Online Course Marketing Funnel Strategy: A Case Study with Jacques Hopkins

[00:00:00]okay hello everybody welcome to the online course podcast the place where online course creators go to sell more of their online courses i'm super excited because i have a very special guest on the line this week a little bit about this person he's the ceo and founder of piano in 21 days he makes over six figures a month selling his online piano courses he also now helps online course creators actually succeed with their online courses he's the ceo and founder of the online course guy he's the host of the online course podcast and he's the owner of the online course community facebook group so without further ado let me introduce the one and only mr jacks hopkins john hey hey john thanks so much for having me here that's quite an introduction uh you're making me look good man i mean the the six figures a month i mean that sounds pretty amazing and uh man even even to me right now that sounds appealing i've had a couple of pretty strong months this year but um going as far as saying that i make six figures a month for my piano course you know it's it's very successful i do very well but that's that may not be completely the truth and let's get into that a little bit as we talk about you know i'm pretty transparent with my numbers and what people could expect from online courses so i'm excited to dive into all this uh with you today and and of course you're a fellow course creator here so i'm sure we're gonna have fun yes for sure and i'll even piggyback on on that a little bit i quite liked following your journey jacks so i listened to jacques podcast and then he was dripping it you know a couple months ago he's like i'm so close to my first six figure month you know i i think a couple more and i'll get there and i'll do it it was really cool to to follow that journey so i like that there but before we get into that jacques i like to start all my podcasts off with a quote or mantra that inspires you or fires you up have you got one for us man one of the quotes i've been dropping a lot lately especially to my to my followers in the the online course space and a lot of my students is is people are not against you they are for themselves and that quote will come up when people are talking about like trolls or haters which you know in my opinion you are that when you start getting trolls and haters and things like that that's one of the signs you're kind of doing things right um because if you try to walk that fence and make everybody happy um then then you're probably not as successful as you could be so i have to remind people of that quote um because at the end of the day that's that's true like if somebody is is coming at you negatively you got to think about what is their perspective for example you would not believe the amount of hate that i get from normal piano teachers out there yeah yeah it's man they can use some vulgar language i'll tell you that um but that's you know because i have haters out there like that i feel like that is a reason that i i know that i'm doing something right um and and i've got a lot of people that love me and a lot of people that hate me as well and i think that's okay yes love that i'll piggyback off that as well i love that quote in in two major reasons as well i like it from a sales side of things you know i feel if someone says no to you they're not necessarily saying no to you it's because it's not a fit for them and then same thing with your with your course you know when you're creating it we may think that you know we know everything and we know the best thing for those people but really those people want what they want so that's the way i look into sales the way i look into course creation yes i'm going to give them what i need but they're for themselves how can i make it a win for them you know they don't care if i've got 20 years experience in the piano or if i've got a phd like that doesn't care about them it's hey how can we help them so i like that side of it and then i like the um the success side of it too the way i look at that is if you try and please everyone you're gonna end up not really pleasing anyone but i think the official quote is if you try and speak to everyone you're going to speak to no one it's impossible to try and please every single person out there say hey pick your lane pick what you're really good at pick what you believe in and then some people are gonna love you for that some people are gonna hate you for that but it's okay it's the only way to get ahead so i i love those there now actually just before we get into it jax everyone that's watching this on facebook live what do you think of jacques video there i've got to say i think that it's the best quality video and audio i've ever seen with anyone doing a facebook live so comment below and let us know your thoughts there but hey jax what i would like to talked about today is you and your journey because it's quite a successful one you've been in the online course space for i think about seven years now you're doing really well you know you've made over a hundred thousand recently a month and i see a pattern going on in the online world where everyone's hey do this course and you'll get a thousand followers next month or you know do this course and you'll get your 10 000 months next month and whatever and sometimes it's not always the case so i was hoping just to hand it over for you here jax and you can start where you want to start with your online journey and over the next sort of 45 minutes or so let us know how you got to where you started from where you are here and i'll sort of sit back and if i see anything that i think we can delve into a little bit deeper or explain it a little bit more for the the audience i'll jump in but i'd love to hand it over to you and tell us your story sounds good well look i appreciate the comment about about my video and it's funny that you said that and then and then jumped in kind of the story with piano in 21 days because the way that my video looks right now compared to the way it used to look is very similar to my story overall i'm all about slow and steady improvement and so if like if you look at this video right now compared to my video quality six seven years ago um it's night and day and so is the success of my business overall i um i started piano in 21 days in 2013.

[00:05:52]march 2013 is when when i got the idea um and i was far from an overnight success story uh i thought it was going to be an overnight success story and the reason is is because i was listening to a lot of podcasts um you know we're on a podcast right now so i'm sure a lot of people can relate to this but a lot of times on podcast you hear a lot of really really uber success stories right um and so i was consuming a lot of podcasts at the time and and i would especially enjoy hearing the stories from course creators and every single one was you know i got this idea and then i spent a few weeks and i put the stuff together and i launched it and it was like i i i launched it and then i went and had dinner with my wife and next thing i know i checked my bank account there's 164 000 sitting there right that every story i could sum up like that and so because those are the only types of stories i would hear i just assumed that would be the same thing same for me and my piano course and so i uh i put it together for me it took about eight months to put together and i launched it and on the day that i launched it i had zero sales none um i did get a sale on day two one one sale and that was that was a big moment um and we can get into that a little bit but it was extremely slow for me at first and um and and just every every week every month every year i try to get better and better and better and every year has been better financially number of course sales and everything than the year before and so if you add it all up in the course of the past seven years i've sold over 1.7 million dollars in in piano courses and um the pandemic was really good for my business there's i know a lot of online course creators who did very well and some are in niches where overnight it kind of went to nothing like i have a friend who um teaches teaches musicians to get higher paying gigs right well his course all of a sudden didn't do very well but online piano lessons um overnight you know started doing really well march april of this year in 2020 and uh and so in the first full month of the lockdown i you know normal normal revenue for me is like 50 60 70 maybe 80k in a month in revenue and my expenses are 20 to 25 000 probably contractors tools and everything um but the first month of lockdown it was about 139 000 in revenue and i had almost 500 new students wow and then in the second month uh in in may um i exceeded that and was about 145 000.

[00:08:34]wow um but then it's it's definitely come back down and since then i think i did maybe a 75k month and 85k month um so there's a couple months there where i did hit six figures i think that's what you were alluding to and that was just wild that was wild man um and and sales are still up and and you know it's going well and it's it's a good year so far for for online piano um for online piano lessons on the piano course um so i told you a little bit about the beginning and then what's kind of been going on lately where do you want to dive into next let's go i think we start from what you did at the start there so you did that launch uh sent out your your email no sales on the first day one sale in the second what was the the next step from there on action actually let's go back a step when you when you built this course did you already have a whole heap of people following you or how did you go about that launch did you just you know post on some social media what tell us about that very first launch what did you do john have you ever had the 4-hour workweek yes tim ferriss love it yeah i can't imagine there's many people listening to this or many entrepreneurs today that haven't actually read that book at this point um but that was a big turning point for me when i read that back in like 2008 i was a senior in college i was getting a degree in electrical engineering and for some reason i picked up that book and it it led me to a whole paradigm shift of entrepreneurship up until that point i had zero interest in being an entrepreneur i don't know about you you probably wanted to be one all your life but for me up until that point i thought being an entrepreneur you had to take out a bunch of debt brick-and-mortar presents lots of employees lots of headaches lots of work a ton of hours and so it never appealed to me right i read this book i'm like wow look at all these cool things this guy is doing he's only working four hours a week i see the path like i see i see that how cool this could be and so ever since reading that book i tried to create some sort of um kind of freedom business like that and so uh from 2008 till 2013 um there was lots of ideas and lots of failed ventures on my part and i tried six different online business ideas none of those first six were an online course physical products blogs um things like that and and none of those ever made a dollar so fast forward to 2013 and i i get i have my seventh my idea for my seventh business and it's an online piano course um but it didn't really just because i got the idea didn't mean that i knew what i was doing or how how to execute right i thought that the number one thing to do was to make the course which that's definitely not the number one thing to do and so a long story a long way of answering your question of like did i have an audience no i i didn't nobody online knew who i was by any means i was working my job as an election engineer i did end up getting a job as an electrical engineer i worked for the same company for eight years and so i was working that job i come home one evening in early 2013 and i felt like i should be working on a side business like whatever that sixth business was at the time but instead of working on that business i found oftentimes after work i would be playing my piano i'd be procrastinating working on the business by by playing my piano so it just kind of hit me one day like if this is what i come to when i don't want to do anything else i wonder if i can make a business out of this and so i just i started putting a curriculum together started um researching a little bit about like filming videos audio like i had didn't have any of that experience and so a lot of what i learned at the time i started listening to the smart passive income podcast flynn yeah so i learned a little bit that way with like uh email lists and lead magnets so i did put up a lead magnet and and signed up for i think aweber at the time i don't use that anymore but to start collecting email addresses and so by the time i went to launch it in late 2013 i think i had a small email list because because by the way i did start putting a few videos on youtube as well so there was a few little things i was doing right but it was a lot i didn't know about either still and so i launched to a very very small list because i had started a youtube channel and had a lead magnet i was directing people from the youtube channel over to the to the lead mag to download that so there's a couple hundred people probably and that's how i ended up making my my first sale so um like i said long long way of answering your question of no i didn't really have an audience when i first launched it well i think it's a good little story there because there'll be many different people listening to this podcast but even that start point there there will be a lot of people who are just putting the course together and have no following there'll be a lot of people that have got a course and have nothing 200 would even be pretty good for a lot of people listening to this so i think that's even a lesson there a few little lessons number one have some sort of a number one build your email list that's the the first thing there number two have something in place to build that email is some sort of lead magnet uh number three have a way to get people though to that lead magnet and even if you just do those three things at least you're gonna do something at least you're gonna make one sale maybe like jax did there so i think that's a good little story and it doesn't necessarily have to be youtube find some sort of way that you can get traffic and then some find some sort of way to convert that traffic into your traffic by getting those people on your email list then you've essentially got something to sell to so i think it's a good little story there so then let's take it from there so emailed a couple hundred people made one sale what did you do what was the next improvement that you made from there oh man from there i just i just stuck with it i sold a few copies of that very first version and one of the most important things that i did um you know let's say 10 people bought that first version over the first few months one of the most important things i did was was like very consistently asked for feedback multiple times i would ask people like hey what do you think are you learning like what could be better and uh and that allowed me to put um put a even better curriculum together when i when i filmed it for a second time probably a year later um and and that's something that i've continued to do over the years is constantly ask for um for feedback from my students and even non-students non-buyers hey why didn't you buy and just always try to improve uh what i've got going on so um so asking for feedback from the students and then just continuing to try to learn i mean basically when i launched and and it was fairly unsuccessful what i realized was that okay i put this thing together but i've never i've never really marketed anything in my life like i was learning marketing for the first time in my life and um and i was realizing how important it is like you could have the greatest product in the entire world but if you don't know anything about marketing it just doesn't matter and so when you think about it that way marketing is almost more important than than the product itself and so i really um really started to learn marketing you know people like jeff walker product launch formula um learning from pat flynn uh and guys like that russell brunson and just just really learning about those things and you know i think one of the big um one of the big things that i implemented that was a big game changer for me was a around mid-2016 uh mid-2016 um i had gone you know three years and i had built it up to about a thousand dollars a month which you know some people hearing that's like well that's that's a lot of work to only bring in a thousand dollars a month but i could see i could see the potential i knew i knew where it could go and the biggest thing um the biggest game changer for me was learning about funnels and implementing a really good evergreen funnel into what i had to offer because ever at up up until that point piano in 21days.com was basically like a really bad sales page like you just go there you learn a little bit about it and then you can either buy it or not buy it it's basically not even a funnel and so i was listening to um smart passive income and and pat flynn had um a guest on who was um and still is i would say an online course expert david simon garland and he was basically walking everybody through on that podcast episode exactly what his evergreen funnel looked like for his course on courses i was like wow this guy's selling a thousand dollar course and doing very very very well and he's basically giving away exactly what his funnel looks like on this podcast let me see if that can work for my online course my online piano course and it was basically like a product launch formula style you know three pre-launch videos leading to an open car period a closed cart period um and he walked through in in great detail on that podcast episode how his was set up and so i took the information in that podcast episode i also opted in to his funnel and like looked at all the the timing and the emails and everything and i set mine up exactly the same as his i just you know obviously had my videos and my content my branding and everything and man i'll tell you pretty much overnight like flipping the switch on this funnel like same course same traffic like nothing else changed except for implementing this funnel i went from about a thousand dollars a month to about 10 000 a month in revenue that's amazing all right yes sometimes one thing has a has a big impact like that hang on okay we're gonna delve into a few different things here because there's a lot going on there um let me break it down so i love what jacques said about feedback on many different things let's even let's start with let's start with feedback in general sometimes it can be confronting especially if you've just started an online course you haven't sold many of them you may be a bit self-conscious asking for feedback because you're scared that people are going to say hey your course sucked it was unprofessional the sound was bad the video was bad i already knew that sometimes that can be scary and you don't want to confront that however if you don't confront it you're never going to get better and jax is a perfect example from zero to zero dollars a month to 140 000 a month just by that steady improvement steady improvements to any improvement and let's say we look at it logically let's say 10 people do your course let's say five of them love it and five of them hate it if you can find out those reasons why those five people hated it well hey why did you hate it well look you know video number six you know the audio was bad or the you know the you didn't even need that or you used a swear word you know that just turned me off and then you can go back and be like all right cool well hold on if i had just fixed up that video number six then this person would be a raving fan all right let me ask the next person what was going on there yeah look you know just some of the you didn't cover this topic here and this topic here and and this topic here you know if you covered those then it would be good okay great well i'm going to go back and i'm going to cover those topics there right and if you can just go by one every single bit of negative feedback you get if you can just fix that problem you're never going to get that negative feedback again and it's just going to keep getting better and better and better and better your course is going to get better you're going to get more raving fans you're going to get more testimonials and it's it's going to go from there but the only way you can do that and i guess this goes back to what you said at the very start about focusing on other people right you can think it's the best course in the world and you can get defensive if someone's like oh well you know video number six sucked you can get defensive and be like oh well it should be in there because blah blah blah blah blah but that's not gonna help your audience see what they don't like about it and make it better i think that's a very good point and then especially in terms of why people didn't buy now there's a few different things going on here jacques i think you are i'm not going to say lucky but you made some sales off your first time which is good a lot of people will launch and make absolutely zero right now the fact that you made a couple sales straight up showed potential straight away okay some people are interested in this i just need to make it better right if you do a launch and no one buys you really need to go and do this sort of feedback okay why didn't i buy at why didn't they buy and that's going to make their marketing better i'm sure that's what jax did as well hey why didn't you buy hey look the price was too expensive oh okay so if it was you know this amount here you'd buy okay great maybe i dropped the price a few dollars and i triple my sales okay it worked off better you know or hey you know it's not what i'm wanting jocks you know what i want a more advanced thing yours is just a beginner's thing well no mine isn't a beginner's thing oh i just didn't convey that message on the landing page or i didn't convey it on the the video so the more you find out why people didn't buy the more you can tailor your your marketing to get people like that to buy in the future so i think that's um that's huge there and then there was okay and then just the constant learning side of things right goes back to what jacques said before as well where is just constantly getting better constantly getting better constantly getting better and especially the marketing side of things my background is in the fitness world actually and you see it heaps in the fitness world you know because most fitness trainers they hate sales and marketing you know they don't get into the fitness world to be a salesperson and it's the same thing you know you can be the best best personal trainer best boot camp instructor in the world if you don't know sales and marketing you're sitting alone in the park doing push-ups same sort of thing with the online online course space right you can have the best course in the world if no one knows about it it's absolutely useless so that's why the the marketing is so important there in it and it's a split focus where it's like yes make your course awesome but also learn the marketing side of things so people actually do it now let's dive a little bit more into the the funnel side of things there's a few things going on there you dropped a few names as well let's even simplify that for some of the audience that haven't heard them so jax mentioned three of the biggest names in the world when it comes to the online space he mentioned pat flynn um he's got a podcast the smart passive income podcast good podcast to listen to he mess up mentioned russell brunson who's the owner of click funnels who's got uh some of the best books i've i've ever written i'm not sure if you've uh written he read his theories oh there we go right now right up there there we go yes i'm a huge fan of the um the traffic secrets and the expert secrets you know i definitely i'd recommend everybody read those books there uh jeff walker so have you done his program jokes jeff walker's no so the thing about jeff walker is he offers his course for like two thousand dollars to learn the product launch formula but you can also buy his ten dollar book called launch and learn pretty much the same material that you know that's a whole different discussion on courses versus books but no to answer your question i haven't done his course but i i i did end up reading his book with all that information in it yes so i um i got sucked in i bought his book and i'm like this is awesome i'm buying his program so i bought the book and got sucked in and bought his program but it was it was a good program i'm glad i did it so jeff walker runs a system launch i guess you'd say he's almost the expert in the world when it comes to launching something so he's a good person to follow really really good book to read even if you don't go and do his 2 000 course his 10 book just covers some really really good stuff now okay let's talk a little bit about funnels and then evergreen funnels because there may even be some people listening to this that's like chucks what's a funnel and what does evergreen mean so let's um let's simplify that and then maybe if it's okay with you you could share some of the funnels you're using at the moment with the listeners to see if they could implement some of those with their their marketing yeah perfect so so my personal definition of a funnel is it's a combination i i love to simplify things as much as possible i mean you look at the piano my brand is called piano in 21 days and you're not going to find a simpler way to learn piano that's that's one of the things that appeals to people it's like people there's so many people that have always wanted to learn play to play piano it's kind of like a bucket list item but they don't want to spend years learning how to play piano so the in comes this this kid trying to teach you in 21 days it's appealing you know it could be seems scammy but it's it's also appealing that's one of the reasons i did so well with the quarantines because all these people are like well now i can finally learn piano you know i might might only have three weeks let's uh let's give it a go so um my definition of funnel is it's a combination of web pages videos and emails that builds rapport and relationships with your potential customers and customers um and and leads them to a sale in a non-salesy way that's what i think a funnel is um and so then you just have to figure out what those web pages emails and videos are that you need to create um and in what order for your particular funnel yeah mine to this day still looks pretty similar to the one i had set up back in 2016.

[00:25:06]so you opt in and then a couple days later i'll email out and by the way you opt in for a free workbook i have this workbook on my website it's called learn 36 popular songs in five days it's essentially the first five days of my course in a book form but then i've i just kind of created a catchy title for it um and then you opt in for that for free that's been downloaded 130 000 times probably and a couple days later you get a video from me and it's video one it's basically the first video of three in a series and it's still this product launch formula style where you you you kind of figure out a topic or really you wanna you wanna figure out three different things that people struggle with most in your niche right and you build a whole video around each of them and then you kind of break down why that won't be a problem for the for the person on the other end through um through stories from your own life or from your story from your student's life um and so i have three of those videos and the first one goes out a couple days after you opt in and then a couple days later you get the second video and then a couple days after that you get the third video and then after that there's a five day open cart closed cart period so everybody that opts in then gets a five day window of buying it or not buying it and to execute that i use a software called deadline funnel and that's that's essentially what my funnel looks like that's what i had set up back in 2016 the big change that i've made since then a couple years ago is you know if you notice one of the biggest problems with that funnel is if is is over the course of like the first week you people don't really have the opportunity to buy so what i've done over the course of that first week is i put an evergreen webinar in a few strategic places over that first week and so those that are really really hot or or the or are the type of person to want to watch a two-hour webinar versus drip feed these shorter videos and it just kind of gives everybody the opportunity to to consume my information and buy in the way that works best uh for them so i implemented that evergreen webinar into the funnel a couple years ago and now i just have a really really really nice funnel going for piano in 21 days yes love that okay so i'll break that down a little bit for the listeners so jax's funnel is essentially and i'm guessing the opt-in you've sort of got that everywhere it's on your website it's in your um i don't know if you've got a facebook group it's on your youtube channel anywhere anyone goes there's an opportunity for them to to opt in for that free thing right right cool so let's even spend a minute there i think a lot of course creators want to go for that hard sell straight away you know hey go and buy my thing here's my sales page where it's got all the info and all the testimonials you know go and buy it and not always the best strategy because a lot of people won't buy straight away because they don't know you like you trust you and then also you almost lose if they don't buy there you almost lose that sale then and there because the chances of them remembering your website and going back and very very slim right but if they opt into something okay great it's a free they're more likely to opt-in because it's something for free and who doesn't like free stuff right my grandparents don't even speak english and they can they they know the word free right so you see the word free that's definitely going to get people in there and that essentially gives you the opportunity to sell and market to them a few times it's not just a one-shot you know where they see your website and sign up maybe the first email resonates maybe the second email resonates maybe the webinar resonates you know it gives them a few opportunities there so i think that's important and also important that the opt-in is good as well right yes and it goes and it goes back to the client thing too where it's like you may think this is a good good opt-in but what's what does the client want what's going to make them be like yep that's exactly what does the customer want what's going to make them be like this is this thing for free that's exactly what i want because a lot of people are hesitant to give their email these days right because they know you're going to try and sell them something you know and me me as well like i've got a yahoo email that i'll give any idiot but my official email i'll only give that if i really really want the thing right so if it's um because i don't even check that yahoo one i don't even know the password i just do it to get access to something but um to give it if it's something that i really want then i'll put my official email in there you know so it's important that that lead magnet is something that people actually want um and then from there so what jax does is they'll get a few automated emails you know hey here's video one here's video two uh just giving content his video three and these videos to simplify uh almost like sales videos without being sales videos all right they're not videos that are like hey i've got this course and it's 20 off and it includes this this this this and this it's more like um a co it's more content based but we're subtly doing little sales things in there to make these people realize hold on you know this guy's got a point if i could just do this thing here then i could learn piano and this thing here is essentially by the 21 day piano course is that is that in a nutshell what those videos are yeah exactly i mean the very first one that you'll get it's called um eight reasons traditional piano lessons don't work and the reason that one's there and it's first is because at this point you know a couple days into being introduced to me in my system they may be weighing like an online course versus going to take in-person lessons because what's in most people's head when they think about learning piano is okay i need to look up some local piano teacher and start going to weekly lessons so i need to uh in that first video explain to them why that's not most likely not a good approach for them it's you know it exists and there's a reason it exists and it does work for some people and it's a whole different discussion but for most people that's not a good approach here's why and here's why an online course specifically one like piano in 21 days is better so it breaks down that barrier so that's just an example and by the way i do want to go back to a couple of points you made about that opt-in if you don't mind yeah yeah yeah so you said that it has to be good content that's that's i mean that's obvious but yes don't just throw something together one of the one of the pieces of content i'm most proud of is that free workbook and one of the big things that you have to think about with something like that is quick wins you got to give give your students give your prospective customers quick wins to really start to um to build trust that they can learn even more from you and so there's a lot of quick wins in that workbook and then you also talked about you know you're you're kind of your fake fake email versus your good email one other tip that i do is once somebody opts in they don't immediately get the thing on the next page they get it in their email because all of my selling is going to be coming through email so right off the bat from the beginning of the relationship i want people to be in the habit of getting good things from me in their email and so like in your case if you put in your yahoo email you don't even know the password you're going to be like oh you know on the next page it says go check your email you're like dang it he got me and you're probably going to hit back and submit your real email yes bang on really really good points there i love that one there and i think that's just a really good tactic you know if anyone's listening to this there's just a good tactic that's going to increase your your email deliverability as well you know it's probably gone to their junk half the time anyway even if they did give you their real email it goes to their junk at least now oh it went to my junk let me transfer it into the inbox cool now i'm gonna get these i love the the quick wins as well because that builds trust it's like because if you just send someone something crap okay great you said you got their email but it doesn't do anything but if you can give him a quick win oh man this guy knows his stuff you know he gave me that was a quick win there great imagine what he does in the pay thing so exactly love that there and i think the that barriers was a perfect a perfect thing where jacques said where the first video was uh face to face verse online because a lot of people i think when they want to give value is they give the actual thing that's behind the course and that's got its place as well and you can do a little bit of that but just think about it like that when jax is giving value he's not saying hey he's less than one to play the piano you know you do bang bang bang you know he's the key or whatever it is it's like here's why online course stuff is good and that can hook people in there so i think that's good there uh we didn't want to go from here okay cool and then so and what junks means by evergreen is that it's going automatically so someone opts in it's like great you know they've they've opted in for that thing a couple days later they get an email a couple days later they get an email a couple days later they get an email jax isn't going there and sending those emails manually they're all happening there now he's got then an open cart and a closed cut so to simplify that to my understanding what jax is doing is being like all right if i give these people the opportunity to join anytime chances are they're probably never going to join in their life but if i say hey you know it starts at this point here or it's at a discount at this point here you can join any time but it's double the price or you don't get this bonus or or whatever it is i found if you don't give people a reason to act they probably won't act because people are people right same as what we do but if it's like oh hold on i would have got this course for x amount of dollars anyway but if i register today and i get this bonus or i get it a bit cheaper or i can't get it if i don't know now or i have to wait a few times that's giving people a reason to act now is that the theory behind that jobs yeah i mean as you know scarcity is one of the most powerful things you can implement in terms of getting somebody to to actually go over the edge to to pay for what it is that you have to offer this people are scared of missing out you know and that's that's what i try to instill through my sequence it's like you know toward the beginning it's like hey guys this is now available this great thing you know it's got this this and this this is what it's going to do for your life but towards the end it's more like you're gonna miss out on this like you gotta jump in before you lose this opportunity then the messaging is very different from the at the beginning versus the end um and so you're appealing to those these different um different aspects of uh people's uh psycholo psychological interest and the end is you know the last day of the cart being open um that day when it's closing is is when i get the most sales because of that reason yes they get me in all the time i'm a fear of missing out sort of guy for sure now jax also mentioned he uses a software deadline funnels because you might be thinking well hold on you know how does that work jax how does it you know if someone opts in today and then someone opts in tomorrow how do you monitor all that jacques uses a specific software called deadline funnels which essentially does that for you is that right jax that's what it does it makes authentic deadlines so for example if i didn't have deadline funnel and i say okay okay jono you know carts closing on august the 21st at midnight and then you go check your email on august 22nd and click the link and you can still get to the sales page in the order form well then that wasn't very authentic on my part um but what deadline funnel allows me to do is automate all that make it make it so everybody's got their own personal launch and when i say the card is going to close it actually closes because and for the listeners out there let's say for example i got that email from jax and he's like hey you gotta register by august the 13th or whatever it is right and i check my calendar and it's august the 15th and the coupon code still works i'm like okay i don't need to act as quickly for this guy you know next time he sends me another special i'll give it another day or two that'll still be over now if anyone's interested in that software you've got a link you could give people jokes oh man yeah i definitely do i've got a good relationship with um with the with the guys at deadline funnel now they have um i promote this on my podcast a lot but they have a double free trial set up for my audience um and i guess you know if you've listened to my podcaster time or two that's probably the reason you're asking that question but yeah you get a 28 day free trial which is double normal uh by using deadline funnel dot com uh slash ocg which stands for online course guy uh so yeah i appreciate that that's um yeah it's one of my favorite favorite tools um i've got you know about five tools that are just i just couldn't live without my business and that's definitely one of them let's um let's spend a minute there actually because what i think we might do so if you're listening on the podcast i'll put these links in the show notes if you're listening on facebook i'll put them in the the comments down there did you want to give us just a really quick rundown on those those few tools jax just like a minute or two what's the tool why is it important if you want to man i i can geek out on tools like i could talk about it for hours if you want to give us your top five and 30 seconds on each okay so you mentioned uh how much you like and respect russell brunson and a lot of his um a lot of his books and and and training and everything and that's one of the reasons click funnels has been so successful is because you've got such a charismatic guy on the top of it but it's also great software too and it's uh really it makes building funnels you know i mentioned funnels are a collection of web pages emails and videos well it makes that uh web pages part and the structure of a funnel just so easy so i use click funnels for my funnels i actually host my courses there uh as well and so click funnels is definitely definitely up there for me deadline funnel i use a tool called bonjouro which uh you know it's funny you're down in australia right the uh the creator of deadline funnel while he's an american does live in australia and then the guys that created banjora which i want to talk about next uh those are australian guys as well um so bonjour is a tool are you familiar with it jono i've heard you talk about it i get the idea but i've never used it so i don't know exactly how it works so i'm learning here and i'd love it if you could spend it a minute or two about it bonjour is a tool i use every day pretty much every day it it makes it very very very easy to send a personal video to anybody that has an email address so what that means as a course creator is i have an automation set up to where anytime somebody buys my piano course a task is automatically created in the bonjouro app and then it makes it easy for me to just click on it it'll say you know april um bought the piano in 21 days ultimate course uh yesterday and so i'll click on it and i'll just and i'll hit start record and i'll say hey april uh jacques just wanted to personally welcome you to piano in 21 days so excited to have you part of the course good luck to you let me know if you need anything it takes about 12 seconds and then all of a sudden within 24 hours of somebody signing up for the course they have a personal welcome video from the creator and instructor of that course and so i've been doing that for uh two or three years now and the reason i started doing it actually is i when i started my podcast about three years ago i i'm obviously a big fan of online courses so i took pat flynn's podcasting course and when i signed up for his podcasting course three years ago i had one of these bonjour videos from him and it just blew me away that a guy of that magnitude would take 20 seconds out of his day to to personalize a video to me and you know i'm i'm big into automation i used to be an engineer like i understand the back end of things but he literally said hey jacques this is pat and there's not a lot of jocks out there so i knew that it was personal to me whereas if my name was john i would have been like oh you know he sent that same video to every john so on that very day i'm like if if pat flynn can do this then i can do this for my piano students from so from that day till you know until now i've been using bonjour and sending out these these videos to everybody that signs up i've sent over 3 000 of those videos at this point and it's a it's a part of my process every day and it's it's only like 20 a month it's a very inexpensive tool so jono you should check it out it's a good tool i think yeah i've been half sucked in for about a year or whenever i first heard you talk about i'm like i like that idea but i just haven't got around to you know downloading in that but what we might do from there so i know you've got you know affiliate links and people get little deals and that um if they go by you what we might say is i'll put your links in the show notes if you want those links on facebook on some of the tools that jacques mentioned just write links down below and either me or jax or get them over to you um just there's a few questions i like to finish up with jax just before we get to them i do have one question on on the final side of things what happens if someone doesn't buy within those five days are they just gone we never email them again we never speak to them again or or what happens there yeah so i have a whole relaunch process right because uh somebody goes through within about the the funnel the evergreen funnel ends about 12 or 14 days after they they first uh opt in um and then the cart closes they they try to they try to click on things and it and it all it's all closed right um but that doesn't mean that they're never gonna buy from me that just means that they weren't ready right now because i promise you i did everything i possibly could do other than knocking on their door and and doing an in-person sales pitch to try to get them to buy and so that just meant that right then wasn't good for them so what they do with what i do with them next is i put them on to kind of my main email list and then i might start sending them some value videos as i make a new youtube video or something um and and look i'm not i don't have a uh like a weekly value email or anything this is like maybe every month if i'm not being lazy at that point in time but then what will happen is they will then get relaunched to every four months no matter no matter what point it is that they finish the funnel every four months they'll get relaunched too and the way i do that is when somebody finishes the evergreen sequence they'll go into one of four buckets depending on what month it currently is um and so i do it that way for a couple of reasons one is i like to have consistent income so rather than doing one big launch a couple times a year to my old email list i do it that way to keep my income more consistent so basically i'm relaunching to a quarter of my email list every month uh but then the other the other reason i do that is because it keeps things more consistent and real from the from the other person's perspective as well so if i were just doing a couple of big launches every year well let's say somebody finishes the evergreen sequence doesn't buy in july and i have my big launch schedule for august well that's kind of weird for for them to see on the other end and so you'll they'll always get it four months later um doing it this way and you know i just kind of picked the four month time frame in the four buckets and then i've done that for three or four years now and that just that's worked really well yes love it awesome right wait there's a few questions i like to always finish up with jax the first one being an on and you've already answered this question but i'll ask it again in case anyone missed it and and wants to know so i ask every single one of my guests what platform it is that they actually host their course on there's a heap of them out there there's teachable kajabi new zealand thinkific i could go all day your platform of choice to host the actual course click funnels um i love clickfunnels that does a lot well and it really does funnels well it's getting behind on the course side and i'm about to re-record um my course for like the sixth time and i am going to i'm about to do like a detailed in-depth like let's analyze all of the course platforms and uh and i'm gonna share that with my online course uh show audience that process and i'm legitimately going to figure out if clickfunnels is the best place for my piano course going to to be or one of these other platforms because there's a lot of them out there now and uh man click funnels just it was great when i set it up three years ago for my course but they're just getting left behind at this point um yes i'm finding that as well i've just switched over myself too um because i and i guess it's because they do all the other stuff so well right their funnels are so good their landing pages are so good it's almost hard to be good at everything right especially when there's people that are doing specific stuff for courses uh now just i'll just back up a bit because i think you said something cool are you going to do an analysis you said of the different platforms and share it with your audience yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna record a very very very long video where i literally go up and sign up for all the demos and trials and everything and start building out my course in all the different platforms and uh and i've got this list of features that i would like to see in an online course platform and i'll just be like checking off which ones fulfill those those those list of things that i would like to see and then i'll make an educated decision at the end of it because only only i can determine what's going to be the best fit for me and my audience right just because um you know you jono if you if you like new zindler or whatever you use uh doesn't mean it's necessarily gonna be the best fit for piano in 21 days and up until this point i think click funnels has been a good fit for piano in 21 days but it may not be going forward so i really need to do the due diligence of figuring out figuring that out and i think if i document that process i think people will get a lot of value out of that yes so i think every single one of my listeners and watchers would want to see that where's the actual i might just if you're interested in seeing that just write course platform down below on facebook and me or jacques will find a way to get it over to you are you gonna is that gonna be on your podcast or where's the best place for people to your facebook group i think i think something like that will be best for uh on video so that'll probably be on the online course guy uh youtube channel but i am gonna start documenting that a little bit on the online course show podcast as well and i'm starting to get some of the creators of these platforms uh lined up to um to come on the podcast because that's one of the one of the steps that i didn't mention that i'm taking is is actually talking to the people that made these platforms and being look here's here's my people here's my students and here's what i'm looking for convince me why i should be on your platform yes love that awesome yeah i think that'll be a hit i'm definitely going to tune into that make sure you you let me know now the next question i like to finish up with is all around mentors now you've already dropped a three three of them already with pat flynn russell brunson and jeff walker anyone else you want to give a shout out to are they probably the big three people that you follow uh the man is you know pat flynn is just the most genuine and authentic uh big time marketer out there um so so he's definitely still there and russell brunson as well i don't follow jeff walker as much anymore i don't know i don't like the other guys have like podcasts and and are doing all kinds of stuff i don't even know what jeff walker's up to these days so i haven't consumed his information lately um but then another another name i haven't dropped um that's a lot of people would be familiar with uh donald miller like he is oh his stuff on on story brand and marketing um in the past couple of years has been uh absolutely amazing i've learned a ton from him as well yes and that's a good book if you haven't read that book story brand by donald bill miller one of the best marketing books out there uh you've almost answered my next question that was books you've dropped a couple of them as well a couple of russell brunson's books uh donald miller's one there any other books you want to give a shout out to yeah so the number one book for a course creator we've mentioned it expert secrets absolutely the best book uh for course creators um and that's it's for course creators like a lot of people don't even realize it based on the title um and then of course storybrand which is which is more for marketing in general but um if we're talking about books that i most recommend for people trying to um market their courses that would be definitely one there and then um just if i could throw out just an author who have consumed all of his books and i haven't mentioned him yet either but uh mike mikalowitz big fan profit first clockwork um his latest one fixed fix this next um just an amazing amazing author for small business owners um and i'm a big fan and i read all the books that he he puts out there yes i'm a big fan of profit first that's how i run my whole business budget now that was yeah i was just missing how much do i reinvest back into the business how much do i pay people so that that just helped clear that up so jax we're coming to the end of the podcast someone's listening to this they're like you know what this is great i like this guy he's cool where's the best place for people to follow you is it your podcast is it your facebook group is it your facebook page instagram where should we go i appreciate it man so there's obviously piano with 21days.com and then on the online course psi course site i have the onlinecourseguy.com um but the biggest the biggest resource i put out over there is my podcast which is just called the online course show so that would be the the main way to learn more about courses for me awesome i'll put all these links in the show notes on facebook as well um you've got about three minutes do you want to tell us a little bit about your your course for course creators in three minutes can you do that someone's like all right i want to do this guy's course yeah i can definitely do that so at this point in time basically everything that i have to offer on this business is free and that's because unlike my piano course business there's a lot of great opportunities for affiliates and partnerships um with with online courses because as you know when you run an online course when you're starting an online course growing an online course there's so many like tools we talked about three of them basically here but there's so many tools you'll need um i don't really rely on affiliate income on the piano side because it's like okay i could i could be an affiliate for like a piano that's about it there's no other tool you need so i rely on course sales over there on the piano side but this side it's a really great win-win if i can offer a lot for free and just be very transparent about that like hey i'm throwing all this free content out there with the hope that um if you're going to sign up for these these different tools and software's uh anyway if you've got anything out of my training i'll hope that you'll use my affiliate link and a lot of a lot of times i've i've set up deals with the with the um the the companies to actually provide extra incentives for my audience like like i mentioned with deadline funnel um and so at this point you know you can get into um my beginner course uh just by by by buying actually a copy of expert secrets for 7.99 you get access to my beginner course um or i have a more advanced course um for existing course creators called next level courses that people can get into simply by signing up for click funnels um and i might tweak it a little bit here and there but i i think i'll always have some sort of affiliate model to make it just such a good uh win-win so you can find out about both of those programs over at the online course guy guy.com love it i would anyone listening to this go on and get that expert secret still if you haven't read it you've got to read that book anyway why not read it and get a free course from jerks as well win win um awesome all right jacks that's all i wanted to cover for today anything i missed or anything i should have asked you but didn't or anything you want to finish this off with um well that's a broad question um i mean i think i think about 30 seconds or less yeah i know right at the end of the day this is not necessarily easy um you know learning the piano isn't easy either but that doesn't mean it's not worth it and you just have to find um find find a system that works fine find somebody out there that's done what you want to do maybe model what they've done i mean that's how i find a lot of my success you know just take the take the story me talking about modeling that funnel um and and i promise i promise it's worth it i get it i get emails messages instagram whatever every day from people either on the piano side the online course guy it's like jacques you know i people literally use the words change my life and that's still unbelievable to the at this point um but you know learning the piano has the ability to change people's life and i'm sure people out there have courses and niches that could change people's lives or lives or have ideas for courses and at the end of the day if you haven't if you if you are good at something that can genuinely help people and possibly change their lives but you don't put a course together and you don't get that information out there and try to help people do those things then at the end of the day like that's on you like that that's a problem right there so i would definitely encourage you to put that information out there and start trying to help people um in whatever way that you can love it awesome i know you've got a heart out jock so i'm going to leave you to it all right i appreciate it jonah thank you okay bye