The Simple Sales Funnel Strategy Jacques Hopkins Uses to Reach His Piano Audience

Jeremy Deighan
Hello, everyone and welcome to the podcast. Today, we have Jacques Hopkins, a seven-figure online course creator from Piano In 21 Days How are you doing today, Jacques?

Jacques Hopkins
I'm doing very well. And, Jeremy, I am on a few podcasts here and there. Obviously, my own podcast as well. And people really like to butcher my name and you nailed it. Not that we haven't spoken before, but you have the perfect pronunciation of my name.

Jeremy Deighan
I've been practicing for the past 30 minutes. Let me tell you.

Jacques Hopkins
Thanks, man.

Jeremy Deighan
Well, cool. Yeah, it's great to have you on here, man. As you know, I've been following you for a while. We're friends, we've been talking back and forth online. And you just created an outstanding business. And I think this is going to be a great episode to show people that you can just really do a lot of great things in any type of niche. And I'm just really looking forward to the talk.

Jacques Hopkins
Awesome, man. Well, I sincerely appreciate the invitation. I'm excited to dive into it a little bit.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, so I know who you are. But let's go ahead and take a moment and just kind of tell the audience out there a little bit about your story, where you come from, how you got into online business, and how you started creating online courses.

Jacques Hopkins
Right on. If somebody asked me, in real life, not in this virtual entrepreneurship life that we live, if somebody in real life asked me, what do I do for a living these days? I'm always like, "Oh, well, I teach piano online." And then that starts this whole discussion of, "How do you do that? Is it live? Is it pre-recorded?"

But your audience is going to understand that I have an online piano course. Your audience is going to understand what that means. But if you told me even six, seven years ago that my livelihood, my main source of income would be because I'm an online piano teacher, I would have thought you were the craziest person ever because that wasn't my path for the longest time.

I was an electrical engineer. All my life, I thought I'd be an engineer. And I was an electrical engineer for eight years. And all the while, I was trying to find some kind of business, specifically online business that could allow me to break free from that.

And it's not that I hated my job as an electrical engineer. I just didn't love it and I wanted the freedom. I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to call the shots, things like that. And when I first was introduced to the world of having an online business that really served you and gave me the freedom was probably like a lot of people, reading The 4-Hour Workweek.

For me, that was back in my senior year of college when I already had my job as an electrical engineer lined up. That's what motivated me. And that was the genesis of me looking for side hustles and eventually finding online courses.

So I tried a lot of different business models in my spare time, while I was working. And a lot of failures, man. A lot of things didn't work for me. And it wasn't until I got the idea for an online piano course, back in early 2013. That was my seventh business venture.

And the seventh one is the first one for me that actually even made $1. So I got the idea in early 2013, launched late in 2013. And I launched on my own platform. I know you've got a good amount of your audience and I know you had a lot of success with Udemy. I went on my own platform and struggled for a while, but slow and steady, and eventually found success.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. Tell us a little bit about those first days when you like first heard about online courses and you got the idea, "This might work." I've tried other things. Who knows if this is going to work or not work?

And then you decide to put your course up. Now, you say you put it on your own platform. Back then, we didn't have all the great wonderful tools that we have today with Teachable, Thinkific, and all these different platforms. So how were you putting your courses on your website?

Jacques Hopkins
Maybe I should have said own domain instead of own platform, but that was a big struggle. Honestly, I may have gone the Udemy path if I would have known about it. I don't know that I really even knew about Udemy.

Just being able to put videos behind a password-protected paywall and all that, you probably agree, that was so much more complicated back in 2013 than it is today. A lot of these tools that we use didn't even exist then or they were in their infancy.

I think I was using Sensei, which was like a WooCommerce plugin, I think, when I first launched. But it wasn't very good and I quickly moved off of that. And today, I use ClickFunnels. But there was a lot of struggles and challenges and hurdles to get around because of the technology available back then. And also, I had no idea what I was doing.

Jeremy Deighan
Now, when you first put on your course on your website, did you have an audience or following already? Had you started doing any type of YouTube videos at this point?

Jacques Hopkins
The little bit of information that I learned at that point would have mostly come from the Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn, which was pretty popular at this point. But it's been around for quite a while. So that was kind of my main source of online marketing education.

And so I knew that I needed to have a landing page and start an email list. One thing I did right because I did far more wrong than I did right, initially. But one thing I did right was I started a YouTube channel and I started putting videos there. And at the end of every video, I had a call to action over to my website for the free workbook that I was offering.

So even those early videos on YouTube, I was putting out back in 2013, you can still go look at the today. And I have the same call to action pretty much that I have to this day when I make a YouTube video. It's like, "Hey, guys, if you enjoyed this, if you want to learn more from me on the piano, head over to Piano In 21 Days calm or click on this link and grab this free workbook to continue your learning process with me."

And so by doing that, I was able to build up a little bit of an audience. And I was working a full time job, electrical engineer. It's fairly long hours, kind of demanding. So I didn't get to put in a ton of time after work and on the weekends.

So it took me like eight months to go from idea to actually having a course ready. And so by the time I launched that, I had a small email list because of the YouTube call to action email list. So I built up a small audience that way, it wasn't a big audience.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's awesome. There's one thing that you talked about that I wanted to take a moment to discuss. Because I've watched you for some time now and in doing so, I've gone back and I've looked at some of your course material, your YouTube channel.

And one thing that I admired about you is that, like you said, you haven't really changed the process and your call to action a whole lot. And it seems like you've been very steady about just really doing the same thing over and over again. Would you say that that has contributed to your success?

Jacques Hopkins
Yes. I think simplicity and focus is extremely important. And so for the last seven years, essentially, since I started my business, it's basically been the same freebie, the same opt in. I've obviously updated it through the years. But a lot of my traffic throughout the internet, especially my YouTube channel, it's got those calls to action built into the videos.

So when people are coming to my site, a lot of times they're expecting that free workbook. So it's hard to change it at this point. But at the same time, to your point, it creates a really nice layer of simplicity there as well and consistency.

Even if I go to create a YouTube video tomorrow, I know 100% fact that at the end, there's going to be that same call to action to the free workbook. And I don't have a bunch of different funnels. I don't have a bunch of different top of the funnels.

That is the one way to get onto my email list. There's not a bunch of different ways like some people do. And it's so many less headaches when you keep things more simple like that.

Jeremy Deighan
Right. That was a point that I was trying to get through is that it's something that always stuck out to me. That you really focused on one thing, one lead magnet, one course, one traffic source. And it has obviously worked very well for you.

And I think one of the problems that we get into, especially new entrepreneurs or people in online business is that we just tried to do so many things. We want to be everywhere, omni presence on every platform. And I think that you have a really good example of a very simplistic approach that has just done wonders.

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah, thank you so much. And I think a lot of us have to learn that the hard way, including myself. Once I had the taste of success, making sales, I mean, Jeremy, how cool is it to make a course sale while you sleep or while you're playing with your kids? It's so freakin cool, right?

And so once I started to taste that in 2014 and into 2015, I wasn't making a ton of money. I wasn't making a ton of course sales. But I had worked up to maybe $1,000 a month, which was cool for a side hustle. And once I got to that point, I'm like, "All right," I know we're just on audio now, but I'm rubbing my hands together. It's like, "What can I do next? Let me create another thing that can bring in $1,000 a month."

And that's the wrong mindset to have. Once you start tasting success, let's keep doubling down on what's working. Don't go and try to make something else. And that's what I did.

I immediately went out and created Guitar In 21 Days and found a good guitar teacher to help me with the videos and this and that. And it was a huge failure because I had my attention split in two different places. I didn't personally play the guitar so I found it hard to really talk about stories and messaging and marketing with that.

And that was totally the wrong mindset to have when it would have been 1,000 times easier to double the revenue from Piano In 21 Days rather than go create something totally new and build that up to what the first one got to.

Jeremy Deighan
Yes, that's perfect. I definitely agree with that. So you get your course out there. You have YouTube videos, you created a lead magnet, you're collecting emails, and then you start seeing some sales coming in. Are you still doing your job at this point? Or had you already stopped and gone full bore into this?

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah, late 2013 is when I launched. And by the way, Jeremy, I don't know how quickly you found success. But for me, it was not quick at all. I went to launch and I was listening to Smart Passive Income and all these podcasts at the time. And I would hear all these big success stories.

It's like, "Yeah, we launched the first version of the course, sold 100 copies, made $26,000 in 24 hours." Those are the stories you would hear. And so I just assumed that I would launch a course like those other people you would hear did and mine would be successful, too. And I didn't make a sale that first day.

It was definitely a struggle for a while. So 2013 is when I launched. I probably just made a handful, four or five sales that year. 2014, I probably made 20-25 sales. So I wasn't anywhere close to being able to quit my job.

2015 was a little bit better and that's actually when I did quit my job, was the last day of 2015, December 31, 2015. But not because I had officially made it. That's about when I was doing about $1,000 a month from it. But my wife and I had really set things up with savings and paying off our mortgage, to be able to quit my job.

Because the thing is, I felt at the time that I really needed that full-time time to devote to Piano In 21 Days in order to make it a success. In order to bring it up to the salary to be able to quit my job, I needed that time from my job. It was kind of a catch 22.

So we set things up in our personal lives, like I said, with was savings, paying off our mortgage, things like that, to where I could go ahead and quit my job. And we had up to a year to live very, very frugally and it not work. But fortunately, late in the year 2016, it did work. And I was able to replace both mine and my wife's income with the piano course by the time 2016 ended.

Jeremy Deighan
Oh, that's awesome. Now in 2016, do you feel like there was something particular that really worked that year for you? Maybe you changed something or did something extra that brought in more results? Or was it just that slow and steady growth?

Jacques Hopkins
No, it wasn't just slow and steady growth. There is one thing that was the biggest game changer for my business. And that was implementing a really, really good evergreen funnel. And before I did that, I really barely even had a funnel.

So before my course was available, you could go to the website and opt in and get the free workbook. But then once I launched the course, then pianoin21days.com was essentially a sales page, right? I didn't really understand how I could have an opt in page and sell the course.

I just was very green with how to do things. So it was just a sales page and I wasn't making a ton of sales. But late in 2016, with the same traffic and the same course, I just implemented a really good evergreen funnel in the middle. And, man, pretty much overnight that $1,000 a month went to $10,000. 10X almost overnight by implementing a really good, evergreen funnel.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. So let's talk about a little bit about the marketing strategy. So what did that evergreen funnel look like? Are you saying that you had like a webinar that just went to a sales page and you promoted that over and over again? Or was it something else that you were doing?

Jacques Hopkins
What I implemented then was essentially the product launch formula style of funnel, which is where you have pre-launch videos like value videos that go out. Get people excited about what you're going to have to offer. And then you have an open cart period and a closed cart period.

So that's the model that was made popular by Jeff Walker. And I didn't really learn it from Jeff Walker I actually learned it from David Siteman Garland back then. And I learned it just from listening to a podcast episode. So once again, I'll bring it up again, but I was listening to Smart Passive Income Podcast and Pat Flynn had David Siteman Garland on as a guest.

And in that episode, probably early 2016, David Siteman Garland went over exactly what his evergreen funnel looked like. And at the time, I didn't even really know what a funnel was. But he went into it in such great depth that all I needed was that single podcast episode. And I listened to it like three or four times, and implemented everything exactly as he was saying.

So that's how I learned about it. I implemented exactly what he was talking about with three pre launch videos, five-day open and closed cart period. He even went over the details of what emails to send out when. And I was like, "This guy is successful. Let me see if I can make it work with my piano course." And it did work.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool. So just to recap, so someone, they opt in maybe to your email list. You send them some videos. It gets them excited about the launching of your course that's coming out. There's an open period where people can buy. And then the cart closes at some point and then they can no longer purchase. Is that correct?

Jacques Hopkins
That's right.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay. So then, obviously, people are going to know that the cart's ending. They get excited and they go out and purchase the course. What happens to the people who don't purchase? Is that just the end of the road for them? Or do you keep nurturing them in the future?

Jacques Hopkins
Oh, that's a great question. This is something I've developed a process for through the years. Because it's not like if they don't buy that they're never going to be interested. They just weren't interested then. And so what I do, it's my relaunch process.

So basically, every four months, if you join my email list, every four months, you're going to get a pitch for the course. And the way I do it is once you go through the evergreen funnel, then I put you into one of four buckets. Man, I don't know about you, but I like consistent income.

I don't like to make a huge amount of money one month and then almost no money the next month. And so I have a relaunch every single month to a quarter of my old list, essentially by doing it that way. And the relaunch numbers get better and better every month because every month my email list is bigger and bigger. And so I'll still get people that opted in six years ago buying my course because of the way that I do relaunches.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, awesome. So you just relaunch to them at a later period. And you're splitting up your list so that you're just not blasting everyone at the same time?

Jacques Hopkins
Right.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool. Awesome. Yeah, that's a really cool strategy. I think that that's a really different way of implementing it that not many people talk about at all. So the people who get on your list, maybe they haven't purchased. Are you doing anything else with them? Are you sending emails about your YouTube videos at all or anything like that?

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah, I'll try to sprinkle in a little bit of value videos in between relaunches so that you're not just hearing from me when I'm trying to pitch you something. But I'll be honest with you, Jeremy. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes we'll go for months where they don't hear from me at all.

But most of the time when I relaunch, it's that same like product launch formula style relaunch, where there is a lot of value that I'm giving you. So even if you don't buy the course, there's still value in some of the videos that I send out. So yeah, I try to send out some value, non-pitchy salesy emails in between. But it doesn't always happen. And I still make sales, even if it doesn't happen.

Jeremy Deighan
Nice. Now, I just remembered also listening to you talk. There's something else that you do with students who by that I always thought this was really cool. And I want everyone to pay attention to this because I think this is really neat.

After someone purchases from you, you send them a video, correct? Just kind of introducing them into the course and saying hello. Don't you use, I forget the name of the software, some kind of software that you can record a little welcome video or just to say hi to the new student?

Jacques Hopkins
Yes, exactly, man. So I really geek out on like tools and software now. And one of my favorite tools that I've been using for over three years now is called
Bonjoro. It's very inexpensive. And it allows me to send a very quick personal video to everybody that signs up for my course.

And that's something I've been doing for like three years. I've sent over like 4,000 of these videos. And the app makes it so easy. So when somebody signs up for my course, a task is automatically created in the
Bonjoro app. And then all I have to do is once a day, I'll log in and take care of my
Bonjoros for the past 24 hours.

So, for example, I'm looking now and in the past 24 hours, I haven't done my
Bonjoros yet today. But I've got seven sales in the past 24 hours. And they're all just sitting here waiting for me to do them. And I'll do one for you right now if you want.

The latest purchase was from a little while ago. A guy named Dave bought my ultimate package of my course. And all I have to do is click on his name, and then I'm going to click Record Now. And if you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead and send Dave a
Bonjoro.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, let's hear it.

Jacques Hopkins
"Hey, what's going on, Dave. This is Jacques. Just wanted to personally welcome you to Piano In 21 Days. Thanks so much for signing up for the ultimate package earlier today. I hope everything's going well with that so far. Good luck. And I look forward to chatting with you more as you go through the course."

So I just hit Stop, and then I'm hitting Send. And that's it. It's a 14-second video that Dave now has. He signed up for my course about three hours ago. And now he has a personal welcome video from the creator. I mean, you heard it, just welcoming him.

And the feedback that I get from these videos is insane. People love it. They're blown away. And it just really sets that relationship off on the right foot. My most popular package of my piano course, which is not a money-making opportunity at all, is $497, basically $500.

And so people are trusting me enough to take out their credit card, pay somebody through the internet they've never met $500.I feel like it's the least I could do to just thank them and welcome them. And that gives them that reassurance that they made the right decision in signing up with me and that I'm going to be there for them. And I am.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's amazing, man. I feel like doing online business, we can lose so much of that personal touch. And those little things that I hear about just really inspire me. I mean, we were able to do it on the podcast. 20-second little video or audio file, welcome him to the course.

But that will speak miles for the person who listens to it, that you actually took the time to send them a personal greeting. And it's so easy for us to lose that touch in the online world. You know what I mean?

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah, 100%. And, man, I love automation and outsourcing so much. There's so much of my business that is automated and outsourced, including my funnel and a lot of things. And so because my funnel is so automated and so evergreen, I do like to have a couple little touch points to just kind of break through that automated barrier.

And
Bonjoro is the number one way that I'm able to do that. So because I have a very effective evergreen funnel that's very well automated, plus I do things like these
Bonjoros, people are very, very excited about my funnel and the opportunity to get inside my course.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's awesome, man. Great stuff.

We talked a little bit about the course and email list and the marketing. Let's move into traffic. I know YouTube is one of your biggest sources for your piano course. And you've been on there for a long time. Are you still consistently posting videos on there? Or have you been able to stop posting on there?

Jacques Hopkins
Man, I should be posting more. I'm very blessed in that I've got two videos on YouTube that have over a million views, which is good and bad. It's obviously good because I get a lot of traffic from those videos. But also, it enables me to be very lazy. It's like, "Well, I'll never be able to do another million-view video. So what's the point of even putting another video out there?"

Which is a really bad attitude to have. So I wish I was more consistent with videos on YouTube and I do plan to get more consistent with it going forward. But YouTube organic is still my top traffic source and was my only traffic source for a long time. But fortunately, I do have a pretty diversified traffic stream at this point.

I do a good amount of paid ads now. I didn't for a while. I really wanted to have a completely proven product before I started spending money on ads. But I do the Facebook ads and Bing Ads and Google ads and YouTube ads now.

I have a good amount of traffic from just Google search now as well. My SEO presence has gotten pretty good. So if you Google like how to play piano or learn piano, typically, I'll have a YouTube video toward the top of the Google search results, and then also my website. And then a lot of times, I'll have an ad too.

So I try to be on the front page as many times as possible. And then I get a little bit of traffic from Instagram and Pinterest and Twitter too. So it's pretty well diversified. I like to advise people to start out with one main traffic source focus. And typically, for online courses, the best fit is going to be a YouTube channel, and really get that dialed in.

But once you have it dialed in, you have a process. You're getting some results from that traffic source, then start branching out and get diversified. So that if something happens. You don't own that YouTube channel, Google does. So if they just decide, for some reason, to just shut it down tomorrow and that's your only traffic source, that's going to be a problem.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's one of the big things that I preach on is making sure that your business is not reliant on any one traffic source or platform or any of that going forward. So these YouTube videos, maybe not today because you haven't been producing lately, but the ones that you've created, are you repurposing those videos? I know you mentioned you have a blog, but you take those videos and turn them into a blog post and do all the things that you can do with that video?

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah, that's like one of the big buzzwords of 2019 and 2020, right? Repurposing? I think everybody could be doing a better job of repurposing. Every time I make a YouTube video, we definitely turn it into a blog post.

I'm very fortunate. I have a very, very good assistant/writer. And so I can just say, "Hey, Emily, take this video, turn it into a blog post." And she does a phenomenal job with that. So we definitely do that. But we could be doing better at taking clips and putting out little videos on Facebook or Instagram and so on and doing a better job with repurposing.

So, yes and no. We're doing some things, but we could be doing a lot better. We're certainly not Gary Vee on the repurposing front.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, who is. I want to hear about the blog because that's interesting to me. I want to point out something you said for the audience listening to also pay attention to this. If someone searches for a keyword, there's a probability or a chance that you're showing them your product and your stuff, your content three times on the page. One in an ad, one for the video, and one for the blog post. And so that's a really cool technique because the videos will do great on their own. But having that blog post can help with that SEO traffic. So that's a really cool strategy you have going there, too.

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah, totally. But the goal shouldn't be, from the start, to end up on the first page three times. The goal should be to focus on one at a time, right? So focus on the video. Try and get the video to the first page first, and then maybe ads, and then maybe try to get Google organic as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Cool. Yeah, good clarification there. Let's talk about this audience, maybe they haven't created a course, or they're just starting out, or they have a course and they don't know how to market yet. I know, talking about buzzwords of 2019 and 2020, pre-selling is also a pretty big buzzword, where people talk about the idea of being able to go out and sell your course, sell your idea, maybe do some coaching or training before you actually build out the course.

Now, hearing your story, it sounds like you started with the course. You were building the course as you were building your audience. I obviously started on Udemy. So I started with a course first. If you were teaching someone today, to go and create an online course, what type of strategy would you recommend to that person?

Jacques Hopkins
You got to build your audience first, right? So before you even think about putting together your outline for an online course, you've got to start building an audience. So in most cases, a YouTube channel can be a really great way to do that. And start putting out content on a very regular consistent schedule.

And that way, you can start building the audience. Ad you need to start understanding your audience better and understanding what they struggle with the most within your particular niche.

And so, for me, if I was starting over and I wanted to create an online piano course, I would start a piano YouTube channel. Just start putting content out there. And you're not going to get immediate results, but if you stick with it, you look up three, four, five, six months later, then you're going to have some subscribers and view count and comments.

And then you post in the comments, "What are you guys struggling with you?" You make sure you have a good call to action and a landing page that you can start getting email addresses. And when you get the email addresses, you send out emails maybe automatically. Like, "Hey, what are you struggling with when it comes to piano? Why don't you currently know how to play piano at this point in your life?"

And really listen to people and figure out what they're struggling with most. That way, when you do go to put a course together, you can exactly address the struggles and issues that your particular audience has. So that's where I would get started. And then yeah, presell that's another one of those big buzzwords around.

People like to throw the term around, but not necessarily know how to do it. For me, what I recommend and what I see work, and I've used it to an extent, is you've got to have an audience of some sort to really pre sell. Like you host a webinar. You do some sort of launch, but you're launching a future product.

And you tell people all about it. And you tell them that they're going to get a discounted price by enrolling now. And it's going to be available on this date. If you're going to pre sell, you've got to have an exact date that it's going to be available. If you make no sales, well, then the market has told you that that wasn't a good idea. You got to go back to the drawing board.

If you make like just one or two, and it's not worth your time to actually make the course, then you can refund those people and go back. But then if you do make a lot of sales, then that is market validation. And it's motivation to go ahead and get the course done and launched on the date that you said you would.

And the other thing sometimes people will tell you to do when you're just getting started. It's like make a free course and try to get people into your course for free. And that way, you can get some testimonials and actually validate your course that way.

The problem with that approach is people are really motivated by free stuff. I've definitely tried that. I've seen people try it. And if somebody signs up for your course for free, it's very unlikely they're actually going to finish it, and probably will barely even get started.

So if you're considering that approach, what I'd recommend instead is you charge a little bit of money, with the promise that if they finish or get a certain result, then you'll refund them 100%. And then that way, people are motivated to actually go through the course. Then you'll have some initial results and case studies and success stories and testimonials, hopefully.

So that when it comes time to actually launch your course, you can tell people that they won't be the first people to actually go through it. You can be like, "Well, Johnny went through it already and these are the results he got."

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, right. I like the saying, how does it go? "People who pay, pay attention." And I really agree with that coming from marketplaces where courses are discounted, sometimes quite heavily. I've noticed that myself with my own courses; that my free courses, people hardly ever finish.

The courses that are heavily discounted, it's a very small percentage of them who go through the whole course. But then courses that are higher priced and the person has more invested into that course, they will take action and actually finish and then it's a better testimonial, all around because they actually took the action to finish the course.

Jacques Hopkins
Yeah. So that's a reason to not give away a course for free right at the beginning. But it's also a reason, at any point in the stage, to charge higher prices rather than low prices. I have one of the highest priced piano courses out there. And because of that, I have a very high success rate and completion rate as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. Yeah, that's great. Man, time's going by so quick and I have 100 more questions I could ask you. And I just love picking your brain about some of this stuff. Real quick, one thing I wrote down, I did want to ask you listening to you talk about YouTube and videos and free stuff. How do you decide what to put in your course? And what to put say on YouTube?

I know this is kind of a big problem with people trying to figure out, what do I give away for free on YouTube? And what do I give away in my course? Because you don't want to teach everything for free you're going to use in your course. How do you handle that?

Jacques Hopkins
Man, I've heard that question put so many different ways. And people even ask me directly who are interested in my courses? Like, "Why would I pay for your course when I can get all this information for free on YouTube?" The answer is that a course is a complete step by step A to Z program. YouTube is just individual videos on individual topics.

So like if I want to go learn woodwork, like I don't know anything about woodworking. If I want to go learn, then I'm not going to learn that much by going to individual videos like how to build a chair, how to build this table. I need more of an A to Z. Like start me off all the way at the beginning and take me step by step by step through this whole process.

And that's what a course gives you. And because of all that, there's nothing I will hide on my YouTube channel. So there's no one thing inside my course that you won't find somewhere on my YouTube channel. Everything to me, inside my course, is fair game for my YouTube channel because it's a totally different platform for teaching.

Jeremy Deighan
Nice. I'm glad you said that because I think that hangs up a lot of people is not making decision on what to do. And I think you explained that very well that it's okay to have overlapping material because the course is going to teach you in that step by step manner. Man, this is great.

So just where are you at today? I know you've had some really good success with the piano course. And then you've started some other projects. So just let us hear about what you got going on today.

Jacques Hopkins
Cool, man. So Piano In 21 Days is still my focus. Since the whole pandemic stuff started, I started going live with my existing students once a week on Wednesday mornings. And that's been a true pleasure. Like I have a total blast doing that. And so my piano students and my piano business is definitely number one and my main focus and my main source of income as well.

The only other significant project that I have going on is I have a podcast as well. And I know you're familiar with that because I've had you on my podcast, which is called The Online Course Show. I just released Episode 136 yesterday.

Jeremy Deighan
Congratulations.

Jacques Hopkins
Thank you. Yeah, so it's about three years old now. And it's kind of the podcast I wish I had back when I was getting started. It's just a fun little project where I get to interview other course creators and get to hear perspectives on success other than just my own piano course. And equal people like yourself who are also in the online course space. So pianoin21days.com and The Online Course Show are my big things on the internet.

Jeremy Deighan
I appreciate you coming on the show. And I could interview you for another hour and ask you questions. So thank you for your time today.

Jacques Hopkins
Awesome. Thank you so much, man.