sure, number one, you hit subscribe. Number two, if you have a chance leave a review for the podcast. I see them all. Thank you so much in advance for that. And number three, at the time I’m recording this we’re all still in lock down. I don’t know by the time you listen to this you are locked down in quarantine as well. Perhaps if it’s much in the future, hopefully we’re at a point where one day we can shake our hands again and give each other hugs and stuff. But until then, if you are still locked in for whatever reason, stay safe. Stay hunkered down. I appreciate you so much. All your support means the world to me. And I’ll hopefully see you on the live show, The Income Stream on my YouTube channel. YouTube.com/patflynn. And just keep chipping away. One step at a time. You got this. Take care. And as always, #TeamFlynnforthewin. Peace.

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