Jacques Hopkins (00:04:20):
And at the time, I didn’t know what it was, but I always remembered that. And my whole childhood growing up, I liked to build things with Legos. I was just very left-brained, very analytical. And so when I went to college down here at LSU, there was no question, I was going to major in engineering and be an engineer. And I did that. I majored in electrical engineering, I graduated, and I worked as an electrical engineer for eight years down here in Baton Rouge. And eventually, things changed and took a totally different direction. But that’s my background, man, left-brain analytical engineering.

Robert Leonard (00:04:51):
We have a similar background in that sense. I’m a left-brain finance guy, analytical finance guy. And if you told me five years ago or six years ago when I was going into college that I was going to podcast full-time and I would not use my MBA that I just spent so long getting, I would think you were crazy.

Jacques Hopkins (00:05:07):
It’s wild. Yeah. I do have an MBA too, by the way. And I don’t use either of my degrees. Well, to a very, very, very small extent. I wish I would have spent all that time starting my piano business much, much sooner, but you live, you learn, right?

Robert Leonard (00:05:19):
Same exact thing for me. But one of the things that drew me to you is that your course is about playing the piano. And that’s for two reasons. The first reason is because one of my goals in life is to be able to play the piano. I have these three random, little life goals that I want to achieve. I don’t know why I have them, I just do, and playing the piano is one of them. And the second reason is because I never thought an online course teaching how to play piano could be as successful as your course has been. Before we get into your online course business and how you built that, I want to talk a bit about your early entrepreneurial ventures that failed. What were your six side businesses that you started that failed and why did they fail?

Jacques Hopkins (00:06:02):
I think I would have not have been nearly as successful with the piano business if that was my first business venture, my first idea. So there were six different things I tried to create. I mentioned that my whole life pointed to me being an engineer and that one of the first things that started to change that for me was reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It was actually my senior year of college at LSU and I already had my job lined up. And so when I read that book, it opened up this whole new world of possibilities for me, because for the first time in my life, I was like, “Oh, maybe I could be an entrepreneur. Maybe I could open up my own business.”

Jacques Hopkins (00:06:36):
At that point in time, I thought being an entrepreneur meant very different things than I know today. I thought you had to have some big brick-and-mortar presence, lots of employees, lots of venture capital or debts, and it was just a lot of headaches and things that didn’t appeal to me. But reading that book, I realized, “Oh, I can create an online business, lots of automation, lots of outsourcing, very little upfront money.” It wasn’t specifically about online courses, but it was just this paradigm shift for me in the way you could go about creating a business. And so that’s what spurred me to start thinking of my ideas and starting various businesses. So I started doing that. Once I was working, I would come home and work on my business of the day, if you will.

Jacques Hopkins (00:07:17):
And so the first six were mega failures, not from the perspective of losing a lot of money, it’s just that none of the six even made a single dollar. And so the seventh one, my piano business, is the one that actually worked. But just to give you some examples, there were a couple of blogs in there, I think that was one of my first ones. I graduated from college in 2008. Blogging around then was pretty popular. As it turns out I’m a horrible writer and I also hate to write, so that was a big lesson learned from that. I think I maybe made two posts on that blog that I created about, it was learning new things blog. There was a couple of physical product ideas that I had, one I called Hopkins HTPC, which stands for home theater, PC, personal computer. And this was before like Apple TV and Roku, those were a thing.

Jacques Hopkins (00:08:07):
And personally, I really enjoyed having a computer hooked up to my TV in my living room because it allowed you to do so many more things, you could stream certain things, you could pull up websites, it was really a great thing. So I was like, “Huh, I wonder if they’re there’s a business here?” And so I designed a PC that would look nice in an entertainment cabinet versus an ugly tower you would have in your office. The problem was that to do it right, I had to charge like 1,200 to $1,500 for one of these, and people weren’t really willing to spend that for that. And then literally two months later, Apple TV became out doing the same thing, but better for about $100, so that just wasn’t a great business model.

Jacques Hopkins (00:08:47):
There was another physical product that I came up with. Blogging was really big back then. Also, the standing desk craze was really big back then. And I spent a lot of time trying to convert my desk at work where I was an engineer to a standing desk, and I spent a bunch of money at Home Depot trying to rig something up. And so I was like, “Huh, I wonder if we could invent something that could universally transform a sit-down desk into a standup desk?” And what I had come up with went on the bottom, sat between your desk and the floor. As it turns out, not the best design because lots of those solutions exist today that sit on top of your desk, I think called VersaDesk or VARIDESK. I’m sure a lot of the listeners have it, it’s pretty popular.

Jacques Hopkins (00:09:28):
That was an idea that the application wasn’t the best, but it also taught me that I’m not really into physical products, because I never really got as far as a prototype. I had some initial designs, I had the idea, but just like getting a prototype and having inventory, there are just so many things that just didn’t appeal to me with that. So those are some of the examples. And I learned something from each one, and like I said at the start of this answer, I don’t think Piano In 21 Days would be what it is today if it weren’t for those six failures that never made a dollar,

Robert Leonard (00:10:03):
I actually have a VARIDESK within arm’s reach of me right now. I’m not using it, but I do have one. And you mentioned The 4-Hour Workweek. That’s such an interesting book to me because it was super popular, and I had heard of it of course, but I didn’t read it for a very long time. And the reason for that was because of the title. And I thought the title was super, super gimmicky. I didn’t know who Tim Ferriss was really at the time, this was years ago, and I was like, “I’m not going to waste my time with this book. This is just going to be a get-rich-quick book, it’s not going to provide any value.” And then I ended up reading it and I absolutely loved it. And it’s been a few years since I read it, I think I need to go back and reread it again. But yeah, I absolutely love that book now.

Jacques Hopkins (00:10:42):
Yeah. It’s one of the few books that I’ve got behind me on this bookshelf, it’s the orange one back here. And it had such a profound impact on my life and my story, and I’ve since reread it several times, I think originally, if I’m not mistaken, Tim Ferris felt the same way as like, “Ah, do I want to call it 4-Hour Workweek?” I think originally was going to call it something about drug dealing for fun and profits, something like that. But as it turns out, it ended up being a pretty good title.

Robert Leonard (00:11:08):
Yeah. I do remember hearing an interview, I think it might’ve been a podcast he did or something like that, where he talked about it. I think it might’ve been with his publisher even. He went back and forth on what he wanted it to do for the title. And there’s another book in the personal finance space a lot of people are familiar with from Ramit Sethi and it’s, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. And it’s the same idea, I didn’t read that book for a long time because of the title, and then I read it and I was like, “It’s actually a pretty good book. I actually like this book.”

Jacques Hopkins (00:11:32):
Yeah. It sounds either too good to be true or a scam, right? Hey, can we throw Piano In 21 Days in that category?

Robert Leonard (00:11:40):
Yeah, exactly. And I think about this dynamic that we’re talking about with these books, I think about that a lot when I name things. Have you given any thought to that when you were naming your course?

Jacques Hopkins (00:11:50):
Not really, man. When I was naming my course, I knew that what I had to offer people that was different was that I was going to teach people piano quickly. And so I wanted to have that built into the name some way. And so I could call it like Rocket Piano or like Super Fast Piano, but I just decided to put an exact timeframe in it. And originally I was going to do piano in 30 days, but that was already taken, and so I just settled on Piano In 21 Days. That’s the extent of what I went through as far as naming it.

Robert Leonard (00:12:21):
Knowing what today about business, everything you’ve learned, do you think there are things that you could have done back on those first six projects that would have led them to being a success?

Jacques Hopkins (00:12:32):
The marketing piece was the big thing missing for me. Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come, that’s not true in this world because you’ve got to have the traffic and the marketing, which I had no experience with. My undergrad was in engineering, I took no business classes at all. I do have an MBA, but we took one marketing class and it was not online marketing, digital marketing. So that’s the piece that was missing for me today. And that’s one of the things that I pride myself most on today and one of the reasons that my piano course has been so successful. So I think that’s the piece that I could possibly go back and apply to some of those failed ventures. I think probably the one maybe would have worked out the best, I don’t even think I mentioned this one, but I had an app that I had made.

Jacques Hopkins (00:13:17):
The app, it was called Driving Thoughts. I’m a big fan of writing things down. I’ve got a horrible short-term memory, and so I’m always writing things down. I’ve got a notepad right here. The only real place that I’ve struggled to write things down was when I was driving, and so I made this app that was super simple to where all I had to do was open the app and then hit one more button, and then it immediately start recording your voice. And after about three seconds of silence, the app would just close. And while it was closing, it would transcribe what you said and email it to you, very simple, called Driving Thoughts. And that one didn’t make it ever a dollar either. It was in the App Store, it had five or six figures worth of downloads, but I didn’t know anything about business or marketing.

Jacques Hopkins (00:13:58):
And so I made the thing, I put it on the App Store and then didn’t really do anything else. I used it personally, I used it for a while. I doubt it’s still in the App Store because I never updated it. This was 12, 15 years ago. But knowing what I know now, I would’ve been able to market it more effectively, I would have been able to keep listening to people and improving it and then even coming up with some sort of revenue model because it was just free on the App Store. Those are some of the things I could have done with that venture knowing what I know now.

Robert Leonard (00:14:32):
Did you code that app yourself or did you actually hire it out and have somebody else build it for you?

Jacques Hopkins (00:14:36):
Yeah, I did. I coded it myself. It was very basic. I don’t think that I’m an amazing programmer by any means, but in electrical engineering, we did take a lot of programming classes and I even had to do a little bit at my job. So I had a basic working knowledge of programming. And real programmers would have laughed probably at the code that was in this app, but yes, I did it myself.

Robert Leonard (00:14:56):
I think it’s important to highlight the failures that we just talked about because a lot of people hear a story like yours and how much you’ve sold online of your course, and they’ll probably think it’s a get-rich-quick scheme. And I know that because that was me, and it’s absolutely not. And you and I have had a lot of conversations about this offline, and I know it’s not. You tried a bunch of different things before you found one that really worked, which we just talked about. It’s not like you did millions of sales overnight with this course when you launched it, it took about three years of you working really hard to get your online course business to a point where you were willing to quit your day job.

Robert Leonard (00:15:35):
And even then, at month eight, I believe it was, you were only doing about $1,000 a month and you were considering going back to an engineering job. So it’s not like it was an easy path or get rich quick overnight. Why do you think there is this misconception that online courses are an easy way to get rich?

Jacques Hopkins (00:15:55):
Well, I think if there is a misconception there, it’s because it’s so much more sexy to highlight the success stories than the failures in general. And that was definitely me when I was getting started. I came up with the idea for Piano In 21 Days in 2013. At the time, I was trying to learn as much as I could about online business and marketing, and all the podcasts and stuff I would listen to back then, you would hear these amazing success stories. I would hear lots of stories about online course success stories and people would get this idea and they would put it together and they would launch it and they would go away for an hour or two, go have dinner with their wife or something and come back and they had like a million dollars in their bank account.

Jacques Hopkins (00:16:37):
Those are the stories I would hear. And so I had that misconception when I was getting started as well, that if I just made it and put it out there, that I would be super successful as well. So I think that’s probably the main answer to your question, is because… I’ve got a podcast too, I highlight big success stories for sure, but I try to get into the real story like you do as well, and it took me a long time to find success. I’m just not the type of guy that finds instant success, I have to work at it. It was months and months and months after meeting my now wife before I even like asked her out, I’m a slow play kind of guy, it seems.

Jacques Hopkins (00:17:14):
So I think that’s the key. And for me, when I first launched, I didn’t make a single sale that first day. Not only did I not have millions in my bank account, but I also didn’t make a sale. And so I thought, “Hey, is this my seventh failed venture? Is this going to be my last one? Do I need to forget about this dream? Do I need to just completely focus on my job?” For most people, it’s not going to be overnight. Most people, it’s going to be more slow. And the ones that are successful are the ones that stick with it and get through the most amount of obstacles, in my opinion.

Robert Leonard (00:17:45):
It seems like this is more of a misconception about online businesses in general than it specifically is for online courses. I see this with people selling on Amazon all the time. And I just had a guest on the show who talked about building a business on Amazon. And what I really liked about that conversation with Steven was that, what you’re doing is you’re talking about how to build a real business with online courses, this isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, and Steven did the same thing with fulfillment by Amazon or building a business on the back of Amazon. Whereas if you go on YouTube and you just look how to build a business on Amazon, there are a million different videos about how to get rich quick overnight on Amazon. And so I think it’s just this group of online businesses that have this misconception that you can get rich quick.

Jacques Hopkins (00:18:28):
Yeah. There’s a lot of people teaching this stuff, there’s a lot of people teaching Amazon, they’re teaching online courses and they want you to feel like you can do it. I think that’s noble, trying to empower you, but you also shouldn’t come across like it’s easy and it’s a magic pill or anything either. And so I do agree with you that that’s probably leading to some of that.

Robert Leonard (00:18:48):
What are the other myths conceptions around online courses that you’ve heard? Like you said, you host a podcast and you have another business as the online course guy. So you’re very involved, outside of just being on 21 days, you’re very involved in this space of online courses. So what are those other myths and misconceptions you hear? And what is the actual truth to those?

Jacques Hopkins (00:19:08):
Four online courses specifically, there’s definitely a few. I would say feeling like you need fancy equipment would be one thing. At this point, I’ve been in business with my online course for like eight years, so I’ve got a nice 4K camera, I’ve actually got three of them. I’ve got good microphones, I’ve got a good studio set up, but that’s certainly not… You don’t need all those things in place when you’re first getting started. With how good smartphone cameras are now, I highly encourage people, if they’re interested in an online course and they have like a niche where they need to be on camera like me and my piano, there are some niches where you don’t necessarily need to be on camera. But for those that you do, film it with your iPhone, your smartphone, because the barrier there is just so, so low and the quality is surprisingly good.

Jacques Hopkins (00:19:53):
There’s a very well-known online business guru, course grader named Rachel Peterson who has done probably tens of millions of dollars in online course sales. And even to this day, films her courses on her iPhone, just to prove a point like, “Hey, you can do this too.” So you don’t really need the fancy equipment, there are some minimal things that you could do for not a lot of money. For me, if you’re going to make videos, yeah, the iPhone’s good, but let’s not use the microphone on the phone, let’s use the video. Let’s get a $25 Lapel mic that you can plug into your iPhone that’s going to pick up the audio right by you. That’s a good step to take, maybe some basic lighting, but don’t feel like you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on equipment.

Jacques Hopkins (00:20:38):
Speaking of filming and being on camera, that’s probably another one, “Look, Jacques, I can never be on camera like you are. That scares me. What would people think?” That’s a big one. And so some people will not even pursue it because of that. Other people will just like put slides in their voice on camera and never show themselves on the screen. And this was me, I’m a total engineer, introvert. My very first videos that I made in 2013, pretty cringe-worthy, they’re all unlisted and hidden now at this point because I’m not super proud of them. I still save them because I plan to break them out one day because I think they could inspire other people, but they’re not good.

Jacques Hopkins (00:21:16):
My first piano videos teaching piano, I just had an overhead shot, I didn’t want to be on camera, I didn’t want people at my job to see it, make fun of me, or whatever. And so it was just my hands at the keys. And it just took getting over myself and getting past that ego part of it, but then also just runtime and getting better on camera. Eventually, once I started being on camera, that’s when those cringy videos, because I wasn’t good at it yet, I didn’t know how to talk to just the camera. And having done hundreds, if not thousands of videos here eight years later, I’m pretty good in front of a camera, but I was not at first.

Jacques Hopkins (00:21:54):
And it just takes A, getting over yourself a little bit, and B, just some practice and runtime. And then a third one I would say is, this one’s real, people are concerned…if you’ve already got an audience, like, “How is my audience going to receive that? If I announced a course and it’s $500, or $1,000, $2,000, I’ve got this amazing audience, how are they going to receive that? Are they going to turn on me? Are they going to think I’m a sellout?” I was on Pat Flynn’s podcast about a year ago, Smart Passive Income, and one question that I asked him because I was just curious about it even though he was interviewing me was, “Hey, why did you wait so long to release an online course?”

Jacques Hopkins (00:22:33):
Pat Flynn, if anybody’s not familiar with him, he’s a huge big-time marketer online business guru. And for the longest time, his revenue model was a podcast, his blog, it was just like affiliates and advertisers. And he waited probably 10 years before he released his first online course. And his answer was, he was nervous about it, but a friend of his came to him and said, “Look Pat, you’re missing an incredible opportunity to serve your audience in a whole new way by not having an online course.” And I love that answer and completely believe in that because it’s so true. If you’ve got a podcast or a YouTube channel, that’s great, you’re giving away value for free, you just can’t go near as deep and serve as much as you can with an online course.

Jacques Hopkins (00:23:20):
Imagine if my piano business was just a YouTube channel, there would still be a massive amount of value people could get, but there wouldn’t be these life-changing stories of people going from complete beginners to what they’re able to do. I’m really proud of my students, that’s what I like to talk about most. There’s one guy who 61 years old, basically had never touched a piano before. And when was 62 years old, he had learned so much and was doing so much, he now has a Spotify channel and makes his own music and music albums, and they’re actually really, really good.

Jacques Hopkins (00:23:54):
There’s a lady, her dad passed away, and she was really grieving with that and she didn’t know how she was going to get through it, but she was like, “Well, my dad played piano. And so maybe learning myself could be a way to help me get through that.” And so in just a couple of months, she was able to do that through Piano In 21 Days. And I just don’t know that she would have been able to do that from a few YouTube videos. So the amount of transformation and impact you can have on people is really amazing. And then the last thing about that is typically we charge for online courses, whereas podcasts, YouTube, videos, people consume those for free, and a lot of times people will stick with it better and actually finish things the more they have invested into it.

Jacques Hopkins (00:24:36):
And that’s one of the reasons I charge one of the highest prices for an online piano course that I do, around $500 is because I want everybody that signs up to take it seriously and finish it. And if I charged like $20 or even free, the success rate, completion rate, wouldn’t be near as high.

Robert Leonard (00:24:53):
That last piece is exactly what was on the tip of my tongue and it was exactly what I was going to say, is the commitment when people pay for something. I forget exactly where I heard it, it might’ve been from you, Jacques, on one of the podcasts you’ve been on, your podcast even. But I remember learning from somebody and I felt the same way, I’m like, “Well, why wouldn’t I just give all this stuff away for free like a Gary Vee-type model?” And then I remember learning like, “No, you need to charge for some things because that’s where you get people to commit.” And then I did some self-reflection, I said, “Okay, what about the resources that you’ve gotten for free? Do you go through all of them? Absolutely not. How about the ones that you’ve actually paid a lot for?” And I actually use those.

Robert Leonard (00:25:29):
And even the ones that are like relatively cheap, I don’t necessarily always go through them. So that commitment piece I think is so, so important. How many books have you bought that you’ve never read? That was exactly what I was thinking of because I get them all from thrift stores and they’re like two to $4 apiece. I know it’s kind of nerdy, but I counted my books the other day and I have like 297 or something like that. I have a very relatively large personal library. I have not read nearly all of them, partially because I don’t have that personal investment in them.

Jacques Hopkins (00:26:00):
Yeah, exactly. And U2Me is a big course marketplace, some people might be familiar with. And basically, every course on there is $10. And there are some really good courses on there, and I’ve definitely gone through some courses on U2Me, but I’ve also purchased way more on U2Me than I have actually gone through, once again because the investment is so low. The most I’ve personally ever spent on an online course is $6,000. Do you think I went through the whole thing? Yeah. I went through it like four times. I was very invested in it.

Robert Leonard (00:26:30):
Yeah. The same thing for me, for U2Me actually, I’ve purchased, I don’t know, between three to five courses on there. So I spent a total of like $50, and I don’t think I’ve ever completed any of them. I don’t think I’ve ever completed like more than 10% of any of them. And they were topics that I was actually interested in. So it’s not like I didn’t want to learn it, I really did, I just didn’t have that financial commitment. The other piece that you mentioned that’s really interesting is how Pat Flynn, his mindset around creating the course, and that’s exactly where I’m at. He almost felt like he was going to be a sellout, exactly those feelings that you mentioned, that is exactly where I’m at.

Robert Leonard (00:27:03):
I have a relatively large audience here on the show and I just need to get over it like Pat did essentially and realize that I’m providing value if I do create a course like Pat. Any tips or tricks you’ve learned from talking to hundreds of course creators on how to get over that?

Jacques Hopkins (00:27:19):
It’s not easy, I get it. I totally get it. And for you, Robert, what you’re doing now is working, that’s part of the problem. It’s like your current business model is working, you have a great audience, they really like the podcast. You don’t really want to mess that up, you don’t want to rock the boat. But I’m telling you, an online course does nothing but help serve them better. You’re not making them spend the money on this. For those that want to go deeper with you. I’m sure there are people out there they’re like, they want more of your attention, they want a deeper dive with you. And that’s a great way to be able to serve them with an online course.

Robert Leonard (00:27:54):
You talked about having the good equipment, and what’s interesting for people that don’t know is you’ve rerecorded your piano course, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think five times now, so you don’t have to like have your finished 100% final, never change it product the first time. You can record your first course or whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be an online course, it could be a side hustle, it could be a podcast, it could be anything. You don’t have to have the best equipment to start, and then if it gains traction, you can reinvest in that and then improve what you’ve created and rerecord it, or whatever that step looks like for your business. But I think that’s an important piece to mention too, is what you create first isn’t necessarily final.

Jacques Hopkins (00:28:30):
Yeah. Don’t sell me short, man. We’ve recorded six times now, just released the sixth version. The version that we just released about three months ago, I would have never been able to create that had it not been for the first five versions. And people are just loving the sixth version and I’ve spent more time on this one than the other five combined because that’s just where I am now. But when it’s your first version, what I always say is like, let’s go for the MVC, Minimal Viable Course. We want it to be viable, but let’s go minimal. Let’s piece it together to where we can put together the least amount we can for the most amount of effectiveness.

Jacques Hopkins (00:29:04):
So, my very first version of my piano course, it was this dinky little webcam set up, just completely Jerry rigged above my keyboard. And probably only like 10 people went through that very first version. But I very diligently tried to track down every single one of those 10 people to give me their honest feedback so that I could roll that into the next version. And I’m a perfectionist too, that kills me to roll something out when it’s not dialed in 100% perfect, but we’ve got to have success. You’ve really got to get past that because by releasing things that are not necessarily perfect, you’re able to do it so much faster, get it out there, and then get the market feedback, which then is the real missing piece to help you get to that level of perfection that you’re going for.

Robert Leonard (00:29:51):
I’m a perfectionist too, and that’s exactly one of the things that I’ve struggled with, specifically with this podcast, when it first started, we had a vision for what it was going to be about, and we’re hundreds of episodes in now, and it’s changed a little bit. We still have the same premise, but it’s changed a little bit, and it’s gotten better. And as each episode comes out, we’re doing these new things to just continually make it better.

Jacques Hopkins (00:30:11):
Yeah. It’s important. And the very first episode of my podcast, I had the wrong mic turned on or something. And so the audio quality is horrible, but I didn’t have an audience at the time for my podcast, so I just put it out there. And we get better every episode, under 75 episodes now, and trying to get better with each one. And if I would have just stopped to rerecord it, and then re-recorded again because that wasn’t perfect, then I might’ve still never launched my podcast. And so you’ve got to find that line between getting it perfect and actually getting it out there.

Robert Leonard (00:30:43):
And you’re going to make mistakes. You just mentioned the mic thing, and we talked about this right before the show, I made the exact same mistake I had. It was probably the first big, big name that I had on the show. I didn’t even turn my nice mic on, I had my computer mic and the audio was horrible. And so we ended up not even publishing the episode, and you guys listening to the show don’t know that because it never went out, but you make these mistakes. And I think it’s important for you to know that, if you start your own side hustle, it doesn’t have to be online courses, or a podcast, whatever it is, you’re going to make mistakes.

Jacques Hopkins (00:31:11):
Quick mic check, Robert, are you recording? Let’s make sure this gets out to there to the world.

Robert Leonard (00:31:15):
Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Jacques Hopkins (00:31:17):
Okay, good.

Robert Leonard (00:31:18):
Between starting your piano course and quitting your job, you had a baby girl, and so that certainly didn’t make it any easier to walk away from your career. And having been an engineer for eight years, I’m assuming you were earning probably a pretty strong salary. So that was just another thing that made it even harder to walk away as well. Take us through your thought process as you were considering quitting your job.

Jacques Hopkins (00:31:43):
I’m also not a big risk taker either, and so that was a huge decision. My wife and I were both very blessed in the fact that we got through our college undergrad degrees with no debt at the end, and we both had an engineering degree. And engineering is great from the perspective of depending on the market at a time, typically get a pretty well-paid job without having to have some advanced degree. You can go right into the workforce making a pretty good living. So we both did that, but we knew pretty early on, our plan was for her to eventually not work, once we started having kids, to not go back to work.

Jacques Hopkins (00:32:15):
And she knew that the goal on my side was to eventually quit and just run my own online business of some sort. We didn’t know what about the piano thing at the time, but that was always the goal. So we were putting things in place the whole time we could. So that meant saving as much money as we could. And one huge thing that we did that probably wouldn’t be in this position today, or I know I wouldn’t, is we paid off our mortgage. That was really important to us to be completely debt-free, including our house. And so we were able to do that shortly before having our first kid in 2015. And so mid-2015, we had our first daughter, and my wife didn’t go back to work.

Jacques Hopkins (00:32:54):
And so I was still working for a little bit, and decided to quit toward the end of that year, 2015. My last day of full-time work was December 31st of 2015. And what went into that decision was basically, I had this thing, like Piano In 21 Days, I had created it two years earlier and I just felt like I needed to spend more time on it to make it work. I was making some sales, I was making about $1,000 a month, but I needed to put a lot more time into it to really scale it. The problem is I didn’t have time. And the thing that was taking my time was the thing that was bringing in the money for our family, and my wife wasn’t working anymore either.

Jacques Hopkins (00:33:32):
And so it was a catch-22 thing, but fortunately, we had our mortgage paid off, we had some savings, so we decided we could live very, very frugally and take that $1,000 a month we were making plus a little bit from savings each month. We had up to a year to try to make it work. If that didn’t increase at all, we had up to a year. So because I’m not a huge risk-taker and neither is my wife, we needed those things in place. And because we had those things that place, it wasn’t as big of a risk. Speaking of the four-hour workweek, one thing that really jumped out at me, and this was a big part of making this decision, is one thing he mentioned in that book was, he likes to look at things in terms of best-case and worst-case scenarios and assigning those a number on a zero to 10 scale.

Jacques Hopkins (00:34:15):
And so I looked at it’s like, “Okay, if I quit my job, what’s the best-case scenario? Well, the best-case scenario is I make a business that’s exactly what I wanted, I’m not trading dollars for hours. We’re able to have complete freedom, do what we want, live anywhere we want, travel whenever we want. It’s a 10 out of 10.” The best-case scenario is a 10 out of 10. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t really work out, and not only does that $1,000 a month not grow, it goes down. And what I thought I had a year, I really only have nine months, and after nine months, I’ve got to go back to work. So worst-case scenario is like a six out of 10. Not that bad. It’s kind of back to where I was before.

Jacques Hopkins (00:34:56):
So was it worth risking a possible six out of 10, which is basically where it was for a possible 10 out of 10? Heck, yeah. So once I put it in those terms, it was a no-brainer to go ahead and try to make it work.

Robert Leonard (00:35:08):
I went through the exact same thought process, and we actually learn that in real estate, or that’s where I learned it, at least was the real estate industry. But it was the same for me. When I quit my job was like, “All right, well, worst-case scenario, what am I going to do? I’m going to go back to my full-time job. I’m 26 years old, I have a good degree, I have good experience. I’m a hireable employee if I go back.” So my worst-case scenario was everybody else’s daily life. So I figured, why not take a chance? So it’s funny I went through the exact same thought process. And you mentioned that you paid off your house and were completely debt-free. So I have to ask, are you a Dave Ramsey follower?

Jacques Hopkins (00:35:43):
Yeah. How could you tell? Yeah. When I got my very first paycheck in late 2008, when I first started working, it was like the most money I’d seen at one time. And I’m like, “Holy smokes, what do I do with this?” I had no idea. Am I supposed to save a certain percentage? Am I supposed to allocate a certain percentage to food? I had no idea. And so I just started Googling around, and that’s how I found Dave Ramsey for the first time, I never heard of him. And I started very diligently listening to his stuff and really followed his plan, and continued to follow his plan at a very high level, like the Baby Steps and everything.

Jacques Hopkins (00:36:16):
And that’s where we were on the Baby Steps, we had everything else in place. And I think it’s Baby Step six, that is the pay off your mortgage. And so we were on baby step seven and made it a whole lot easier to quit my job.

Robert Leonard (00:36:30):
For those listening that don’t know, Jacques and I have spent hours talking together before this, and we’ve never talked about anything financial. So I had no idea that he was a Dave Ramsey follower, but I could tell just by how he’s explaining his financial situation that it was probably a Dave Ramsey-type situation.

Jacques Hopkins (00:36:46):
Yeah. I called it into a show one time and that’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever been in my entire life, because I’d been listening to him for a couple of years, and I actually was like, “I got to speak with him.” And Ooh, man, I was nervous.

Robert Leonard (00:36:58):
Was that published on his podcast?

Jacques Hopkins (00:37:00):
Yeah. It was. This was years ago. This was years ago. So I don’t know if it’s still out there anywhere, but yeah, it was.

Robert Leonard (00:37:07):
I’ll have to see if I can try and find that, I’d love to hear it.

Jacques Hopkins (00:37:10):
Here’s Jacques from Louisiana with the question.

Robert Leonard (00:37:13):
Yeah, I can imagine. Was there a moment when you knew you were ready to quit? I know you just went through all those steps that you said you were taking to get there, but when was it like, “All right now is the time, I’m ready. This is when I’m going to do it.” Was it as soon as you made that last mortgage payment? It sounds like it was December 31st, so was it just like the end of the calendar year, like, “Let’s do this”? Or what was your thought process there?

Jacques Hopkins (00:37:35):
There are really the two layers there. I gave my boss and my company a lot of notice, so it wasn’t like December 31st, 2015 is when I made the decision, I made the decision months and months, and months before that. I had to say, I worked for the same company for eight years, I had the same boss for eight years, great company, great boss, great people. And as far as a job goes, it was good, I just didn’t feel like that was my calling long term was to work for a company. I felt like I wanted to run my own thing using this model. And so once we had those things in place and I put it in that perspective of the risks, that’s when I knew, “Okay, I need to give this a shot.”

Jacques Hopkins (00:38:10):
And so I had a casual conversation with my boss, just telling them, “Hey, look, I think my days here are numbered, but I’m going to stick around and make sure that my replacement is here and well-trained. I’d been there seven or eight years at that point, and I worked my way up to engineering manager and I had a lot of people under me, and a lot of projects under me, I didn’t feel comfortable just like leaving in two weeks, especially the relationships I had built. So I stuck around for several more months to get all those things in place. But I mentioned I’m not a risk-taker, so the plan all along was for me to actually go part-time, because I knew I needed the extra time, but I wasn’t super comfortable just completely eliminating the paycheck.

Jacques Hopkins (00:38:50):
So our agreement was actually starting in the new year in 2016, I was actually going to go to like 10 or 20 hours a week and just stick around and still manage a few projects and so on. So there was a big moment when I quit permanently. So I go to work that first week or two in January of 2016, part-time, just like a couple of days a week, and it’s going okay. It’s interesting because for the first time I’m not working like 40, 50, 60 hours, there’s a lot of freedom there, but I still felt some layer of security. And then I got my first paycheck as a part-time employee. And for some reason, I thought that we had an agreement that my hourly rate was going to go significantly up because I was no longer getting any benefits.

Jacques Hopkins (00:39:32):
I was no longer getting 401(k) match, healthcare, that was a big one, not having healthcare anymore. And so for some reason, I thought we had a deal in place to where my pay was going to be a lot higher. When I got that first paycheck, it was way lower than I expected because it was my same old hourly rate back when I had benefits, and I went straight to my boss, I was like, “Hey, what’s the deal here?” And he was like, “You made the decision to go part-time, that’s just what it is.” And I was like, “This is not going to cut it.” And I left for good. It was really scary. I called my wife immediately crying, freaking out because it was so scary, but that was the moment where I never went back.

Robert Leonard (00:40:09):
I had done that with previous employers when I was making a transition to a new employer, I’d worked full time for the new employer and I would stay part-time with the old employer until they could transition in somebody to take over my position. That was never an issue. So I thought that that was going to be an option with this company when I made the transition to be a podcaster full time and invest in real estate. And so that was my expectation. I went to my boss to ask if we could do part-time, I just expected her to say yes, and she said no. And I was like, “Well, I’ve already made this decision that I’m going to do this full time. I guess I don’t have a choice. I guess if we can’t do part-time, then here are my two or three weeks,” and that was pretty much it.

Robert Leonard (00:40:47):
When you first had the idea for the online piano course, where did you start and how did you even know where to start? That’s what I think is probably the most interesting piece, is, how did you even know where to begin?

Jacques Hopkins (00:41:01):
Well, first of all, I didn’t really, it was not an immediate success. The little that I did know about this type of stuff, most of it I learned from Pat Flynn’s podcast, Smart, Passive Income. It’s been around for quite a while now. I’m curious to know when he started, I would guess probably like 2010, 2011. So the little I knew came from that podcast. So here’s what I knew, I knew that I needed a lead magnet, I knew I needed an email list. So what a lead magnet is, it’s something of value I can give for free in exchange for an email address. And I just knew a little bit about email marketing, so I knew that it was important to collect a list of emails and market via email, so I knew that. So I set up a very, very basic website, one landing page, a single-page website.

Jacques Hopkins (00:41:43):
And by the way, that’s another thing that I learned from all these failed ventures, was how to make a basic website. That part came pretty quickly because I had made pretty much a website for all these other failed ventures. Otherwise, I probably would have spent weeks researching how to make a website, which is a lot harder in 2013 than it is today. So I knew to do that. And then I also knew to make a YouTube channel and make some videos there. And then at the end of the video, have a call to action to my free resource on my website that people could get in exchange for an email address.

Jacques Hopkins (00:42:12):
And so what I did was I started designing out the course, and once I felt like it was a good break-off point for some free content, at first, I was actually eight days, it’s since morphed to five days, but I put like, “Hey, if you want the first eight days of the course and a free workbook, head over to PianoIn21Days.com and grab it for free. So those are the steps I took. And those are the steps that led to building up an email list. All the while, I was developing the course. It took me about eight months to go from idea to actually releasing the full course. And when you release a course, you want to release it to somebody. And for me, I probably had 100 email addresses, that’s what my first launch looked like, which is not near enough. But those are the steps that I did know to take just from listening to Pat’s podcast.

Robert Leonard (00:43:01):
If you were getting started today, would you still start on YouTube as one of your first ways to build an audience?

Jacques Hopkins (00:43:06):
Yes, 100%. For people that want to get into online courses, and that’s what I know most about. There’s a broader category of just online business, but for online courses, building an audience is incredibly important. And I think most people should start either with YouTube or a podcast. And you probably know significantly more about podcasting than me, but how do you decide which one? I think it’s based on what your niche is and if it’s better consumed on video or audio. For teaching piano, could you imagine a podcast on teaching piano through an audio podcast? You need to see me interacting with my keyboard. My podcast is about online courses, it’s not about piano, and most of the time I’m just interviewing other course creators because I like to get those real stories about courses.

Jacques Hopkins (00:43:49):
And a lot of times, I have people on that teaching other people how to make money, like my piano course, hobby courses, bird watching and playing the ukulele, and solving a Rubik’s cube. And a lot of those, you need to be on camera. And so a YouTube channel is a really great place to start for that and start building your audience there. The type of person that’s going to be intrigued by free videos on YouTube about your niche in a lot of ways is going to be also intrigued by an online video course around that topic as well because they’re looking for answers to problems in video form. I’ve seen online courses that are text-based, but I don’t really even consider those online courses. When I say online course, it’s video-based.

Jacques Hopkins (00:44:30):
But with a podcast, if it’s right for your niche like a podcast, you’re obviously a big-time podcaster, Robert, I think talking about Millennial Investing on a podcast was a great place to start versus YouTube. I know now you have both, but it’s primarily the audio of the podcast. And so when I went to start a second business talking about online courses, I was like, “Okay, podcasts make a lot more sense than YouTube because I can just talk about it, I can just interview other people.” So it depends. A YouTube channel is not necessarily the right fit for everybody, but if you need to be interacting with something on camera, then yes. And to summarize that and the specific answer to your question, for me and piano, yes, that’d be the very first thing I do is start a YouTube channel.

Robert Leonard (00:45:14):
Since you have a few videos that have quite a lot of views, you have one with over two million, one with over a million, one with close to a million, and then so on, do you think of YouTube as an additional revenue stream or is it purely just top-of-funnel type strategy?

Jacques Hopkins (00:45:30):
No. So revenue-wise, Piano In 21 Days brings in on average 50 or $60,000 a month. Do you want to guess how much of that is from YouTube ads?

Robert Leonard (00:45:43):
$750.

Jacques Hopkins (00:45:45):
Yeah, that’s pretty close, just somewhere between there and $1,000. It’s a very small percentage of that. So, no, from my experience. It’s far more profitable to use YouTube as just an audience builder to get, like you said, top-of-funnel, get people into your funnel versus the end game, which a lot of YouTubers use as the end game. Right now, we’ve got about 85,000 subscribers, so not a huge channel, not super small either. I’m sure if I had like a million subscribers or two million subscribers, it would be more of something you could consider an income and pretty good money from YouTube. But I also wonder if that takes away from my product in my funnel, meaning if I have a video on YouTube and somebody clicks on it, they’re intrigued, the one that’s over two million views is called Learn Piano in Four Minutes, and then an ad for one of my competitors shows up first in front of the video, and then, they click that and go to their site and never end up watching my video, was it really worth that like 10 cents that I got?

Jacques Hopkins (00:46:48):
So I wonder if it would be better to just turn off ads altogether, but at the end of the day, it’s not a big part of my revenue model.

Robert Leonard (00:46:56):
Yeah. It’s interesting to think about that strategy piece. And for some people though, maybe 750 to $1,000, that might be enough to get them going. And of course, that’s going to take a while to build a YouTube channel that can actually do that. But yeah, it’s interesting. And we’ve actually been making a huge push into YouTube, not just with my podcast, but as TIP, as The Investor’s Podcast, we’ve been making a big push into YouTube. And just a fun fact for you, Jacques, and really anybody listening, but the number of subscribers actually doesn’t correlate to how much you make and, or your views, because we found, we’ve done a lot of research into this, but the number of subscribers you have is more vanity than anything on YouTube because people don’t go through lists of videos and watch them from their subscription like they do on podcasts. So we find that a lot of channels with a lot of subscribers don’t necessarily have the most viewed videos and what drives revenue on YouTube is viewed videos.

Jacques Hopkins (00:47:48):
Yeah, viewed videos and view time overall. I’ve been on your YouTube channel for this podcast and a lot of the videos are over an hour-long because it’s these full long-form conversations. And when they’re that long, you have multiple opportunities to insert videos. I think the number is eight minutes. If you have a YouTube video shorter than eight minutes, then you can only have an ad right at the beginning, you can’t have ads in the middle. So overall, time is probably the key metric there.

Robert Leonard (00:48:16):
Yeah. We only have roughly say 50,000 subscribers or something like that, but we met with a big YouTuber who has like maybe 300,000 subscribers or so, and we make more revenue per month on YouTube than he does, even though we’re a sixth of the size in terms of subscribers. And that’s just because we find that there’s not a huge correlation between subscribers and views.

Jacques Hopkins (00:48:40):
Yeah. That’s really interesting.

Robert Leonard (00:48:42):
We both mentioned this term top-of-funnel, and I’ve read a lot of Russell Brunson and these types of ClickFunnel books, so I know what this is and we’ve talked about it, but for those who aren’t familiar with it, explain what a funnel is and what it means when something is top-of-funnel.

Jacques Hopkins (00:49:01):
Ooh, the ClickFunnels guy. I’ve got six books back here behind me, and one of them is 4-Hour Workweek, another one is Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. So a big fan of that, a big fan of his. I like ClickFunnels, but it’s embarrassing how long I was in business before I even knew what a funnel was. And that was actually one of the biggest things that were keeping me from success in my business, was basically not having a funnel of any sort. I’ve since come up with my own definition because I like to keep things as simple as possible, simplifying the piano to a 21-day course. And when I talk about online courses, I try to simplify things as much as possible as well.

Jacques Hopkins (00:49:39):
So when we’re talking about funnels, it can be something that is a little intimidating to people and a little confusing, so my official like Jacques definition of a funnel is, it’s a combination of webpages, videos, and emails, a combination of webpages, videos, and emails that builds trust and rapport with your potential customer and leads them to a sale in a non-salesy way. So what is it? It’s just web pages, videos, and emails. And then what does it do? It builds trust and rapport with your potential customer that leads them to a sale in a non-salesy way. And that’s what I was missing for the longest time in my business.

Jacques Hopkins (00:50:15):
And once I understood what a funnel is and what it can do for you and what it can do for your end-user, potential customer, and was able to take action on that and implement something, it was a complete game-changer. But as far as what is it, does that make sense, Robert?

Robert Leonard (00:50:32):
Yeah, absolutely. You also talked about, and we touched on this earlier, but you talked about how in your YouTube videos, you’re actually giving away valuable content. They’re not just fluff, they’re actually helpful. And we talked about Gary Vee’s model of giving away his content for free and things like that. And he talks about how, even though he gives away almost everything for free, he still has companies that pay his agency hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, even though he’s giving away his full model. How do you think about this dynamic of giving content away for free on a medium like, say YouTube versus making people pay for the quality content? And I know we talked about the commitment piece, but how do you think of it from the business perspective?

Jacques Hopkins (00:51:14):
You mentioned the word quality. I don’t know that that’s necessarily the number one thing, because I aim for the same level of quality on my YouTube videos as I do for my, say, course videos. And I would imagine that the level of quality, for example, that you put into an episode of your podcast is extremely high. You value the quality of that and you would probably put that same amount of value in quality too if you released an online course. I think the key difference is having everything in one place and having a step-by-step, A-to-Z program and then any additional interaction on top of that.

Jacques Hopkins (00:51:51):
So what I mean is, there’s probably not a single thing inside of my course that is not somewhere on my YouTube channel for free. So why would people pay for the same information? Why would they pay $500 for the same information that they could get for free? Well, it’s because they can log in and there’s a very clear starting point, and I take them through this process step by step, by step, by step, by step in a very, very organized and sequential way. Whereas with YouTube, it’s just random videos here and there, it’s not meant to be sequential in any way. And then the other reason is, and this isn’t necessarily a component of every online course, but it is mine, community and interaction is a really big part of it for me.

Jacques Hopkins (00:52:33):
People will sign up to be a part of the community, and not only do they get to experience my lessons and interacting with me, but they can interact with each other and feel like they’re going through this with other like-minded people, going through the same thing, struggling with the same things. For me, they also get access to a weekly live Q&A, that’s something worth paying for in addition to the course that you’re not necessarily going to get on YouTube. They can email me, ask me questions, they can post questions under lessons and me or somebody on my team will respond. So it’s a much higher level of support as well. And so it’s not necessarily the content or the quality, that’s the difference, it’s more those other things that I just mentioned.

Robert Leonard (00:53:16):
We talked at the very beginning about how online courses aren’t an overnight success, and I want to have a similar conversation about funnels. We just talked about how they were a turning point for you and your business, they’ve clearly been important, they’ve provided a lot of growth, but I want to emphasize that they’re not a get-rich-quick scheme either. Just because you create a funnel, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have all these people flowing into your funnel. So talk to us about the work needed to actually make a funnel work.

Jacques Hopkins (00:53:44):
All right? So in my opinion, there are four components to a successful online course business. My course business has these and I’ve now interviewed hundreds of other successful creators and really boiled it down to, okay, the common elements are these four components. An effective funnel is one of them. Just to quickly mention what the other three are, you’ve got to have traffic, we’ve talked about that. It’s not simply if you build it, they will come. You’ve got to have traffic, you’ve got to have a funnel, you’ve got to have a course. That’s probably the most self-explanatory element, you’ve got to physically have the product that you’re delivering. It’s not Fyre Fest here where you just sell and then don’t have the actual product on the backend.

Jacques Hopkins (00:54:23):
And then you’ve got to have student success and testimonials. People need to be taking your course and actually come out the other end successful. Those are the four components to a successful online course business. And for me, my biggest struggle was that I was missing one of those. About three years in, mid-2016, I was still making about $1,000 a month. I had a course, it was pretty good and it was generating successful students and they were making testimonials. And I had traffic, I had a growing YouTube channel. That’s probably around the time when my first video that first crossed over like a million views. I just couldn’t figure out why with these components, I was still only making about $1,000 a month, only selling two or three copies of my course per month.

Jacques Hopkins (00:55:09):
But that’s because I didn’t have a funnel. People would go to my website and it would just be like, “Okay, buy now. Take it or leave it.” There was nothing much more to that. I was collecting a few emails, but I wasn’t really doing anything with those emails. I wasn’t strategically sending out emails. I knew building the email list was important, but then what do I do with those emails? And so my story is certainly not an overnight success, but I will tell you that the moment that I dropped in a very good and effective evergreen funnel into my business, because I had the other three components already, I finally for the first time had the fourth piece to the puzzle, basically overnight, my business 10Xed. Basically, it went from $1,000 a month to $10,000 a month by adding in this component that was missing you.

Robert Leonard (00:56:02):
You and I got connected because I was, well, and still am, a big fan of your podcast. I’ve listened to nearly every single episode. And nearly every episode I listen to, I have been amazed at how much you knew about online courses and specifically how little I knew. You were talking about all these different software tools and marketing strategies and all this lingo that I had no idea what it meant. And I just thought it was so fascinating. It literally happened yesterday. I was at the gym. I was listening to you on your podcast, and I literally was just so fascinated with how much you knew and how little I knew. So for someone like me who wants to get to the level of knowledge that you have, where do we learn this stuff? How did you learn all of these marketing strategies and software tools that you use today? Is it just from trial and error from your piano course?

Jacques Hopkins (00:56:57):
Well, first of all, Robert, thanks for the kind words, man. I very much appreciate that. For me in my story, I learned from a lot of different people. I mentioned Tim Ferriss, I mentioned Pat Flynn, Russell Brunson, those are just a few people that I’ve learned from. There hasn’t been any one person in particular. I’ve tried to consume a lot of information over the years, I’ve tried to learn from people that are where I want to be. And so it’s just been a lot of different resources through the years, in addition to trial and error. Just to give you one example, shortly after I found success, I dropped in the evergreen funnel and things were starting to take off, I eventually realized that I didn’t have to go back to work, which by the way, that was another scary story, whenever my wife told me she was pregnant with our second kid and I was still making $1,000 a month, I felt like I might have to go back to work.

Jacques Hopkins (00:57:45):
But shortly after, I did make things work around probably 2017. I had a big question in my business that’s a little more of an advanced topic, but the funnel was working, everything was working. But then once somebody went through the funnel via email, I had their email address and they didn’t unsubscribe and they didn’t buy, what do I do with those people? They’re just hanging out on my email list. I didn’t know how to just strategically re-pitch the course to them, relaunch to them. And so, that’s one area where I just used my left brain nature and just devised a plan. So most of the things I’ve implemented in my business, I’ve learned from one person or another, but this process of what to do with people after they’ve gone through your funnel and haven’t unsubscribed or bought is a strategy that I’ve developed completely on my own, just based on what I felt like would work best.

Jacques Hopkins (00:58:38):
I now call that process Relaunch Magic, and other course creators have since implemented, but it’s a way to basically relaunch to one-quarter of your email list every four months, and therefore, every month you’re launching to a quarter of your list. And it’s a really great experience for the end-user, it’s a way to really level off your income and not have these huge spikes and then these huge droughts, it’s a really good process. But that’s something that came up just at some point in my business. I wasn’t asking those questions before I had a really good funnel because it would’ve been worthless to ask those questions. So it’s really a combination of learning from other people, plus trial and error.

Robert Leonard (00:59:15):
If you were starting over today as a brand new course creator, say somebody listening to the show wants to start their own course, what is the first thing that you’d focus on learning? And what is the resource that you would use to learn that?

Jacques Hopkins (00:59:28):
I’m a little bit biased because I do help people with online courses, but there’s a lot of online course gurus out there, and I can tell you from having so many successful people on my podcast, a lot of them attribute their success to various online business, online course gurus. So there’s a lot of great ones out there. There are some stinkers out there as well. So finding one person, one guru, one course to learn this from is not necessarily a bad thing, but as far as specific things that I would focus on first, instead of just saying, okay, the whole online course process, I think that really thinking about your customer and their experience and wanting the best from them is one of the best things you can learn or process through, even ahead of making money, making revenue, making profit.

Jacques Hopkins (01:00:16):
That’s a lens I wish I would have looked through far sooner than I did. There’s no question that I started this business for the money, for the passive income. I love the idea of waking up in the morning and having made $500 while I slept, amazing. But as time has gone on, I realized that I’m actually having a direct impact on other people’s lives, which is far greater than money. That feeling is unreal. I told a couple of success stories earlier. And so my focus now is more on the customer in general and the impact. That’s one of the things I hated about my job. I mentioned that for the most part, I liked it, but I just felt like I couldn’t see the impact of my work.

Jacques Hopkins (01:00:56):
If I didn’t show up to work, the world or anybody in it wouldn’t necessarily be any different. But now I’m able to teach people all over the world that in some cases wouldn’t have otherwise learned, “Robert, you should take the course, man. You haven’t learned how to play piano. You’ve always wanted to,” it works for a lot of people. So to give you a couple of examples, when the pandemic hit, my business did really well unlike a lot of businesses, but not only was I getting a lot of new customers, but all of my old students were reinvigorated by the piano because everybody was staying home looking for things to do that weren’t just watching Netflix. And so my first thought, and I’m not bragging here, this is just the evolution of my business. My first thought was, “Okay, how can I serve these people more?”

Jacques Hopkins (01:01:39):
Not like, “How can I get more money out of them? How can I serve them more?” And that’s when I implemented the Weekly Live Q&A that I mentioned. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And man, they just love it. They absolutely loved it, it’s really well attended. It just adds so much goodwill to my brand even though I don’t charge specifically for the Q&A’s or anything like that, it was just a value add I was able to provide, and it’s been so great. I enjoy it, they enjoy it, that, I haven’t stopped. And I do have plans to maybe outsource that to another piano teacher eventually, or maybe I do it one week, she does it another week, something like that. But that’s just an example of thinking about the customer first.

Jacques Hopkins (01:02:19):
Another example would be, I mentioned or you mentioned, releasing the new version of the course 6.0 I tell people when they sign up, you get lifetime access. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re and to get access to all the updates, it just means your course access is not going to go away. But everybody that bought my course since 2013, everybody got out access to the new version of the course. I had no additional charge. And I just think that’s the right thing to do. And I think even if your focus is the money, the profit, which mine is as well, there’s no question about that, if you have a first mindset, then the money will follow.

Jacques Hopkins (01:02:52):
So by letting these people in for free to the new version and because it’s good, then now they’re just like praising it, loving it, talking about it on social media. I did a webinar trying to sell it, and I invited my old students to the webinars, just like, “Hey, you don’t have to attend this, but here’s what I’m doing. If you want to show up and just share what it’s like inside the new course, feel free.” And a ton of them showed up because they just really like me, they like the brand in general, and they’re willing to do that for me. And that was a huge help in making a lot of sales. So that wasn’t my end game, but I think things like that can happen if you have a customer-first mindset.

Robert Leonard (01:03:33):
I’ve had the same experience with the podcast, and I’ve talked about it a little bit here on the show is, I didn’t create the podcasts necessarily to make money, but just all business ventures, my focus had always just been money. And then I started the podcast and maybe a year in, people started to say, “Hey, I’m buying rental properties because of what you’re teaching me.” Or, “I got my personal finances in order,” or whatever the situation is, people are making these comments about how we’re changing their lives with this podcast, and I just didn’t really realize the value that that was going to provide to me personally. Selfishly, I always only cared about the dollars, I didn’t realize how great that other piece of it was.

Jacques Hopkins (01:04:11):
Yeah. And now, it allows you to build so much trust too, and now you could send one email and just say, “Hey, I’m thinking about making an online course, what’s a topic that you would like to learn more from me on that I could go a deeper dive to?” And you’re going to get replies and you figure out which one’s the most replied topic, make a course. And now you know the exact people that are going to buy that course, and that’s because you set things up the right way from a customer-focused perspective at the beginning.

Robert Leonard (01:04:42):
Jacques just unintentionally set me up perfectly for what I wanted to talk about next. This is actually for everybody listening, not for Jacques, this is for everybody in the audience. And I have you guys a question, Jacques mentioned you could send an email, and I probably will do that at some point, but I want to ask you guys while you’re listening to the show, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I am going to create a course, but I’m stuck on what the topic should be. So there’s going to be about 250,000 people that hear this, so I’d love to hear from all of you who listen to this podcast each month to let me know which one you’d like me to create.

Robert Leonard (01:05:18):
And the courses I’m considering are one, on Bitcoin. And it’s funny, Jacques, you actually inspired this Bitcoin course, and you’re probably wondering how the heck did you inspire a Bitcoin course? But the reason for it is because I know when you started piano, you weren’t like an expert on piano by any means, you were still learning yourself. So that’s where my twist on this Bitcoin potential course came from is that I’m not an expert on Bitcoin and I can teach the course as I’m learning as well, similar to what you did with the piano. So that’s what inspired me for that one. I recently helped a friend who’s a police officer, he has no idea about money, and he’s trying to get an understanding of his money.

Robert Leonard (01:05:54):
And just I’m realizing how many people really need the help with the basics of personal finance and investing in the stock market. So that’s another one, house hacking, long-distance real estate investing, and how to analyze real estate deals. So to summarize the course ideas are, a beginner’s Bitcoin course, getting started in the stock market for beginners, how’s hacking long-distance real estate investing, or how to analyze real estate deals. I’d really appreciate it if you guys listening to the show, shoot me a DM on Instagram or Twitter, or even send me an email and let me know which course you’d like me to create. And Jacques, so that leads me to my next question for you.

Jacques Hopkins (01:06:32):
Robert, I would love to stop for one second, man, and just add to that. I love that call to action, obviously asking your audience is a really good thing, but I would love to challenge both you and the audience a little bit further than what you just did, and I would suggest not limiting to just those categories. Those are the ones that you’re seeing that you could do, and at the end of the day, it’s probably going to be one of those, but it’s easy to have blinders on in terms of what you’re good at or what you’re offering value around. So if people really want to learn like how to podcast from you, or they want a health course from you, let them tell you that.

Jacques Hopkins (01:07:10):
It might not be the highest odds there, but you just never know. So I would encourage people to yeah, look at the list that Robert gave you, but don’t limit yourself to that. Is that fair?

Robert Leonard (01:07:21):
That’s a very, very, very, very good point. And guys, you’re hearing me learning in real-time, so like Jacques said, if you have another option that you’re thinking about, please let me know that too because there is definitely a possibility that I don’t know.

Jacques Hopkins (01:07:34):
And an extension of that, I would also suggest people let you know if they would look at you or look at the brand in a more negative light if you were to make a course. I think you should ask for that feedback just in general, “Hey, what would you think about me releasing a course? Would it make you look at this in any negative light?” Because we talked about that much earlier on in this conversation that that is something that people go through. They don’t want to mess up a good thing. You’ve got this business model, you’ve got this rapport with your listeners, you don’t want to mess that up.

Jacques Hopkins (01:08:04):
In my opinion, just releasing a course can only add positivity, but if you’re worried, if that is something that you are worried about, then let them tell you that. And if you get an overwhelming response, “Yeah. Robert, look, you’re the podcaster, if you released a course, not only am I not going to buy the course, I’m going to stop listening to your podcast.” If that’s true, let them tell you that. I don’t think that’s going to be true. Let’s see.

Robert Leonard (01:08:27):
Yeah. You know I’m in the same situation that Pat Flynn was years ago, so I think that’s another great piece of feedback…everybody listening let me know which course it is you want me to create if you want me to create one. And if not, tell me like Jacques just said, is that going to change how you feel about this podcast, or to me, or The Investor’s Podcast at all? I’d be curious to hear that feedback from all you guys. And we have a big sample size here so I could get a lot of good responses, so I’d love to hear it. Now, this leads to one of my other questions for you, and it’s one of the things I struggle with most as an entrepreneur, and I know a lot of other side hustlers and entrepreneurs struggle with this too. And that is focus.

Robert Leonard (01:09:03):
I fall victim to the shiny object syndrome, where there is always, always, always something new that I want to work on. For me, I’ve been wanting to create an online course for a while and I can’t help but want to create multiple courses at once. And I want to create a few different real estate courses like I just mentioned, I want to create the other ones that I talked about. To put it simply, how do we focus?

Jacques Hopkins (01:09:28):
It’s not easy, man. You know this, it’s not easy. I’m a big fan of trying to focus on one thing. It’s so difficult. That is one question I get from beginners, it’s like, “Jacques, I’ve actually got five ideas for an online course, should I pick one or should I try to pursue all five?” And the answer is 100% pick one, but it’s just our nature to want to pursue everything we think is a good idea at the same time. And I’ve learned this the hard way so many times. Back when I was trying to make Piano In 21 Days work, I had learned a lot of new skills. I learned how to make websites, starting to learn a bit about marketing. So when people would come to me, even though I’m trying to grow my piano lesson business, people would say, “Hey, I’ll give you X amount of dollars to make this website for me or X amount of dollars to do this marketing for me.”

Jacques Hopkins (01:10:13):
I would say yes because I liked the price tag, the dollars I would get, but it took away from Piano In 21 Days. And I didn’t really realize that at the time. And then in 2017, I decided to start this other brand, The Online Course Show, started a podcast. Well, that took away from Piano In 21 Days, and I wasn’t completely focused on either one. And so I realized a few months ago, I got this idea for the 6.0 version of my piano course not only that, but it was this whole brand new platform with all kinds of cool features in it. I got the idea for it back in October, and I looked up, it was like March or April and I still hadn’t even launched it yet. And that’s because I was spending half of my time on my other brand, The Online Course Show.

Jacques Hopkins (01:10:57):
So, I think focusing on one thing is extremely important, even if that means seasonality. And that’s something that I’m a big believer in. And so that brand really took a backseat. We switched to going to every two weeks on the podcast, any additional coaching, consulting programs I had over there, completely stopped, and put all of my focus, like 99% of my focus on piano and this new launch. And it’s still there. We’ve since launched it, it’s going really well, but there are still new features I’m trying to roll out, there are still things I’m trying to do. And being completely focused on piano has done really well for it.

Jacques Hopkins (01:11:32):
So there’s no one-trick or piece of advice there, it’s just being aware that it is a major problem, and the more focused you can have on one thing, the better. I’m sure you and the people listening are familiar with The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. I’m a huge believer in that philosophy. But going back to the seasonality, I plan to get over the next few months, get PianoIn21Days back into a really good, steady state, start outsourcing those Q&As, finish all these features I want to have in the new platform, and get it to a really good point, and then I can spend 99% of my time on something else.

Jacques Hopkins (01:12:07):
And then maybe in a year or two, I’ll have to switch back to piano, or there’s going to be some other thing. So that’s what I mean by seasonality.

Robert Leonard (01:12:14):
Other than focus, which habits or principles have you incorporated into your life that you think have helped lead to your success? It could be in business, it could be just in life in general, that not enough people do, but they should?

Jacques Hopkins (01:12:27):
One would be not letting haters get to you. When you get to a certain point, no matter what you’re doing, I’m sure like Mother Teresa, the kindest people on earth, had her fair share of haters. If you’re doing anything meaningful, you’re going to get trolls and haters. And at first, I really let them get me down and led me to question what I was even doing. But that just comes with the territory if you’re doing things right to any significant level, and you’ve got to find a way to either ignore them or just not let them get to you. It’s incredibly important. I know like Joe Rogan, I guess he’s widely considered to have the top podcast, he’ll post on Instagram, but he doesn’t look at the replies.

Jacques Hopkins (01:13:11):
He doesn’t look at the replies on Twitter, he doesn’t even let it get to him. He completely ignores it. For me, my assistant, Emily is a filter between comments and me. And so sometimes she’ll share with me like really negative ones, just from almost an entertainment perspective. You wouldn’t believe how hostile people can get about piano lessons sometimes, the vulgarity, the curse words, sometimes she’ll screenshot and give me, “Look at this one,” just for a laugh and to keep me leveled as well. So that’s really important. And then the other thing I think is worth mentioning is just consistency.

Jacques Hopkins (01:13:43):
I think that even if you have good intentions, let’s say you have no business, you have no audience, you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to follow Jacques and Robert’s advice, I’m going to start a podcast. I think that’s good for my niche.” And you go and you release like four episodes and they get like three downloads total, and you’re just okay, and you move on to the next thing, I think consistency, even when you’re not getting results is really, really important. With my YouTube channel, consistently releasing videos is very important. My podcast and sustainably releasing is important.

Jacques Hopkins (01:14:17):
I had one guy on my podcast, David Wallimann who has a guitar course who he made a decision like 12 years ago that he was going to release actually three-guitar videos on YouTube every week. He didn’t really know where it was going to go yet, but he made a decision he was going to do that. And three months went by, not much traction, six months, okay, starting to get some traction. After a year, he had up a really nice audience. And then a couple of years, he released a course. And fast forward to today, 10 or 12 years later, he has released three videos on YouTube every week and has an incredibly successful online course business because of it, multiple five figures because of it.

Jacques Hopkins (01:14:57):
And now, that’s just his job. Imagine if that was your job, all I have to do is release three videos a week and I get lots of money in return for that, not because of the advertising revenue, but because of the business that I set up. But he would’ve never been able to do that without staying consistent. And I think that’s true for not just online courses and online business, but with your health and relationships and everything else, is just consistency.

Robert Leonard (01:15:21):
Jacques, I can’t thank you enough for all the help you’ve provided me personally over the last few months, and also for joining me on the show. You mentioned before that one of the first things you do is find somebody to learn from, I think for everybody listening today, I think it’s obvious as to why I chose you to be somebody that I listen to and learn from. For anybody that’s listening that wants to check out what you’re doing, learn from you as well, where’s the best place for them to find you?

Jacques Hopkins (01:15:48):
I appreciate that, Robert. And I very much appreciate the invitation here. Obviously, pianoin21days.com. There’s a lot of business people that also want to learn piano, and I find a lot of times when I go on a business-related podcast, I end up getting a lot of traffic to the piano side because it’s the type of person that’s like, they’re busy, they don’t have a ton of time, but they have goals too, and so it appeals to that type of person. So I still have a free workbook there that you can download just in exchange for an email address. I’ll be honest with you, you probably going to enter some sort of funnel when you do that, but you can try that out for free for sure.

Jacques Hopkins (01:16:21):
And then my other business, like I said, I really have shut down all of my programs and coaching and everything for right now. It’ll probably come back in the future, but there is still the podcast. So for the business side, I would just point people to look up the Online Course Show wherever you’re listening to this podcast.

Robert Leonard (01:16:38):
Yeah. You never know what people are interested in. I didn’t talk about DART’s Bikes for a while on the show because that’s one of my biggest passions outside of investing. And then I started to talk about it, and so many people from the audience came out and they were like, “Oh my God, I ride their bikes too,” or, “I did when I was a kid.” You never know what people are interested in, and you probably wouldn’t have guessed that I want to learn to play the piano someday. So if anybody is interested in the piano, check out Jacques’s course, if you’re interested in online courses, check out everything that Jacques has going on there.

Robert Leonard (01:17:05):
I really highly recommend his podcast, I listen to it. I’m not kidding, I’ve listened to every single episode. I listen to every new one that comes out, so I really highly recommend you guys go check it out. Jacques, thanks so much for joining me.

Jacques Hopkins (01:17:17):
Thanks, Robert. Really appreciate it.

Robert Leonard (01:17:18):
All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Millennial Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro  (01:17:24):
Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. The show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.