Jacques Hopkins: Regular people are taking their knowledge and content, packaging it up in an online course and they're making a living doing it, but not everyone is successful with online courses. There's a right way and there's a wrong way, and I'm here to help course creators actually succeed with online courses.

Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins and this is The Online Course Show.

And off we go. Welcome aboard. Glad you're with us. This is The Online Course Show. I'm your host Jacques Hopkins. Here with me as our cohost David Krohse.

David Krohse: Hey, what's up?

Jacques Hopkins: And we're excited to dive into all things online courses with you today. David, welcome to episode 108.

David Krohse: Thank you.

Jacques Hopkins: How are you doing man? What's been going on in the past week with you and your online course?

David Krohse: I'm doing fantastic. You know, this last week my wife and I went on vacation to New Mexico and we basically flew down there and did a little road trip around the state, and at the same time, I actually had my second launch of my course going. That started on Friday of last week, and so I was having a great time. We were hiking, we were in mountain biking, really great times, flooding down white sand dunes, but I did come up with this idea that I'm super excited with. So last time I had my first launch, everybody that joined, I ended up sending them a little like, thanks a latte card with Starbucks card in it.

Just five bucks. Just a little welcome to the course. But I was out for a mountain bike ride and I was like, I want to, I want to kick that up a notch. I want to do something more fun. And I'll tell you my first thought. I was like, I'm going to send these people some Superman underwear or some Wonder Woman underwear.

And I was like, this is such a great idea. They're going to love it. It's going to be such a great way to welcome them to the course. And you know, I'm truly teaching people how to public speak, which is something that's scary for a lot of people. So I thought. You know, if they're feeling scared, they can put on their underwear.

But then there was that little logistical issue that I'd have to reach out to females that don't in my course and ask them for their waist size. So let's doing some brainstorming. I'm like, how? I don't know about how that's going to go, but ultimately I did research so you can get actual Superman and Wonder Woman socks that have a cape on the back.

And so that's the plan. They're like nine bucks from Amazon and anybody that joins my course is going to get a pair of those socks. And on Wednesday of this week, I got my first sale. So the open cart is from Tuesday through Sunday evening, so I'm excited. That's still, I mean, when the notification goes off, it's still is very much like, you know, a happy dance for me.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah, for sure, man. So that's the first sale of this particular launch overall, that's 30 something sales, I think. Something in that ballpark, right?

David Krohse: Maybe about half that many.

Jacques Hopkins: Oh, well, we'll get there. We'll get that. David. No, no problems, dude. I love the underwear idea. And yeah, logistically that'd be pretty tough with the waist size and everything, whereas socks are more one size fit all.

So I love that. I love that. I love, because you know, when you're public speaking, people always tell you, Hey, think of people in their underwear. Right? And then I assume that's part of the [00:03:00] correlation with the underwear. And then you're also saying, Oh, you know, a super woman's Superman. I love it. That's really cool. Now, quick follow up. How do you have these people's physical address?

David Krohse: Well, these are all chiropractors, so I can just send it to their clinic.

Jacques Hopkins: Sneaky. Sneaky. Okay.

David Krohse: Yeah, it should be fun. What about you? What have you been up to?

Jacques Hopkins: Man, I went on a little trip myself as well. Before I tell you about that, I'm going to let the listener and you know a couple of just little insights into the world of Jacques or things about me and my personality. I'm very, I get cold very easily. It's very cold outside right now. It's like maybe 58 degrees. Now I'm all bundled up and I've got a little space heater going right here, and I'm worried that the space heater might be effecting the sound quality right now.

So I'm gonna, I'm going to hit this button right now and turn it off. So you're going to hear a little beep. It's gonna turn off in a second, and I apologize for any sound quality issues going into this, but that's why I have a space heater going, and despite the cold, I'm obsessed with ice coffee as well.

So even though I'm freezing, I'm still drinking iced coffee is one of my favorite drinks. I'm taking a sip of that right now as well, and I just got back from a week long trip to the beach where I did absolutely nothing for my business, for my online course. Things ran along absolutely fine, and one great thing about the trip that I'll share that we were able to do is we do this trip. I think I mentioned the last episode. We do this trip every year. We've done it. This is our eighth year. We go with a bunch of different couples. We go to the same place. We have a blast. We usually go for like three or four days, and because I have an online business and online course, and I don't have a boss and I don't have to be anywhere at any particular time. This time me and my family stayed an extra three days.

And we had an amazing time, just the four of us, me and my wife and my two kids sticking around, not having to leave on that Sunday morning like everybody else cause they had to go back to work and that it's things like this are the reason that I wanted to have an online business and not work my full time job as an electrical engineer for the rest of my life. It's something small, staying at the beach for an additional three days, small. But I'm able to do things like this over and over and over again and it's amazing.

David Krohse: Yeah. That's awesome. I love it. I love hearing. Yeah, freedom is where it's at and it's really cool what you're able to do.

Jacques Hopkins: Yes, it is. So before we get too far, David, I've got to tell people about the sponsor of this podcast. You know, this podcast is all about tools that we use as online course creators, and a lot of times the sponsor of these podcasts are going to be a tool because Hey, they go hand in hand with online courses a lot of time.

And today's sponsor is, of course, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite, all time online course tools, and you'll hear a lot more about it throughout this episode. That is Bonjoro. They are the sponsor of this episode. Bonjoro allows me to easily and quickly send a short thank you video to everyone that buys my course.

Each morning I log into the Bonjoro app and a task is right there waiting for me, for everyone that bought my piano course the day before, and then I can just go in and hit record on a particular name, record a short personal video, hit send, repeat the process until I'm done, and it literally takes me about two minutes each day. And [00:06:00] it's just really powerful for that new student. So you out there listening can get started with a 14-day free trial of Bonjoro by going to bonjoro.com/Jacques. That's Bonjoro dot com slash J A C Q, U E S. Go check out Bonjoro.

So David, I've probably said 2,500 of these Bonjoros. I think you're starting to use it yourself, aren't you?

David Krohse: I am. Yeah. The last time that I did my launch, I had 11 people sign up and I sent a Bonjoro to each of them, and the feedback from them was awesome. People really, you can just, like you said, about half of them wrote notes and just really appreciate it.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah, big fan, big fan. I only promote things on the podcast and we'll anywhere promote things that I actually use. I think that's very important and Bonjoro absolutely fits that. So if you're not using it out there, give it a shot. 14-day free trial. All right, so let's transition into kind of the core content of today. We're talking about tools today and for that main conversation. I was joined by a couple of repeat guests.

You're very familiar with Nate Dodson, who's been on many, many episodes here, and then Abbey Ashley, who is incredibly successful with online courses. In fact, you'll hear in the, in the actual conversation she is going to be doing, you know, I just hit $1 million all time sales for my piano course. She's going to do $1 million in sales on her course just this year. Just this year alone, like she's, she's absolutely killing it. So I want it to bring in a couple of course graders who are doing just really, really well with online courses, with their own online courses to talk about tools. That's why I invited Nate and Abbey. And just real quick, just overall thoughts before we jump into it. What'd you think the, the conversation about tools, David?

David Krohse: Oh, I thought it was amazing. Tend to high value tools that I didn't know about, and of course, you know, just some crack out loud moments. So it was funny.

Jacques Hopkins: Excellent. Well, I'm glad you liked it, man. It was a pleasure talking with them about tools. That's one of my favorite topics to get into. So without further ado, let's go ahead and play the conversation with Nate and Abbey and myself about tools for everybody and we'll jump back together on the backend. Let's get into a right now.

Abbey, Nate, welcome back to the online course show. Guys, [I] Appreciate you joining me here for this episode on tools. Before we get into some of our favorite tools, I want to get an update for both of you. Obviously, both of you have been on the podcast and both very successful online course creators, so let's start with you, Abbey. What's been going on in the last year since you've been on with your online course?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, this has been a heck of a year. Things are good. You know, I'm really. I really believe that people are who are just persistent and stick with it are the people that'll find success. And that's kind of been my story.

I feel like I've been doing this a long time, and this past year has been one of the years that things have just really, really picked up. So, you know, I do. Two big launches of my course every year, and then I've also, I have an evergreen funnel that's really like rocking and rolling right now, or really just optimizing those two things has been the majority of my year this year. And yeah, it's really starting to take off.

Jacques Hopkins: I think the last time we talked on the podcast, you were also focused on maybe a couple of launches a year. Plus when you weren't launching, you were still doing evergreen. So it sounds like not a lot has changed in terms of your methodology. Is that fair to say?

Abbey Ashley: Nope, I am definitely in the light. Keep it simple chaos. So just do the same thing over and over 'cause I'm reaching new people all the time and I can tweak my systems and I really liked that. I, you know, I have family and kids and so I'm. Like coming up with new ideas, but I really, really try to release them very slowly.

Jacques Hopkins: I'm very curious about what tools you're currently using for that evergreen funnel. We'll come back to that in a little bit.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins: Are you still on pace for like a record year? Here's maybe a seven figure year?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, I will definitely, I mean, things would have to go terribly wrong for me not to hit seven figures this year, which I'm really excited for. This will be so like path 365 days I've hit $1 million but as far as this year, you know, in a calendar year, this'll be my first calendar year to hit that, so I'm really, really pumped.

Jacques Hopkins: That is no small feat. I recently crossed over seven figures all time and for piano in 21 days, and that's, that was a momentous occasion on my side but here you are, and just past 365 days, seven figures. It's a really incredible, all right, Nate. What's been going on with you, the past what 4-6 months since you've been on the podcast?

Nate Dodson: Well, it's basically been trying. I was really trying to scale it up and grow the business and it all just kind of fell apart and it kind of all unraveled just to losing people and not being able to actually build the systems. To deliver the content like I wanted. So I haven't been putting out content.

Jacques Hopkins: Now, when you say losing people, that's like people working for you, not students.

Nate Dodson: Yeah, people working for me, not being able to keep them on. So then just like getting bogged down and trying to find people.

Jacques Hopkins: I know somebody who's, who actually knows a lot about that.

Nate Dodson: Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins: And that was Abbey.

Nate Dodson: Yeah. I need people, that's for sure.

Jacques Hopkins: Why do you think that happens? I mean, things were going really well last time you were on, and they're not going horribly right now. I know that. But what do you think you could have done to prevent going backwards?

Nate Dodson: Well, in certain circumstances, it might've just been hiring the wrong person from the beginning, but it was also stuff that was completely beyond my control.

Like someone adopting Eskimo baby, you know, that had congenital heart defects. It's like, no, she couldn't continue to work and it just made perfect sense, you know? But it's also about like finding enough for the people to keep them busy and keep them engaged. I had someone that was working for me that I think they just were bored, you know, just wasn't enough complexity or challenge for them.

Jacques Hopkins: Well, I think, overall you still have kind of the same evergreen funnel going on your side and people are still buying your course. It's just that it sounds like it's a little more overwhelming than you would like because you have more responsibilities. Things are a little over the place. And I know you're actively trying to hire one or two people right now because of those losses that you've had.

Nate Dodson: Yeah, and I've just got real distracted in my personal life, moving my family twice this year and buying a bunch of rental properties and just not staying on course dialed in with the business. But my strength isn't like being the COO and scaling the business and systems and all this stuff. I've always just kind of like used you as a crush to really help me do that.

And my skill, real skill is like the visionary stuff, like coming up with big ideas. And I've come up with one of those recently that I think is just going to completely revolutionize my business and the entire industry. That's a big breakthrough. I'm very, very confident and it's going to deliver for me so that's kind of a new thing that I'm really excited about.

Jacques Hopkins: Nate, thanks for the updates, guys. Let's move on and jump into our favorite tools because that's what we are here to talk about today. That's one of the questions I tried to ask just about everybody that comes on the podcast is like, what are some of your favorite tools because without tools it would be really hard to do what we do and be successful with online courses. I know when I got started back in 2013 I struggled to find the right tools, like even finding like a software tool to host my course and have it behind a password protected wall was difficult because a lot of those types of tools didn't really exist.

It was kind of a challenge but today there's some really fun tools out there and I know all three of us like them. So I want to start by going over a recent list that I made up, put out a video recently called the top 10 tools for online course creators. That's my personal list. I want to go through each of those and see what you guys think about those, and then we'll hit some of yours that are not on that list.
So most people know by listening to this podcast, and you guys might know this as well. The number one on my list is Clickfunnels. I use Clickfunnels for hosting my course for all my landing pages, my funnels. Almost everything. One thing I don't like about Clickfunnels would be their email autoresponders.
I don't use it for that. For all the features that I use, it's $97 a month. I'm a big fan. Abbey, you think you used to use it, don't use it anymore. What are your thoughts on Clickfunnels?

Abbey Ashley: You know, I think everybody has to try all the different things out there to see what's going to be the best fit for them. Clickfunnels just never like clicked for me. Like it just, I always felt like I [00:14:00] was piecing it together. I had a lot of technical issues. It just things would go wrong and it would be on their side and like we wouldn't get notified about it. Like I just felt like, and I know so many people who are like die hard Clickfunnels fan, so obviously it works really, really well for some people, but I think my user experience just wasn't as good.

And so I kind of went an alternative route and that has worked really well for me. So like I fell into more of, I use Teachable to host my course, and then I build my landing pages via Leadpages and all my sales pages and things like that. So that's just kind of what I found to be the best system. It means that I kind of patchwork my favorite systems together.

So again, I use a different system for emails. I actually use a different payment processing system too, and I piece them all together because I like all of those systems and they work really well together for me. So yeah, it's a little bit different.

Jacques Hopkins: It sounds like you've found multiplethings to replace Clickfunnels, and sometimes that's a problem because then you have to get everything to work together, but it sounds like what you've got set up and working really well for you.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, it works really well. We just use Zapier to integrate everything, and so I think it's a little bit more expensive, but again, it's what I know. It's more expensive, but it's what has really worked for me.

Jacques Hopkins: Now I think the last time you were on, you were like transitioning out of Clickfunnels, so you were still using some parts of it, some not. I think you were executing your evergreen webinar through Clickfunnels. Do you still have an evergreen webinar today, and if so, what are you using for that?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, so it is basically a, I mean, you sign up the, , a Leadpages landing page, and then it leads you to an automatic webinar. So it's a prerecorded training. And I advertise it as a prerecorded training. Like I don't try to say like, this is really live or anything like that, so I don't need any of that software that says that. I think people don't need all of that. They just want the training and so it's actually like a Vimeo video that's just embedded into the landing page.

And then from there we use Deadline Funnel to use like Scarcity and I love Deadline Funnel. So that's been really good for me. And then during live launches we also embed a chat so we can chat with people who are going through that. And eventually I want to put that in evergreen as well. Have it where people could chat with us live. It's just not something that we're like ready for it as a team yet.

Jacques Hopkins: So whether the webinar is evergreen and prerecorded or it's live, that's still a Leadpages page or embedding the video on?

Abbey Ashley: Yep.

Jacques Hopkins: Interesting.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah. It works.

Jacques Hopkins: Anyway, I feel that Clickfunnels.

Nate Dodson: I'm still happy with Clickfunnels. For me, it's once I learn a system, like the cost of switching is so high because I'm real slow to learn tech stuff that I'm just happy to stick with it. I'm using it for landing pages, sales pages, order forms, and my membership area. And my audience is really just there for the entertainment or not for the entertainment, for the information. Like I don't try and fancy up any of my stuff, and ClickFunnels is pretty bare bones, but it allows me to get the information across. And a lot of my customers too, are older. They just don't care about real slick user interfaces. So it's been working great.

Jacques Hopkins: Is there anything that you don't like about it?

Nate Dodson: Yeah. I mean, I don't like to, I can't do an affiliate program cause I have a bunch of, I have my funnel going through different domain names.

Jacques Hopkins: I don't like their affiliates set up. I'm using it and I'm using it to moderate success. It works, but there are some weird things about it. I don't disagree there. What are you using for your affiliate program, Abbey?

Abbey Ashley: So again, I pulled it in another tool. So we do all of our payment processing through SamCart, and I love SamCart. It's literally just checkout pages and affiliates, but somebody can, I could send somebody to just my homepage and they can get cookied with like somebody affiliate, like I don't have to send them directly to the page I want, you know, that they're going to buy from. I can set individual affiliate links.

So, and that's one of the reasons, I mean, I really love Teachable as my course platform, but, and they've even like tried to get me to switch over to their payment processing and they've done a lot of updates. Like I know that Teachable is really, really working hard on like their checkout process cause they realize that a lot of people are using a different payment processor.

But again, it's one of those things that, Oh my goodness, it would be so much work at this point for me to, to switch to something else. So yeah, it's works really, really well. I really like SamCart's checkout experience. They also have like upsells kind of integrated into it so you can do upsells, down sells, ad-ons, all of that kind of stuff. And then their affiliate program I really enjoy as well.

Jacques Hopkins: Now the actual money, is that still getting processed by Stripe or is that processed by SamCart?

Abbey Ashley: It's Stripe, so.

Jacques Hopkins: It's Stripe. Okay, so does Leadpages not have the order forms being able to checkout?

Abbey Ashley: They might, but they wouldn't have all the affiliate stuff and all of that that I like through SamCart.

Jacques Hopkins: You see, this is the reason that I recommend Clickfunnels for people cause you, you've got a working system, but it's literally five different things together, which is fine. It's, that's what's worked for you. But most of the time when people are just starting out, especially like it's nice to have all five of those things in one place.

Abbey Ashley: Definitely. And I'd still recommend people try out Clickfunnels because it is such like an all in one solution. For me, it was worth it to switch. I disliked my experience that much. I'm sure things have improved, but yeah, that was it for me.

Jacques Hopkins: Historically, one of the bad things has been their support, but I can tell you that that's significantly better than it used to be. Another thing that I don't particularly like about Clickfunnels is their membership experience, right?

Teachable is way better. It's just very simple. Not a lot of features. They keep saying that they're going to improve it in teasing it, but then like just recently they made this big announcement how they're doubling down on being a sales funnel company and not trying to focus on everything.

So we'll see where that goes. Maybe one day, eventually I'll take my course out of Clickfunnels because they really haven't done a lot of updating in the past year or two. But once again, it's nice to have everything there in one place.

Next, let's talk about email autoresponders cause second on my list is Active Campaign. I've tried several of them and that's my favorite. What are you using Abbey?

Abbey Ashley: I use Convertkit. It's interesting because they're using all different tools, but I think that's good, you know? Yeah. So I'm a huge Convertkit fan. I love it so much. You know, you're smiling. No one can see but you're smiling.

Jacques Hopkins: Convertkit is really, really, really popular. In fact, they reached out to me about possibly sponsoring this podcast and I was like, nah, I'm kind of an Active Campaign guy. I think they're big with like influencers and bloggers and cause they're one of the newer ones, relatively like, why do you think they've gotten so popular.

Abbey Ashley: Their customer service is pretty amazing. Like I think they've made this like little community out of it. Like you really feel like you are a part of a community. They have a conference every year that I, it's literally my favorite conference in the whole entire world. It's in Boise, Idaho. So I go all the way to Boise for this amazing conference.

Jacques Hopkins: Wait. Hold on. Is that, is that where headquarters are for ConvertKit?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins: That's where Clickfunnels is too.

Abbey Ashley: It's funny, but yeah, I like the user experience. They're really proactive on feedback. So like I've probably like six months ago I said, Hey, it'd be really helpful if there was kind of like a search feature. When I'm looking through my old emails, like I'm trying to find an old email, and literally like two days later they had it integrated into the system.

Like I've been really, really impressed with that. So I think it's newer and it's. Well, you know, newer, I mean, there's even, there's new ones that are popping up. Even still, people are talking all about like slow desk right now in my community, that's like new kid on the block. So for me, ConvertKit's still old.

But yeah, I, I don't know, I really like it. I think it still has its little bugs every once in a while, but I see them make changes. Like I think that's a big thing too, is that if a company is willing to take feedback and you know, realize that they can still improve that means a lot to me.

Nate Dodson: Did you switch to ConvertKit from another, like good email autoresponder program before that?

Abbey Ashley: I mean, back in the day when I had like 200 email subscribers, I used MailChimp.

Nate Dodson: Oh yeah.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins: I think MailChimp and AWeber would be the two places people typically start cause they're pretty popular and they're pretty inexpensive. I think MailChimp's even free when you're under a certain level. I know for me, I started with AWeber cause I was, when I was just getting started, I was following Pat Flynn and that's what he would always recommend.

Nate Dodson: Yeah. I feel like I've heard a lot of good buzz around ConvertKit, but nothing specific like that really stands out of what makes it so amazing.

Jacques Hopkins: The community, Nate. The community.

Abbey Ashley: I'm sure all other email systems probably do just as good as far as like the technical aspect and I've actually Active Campaign is the one that I usually tell people like once you're ready to upgrade from the free stuff, look at ConvertKit and Active Campaign. Those are the two that I usually send people to because those are the two that I feel like people like the most.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah. When I was looking to switch a few years ago. Everybody would say that Infusionsoft was like the biggest and the best one, but it was super, super hard to use and confusing, right? Infusionsoft.

And so to me it seemed like Active Campaign was the best middle ground between where I was with AWeber and not having to go all the way to Infusionsoft. Nate, which one are you on?

Nate Dodson: I'm on Active Campaign. You sent me there, so I've stayed there.

Jacques Hopkins: Let's move on to number three on the list: Bonjoro. What I have on the list. Listeners of this podcast, have heard me talk about that plenty. Every time somebody signs up for my course, the next day they will get a Bonjora from me, which is just like a 22nd video of me calling them out by name and welcoming them to the course do either of you use Bonjoro.

Nate Dodson: No, I don't use Bonjoro. Wanted to do it. And now while you're saying that, I'm wondering why you couldn't just do that with like lone screen recorder or something.

Jacques Hopkins: Bonjoro makes it easy. That's why you would use something like Bonjoro. So what happens is with Zapier, and I think they actually natively integrated with Active Campaign now, but I still have it set up through Zapier. Anytime somebody buys my course, there's a web hook and Active Campaign. It goes and creates the task in Bonjoro.

Every morning I log in and I can see the tasks inside of Bonjoro for those who purchased the course the day before. I click one button, I'm starting to record. It can be on my PC or my phone, and then it's got everything from the CRM, from Active Campaign is built in, right. It tells me which package they bought, what their name is with their email, a little bit more information about them.

I like to say their name and then maybe one other thing that's just for them, just so they know 100% it's not automated because if I'm going to take the time to do it, I want them to know that I did that and so you can absolutely do it with Loom. I know people that do that with Loom, but they're not getting as many like signups is as I am, so it's a little easier. Have you heard of Bonjoro?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, so I have Bonjoro. I love Bonjoro, and what I love most about Bonjoro is the fact that they just released a new feature called roll-ups. Have you seen that?

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah I have.

Abbey Ashley: 'Cause I am the queen at getting behind on my Bonjoros and it'll be like two weeks and I'm like, Oh crap, I have like 40 of these today. And so I'm like really, really bad at keeping up with them. So they've done this new thing called roll ups, where if you miss a bunch of them, then you can go and do one blanket message and then get back to doing the personalized ones. And so I'm going to do that soon because I'm really, really behind.

But I love it. Like I love the idea of Bonjoros. I love the concept, but if anyone listening, it's not my course in like the past two months, you probably haven't gotten one. And I apologize cause I got really behind. And once your behind then It's bad news. So.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah, that's true. They collect up. I mean I told you this, Abbey went on a Disney cruise with my family recently and it was pretty hard to keep up with the Bonjoros over that week, you know, without an internet connection.

So I definitely got them backed up at the end. But me sending those to people is really important to me. And the reason is, is because of the way that I personally felt when I received one from Pat Flynn, when I signed up for his podcasting course. When I, back when I started this podcast, a couple, two and a half years ago, it just felt amazing that he would take the time to send me a personal video and I wanted my students to feel, you know, even a 10th that way when they're getting started with my course.

And so even when I am backed up, I try to not take advantage of that roll up feature and I just, I love it. I've sent probably 2,500 of those Bonjoros over the past couple of years and I don't have any plans to stop doing it.

Abbey Ashley: Really curious how many I have right now that are sitting.

Jacques Hopkins: They sent me, once I sent a thousand of them, they sent me a bear suit in the mail.

Abbey Ashley: What? That's so cool.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah. Wore it.

Abbey Ashley: Now I'm motivated to get 'em done.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah, for sure.

Nate Dodson: I want to know like what both of you say and does it generate like quite a bit more support 'cause you haven't replied these people then do you, are you like generating conversation or what do you say so you're not getting a bunch of extra work to do after?

Jacques Hopkins: Well Nate, some of us have people managing our emails for us.

Nate Dodson: Well, I did for awhile.

Jacques Hopkins: So what I say in my videos, it's honestly I've gotten it down to about 12 seconds per Bonjoro. I say, Hey John, this is Jacques. Just wanted to personally welcome you to Piano in 21 Days. Thanks for signing up for the ultimate package. You know, I tried to say which package they signed up for. Good luck and let me know if you need anything or look forward to chatting with you more as you go through the course. Something like that.

Nate Dodson: Do they usually reply to that?

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah. Half the people probably reply of some sort and a lot of times it's just thanks, you know, awesome that you would do that yourself or you know, people are pretty blown away in the responses. It's rarely like a support request right off the bat like that. It's normally just a thank you.

Nate Dodson: It just sends this video to them in their email.

Jacques Hopkins: Yes.

Nate Dodson: Okay.

Jacques Hopkins: Yeah. You just click on it and then it opens up the Bonjoro page with your video and we'll start playing.

Nate Dodson: Cool.

Jacques Hopkins: Works really well.

Abbey Ashley: You're encouraging me to do them again. Part of the problem is that sometimes, let's be honest, most days I don't shower till like three o'clock and so I feel like they're getting a video with my hair. It's just all like crazy over to the side and greasy and now...

Jacques Hopkins: It's real life. It's real life Abbey. Let it happen.
Abbey Ashley: It is real life.

Jacques Hopkins: Nobody cares.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, it's true. I feel like it's a little different for men to say that, but that's okay. And in my hurdle, it good.

Jacques Hopkins: Next on my list was actually come up already, Zapier. I'm not sure what I would do without Zapier. I do a lot of things with it, or it does a lot of things for me. Let's be honest.

Abbey Ashley: That'd be one of the things that I wish I didn't need it, but of course, obviously with me having like a million different tools, I mean it does. It makes life so much easier. I actually, it's not working again, so I need to go back and fix it. But for a while I had it. I had a zap set up for every time somebody bought my course, my phone would go chi-ching. It was like a really cool feeling. I need to go set that back up.

Jacques Hopkins: I had that set up at one point as well. But it got to be, I think, a little obnoxious for my wife and for not for, even for me, like distraction, like, you know, cause I was making so many sales. No, I don't know. I felt like it was something that would interrupt me from doing things and so I turned it off. But that is certainly one use of it.

Abbey Ashley: Kind of fun.

Jacques Hopkins: So if somebody is not familiar with it, it connects. We're talking about tools here, so it connects just about any tool to another tool. So if two tools don't natively connect to each other, then usually you can use Zapier to connect them. For example, when somebody opts in for my free piano workbook, they immediately go to a type form survey.To where I'm just asking them some questions like, have you ever tried to learn piano before? Do you have a piano already? Things like that. And those answers automatically get into Active Campaign via Zapier. But for example, about two weeks ago, they released a native integration between Active Campaign and type form.

And so I no longer need Zapier, but it's kind of a pain to go in there and turn it off and set up the native integration. But that's kind of what happens is like Zapier will sit there in the middle until the integration actually exists between the two. Nate are you using Zapier?

Nate Dodson: I'm just using Zapier for one thing. I think if you set it up for me, it sends sales to a spreadsheet for me, but I don't like the idea of these things all communicating with each other. Like it just sounds like more complexity and it just more stuff that can break. So I want to try and avoid communication between apps as much as possible.

Jacques Hopkins: You are a weird dude.

Abbey Ashley: You're like the opposite of the spectrum, Nate.

Nate Dodson: I am.

Jacques Hopkins: Seriously.

Abbey Ashley: All the apps. Give me all of them.

Jacques Hopkins: One thing I like about Zapier so much is that it usually works really, really well. Like I rely on it a lot and it almost never breaks, knock on wood, but to me like it's automation and you know, I was an automation engineer for about eight years. I love automation and there's no human interaction when a zap fires. To me that's, that's less errors, not more errors.

Nate Dodson: Yeah. I mean, there's not a lot that I think I'm doing right now that I could have it do.

Jacques Hopkins: Yes. The sales spreadsheet is something that I set up, that I shared with you. Every time somebody buys my course, and I guess your course as well, all the data about that person goes on a row in a spreadsheet.

So I literally have sales data from the past two and a half years on this one spreadsheet. It's really nice. I know. You know, if they're a man or a woman their age and so on. And then I can, you know, that way I can go see how many sales per month I've had, and it's just a lot of great data to have. A couple other things I'm doing with Zapier would be, that's how I get data from Stripe. Like when somebody pays me over to FreshBooks, my accounting software, like I don't know of another way to do that besides Zapier. In order to do that.

Abbey Ashley: I do the same thing with a spreadsheet. So we have, I have mine broken down my month by month, but I track all my cells in a spreadsheet and then we have like a couple formulas in there to kind of see like which percentage of students are doing the payment plan versus pay and full, what's our refund percentage.

I can like put in how much, if I spent anything on ads and it'll like do my cost per lead and all of that stuff. So I have, but the Zapier is what like actually puts that information all into the spreadsheet. And then another thing that I've been using it for, which we just talked about like a week or two ago Jacques, was for my Facebook group, I have this new tool that I'm using called Group Funnels, which I really, really like, and I can ask in the questions for people to enter my Facebook group. I can ask them, Hey, do you want my checklist and starter kit? If so, drop your email below. And when they drop their email, this tool called Group Funnels automatically puts that into a spreadsheet, and then Zapier will take that spreadsheet, integrate it to my email software.

So every person that joins my group has the opportunity to join my email list at that point. And I'm getting. You know, a couple hundred email subscribers every few days just from that integration.

Jacques Hopkins: Couple hundred every few days. Are you serious? How big is your group?

Abbey Ashley: We're about to hit 40,000.

Jacques Hopkins: Oh my goodness. So that's just your free Facebook group around your niche?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins: That's amazing. Yeah. Ever since you told me about that tool, I haven't signed up for it yet, but ever since you told me about it, I added the question. When people join my group about getting email and I started looking into the tool and it's not super nice because you have to have Zapier and you have to have a spreadsheet and this and that.

So I'm like, Oh, I don't need this tool. I don't need to spend $300 but now I'm backed up on my approvals cause I have to manually go in and take the email address. So I've got like seven and getting a couple of people added per day. So I've got like seven or eight email addresses just sitting there waiting for me or people waiting to be approved into the group. So that I can [00:33:00] take their email and put it into my, into Active Campaign. Because I think once I click approve, I don't see that email anymore.

Abbey Ashley: And then it's gone. Yeah. So I was for a while, having a VA do that, like take the email and just drop it in. I would just have our drop it into like our landing page, you know, just so it would fire off everything automatically as if they signed up.

But. Yeah. Cause I also have a landing page for my Facebook group. So like if you go to my website to join my Facebook group, like if you go to my website, there's a portion that says join my Facebook group. It actually doesn't take you straight to the group. It takes you to a landing page and it's like, Hey, get access to the group.

And then they fill out an email and it'll send them like kind of a followup sequence about like, here's the link to the group. Did you get in dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So before when I was doing it manually. I was having somebody put them into like that landing page sequence, but they're not doing that anymore.

Jacques Hopkins: So let me ask you this. With group funnels, can you do more than move just email addresses? Like if I want to ask them, like, do you have an online course already? Can I put that answer in a spreadsheet? And the move it with Zapier to Active Campaign as well? Or is it just for email addresses?

Abbey Ashley: I'm pretty sure you could do that cause you can move all the information goes to the spreadsheet. So as long as you could take that as a zap, that should work. Yeah.

Jacques Hopkins: Man, I was telling you about group funnels the other day, cause I know you have a pretty lively free Facebook group as well. That sounds like a good lead generation method there what Abbey has set up.

Nate Dodson: Yeah, absolutely. I think I forgot to like write that down on my to do's, but it's definitely something I want to do. Right now I pretty much just say, do you want a free ebook on our website microgreensfarmer.com is that helpful? And a lot of people say yes, awesome. Or I say like, did you sign up or something? They're all, a lot of people do, but this sounds way better.

Jacques Hopkins: It does. It does. I think it's just a one time fee of 297 if I remember correctly whereas most of the tools we're talking about here come with a monthly fee. Next on my list, I think we're all using and love is Deadline Funnel. I don't know, like a lot of these tools have competitors and alternatives, but I don't know of a good alternative to Deadline Funnel. Abbey, are you aware of one?

Abbey Ashley: Not any tool that provides like the true scarcity factor like I know a lot of people were like, Oh, I don't use that. I just use like motion mail and my to do an email timer. It's like, well, that's cool. If you're doing like a live launch, you're going to manually take down all the pages and stuff. But especially for evergreen, it's like, yeah, to be able to like say, Hey, this is going away and then actually have it go away. Like I don't know of any other tool that does that.

Jacques Hopkins: I remember probably not long after I signed up for Clickfunnels, I was trying to set up some, like an evergreen funnel and they had built in timers. I think one of the widgets is even called like an evergreen countdown inside of Clickfunnels, but it wasn't doing actual scarcity like I wanted it to.

And I think I posted in the ClickFunnels Facebook group back then or something. And that's when I heard about Deadline Funnel. And I think originally I thought it was associated with Clickfunnels, cause it had the word funnel in the name, but I ended up signing up back several years ago and I've been using ever since.

I love it, and I just assume that maybe the creator was some like sleazy, scammy, kinda guy making a software like that. But you know, he came on the podcast and just a wealth of information and totally not just the greatest guy Jack Born was on episode number 96 and it's been one of my favorite episodes so far. And now, you know, I'm even a bigger believer in Deadline Funnel now that I've got to talk to Jack.

Abbey Ashley: He's the real deal and he's like, so giving, we got on a phone call once, I don't actually even remember what we were chatting about, but we got on a call and he was just like, just pouring out all this information. It's like, if you ever need this, you ever need this? Do you ever need this? I'm like, how are you so cool? Like either really, really good guy.

Jacques Hopkins: Nate, are you a fan of Deadline Funnel?

Nate Dodson: Oh yeah. I've been using it for a long time and works wonderfully. It's easy to set up for a quick launch or to integrate into a longer automated sequence. It seems like their user interface, it's just gotten more user friendly and cleaner and done some really nice updates in the last year.

Jacques Hopkins: Have you guys ever had a, a big issue with Deadline Funnel not working?
Abbey Ashley: I think so.

Nate Dodson: I did one time, yeah, I had an issue one time where there things were getting stuck. They were like overwhelmed and it was taking extra time and, and they told me to give like an 8-hour buffer or something between when people opted in and when they got their first email that had a tag or whatever.

Jacques Hopkins: I say that because one of the things I like most about Deadline Funnel, because it normally works and it's like, it's amazing how much I rely on it. Like people are going through Deadline Funnel every single day in my evergreen funnel. And you know, even if it broke one day, that could mean two, three, four sales that don't actually happen. And so I'm really impressed by how robust the system is that they built.

Right next on my list is RightMessage either of you using RightMessage?

Abbey Ashley: I think I don't even know what it is.

Jacques Hopkins: All right, here we go. This is a first, neither one of you know what it is. Brennan Dunn is the creator of RightMessage. He is kind of a segmentation guy. He started the website, I think it's doubleyourfreelancing.com something like that. And he did a really great job of implementing segmentation on that site and making it super automated and making it super successful.

And then he created some software called RightMessage, which helps with segmentation, and it's a little different today than I think the way he originally designed it. I think originally the big feature was that you could customize webpages based on who was looking at it. Like you could customize a headline, it could be different based on who the segment of people was.

But now one of the biggest features of RightMessage is you can survey your customers on your website. So a little widget pops up, like in the bottom right, and you can just ask a question. Like for example, if you go to theonlinecourseguy.com I ask you something to the effect of, do you have an online course yet, or what's the status of your online course?

There's three different options. No, I don't have an online course yet. I have an online course and it's making less than $500 a month. I have an online course and it's making more than $500 a month. And that's really, you know, depending on somebody's answer to that, I can serve them in a totally different way.

And so that information that goes into my, into Active Campaign, and I can pitch the right things to the right people, you know, Pat Flynn uses it. I've seen the widget on a lot of different places. I think it's becoming more and more popular, and it's just a really good tool for segmentation.

Nate Dodson: After they select their segment, does it pop them to a landing page and then that's how you would capture that information?

Jacques Hopkins: It can. So if somebody is already on your email list and they're browsing the page and then answer, it'll feed back in. And then if they're not on your email list yet, and they answer, and then eventually, probably within the next 30 days, if they do get on your email list, then it'll I don't know the exact term, cache or cookie or whatever. It'll save that information and then put it in there once they are on your email list. That's the idea behind it. It's pretty cool.

Abbey Ashley: That's pretty cool.

Jacques Hopkins: Check it out guys. All right, next out of doubt you guys are using this one either. Next on the list is PicSnippets.

Abbey Ashley: I don't think I know this one, but I have a feeling I know what it does. Tell me what it does.

Jacques Hopkins: What do you think it does?

Abbey Ashley: I mean, is it just like, like a screen capturing software? Okay.

Jacques Hopkins: No. So when somebody signs up for my email list, the very first email is just a welcome email. Hey, I'm Jacques, excited to teach you piano. And you know, at the bottom is the link to the workbook and whatnot.

But in the middle is a picture of me at my keyboard holding up this big white sign and it says, welcome, and then your first name in handwritten looks like handwritten marker.

Nate Dodson: Very cool.

Abbey Ashley: Cool.

Jacques Hopkins: It's so cool. You know, my funnel and everything that I have set up is so automated and I absolutely love it, but if I can kind of break through that automated barrier a couple of times throughout the process, I'm all for it. So with the Bonjoros, that's one of the reasons I like doing Bonjoro so much is because everything is so automated. If that is rubbing people the wrong way and they're like, I'm not sure about this guy, or not let me sign up, but I'll probably request a refund. But then they come through and they see that I am a real person and that I am acknowledging their existence, that's great.

PicSnippets is similar. It's still automated though, which is kind of cool. And I'm sure half the people don't think I actually wrote their name on a board and hold it up. But even if they understand it's automated, it's still really cool and it's only about $20 a month. It's not super expensive. And I think it's super neat.

Abbey Ashley: That's pretty cool.

Nate Dodson: Yeah. That's awesome.

Jacques Hopkins: Next on my list is FreshBooks. It's not like my favorite tool ever, but of the accounting software I've tried, I think it's the best. Abbey, what are you using for accounting software?

Abbey Ashley: So I am terrible at all things math, numbers, accounting, all of the above. So I mean, my accountant uses is just QuickBooks and I have an amazing accountant and an amazing bookkeeper, but I literally, I know it's not software, but my bookkeeper is like one of those people that you tell the world about because he is so good. So good. So I feel like I should shout him out. It's Evolved Finance.

And literally so that they do bookkeeping like just for, I mean really just for like online business owners, but namely course creators and so they know so many insights about the online course field. So he'll literally, like, I get a video message every month after they've done my books. And he's like, Hey, so you know, you said this percentage on this, this percentage on this, it looks like if you're feeling a little overloaded, it looks like your team percentage is actually down.

You could probably afford to hire another person or it looks like, you know, he's always like, cause I spend like less than 1% on marketing cause I don't really run ads. And so he's like, okay, it's time to beef up ads. And so that kind of stuff, like he actually gives me insight because he's looking at the books of tons of different course creators. So it's not a tool that I had to give them a shout out cause they're so good.

Jacques Hopkins: No, that's helpful. I don't think Nate nor myself have an actual bookkeeper. Can you give me your pitch for why we should have a bookkeeper?

Abbey Ashley: I mean, if you're the kind of person that can do your own books, then I don't think you need to, but literally like my books were a mess. I had no system. I had no, it was, it was pretty bad before I hired them.

Jacques Hopkins: What does doing your own books look like? Cause I've never had a bookkeeper, so I have things set up is with FreshBooks and Zapier and Stripe. My invoices automatically get like the money I receive via Stripe. That automatically gets created as a payment inside of FreshBooks.

So that's there automatically. And then my expenses all go through my link credit card, which then those show up as expenses automatically. And I'll just do quality checks every couple of days to make sure things look good. There's not a lot of intervention I need to do.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, well, I didn't have that setup for one. So I guess part of it is that, and this allocating things for the right spot, like I am also, I'm really bad at all the gray areas. I'm like, so I'm going on this trip and I'm going to a conference, but I'm also spending three days at Disneyland and like, he's just like the kind of person that I can ask those kinds of questions too. Like where, what is and what is not business expense.

He gives me the reports afterwards. So I mean, if you have your own system that works for your bookkeeping, I guess you don't need one. But I felt like I needed an actual person.

Jacques Hopkins: Well, that personal advice is, is valuable. Do you have a separate accountant as well?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, so I have somebody that does my taxes also.

Jacques Hopkins: So tell me what that site was again?

Abbey Ashley: Evolved Finance.

Nate Dodson: How much does that [00:44:00] run to hire a bookkeeper?

Abbey Ashley: I think his prices on his site, he has three different packages, so one that's just like the bookkeeping, one that includes a video message from him when they reconcile your books. And then one that includes like a meeting. So I do the video message and then he also has started, and I think that's what the middle tier is what it's included. But you get like once a month, any of his clients that want to can come to a meeting and we literally like talk about our books together. Like it's like an open conversation about our finances and profit.

And just honestly, a lot of it's the accountability. Like I'm naturally a spender. So for somebody to, if you can't tell from all of them software, I'm naturally a spender so for somebody to be like, Hey. But your business profit is here and I know it can be here. To have that accountability really helps me to.

Jacques Hopkins: Nate, this sounds like something that might be a good fit for you and your business.

Nate Dodson: Definitely sounds like something I need. Yeah. I mean, I think I mentioned that to you like last month that I'm trying to hire a bookkeeper and