60: Dan Tricarico: High School Teacher to Zen Online Course Creator

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp, and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. Before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is on the AppSumo Marketplace at a special deal and the link for Course in A box on AppSumo is in our show Notes. Today we're in the middle of our course creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators just like you. We're talking about their journey in their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced, and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people. And today my special guest is Dan Tricario. Dan is a national speaker and author of two top stress management books and and creator of the Zen Professional Five Step Blue Plan for Stress Reduction. Dan now shares his expertise and insight by showing business leaders how to thrive both inside and outside the boardworm. He has been featured in Fast Company magazine, Etopia, and Teacher to Teacher, as well as having guested on many business and educational podcasts. Dan lives in San Diego, California and is creator of the popular online course Instant 5 Simple Steps to Reclaiming youg Focus, Energy and Peace. Dan, thank you so much for joining me. We have been chatting a few minutes before. I am so excited to dive into your journey and kind of how you got into the online course business.

Well, thanks for having me, Destiny. I'm thrilled to be here. It's a pleasure.

So why don't you just take a few minutes and tell the audience a little bit more about you. You can start at the beginning and just kind of take us and take us through the journey of how you got to where you are today.

Sure. I think for me, well, first of all, I want to tell everybody you really can't get a more ordinary person than I am, you know, who started a course. Because I've been a high school teacher for 30 years and this kind of for me starts around 2014 where I was experiencing tremendous stress. I was heading toward burnout. I was looking around and seeing this happen with other teachers and we lost three teachers in my own English department in the space of a couple years from the same kind of thing. They just the bureaucracy and the red tape and the standardized testing machine and the lack of funds and all of that stuff was just getting too much. Now keep in mind, that has nothing to do with the teaching and the relationship with the students and all of the things that we got into the profession for. Those things are lovely. Those things I still love to this day. But I didn't know how I was going to make it to retirement. And I was a drama major and an actor in college. And I thought back to the acting classes, and I thought back to how the acting. Acting teachers talked about relaxation exercises and breathing exercises and being in the moment and mindfulness and all of these kinds of things. And they talked about how it was important as a performer to have what they called a relaxed preparedness. You were calm, but you were ready to go. You were relaxed, but you were ready to perform. And I thought, well, that's what teachers need. So I started. I've always loved writing. I always wanted to be a writer. And I started a blog that I called the Zen Teacher that really were reminders for me about how to just chill out and relax and kind of use those techniques to get through all of the stress. And then I was fortunate enough to turn that book into. I'm sorry, to turn the blog into a book. And then my publisher started getting me some speaking engagements at different school districts around the country. And that just changed my life. And that was. It's been an amazing experience, and I've absolutely loved it. The only thing better than helping students is helping teachers, because then your ripple effect not only goes to your students, but goes to other teachers and goes to their students. And so I just have been thrilled to be on that path. But right around the time the book was published in 2015, I started hearing about online courses. And I just kind of intuitively knew that. I said, this is the future. This is where we're going. And I thought, I need to get on that train. You know, I said, I need to do that because I thought it's. It's. I was also starting to learn about passive income, and I thought, well, this is the perfect combination. I'm already a teacher. I know I can teach, so I need to take what I know and turn it into a course. And, you know, the funny thing is, I knew I was over 50 at that point. I was like, I'm not gonna go back to school and become a doctor or a lawyer or anything like that. So I really was investing in taking online courses, too, and online programs. Some, you know, as cheap as $50, $100, something like that, some up to $2,000, you know, and I kind of looked at those, like, student loans, right? I mean, I wasn't going to get a degree at the end of it. But I was going to get practical skills that I could use. And so if it was good enough for me to take, I thought, well, why not, you know, create one myself? And so this is the secret, and I want to say, shh, don't tell anybody is one spring break, I snuck into my classroom and I threw up a backdrop behind my desk, and I asked the librarian, hey, do you have a potted plant or anything? You know, just for some set dressing. And I put the little potted plant next to me, and I shot 14 videos in one day. I had kind of mapped out the curriculum, what I wanted to have happen in the course. And I designed, like, a little. Kind of a little three or four video free course that I called the Self Care Starter Kit. And then a more intensive course that maybe was about 10 or 12 videos called Self Care 101. And they could kind of get to know me by taking the free course. And. And then if they liked it, they could go deeper with the paid course. And eventually what I did as things grew is I kind of combined those two into a pain course. And what I've done most recently, though, and what I'm kind of most proud of, is the course that you mentioned, which is Instant Zen. And I talk about something I call the five S's, which is stillness, silence, space, subtraction and slowing down. And it's a really good introduction to what you can do right now to take care of yourself, because those five S's are things that our culture does not value at all. And so we need to be really intentional about practicing them and incorporating them into our lives. And my course shows us how. And I've also kind of lately been transitioning into the idea of helping people in the corporate sector because they're stressed out, too. And so that's been a new learning curve and a new project for me. But I've been having a lot of fun. And during the quarantine, it's been interesting because I'm teaching from home. In fact, I just found out I've been home for a year, which is crazy, but I just found out I'm probably going to be going back in late April, so I'm just to finish out the school year. And so I've had all this time to try to really work on this platform that I have, and it's been fun. And online courses have been a game changer for me, brought in some extra income, and I highly recommend everybody try it again if I can do it. Anybody can do it, because I am far from a tech guy, but it doesn't take that much anymore. So that's my story. Oh, wow.

And as you were going through that, I was writing down a bunch of notes. I'm like, I gotta ask them this.

Oh, good. Yeah, yeah.

So. And one of the questions I was about to ask you is, when did you leave your teaching job? But you're still there.

Oh, my gosh, yes, I'm still there. Well, and the thing is, destiny is I love it. I love teaching. And people say, if this really took off, would you leave? And in the beginning, I was like, I don't know. I love teaching. But now I'm like, yeah, let's see what happens. You know, I mean, because it has been hard. You know, I always say that there's a difference between teaching and the education profession. And the education profession right now is frankly kind of broken. And there are amazing teachers out there, but they are fighting against an infrastructure that is, you know, and everything's flawed. But this infrastructure is in massive need of overhaul. And I don't think too many people would disagree with me, but we do the best we can. But I can't think of anything more noble than spending my time helping the future of the world, you know, so that's the way I look at it. But, yeah, I'm still there Now I'm.

An educator myself, but I teach at the college level. But I can. Even though it's a different level of students that you're teaching, Right. Older. Older students, and even some of ours, as I can teach at the graduate and doctorial level, you know, they're still experiencing. Those teachers and those professors and faculty are still. Still experiencing everything you're saying there.

Sure.

You know. You know, it applies to them, too. So this. All this started in 2014, and about a year later, you launched your. Or sometime in that you started your blog, then launched your book.

Yes.

And you launched your book in 2015, correct?

Yes.

When exactly did you launch your first course?

Oh, gosh. Preparing for this. I probably should have looked that up, but I didn't. It was soon thereafter, is what I would say, because I know that the book came out in October. October of 2015. I didn't have a course. I was already thinking, I really should have a course. So I'm guessing what I probably did was, I think, yeah, probably 2016. So I probably shot it the following spring break in my classroom and then launched it. You know, I had my daughter's friend who was good at video Editing. I think I paid her like 100 bucks and said, can you just put a title card on the beginning of each of these videos with the name of the course? And just like, you know, like how, like there's that music that goes boom, you know, just like one, one note, you know, and, and I said, can you just do that? And, and she did that, you know, because again, it's about how can I do this without breaking the bank, right? And you know, because again, as a high school teacher, I don't have a lot of discretionary income to be thrown around. And I bought a backdrop online for like $50. So like I literally, you know, was able to do everything I needed for $150 to produce the course. But then I was looking around for a platform and you know, I really like my goal. I wanted to save for Kajabi, which was just a little bit out of my budget. And I've been with Teachable, which has been absolutely fine and very, very user friendly for a non tech guy like me. And it's, I think it's, I want to say about $400 a year, which I think is really reasonable because I remember sitting in a parking lot, looking at this strip mall and thinking of these little stores that have very specific niches of demographic of their customers and going, well, that place is going to be two or $3,000 a month. So spending $400 a year for quote unquote rent, you know, on my space doesn't seem like that much, you know, so sometimes it was credit cards, sometimes it was core sales, you know, just made it work, you know. And so now here we are and I've had the courses up ever since.

And you're still using Teachable to this day.

Yeah, I really haven't seen any reason to change. I get a PayPal, you know, every time I sell courses, I get a PayPal deposit and it's been awesome.

So tell me, you started your blog in 2015. Did you start building your email list at the same time or what was that process like?

You know what, it's funny because I say this and it sounds vain and I don't know where this came from, but around the time that the book came out, I just intuitively knew I needed an email list. And I said, because again, I just recognized that as an asset that was mine and that I owned. And so I put a, I had a cheesy little weebly website that it was very cute, I loved it, it worked fine for them. And I put a little contact form on it. And do you know that like I had, every month or so I would sit down, it would send me the emails of the people who signed up. And every month or so I would sit down and manually enter those emails into mailchimp to build my list. Because I was like, you know, I come from a blue collar family. I'm like, I have no problem rolling up my sleeves and pounding the pavement, you know, and doing what I need to do. But when got, you know, I was, you know, knew enough about entrepreneurship and had enough courses behind me and all of that, and people helped me get it automated. Gosh, I thought I was going to cry. I thought that was the most magical, amazing thing is people just sign up and then they're magically put on my email list. And so that's probably been, I think, I think that happened in 2017 when I finally automated the email list. And so now I have almost 2,200 people on the email list. Oh, good.

So, you know, did you have a lead magnet that was attracting them or were they just coming to your website saying, you know, put me on your email list?

I think both. I mean, I pushed a lot of stuff out on social media and I would say things like, hey, if you want to know more, you know, sign up here on my, on my site. But also I did have a lead magnet. And when I had my website rebuilt, the people who rebuilt the website were kind enough to turn. I had, I had, you know, I built the little lead magnet, but they were kind enough to turn it into a fancy workbook that now everybody gets when, when they sign up. So there is definitely a lead magnet involved.

So how were people finding out about you? Was it through like organic SEO? Was it from what you are posting on social media? How were they even? Not that you are out there and could help them?

Well, I think the key is just, you know, knowing, you know, if anybody who's been learning about online courses has heard this a million times. But it's about knowing who your ideal customer is. And I knew that I just had a built in group with teachers. I just knew those were the people I wanted to help. And so I would write blogs and I would push them out on Twitter because there's just a bajillion teachers on Twitter. It took me three tries to really connect with Twitter. The first time I just was doing it to be silly and have fun. And then the second time I tried and it didn't really stick. But when I created the Zen teacher, then it stuck because I saw the potential of what I could do and I would push out these blog posts and teachers started responding to them. And that's kind of when I knew that, okay, it's not just me. And then I started learning how to use Facebook to prove my business. And I would post on the Zen teacher page. Then I created a Facebook group and I started putting the blogs in there, and then again, the people were really responding there. And then I would say, well, if you want this little workbook or if you want my book. Book. And then I created a little ebook of, I think it was like 14 or 15 blog posts. And I wrote five new ones specifically for the ebook. And I put that on Teachable for 7DOL. So that's one thing I want people to know is you can sell anything on Teachable. It doesn't just have to be courses. But that's a good start. But so that's kind of mostly, I would have to say it was social media that helped out because I tell people I self published my first book in 2002 and there wasn't any social media. And my aunt bought like three copies of my book. And then that was kind of it, you know, that was all there was. You know, there was no way to distribute, you know, the word and get the word out. But when social media came along, now I can tell teachers across the country, across the world, hey, I've, I've. I'm not only talking about this stuff, but I've got these resources that can help you.

Now, are you primarily using just Twitter and Facebook today or are you using any other social media platforms?

I have experimented with Instagram. I've had that for a few years. I'm having fun with it. I don't know that there's been a ton of ROI on that, but it's been fun. It skews younger. So that's kind of been interesting to connect with some of the younger teachers because again, they have a longer haul. Right. I mean, I'm at the end of my 30 years. They're kind of, you know, starting or in the middle. I have two daughters who tell me about TikTok. And I just go, I'm too old for that. I'm just too old for TikTok. But I've been watching the videos and they're fun and silly, but I don't think that's my platform. I'm definitely not a Pinterest person. I know that. But I think it's really, you know what somebody said that I thought was really Interesting with social media is pick the place where you know you're going to show up, and pick the place that you like because you're more likely to show up. And so for me, that's been Twitter and a little bit of Instagram.

Very good. So my next question has to do with the courses that you have, and you talked about several of them, you know, before, you know, during our conversation. So walk us through kind of what you started out with and how that's maybe changed over the time.

Well, you know, it's funny because anybody who's creative knows that when they get better and as years pass, they look back on the first things they did and they're kind of embarrassed. You know, they look back and they're like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I put that out into the world. And I feel that way a little bit. I mean, I think there's good content in my earlier courses, but I think the production values and just the learning curve of getting used to it kind of shows a little bit. But I think the main thing that I would want to share with your listeners, and if they've been following you or learning about online courses, they've probably heard this. But the thing I'm probably most embarrassed about is that as a teacher, I should have known this, but that I just mapped out what I thought would be good in those first couple courses by saying, oh, I should talk about this and I should talk about that, and they should know this concept. But I wasn't thinking in terms of end result. I wasn't thinking in terms of transformation. And I learned that later. And so I think Instant Zen is more focused on who are you going, you know, what's the pain point that you have now? And then, who are you going to be when you finish this course? Because that's really the selling point. That's what's going to get them interested, is you're solving a problem for them of who they want to become. And I didn't know that in the beginning. I was just like, oh, this is an important concept, which is true. But they want transformation. They're paying for a transformation.

And, Dan, I would say that that is a mistake that a lot of us educators make. And I, you know, I've made that mistake in the past is because we are. We know how to teach, right? We know how to outline courses. We know how to outline curriculum. But in the online kind of world, when you're selling these, selling an instant Zen course, or selling whatever course people are selling, you're right. You got to look more at that in transformation and communicate that. Right. What are they going to get once they finish this?

Yes. If you can't communicate it, they're not going to buy.

So tell us about this Instant Zam. When did you launch it? What were your results? Can you walk us through, through how you, how you actually launched it to the world?

Sure. I had had this idea for a while, but just full time job. I also do private tutoring, so I have kind of like three different jobs, but which is in some ways off brand. Don't tell anybody, but I just had this idea and I won't say I've been grateful for the pandemic because that's not accurate, but it did afford me time. When I started teaching from home, I had more time to try other things. And so what I did was I. And if you want, I'll just tell you all the mistakes I made. I mapped it out and I knew it was easily structured because there were five S's. So one lesson for each of the S's seemed reasonable. I knew I wanted. I was working with a business coach who talks about what she calls Pocket products, which is kind of a mini course to get people interested and build your email list and that kind of thing. Kind of almost kind of like an impulse buy. Anywhere from $19 to $50. You know, something like, like the candy bars on the grocery store aisle when you get to the cashier, you know, just like, just sitting there like, oh, I can. I should just get this right now. And then, you know, so I was looking for something like that. And what I did was I have lots of, you know, friends now in the entrepreneur space that I can use as beta testers or get feedback from. And I did a video lesson for each of the S's. And what was funny was like I'd never, you know, I'd done an audio. I had done an all video course and I was like, I don't want to be on camera again. Nobody wants to look at me. I did an all audio course which was fascinating. Did that with another teacher who lives in New York and I live in San Diego, California. We did the whole course over technology. We put the audio in Dropbox. She had her VAs create graphics and edit. You know, we discussed things and planned it out through voxer. I mean it was an amazing process. And then so that was all audio. So then I thought, well, I want to. I've seen a lot of courses now that have slides and voiceover narration and I Thought that's probably the best format for what I want to do with the five S's So I had just, you know, we had just gone all online on teaching, and there was this platform called screencastify where you do screencasts, and I had to learn that. But before I did that, I thought, okay, I made my PowerPoint and I said, okay, how do, how do I get the voiceover narration on it? So I Googled or whatever and I saw narration. So I did that. And then I'm uploading it into teachable and I'm going, well, wait, so the people have to have PowerPoint to watch this and listen to this. And then I had that moment of, oh, wow, I just did this totally wrong. This is not a video. This is not something they can watch anytime they press play. So I had to go back to screencastify, do them all again, which, which sometimes you have to do when you're, when you're building something and start again. And I did them all. And then I sent it to a friend of mine who's, who's also in the entrepreneurial space. And she went through it because I said, tell me what you think. And I'm thinking about, you know, $47. And she came back and said, dude, I just don't think this is robust enough for $47, which is five videos in a workbook. I said, okay, that's cool. So I added an audio lesson that went deeper into each of the five S's. After the video, I wrote up a workbook. And by then I knew how to make a fancy workbook in Canva. And then after that, I added a guided meditation that I had recorded. So Now I had five video lessons. Five audio lessons, a 12 or 14 page workbook, and a guided meditation that was 10 or 12 minutes. I sent it back to my friend. She said, you've got it now, you're set. And so I put a price tag on it of $47. But what I do is when I promote it to my teacher friends, or, you know, I call them my teacher friends, but my teacher audience, I always give them $10 off right off the bat. So they're always at $37. But I specifically made this course, Instant Zen, applicable to anybody because I knew, like I said, that I was kind of wanting to transition into the corporate sector for a number of reasons. And I wanted this to be a calling card where I could get in front of those people as well. And so, you know, frankly, I mean, if we're talking numbers here's, the thing. Corporate people, A, tend to get paid more than teachers, B, have a little more discretionary money. So they're going to pay $47. And I'm not going to feel bad about not discounting at $10, you know, so. So that was kind of the process, for instance then.

So thank you for sharing that. And let, let me ask you this. And you mentioned earlier that you were kind of transitioning into the corporate world. And I know you have some workshops that you're going to be promoting there. What made you want to go into this different niche? Because it is a different niche. You're gonna be targeting a different target market there. How are you going to transition into working with those folks?

Well, good question. And I've always kind of seen Instant Zen. I mean, it's a great way to bring in a little passive income along the way. But I really see Instant Zen as a calling card for getting those people used to me because they may not know me. And what I also did, which is somewhat related and somewhat not to what we're talking about here, is I launched a podcast called the Zen Professional Moment. And they're very, very short because, you know, I say they don't call it busyness for business is busyness, right? These people are busy. So my episodes are between three and five minutes only. And it's one tool, one strategy, one concept that you can use and implement in your life right now to reduce the stress. So the way I see the funnel going, I'm hoping, I haven't tried this yet, but I'm almost there is I'm going to email HR people and say, hey, look, here's a, here's a podcast. I'm providing value. I'm giving you a resource to give to your people, your employees, your managers, your executives, whatever that will help them kind of avoid burnout and reduce stress and improve their self care. If you want, I can also, if you like that I will give you one free enrollment into Instant Zen, my course, and they can try that. And then if they email back which shows some interest and I give them that online or I give them the code for the online course, then I will say, by the way, I also do workshops if you want to bring me in, and that would be the higher end ticket item. So I'm hoping that process is successful in terms of transitioning into that other sector.

Have you started it yet or are you.

I'm almost there.

Okay.

I'm almost there. Well, the course is made. I have, I want to, I wanted to Get a number of podcast episodes published so that they knew I was serious. And tomorrow I have. Or no, I'm sorry, it's Wednesday. I have scheduled for my first guest on my podcast to record. And then when that's published is probably when I'm going to go ahead and start sending out emails. And I've got the email written, but I wanted to give them something because as a teacher, I get emails all the time about people saying, hey, you know, do you want us to come in and do a presentation in your class? And I delete those immediately because I don't have the authority to have people come in my class or just, you know, random people to do presentations. And plus, I have too much curriculum. I need to get through. I don't have the instructional time. So I thought, well, how can I email them in a way they won't just delete it? And I thought, well, I need to offer them something. And so that's why I started the podcast.

That's a great idea. Let me ask you this, and what do you see as next steps in 2021? I know we're kind of. I know you're transitioning into this new niche. You're going to test it out. What else are you going to do in your business?

Well, I think what we learned in 2020 is you might as well try stuff, because you don't. There's no guarantees about what's going to happen, you know, And I think, you know, it goes back to the idea of. And I can't remember if I said this while we were talking before or during the show, but, you know, it goes back to people saying, you know, if. If this takes off, would you leave teaching? And that's at this point, after 30 years. I'm 57 years old, almost 58. At that point, you know, I'm like, well, I always envision just retiring. And the beautiful thing is, because of my work, helping other teachers and using all those concepts as reminders for me, as I know I'm going to make it to retirement now. So the worst case scenario, which is a great scenario, is I work another or five years as a teacher and then I retire. And I've had a wonderful career teaching students. And that's wonderful. If this corporate thing takes off or if the Zen teacher platform takes off more and I was able to do it full time, I would have an important decision to make. And I think at this point, you know, I had another business mentor of mine. You know, I said, I feel guilty because I love teaching. It's who I am. I don't know that I want to leave. But she said, you know what? You've been doing it for 30 years, Danny. You've done your time. You know, it's okay if, you know, you want to do something else. And she kind of gave me permission to say, if I get to that point, it's okay to walk away because I've done a lot in that realm, and I should be proud of that.

And you certainly have served your students for many, many years.

Thank you.

There you go. Have one last closing question for you.

Sure.

What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

Do it. You know, I mean, it's really kind of that simple is I think there's so much I've learned in the last few years from an entrepreneurial standpoint, because I was as a teacher, I never had to think about being a salesperson or an entrepreneur or anything like that. And what I learned is there's an old saying in business that I've learned is done is better than perfect. And a lot of times, perfectionism is a hindrance. It's just an obstacle. It's a rationalization for not getting your stuff out there. Like I said, there are things about my first courses that I look back on as a creator, as an artist, and go, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I put that out there. But it's still out there and it's still selling, so it doesn't matter what I think. And that's the thing. If the concepts or if the training is valuable to people, they don't care if, you know, I mean, the production values can be a little cheesy. In fact, these days, that's kind of expected because I'm on my laptop right now. People are shooting video with their iPhones. I mean, that's just the world that we live in. So don't be afraid. Just do it. That's my advice.

And I think that's a great point is you see kind of these production departments from these corporations that have millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of marketing budget, and it looks like they have all this, you know, carefully curated content. And the reality is people aren't looking for that, and they're certainly not looking for that from you or me.

So I look more skeptically at those people, to be honest with you. I'm like, why are you so slick?

There you go.

That's a red flag to me for sure.

And, Dan, can you tell people where they can find you?

Sure. Probably the best thing to do is to go to my two websites and there's one kind of for each platform is the zenteacher.com if you're interested in the educational side of things, and the Zen professional.com if you're interested in the corporate side of things. And I really want to focus on the workshops with the Zen Professional. Again. The Instant Zen course would be kind of a calling card for that. But for the teachers, the Instant Zen course is really a tool in their toolbox. And so I think that's what's lovely is that it really has two purposes and it's and it's can help a lot of people. So those two websites I think are good. And also Twitter is the Zen Teacher and Instagram isenteacher. I guess the was taken on that.

One but very good. And I will make sure that all of those links are in the show notes so people can find you course creators. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any questions about Course in a Box which is offered on AppSumo, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Dan. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.