Excel Expert Billy Wigley Explains the Importance of Having Systems for Your Business

Billy Wigley
Aloha kakahiaka, Jeremy Deighan. This is Billy Wigley coming at you live from the 9th island, Las Vegas, Nevada. Whoo. How you doing, Jeremy?

Jeremy Deighan
Good, man. How are you doing today? I'm glad to have you on the podcast.

Billy Wigley
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. And we've got a lot to talk about ever since this pandemic hit. It's made me get into my business.

Jeremy Deighan
Very good, man. I'm excited to hear about that. If you don't know Billy Wigley, he is from Don't Get Mad Get Skills. And he's on the podcast with us today to talk about his online course journey. So Billy, how did you get started in online business?

Billy Wigley
I got tired of traveling. I was a professional speaker; traveling, teaching people Excel, giving all-day six-hour seminars, going to four different cities a week, doing about almost 100 cities a year sometimes. At 9:00 am, the seminar starts. I'm teaching Excel until 4:00 pm when it ends.

And then I'm packing my bags heading to next city. And I'm sitting there doing what I call infotainment because I'm teaching Excel, doing what I'm passionate about. But at the same time, you're speaking to sell. It's infotainment.

I'm teaching you some skills, but I gotta give you some resources that you can continue learning because you're going to forget. How much do you remember when you go to a seminar? Do you remember 100% of the seminar?

Jeremy Deighan
Usually, just the last sentence of the last day.

Billy Wigley
When there are breaks, and when there's lunch, and when we're done.

Jeremy Deighan
Right.

Billy Wigley
So I need to give you something to take with you to reinforce the learning. So the companies that would contract me to go speak, they would be relying on me to sell. So more than being a trainer, speaker, what I am is a sales professional.

And as I'm teaching you, the whole way through teaching, I'm plugging in the products, the resources that are going to help you continue the learning.

I started getting really good at developing the techniques. I started studying a little bit of neuro linguistic programming, and understanding the chemical cocktail that you can create in somebody's mind that'll lead them to purchase by using specific language.

And I was getting pretty good at that. My sales weren't as great as they could be. And I started to realize that it's because I don't like the product. I like speaking and I like teaching, but the products that I had to sell always felt like I could do better.

My sales started to decline. And I got tired of traveling. You know, it's pretty cool when you first start traveling, the first couple years, but after five years of 100 cities a year and you pretty much keep going to the same places over and over, and you don't even know your neighbor.

I knew the people at DSA, the people at the Southwest Airlines counter, Delta counter, everybody at the airport were my friends. I thought, "I gotta quit doing this." So I started making just-for-fun videos on YouTube because I wanted a YouTube channel.

So I started making videos on YouTube of Excel: the elements of the Excel screen, how to write a formula, how to do a Vlookup, these different things related to Excel. And I was just putting it on my YouTube channel.

And I started thinking, "There's got to be a way I can make some money from this." Because I was just doing it for fun. And then I thought, well, there was this, it wasn't Skillshare. It was something else before. It started right about the same time as Udemy.

And they did pictures, sold photographs, and then they had like skill bids or skill success. I forget what the name of that website was. So they allowed you just to put those small courses up there, kind of like Skillshare and with no quality control or anything.

So I just started putting courses up there. Well, not even courses, just videos. And then next thing you know, I'm getting $2, $3, $4 and I thought, "Wow, that's pretty cool." And then some of the people that were in there, some of the instructors that had their courses in there, Alan Hill was one of them.

Jeremy Deighan
Old school.

Billy Wigley
Old school, man. And that's before we knew anything about Alan. We just knew he was rocking. And then he starts talking about Udemy. I thought, "Oh, cool. Let me go find out about Udemy."

So Udemy was like a step up because now I had to go through some quality control. I got to actually put together a course. So I'm thinking, "What course can I put?" So I got involved in the Udemy Facebook group and started talking to other instructors. "I want to have a course and I've got all these videos. What should I do?"

And people said, "You got videos, make a course. Just put them together and just put something out there and just see what happens. And start figuring out from there." And so I thought, "Well, I got all these videos that I made of all these different Excel skills."

So I created a course called Excel Shortcuts, Tips, and Tricks. So it was just a combination of a bunch of different videos which all could stand on their own.

And the next thing you know, I started to work on okay, how do I get this to sell in Udemy? And that's when I started figuring out optimizing for the Udemy search engine.

Billy Wigley
So I'd be changing my title and then searching for it, and then changing my title again and searching, changing some content and searching again; trying to keep myself appearing higher and higher up.

Then after that, I started seeing, okay, there's a little bit of money coming in here. I can see how I could turn this into a business where I can actually make a living.

So I was so sick of traveling and teaching six-hour seminars every day that I just said, "You know what, I got enough money saved up to last me a little bit over six months in case I don't get any income," and I just quit.

I just changed my audience. I didn't change what I was doing. I didn't change my act, I changed my audiences is what I did. I took my act from being public with the audience that my client was choosing for me, and I went to go look for my own audience with my same act.

So that's when I started working on Udemy. And when I quit my contract, I just stayed home and I started making a course. I laid it out really good, structured it out really good. I mean, I spent six months creating this course.

I burned through all my savings completely and then I finally got it on Udemy. Then I got into the Udemy world. I stopped thinking about where else can I have this product? It's all going to be right here in Udemy.

Then I got picked up by the Udemy for Business. Then it was starting to be a lot of work and I'd burned through all my reserves. So then I had to start working. I started driving Uber and Lyft and doing Amazon package deliveries; everything that I could do that would still allow me time to work on my business.

Then after a while, what happened is I just started making regular monthly income on its own automatically just sitting there, but I started getting disappointed. I started thinking, "My product's not that good. It should be selling. There's all these other people around me that they're all cranking, making a bunch of money."

Alan Hill was making tons of cash. Jerry Banfield was making tons of cash. The same scenario: comparing, which I should have never done because you don't know what their situation is on the other side.

Jeremy Deighan
That's right.

Billy Wigley
But I started feeling sad, depressed, like my stuff's not good, it's not selling. And instead of investing more time into learning more about how to sell my course and if it is the right product, I started spending time just trying to survive, trying to make money to pay my bills,.

I started breaking away from investing the time I needed to invest. In the meantime, every month, I'm getting a little bit more and more money from Udemy, without me even touching it. That's the only thing I knew about my course on Udemy was like on the 8th, I'd be looking to see if I got paid.

It started out like $100, then $500, then $900. So it always came in handy. But I still wasn't even touching it. For two years I didn't touch any of it. It was just like dividends coming to me.

Then the pandemic hit. So now I got to sit here at home, in my home office, and there's nothing else I can do except focus on my business. At the same time, I'm sure you've got some courses on Udemy. You started to notice, wow, Udemy just got busy.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah.

Billy Wigley
Everything online just like blew up. My income doubled.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it's taken off lately, for sure. And like you said, that passive residual income from Udemy is great. How many courses did you put on Udemy? Was it just one or did you have multiple courses?

Billy Wigley
I had four and the flagship course, the one that's 75 videos; it's about almost six hours long. And it's my flagship, it's like my best one; it's not the one that sells the most. The one that sells the most by far is the one that I thought was my crappiest of all.

It's got some business on it. I look at it and go, "Man, that's before I even barely knew how to make a video." Like, I'm using a microphone that's on my laptop and everything. That course by far outperforms all my other courses. And it's the one that I thought was the crappiest of all.

Jeremy Deighan
Now, let's pause here for a quick second. Why do you think that that course has done better than the course that you spent all that time and hard work on?

Billy Wigley
Oh, number one, it's because of the topic. People are looking for shortcuts, tips and tricks. And they just love going in there and watching a couple of videos there and then boom. They probably never even look at the rest of it. They just need to get that one or two videos out of there.

Jeremy Deighan
Gotcha.

Billy Wigley
And it's not too long. I think it's because it's not that long.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah. I noticed that myself as I did the same thing: a Photoshop course. It's like a 16-hour course and I thought it was going to go bananas because I'd put so much effort into it. And it doesn't perform as well as some of my other courses. And I wonder if it's because it just too much information; information overload.

Billy Wigley
But there's also another thing, though. That Excel Tips and Tricks course, the first course I put on Udemy, I invested a lot of time into the copy, content, the wording, the Udemy algorithm. I spent a lot of time optimizing it for Udemy, that first course.

The second course, I didn't spend so much time because after six months of working on it, I was just happy to record the last video, man, and get it up there. Now that course has the highest rating. My Shortcut, Tips, and Tricks doubled the sales, but it's not as highly rated as my Seven Steps to Excel Success course.

One of the things that you got to really do that I've learned for selling is consistency and you got to believe. Believe in yourself, believe in your product, and believe that you're going to be able to achieve what you want to achieve. You got to believe it.

I lost faith in my products. That's why I wasn't in touch with it. I started doing other things and I was even thinking about applying for a job someplace. And then when the pandemic hit and I'm able to spend more time in my courses, I started answering reviews, responding to reviews that were being left on my courses.

And the reviews were all amazing. I was like, "Wow, why wasn't I reading this when I was sad a year ago?" They were all awesome. "I've learned so much," all these great reviews.

Then I started looking at some of my videos of my pride and joy course and I was going, "Wow, I watched the seven-minute video and it felt like it was two minutes long." I was like, "Man, I even like my own videos." Usually, I don't like my own videos.

So you got to believe in your product. So now that I've got my product, it's market-tested already. For a couple of years, it's been out in the marketplace, it's selling good in Udemy only, though. So I'm not generating that much income.

I don't think I'm able to sell it on Udemy for what it's really worth. So then I've been wanting for years to get my own platform so I can have my own students, my own customers, everything, I could control it all myself.

So I started experimenting with Teachable and Thinkific, and all these different ones. And I finally settled on Zenler. And I kind of hung out with Zenler for a little while and then eventually, it evolved into New Zenler. Then now I've got everything in one place. I've got all marketing; I got everything all in one place.

Now, I'm putting my courses up there. So I've got two courses on there. All of a sudden, I realized, how come I'm not getting sales? How come I'm not getting any traffic? And then I realized, as I started to learn more about SEO, which I don't know anything, I'm just now taking free classes from Neil Patel. And as soon as I can, I'm getting me a coach to work with me to help me flatten this learning curve.

I just lost track of my thoughts there thinking about a coach.

Jeremy Deighan
Well, you were talking about putting all your stuff on New Zenler as your own platform. I wanted to just mention real quick that you were talking about having a belief in your product.

And I think that's important because it sounds like when you were traveling and doing the in-person events, you started the podcast off by saying that you lost faith in those products. You lost the belief in those products, and your sales started going down. And it sounds like this happened again with your courses. Like you said, you lost belief in those.

So you regain your belief and then you decide that you're going to put them up on your own platform, and you went with New Zenler. So how does that look now on that platform? You said you had two courses on there?

Billy Wigley
I have two because that's all I've uploaded so far. Can you believe that my very best course, my highest selling course, best of all time, I have not yet uploaded it on my own website?

Jeremy Deighan
Why would you not start with that one?

Billy Wigley
Exactly. What would I not start with that one? It's because I always thought in my own mind, not the customers mind. See, that's the problem, I switched to my own website, and I started building it for myself

Jeremy Deighan
That's good.

Billy Wigley
Instead of going, "Who's buying this? Am I buying it?"

Jeremy Deighan
It's funny because people will ask me a question and I'll say, "I am not your audience. Don't ask me that question. Go ask the people who would buy your course and ask that question." Like, I'm not buying it. And that's a good point.

We get so focused on what we want and what we think is best that we lose track of finding out what the people who would buy would actually be interested in.

Billy Wigley
Yeah, exactly. So you got to remember who's your audience and write for them. But when we sit here in our little world, sometimes we get so into our little world that we get stuck in our little world. That's why you got to take breaks.

So I got a couple courses up on Udemy and I'm wondering, "Why am I not getting any traffic?" The only traffic that I'm getting is traffic that I'm specifically forcing to go there but there's no conversions happening. And I'm not doing any paid advertising because I don't know anything about that yet.

Suddenly, I realized, wow, the content, the copy for my landing pages for my courses in my own store is optimized for the Udemy search engine. That's why I started learning more about Google SEO and Facebook advertising. You really seriously want to get into it. You got dedicate a lot of time.

So because there's so much online going on and so many webinars, I started seeing a lot of webinars pop up. I thought, "Well, I've got my system where I can do live classes, attach to my courses. I can do live webinars. I can do live streaming in my store." So I decided I'm going to start.

Now I'm working on optimizing the content on my landing pages. And I created a webinar for macros. I just said, "I'm going to make a little short 30-minute mini webinar, structured it real good, get a lot of content in there in 30 minutes and not even feel rushed."

So first thing I did was I decided it's going to be a macros webinar and I set the date. And then I started figuring out now what are the steps that I need to do because I need a system. I always wanted a system, but I never invested the time into developing a system.

So I take out my mind mapping software, and boom, boom, boom, boom, outline my course real quick. Bam, bam, bam, that's going to be the content for the 30-minute course. I already know this content.

Now, let me create my marketing sequence. I had to develop that; my series of emails that I'm going to send out. And as I was putting together my system, I started to realize, okay, now I need to build a separate landing page for this, I need to build this, I need to build this, and all these different things that I couldn't have done five years ago because I didn't have these technical skills.

So I've been able to build technical skills. Now, it's working on the SEO skills and the marketing skills.

Jeremy Deighan
Right, and getting it to convert.

Billy Wigley
Yes. So now I've been able to develop a system, a series of emails that I send out, and a way of tracking everything. I did that first webinar and I got seven people to register. And I only did like a week and a half of trying to get people to sign up. And I have a small list of like 700 people that I've built from personally meeting people.

So that's what I've been marketing to, I've been, little by little, picking up other people on my list. Then I put the free giveaway thing on my website. So I've learned that.

Well, continuing with my system, though, once I did the webinar, there was the last steps of my system; the post-webinar follow ups to the people that attended and to the people that did not attend. That led to me building a webinar page, added that to my website.

So when you go to dontgetmadgetskills.com and you click on Webinars, it's going to start showing you all the webinars that I've done. That's where they're going to be residing. Then eventually, that is evergreen.

Because the contents for those webinars, it turns out, is pretty good. The first one I just did that's on my website right now, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm usually not happy with any video I record ever. And this one as soon as I was done with that webinar, I saw the recording, I was like, "Wow, that's good. I'm really getting into it. I liked it. I watched it like three times in a row."

So all those webinars, those are all good content. My first webinar on macros, I don't have a macros course. I think I only have one video that teaches macros in all my courses.

So after I went through this whole exercise, now I got a system in place that I'm going to keep tweaking. But that also taught me, why did I do a macro webinar? I've not got anything on macro to sell. All I got to sell is at the end of the webinar, I just go, "Hey, let me show you my website. Come on here." Just trying to get attention.

Jeremy Deighan
And there might be a disconnect there because if someone came to learn macros, and then you send them to your site and you don't have anything on macros, then you've lost that interest of that person.

Billy Wigley
Yeah, and within the conversation I throw in, "I'm going to send you a follow up email showing you how you can schedule one-on-one time with me so I can help." So now that I've got this system in place, I have to go through the motions. It took me like two weeks to develop this basic system. Now, I've got my next webinar is pivot tables. Well, guess what? I have a pivot tables' course.

Jeremy Deighan
Nice.

Billy Wigley
So I'm just going to teach highlights of the pivot table course, some skills that I know that people want to know about pivot tables. Pivot tables, I know, is a mystery to people.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it is to me. It sounds like something I need, but I can't ever figure it out.

Billy Wigley
But it's easy. Once I show you, it's a filter on steroids. That's all it is. So now I've got this system in place that I'm going to plug in. Now I know what to do. I have an algorithm for what I need to do for my next webinar and then keep improving upon that.

You just got to be doing it all the time. It seems like I quit for two years. I quit my business for two years but it kept growing on its own. And there's things that I had invested in like AppSumo, like TubeBuddy that I got, and I got
Amplifr.

TubeBuddy is great for helping me optimize my YouTube channel. And then
Amplifr is helping me with my social media. It distributes your posts. You can schedule a whole month of posts in advance and all that. So those I purchased in the past, they're coming in handy now. The investments that I made in the past are coming in handy now.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it sounds like you, you got the foundation started. And now it's just building up that house. And I want to talk about your YouTube strategy because I know you do a lot of YouTube and I want to hear what's working for you on there.

But I want to take a moment real quick just to point something out. Listening to your story, at the beginning, you mentioned that it takes a lot of time. And that is true. Learning and implementing these things can take a lot of time. Setting up a sales funnel, email automation, the emails that you have to send out, the content you create, the system that you're building does take time.

But the beauty of it is once it's built and it's refined and it works, it becomes that passive income generator. And you have more control. So a lot of people go to these marketplaces like Skillshare and Udemy because they already have the system and they already have the students coming in. But you have very little control over that platform.

Now, when you go to your own platform, you have way more control. It's going to take a little longer, but once you build that system, once you have that system in place and your webinar is converting and your products are converting and now you're just sending traffic, you won't have to worry about that anymore. You already had that foundation built out.

Billy Wigley
Absolutely. You got your system. It's almost like you become an online marketing professional.

Jeremy Deighan
Let's talk about YouTube because you said that you started YouTube first. I know you said you took a break from your business for a little bit. But have you consistently been publishing on YouTube and what things have been working for you on that platform?

Billy Wigley
I have not. I wasn't publishing on anything anywhere. I just stopped. But what I did have that's sometimes giving me an advantage right now is there's so many things that I've been working on at once. I had a guy; he taught me some YouTube strategies.

One of the things that I remember that I really picked up on was you got to get TubeBuddy and then watch my course also. So I was able to get TubeBuddy through one of those AppSumo deals. Now it's more expensive, but I was able to get it.

So YouTube is like a whole other world there. Just recently, now that I'm doing my webinars, I'm going back into YouTube now. And you have to be consistent. You got to be putting up new videos up there and you got to be consistently letting everybody know that you've got new videos up there.

YouTube is something that's just been sitting there for me. It's just a place where I went and put videos and that's just what got me started on everything. Now I'm using YouTube to drive traffic back to back to my site.

Jeremy Deighan
Gotcha. Now, how does that look? Are you sending them to a lead magnet or an offer or are you sending them straight to the courses? How does that look?

Billy Wigley
That's the part that I'm working out right now because it turns out I discovered such a thing called marketing funnels. It's like you said; you have to invest some time. Like when I'm building my system, I got to create a landing page. Before, it would take me a week to make a landing page and then put a tracking pixel? Forget it.

Now I can just whip that out. But there's more stuff I need to learn. Once I get my Don't Get Mad Get Skills site with at least three courses on there, and each one of my courses, the copy is optimized, and I've got this quizzes, and I've got everything working really nicely inside my store. I'm going to invest more time into YouTube.

I mean, I'm still working on YouTube because I got a friend of mine that is obsessed about YouTube. He wishes that I just did YouTube only. So he's always getting upset with me because he's sending me all kinds of keywords that I need to be using and videos that I need to be making. And I'm like, "Man, I'm not a YouTuber."

But YouTube, I think, is really powerful. I think there's a lot of income that can be generated from YouTube. And I think there's a lot of traffic that can go from YouTube to your site. My goal is to make my site like a premium site. Because my course, yeah, you can go to Udemy and get that Seven Step Excel Success course for $5 or $9.99 or whatever, but you're not going to get me.

Jeremy Deighan
That's exactly right.

Billy Wigley
I'm the Pro. I just gave you five hours of knowledge here on this course, but there's 30 years Excel skills in this brain still left. There's 5,000 people that I've trained one on one in person. So that's worth more than five bucks.

Now, I got to communicate. I see the value. Now, how am I going to get my customers to see the value? It's the conversion. Now I'm starting to figure out how to get... because I'm looking at my numbers, I'm starting to see every little thing go up: the visits, the bounce rates going down, all these numbers that I'm beginning to understand now.

Now I'm able to measure. So I'm getting people to visit my website and visit YouTube, but there's no conversions happening. That's the part that I got to start working on. It's just a lot of work. It's everything in one piece, man. But the number one suggestion I can give to anybody is just stick-to-itness.

Jeremy Deighan
I was going to ask you, if you were talking to yourself five years ago or how long you said you've been working at this, what would you tell yourself to focus on? If you could just pick one thing that you thought would really move you along the most, what would that be?

Billy Wigley
Doing something every single day that's going to get you closer to your goal and maintain a positive mental attitude. That's two things that go together.

Jeremy Deighan
Well, I think probably maintaining the positive mental attitude is probably more important, because once that fails, everything else seems to follow.

Billy Wigley
Yeah, that's what happened to me. I just stopped. And it was because of the pandemic that brought me back to my business. And I'm actually doing better now than before.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it's funny how sometimes life can just throw itself at you and make you change course for the better. You might think at the time, like, "Oh, why do I got to be stuck at home all the time?" And here it's knocking on your front door. "Hey, Billy, open up. You can you can start working on your course again."

Billy Wigley
Yeah, and the number two advice, thinking back on points that were like stepping stones where I actually took a leap, and that was every time I talked to somebody that was more experienced than me. Like John, I wish I could remember his last name, the YouTube guy. He gave me a leap.

And then even you. You've just recently reminded me that I have an audience. I'm writing for my audience, I'm not writing for me. You were helping me with my macro webinar. I'm like, "Hey, so what about this?" And you're like, "Hey, what's a macro?" And it made me realize, in my whole promoting this macro webinar, I never mentioned what's a macro. If they already know macros, why would they go see this webinar?

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah. And that comes back to the marketing and learning these things through the process of education and training yourself. Like you said earlier, we get so focused on our own world and what we know as experts, but forget that students, new learners don't understand.

And it's funny because I was talking about this with my wife the other day. She's in the medical field and we were talking about this very same thing. She's been doing this for 10 years and when she does surgeries, which is what her profession is in, it's second-hand nature to do something as simple as putting on gloves and a gown.

But one time, she did it to me and I had no idea what to do. She was holding the glove out, I didn't know I was supposed to put my hand in and then grab it. Like all these different things that are so second-nature to the experts, things that we take for granted, that when we say something like the macro webinar, come learn macros, someone who doesn't understand even what a macro is, that doesn't really speak to them.

So we have to start thinking about the messaging. How do macros help? What can we do with macros that are going to make someone want to watch this webinar? I definitely agree with your second point; just reaching out to people who are on different parts of the road than you are and just gaining that experience from them.

There are so many great people out there that all you have to do is go see what they're doing and see what works and then follow their lead.

Billy Wigley
And I like to exercise, I like to work out, and the very best shape that I've ever been in my life, top shape, like I never thought I could ever be in this shape every in my life was when I had a trainer. And I paid her to train me.

I used to lift really heavy weights, as heavy as I could. And she told me, "No, no, we're going to work on every little weak part that you have and we're going to strengthen that. We're going to use tools to help us build the strength and the solid foundation. And you're not going to use a lot of weight because you're damaging yourself. You're just going to work on your technique."

So her years and years of knowledge just took me from like 10 years, 15 years of me working out and one year working out with here was better than those 10 years. I got better results. And then she got to the point where she couldn't get me any fitter. She said, "I can't do anything else with you."

So she turned me over to a different trainer; a boxing coach. And then he got me into competing in amateur boxing at the master division level. But it's because I invested into paying some people to help me. Now, I know that to get me to the next level, I need a coach.

Jeremy Deighan
I invested in a high-ticket coaching program myself. And it's definitely been life-changing and has opened me up to a whole lot of new ideas. And what's interesting is when you pay money for something, especially for coaching; let's just use coaching for an example, if you spend a good portion of money, which is always the struggle, right? Because it's always like, "I can't afford to pay for a coach."

But the real question is, can you afford not to pay for a coach? How much time, energy, and money are you wasting trying to figure out everything on your own, looking at YouTube videos, where a coach or someone can just point you in the right direction immediately and show you that path, and get you past all that wasted time and energy?

So when you pay for a coaching program or a higher level course or higher-ticketed program, I noticed that two things happen. One, you're paying for the education of that coach or that trainer, or the person who's giving you that information. Two, you are more invested into your success because you've applied a monetary value to it.

So I find that when I put more money into a higher-ticketed coaching program, not only am I paying for that expertise, but I am invested more into my goal because of the money that I put into it.

Billy Wigley
So is the person helping you.

Jeremy Deighan
Right. Exactly, because they're getting more money for the value of their time. So, of course, they're going to give you more one-on-one time and help you out. But just you as a personal experience or me for myself, I just feel like I'm not going to let myself down. I applied for this.

I always use the analogy of like going to college. Because when I went to college, I took out a loan and that money is kind of like in the atmosphere somewhere. It's not tangible. You don't feel it. You're making student payments, but that money is just like it's out there in the world.

But when I took hard-earned cash out of my wallet and paid for coaching program, I've learned more in this span of time than my degree in college because I just feel like I'm even more invested into myself and my success.

Billy Wigley
Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying. I did have fun in college. [inaudible] I was already 30 when I went back to college. So I was paying for it. I was working and learning at the same time. But the first time I was in college, I was just partying.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, when you went back a second time, you were probably much more invested in your success because now you're putting your money into that. It's not just something that you have to go do because you've finished high school.

Billy Wigley
Yeah, exactly. When I was traveling around speaking, there's this one guy. His name is Jamison Dell. His name is known as Mr. Lifestyle. He's the number one trainer, top sales guy, and the number one seminar company on the planet. This guy is super cool.

Well, he's got a system that he developed. I mean, I've helped him in seminars. I've gone there and he creates what's called stampedes into the back of the room. I go there to help him because he always has seminars with more than 150 people. So when he's been in Vegas, I've gone to help him.

And I'm in the back because he needs somebody to collect the sales because he's got so many people buying, he can't do it all himself. So he does his magic. And when it comes time to sell, it's like he flips a switch, and then bam, people are running all the way back to the back. It's literally a stampede of sales, man.

He'll do like 50,000, 20,000 30,000, those big numbers. No one in the company even comes close to doing those numbers that he does. And he coaches also. When I first started, I couldn't afford his coaching because it was like $10,000 I had to pay him. Then he'd fly to a city to watch me on one of my trips, and I couldn't at the time.

But he would say, "Billy, I like you. You can just pay me like 300 bucks and I'll teach you a little something." And every time I would talk to him out, the very next time I'd go on the road, my sales were better.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah. It's funny you talk about the in-person event coaching because I changed my mindset on this when I used to go watch events, conferences and stuff. I was listening to what the speaker was talking about. Hopefully, I get my point across here. But I used to take notes on what they were speaking about.

So if they were speaking about Excel, I was taking notes on Excel. Now, when I watch speakers and conferences and webinars, I'm not paying attention to what they're teaching. I'm paying attention to how they're teaching it. So my notes are why did they ask this question? Why did they say it this way? What emotions or feelings are they drawing out because that is truly marketing?

And we were talking about this before that online course creators, if this isn't going to be a hobby and it's going to be a business for you, you have got to stop being an online course creator, and you have to start being a business person.

You have to start thinking about the online course as just a product, and there are more avenues, more aspects of the business. There's advertising and marketing, messaging and sales, and different things like that. So when I watch speakers now, there's a reason why this guy is getting people to buy.

It's not just the knowledge that he has, but it's the way that he's saying it, the way that he's crafting his presentation and his messaging. And it's so funny now because I even look at speaking differently than I used to in the past.

Billy Wigley
Yeah, Jamie, he has spent years testing out every word that he uses. So he'll look at his sales and he'll look at his reviews at the end of the seminar and he'll think, "Okay, what is one thing that I can change on the next one and then see the results?" He'll change one thing. He doesn't change five things. He only changes one thing.

Jeremy Deighan
Because you wouldn't know what worked and what didn't work.

Billy Wigley
Yeah. And then that guy, whenever I get a chance to go see him, I'm just like you. I just take notes. I'm not even paying attention because I already Excel. He's got two seminars going. He's teaching you excel, but he's doing something else to you.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it's marketing and its emotions and it's the messaging and the offer. And so next time you get to see him, sit down and write down his questions. Then think, why did why did he ask that question? Why did he say that? Why did he present it this way? Why did he talk about this first and this second, and this third?

And you can apply that into your own marketing. You can apply that to your own webinars, and your own courses, and your own landing pages. But yeah, man, it's been a great talk. We should probably wrap it up. I feel like I could talk to you for hours on all this.

Where do you see yourself going forward in the future? What are the main goals that you're trying to accomplish and where do you see yourself? Is it just going to be online courses? Would you like to get back into in-person events? Where do you see yourself maybe five years down the road from now?

Billy Wigley
I only have two goals that I'm focusing on achieving. That's it. I want to get to 1500 bucks a day and I want to move back home to Hawaii. That's all I'm working on right now. Whatever it takes, that's what I'm doing.

Waking up at 5:00 am, spending time putting together all my mind maps, creating content, you know, getting pissed off at Facebook, getting pissed off because I don't understand what the hell analytics are, getting frustrated. I sat here for four hours trying to figure out why one pixel wasn't working on the landing page. For hours!

And I decided, finally, to go on Facebook and to one of the groups and I ask. And you know why that pixel wasn't working for me?

Jeremy Deighan
Why?

Billy Wigley
Because I had the ad blocker turned on. Everybody that knows about ad blocker understands this. That's like, my computer's not working, and the first thing you check is make sure it's plugged in. So, four hours, man, that I spent and finally somebody goes, "The pixel is working for me," and they send me a screenshot. And as soon as I saw the screenshot, I realized it's the ad blocker.

Jeremy Deighan
Oh, man. Well, very good. Well, I hope you just continue on your success. I hope that your meet your goals. And once you get back to Hawaii, we're going to be making our way out there. So maybe we can meet up?

Billy Wigley
Absolutely.

Jeremy Deighan
Or maybe you can show me how to surf a little better.

Billy Wigley
On the big waves, brother.

Jeremy Deighan
Hey, I wanted to ask you, where can people find out about you online?

Billy Wigley
Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to see everybody at dontgetmadgetskills.com.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. Thank you, Billy. You have a good day.

Billy Wigley
All right, brother. Aloha.