Jacques Hopkins [00:00:00]:
Most course creators try to do the wide thing first, build a big audience, create a big course, launch to the masses. But what if that's the slowest way to get momentum? In this episode, my guest, John Meece, shares a simple model he teaches for building a course business in 3 layers: go wide, go deep, go long, and why the smartest place to start is usually not wide. You'll know more about what I mean here in just a minute. You're listening to The Online Course Show, where we bring you the insights and strategies to build a thriving online course business. I'm Jacques Hopkins, and over the past 13 years, I've built a successful online course business teaching piano that's brought in over $5 million, and I'm here to share the lessons that I've learned along the way. 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.
Jacques Hopkins [00:01:03]:
Hi, I'm Jacques Hopkins, and this is.
Jacques Hopkins [00:01:05]:
The Online Course Show.
Jacques Hopkins [00:01:12]:
All right, today I'm talking with John Meese from Sell Your Smarts, and we're breaking down his Go Wide, Go Deep, Go Long framework. We'll talk about what each one means and how to choose the right one for your particular stage. All right, here is that conversation with John Meese. Hello, John. Welcome to The Online Course Show.
John Meese [00:01:31]:
Hello, Jacques. Thanks for having me.
Jacques Hopkins [00:01:34]:
It's my pleasure, man. So look, 2026, happy New Year. Uh, in 2026, if somebody is looking to get started to take what they know and sell it, like, what is your recommendation here?
John Meese [00:01:46]:
Oh, I'm so glad you're asking this. Okay, so my business is called Sell Your Smarts. So this is what we like obsess over is like, how do you take what's in your brain and like sell it, but like keep the brain matter, you know, like just You know, um, and what's working today is a threefold strategy. Now let me just preface this by saying, if you're starting from scratch, don't start with 3 products. But once you have a mature business, it's 3 products. It's one where you go wide, and by that, well, I can come back and define these. One where you go wide, one where you go deep, and one where you go long. So for example, in my business, I'm an author.
John Meese [00:02:18]:
That's how I go wide. So I create books, uh, and other products related to those books. That I can sell for a low price product, low price to a lot of people. And the goal there is to serve, is to go wide. We're going after, that's where we get the audience. That's where we get the larger customer base coming in, very low price product coming in. And then where we go deep, and this has really become the core, especially in the last 5 years, there's been a big shift in the industry. It's always been there, but it's become like necessary is really to have a core of the business where you're going deep with a few people who say, I want your help to achieve a result.
John Meese [00:02:49]:
So I have a program called Sold Out Coach Club where I take 12 people at a time through the process of creating and scaling sold-out group coaching programs. That's the core of my business. And then the third category is to go long. And so for me, that's— I have a mastermind group that's called the Authority Guild. Um, that could be a membership, doesn't have to be a mastermind. But the reality is what I'm seeing now is that really to, to have a business, especially if your goal is to have a 7 or 8-figure business with online education, you have to have all 3. You have to go wide, go deep, and go long.
Jacques Hopkins [00:03:20]:
Some people would argue that it's better to focus on one product and do one thing really, really, really well. How did you discover that it's best to have these three different categories?
John Meese [00:03:29]:
So, well, I actually agree. I would agree that if your goal right now is to build a six-figure business, you should have one product. You should just go deep. That's it. You should have one program where you go deep with a few. A lot of people think they should start with the product, like the go-wide product, because it is, it's logical, right? Let's start with low-priced product. Let's start with the product that requires the absolute most amount of customers to be successful. But after 12 years full-time in this industry, what I've seen is the most common reason why people coming into the online education space fail is because they die what I call death by 1,000 ebooks, where they build their business off the back of a $17 ebook.
John Meese [00:04:04]:
And then, or we can call it a course, right? $17 course, $47 course, $97 course. And they spend years trying to sell it and they end up selling a few hundred. They make a few thousand bucks and they either go broke or they burn out and they give up. And so what I recommend is that the first thing you do until you're at least earning $10,000 per month from this business is that you have one program where you go deep. And that's what I teach in Sold Out Coach Club is to say like, let's go all in on creating a sold out group coaching program where you're taking 5 to 10 clients at a time in a group, charging a premium rate, and that funds your lifestyle. Now you can buy back your time from either one-on-one client work or a job. And now you can go, go wide. You can create a book or a course from a place of abundance.
John Meese [00:04:45]:
We're already paying the mortgage out of your coaching program, and now you can go create a book and go wide, or a course to go wide. And then the last thing you add is you go long with a membership or mastermind. So it's in that sequence that I recommend.
Jacques Hopkins [00:04:57]:
Yeah, thanks for clarifying the order. Let's, let's stick with the people more on the beginner side for now.
John Meese [00:05:02]:
Sure.
Jacques Hopkins [00:05:02]:
Currently not the entire time. So the first product you recommend is the deep product, kind of like a group coaching of some sort.
John Meese [00:05:09]:
Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:05:09]:
Or maybe even one-on-one coaching. Are you a fan of that? That starting out?
John Meese [00:05:13]:
Uh, no. Uh, so I'll tell you why. It's because when you sell, if your ultimate goal is to build an online course business or an online education business of any kind, the reality is you're going to have to get good at selling promises of like, here's the promise of what this thing makes possible for you. When you're selling one-on-one coaching, you can actually change what you're selling for every single client. And so because of that, what happens is people will build a whole business off the back of one-on-one coaching Now they've sold all their time, they've lost a lot of their freedom, they're making good money, but we'll, we'll start breaking it down and they realize, well, there's not like a sys— it— each client is a little bit different. And so they really struggle to go from one-on-one coaching to, uh, a group coaching program. Now what people wanna do is they wanna go from one-to-one to like one-to-many. But what I— if you are in that position where you do have to— you do have one-on-one coaching, like don't worry, you don't have to go fire all your clients.
John Meese [00:06:02]:
But what we do wanna do is if you wanna go ultimately from one-to-one to one-to-many, you have to start with one-to-few. Because just that work of going from taking one person at a time to serving 5 people at a time in a small group, that forces you to get really clear on what is the promise, what is the transformation, what is the product we're selling? And ultimately that skill is gonna allow you to sell courses and books and memberships and masterminds and all those things.
Jacques Hopkins [00:06:26]:
Okay, so we'll start with the group coaching program.
John Meese [00:06:28]:
Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:06:29]:
How do we fill the spots? I mean, as, so as the self-proclaimed no ads, no social media guy, that's me. How do we build our audience to where we have enough people in the audience to be able to sell them group coaching to begin with?
John Meese [00:06:41]:
Yeah, I mean, I think, so I have a 7-step process for this. And well, the first 5 are really about selling that first group. So let's just focus on those for now. I have a process for this where step 1, I think a lot of people skip this, is we have to find your target client bullseye. A lot of people have like a theory of like, who's my target client? Who's my ICP or my, you know, like Who's my avatar, right? Do you have a language like that you use, Jacques, in terms of how you describe the person they're going after?
Jacques Hopkins [00:07:10]:
Yeah, your client avatar, ideal target audience, you know, the general canned terms. I like what you're saying, the client bullseye.
John Meese [00:07:17]:
Yeah, so typically, like, all those things are true, that there is like a general target where you're going. But when you're saying, when you're raising the stakes, like, let's just, let's just be super specific. Let's create a template for this. There's a lot of ways you could charge or design a program, but for this conversation, let's have a program. Where you're running a, an 8-week coaching program where you're taking just 5 clients who are gonna pay $2,000. Okay, so you're meeting with these people once a week for 90 minutes. So for 90 minutes a week for 8 weeks or 2 months, you're gonna meet with 5 people and you're gonna charge them each $2,000. If we start with that as a framework, immediately it raises the stakes for what problem we're solving.
John Meese [00:07:51]:
And so when I say find your target client bullseye, I mean you gotta look at that kind of like broad target you have of who you're going after and find Where's that inner 10% where right now they need your help and right now you can have a bigger transformation in their life than any other time. So typically there's some sort of transition they're going through. I mean, I just was talking to a woman, for example, who's starting a program for, um, women who work in a full-time corporate position that have young kids and they don't wanna be a stay-at-home mom, but they do wanna spend more time with their kids and with their family. And so she helps them transition, transition from saying like, hey, how do I make a seamless transition from full-time corporate employee to taking those exact same skills and starting my own consulting business that allows me to spend more time with my family. Right? And so there's a lot of versions like that. I mean, sometimes it's, uh, so I have clients who work with nonprofits, for example, that say like, hey, we want to help you unlock major— a major gift pipeline. Chris Parker is what comes to mind. He works with nonprofits to help them unlock a major gift pipeline so they can fully fund their mission.
John Meese [00:08:47]:
Whatever that is, the goal is we got to figure out what's the inner 10% of your target client. Who's willing to pay a premium because there's a real problem that you can solve. And then we start there.
Jacques Hopkins [00:08:57]:
Okay. So target client bullseye. That's the first of 7 steps.
John Meese [00:09:03]:
It is. It is. Yes. So you want to go to step 2?
Jacques Hopkins [00:09:05]:
And these 7 steps, the goal of the 7 steps is what? Is it answering my question about how to build your audience or is it bigger than that?
John Meese [00:09:12]:
Well, so, okay, let's, let me ask you this real quick. I know the question is build your audience. I know, I know that's the question, but Let's just imagine real quick, Jacques, that you've got a friend who wants to open a coffee shop, right? And he tells you, um, he said, he says, hey, I'm opening my new coffee shop. You got to come down. We're going to have a big party, big grand opening next week. And you walk in an hour before the party and you walk in this room and you look around. You don't smell any coffee. There's no coffee on the shelves.
John Meese [00:09:37]:
There's nobody behind the counter. And you say, hey dude, like, what's going on? He's like, oh no, no, no. See, we're just waiting till we have enough people, and then we're gonna start selling coffee. That's not a business, right? What a lot of people do is they think you have to focus on building the audience first and then one day build a business. What I'm telling you is— what I'm not just telling you, I'm recommending— is to say we have to focus on figuring out the product first, because then once we have the offer, the goal is to go get 5 customers. That's way more important than going to get 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 email subscribers. Is to get those first 5 customers. Now it's easier if you have a couple hundred email subscribers to get 5 customers.
John Meese [00:10:15]:
And so I'm not going to pretend like email marketing doesn't matter. Um, I love building an email list. It's so critical, but if your goal is 5 customers, you have to figure out the product first. That's what you build the business around. So does that make sense why I'm kind of dancing around your question a little bit?
Jacques Hopkins [00:10:30]:
Yeah, totally. That's fair. And I would say that building out a coaching program is probably a little less friction than building out an entire online course because you and somewhat steer the ship as you go. I would love to, I would love to, uh, pick a specific, a very unbiased example to run through this. Let's say that my course Business Piano in 21 Days did not exist and it's 2026 and I'm like, you know what, I teach piano and I would like to, um, create an online course or like sell, sell my knowledge somehow online. I'm listening to this episode with, with John and Jacques. All right, so first step is to, you know, brainstorm the product, obviously, you know, target client bullseye, all that. And I'm gonna create my coaching program offer even though I have zero audience.
Jacques Hopkins [00:11:18]:
So I create this program that's got 5 seats in it and I'm charging $1,000 or $2,000, something like that. Okay, great. But I still have zero audience. So like, what's the next step? Well, without social media, ads. without Sure.
John Meese [00:11:30]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, the short answer to that question is, is borrow the audience, but the more bigger question is which audience. And so that's why the target client bullseye is so important because you can teach piano to anybody, but like you can teach piano to kids, you can teach piano, but we have to get clear on like, what's the bullseye of why would someone pay $2,000 for that? Um, I have an idea. I have a, I have an idea maybe, but I'm curious, like, just from your experience there, like, is there a specific demographic that would pay $2,000 for a coaching program to, you learn piano, what comes to mind for you? Yeah. Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:12:02]:
The, the most I've charged for anything on that side of my business is, is $1K.
John Meese [00:12:06]:
Okay.
Jacques Hopkins [00:12:07]:
So I don't know, I, I don't have any proof, so, uh, proof of, of selling something for $2K, but I can tell you like, you know, the, the typical demographic that's going to buy that my higher priced items are gonna be people, um, average age about 60.
John Meese [00:12:22]:
Okay.
Jacques Hopkins [00:12:23]:
Typically men, but not always, but right around retirement age. Um, so because all of a sudden they've retired and they have the extra time in their hand, they've, uh, on their hands and they've had learning piano on their bucket list, but they don't wanna spend forever, like years learning because they are older.
John Meese [00:12:41]:
Um, that makes sense.
Jacques Hopkins [00:12:42]:
Obviously English-speaking countries, like that's, that's my target audience.
John Meese [00:12:45]:
Okay. That makes sense. So let me give you an example of where there might be another market to go after for this, for a premium offer in the piano world. So, um, I bet— I'm going on a limb here. I haven't— I played piano since I was like 7, but, um, but I'm gonna go to a limit here and say, I bet you there are some colleges out there that offer scholarships for piano players of a certain caliber, right? Is that true? Do you think? Do you know?
Jacques Hopkins [00:13:10]:
I would imagine so, yes.
John Meese [00:13:13]:
So one offer— this doesn't have to be the offer, but just use this as an example— one offer could be I can help, you know, I can help your kid master piano to the level required to pass the audition required to get a full ride scholarship, which is worth at this point, $50,000 to $100,000 in tuition, like $50,000 to $100,000 because like tuition keeps rising. And so it's like, so all of a sudden you've got all these, you've got parents out there who are, where you say like, hey, if your kid likes to play the piano, I can teach them in this program. What they need to know to pass the audition required to get a full ride scholarship at a major university. And now all of a sudden we just raised the stakes, right? You see how we took it from like somebody's retired, they have extra time on their hands to like, this is a, there's a transition point coming where this is worth, this is worth serious cash to me to solve this problem. Um, what do you think about that?
Jacques Hopkins [00:14:05]:
I think so. I'm, I'm from your example, there seems to be two key layers. That I'm hearing. One is just really hyper-niched down. Yeah. But two, and probably more importantly, is really, really focused on the value that you have to offer, right? Not simply learn piano, but in your case, like, hey, pass this entrance thing so that you can do this, which will allow you to do this, which will allow you to do this, which is really, really powerful. So those are the two layers that I sense. Is that kind of what you're going for?
John Meese [00:14:35]:
100%. You just picked up on a key part of what I— this is step two of the process is the Crafter10x promise offer. So step 2, the process is where we dial in, like, what is that promise of you're learning a thing so that what? And we try to go several layers deep of like, like you're learning piano so that what? And then it's like, okay, well, so that you could, I don't know, get into college. So that what? You could get a full ride scholarship. So that what? I mean, I guess we could say about skip college loans completely altogether. That'd be pretty cool. So that, you know, like, what is that, right? And it doesn't have to be just that example. Like, it could be There could be another one that's just like where the promise itself is, you know, learn how to, let's see, you know, learn how to give your friends a soundtrack at parties.
John Meese [00:15:18]:
Like learn how to play piano with like songs where you can just like hang out with your friends and feel connection and kind of like, it's almost like that sense of like purpose and belonging. There's a lot of reasons why you could want, but just like the one that came to mind for me right away was college scholarship., would be a, a big reason. So it's raising the stakes.
Jacques Hopkins [00:15:37]:
So obviously I've got a lot of experience in this piano niche.
John Meese [00:15:40]:
Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:15:40]:
So, and, and, and I don't teach kids, they're, they're not drawn to my messaging, so it's hard for me to relate to that specific example. But I do hear what you, what you're saying. I'm just like spitballing something more like, you know, there are studies that, um, you know, people that learn an instrument when they're older have, you know, X percent, uh, better chances of not developing dementia.
John Meese [00:16:03]:
Amazing.
Jacques Hopkins [00:16:04]:
You know, and this program allows you to, um, to tap into that, you know, so that, that's, that's clunky, but something like that is kind of what you're talking about, right?
John Meese [00:16:13]:
Yeah. So like, so, so, uh, you know, so, um, you know, play, play into play until the day you die or something like that, where it's like, we're taking that idea and just kind of saying like, if you're talking specifically about selling to retired people, we're looking for purpose and passion, connection, mental alignment. The one of the, you know, so the biggest two fears typically like after retirement in like the US are like Alzheimer's and cancer. And so it's like, if you can help me connect the dots that like playing piano is going to mean that I get to keep my, I keep my brain longer. Like, whoa, that's worth years of my life. Like, where do I sign? Right. And so that's really what we're doing is we're just saying like, so that what, like, why does it matter? Cool. And I would say this is a shift.
John Meese [00:16:56]:
This is a shift in the market really in the last 5 or 6 years. So my background was like super nerdy before I got into online business, which is already pretty nerdy. But before that, I got a degree in economics and I used to work in economics research lab. And so I'm still into the— still in the 2000s, I've continued to kind of read economic papers for fun you sometimes, know, as one does. And We grew up, I mean, everybody listening to this, the majority of your life has been in the age of information. And so, I mean, literally, like our businesses, like the information product industry is what it was called for a long time, right? We grew up in the age of information. And so what a lot of people don't realize though is the age of information ended. I mean, that's sort of like, that's sort of like it's, you know, we're back in the Stone Age and you're still like running your business using stone tools and the Stone Age ends and the Bronze Age begins.
John Meese [00:17:46]:
But you missed the memo, and so you're still using stone tools, and you're like, I don't understand, how's other people— how are the people better than me? How are they— how are they faster? Are they more successful? Well, it's because bronze came along. Well, the age of information ended in 2020, but very few people were reading the World Economic Forum's memos in 2020 when they were worried about other things going on in the world. But what began was the age of insight. And so what's really interesting is it really predicted, the market demand for AI tools we use today. Um, so just to kind of backtrack a little bit here, you know, the age of information was characterized by the fact that, you know, before the '80s, if you wanted to know a thing, it was probably locked in someone's drawer on a piece of paper, and you may never know the thing, right? Or there was somebody that could teach a thing, but they were on the other side of the world, and you would never learn it from them. And so the beginning of the computers and the beginning of the internet was really this dawn of the age of information that, wow. And then with like, with print on demand and with translation technology, all these things, you know, '80s and the '90s and early 2000s were all focused on the age of information. We get access to more information.
John Meese [00:18:51]:
We can access anything in any world, in any language, anywhere on the planet. We can connect to anybody. And that was so cool until it was overwhelming. And then what happened was in the early 2000s, we crossed that. We started to cross the threshold where all of a sudden we're spending a lot of time investing in like filtering our inboxes, ignoring headlines, turning on blockers. Trying to ignore information because there's so much information all the time that we're just trying to filter and ignore it. And that was where we started to shift ultimately to the point where we have access right now to so much information. There's no way you or I could possibly process it.
John Meese [00:19:24]:
And that's when we crossed into the age of insight. The age of insight is where what we want as humans, what we want is information that has been filtered by a trusted expert. That's what insight is. It's where you have all the information and instead of 3,000 possible ways you can fix a leaky faucet, you get the one way that works. And so what that meant is suddenly there was this massive demand for, in 2020, for creators, for coaches, for people to say like, I'm looking for somebody to tell me how to parent my kids, how to take, how to train my dog, how to take care of my health, how to fix my marriage, whatever that is. Massive demand. It was already there before. But before you were selling information, like an online course that was sold 12 years ago, it was sold by saying like, hey, you get access to 32 videos and a 72-page PDF with these 4 secrets that you can't find anywhere else.
John Meese [00:20:11]:
You can't sell a product that way anymore. That's the age of information. Now you can sell— I can, I can— now you can sell a course that's, hey, I can teach you the one way that works to do the thing that you want to do. And what you're really— the difference there is, is dramatic in terms of information. And insight. And so that's where we're in, is the age of insight today. What do you think about that?
Jacques Hopkins [00:20:32]:
That is like, I mean, it's like so profound. It's like, it's like you should have had a microphone just so you could drop it after that.
John Meese [00:20:40]:
I gotta go find my, wait, I gotta find it. I got one. Yep. Here it is. Got it. Yep. There we go. There we go.
John Meese [00:20:51]:
Mic drop.
Jacques Hopkins [00:20:51]:
Don't break it.
John Meese [00:20:52]:
Okay.
Jacques Hopkins [00:20:53]:
He just dropped the microphone for those of you just listening. Yeah. So, wow. I don't even know where to go with that. So what you're saying, let me just try to unpack it. What you're saying is that over the years, information became more and more and more available for us. And at a certain point it became basically too available. There was too much information and it was overwhelming.
Jacques Hopkins [00:21:16]:
And so we needed, and that's where the shift to needing insight rather than information to help us. Go through the information, parse the information, find the good information versus the bad information. And what you're saying is the way that that has affected info products is.
John Meese [00:21:33]:
Inside products, inside products maybe, I don't know. But yeah. Ooh.
Jacques Hopkins [00:21:37]:
See, this is, this is the part where I'm getting a little bit lost because basically what what I, I heard was, and maybe I heard it wrong, but the shift meant that for course creators, we need to focus more on selling the outcomes versus the features, but we, I would say we should have been doing that 10 years ago anyway.
John Meese [00:21:58]:
Yeah, I think that's true to some extent. I mean, it's always been true that we always wanted insight, but it's become more true because before information was so, I mean, like it was still, it was still like turning on the internet was still like tapping into a goldmine where you're like, wow, there's so much information where you could have. You know, there were sales pages that said like, hey, if you buy this thing, you get 32 hours of videos, you get 72-page PDFs. You get— I mean, you've seen all these things, right? It's like, who watches all those videos? Well, as it turns out, not many people, right? Because then studies came back and said, oh, actually it turns out like 5% of people complete these things. But you were buying it in some ways because even if you didn't understand what was going on, you were at some level trying to acquire information because that was the currency. Was like, I'm get— I have information. And so because of that, I'm more, I'm more successful, more valuable. That's what I'm getting.
John Meese [00:22:46]:
And so yes, you're right. I think to some extent we probably should have always been selling outcomes, but it was less important before. Um, and also even before, before you might have, you might have sold the outcome and then people still wanted to know, okay, but exactly how many videos do I get? How many PDFs? They still wanted to know what information they get access to, but now they don't even want to know. They just want to know what the promise is. Right? Like, and it's just like half the time they don't care. They're just like, tell me what you can help me do. Um, and so I help people, I help people sell programs that are $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, or $30,000 where we really don't even give them, we don't give them the logistics, the frequently asked questions and what's included. We really sell it based on the promise and they ask a couple questions and then they say yes and they buy.
John Meese [00:23:31]:
And then once they're in, they find out, once they're a customer, then they find out all the stuff they get access to. What I found is that right now, if you tell them all that information up front, it actually hurts the sales process because it's the wrong focus. So this is where like ChatGPT and things like that came from in 2020. All of a sudden there was like this shift where it was like, hey, we crossed this point where there's such a demand for trusted experts who can give us insight that it was actually way more demand than there was supply. And the way the market works is when there's a massive gap where there's massive demand small supply, then what happens is new technology is developed to meet that demand. So artificial insight is what happens is instead of going to Google, what you do is you go to ChatGPT and you ask a question and it gives you one answer instead of giving you 100 answers, right? But the reality is it's artificial insight. AI. It's artificial insight.
John Meese [00:24:22]:
You, you know, you and I are the real thing. And so that's where like we have a superpower that as you build trust with people and you recognize your job is to deliver the one trusted answer for each problem that you help your people solve, now all of a sudden you realize how powerful you are. And that's what people are really craving.
Jacques Hopkins [00:24:40]:
Dude, I just had a flashback. Like, I, I haven't heard somebody geek out on like economics terms in a while. I'm talking about supply and demand. I'm, I'm picturing those curves like back in AP economics class in high school, dude. Like guns and butter. Remember all those examples about guns and butter? That came just back.
John Meese [00:24:55]:
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yes. Vaguely, I do. Yeah. Yeah. You probably never read my, my, my college thesis. It was called Hedonic Quality Adjustment: A Qualitative Metric.
John Meese [00:25:07]:
So just all full nerd. So I've recovered a good bit. I've learned how to speak human again. But I could joke that I have.
Jacques Hopkins [00:25:14]:
It printed out over there, but there's no point.
John Meese [00:25:16]:
I mean, nobody does. I lost it. But that's fine. But yeah, so But this is relevant for our industry, right? Because it's like, this is why we exist is like literally like we're still selling. I mean, I've all, I mean, Jacques, I cannot count how many people have come to me like behind the scenes to the grapevine because I've worked in this industry long enough that I work with some of the 7-figure, 8-figure course creators and a lot of them are really struggling. And so they'll come like, I'll hear like, hey, John, I hear you've got a way that works. Like, what's wrong? And I look at their sales page and I'll tell them like, you're still selling like it's 2019. Like you're still selling an in— an information product and just like no one wants that anymore.
John Meese [00:25:57]:
And like every single time it's the same advice. It's just like we gotta refocus on what's the promise that we're selling. Because what someone's buying when they're buying an online education product is they're buying a future version of themselves. They're buying a promise of who they could be. And that's really what they're buying. And then it's just a question of how are you gonna deliver that? That's secondary.
Jacques Hopkins [00:26:18]:
Do you mind if we keep running through these 7 steps with this hypothetical channel example?
John Meese [00:26:22]:
Let's do it.
Jacques Hopkins [00:26:23]:
Cool. So step 2 is craft your 10x, what?
John Meese [00:26:26]:
10X promise. 10x promise offer. Yeah. Promise.
Jacques Hopkins [00:26:30]:
Okay.
John Meese [00:26:30]:
Yeah. 10x promise.
Jacques Hopkins [00:26:31]:
That's where we just keep doing the so you can, uh, a layer and a layer deeper.
John Meese [00:26:35]:
Yeah. So like, let me give you a couple examples of some 10x promises. So Sean Blanc is a client who is a productivity coach. But then he developed a group coaching program for entrepreneurs, uh, and his 10x promise is run your full-time business working part-time hours. And so it's a one phrase. It takes a lot of time to come up with that one phrase. Once you've got it, you're like, oh yeah, I know what that means. Either I want it or I don't, but it's clear, it's compelling.
John Meese [00:27:00]:
Um, then so mine is earn $10,000 per month group coaching 90 minutes per week. That's my 10x promise. Right? And so that's what I help you do with Soul.CoachClub. And so there's multiple layers to that promise, right? It's like buying back your time because it's like, could you earn $10,000 per month through coaching 90 minutes per week? It's a pretty bold promise, but that is— but that is a promise for my program. There's a lot of other examples, um, but I think that gives you a couple. I've joked before that if I had a fitness program— I don't— but I've told people they should like create this one. Like, a really good program, a promise for a fitness program would be Turn your dad bod into a father figure with rock hard abs. That'd be a great promise.
John Meese [00:27:39]:
So yeah, do those examples help?
Jacques Hopkins [00:27:42]:
So yeah, yeah, 100%. So let's, let's just, uh, let's just say something like, um, you know, get, get back to your 30-year-old brain, um, through, through 3 weeks of piano lessons.
John Meese [00:27:55]:
Amazing.
Jacques Hopkins [00:27:55]:
Something like that. Or like, yeah, by learning piano in 3 weeks. Or in 21 days, obviously. Okay. So that's, that's our V1 of the 10x promise. What's step 3?
John Meese [00:28:05]:
Yeah, I already, I'm already rewriting that one. I was like, I was like, there's like a way to probably say like, play, like play your way back down the age ladder or something like that. But you know, there's like, there's probably some fun, but yes, same concept. So step 3 is you send compelling hand raisers. Now, if you hand raisers are, I mean, imagine you're sitting in front of a crowd of people, right? You're sitting in front of a crowd of people and you know that there's 300 people in front of you and you're looking for these 5 people who are your target client, what you would do is you would say, hey, would you raise your hand if you are a dentist with at least 2 employees based out of Boise, Idaho? Right? And you get them to raise their hand. You say, okay, great. Can you guys come meet me over here? Right? That's how you find 5 people out of a crowd. We do the same thing on the internet.
John Meese [00:28:41]:
We send hand raisers. Now, this is where my preference is you send this to an email list. So this is the point where it is very helpful if you have at least 100 email subscribers. I mean, the more the merrier to some extent. Um, although some people with huge email lists really struggle with this. Because the response can be overwhelming. But if you have a list of a few hundred subscribers, for example, you send a message and you send an email message where the subject line is quick question and the email is, would you like to, uh, tell me again your promise. Would you like to go back to your 30s? Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:29:14]:
Go back to your, get your brain back to the way it was in its 30s through, um, Through a 3-week piano program.
John Meese [00:29:23]:
Yeah. So we probably take out the 3-week part because that makes me think too much about the product, but I might just say like, you know, I might say like, hey, would you like to, uh, would you like to get your brain back to where it was in your 30s just by playing piano? Dash shock. That's the whole email. Now that's one example. The reality is there's like a bunch of different types of hand raisers. We call that one the want it 10x because basically that's all it's saying is like, do you want a 10x promise? Um, and then people will reply and say yes. Maybe tell me more. Right.
John Meese [00:29:51]:
So that's— now, if you don't have an email list, you could do something similar by either borrowing somebody else's audience and kind of creating free trainings for them by posting on social media. If you do that kind of thing, I don't do social media or honestly direct invite. So because there's another one we send, typically what we do is we start a program, we send two hand raisers, the want us next and the who do you know. And the who do you know hand raiser is structured like a referral email where it's like, hey, I'm I just opened up this spot on my space on my calendar for some free lessons. Usually I say complimentary coaching, but in this case I might say some free lessons. And I'd love to serve someone who, you know, is, uh, you know, at least 65 years old. Um, you know, enjoys to dabble with the piano and would like to, you know, revert back to their 30s by playing, just by playing piano. Do you know anyone like that? What happens is that kind of message, you can send that in text messages, you can send that in DMs.
John Meese [00:30:43]:
You can post that on LinkedIn with a picture of you at the piano, uh, or on Facebook. And it's really great because it's very non-threatening because it's like a referral-based email where you're saying like, hey, do you know anyone like this? But your goal honestly is usually that people say, oh, that's me. And they reply and they're like, yeah, that's me. I want that. Or they tag somebody or refer you to somebody and say, oh, you should talk to my friend Jeff. Um, and so usually that's all we need to do to get to step 4, which is where we serve to sell with one free coaching call. And this is the subject of my most recent book, uh, it's called Serve to Sell. It's a, it's how do you give one free coaching call that's designed to sell premium programs.
John Meese [00:31:19]:
We can talk more about that, but the summary version is your goal here to start a new program is to book 10 serve calls with your target client, and then 50% of them will buy. And then you have your first 5 clients paying you $2,000. And then that's step 5, which is where you fill your founding member cohort. So that's really, that's the full 5 steps of the is process find your target client bullseye. Crafters' next promise offer, send compelling hand raisers, and then serve to sell with one free coaching call so that you can fill your founding member cohort. Now, once you're sold out, now we've got a business we can build off the back of that. And that's where step 6 is about celebrate clients to get more clients. And then step 7 is ultimately to scale your sold-out coach business.
John Meese [00:31:55]:
So that's the 7-step playbook that we use.
Jacques Hopkins [00:31:57]:
Hey, it's Jacques jumping in here real quick. If you're listening to John talk about selling outcomes, getting your first customers, and building something real, and you're thinking, okay, but What's my actual game plan for building my course business? Well, I've got something for you. I put together a free 35-minute workshop that walks you through the exact formula that successful 6- and 7-figure online course businesses are built on. After 13 years of running my own course business and years of interviewing course creators on this very podcast, I've discovered the common threads that make it all work, and I'm sharing it with you in this free training. Grab it for free at oc.show/workshop. That's oc.show/workshop. All right, back to the conversation with John. Where, let's go super high level.
John Meese [00:32:37]:
Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:32:37]:
Where, where do courses fit in? Are courses dead in your opinion? Like, what do you think about courses?
John Meese [00:32:42]:
Well, so I mean, info products are dead. That doesn't mean courses have to be dead, but if you're selling a course, like, it's the age of information. I mean, technically people still buy stones today, I guess, but we're not in the Stone Age anymore, right? Like, like, it's just not a good, it's just not a winning strategy. Um, so going back to the idea of like, we've been really diving deep now into, if you remember, we're diving deep into going deep, ironically, like the Go deep product, which is like to have a solid group coaching program. Typically what I recommend is once you've got your first sold-out cohort there and now you're looking, okay, how do I do this again and and again again and again and again? One way is to grow your business by going wide. And that's where courses are fantastic, where you can create an on-demand course that solves a problem that somebody has that's your target client. And you can lower the price probably from what you're charging because the world has changed there too. Like course prices.
John Meese [00:33:32]:
I've gone down a lot for like on-demand, something I could maybe find on YouTube or ask Sora to just create for me. I trust you. It's, I prefer you over some random person on the internet, but I'm going, but still the goal with the product, that's where your goal is to go wide, like a course, like a lower price course. Your goal is not to create cash, it's to create customers. And that's why you have to have the go deep program first, because if you're just selling a $45 course or a $50 course or a $97 course, It's really hard to make a living doing that. But if you're selling that course and you can even lower that price depending upon who your target client is, maybe you're selling that for $5 or $10 or $20 or $50, whatever that is. If you know your goal there is to create customers, well now once someone's bought one product from you, they are 5 times more likely to buy another product from you than somebody who's never bought anything, right? And so we use the go wide strategy to create this whole list of customers. And then we can invite some of those customers into the group coaching program where you go deep.
John Meese [00:34:30]:
And that's really where the courses come in. Um.
Jacques Hopkins [00:34:34]:
What about the person that got into this because of the allure of passive income and they don't necessarily want to have a packed calendar and do live coaching calls and really would like to spend a lot of their time up front building an audience, creating content, making the sale, and then don't want to have a lot of responsibility. Post-sale, what would you say to that person?
John Meese [00:34:54]:
I would say that today there are people who are craving your leadership, and what you have the opportunity to build an authority business, which is what I call this kind of business, where you're really— you are the— you, you earn people's trust so that you can lead them. But if you're building an authority business, you owe it to them to show up. So if your goal is to like get rich quick or create something that just like makes money in the background automatically, I don't recommend that, but I also like live in Puerto Rico, have 4 kids, 5th on the way, spend lots of time with my family, spend Fridays all day at the beach. Like there's, there's a middle ground, right? And so what I recommend, like with the group coaching program, for example, is like I deliver all of my group coaching on Thursday afternoons. And so like on Thursday afternoons, I'm delivering the group coaching program. So I don't know if that's, that's like the, okay. Yeah. Um, it was just like my webcam got blurry for a second.
John Meese [00:35:49]:
Um, on Thursday afternoons, I'm doing my group coaching program. That's really it. Now on Tuesday afternoons, I'm selling my group coaching program usually, or right now I'm in a conversation with you to be on. So part of the marketing strategy I also a big fan of is like, is going on stages where you get in front of your target client, right? This is what we're doing right now. This is a virtual stage. But the reality is I never take meetings before noon. I only work 4 days a week. I, you know, like I've got a team now, a small team, got 2 employees, but I, I've got plenty of clients in this with no employees.
John Meese [00:36:25]:
You know, just, I guess what I'm saying is like, if you, if you want to earn $10,000 per month through coaching 90 minutes per week, coaching is a way, great way to go. And that's good math. That's amazing math. If you want to never log into your business and make money, you should probably go invest in, I don't know, like, I just don't think most of that exists. Like, has that been your experience?
Jacques Hopkins [00:36:49]:
I don't know, John. I mean, that is mostly how Piano in 21 Days is still run, where there's very little we have to do post-sale. There's a little bit, and I've got a team too. Um, and it is probably the most the most common offer that people take is it, is it $800, is the $800 offer. So it's, as far as courses go, it's higher priced and that is the main revenue we make for the business.
John Meese [00:37:18]:
That's amazing.
Jacques Hopkins [00:37:18]:
But like I said, I mean, we've always just been like very outcome-based with our promise. So what I mean is back in 2013 when I started, there were a few, there was a handful of other piano courses. And every one of them was doing exactly what you're talking about. Hey, we have 57 hours of content. You're going to learn classical and jazz and, you know, all these different styles. Like you're going to get 7,200 pieces of sheet music. It was just all of the, like, huge list of things you would get. And so I came in and said, hey, learn piano in 21 days, right? It was by far the shortest course at the time.
Jacques Hopkins [00:37:55]:
Each lesson was like 5 minutes.
John Meese [00:37:56]:
Amazing.
Jacques Hopkins [00:37:57]:
It wasn't about paying for quantity. It was paying, it was paying for the result. Hey, this is not piano lessons. This is the ability for you to play your favorite songs on the piano in as little as 3 weeks from now. That's what you're paying $800 for. Right. And so for, you know, 13 years now that that's worked and it's still working here in 2026, but maybe it's becoming more of the exception is kind of what you're saying.
John Meese [00:38:23]:
Yeah, I love that that's still working for you and that's still, and that's amazing. And you've got a clear promise there, like learn piano in 21 days is a clear promise. I would say it's in the generic promise category of where like a lot of those, so part of the thing, advantage you have is just the fact that longevity, right? You've started this business a while ago. Starting a learn piano in 21 days business today, I don't think it would work well if it was just go learn business piano in 21 days without picking who you're talking to more specifically or a more niche promise. So I think part of the thing you have working in your favor is just the fact that you started this before the shift to the age of insight. But now people are wanting to know, like, you know, like, for example, like even just like talk about learning Spanish, for example, there's now a program that's like specifically it's like learn Spanish with Bad Bunny. And it's like, it's like the program is specifically just like Bad Bunny songs. It's like the whole background.
John Meese [00:39:17]:
And it's like going like, just like, it's like taking something and just creating a niche that makes it more specific to, to a specific demographic. Um, that's becoming more and more important because like you mentioned, when you started, there were a lot of these other people who were selling a different way. But now, you know, people are smarter and there's a, there's probably a lot of people who are selling learn piano programs in some form or fashion.
Jacques Hopkins [00:39:39]:
Yeah, but I'm certainly not trying to discredit your point because I think I think to your point, people are craving more of the coaching program more these days. And so not to say that if we had something like that for Piano in 21 Days, maybe it would be like uber successful. We just, we don't necessarily have it because I don't necessarily want to do it for that business. But for the Online Course Guy side of things, like that is absolutely what we do. We have a group coaching program. We don't just sell a course. We don't just have this little cheap membership. We have a high, two high-ticket coaching programs.
Jacques Hopkins [00:40:09]:
That's the way the business operates. Because I mean, I used to sell a course on courses, but it sold a little bit, but it's a cool thing to do. I just found with this niche, people needed more help and it wasn't like the same exact roadmap for everybody. And that's why a coaching program has been so successful is because people need a little bit more customization for their exact situation, their niche, their goals and things like that.
John Meese [00:40:40]:
Well, yeah, and what people are usually buying, so what people are looking for is insight, but what people are usually buying is actually guided implementation to apply the insight, right? So it's like, because I could even, this is a free conversation we're having, right? And I'm delivering insight, you're delivering insight. So people are coming to look for insight. They're saying, I could go out there and ask ChatGPT, what should I do to grow my online course? But I'd rather hear from John and Jock, what do I, you know, what's, what's working today, right? Having this conversation. But if someone were to hire either one of us, what they're typically looking for is to say, I want you to guide me through the implementation of this insight. Like, what do I actually do with this? And so that's where people are paying a premium. Um, now I will say, I will say when I say people, there has also been an economic shift in terms of the widening of the gap between the classes. So that's not fun to talk about, but it's the truth. And so what it means is that today, You know, you've got, if you think about the market right now for like online education products, people have to be at a certain level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs to even think about it.
John Meese [00:41:40]:
But then if someone's going to invest in a course or a membership or a coaching program right now, about, see if I can get this math right, the top 10% of the economy has 60% of the available budget. And the other 90% of the economy has 40% combined of the available budget. And so what that means is it's, you know, a strategy that's becoming more and more popular that I enjoy myself is to say, hey, for 90% of people who are following us that want to learn from us, could we just give everything away for free or cheap? Could we just create amazing podcasts, YouTube channels, really cheap products that are super valuable for 90% of the market? Because the reality is, even if we try to charge them a premium, they only have 40% of the total available budget. But the top 10% of the market has 60% of the available budget. And so can we create premium programs for people like that, people who are not rich in time? Um, so the people who buy group coaching programs are typically people who say, I want a shortcut. My time is more valuable than my money. I'm, I'm— what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to buy a guided path to achieve a result, and I believe that it's worth my money to save my time. Because if you've got time, if you have an abundance of time, you've got YouTube, you've got ChatGPT, you can trial and error your way to anything.
John Meese [00:43:02]:
But if you don't have time, whether that means given hours in a day, or like if you're talking to retirees, that might mean years in the calendar, whatever that is. If you don't have time, that's why you're buying a group coaching program, is because you're buying a shortcut to a result.
Jacques Hopkins [00:43:16]:
That's really interesting. That's, that's a great argument for having the deep product as well as the wide product. So let's say that somebody is set up, they've got the deep, they've got the wide. That sounds like a killer combination. Why even go long when you have those two?
John Meese [00:43:31]:
You could just do those two. The reason why is because the people who go through your program where you go deep with them, oftentimes your best students want something more. Right? Because if you think about the fact, like, they go through a program that's like a 21-day coaching program, like, and then they get to the end of it and they're like, this was great. I feel like I've— what I'm— at this point, what I'm looking for is two things. I'm looking for an identity. I'm looking for my identity and my tribe. That's actually what I'm looking for. Because we do live in a world right now where this— where it used to be that your tribe of who your people are and who you are, your identity, was many ways based on your geography.
John Meese [00:44:07]:
But that's become more or less irrelevant to how we connect to people. And so at a certain point, like my program's called Sold Out Coach Club because we're selling the identity of becoming a sold out coach. That's actually the identity. Once you do that, you have the opportunity to graduate into the Authority Guild. And this is the Authority Guild is a guild of people who are building authority businesses, who are saying, I wanna build a, you know, I wanna build a business where I wanna build a million dollar authority business for just 1,000 superfans. And I wanna be really clear about that balance between those two. And so like what we're really buying into is not just the tactics we're buying into. We're going long.
John Meese [00:44:39]:
By go long, I mean in some ways for life, like somebody that you're finding like this is your tribe that you're going to go through, whether it's piano or whether it's marriage or whether it's your health, whatever it is. Like that's a lot of times what you're buying into is that is this is a tribe with a leader that you trust. Um, because we don't have that in many areas of our life. So that's why you would add go long, but you don't have to. You can actually build a great business with just going deep and nothing else. Um, but if you were to have any more, then I would say go deep and then go wide and then finally go long.
Jacques Hopkins [00:45:09]:
How are you personally doing marketing? How are you getting leads? Is it through the wide products? Obviously you have multiple books. Is it through, um, just through like borrowing other audiences without social media and without ads? How are you driving growth and building your audience today?
John Meese [00:45:25]:
Yeah, I'm a big fan of looking at what are the things that are timeless that we can apply to like what we're trying to do now. And like this whole industry that you and I talk about, like we're talking about changes in the last, you know, 5 or 6 years. But if you look back a couple thousand years, this industry exists. It's books, stages, and clients. Thousands of years ago, those existed. Books, stages, and clients. That was the business model. That was it.
John Meese [00:45:48]:
So now it's a little more sophisticated today, but the reality is I think those things are still very relevant of saying like, hey, how can I get on stages? How can I sell books? And then how can I invite some people to become clients? And so to get more tactical, I like to start big picture and then like, I'll actually answer your question. You know, I'm on typically on average like one stage a week of like this where like I'm on like, this is actually my second podcast interview today. So I'm bashing it right now. But, you know, typically I'm on like one stage a week where I'm going in front of somebody else's audience to share something useful and interesting and valuable for free. And then I will invite people to kind of, you know, so typically then I'll also like give away something for free. Like I'll give away a free copy of a book. At the end of a show and invite people to come over to my world. And some people do.
John Meese [00:46:29]:
Um, I also, I mean, books do create, they do unlock the word of mouth engine, unlike any other product where once someone likes a book and they find it really useful, they're more likely to, they're likely to recommend it to somebody else. And so like that, that happens with other products like courses or even a newsletter or things like that. But it's really ingrained in our culture that if somebody has a problem, where they're like, hey, but like, hey man, like I'm trying to grow my business. I know I'm supposed to do these like consults, like free meetings with people, but I just feel like I'm not even trying to close a sale. And someone goes, oh, have you read Serve to Sell by John East? You should totally check that book out. Right? So those moments, that's a doorway into my world for people. Um, and so that's where, you know, books are a key part of my strategy. Stages are a key part of my strategy.
John Meese [00:47:16]:
Um, as far as growing my audience, that's pretty much it. A lot of times what people miss is that your business is based on 3 systems: attract, nurture, and sell. When you first get started, it's attract, like getting people in and sell them into products. But in the long run, nurture is actually the more powerful tool of how do you keep people in your world. I mean, I just had a client who joined and he just told me, he said, I've been following you since 2020. He's bought a couple like one-off products here and there, but he just became like a group coaching client. He's been following since 2020. I've read your newsletter.
John Meese [00:47:46]:
I've watched a couple interviews you've done on podcasts. I've followed along. I've been interested, but I was never ready to take action until something changed in his day job. So he had a full-time job and then his role changed in this way that he knew there was an end date on his job. And so he said, okay, now it's time to go all in on launching my online business that I've been kind of toying with for a while. And so I was just, that nurture system is what allowed me to be in his inbox every single week for 6 years for him to become a client. Um, and so I'm, I'm a big fan of leaning into nurture and that you don't need a huge quantity of customers if you've got a good nurture system. My most successful client, Dustin Rieckman, he's done $2.5— we just did a case study on— it's on my YouTube channel.
John Meese [00:48:24]:
We did a big like Q&A case study with him. His first $2.5 million in sales from group coaching he made with less than 2,000 email subscribers. His first year that he did $550,000 in revenue, he had 600 email subscribers. And so like, that's like when you're going into, when you're saying like, I'm just looking for 5 people at a time, 10 people at a time, it's just different math. You don't need a massive audience to be successful.
Jacques Hopkins [00:48:49]:
That's amazing. You, uh, you just said my YouTube channel. I thought you didn't have social media. Does that count?
John Meese [00:48:55]:
Okay. This is a good question. I hired somebody to run it and we debated if it counts as a social media. And so we've only published a couple videos. So I don't know, but this is a good question. This is what keeps me up at night, Jacques, is like, Am I betraying my social media stance if we create a YouTube channel? Um, but we're toying around with some stuff right now. So it's just an experiment and I've got an employee that's over that so I can keep my distance. I think YouTube's questionable too, if it's social media or not.
Jacques Hopkins [00:49:22]:
Agreed. Agreed. It is my favorite. If it does count, it is my favorite platform both to create content and to consume content.
John Meese [00:49:29]:
Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:49:30]:
But you are, you are, I mean, from what I've seen, true to your word. I try to like connect on LinkedIn with those that are coming on the podcast and I couldn't find you on LinkedIn. You weren't there. At least I couldn't find you.
John Meese [00:49:40]:
I deleted it. No, I've got, I deleted everything else. I guess YouTube's the only one I didn't delete. But, uh, but again, like I said, I'm not like famous on YouTube. I've got like, I think, I think I just hit 300 subscribers because we did this Q&A last week. So I don't really do much on YouTube. It's, it's an experiment here and there. Um, but that's it, you know, no social media and no paid ads.
Jacques Hopkins [00:50:01]:
Tell me about Puerto Rico.
John Meese [00:50:03]:
Okay.
Jacques Hopkins [00:50:04]:
You want to move there?
John Meese [00:50:05]:
Oh man, we've got a list. So we made a long list. We're, I think we might make a, like a video about that actually, because that's also, that's another reason we're really into YouTube is now I live in Puerto Rico and it's just like, I just want to share it with people. It's just beautiful. Um, so I'll get really personal with you. We've got to know each other better over the last 48 minutes and 23 seconds.
Jacques Hopkins [00:50:24]:
Pretty much friends best at this point.
John Meese [00:50:25]:
Yeah. In 2020, not only was I reading the World Economic Forum papers about the age of insight, but also I had time to read that because I was sitting in the waiting room at a cancer center while my dad was going through chemo. And so my uncle had just died a couple, like shortly before that. And then in 2020, my grandfather and my dad died and I became the oldest male in the family tree at 30 years old. So not great. I mean, Just nobody wants that. So that was hard, but also around the same time, shortly before that, I had a client, Chris Carr, uh, who we'd done some work together and she's kind of got a big like vegan health business online. And I had heard her just on a webinar say to somebody, uh, she said, is it heart disease that runs in your family or is it love of sausage? And immediately I was like, I'm sorry, what? She said, is it heart disease that runs in your family? Or is it love of sausage? And she wasn't even talking to me.
John Meese [00:51:22]:
I was just like running the webinar stats or something like that. But it stuck with me of like, what is it about my lifestyle that is determining this result? Because everybody in my family not only dies young, but dies of cancer specifically. And so that's when my wife and I started saying, okay, we want to reset. We want to really reset our lifestyle and reset our life. And we didn't know that was going to end up in Puerto Rico. But ultimately, I'd never been to Puerto Rico. I didn't know anything about it. But we kind of stumbled into learning about Puerto Rico, fell in love with the people, the food, the language, the island, the sunshine, the beaches.
John Meese [00:51:58]:
You know, and we homeschool our 4 kids, 5th on the way. And so coming here is a choice for them too of like growing up fit and strong and a lot of like life outdoors. I mean, I biked to work. I have an office now as of like a week ago, but I biked to work. Like I live half a mile from here. And so, like that, that kind of lifestyle is what we want. And we found out that on average in Puerto Rico, people live 4 years longer than anywhere else in the US because it is a US territory. And so it is like, it operates a lot like America, just in like Spanish mode.
John Meese [00:52:30]:
Um, and I am bilingual. I do speak Spanish, uh, but English is my first language. But when I found out people live here 4 years longer here, I was like, what's the secret? And then I came to visit. I was like, is it what they eat? Is it the lifestyle? Is it like how they exercise all the time? And I was like, no. Puerto Ricans just sit at the porch, drink coffee, eat fried food, barely get enough water. Their diet is awful and they still live 4 years longer. It's because they've got a culture of always outside, always sunshine, ending work at 3 PM on a Tuesday to go hang out at the beach. And they're also tranquilo.
John Meese [00:53:04]:
Tranquilo just means like, basically, I tell the kids tranquilo is Puerto Rican Spanish for hakuna matata. It means no worries. It's just like, and that's just like, that's the vibe here. Um, so there's my pitch for Puerto Rico. I will also mention, because somebody else will ask me later why I didn't bring it up, there are tax benefits for entrepreneurs for living in Puerto Rico. But for us, that was not our primary draw. That was like, oh, that's cool. That makes it easier to move.
John Meese [00:53:28]:
Right. And so that was like the last thing we learned about, but the reality is it's, it's the best. I'm not a tax advisor, nor do I play one on TV. Disclaimer, insert there. But I, it is the best, uh, tax favorable situation for online entrepreneurs of anywhere in the world if you're from the US. Um, so that's a reason.
Jacques Hopkins [00:53:50]:
Yeah, you're, you're probably the first person I've asked that who made the move to Puerto Rico that didn't start with the tax advantages.
John Meese [00:53:55]:
Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:53:56]:
Uh, it's, but you know, many years ago I had multiple friends, uh, that moved down there and some maybe are still there, some are not. But I know that was a big reason. Is the tax incentive the same as it was 5 years ago or has it changed at all? Do you even know?
John Meese [00:54:15]:
It's the same basically. You know, it's changed names since then. Well, it depends on your business size. So my neighbors, by the way, include John Lee Dumas and Joel Kalm, as far as 2 people from this industry. So I don't know. So they're like, they also like live here in the same community. Um, uh, but, um, yeah, so it's, let me see if I can explain it. So it's based on your revenue level of what tax level you qualify for, but like the highest you'll qualify for under Act 60, which is like the law I'm talking about, is 4% of profit if you're under Act 60 export services.
John Meese [00:54:47]:
So I'm under Act 60 export services. That means like I'm selling products or services. I'm selling services to people who don't live in Puerto Rico. And so I'm exporting services from Puerto Rico. You can actually qualify for like 2% of profit being your taxes instead. There's also another one called Act 60 capital gains, which is like the crypto bros. There's a lot of crypto bros here because if you're buying and selling anything that has a bunch of capital gains on it, then you can pay, I think it's 0% capital gains for 10 years. And so some people also come here when they're about to sell their company.
John Meese [00:55:18]:
They'll live here for a couple of years, sell their company, make their exit, pay 0% capital gains, and then move back to the States. That's fine. I mean, that's, that's like a different vibe because those people like come for a couple years and they leave. Like, we're building a life here, you know. And so, um, there's a great community of people who just chose to be here and chose a life of like sunshine and chill and family, and it's good. So you should come visit.
Jacques Hopkins [00:55:39]:
Amazing. Yeah, it's, it's on the list for sure.
John Meese [00:55:43]:
Good.
Jacques Hopkins [00:55:43]:
Uh, just a couple more for you, John. I— you, you mentioned, you know, you like to geek out, the whole economics thing. I, you know, I geek out on things here and there. My degree is in electrical engineering. And then one thing I like to geek out on is tools. So I'd love to know kind of what your tool stack looks like. What do you love? What is it that you can't live without?
John Meese [00:56:03]:
Yeah. Okay. So I was really ready to answer your question until you said, what is it that I can't live without? And I was like, okay, I can't live without my wife, my kids, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Yeah. So I know, I was like, you're going to raise the stakes really quickly. For me. Um, but as far as like tools that I find in useful Apple, let me back up for a second. Tools that— so I actually really love the Kindle Scribe.
John Meese [00:56:29]:
So it's like the— a lot of people are familiar with the Remarkable. This is like the Kindle version of it where it's not only can you read, but it's also like my daily planner. Um, and it's nice because we live in such a connected world on the internet and I work in such a connected world. It's nice to have something that is, you know, more or less offline off the internet. I also use the Freewrite typewriter for like writing. Which same idea, it's a single purpose device and you just, it's a typewriter. Now it's connected to like the internet. I don't know.
John Meese [00:56:55]:
Do you want me to show it to you? I know that people in the podcast can't, or some people aren't listening, can't see it, but do you want me to grab it real quick?
Jacques Hopkins [00:57:00]:
So I kind of want to see it. Yeah. I'm going to talk for a second while you go, while you grab it. But so I've got a Kindle Scribe as well. I've had that since it came out. I actually replaced my reMarkable at the time when it came out because it was a Kindle that that then could also do what the reMarkable could do. So I use that as well, but what you're talking about now, I've never heard of.
John Meese [00:57:20]:
Yeah, so this is the Freewrite. So if you can't see it, it's just imagine, well, the first, the Freewrite they made, which is like, it looked like a giant old-fashioned typewriter. This is the Freewrite Alpha. So it's thin, but it's a typewriter that just has a little e-ink reader at the top. So you can only see like 1 or 2 sentences at a time that you're writing. And then when you're done, you hit send and it sends it to Google Drive or Dropbox, wherever you want it to go. But you can use it basically for like writing disconnected from your computer. So if you're working on a book or a newsletter or just want to journal, it's really great for that.
John Meese [00:57:50]:
So I love it. I'm a big fan of the Freewrite. I've had every version they've come out with because they had their first one was like this giant old-fashioned looking thing except for connected to the internet. And then they had one that was the Traveler, which like folded. And then this is the Alpha. So I've— every Kickstarter project they've done, I've backed in there, uh, for like probably close to 5 years. They actually just made a new typewriter that I also bought, or sorry, keyboard that connects to your computer, but it's not out yet. I bought it on Kickstarter and they're sending us pictures from the warehouse, so we're in that phase of building the thing.
John Meese [00:58:24]:
What else? I do, I love having a little bit of fun, just having some Legos by the computer, just like little color here and there just reminds me to be playful. One of my, I just knocked over my water bottle, but one of my core values is playfulness. And so I like, my core values are wisdom, playfulness, and stewardship, which they're like right on the back of my phone right there as a reminder. But I do try to be playful because like we got to do the work anyways when I have a little fun with it. But honestly, like I'm pretty simple otherwise. I mean, I use the MacBook, you know, lots of people do. That's not very original. Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [00:58:59]:
What about, what about any software related?
John Meese [00:59:01]:
Yeah, I've used Kit for a long time. I'm a big fan of Kit. Um, formerly ConvertKit. Love Kit. Super easy and simple to use. Um, great for a lot of stuff. And I use Notion behind the scenes. And, uh, for like project management, task management, collecting all of my writing from the last like decade.
John Meese [00:59:20]:
Um, that's kind of the main stuff. I mean, I try to keep things simple. I do use Circle for my community, for my group coaching program. So, and I will say like we've won some awards. I do need to say. So we use Circle's AI platform for like in the DMs, you can AI. We have an AI coach called Smart Buddy that can help people and provide like instant support and coaching based on training my frameworks in like any language. We did win Circle's award for like their bet, the best use of an AI agent on Circle.
John Meese [00:59:45]:
And then I also won an award. Well, I ended up being like one of the finalists, like the top 5 or something like that because we, I moved my entire website out of Circle now because they have like a public facing website builder now. The website builder itself is pretty simple, but for me it was just the piece of just having everything on one platform was great. But yeah, so we use Circle for paywalls, we use Circle for the community, for AI agents, for even— I use Circle's live video even for our like group coaching calls because it automatically processes the replay and the transcript without having to use Zoom. So I use Circle a lot.
Jacques Hopkins [01:00:17]:
So I'm not I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of Circle. I know it from a high level. It's not one that I use personally, but I have dabbled with it. So tell me more about the AI agent. Like people can basically DM a chatbot to get more insights.
John Meese [01:00:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I can just go into the DMs. I mean, and I can have Smart Buddy is the name of my AI coach, but you could also have it like comment on things, but I have it where people can DM and there's some suggested questions, but people can just DM it and say, hey, help me craft my 10x promise, or help me figure out like, how do I actually identify, what are the 3 types of objections in a sale? Like, for example, of like, or, hey, here's a transcript of the surf call I just gave for the client. Could you help me figure out what could I have done to close that sale? Or what should I charge for this? Or someone asked me this question, how do I respond? So it's designed to really give you all of those things. And I've even designed courses now. So actually, I do sell Well, these days mostly I just give the courses to my clients. Occasionally I sell them as standalone things, but usually I mostly just give them to my coaching clients.
John Meese [01:01:22]:
But in the courses, sometimes I'll include an AI prompt of like, hey, ask Smart Buddy this question and it'll guide you through the whole process. So for example, we have a course on creating a crash course, which is like a free email course for new subscribers. That whole thing is based on like, like one giant prompt or basically you answer a few questions and Smart Buddy like writes the whole email series for you. And then we have a kit automation template where you like click the template, install on your account, copy and paste the copy from Smart Buddy, and it's 90% done. And so it's not just like you're learning how to do the thing. It's actually like the easy button for getting you most of the way there. Um, yeah, so that's, that's what we do.
Jacques Hopkins [01:01:59]:
That's really cool. I love that they include that as a feature inside of Circle. Yeah. Um, all right, John, look, man, it's been an absolute pleasure. Uh, where, you know, call to action time, where, where should people go? Obviously they need to follow you on all the socials. Uh, things like that. No, where, where do you want people to go?
John Meese [01:02:15]:
You will not find me on social media. Um, but, uh, here's what I love to do. We, we briefly touched on one of the steps of my process, step 4, being a serve to sell with one free coaching call. That's a critical process. We're learning how to sell anything premium. So anything that's over $1,000, learning how to sell that. You have to learn how to have a conversation with somebody that is really easy for you to show up without feeling like you have to put on some like kind of sales bro persona, like show up and just naturally talk to somebody and communicate them in a way that invites them in to genuinely buy your program. That's the topic of my bestselling book, Serve to Sell, which I want you to buy for the absolute low price of $0 by going to meese.gift/course, as in Online Course Show.
John Meese [01:02:58]:
So if you go to, it's my last name, M-E-E-S-E. So meese.gift/course, you, you'll get a free copy of the Serve to Sell book. And feel free to check that out. It's a bestselling book. It's got over 100 reviews on Amazon. I've heard from people who've, I mean, I know of at least one client who's made over a million dollars just from the framework in that book. I know lots of other clients who've made hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it works. So I highly recommend you check that out.
John Meese [01:03:23]:
Get yourself a free copy. Hopefully the price is right. And then behind the scenes, of course, that'll actually introduce you to other things in my world where I love to start with you know, free value. So you'll get, you'll get my free crash course, you'll get some other free trainings from me that you might find useful and valuable. So that's where I recommend you start. How's that sound?
Jacques Hopkins [01:03:41]:
Amazing. Yeah, well, uh, I'll mention that in my outro again and then in the show notes as well. So that's very generous, John. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sharing your time with us today.
John Meese [01:03:50]:
Yeah, it's my pleasure. I really appreciate it. And thank you for the good work you're doing because really, you know, you and I are in the same industry of helping people steward wisdom and it's, it's a sacred duty. And that's what we're doing. So, uh, thank you for having me on as a guest and please keep up the good work. Yeah.
Jacques Hopkins [01:04:04]:
Insights over information though. That's the key.
John Meese [01:04:07]:
Amen.
Jacques Hopkins [01:04:08]:
Thanks, John. Take care. And that's a wrap on my conversation with John Meese. If you take nothing else from today, take this: don't build your entire business on just more information. People are drowning in information. What they want is insights. A trusted path, and often guided implementation to actually follow through. And I love John's reminder that you don't need a massive audience to get started.
Jacques Hopkins [01:04:32]:
You need the right offer, the right people, and a clear way to raise hands and start conversations. If you want to check out everything we mentioned today, including links to John and his work, you can find those show notes over at oc.show/276. And don't forget, if you want my free training on how to build and grow a successful online course business, grab that workshop.
John Meese [01:04:52]:
Oc.show/workshop.
Jacques Hopkins [01:04:54]:
Thanks again for listening, and don't forget to take action on what you heard here today. I'm rooting for you.
