#200 – Every Indie Hacker Has an Online Course in Them with Andrew Barry, Marie Poulin, and Ali Abdaal
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What's up, everybody? This is courtland from india hakka com. And you're listening to the indie hackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process.

And on this show, I sit down with these ni hackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities and strategies they're taking advantage of so the rest of us can do the same. All right? We heard today with some of the best online course creators.

And I know so many the hackers who were getting started and who were successful are successful because they're ding ways to teach other people online. And I think the most straightforward teach people online is through online courses. So we've got Andrew barry, who runs the on deck course.

Greater flowers on decks has blown up. Everybody y's talking about and the people who we're talking about that seem to be part of IT already. We've also got marie polin, who runs an online course called notion mastery maris bad as I don't know this is a public mine. If if it's not, will bleep IT out. I don't even know this is accurate, but I heard of course, sold like five or six hundred grand and revenue last year.

something insane the last year.

Yeah it's crazy because it's it's like i've been seen you teach everybody notion and I just didn't realize like I want to guess like a faith of that. So i'm super impressed. I think it's amazing, super inspiring.

And in last but at least we have got all up doll brilliant youtube r with over a million and a half describers. You've also got a course called the part time youtube or academy and you're also a full time medical student, I believe. Welcome to the show, ali.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thanks for having me. So maybe we'll start there because that's a crazy amount of productivity. I don't think most people can do even one of those things little alone, all three of them. How are you so productive, moley, how are you doing so much more than everyone else can?

I mean it's it's what saying that I am no longer a full time medical student. I've now become a doctor. So I was was working as a dog two years while while doing all this stuff.

And i've GTA taken a break at the moment, intending to travel the world and do like medical stuff in australia. But then pendant happened. And so right now i'm, in a bit of a way, a place where i'm sort of a productive ity gurl on the internet, but I don't really have a job other than doing internet stuff.

So I always fears a bit. We had. But whenever ver people asked me about about the productivity thing, my main spill this is that a lot of IT is around just enjoying the things that you're doing.

And part of that is finding things to work on that you find fun, like i'm sure you find IT fun and working on hackers. But also part of IT is sort of choosing to find fund in the things that you end up doing anyway. And so a lot of students studying for exam things like that, you don't really have a choice in the matter. But there are a lot of things that we can do to make the process more enjoyable for ourselves. And so it's like that thing that naval ravi a says that, you know, if you find something that feels like play to you and looks like work to others, then the productivity kind of takes care of itself.

I love that. I've been doing that a lot with andy hackers recently. For example, for this podcast, I hired like a pocket box and she's an editor or producer. He does the notes h show sit down with me for two hours a week and have a call where I pret refuses and it's more fun to do with somebody who's like, you know ripping back and forth with me than doing on on my own. And so IT turns as staying we're like was pretty fun, but now it's super fun and all the hard parts of just outsource and it's like a thousand times is Better and easier to work on.

Yeah, I was going to say like I believe you've also got an exceptional strong team that you built around you, which when I was working with you and your program was is quite A A joy to witness that. I know that something so near the to as well, I don't think any could do any of this without a really strong team around me.

And it's like, this is just mary your face and is he talking what's going on behind the scenes?

Yeah like that used to be my husband, I and then he took on a full time job. But what a year and a half ago, so I can went, you know two back to one, but I couldn't do everything myself. So I had assistant for the last year and a half, and I only just tired her full time last month.

So now it's two of us and also bring on various contractors and assistant coach too. So I actually stopped doing one of one work and now I have an assistant coach, the handles all of the the one of one. That's what amazing like it's just such a shift in a my own focus.

Like now I can really focus the stuff. I want to focus on content creation. I don't have to do all the logistics behind the scene. So it's it's a game changer when you hire first person.

So walk me through what IT is that you do exactly because I use notion religiously like my prep for this podcast is all the notion. I've tried to explain notion. Other people, they have no idea what that is. What's notion? How these records work exactly?

yeah. I mean, I use IT to manage nearly every aspect of my life and business, everything from like tracking the health of my plans, to even track the offer that I made to my assistance to become a fully time member. Like every piece of my business is managed through notion.

So people call IT a productivity platform, and IT is a lot slower than a lot of other platforms. That is a big complaint that people have. But I think if IT is a place where everything is integrated, I can see everything in one place.

And that piece of mind of just knowing we're all like moving parts and it's one or two clicks away, whether it's data, whether it's creativity, note taking you name IT, IT all just kind of lives in this one place. And IT just brings so much peace to my brain. So I got so stoked about this.

I was not sharing with all my friends and colleagues and everything. And at some point I was like, kay, there's there's something here I think when the first person said, if you make a course about this, I will give you money and I was like, okay, like there's there's something here i'm talking about IT enough. You know, people are asking questions and stuff.

And so I decided to do a webinar on IT took me like three years to get the current to run a webinar. I was so scared and I was just so excited, you know, chatting about all the things i've done with notion. And I just kind of honest, that's everything kind of exploded from there.

The notion team reached out. They were really curious to shout, would be more about collaborating. And so business just kind of took things in a totally different direction.

I was like, could I get paid to teach people about this? Is this a thing I could make a living on? And IT was IT was a risk.

I was like, okay, do I want to be known as the notion? Girl, I don't try IT. Let's try IT for a season. Let's like, see what happens.

I have so many other skills like i've been working with online course creators for so long I was like, let's try IT and shipped to course and then business took A A left turn like, well, okay, by answers my question. So let's like, make a while. The sun is shining and see what happens. So the rest is kind of history.

It's faster ating to see what kinds of topics and sort of focus you can have to actually make money from the course because he is, see that you predicted in the beginning. And I think that's where almost every course creator has to start.

You, if you want this to be something that you make a living from, you know, is this even the right topic? Ally, you have basically sort of transition to teaching people not just how to be productive, but how to be youtube. S, how much money do you charge for your course? How did you choose the topic?

yeah. So at the moment was is a sort of six week life online course. And so it's fifteen hundred for the basic edition, twenty five hundred dollars for the premium and five thousand for the of that's a lot of money. He was like, really, really, really scary charging that amount. I'd done courses in the past where mostly my courses were on skill share, which is like free, basically for people to access with a free trial or like a nefer X X scription. And I saw a few courses helping people get into meet school for the sort of hundred dollar Price tag, but doing a sort of high ticket live online course that was like, yeah, hadn't hand ready done that before when I thought of online causes.

And the model had in my head was the, hey, you pay a few hundred dollars for a course, and you watch a series of videos, but was speaking to two friends, a tioga forty and David prawl, who run their own live courses, which i'd taken, and I was running them through my idea of having a course for youtube, and they said that, look, you should really consider doing IT as a life thing, because course completion rates for self pace courses are like a visually low and like basically no one completes them. You and I have probably signed up to dozens online courses and just sort of watch maybe one of two videos in them. Just the model of doing that life seemed interesting.

And though I tried to out sort of late twenty, twenty, and I was just so much fun and infinitely easier actually, to teach her calls on the zoom, then IT is to record a load of prerecorded videos. So yeah, we started off a lot cheaper than that, but sort of hiked up the Prices over time as the demand increased. And it's been really found something .

about their process because you said our earlier records were like a hundred dollars. Now you're highest years five thousand dollars. You have gone fifty x higher. You have the emotional way with how to do that because I know people who are afraid to charge ten dollars among for their product that they spent the last year .

building the thing that kind of sorted for me was speaking to this marketing coach called bill Billy Brown, who basically said that luck, you need to stop thinking of selling as being something evil. And you need to think of selling as being you. You're doing a service to your customers. You're doing them a favor by letting them buy from you.

And as long as you are delivering on the value that they were promised, they will be glad that you offered that service in a weird way, just changing their mindset to I am trying to make money off people and more towards I am trying to create a transformation for people, and they will be happy to pay for IT. That, that made me more. Okay, we've charging for IT, but still, you know the first time around, we put the cut up and started off its four hundred dollars as like our cheapest plan.

And I was I was terrified. I was like sweaty through all of my clothing just before the car went life. And I was just so surprised that people actually bought and then every other calls create or spoken to who says that, like if you just dle your Prices, you actually end up with the same number of people.

In a weird way, the more someone pays for something, the more invested they are in actually making IT work for them. And so weirdly, if I were to charge one hundred dollars for my youtube course, so many more people would ask for refunds. Then if we charge five thousand dollars for IT, and so many fewer people would actually go through the course and find a useful than the higher Price.

G, I talk to you joro corner on the podcast, and he is a very interesting story about how he was like working so hard to become an edy hacker and learning everything you could. And he, like, used his credit card to pay like two thousand dollars for a course to learn seo. You're just end debt.

And it's like what he actually finish that course and took IT took IT really seriously because like he spent a lot of money on IT. And I know that I spent hundreds of dollars in lots of things are really super cheap and just never finished IT. So android, think you're making the right decision to charge three thousand dollars of the on deck, of course, created his valuable.

And the math there is pretty cool too, if you have one hundred and eleven people paying three thousand dollars as three hundred and three three thousand dollars going from barely over one hundred people, compared to people who are charging like five dollars a month, you know they need thousands of customers just to be able to pay their salary. And so this is what I like about education. Businesses you can charge lot of money is super valuable. People that want to pay you are actually help. So they are grateful they don't feel ripped off and you don't have to like be some sort of marketing genius who reaches millions of people like olives do youtube in order to actually cover your cost.

It's a lot easier to sell one thing for one hundred dollars than one hundred things of one dollar, like the a sym met try in the ease of selling is just like completely insane. And also, the sort of people that pay thousands for an online course are also a lot less likely to need handholding the sorts of people that pay ten dollars from online course.

So this is one of the cool things about on deck I want to describe. On deck is almost like and online college, that is all these different. You call them fellowships to kind like podcasting and Angel investing and corporation. And one of the cool things about IT is like it's cohort based. So it's like going to college, like you don't just take the course by yourself and do IT alone in your your room.

There's a bunch of other cool, smart, successful people who take the course an exact same tourism one period that you take IT and then half the value isn't even like the curricular MIT, just like getting to be in the same program with mary or ali or whoever else. Is that a good description description of on deck, Andrew? Or how does that work?

No, that's that's spot on content and it's unit started as as a community, you know that's it's core and it's probably one of the best out there and sense of offering community the the value of that ecosystem is just it's exponentially growing now with the people and and the sort of quality people that are in added what we are now working on and what i'm specifically focused on with helping some of the other program factors is on learning the educational component.

So thinking about more of A A T curriculum that looks at the learning journey, that's actually the hot dest part is the community. I think many would agree, right? And so that the fact that already nail bags is is great, that we can layer in this educational piece that kind of take them into that online university or or stanford of the internet as as it's been called.

I want to get all of you guys opinions, the most important parts of education, because you all educate ice's and time educating indirectly through interviewing people like you. And I think probably everybody has strong opinions about education. Like I remember being in high school and just being so pissed off at the curriculum that we were learning.

Like I do memorize, like what day to this hospital burn down and like, what month and eight hundred and seventy three? Like, why does this matter? Why am I learning this? I could be learning a million Better things.

Like, you not teach me personal finance. You not teaching my psychology. Teach about sexy or relationships or anything. And so for me, like the richlun is super big. What you guys think about online education, what you think important for teaching people effectively.

one of the things I often think about is the information that you're delivering needs to be useful in some way, like immediately, like this student needs to be able to see how they can they can apply IT. And often this is just the one key difference between the good medical lectures that i've attended. End deliver under the bad ones, where the good ones will start off with a scenario.

They'll say, all right, five years from now you're going to graduate, you're going to be doctor. Let's imagine you're in the emergency department and you a patient comes in and they've got shortness of breath and t and chest pain. They've this and that and then you do an electrode o programme.

This is what IT shows, like, how would you approach this? And at the start, no one has any idea, because they haven't learned to learn subject to, but imagining themselves in the shoes for BIOS from now, thinking of crap, I need to know the answer to this just makes them pay attention and absorbed in a way where, if you just had electron, here's how the hot works, or here's how ek work. No one would pay attention, because this is not immediately obvious why that might be useful. And like the weird thing I found was that once I graduated medical school, I now more about the knowledge that was getting, in a way, wishing I paid more attention in mechanical, because I could now see IT being immediately relevant. And I just wish more people did that, just making IT obvious what the point of something is.

D probably agree with this, but framing your modules in terms of outcomes instead of topics like I think a lot of first time teachers may be approached in terms of I wanted teach x versus what is the student want to be able to do or who do they want to be by the end of this module. And you can think about that at the course level. I do.

I want to be by the time I finish this course, and who do I want to be by the time I finish this module? Like you can kind of look at that as a micro or or micro o thing. So think of IT in terms of action.

What should people be able to to do by the end of this and not just like you're going to learn. So it's like, well, what am I actually learning? Like what do I want to be able to do by the end of this?

I think about that was na aos pockets epsom too, where I like to start off episodes talking about like, okay, where are you at? You know, you're making like a crazy amount of money with records. Like I like you're completely independent.

You is this a huge youtube channel and like also you've got like all these passive income 在 这。 I think once you hear, okay, this is what this person is like, I would like to be there. Then suddenly everything they say takes on like a lot more importance. You actually care about their advice version if you just jump straight and you have no clue how much money this person's making, what their life is like than why. Listen, do you share your revenue numbers, ali, for your courses and stuff?

It's about one dollar per year per subscribe. But like last, like twenty twenty for us, we made about three hundred thousand dollars from the first cohorts of the europe academy and about five hundred thousand dollars that year from skill share, which was weird. I never thought that would be the case and maybe two hundred k from brand deals on youtube, but about hundred and fifty k from accents. So all I was about one point three minute.

It's a time is very d risk because you've got multiple income streams. It's not just one thing. It's it's four five different things. Know youtube cuts out your ideal or whatever, then you're probably still find my bigger .

feel like at the start of twenty twenty was and I go to wit, this business is too reliant on youtube. Let's stop making causes and skill share like, oh, okay, now would you skill share? This makes a half of revenue. Okay, let's think about how we diver surly away from skill share. You know, let's try do our own course, which is how the youtube adem first came to be as a self posted kind of live course.

I want to use cases I can talk about the the dark side of course creation ah there's always posted about this on andy hackers because people get out tired of seeing how many people are selling their course and IT. I think from the outside looking in, sometimes you can look like it's just a bunch of people. Here's how to get big on twitter, and that's how you get big on twitter by selling your course to get pig on twitter.

IT seems a very circular. Are all your opinions on, I guess, teach your qualifications. You know, if you go through the sort of traditional educational system and you go to a college like, you know, you're getting educated by people who are you you know somewhat qualified to be there if you're buying online course is is really easy to end up on clubhouse in some scammer room where they told you how to make a million dollars next week and sudenly you paid no your entire life savings for some scammy course.

And sort of a buyer beware or like you gonna have to do your research on who is the person that you that you're taking this course from. And there's a difference between how to make ten thousand dollars doing x versus I made ten thousand dollars doing x like just because you did a thing once doesn't mean that's a framework ker system.

And so I think is there like a pattern of success, right? Is there like more than one thing to look to? What is the teachers history? What is our experience? I know i'm not one for like official credentials.

I don't really care necessarily like did someone go to university and get a degree and do whatever, but I want to know like what is the output of of what they've done? And do I trust that person and so that trust with a teacher I think happens long before the the courses purchase, right? It's like you're following them on twitter.

You're hearing what they say. There's resonance that happens long before. And so I think resonance is a big, a big thing.

Like you can have ten different teachers teaching ten different topics, but like the way someone delivers IT just really resonate with you and you're like, guess, okay, I like the way that person delivers that. I want that. So I think the .

interesting thing here is that, like, I mean, a lot of colleges are also quite scheme, like you paying a lot of money, you're going into death for thousands. And like what's the return on that is the electorally good. I went to a prety good medical school like cambridge university is pretty solid. I would say ninety five percent of my lectures were boring and uninteresting, and most of the people I knew, including me, we learn to ourselves from youtube videos. So I think education as a whole suffers from the problem of, you might not know how good IT is, at least with online courses broadly, you actually cancer testimonials. And if you youtube if you search youtube for review of notion moisty or review of the pot to music academy, you will see people creating their own suppose the unbiased reviews about IT, which you don't really see you a review of cambridge university medical school twenty twenty isn't not really a thing.

Yeah, I went to MIT tuition as fifty five thousand dollars a year, times four years. I can insane a mount. And it's like I barely went to class like I don't remember what I learned my class as I was mostly teaching myself to code like by going online to the same websites everybody else was and like there's advantages. Like it's a school, school people respect to you more if you have done in your resume blob blaw. And like I merely amazing people, but like I didn't really even have to have a curriculum was mostly just like a socially acceptable stamp to pay lot of money to get.

Yeah credential ism. The the scammy market is online courses actually was so helpful in helping me to find what we were to do with on the course create because IT became this perfect counterpoint, and they are so easy as smart, which is great, and make IT so easy, like you go in the club boaster rooms. And so a million emerges like rhinos and the bionic arms and all lets of stuff.

And it's like, you know, okay, cool. I know exactly what that is about and for me the big difference is also which great is is easy to from a students and perspectives, as you can tell, you can tell of the courses transforming people's lives. It's like ali are saying, like people are just creating like long videos.

If you know how much time and effort goes into making a video and they are doing that just to review his course, that means that changed their life. That's the difference, I think, when when you get into the real transformational courses. And the other thing is everyone, everyone here is super passionate about teaching and that that drives the transformation. But is also like it's an energy like murry says, that you can you can see and resonate with long before you even take the course.

Another topic here in the dark side of education is, is, are people even finishing these courses if you pay a lot of money for a course that you're probably more likely to finish IT. But as any sort of guarantee that wants you take a course that actually helped you, you know, is there any place to leave a review and say this course such for future students? IT seems like there's really no real accountability here.

And there's like some models that are different. For example, lambs school has these income share agreements where they essentially don't charge you tuition and let you go get a job, which is probably like the most accountable you can be for record changing somebodys lives. How do you all think about this with your courses? How do you know that people are getting the value that they pay for?

This is a real there isn't really a kind of trust pilot for online courses. And so a lot of IT is reliant on the course creator kind of making information public. And obviously, if we have some students and we do have some students who we know when we asked them how transformational was the course for you, they'll say it's one out of ten, but we're not going to publish not not going to publish that.

We not going to put their bad review on the website because we control the website. The thing we do is that we've got to a meeting about this like two days from now where my team and i'll get together. We look through every single one of our entry and exit survey responses. We say, kind of thank you to the people who raided the ten of ten, which is like seventy percent people. And we spend a lot of time going through the people who raided IT, less than eight of ten, thinking, okay, what we have done differently, how can we improve this next time?

How can we make sure and with us and with a lot of a lot of these other life courses, there is a kind of money back guarantee where what we say for us is that if you complete the work I E, you do the opening survey, you just put out the six videos a week that know the the six videos over six weeks that we're asking me to do. All we asked just make one video a week. That is the only thing you have to do and you still don't find the course valuable.

Email us and we will give you all of your money back. And I think we've not had a le person who's actually done everything and asked for their money back. We ve had people who've said halfway through that our real life got in the way, you know, I got covered.

I couldn't do the course like, okay, that's fine. Happy money back your money in this case. But IT does rely on the individual course creators being honest about this. There isn't a trust pilot for courses .

I throw the potentially is when eric jorgen sum actually working on something called course correctly dot com. And it's that's kind of exactly what he's trying to do. So that's that's pretty ool, I think. And it's gonna be so available for this whole space.

Yeah, I think Alice said going through that student feedback, asking the right questions also in your intake, right? Like what would you consider success going through this course? That's really interesting.

There's really fun data to look at there, like when people are describing their own intentions for when they finish the course and then an exit survey to see, okay, well, how did that match up? You know, where would we drop the ball or what can we do Better? I think most people don't realize course design is sort of like an iterative, like it's never really done, right? It's like you go through a cohort.

You're like, okay, here's all the places where we notice gaps. You're always kind of going back and tweaking and try to improve IT. If you're a great structure. I think a lot of people who can set IT and forget IT, but I also want to play a little bit of devils advocate to and that I don't think necessarily course completion is the best measure, of course, success like and i'll say this is someone who I take a ton of courses like i've always taken courses online, like that's where all my money business.

I'm just like always like what's like a shortcut, right? Like we're can I learn from all these amazing people who been there before and often? And i'll get what I need in the first couple of models that my awesome got my value out of the course.

I am good to go and i'm happy. I'm like, really happy. Even just that one nuggets that just made IT worth IT was like, that was awesome.

And so you might never see like those instructions or might not ever see anything for me and might not know that like that, that piece of content or that delivery, that workshop changed something in my business. So I went off and I was super happy. So there aren't always mechanisms for that feedback to get surfaced.

So I don't think completion necessarily is always the best measure. It's those outcomes. Like how do we know that students are actually applying that knowledge out in the real world? And that's a little bit harder to measure. There's ways you can you can do that with the exit surveys and stuff like that and reporting back doing those focus groups and stuff.

And a way that's what the antihero's podcast is. Let me find any hackers who are crushing IT, bringing on and publicized stories as widely as possible and funny, because often people are like, I don't want to hear the success stories. I want to hear the failure stories give the ninety greedy and a lot of people who tried to to start these sites that are just failure stories and like you can and name any of them.

No one actually wants to read a bunch of failure stories. It's not inspired and you know actually learn as much as you would think. And so I think the success stories are much Better sort of strategy to share or is interesting .

to learn that chAllenges and failures from the people who've hit a certain level of success, you're like, where did you go wrong? Like, I want to know that, but I want to know from someone who's made .

IT right .

yeah where have you ve gone wrong?

Very where where have you gone wrong? Um I mean, there are so many places like when I first launched the course, for example, if there was no content finish, that was a total total pilot, total data. I'm actually huge for end of always, even if gonna do.

And every Green course always launch IT in a beta pilot first. Always always like you need that student feedback, of course, is never gona look like what you think that looks in your head. Soon, as you put IT down into the wild, IT takes on a whole different shape.

So I think that's really, really important. But I think one of the things that was so hard and having launched the course inside of notion, right, you can move day a around you, you can move stuff. And I was very clear that he was a beta. But I think some folks that would have benefit more from like a very structured linear process came in. And it's like we like content changing, amounting new modules. Like there were people who were like excited to be part of a building and there were other people that were like, well, this is overwhelming like, you know, IT IT was too much and so it's just part of the learning process and my gap, okay, like not everybody was maybe the fit for for a total pilot like that. Uh, but you just you learn and you just keep keep adapting and iterating I got .

a terror who has a cool course teaching people to build apps without code. And like her first thing, I think he gave a talk and a few people, the audience were like, hate. Can you teach us to do that? And she's like a four thousand dollars.

And like, sure. And just like a super and prompt you fly by the seat of her pants, just figured that out. And then like after that, like anything goes like fifty, one hundred people like, oh, we want to learn that and of course, now a little bit Better, but still like super beta.

Like that's a cooking about teaching. You can just like I can I get create of course, tomorrow I get just jump in and say, hey, he wants to support of my course. Probably a few hundred people would sign up and fly by the city of my pants and like, no one's going to die.

People might ask for refunds, are happily give refunds. And then I also want put their negative testimonials on the website. But it's super easy to just get to get started that way.

So I I have the story that everyone has an online course in them. If you are helping people in a repeatedly way and you doing in them that a few times already and that could be like coaching, I think IT could be a service business that could be so many different ways. Um then the only thing separating you from teaching or scaling your impact that is learning how to teach on the internet and and that's a skill like you can totally learn how to do that and get Better at and Better at, like everyone said, is an what do you think .

is the most important thing to teach course creators angry because that you're running the course creators fellowship. It's very meta. You like got a course basically teaching all these course creators how to make course this and like your students to ask, you know members are like pretty great, like marian ali, like you guys could be teaching and yet you're part of the valuable learning, Andrew, what you teach all these amazing corporators yeah.

I mean, first inform us, I recognize that there is no I like i'm not the gu who's going to teach you how to create the perfect course. I'm going give as much a sense of guidance and and frameworks and ideas for thinking about your course. I still gonna earlier today, today whose causes this a bunch of sort of guides on the website.

You you they like super multimedia, like audio versions and and videos and so and and he was like this, of course and like absolutely cause like that tally and that's there's such a massive spectrum of what can of course can be in people. So first of all, people, it's about breaking that. Like IT doesn't have to be a court base course.

IT doesn't have to be a bunch videos on teaching. There's just a million of different ways of content delivery. And so I think what's more important before you even get into content delivery, what platform are you going to use, all that other stuff is nAiling three peas, which is how do you connect with the personal meaning of every student coming in. So it's not about using this is what you need, but it's about using, I know you want and you want and you want and this is how and to connect you with what I think you need um and then p to P A learning when you talked about like the power of the community and then the prompt action like doing like I six videos that you go that we learn the most not from know as as amazing as aliis in delivering his sessions but you you're gona learn so much more just getting a video done and then it's writing doing IT again next week and next week um so if you get those three peas then personal meaning p to p learning and prompts to action that sort of the building blocks for for great teaching.

And related to that, Andrew, the we've got those three peas that are really memorable. I think every course crater in a way can ask to distill their content into, hey, here's a frame like a memorable framework that you're gna come away with, right?

I think that's the hardest thing to do sometimes to give your course that structure where you can feel like a medal of information, like how do we give this? What's my unique framework? And that can be, I think, one of the biggest chAllenges to do .

that's the creation part of this, right? That's quite at least got some amazing ones. The what are you, the frameworks, I just crack me up.

ve got like the bird song technique.

birth's techniques of never .

run out of ideas for content theory being that if you are Normal person and you listen to bird song, he think, oh, it's some bird singing. But if you're the sort of nerd who understands what birdsong is, unlike what birth is, IT suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. And it's like you ve unlocked this part of your brain that can distinguish between a sparrow and a Robin and a ninety gale.

And I don't know any other birds talked. And similarly, when IT comes to content creation, when you become a creator and your minds that shifts from being a consumer to a creator, suddenly you start seeing content ideas while you're throwing through twitter on the toilet. Like more than half of my youtube videos of video ideas have come, like in the last four years, from me being on the toilets, growing through twitter.

You know, that's a really interesting tweet. That corner is just posted. I onder if I can make a video kinds touching on that thing and we talking of talks about this thing, or of all, just posted something interesting.

huh? I actually have some thought on that. Let's make a video about IT. It's a bit of a stupid name, the bird's on technique but it's you know IT just makes that seem more memorable and way more edit than just saying guys grow through twitter while you're on the tour to come up with content.

Yeah, I love IT marry.

What do you think you and framing, what do you think is the most valuable thing that you teach and your courses on notion? Mastermind, yeah.

I think what has been really interesting is like initially IT started as, like i'm teaching you how to use this tool. Know, like people want to like how to hack to. I, what's the quickest way to learn this tool? But the ideas, it's what the tool allows you to do that's more interesting, right? And so people have come in and they said, oh, like, I expected to learn about notion.

But IT was more like how to live your life Better and like, wow okay, that's that's kind of interesting. Um and I think because maybe I share so much of my own applications, like people see my own work space all the time. I like here's how I do task management.

Here's how I think about managing my plants like so they're seeing all he's different pockets of my life and I think it's giving them ideas for how to apply in their own life. And it's like I can't teach you about managing your task to notion if you don't actually know how to prioritize your own pillars of your own life. So inevitably, I had to keep layering on these.

Well, we to talk about habits, we have to talk about that. So I just became bigger and bigger over time as a wo. Okay, where where do we cut this off off? Like, how big does this become? And so I think some of those elements people weren't expecting to learn about, but they're kind of necessary because you're not just gonna switch from one tool to another and think suddenly all of your prioritization problems are going to be fixed, right?

It's like there's the technical piece, but there's also habit building pieces when you're learning to manage this stuff. So it's like new organizational habits. It's interesting how like when when you start making a course, you might have an intention of where it's going to go.

And as you create the content and as students engage with that, you're like, oh, wait, this is something a little bit different or oh, actually maybe there's three courses in here like even ali and I were talking about this because he's gonna have beginners and intermediate. He's got advances. People like you're going to have people at all different levels with different intentions. And I think certainly with notion, it's like, oh wow, we have people who've never touched the tool before but like saw video and bought IT.

And then we have people who are super advanced but using IT for two years, people that are managing their business that as out of the people that are like running a farm and like a winner and a go, okay, how do I contain this when the intention is so different for all these different students? And I think that was the the hardest chAllenge for me is what's core curriculum and what is really fun, rabid holes you can go down. So like these branches of, like, okay, well, everyone's on this track, but there is going to be some people who are gonna want to go deeper.

So probably in the number one question that every ny hacker has for every successful and hacker is how did you get started? Because all of you are like pretty advanced. You've got hundreds of people taking on that.

You're making you hundreds of thousands of millions dollars recourses. Let's say your total, total new by you have no idea what that is. You can even teach.

You've no online audience. No, no. Who you are. You very few skills. I'd ject the first step .

to become a gross creator. yeah. So I think everyone does have something to teach. And actually, I keep a copy of Austin cleans books.

I show your work being my my favorite on my desk all times, because this is a book which take text five minutes to the basically, because is so short and penford. Like this is book one of the book that the most changed my life. Because when like five years ago now in two thousand sixteen, when I first read IT.

Before that point, I was very scared of putting myself out there online. I'd been thinking maybe should start blog and I never really got round to IT because I thought, you know, people are going to think i'm an arrogant whatever for having, you know, for having the the the audacity to have my own website, like, come on, the hell does that and I D I read, show your work. And his point is that everyone has something to teach.

And even if you're not teaching, like he is documenting a, your learning of something is actually a value out to other people trying to learn same thing. And he talks about CS Louis's phrase. I think the course of the expert where being a gu in something, being an expert is actually not necessarily the best way to teach a beginner.

Because you probably have forgotten what the actual struggles of the beginner r so when I read that book that I completely changed my hope perspective on the stuff, and I started thinking, okay, i'm going to start writing stuff online about my journey. Throw entrepreneurship because i'd been doing like the attempting to do the the hacker thing for like ten years at that point, trying to learn to code, trying to build my like business is in ata. And then when I thought of my new ship channel, IT was a case of, okay, i'm in medical school.

Why don't I just share what it's like being in meet school and what IT took to get in? And you just share my faults in this because I thought I was reasonable at teaching. And just the thing of the way I think of IT is what can you teach to someone who is three years Younger than you? But but who is you in every other way? Like what could you teach to yourself three years ago? And anyone asking themselves that question will have answers to that.

Like three years ago, I wish I would have known this. Or, oh, three years ago, I was trying to learn how to a code, and then I discovered I don't coat. And here's, I learned being able to document that through something on the internet for free.

So a blogger or europe channel, I think that would be the first place to start. And certain. Ly, that's how I got my start with online education.

And I love that you're not discouraged by the fact that people might already be teachers like, hey, you don't have a code. Guess what? There's lots of teach what a code you ouldn't be discouraged, marine.

You're teaching people notion mastery. There's a lot notion itself has guide for how to use notion, and that you able of this course. But any hackers, people had to websites and interviews and books about how to start companies well before this. And so of the beautiful things about course creation is you don't necessarily have to be discouraged because someone's already doing what you wanted.

Teach comes back to that residents thing, right? Like different teachers have different teaching styles, different delivery mechanisms, different ways of phrasing the same thing. You can hear the same thing ten times.

We are like, I just the way they put that in the words was like yes or uh the written word versus video, right? Like some people are much stronger on video versus the written word or amazing tweet storms or something like that, right? So it's like we have to uh, remember that we're gona create resistance in a different way and just keep adding to your experience bucket. And over time, people are just going to be like, wow, that journey is so interesting. I I really want to learn from that person.

This is something anybody can do this like I I actually, when I first start my business five or six years ago now, I in this frame of mind, out coming out the corporate world, where I was like, I need to pretend to be a lot bigger than I am. So IT wasn't I was like we I was always saying we to clients in what I was just me like IT worked, but I like a very slow growth sector in those early days.

And then fast forward to this past year, I pretty in August had like three hundred followers and didn't take IT seriously. All but I started realizing, okay, i've been doing this online course thing. But for, you know, the corporate violence for fifteen years, I had a lot of experience there. There was now I A best sort of picking apart what online course creators are doing and set of like, oh, this is what really worked well with right passage example with destination generic groups and that type of stop just started resonating with people in twitter. And so I had this like crazy growth cut from August until um until december when electoral bug reach shocks well actually before that actually an ali reach shots and so me know and I like absolutely becoming friends with these folks who yeah I mean, I was like, quite right you didn't know existed before August you know I was like, that's the valuable thing just learn in public thought to share that stuff and don't keep IT behind closed doors and pretend that you are bigger than you are because IT really does pay off. So in a way.

it's like you on't even necessarily having to do the brilliant stuff you are putting on the work to figure out how other people who are successful doing IT. And you would share personally and say, hey, here's know my dissection of why this course works well. And you're just doing from your personal twitter account, which kind of confer to you a bunch of expertise, because no one else really analyzing the stuff and breaking IT down.

Yeah that's exactly very cool. yeah.

Mean.

I agree with you guys that learn learning publicly is so huge like not doing that work in secret, whatever you're learning, whatever work you are doing. I think the people that i've seen struggled the most are are ones that have theyve Operated behind the scenes. They're doing all this work.

They're working with client, but there is no evidence of their work anywhere. I'm like over is here like there's no youtube IOS. You've got some instagram stories which are a femoral and disappear, right? So there's almost like choosing these channels where there isn't there's no seo, there's no way to find their work.

And so you've got to be a find able. And I think again, twitter has just enabled so much conversation that is so easy to meet interesting people. If I think, and was interesting, i'm seeing him interact with alien someone else, interesting replies, them like wall, like you're going down these deep dives and meeting these really cool, interesting people who maybe think think like you, but also have a really different and interesting perspective too.

So I I think courage is a big part of IT. Just a willingness to put yourself out there, even if you don't feel like an expert yet, is huge. So I am a huge believer in that whether it's a blog that you don't think everybody's watching yet, you know, setting up those email lows, others, even if you ve only got five subscribers, like you just have to start somewhere and that resident starts really slow. But that river effect and that like compound interest of that one percent that you do every day, every week, whatever, even if you shipped the video a month over two years, five years, like the results of that are going to be so much bigger than if you just didn't take any action at all and you're just kind of secretly working on your skills, work on your skills in public, share what you're working on, share your opinions and you're going to find your people over time, but you've tt a put in .

the work and you don't have to have you to figure out to begin with. That's other thing, right? Like such a paralyzing thing. And for for a lot of people, for me included. And I mean, when I first started sharing stuff online, I was like, this is how to create line or no online cause like a cause for companies. You know, no one cared about that on twitter and IT was until I started like talking about what course creators are doing that that's what I got a resonating so I yeah I mean, I to go back and look at the home and tweet that just like into the way no was reading.

And I think sharing that like sharing hey, here's what i'm thinking about x versus here's how to do x. So I think you can just share what you're like, hey, here's what i'm thinking about or or here's something i've noticed, right? Like I worked with a number of clients and keep seeing why like show that you are recognizing patterns and that you are seeing certain trends even if you're again a beginner. But just sharing that thinking is what is gonna start to put those you know that that residents out there.

I love that that just like slight twisting of the phrase, because you a perfectionist or you're someone who's like a lot of anxiety o at how people perceive you if you have phrase things as here's how to do x like you've now raised the bar tremendously and what you need to share and you going to be paralyzed because you can look up to that and also two Andrews point about just putting out content and tweak the whole thing about being a youtube or or twitter or podcasts or a blogger is like most of people even get a look cat ure early stuff like that was growing on your witter time mine to see what if you were tween a bunch like years ago like you just like put stuff out there, see how resonates and like ideally, don't lock yourself into one plan right at the beginning.

Your podcast, if you have a podcast, should change over time and I should get Better and Better over time. And IT doesn't matter if you start off pretty crappy. And so it's another easy way, I think, to get started by giving yourself some any way to not have to start with perfection.

I don't know how many years ago I was I was just terrified to beyond video, like I never wanted to do client calls or anything. I was like just lets Operate by email. Like I was really, really afraid of being visible in any way, shape, perform.

But I knew that was gone to hold me back in business. And I think I started with a one hundred day project. I know if you ve heard about IT, but he pick one thing to do every day for a hundred days.

And so I did a video blog. I posted those to youtube, but posted of them on instagram, and I left them up because they're award A F. And I wanted people to see.

This is a learn able skill, like you can learn to speak on stage, you can learn to get comfortable in video. Seems like it's a lot easier for some people than others for sure and people like, oh, but you seem so comfortable oh my, oh my god. S i've hire speaking coaches.

I've done these crazy chAllenges. I sign up for acting classes like. You name that.

I have done everything because I knew this was a skill I needed to work on. And I wanted people to know that. I wanted them to know.

It's not just that there are people that are very comfortable and they're just naturally amazing on stage. And there's the rest of us. These are still that we can learn.

And so I wanted people to be able to see that trajectory. I get notes from people all the time being like, oh, well, I went back and watch video one or I watch a video fourteen like, oh, it's it's cringe. But IT needs to IT needs to be there for people as a reminder that we are all on a jury. We are progressing at our own pace, and there's room for everybody to improve whatever that looks like for you.

So I want to try an abstract question here to sort of close this out. I'm curious like what mental models, what philosophes, what ideas do you all have that drive your work in life? And IT doesn't have to be related to course creation.

You could just be any sort of broad idea. So all start just as an example. I really like this idea from charlie monger about having the sort of the latter work of higher level ideas that you can hang specific things on. So the way he describes that is it's really hard to remember hundred little facts, but is easier to remember like the small number of facts from which you can derive other things.

So if I think about a business, for example, I just think of four words, what promise is solving, which the distinction channel with the business model and what's the product? And from those four words, I can basically create like a thousand little questions for each one of those, help me analyzed the business. I don't have to remember all bunch of different stuff.

So I should I take that with me to every part of life, and I find IT to be super useful. Uh, what models do you all have? Know other things. You've learned to a red that really stuck with you.

So it's funny. I think my one is sort of also in the space a little bit. I been thinking a lot about destination and journey groups and sort of applying that to my own personal life as well, constantly kind of going between action, action, action and sort of alignment with where i'm hit ted.

And that's something I early started like doing more intentionally this year, actually in the last year, this year as things just started to get so much busy basic running two companies like but when you're all kill that, just have to do this. And just so let you know that when you executing, executing, executing, you actually on the path you want be on and it's a line with what you want to be, you know, so so the journey, you clear what the destination is and you just focused on the journey. And of all the things that come with that, bringing people in, you know, like making relationships and know that stuff.

here is a good idea to your abc, like, a where you are, b, your next step, and z, like where you want to end up. And if you have lose side of any of those, you might end up way out path.

My whole mental model, four things, is just trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible. If I find that I am not having fun doing anything, then not everything can be found one hundred percent of the time. But if it's if it's very not fun for an extended amount of time, and usually there's a sign that something is wrong, either it's a destination that's not meaningful to me or more likely, I am kind of approaching IT.

I'm choosing to approach IT in a way that is just not conducive to having fun. And in particular, one one thing that I am very bullish on is setting input goals rather than outcome goals. Input goals, meaning i'm just going to make two videos a week.

Outcome goal being like I want to get x number of subscribers or I mean, the process of writing a book at the moment. And I really wanted to hit the new york times set list. But any time I think about IT IT just gets so depressing.

And I hate the thought of writing the book well, as I try to rewire my brain to think, no, not gona care about that. If that happens, it'll happen. But othe wise, you know, the thing i'm going to care about is I want to write a book that i'm proud of, which is an input kle. It's in my control. So that just helps me enjoy the journey rather than being fixated on the destination.

I love IT. Well, ali, Andrew mari, thank you for come on the show dropping some gyms about course creation. I would love for you to let the audience know where they can go to find out more about the course is are working on about the on deck course creation fellowship. Andrey, maybe you want to .

start if you go to a beyond deck dot com um in the top menu you find course creators uh we've actually closed uh depending on this is really actually we close now for the first court but we running two, three calls here um and so people can get on the the way to stay. And if you want to talk to me specifically about on twitter, B I Z Z A R U T O I. I love getting D M. From people who are passionate teachers and conservators, and I answer over them. So at this place.

you can find me online at mary pool in dot com. Or if you are curious about the course notion mastery, dotcom pretty active on twitter or instagram or youtube if you're looking for a notion related content. So you can pretty much google my name. I've got all the handles.

Yeah and thanks for me. If you just google my name and you'll find a website or youtube tunnel and through there, you will find links to the point of time if you're interested in signing up for like june in anyone. So depending on when you watching this.

I would like to happy, right? Thanks, everybody.