Danny Iny 00:01
Okay, this is course lab and our guest today is Jonathan levy Levy. Okay, guys, take it away. Hello and welcome to course lab, the show that teaches creators like you how to make better online courses. I'm Danny, the founder and CEO of mercy. And I'm here with my co host, APE crystal, the co founder of resumo. Hey there Danny. In each episode, of course lab we showcase a course and creator who is doing something really interesting either with the architecture of their course or the business model behind it or both.
Today we welcome Jonathan levy onto the show. Jonathan is a best selling author and the creator of superhuman enterprise, enterprise Academy
00:43
enterprises Academy is probably better.
Danny Iny 00:47
Today we welcome Jonathan levy on to the show, Jonathan is the best selling. Today we welcome Jonathan levy on to the show. Jonathan is a best selling author and the creator of superhuman Academy. He's helped over 250,000 people in becoming super learners. Jonathan, welcome to the show.
01:06
Thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Danny Iny 01:08
So 30,000 feet, who are you? What do you do? How did you come to me doing it tell us the whole story.
01:14
Oh, that is a long story. And I recently heard a talk about being a good guest on podcast interviews, and they're like, don't talk for five minutes straight. So I'm going to try not to. But I would classify myself as a serial entrepreneur and lifelong learner. Growing up, I was not a prolific learner, I was not a confident learner. And at a certain turning point in my life, I learned that I was a fantastic entrepreneur. Because I didn't fit into other boxes that other people fit into. And then at a different point in my life, I discovered that learning is a skill that you can learn. And since then, I have learned my way into a lot of different businesses and opportunities and ideas, from books, to podcasts, to YouTube channels, on all kinds of topics from accelerated learning itself to the things that I've had the pleasure of learning, such as personal fitness, such as productivity, 3d printing, Bitcoin, anything that I'm passionate about learning I love to learn and then teach, which your audience I'm sure will know is also one of the best ways to solidify your learning.
Danny Iny 02:25
Yeah, so tell us about the training that you've developed under the umbrella of superhuman Academy. I know it's broad, but let's focus in on specifically the accelerated learning stuff.
02:36
Yeah. So in 2013, December, I didn't know what I was going to do, and decided that this online course thing would be really, really interested, I had taken one online course by Matan Grifoll, it was a one month Ruby on Rails course. And I thought, hey, this is an amazing racket, you create the content once and you sell it repeatedly. And you know, this would be a really cool thing to do. And if I could just cover my rent, which at the time, I think was like $1,000 a month, until I have my next business opportunity, that would be really great. Now, about a year prior to that, I had hired two private tutors to help me with learning memory speed reading. And they were a couple that had done some work in Israel with students with learning disabilities. So the wife taught me a lot of memory techniques, the husband taught me a lot of speed reading techniques. And I had referred a ton of people to them throughout business school, because people would say, Hey, why didn't Why did you leave the exam in the middle? And I'd be like, because I finished the exam in the middle. Or, you know, oh, my gosh, we got home at 4am. Last night. I'm sure nobody read the case study. And I'm like, I read the case study. So people would ask me and I would refer to them and at a certain point, they reached their kind of limit of how many clients they could take on. And I approached them and said, hey, what if I took your materials and built upon it with all the things that I've learned in the last year researching and taking an interest in learning and memory, and we partnered and I created an online course. So I launched that first online course, in 2013. By the second month, I mean, I applied what I what I teach, so I learned everything I could about creating online courses and video editing and the million other things you need to know to launch an online course. And by the second month, it was paying two and a half times my rent. By the fourth month, it was paying five times my rent. And it just kind of took off from there. And from there, I built more courses took me a long time to figure out if one course is good, two courses is better. So it took me about a year and a half to realize, hey, I could do more courses. But then it just over the course of eight years became courses, podcasts, books, YouTube channels, and on and on and on and on.
Danny Iny 04:54
So in what ways cuz you've been doing courses for going on like eight years now. In what ways? Have your courses stayed consistent with the template of the first thing you ever created? And in what ways have you changed, evolved adapted? Either because you've learned more or because the environment has changed, and you've responded to it?
05:15
Yeah, that is a phenomenal question. So I think one thing that I did very, very well in the beginning, is I kind of realized, and I don't know how I happened upon this, but I kind of realized that the magic in an online course was not the nuggets of information. It was how they were presented. And later when I would think about this, and I would coach and I would take on clients and help them with their online courses. I put language around this feeling and idea, and I call it a curated learning journey. And the idea is that anyone can learn anything for free on YouTube, or podcasts like this one, or, you know, all the millions of free Kindle books, all the information is there. And essentially what people are paying for is the curated experience of what to do in what order, and make sure that it all works together with all the other things that they taught and take all the guesswork out of the learning. I always like to joke, if you want to figure out how to make, you know, an ICBM, I'm pretty sure you could figure it out on YouTube, like, all the information is out there, and it's free. So what I always tell people is, when you're selling an online course, what you're selling is the experience, the curation and the journey, that is going to lead people to the outcome with a high probability of success. And I think I figured that out really, really early on. And I just double down on that time and time again, my courses, I don't write a single word until I have an outline from top to bottom. And I go through that outline, and I feel, you know, how am I going to feel at each chapter after someone has learned X? What are the questions in their mind? And can I answer those questions before they have the opportunity to get frustrated? What has changed? Obviously, video production quality changed a lot over the years from the I put a towel over my MacBook Pro for my first you know, video, so there would be less echo, and I use the MacBook Pro itself. For the webcam and the microphone. It was awful. I taped a bag onto a desk lamp for my light and light box. So that all changed a lot. And I think what changed a lot as well was the resources. So having PDFs having a ton, as I learned more about learning, I realized, having a lot of hands on was very, very important. Tons of PDFs, tons of supplemental reading tons of weave and built out an entire game server where people can log their scores, check their reading speed, check their memory test challenge themselves. So a lot of interactivity built into the programs.
Danny Iny 08:00
Yeah. What were some of the key things that you learned about learning that inform your thinking about online courses that in your surveying of the market? It's like most people don't seem to understand this?
08:15
Yeah, that's a really great question, Danny. So one of the things that I happened upon pretty early on as I took an interest in learning, after doing the program with these two mentors, is I discovered this guy by the name of Malcolm Knowles. And no one talks about him because he didn't have a PhD. And he, you know, I don't know why people don't talk about it. But he came up with these five principles of what he called andragogy. Not androgyny. andragogy the science of adult learning. And I think he was like the director of a YMCA, to give you context of, you know, you find genius things in in all sorts of places. And he talks a lot about the science of how the adult brain learns differently than the child's brain. And one of the most important, if not, the most important thing that I took away from that is that adults need to know why, right? It's the Simon Sinek thing, start with why but in this case, it's not about leadership. It's about motivating yourself to learn, adults need to know why they also need to know how this fits into the rest of their worldview. So you need to connect it back to their existing knowledge. They need to know practical application. So the y cannot be for an adult, hey, this is going to make you a more rounded person, hey, this might come in use one day, they need actual practical application. So from the beginning, I put that into my courses, even if the why is hey, there's going to be a quiz at the end of this section. And you can't move on in this course unless you pass that quiz. So you really need to pay attention here. But ideally, I go with the Y every single one of my courses. Before you can even take the lectures. I Have you do a free writing exercise? Which says, for example, in my productivity course, why do you want to be more productive? What is that going to actually do for you? And people need to think it through. And sometimes people have told me, Hey, you know what, I took that first lesson. And I decided to put this on hold, because I wanted to be more productive, because I thought that'd be cool. But my reasons weren't that good enough, it was. So I'd have more time to sit on YouTube every single day. But those who do channel in and say, you know, this, for me really, is about the fact that I don't feel that I'm involved enough with my kids, or this, for me really is about the fact that I haven't seen my girlfriend in, you know, weeks, because I'm working so late, that deep y is going to inform and impact the way that they go through the entire course. So that's a big one for me.
Abe Crystal 10:50
Can you talk more about how did you actually apply those principles? So can maybe give us some sort of case studies or examples? Yeah, you put those into, into practice?
11:01
Absolutely. So outside of just putting it directly into the course I try to start every learning challenge with that. And it's, it's, it's a little bit almost informed by kind of, I'm a student of marketing, as I think we probably all are as entrepreneurs, and not selling the feature, but selling the benefit. And I do that to myself. And I encourage my students to do that as well. Right. So I'll take the example of 3d printing, which is something I'm super interested in, bordering on obsessed with, because I love creating, and I'm a creator, as I think, again, all entrepreneurs are. And when I started that out, it wasn't about I'm gonna learn this so that I can make whatever I want. That's like a very kind of a more fiscal, it was more like, there are hundreds of little individual things in my life and in my house that I could fix or make or create. You know, before we hit record, I showed you all this, this amazing, I love to film and I love to create content. And I created all these amazing accessories for all my camera equipment. And I could make custom trash bins for all the rooms in my house. So it fits in the little notion, niche and look. So it was about figuring out like, Why exactly do I want to learn this. And there have been other cases. In my life, I am far from perfect when it comes to learning where I wanted to learn Russian because I wanted to challenge and I'm interested in it. And I that lasted for about two years. And then I kind of dropped by the wayside, because that's enough to get you motivated to a certain extent. But it's not enough to get you to spend eight to 10 hours a week learning a language for five or six years. So I find my success is directly correlated to how well I do that preparatory work around the why.
Abe Crystal 12:51
Other Other examples come to mind or other ways that you've applied some of those other principles of andragogy that you mentioned.
12:58
Yeah. So in my courses, I always try to get people applying as quickly as possible and applying in ways that are meaningful to them. Right. So as I mentioned, we built a an interactive game server. But I tell people, this is an exercise of last resort. What I'd rather you do is find something that matters to you, because not everyone, you know, we've all seen the TED talk, I think by Joshua for where he has you memorize his TED talk without you even knowing it. And we've many of us, read his book where he has you memorize his grocery list without you even knowing it. And that might not be relevant to you. So I try to tell people, hey, I want you to pick things that are going to be powerful and relevant to you. For entrepreneurs, it might be hey, I want you to memorize all the different names of all the kids of all your employees. And for others, it may be the grocery list. And for others, it may be memorizing you know, your kids social security numbers if you don't have them memorized. So finding that and actually baking that into the course that you need to take what you learned, but apply it to things that matter to you, not to me, not to the author, not the other people in the course who are sharing great results on Facebook, take what you learned and put it into things that matter for you. Because that's going to trigger that immediate and pressing need and personal relevance that Knowles talks about. And people who do that, instead of just going the easy route and saying, Oh, well, you know, they gave me this game server. So I'm just gonna go online and play these games and memorize, you know, different shapes or cards or orders of words. It's not relevant. So some students or some cases, I try to give a ton of examples, right. So if you you know, find yourself in a lot of social situations, learn how to memorize a deck of cards, it's not hard. If you are single learn how to memorize a phone number and you know, play this gag of like, Hey, give me your phone number. I promise I won't write it down. But if I remember it, that I'm going to call you and we're gonna go on a date, find whatever it is that's going to be interesting, engaging, and most importantly, valuable to your day to day life and apply it to that
Danny Iny 15:01
Jonathan, I wanted to shift gears for a second and talk about the business side of things. So I know that early on, you built these courses that you put on the Udemy platform, and you were featured very prominently there. And you made a ton of money selling courses that were very inexpensive. And the algorithms have changed. And so you're not able to make that work in the same way anymore. Talk about that journey, talk about what was, what was the reality, then what does it change to now? And how has it informed the way you think about pricing and marketing courses?
15:35
Yeah, so I did very, very well on Udemy for many years. And I think it's a, there's a trade off there, right, because when I was solely devoted on Udemy, there is a trade off. But also, it's become more crowded, when I was solely devoted on Udemy, I continued to do well. But as soon as you shift your efforts elsewhere, whether that's a podcast, or a book, or a premium course, you're letting your foot off the gas. So I think there are probably people who are still doing very, very well on Udemy. And there is a case for that. But if you want to do more, and you want to have a brand, not just a very small corner of a very large platform, and that can mean anything, right, that can mean a mailing list, that can mean a YouTube channel. It's very hard to make it work as anything more than just lead gen and brand awareness today. And they've made it progressively harder, largely in part, thanks to me breaking rules that didn't yet exist, and then creating rules because of me, they've made it very, very hard to move people off platform. Even if it's for, hey, I have a podcast, check out my podcast. So it's still doable. And I think Udemy is a great place to build your audience, if you're going to do a YouTube or a podcast, and you want to be able to shift weight from A to B and I used to joke, you know, like I had 350,000 students on Udemy. When I create a podcast, there's no way that podcast is not getting to new and noteworthy for six weeks straight, because I'll just send the messages saying, hey, there's a free podcast. Same with YouTube channel, same with anything that's unpaid. But then when you want to launch a premium course, it's a grind from the get go. So I think there's a case for it. And, and at the same time, it's become so much more crowded. And as you said, algorithms change. Today, I find I feel strange telling you this data because you're the authority that I that I listened to on pricing and courses and everything, I just found that, at least with paid traffic, I couldn't make things worth work for less than $500 just didn't happen. And I wanted, I would be happy to sell my course for $500. You know, given the amount of effort that it put into a next level course, but just because of the economics of how Facebook works, I couldn't bring in a customer for less than that. So I think on the other side of things, if you're not going to have a platform that is going to push you to the relevant customer, you better have another way of getting really, really targeted and affordable leads. And I think you all have done a really, really good job with just the partnerships and affiliates. I don't know if you do paid ads, but
Danny Iny 18:34
very little we continually aspire to be better at those things.
18:38
Yeah, and it's hard. It's incredibly hard. In 2017, I had a funnel, a webinar funnel, which would take $1 and convert that dollar into $3 within 90 minutes. That's a phenomenal funnel. I mean, I would put $1 into ADS and $3 would come out. And then Cambridge Analytica happened. And Facebook cut off all of the look alike audience at the knees, it became much less effective. I used to be able to say hey, here's 100 people who bought my course and they've given me 1000 People who were psychographically exactly like them. That changed in 2017 at least for me. And we hired marketing agency after marketing agency to try and chase that dragon. And I was never able to make it worth the while at $500 and even at $1,000 I was still putting in $1 and bringing out $1.20 Which after you pay staff and yourself and all these other expenses is really not it's not all that good at all.
Abe Crystal 19:44
So yeah, just this is just a fun speculation. But if you were starting a brand new online course initiative today, given all these changes in the marketplace and Udemy and Facebook, where did you start where Where would you look to, to build a business and to get customers for course today?
20:05
Well, I'll tell you what, eight weeks ago, I probably would have told you affiliates. But I recently had an incredible experience on YouTube. I started a 3d printing channel, just as you know, I imagine a lot of your audience is further back in the process than I was with superhuman. So I think this is more relevant. If anything, I started a 3d printing channel, I had zero followers. And I did not use my existing audience whatsoever. I mean, I had nothing. Except, you know, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success, I have eight years experience in producing super high quality video content. And I also know a couple good video editors that are willing to moonlight for me when they're not doing superhuman Academy stuff. That was it. And that's not wildly expensive, you know. And, in eight weeks, I'm already at 9000 subscribers, average video is getting 70 to 80k views. Revenue is pouring in already. And people are, I don't have a website set up. And people are like checking out my personal website and sending donations and emailing me. And so I have to think that if I were starting out today, it may not be YouTube, maybe it would be Tik Tok. If I were a different generation, maybe it would be Twitter. But I have to think that I would start out with just doing super high quality organic content, even if it's on medium, even if it's, you know, another platform that I don't control. But just based on that experience, you know, if you had told me that I'd have an a super engaged audience of 9000 people and 250,000 people getting access, I mean, watching my content in a given month, two months in. I mean, it took me years to get to the point where I could access 250,000 people on Udemy, like, like five or six years. My mailing list is still not at 250,000 people and none of my socials are at 250,000 people. So I think I might start there. And also YouTube, Tik Tok, Twitter, a lot of them are much more lenient, in how you can engage your audience. And they allow you to link off site, which is super important. They allow you to have other revenue streams. You know, if you want to link to a Patreon, if you want to link to an online course, if you want to talk about your paid products, they allow you to do that in a way that Amazon Kindle does not in a way that podcasts is not as effective because people are listening, and they're not gonna, they're not likely to click in a way that Udemy definitely is not going to allow you. I might start there, to be honest with you a bit. That's, by the way, also a note on that is, if you're going to be doing online courses, you better get real good at producing video, and making engaging video, or good at writing for someone else who's going to do it for you. And YouTube, the stakes are zero, people upload such garbage on there, and it performs. So if you're going to learn, I think it's better to learn on a YouTube than it is have people paying you for your first course, which is the first time you've ever stood in front of a camera and be disappointed. And then you sour a customer relationship for life. Now, that's not saying give away all your stuff for free for years. But I think YouTube is an amazing testing ground or tick tock or Instagram video or whatever. But I think free video, you know, as it as a sandbox is pretty phenomenal as well.
Danny Iny 23:48
Nice. That was fantastic. Thank you. I don't I don't have more questions. I mean, we could keep talking about this for a very, very long time, as we have on many occasions. But I mean, for purposes of this conversation, I'm really happy with what we've got. Do you have anything else you want to ask? Or do you want to read us up?
Abe Crystal 24:06
Now good. Is there anything else you want to share with our audience or any other lessons learned for other course creators?
24:15
No, but I will say actually, I will say that. And this is a total unsolicited plug. And I hope I'm not going to embarrass Danny. But I had an eye opening moment as well. And this is maybe kind of like a call to action and a cautionary tale for people is Danny did a two or three I think it was a three day free training for my audience. And I tuned in because I'm in the online course industry. And I at the end of three days was like oh, that's why my sales have declined because I realized the market has, I think maybe COVID was a big part of it. People are getting more and more comfortable being on Zoom. And just the proliferation of have all these mass junk courses on like Udemy. But the market has changed and high touch is the way to be now. And if I were, if I were actively working on changing my courses and redoing them and all that kind of stuff, instead of setting out into new brands and new opportunities and stuff, that's where I would be focusing my attention is how do I add interactivity to my courses? And as Danny Says, make them hybrid? Because my entire business was structured around, how can I create a course so perfect, that anticipates every needs so much, that I have to do zero human interaction and the customer is still 100% satisfied. And I did everything in my power to achieve that goal from adding in course discussion. So people answer their own questions, to hiring, you know, course cheerleaders that go into the courses and answer questions for me as much as possible. But no live video, no q&a, no office hours, none of that. And I think the industry has changed and moved on from that a lot.
Abe Crystal 26:07
That's great. Thank you. Jonathan levy is the best selling author and entrepreneur behind superhuman Academy. To learn more about him and how to unlock your own super learner abilities. Head on over to superhuman academy.com That's super human academy.com.
Danny Iny 26:27
Great. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. My pleasure. Yeah, that was fascinating. You got me googling 3d printing? You lit a fire on Google search on YouTube.
26:41
Yeah, search on YouTube. The next layer. I think that while I'm producing that we're five years I was thinking the other day, like how far are we from just me buying one of these for my mom and putting it on her desk and I think we're about five years away. Five years. Okay. Yeah, I mean, now you've got to be a tinkerer. If you've got a little bit of if you're handy and you're comfortable taking apart mechanical parts that get stuck where they are now. I just had