Learn How To Create Successful Online Courses With Scott Paton

And I was like. And this was my last year's goal, to have five courses online. And I'm telling myself, 10,000 people have learned what I knew about life. And then I look at you, 89,000 people. I'm like, I am clearly not doing enough. And I was hugely inspired. So, you know, before we get started, the first thing I like to ask everybody is what avatar would you like to choose? Which avatar would you like to show to choose for the rest of the show?

Hulk.

Alrighty. Nice. I like that. It is. So Mexico, huh? You're going to be there for a while.

I'm leaving Monday to go to Spain.

Oh.

So, no, I won't be.

Lovely.

Yeah. I came here for two weeks because one week is too short. I was in the Middle east and I had to come to a conference in Carmen. I mean, Cancun. So it was. You know, it's hard having to come to Mexico for. For a couple weeks when you're traveling the world. But I did. And so next week I'll be going to go to Kenya, and then I'll be going Kenya and Africa after Madrid.

Wow, that sounds like so much fun. You know, Scott, I have become. I'm so inspired by what you're doing, because I started my Udemy courses last year based on a very. Based on a niche, which was. So I wanted to go general by doing social media, but I went very niche by doing only for hoteliers. And I got some 10,700 students who enrolled in the program with a 4.3 rating on 5, which is not bad. And. And I was like, and this was my last year's goal, to have five courses online. And I'm telling myself, 10,000 people have learned what I knew about life.

And.

And then I look at you, 89,000 people, I'm like, I am clearly not doing enough. And I was hugely inspired because I like to follow and surround myself with people who are obviously 10xing what I'm doing. So you're pretty much 10xing the game. But anyway, we backtrack a little bit, and the first section of the interview is always called what's your story? So tell us your story, where you grew up, about your family, your first crush, your first whatever you want to talk. Any firsts that you want to discuss with us?

Well, let's see. I think my story started in grade one, when my parents moved to Australia from Winnipeg, Manitoba, so basically the center of Canada, to Melbourne, Australia. We were there two years. I was afraid of swimming. I was afraid of water. When I left Winnipeg, I swam like a fish when I came back and I just loved Melbourne and I loved my friends and I loved being there. And I was so upset when we left. I really wished we'd have stayed and of course my life would be completely different if we had. But my goal growing up was always to go back to Melbourne. And once I graduated university, I went back, spent six months in Australia, ended up going to Southeast Asia and India, going around the world in my, well, mid, early to mid 20s. Then I did the corporate 40 year plan for 20 years and had some kids and got divorced. And then now my kids are grown up and I'm continuing my, my journey and my travels. But I think if we hadn't have left, I wouldn't have been wondering so much about what is out in the world and wanting to see it. So that's.

So if you hadn't left from Winnipeg or if you hadn't left from Melbourne, both. I hadn't thought of it the other.

Way about Melbourne, but if I hadn't left Winnipeg, I think I would have, you know, probably been very insulated and stayed there for most of my life. And I think if I'd have stayed in Melbourne, there would be no way you'd ever get me out of it. So probably would have been, would still be there.

Lovely. Love it. So tell me this. So there are digital nomads. These millennials are traveling and some people are actually traveling, living life and everybody has the right to do whatever they want in life. But when it comes to. So yesterday I was reading an article by Jason Silva about digital nomads and he's. So they're talking about a lot of them are making decent money traveling and sharing their experiences and all of that, but a lot of people are not making enough money. So can there be a balance while you're traveling and you're making a decent income as well so you can continue to travel?

It all, I think, comes down to your goals and your mindset. If you think you're poor, it doesn't matter if you're traveling or not traveling, you're going to have a hard time making money. And I think that there are a lot of people who travel well. I think it's a general thing. It's not just the digital nomads. I mean, if you go down the street, I'm sure any city you're in, you'll find people that are not making as much money as they would like to make or as that they need to really live well. I'M kind of. I have a bit of a different take on that when about 25 years ago, I read a book by a fellow named Lester Levinson. He had cancer. He was an engineer. They told him there was no cure. He used his engineer knowing knowledge to kind of figure out a solution. And he didn't have cancer anymore. I don't know if that's true or not, but part of the book that really inspired me was he traveled around the world without a passport and with no money. It's basically decided one day to leave his home. And he just walked out the door and someone drove by and said, hi, Lester, where are you going? He said, the airport. And they drove him. And I don't. I can't imagine it happening the same way now. But part of me was always kind of inspired to travel, you know, for free. Right, right. And of course, you know, free is. I wish there was another word for it, because always it's an exchange of energy. And I think when you talk about free, it's something other than money that is exchanged. I think we always have to exchange something, always have to give back. And if you give back more than you get, then I think you'll always be rich with, regardless of your bank account. So when I decided to do my traveling, one of the things that I wanted to do was volunteer. I wanted to be able to give something back to the communities that I was visiting. And I also. I knew something about myself which was if I stayed in hotels, everywhere I went, I would meet nobody and I would experience nothing. I have enough of an introvert in me that I would not go out to meet people. I need to be put in a situation where I'm basically forced to meet people. And I thought volunteering is great because there's a task that I can be helping these people with. And of course I have to talk to them to be able to help them. And I can contribute some of my knowledge and some of my expertise and some of my, you know, whatever hand work I need to do. And I found that really worked out well for me. And so usually about three out of four weeks of a month, I'm volunteering. And part of the thing with volunteering is they look after your accommodation, they give you a bed and they feed you. So I think if you want to travel, you can very easily travel. And because there's three big expenses. Food, accommodation and airplanes and trains.

Sure.

So if you take two of those three out of the equation, then all of a sudden it becomes very cheap. And I'VE had months where I've recorded my expenses and I spent $200, had a nice place to stay, ate great food, and contributed. And I got to know a whole bunch of people in the community. So I think those people that say, you know what? I don't have enough money to travel. I'm struggling when I'm traveling, they need to look in the mirror and say, what am I giving?

Okay?

And then I know there are other people, they just want a job, and it's a remote job. Then you have to change your mindset, because I don't help people with jobs. I help people get out of jobs. You're far better to have your own business doing your own thing than working for somebody. And so it's really easy to have your own business travel if you set it up properly. I even know people that have a catering business and travel. And I couldn't believe that because I, to me, when I think of traveling and having your own business is building websites or podcasting or videos or like, all these sort of online things. And a friend of mine here in Playa del Carmen was telling me about someone they knew who was a caterer, owned a catering company, and she's. Yeah, she just manages everything virtually and has great people doing all the work. And I thought, wow. So I don't think there's any limitations to the type of business that you can have and can travel as long as you remove yourself from having to physically do the work that is a physical type of work. For example, a plumber. If you're a plumber, you can't be in Playa del Carmen and fix, you know, a pipe in New York. But you can, you know, but you can have a business, right? You can have a business where you have plumbers that you look after, manage, and they do all the work. So it's just how you. How you look at it, in my opinion.

I love that. I love that. So this is automatically taken the conversation to my next question, which is that you obviously believe that people can work remotely and still make a living. And also you have. You have some very successful podcasts and very successful Udemy courses. So what would you like to touch on first? How did you get started on the Udemy courses? And how did you 89, 90,000 people to. Was it the subject line because it was so very powerful, travel around the world for free and still make a living, or was it consistently putting out videos and, you know, you never know which one does well?

Well, I have 85 courses in Udemy and I have 130,000 students. And when I first learned about Udemy, I was very excited. And it actually came directly from podcasting. I was asked to talk to the marketing department of the company that makes the Starbucks app about podcasting. And after I was done, the managing director of marketing came up to me. He said, scott, you've got to do a video course on podcasting. And it's kind of like, you know, Moses on Mount Sinai. It was like, there's your mission. Go do it. There was no question. And so I did the course, and I wanted to put the course somewhere where I didn't have to worry about technical things, about videos, downloading properly and all the rest of it. And I looked at Udemy, and I thought, this is great. There's no cost. I can put it up and I'd be done. And to be quite honest, I was quite prepared at that point to go on with my life and never make another video course. But I made the mistake of looking at other courses on Udemy, and I saw 5,000 students and $200 courses. And I thought, that's a lot of money. I got excited about the potential, and I didn't realize that Udemy is very much the Walmart video courses, and they sell mostly everything for 10 or $12.

So these.

The calculations were very, very skewed in my head. But fortunately, you know, ignorance may oftentimes is bliss. If you knew what it would take to do something, oftentimes we wouldn't do it. So it's a good thing we don't. And before I knew it, I had five courses that were recorded. And at that point in time, I was still editing my own videos, and I had done it with other people, people that I knew that I thought they would be really interested in being a part of this, and they were. But I knew one thing, and that was if I was going to be editing these videos, it was going to be five years before the next one got done. So I was forced to outsource. And I have no background in video editing. I have no background in recording or audio or any of those things. But of course, in my infinite wisdom, I thought that there was no one who could ever edit nearly as good as me. So it was really difficult to let go of it. But I did. And she's been editing my videos for three and a half years now. And I love my video editor. She is like a zillion times better than me. I just like, wow. And we just rave about the job that she does. So I'm so happy to have her, to have her helping me. So I came up with a system which was basically if you take 6 months working 12 hour days to put together your course, and at the end of that you launch your course and you have three students, you are going to be devastated. And we never know what's really going to be successful. And particularly if that course is sold for $10. That's like, oh my God, all this work. Ten bucks, you know, put me out of my misery now. So what I do is I do a three hour program which is basically, it takes three hours of your time. Three hours of my time. We have a really nice course that's about an hour to an hour and a half long and that we then use that to start our Udemy career.

Okay.

And if it flops and nobody likes it, it was three hours of our time. A couple hundred bucks for the editor. So it's not a big deal. And what happens is by going through the process, you learn things. So you learn how to work together, how to make courses better, how to make courses easier. You start getting feedback from Udemy. It's really like market testing. You put a course up, is it really going to do well? I tell you, the first course will probably do poor simply because it's your first course, you don't really know what you're doing. Second course will do better. Third course, you're starting to get in the groove. And by the time you, you know, you've done 10 or 15 courses, you're away to the races. And if the courses are only an hour too long, then you're only looking at, you know, 10 hours of video. And most of us know way more than 10 hours of video. Which brings me to the second point when it comes to Udemy. And that is most people make a part time income on Udemy. Like it's not enough to probably pay the rent for most people. And that's okay because the way I look at Udemy is it's a lead generation. Actually just coined a new phrase that I really like. Lead generation through education. In other words, if you're a coach or an expert in your field and people spend a couple hours with you watching a video, they feel like that's you. They feel like they know you, they understand what you're about. They, they like you, they love you, they want more. And that could be a live workshop in Cancun. That could be youe know, coaching one on one group coaching masterminds. I mean, there's all or could be selling their books, your books or your software and that sort of thing.

That is so powerful. I remember you saying that this point, I don't know where I read about this or maybe when I spoke to you last time, that it is a huge regeneration tool if done properly. I remember you said that as well. Would that be enough call to action and all of that?

Yeah. Udemy wants to be an educational platform. They don't want to be a sales platform. So you have to be careful. They do give you a bonus lecture in which you can sell all that you want in that lecture. And what I tend to do is I tend to tell people, look, the Udemy platform is not really set up for good communication between the students, amongst the students, and also between the students and the teacher. So I have a Facebook group for us. Go there. You can ask all the questions that you want.

That's a good point.

A lot of my groups are quite active because the people that are join obviously are very interested in those topics. And of course, you have to learn how to look after your groups and keep them active and everything else. Like chickens, you know, you have to keep sending them seeds and feeding them, or else they're just. They're gonna be going and looking for someone else to get the food from. But that's working out really, really well for us. And so maybe. So what Udemy does is it brings you people who have paid money to learn what it is that you know. So they are buyers. It's buyer traffic. And instead of you going to AdWords or Facebook ads and paying 5, $10, $100 for a click, that's just a click. I mean, that's a total cold thing. You have these warm people that Udemy is bringing, and they're paying you a dollar, $5, $10, $20 for these leads. And so the trick then is to be able to really work at how you can develop that relationship. And Udemy gives you four educational emails and two promotional emails. Promotional emails are for promoting other Udemy courses. Really hard to do that if you only have one, which is why you need to have a lot. But then the educational ones could be, you put up a YouTube video on Facebook marketing. And at the end of the video course, you have your call to action. Well, that's an educational video. And you can send that out to your 10,000 or 15,000 or 130,000 students. And you're gonna get a certain percentage of those people that get the email and certain percentage of them that take action. And you have to Kind of watch it yourself to see what, how good that is. Right.

Powerful. So you can. The second point was that you can send emails to the Udemy data. They allow you to do that. And so, so that's powerful thing you mentioned before that was that there are bonus courses where you can talk about a little bit of call to action, what else you're doing. And the first point that you started with was. I'm backtracking. The first point you started with was that use it more as a lead generation and a brand awareness tool for free. Right. But if I say that, for example, if I say I've got 10,000 students and I do more courses and I've reached 20,000, should I, should I try to get a number in mind saying 10% of them should be monetized at 15% at $15 a course or there's no math that works like that.

As far as I know, nobody has talked about that. And I don't know what the answer is for me because in most of the time I have two or three co instructors that I do this with. But most of the co instructors I don't do this with, they just want to have coaching clients. I just say, let's not, let's use it. Get your coaching clients. I don't want to be involved in trying to figure out if it came from Udemy or came from somewhere else. So it also depends on where you're getting. Like, a lot of Udemy students are from India, they're from Egypt, they're from Tunisia, Morocco, some of the poorer countries. So you get like probably 25 to 40% from the states, but you're gonna get, you know, so it kind of really depends. It also depends on what you're marketing. The people who are making big money on Udemy are mostly doing programming courses like how to, how to script Java, Apache servers using Linux kernels. You know, some crazy stuff that I just don't understand at all. You know, when I look at the guys who say, yeah, I'm making lots of money, they're mostly doing that. There are a few people that have done like photoshop courses and YouTube marketing and that sort of thing that have been really, really done really, really well too. And there are people who have had a. The following has followed the Montague Udemy and they've done really well.

Like, Gary Vee's got a course there. Yeah, got it. So 130,000 students.

You said 130,000 students.

Yeah. How does that feel, that impact to say the 130,000 people. You connected to them using your laptop or phone or whatever. How's that feeling?

It feels amazing. And I tell you, the best feeling in the world is every morning I wake up, when I wake up, after I get up and everything else, I check my reviews. I don't even check my sales first. I check my reviews and to see, you know, five star reviews and then the comments from the different people with the different courses. I mean, it's all variety of courses and just, you know, wow, like, you've really changed my life with this. And the light bulb went off on that. It's just. It's a really good feeling.

Yeah, I can imagine that. So what's next, Scott, what's next on the.

Well, my next goal on Udemy is 100 courses.

You have 15 more to go, 15.

More to go and 200,000 students. I hope to do that by the end of the year. And I'm probably going to spend less time. There's always a balance. I've been out of balance just making courses because fun. I love to learn. I love to interact with different people. But what I really want to do now, moving forward is pick the courses that are doing really well and work with those instructors to really. Because what I haven't done is a lot of marketing. Like, everything I've done has been predominantly Udemy only. Which, by the way, is exactly what I did when I started podcasting. When I started podcasting, all I did was put content up in itunes. See what happens. And what happened is 375,000 download subscribers in the first year for my weight loss podcast. So what I want to do now is talk to those people, because everybody that I work with, of course now is very good on video. So I want to do lots of videos with them, short ones, you know, three to 10 minutes long, and really use those to drive traffic to the courses. And there'll be probably two prongs to that between YouTube Live and Facebook Live and then a little bit of backlinking. But the idea is just to create, because this is what I've noticed with a lot of people that are quite successful on Udemy is they say, yeah, people come. A lot of people come from YouTube to Udemy. You would think that being able to get all the knowledge in the world video for free on YouTube would make them not want to go to Udemy, but that's not necessarily the case. And people also, I think what people forget two things. One is not everybody's cheap. And if you help somebody with your YouTube video, and there's a $10 or $20 coupon for the course. That person says, you know what, I really appreciate what they did. There's probably some really good information in that course, gonna buy it. And we forget about the law of reciprocity a lot of times. So it's just like, oh, put everything on YouTube and nobody's gonna buy. And of course, retail sales, they've never gone down. So yes, they're always gonna buy. So I think that, you know, working with the groups to grow the groups that I've created and make sure that they're supporting the students well, and then putting on either YouTube or I like YouTube live better because it's HD resolution when you download it. For some strange reason, Facebook Live when I Download it, it's 640x360 or something. And it's very. Really, you can't upload it to Udemy and you can't upload it to YouTube and have a very good resolution. One of the things that happens once you've got a course live, if, like, for example, if you and I had a course and we got together and did something like zoom and we were just talking about something that was related to the course, I could cut that out and then I could add it as an additional bonus lecture to the course, which means over time, my hour and a half course could become a two hour course, could become a four hour course, could become a five hour course. And that becomes like, wow, look at all the knowledge you're going to get for, you know, for your $10. Right. Without having to do it all at once. So I look at the courses as living things that are growing all the time. And just because you've got the course done and it's a couple hours, doesn't mean that you're finished. It just means you've got it up, you've got students, you're getting feedback, questions that they ask. I'll often answer those questions as extra bonus lectures. And the students really love it.

Wow, I love that. I didn't think of that. So you're saying, firstly, I love the way you said that you look at your courses like living beings. That is so beautiful. I've never heard anybody say that about anything digital. You know, it just puts back life and humanity and, you know, and that touch and feel heart back into an online course. I never, I never thought of it that way. That's brilliant. But tell me, so what you just said was that, and I didn't know that you said that you can go back to a published Udemy course and keep on upgrading it. And also you can. And one of the ways of doing that is not only adding extra content, which you can do by, you know, getting one more speakers or other experts, but you can also one hack, I don't like to use that word a lot, but is that you can actually go back and add that as a bonus lecture so that the existing students come back to your course. Say, I took this course, I already paid for it and he's got a bonus lecture and they come back to you. So the engagement with your brand continues. Yes, that is very powerful. I didn't know that.

One of the worst things you can do is put up a course and abandon it. And I'm sure that there are courses you could look and it would feel like mine are abandoned. But if somebody asks a question, I'm answering it all the time. And there's a company that does social media marketing. In other words, you put a post and it goes all over the place. And they put a lot of their training on Udemy. Nothing ever happened. Like it was, it was just. It just felt really impersonal.

Right.

And so I think it's really important, like, because people would ask questions and it was like seven months ago, they asked a question and there was no answer. So what you really want to do is make sure that you're on top of any questions from your students and that you answer them in a timely manner. Add value with the questions, with the answers to the questions.

Brilliant. Tell me squat. It's just, you know, very honestly. Thank you so much because there are light bulbs going on as I speak and I'll show you the light bulbs when we edit this. So I wanted to know, Scott, when it comes to your regular day, you're traveling around the world. I love the breeze. You know, in that frame, you living life on your own terms, life by design. How does your morning start? What is your morning ritual? Because you have so many channels to check, you have to reply to people on udemy, your Facebook, YouTube. How do you prioritize and how do you make sure that you're doing everything every day? Or how does that calendar work?

Well, that's a great question. Basically, about 7:30 my alarm goes off and I spend the next hour kind of in that state between sleep and for 20 years I managed grocery stores and at 7 o' clock the alarm would go off and I would jump out of bed because I should have been up at 6:30 and I rushed to the shower and I'd rush here and I'd rush there, and then I jump in the car and I rush to work. And the rest of my day was rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. So I start the day off nice and slow and I'll have a shower, I'll kind of get ready, and then I'll get a bite to eat, and then I'll come out on a place like this with my iPad and I'll quickly check my emails, I'll quickly check my Udemy reviews, and then I'll check my Udemy sales and see, and when you do that, there's a little red button that pops up that says questions on your courses. And I'll just check that and I'll answer the courses. And it only takes. Well, I don't rush it, but I don't think it takes more than half an hour. Okay, then I kind of got it covered. If there's the nice thing about building websites and doing courses and that sort of stuff is it's not brain surgery and there's no emergency. Right. Who think it's an emergency, but it's really not. So I train all of my clients that there's no emergency.

We will.

It's. It can be urgent and it can be important and we'll get it done in a timely manner. But we're not going to be playing the oh, my God. I gave you an email four minutes ago and you haven't responded. I had an interesting thing. So I have about three or four clients that I've had for 15 years. I build their website, I help them with their marketing. I answer their questions because I know their business as well as them. They need somebody to kind of consult, I guess they need someone to, you know, to ask to just to bounce ideas off of. And one of them is a home renovation contractor in Vancouver. And he likes. I never understood this, but he would say, come over for a burger. I'll barbecue up with some burgers and we'll talk. And I would loved his burgers. So I came over and he would barbecue up and we would talk and get everything, you know, that we needed to get figured out. Figured out. And I realized that he doesn't like really talking on the phone and he hates email. So when I left, he was always asking me, when are you coming back? When are you coming back? And I would say, in the spring. In the fall? In the spring? In the fall. And he says, finally he said to me, you know, you sound like my contractors when they don't want to tell me when the job's going to be done. And I realized. And then he said, you know, I really didn't like it that you were gone. And I actually went to another web design company and asked him to look at the site. They came back and they said, you know what, Scott did a great job. There's nothing that we would change. And he's covered out all the bases that we would cover. It's a really nice site and it's really nice for SEO and everything else. So he said, oh, I guess I'll stick with Scott then. And that's the only reason that he stayed. I didn't know this. And so when I realized that this was an issue for him, I wanted him to know that I wasn't just being irresponsible and, you know, being a hippie and running around the world for the two years before I left, three years before I left, two of them. My dad was really sick with leukemia and he ended up passing away. And for about six months after that, I was still going. They were in Vancouver Island, I was in Vancouver. I was still going to Victoria to see my mom, make sure she was okay. And then about six, a year after that, my youngest son bought a house and he moved out. So all of a sudden I was an empty nester. And I thought, you know what? My kids are healthy and alive. My mom's healthy and alive. I'm healthy and alive. I don't need to stay here. I can fulfill my dream now. I have no responsibilities and travel the world. But my mom is 83, and in two or three years, she's not going to want to drive, but she's really healthy. She's still driving at 83. Not that she drives far. And when my dad was getting sicker and sicker and basically wasting away, she looked after him. And he never had to go into hospice. He went into the hospital, like for a day here and a day there. He was in his home that he loved until the day he died. And I thought, you know, my mom did a lot for my dad. And I would ask her, you know, are you okay? And she'd say, oh, your dad's no problem. He doesn't complain. And I asked dad, and he'd say, he'd say, oh, it's great. Your mom looks after me. And she's a real angel. And so as far as the ending of a life, I think my dad had probably the most beautiful possible ending to his life. But I didn't want my mom to go into a home, no matter how nice it Is right. I talked to my sister because we weren't sure what my mom would say, and she thought it was a great idea. And then we talked to my mom, and I said, you know, when I'm done my trip going to come to Victoria and when you need to drive, because I'm so flexible, right. I can schedule everything around everything. And I said, when you need to go to your. This club or your church or your curling club or whatever, like, she's very active. Then I'll just take it and I'll take my stuff and I'll find a coffee shop and work, or I'll come home and I'll come and get you when you're done. And she said, that would be really nice. So this is kind of my big trip before then, make another commitment to my family. Once I explained that to my contracting client, it totally changed everything. And I understood then the power of stories, right? Like, he understood what my plan was and what I was doing, and also that I would be back. But he had something. He had my vision then. And then he could hold on to that vision and work with that before. He had no vision. He just. Scott said a beach somewhere. I don't know if a shark's gonna eat him, and I'll never hear from him again.

This is very powerful because, you know, as all of us who in our digital marketing journeys, travel to different countries, I do get the sense that my clients. Not only sense. I mean, they say it in exact those many words that they're panicking. Internet moguls has grown to be almost about 200 people in the company. We've got hierarchy, but still they want to work with the. With me. They want me to oversee the projects. And I thought that there will be one day that the company works on its own. It's good. I mean, I feel important. I feel valued, that everybody wants to. I mean, my clients want me to. You know, sometimes it's just to say, you know what? I hate purple. And Avi has to come in and say, I love purple. They're like, are you sure?

Fine.

We love purple too. So they just want that validation from me. But I like this idea of yours to say that, you know, be vulnerable and tell them that this is why I have to travel and I'm always available for you. There are so many light bulbs that are going on. It's just amazing. Squad. I'm having so much fun doing this.

Thank you.

We're at 35 minutes. We started 15 minutes late. My fault. And I asked for 45 minutes. Is it okay to go on for another 10 minutes or would you.

You bet. As long as you want.

Excellent. Thank you. So we learned about your morning rituals. We learned about how the power of story. I would also say the power of being vulnerable. I'm also getting from the vibe from you that after so many years of doing different things in life, you seem to be. I'm getting a fearless vibe from you that you don't fear repercussion unless you, you know, if you're doing the right thing, you don't care how people judge you and how things happen. And the main thing that you're focusing.

Can I just jump in on that? That's a really. Fear is a really good topic. I'm glad you brought it up, because I have fear. It's really interesting how different it is now than, say, 40 years ago, because I have a client that I worked with since 2005.

Okay.

And his having a really hard financial time right now. So I've just cut back everything. I don't charge them for anything now. And. And it was a hole, right? And there was a few times when I've had other clients where, like, they just don't work. And I'm thinking, ah, I'm really, you know, what am. There's a hole. Like, how am I going to fill this hole that has been filled by these people? Right? And. And the fear comes up and I recognize it, and then I stop myself and I just say, hang on a second. It's not hard to get another client if you really want another client. And then that part of me that's fearful sort of settles down. And the other part of me says, yeah, that's right.

Like, we can get.

We have lots of people that we could talk to about working for, helping or consulting if we wanted to. We just got the number we want because we're able to live the lifestyle that we want to live with this number of clients. And once that. But the fear comes up, and I think it's really important to address it and say, you know, thank you very much for sharing that fear, whatever part of the mind it is. I don't know about you, but I have lots of voices, right. And, you know, really appreciate it. You're doing your job now. You can calm down. And here's what. Here's what we can do.

Right?

And I think when. Because a lot of times I've noticed people when you and I look at somebody and we see they're absolutely frozen in fear, but it's a fear that we don't have. And we're like, why are you even concerned about that? Like, it's a. It's a little spider on the wall or something like that. But it's freaking them out. It's because that voice has just taken over. And I think as you go through life and you. And you. You have your good times and your bad times, and you get through your bad times, then you learn, yeah, you know, I'm having a bad time this week, but I'm gonna get through it. And I learned that in grade eight because the teacher told us that I had to. Told us. I guess everybody did it, but I only think of me that we had to get up in front of the class and do a geography talk. Mine was on Marco Polo, and it was on Friday. And on Monday, I was terrified. And Tuesday I was terrified. And Tuesday I said, you know, I'm gonna be playing tennis Saturday morning with my buddy. So I just. No matter what happens at geometry class, geography class, I'm gonna be playing. And that got me through. And then I realized if I just look past the fear, it quietens down. And I had that. I did that presentation, and it was hilarious. Everybody was laughing and having a good time, not laughing at me, me laughing with me. And it worked out really, really well. And obviously, it wasn't so traumatic that I never got up in front of anybody ever again. So. But we have that fear, and I'm glad that you brought it up, because you need to address it and become friends with it. Like, thank you very much for sharing that. Here's what's going to happen. It's going to be okay. And then it's like, I think of it as a little child, right? And the little child scared. And you just say, no, no, Daddy's here, Mommy's here. Big brother's here. It's gonna be fine.

That is very powerful. I used to have. I used to have somebody who should talk to me about. We used to talk about that, and they used to always talk about the fact that the mind is like a shy bride. So if you look at the mind, the mind quietens down and sort of curls up, and you have to tell him it's okay, you know? And the mind, it opened up, opens up. So similarly, like, you could say the mind is like a. Like a small child. So I like that analogy. And what I learned from this last segment that you shared with us was that doesn't matter who you are, how many years you've been in the business, and, you know, why I'm loving this is because very recently I had a conversation, a long conversation, with my sales team telling them that although we've been so. We've been doing this for nine years, and to some extent, some people who join us, they feel that business should come to us and leads come to us, and leads should convert on their own. But the biggest clients we've got is when we've gotten out to them and we've said, this is our story, because nobody cares about who you are. In our own heads, we think that we've reached a certain pinnacle. But what you just said was that if you lose a client, you can always go out, which taught me that everybody has to go out fishing or hunting for the right client every time. There's never going to be a time you sit back and people are coming to you. Even if that happens, that's not consistent. So you still go out after clients when you need to?

Yes, yes. And this is why planting seeds is so important, right? Because I nurture lots of relationships over long periods of time. And some become clients, some don't. And some don't become clients because I don't need a client, right? But if I needed one, like, oh, there's a nice, beautiful tree that I've been pruning for 10 years, and, you know, maybe I should just talk to them and see what their needs are. Like, I don't ever approach anybody by, you know, you need this and you need that. I approach them with, you know, like, what. What are your problems? What are you. What are you struggling with? Struggling with this. Okay, have you. And then I start giving them advice, if they're open to advice. And then it. So one of the books that really. And people that really influenced me was Blair Singer, who wrote Sales Dogs. And I saw him. It was actually really funny. I saw him speak, and I ran to the back and I bought his book because I thought he just talked for 45 minutes. And this is amazing because this has really helped me with my sales problems, and the book must be way better. And I read the book, and I was very disappointed because there was nothing in the book that he hadn't said in the presentation. So it was, you know, and so I had this, like, high and then this low. And then three months later, I couldn't remember what he said, but I had the book. So I was really happy that I bought the book. It was really a funny process for me. But he talks about like, I thought you had to be a bulldog. I thought the only way to Sell was to be a bulldog. I would take my jaws and I'd grab onto your leg. I wouldn't let go until you bought. I'm not a bulldog and I hated it. I'm a golden retriever. Like, scratch me behind the ears, pat me on the head and let me help you. And my tail is wagging and I'll do anything for you. And that's the way that I work. And what happens is people who talk to other people and they say, oh, I have this problem. What will inevitably happen is talk to Scott because he can help you solve the problem. Because I'm the golden retriever, I'll come in there and I will fix everything. And so knowing what type of dog I was like, I went from total struggle to make a sale to just not a problem, not a care in the world. Because I would just help people with their problems and then they would hire me. And that was so much better than just trying to be something that I was not.

So that. So that's the book. It talks about different what kind of dog you are.

Yes. Sale in terms of sales. Yeah. So yeah, they had. So you could figure out which type of sales dog you needed for which type of sales client.

Right.

Some clients need to know every single little itty bitty detail of something. Other ones, they want to be with somebody who's obviously in charge and follow them. And other people like to go to the parties and have the big diamond rings and that sort of stuff. And that's how they shoes. And we see it in sale. Like when you look at, like in real estate, you can look at a whole bunch of real estate agents and you can just tell what type they. You know, I see little dogs on their, on their foreheads.

You know, I learned this recently where they said that when you go into a sales meeting, you ask, you know, you see somebody wearing new shoes or a new T shirt and you say, squat. Nice T shirt. Where do you get it from? I got it from H and M or I got it from Zara or whatever. So he said, you look at other T shirts, you say, you know what? You know me, abhi, I look at one or the other person says, I have to look at 10T shirts before buying. So this was a long, long, drawn out decision in your sales meeting. What? How is he going to behave? Because his decision making styles, you know, are pretty much similar.

Right. That's a good tip. I like that.

Yeah, I just, I just learned it from Jerry Holland, you know, in here in Vancouver. So good guy.

Jerry.

Yeah, I actually immediately came home, had a quick sales call with my team and I said very short, I just want you to remember this. And I thought it was very powerful. Great. So Scott, I think we are almost at the end of this time. I want to respect your time. At the same time, I would love to have you again here because I'm enjoying this conversation in a very selfish way because I am learning so much for my business. I know my show is supposed to be for the audience because most of the time the audience is from Asia. And now I'm building an audience in North America as well. And I'm seeing even if people come back and write comments and say that that tip I used in this part of the business to get this result. And that's when I sit back and say, oh thank God, let me do more shows because this is getting to be more fun and, and especially because I'm 41 years old, I. The only thing, I don't have any regrets, I wanted to go to a very, I wanted to go study abroad. At that time we couldn't afford it, but I don't have that. It will be there because I did a lot of other things at that time. But the only thing that I think back is that if I had access to Scott through Avi's show or through Ricky through some show, my growing up years would have had a lot of answers would have come in. There was no Google when I was growing up. Despite whatever my grandfather wanted me to do. I would never open the right. So I would just about asking people questions. A lot of people will shut you down and say this is stupid because maybe they didn't know themselves. So that was the end of asking questions. Now this is this generation information age where information is leading to transformation and people are actually showcasing their lives that you are saying, I'm in Mexico, I'm making a living, I'm taking care of my mom, I have a plan. I'm not somebody who's abandoned everything and gone to the Himalayas and I'm still happy and that is possible. So this is really very inspiring because I don't want to be a 41 year old looking down on an 18 year old sitting on the beach and saying you're wasting your life. But to a large extent I see a lot of digital nomads fooling themselves because firstly they're making zero money, secondly, they've run away from responsibilities. And one of my talks, whenever I give a talk, although the talk is always around social media, but my second Chapter is always stay close to the router. And I say router is. I say we're all devices and our router is. Our parents are our routers. So the closer the device is to the router, the more you have more access to the Internet and you have more beams so you can download more information about yourself. So what? A lot of youngsters, a lot of people go through life spending time away from their friends and family and parents because parents are, they like mirrors to us. They know us the most. And sometimes we don't like to see the mirror, so we travel around, we do whatever to understand ourselves, which is not bad. But we must recognize. I like to tell a lot of millennials that we must recognize. Why is it that our parents are making us uncomfortable? All parents are not bad. Like some of the people are saying, forget your parents and all of that, you know, so they might. There are some stories out there, but in most cases they're only trying to. It's the same DNA. So there is something in them that you find in yourself which makes you uncomfortable. It's not them, really. So the story of your mom and how you made this promise to her is the favorite part of my show because I'm 41 and I am a proud mama's boy. I speak to her every day and I know she will be watching this interview and she'll be like, you know what? Hi, mama. She's going to be like, you know what? I wish you spoke slightly slower or I wish your hair was done a certain way. So she's still, you know, I. For her, I'm still a 10 year old and I love that about this relationship that we have. So, Scott, thank you so much for sharing so much with us. The one thing that you've inspired me to do is be slightly more fearless. And so two things. And the other thing is that I'm grateful, but I'm not done with the 10,000 students yet. So as you go build about your 200,000 students, I'm going to go make it 25,000.

Excellent. Way to go.

Thank you, Scott.

And I have to tell you, I'm very excited because next year I'm going to be in India and I'm looking forward to spending some time at your hotel. I'm going to let you know when I'm going to be there long in advance because I'm hoping that you'll be able to. To stay there at the same time. That would be just amazing to me.

That would be amazing. We'd love to do it either in Delhi at Janta Hotel or Goa at the Damris. And Goa will be more fun. It'll be the kind of scene that you're in right now. And I look forward to making it happen.

Awesome. All right. Thanks for having me on the show. It's been a lot of fun.

Same here. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Squad, all the best with your journeys ahead.