A Conversation With Marcio Santos of Nerddigital

If you've ever spent casual non-classroom time with teachers, the passion for the cause of education tends to come out story after story about students, school and classes. So it is with Marcio Santos, whose company Nerddigital — sparked by his own experience with a great teacher — is all about bringing great teaching to more people. He spoke with host Matthew Dunn about email marketing and digital marketing in general, in the rocket-ship world of online courses. This is a great episode for marketers in education and educators trying to understanding marketing and learning in the post-pandemic era.

Transcript (evidence that AI is not perfect…)

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. It's Dr. Matthew Dunn, the host of the future of email marketing. My guest today after lots of logistics and errors on my part, arranging it is Marcio Santos of nerd digital Marcio. Welcome.

[00:00:22] Marcio Santos: Thank you, Matthew. I'm glad that we could finally connect and glad to be

[00:00:27] Matthew Dunn: here. We're talking, we're talking across the country from, uh, from the Northwest to, uh, to, to run to great city.

[00:00:34] Um, tell people a bit about nerd digital and your, I love the name and you're focused in your market there.

[00:00:42] Marcio Santos: Yes. So at NERC digital, we coach course creators to get to six figures and six. Um, we are passionate about using digital marketing to accelerate their growth. Um, and that's, that's what we do.

[00:00:56] Matthew Dunn: I was very curious to talk to you about the course sort of the, the course world, because am I wrong?

[00:01:02] It's exploded in the. I mean, certainly the last year and a half pandemic period. But even before that, it just seemed like everything was just taking off. And your quote, I love your quote on your webpage. We believe teaching is the highest form of, of human intelligence. My sisters, who are teachers, my mom was a teacher.

[00:01:20] Would completely agree with you.

[00:01:23] Marcio Santos: I, yes. I think your observation is spot on the education market. Online education market is huge. It's worth well over a billion dollars and it's, it's only expanding. And I think a lot of what you've been able to observe are people taking advantage of this, this, uh, part, um, great resignation.

[00:01:44] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, being, having to work from home and COVID and all these things combined for a perfect storm that has made online courses a really interesting way to make money, to leverage your time and leverage your knowledge.

[00:01:57] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now let's let, let let's jump in the pool deep right off the bat.

[00:02:03] I remember reading in your bio that you were in a course with a professor and you did a marketing project on the X-Box. If I recall and impressed your prof. And she said, you know, presenting the class about this and then ask you to come back and do that a couple of more times one that seemed like a real takeoff point in terms of your own professional focus on marketing.

[00:02:26] Is that

[00:02:26] Marcio Santos: true? Very true. Yeah. I remember I still remember the day of being in class and, um, when I first heard about marketing, it's funny because a colleague of mine at work, she said, have you taken. It was like, no, cause I was also in, in, in the business administration program like her and she was like, once you take marketing, you're really gonna like it.

[00:02:44] And I kind of, you know, said, sure, whatever. But once I sat in that chair and I was, man, this is so fun. This is so interesting. And I was really into it and yeah, I had the chance to do the presentation. It actually came out of this. I kind of was able to turn a bug into a feature. So I had to miss class because I was going to go on a trip to the world, cyber games, which at the time was run by Samsung.

[00:03:11] And it was essentially like an Olympics, a video games that was going to be held in Italy. So I was going to be away for two weeks from class. And I kind of pitched this idea to my, my teachers like, Hey, why don't I, for my marketing projects was like the final project. Why don't I go to Italy? And I research the launch of the product, which is kind of like launching at the same time.

[00:03:31] Yeah. And then I'll come back and report on it. And so that's what I did. I ended up flooding. I helped coordinate the event. But then on the side, I kind of gathered data about the Xbox 360 launch, two pictures, like what their branding look like, what their messaging was like, what the product was like, how they were talking about it.

[00:03:49] And then I read other books and did other research, but I ended up combining all that. So really cool presentation that was so much fun to do. So

[00:03:56] Matthew Dunn: you say, well, I mean, when you ended up with a really, with a really like deep case study on a launch, that dive is a big launch with a big amount of dollars and expertise behind it, right?

[00:04:10] Marcio Santos: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Those are, that was a very important launch. If we're talking video game market, that was, it wasn't the best in terms of overall performance. But I think the gap between PlayStation and Xbox, they were able to close the gap pretty significantly. Um, the PS two at the time three was the dominant platform and they had, you know, the user base.

[00:04:36] Against all the odds that they were facing, they were able to create a successful product and bring it to market and, and be, and be successful. Let's say. So it was fun project, nonetheless, to do, um, I'm going

[00:04:50] Matthew Dunn: to come back to your prof, but let's keep going down the down the X-Box launch rabbit hole because it's fun to talk to an expert.

[00:04:56] Uh, my recollection is that halo was an extremely pivotal thing for the X-Box.

[00:05:04] Marcio Santos: Yeah. So the halo actually came out in the first X-Box iteration and then they relaunched it, uh, with halo two, four, actually, halo two came out on the first X-Box and then the Xbox 360 launch with. Okay. And yeah, so halo was a super important franchise.

[00:05:24] It's a type of game where people will buy the console strictly for that game. Yeah. Nintendo and PlayStation. They all have these, these, uh, these flagship games, right. Where people will say, look, I have to have red dead redemption, or I have. The latest, Mario, I'm simply going to get that platform. They might just buy one game and that's it.

[00:05:48] So yeah, definitely getting the right game in there. Yeah, it's crucial. It's the, the,

[00:05:52] Matthew Dunn: the, the, the S calling it software is a little unfair, but the software sells the hardware and it's sometimes the hardware sells the software. Um, after that, um, fascinating, uh, cause cause I've been around the sector long enough.

[00:06:07] I'm going to remember the original X-Box my, my joke question. Hey, you finally fixed all this stuff. I hate about windows and called it the X-Box. But watching that, watching that back and forth dynamic between that key experience, content, whatever you want to call it, the game, the flagship game and the hardware platform.

[00:06:28] I don't know if those are an enormous, enormous investment and the cost of failure. Like, I don't even want to imagine, um, dot back to your prof and that, that, uh, that inflection point experience though, I, it made a difference that she recognized the value of what you've done and, and encouraged you. Right.

[00:06:47] Um, I'm um, am I wrong in saying, oh yeah,

[00:06:51] Marcio Santos: yeah, yeah. That was really important for me, because at that point I was just presenting. Um, and at the end of the class, everyone was still seated and they're really engaged and I even collapsed after the presentation. And so the professor was like, look, you've done something good here.

[00:07:09] Let's, uh, if you're interested, you know, come back for the next cohort for the next semester. And I came back and then after that, she invited me back again, and I should have done more with it at the time. You know, in hindsight, I should have leveraged that opportunity a little bit deeper and spoken about it more.

[00:07:24] But, um, I think from an emotional perspective, It really just made me so proud of yeah. Of, of like combining something I loved with this, this new area that I was learning. So combining this love for video games, which I loved combining this love for marketing, which I was sort of falling in love with, and then combining to this third piece, which is presentations.

[00:07:48] Yeah. So, you know, combine all these three things and it was like, I was just so much fun on it. And I think that's where I kind of loved the course creative market, because it's really about combining the things that you're good at with the things that are marketable, packaging that up in a way that you can sell it, have a good time work with great people.

[00:08:10] So it's, it's, it's fun. It's really fun. I love my job. Good to

[00:08:15] Matthew Dunn: hear, look at that one from the backside though, for just a second. Um, and I'm not sure I'm going to articulate this well, but I'll just. It seems to me that one of the differences between the online learning experience and that inflection point experience you had in the class was an, is the personal and social element that made such a difference for you like the prof saying, this is great.

[00:08:47] You don't get up, present it. You know, you having live relationship with classmates and realizing they respected what you did, which you, you implicitly said. And it's hard to find that in online courses for the students. And I suspect that one of the reasons that completion rates tend to be low is, is because the social emotional element is, is, is not nearly as integral a part of an online course as it is a live.

[00:09:18] What do

[00:09:18] Marcio Santos: you think? I think you've articulated that perfectly well. And the D types of courses that I've been working on with my, my clients are what we call cohort-based courses. So these are not courses that are, you know, say an evergreen or recorded course where you would have. What part of the videos and you put it on a platform and the person will go through the student will go through the class on their own, on their own tablet, learn things on their own, the types of courses that I'm helping create and promote our courses, where we do them live, where we have live interaction, we have community support and coaching in the program so that people really get to the transformation.

[00:10:00] So we're looking at completion rates instead of 10, 15% are recorded. We're looking at 70%, 80% plus it's terrific completion rates. And even another key metric is very low turn rate or refund rate. Yeah. So, you know, sub 5%, even sub sub 2% refund rate wow. For the courses that I've been working on. Um, I think speak very highly to that emotional, that social, emotional support and encouragement that people get from a live.

[00:10:34] Yeah.

[00:10:35] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Okay. Well, boy, that's terrific to hear. And, and, and at the same time, I'm not entirely surprised that the numbers are that much difference. I'm sure there's that I'm sure there's more to it than, than just, you know, the social, not social and social light element. I'm sure there's more design to it and more thought to it than that, but still that's a dramatic

[00:10:58] Marcio Santos: jump.

[00:10:59] Yeah. I think if you w a few aspects that the social element bring to it, it's, it's that one, the, the instructor themselves, if they're alive and they're speaking to you and it gives you an opportunity, or they actually prompt you to participate, that is going to change. How you show up when you, when you hit join, you know, join the zoom call or join the whatever call you're using that has an emotional component to it, which is like, okay, I'm actually, somebody can actually see me and I can see them and wait, it's completely different than, you know, I was just having lunch.

[00:11:38] You grabbing a tuna sandwich, hitting play on something. And just sitting there passively watching this you're actively engaged. Like you have to sit forward, you have to straighten yourself off, but you don't, you might look around or things falling apart. So it th that, I think there's that part. The instructor part brings already like this, this really strong engagement.

[00:11:59] The second thing that the instructor brings is coaching regardless or not. If they mentioned that I'm going to coach you in the program, they end up coaching. You. Okay. And code and coaching. What I mean is the nuanced questions that people have once they've learned the knowledge once they've learned the skills.

[00:12:16] Yeah. So for example, if I'm, if you're teaching me email marketing, you'll teach me three, three key things, right. You'll take me to about segmenting, about building and then about optimizing, let's say, and after you've taught me this, I'm going to come back and say, Matthew. Yeah, sure. I've done this, but do I segment male and female?

[00:12:33] Do I segment behavior? And even of these behaviors, do I segment for, you know, last, last click or do I segment like this? That nuance is coaching. Okay. And, and w w when you're in a course, that's so rich, it's so rich. Like if you coach somebody live, everybody that's in the closet. Oh, wow. They have this light bulb moment, his eyes light up moments.

[00:12:57] Yeah. Yeah. And then the third part, which you mentioned is the group, they bring accountability. Yeah. And it almost, I, a florist is like, they bring this transparency and this like, just good feeling of man, if so-and-so can do it, then why can't I right, right. So-and-so is struggling. It's completely fair that I'm struggling to.

[00:13:19] Yeah,

[00:13:20] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah. Or if I hear, you know, if I hear someone who's, who's made such great observations in the past, ask a question that I was thinking about asking, is it, oh, well, I guess it, wasn't a Tom question and I'll listen to the answer and maybe I'm a little more encouraged next time to ask my own question, to get my own micro moment of coaching.

[00:13:40] Interesting. So you jumped way ahead of me, man. You went from the richness of the experience that you talked about with your prof to taking some of those same dynamics and, and bringing them into the world of what, uh, what you're helping your clients do with their courses. It's fantastic. I just finished, um, This geek stuff.

[00:14:01] Right. I just finished doing a Google cloud certification course. Um, and it was, it was the, the passive online course experience. Right. You know, well paced, great video, good contents, Coursera, I think, um, like can't knock. What was there, getting my butt glued to the chair and doing the work was, was the hard part like, oh, I should do this instead.

[00:14:31] Or, Ooh, I got to look at that email and that's distracting me. It's like that the discipline load on a passive course is mighty high. It's kind of like the thing about what someone says about a workout, right? If you want to really want to succeed in your workout, workout with a buddy or have, have someone else who's doing it, that's holding, you know, where there's that social bond becomes part of the workout.

[00:14:52] Same thing, same thing in a course. Right. Hey Marsha, I didn't see you in class last week. How are things big encouragement?

[00:14:59] Marcio Santos: Yep. That's a huge encouragement. Yeah.

[00:15:02] Matthew Dunn: Um, is the world of let's call it commercial education, right? Of course we're not under the auspices of university of XR academy of why. Um, you think we'll see some experiments and lessons learned there about education in this hybrid and virtual form that we'll start to take back into conventional schools?

[00:15:32] Marcio Santos: I think so. Um, I think one thing that I've seen at Harvard, for example, in their MBA program is that they created, uh, an electronic version of their MBA program. And they did this in a way where they integrated a lot of this in class feedback in class experiences. I think this is, yeah, this is already being done.

[00:15:58] Like, you know, universities have that level of programs of that level. They've already started experimenting and building, um, programs like that. So you could take the in class, you could go to school, you know, at the Harvard business school, or you could take the electronic version, but the electronic version is not a lightweight version of the MBA.

[00:16:19] The electronic version is an experience on its own. It has its own price. Has it still has its value. So get your certification and whatnot, your diploma. Um, but th the experience it's leveraging technology to still give students a rich in classic. So I think that's still, I think that's coming for sure.

[00:16:41] Uh, at least market leaders, if they're not, they should be aggressive in, in leveraging technology to, to move forward because COVID hit and they had to close the doors. What happens when the next, when the next pandemic hits, whether that's in five or 50 years, you know, what is education going to look like and how are they going to continue to stay relevant?

[00:17:01] Those are all super important questions that they have to think about. And, and, um, that's, that's their business. So I imagine that they're thinking deeply about

[00:17:09] Matthew Dunn: that. Yeah. You, you, you you'd hope on as, uh, oh, I was, I was a classroom teacher granted decades ago and I come from a family of editors. I think I mentioned educators and, and, you know, I think about that, look, look at that a lot, because I had formative experiences like you did, um, in the classroom with, you know, with teachers, with profs that, that, that set directions and, and at the same time, I, I don't think, I, I don't think I would sign up for a live classroom experience right now.

[00:17:45] It's like, wait a minute. You know, like, like the Harvard MBA, you mentioned actually my, my friend Lisa Jones is in that program. I think. Um, it's like, and I think she's doing the virtual one. I consider that why for the same reason, people aren't wanting to drive to the office right now, right? Like we've gotten our taste of, of work from home is not the right label of, of a digital plus life experience.

[00:18:10] That's more in our own control. And I suspected educational institutions that are rooted in live classroom are going to face some serious pressure. I mean, your customers, your clients in a funny way are, are, are an alternative or not a threat, but certainly an alternative, um, to I've got to go spend four years or six years doing X, Y, and Z in this place with IBM.

[00:18:38] Marcio Santos: Yeah, for sure. I think in any unregulated field, as long as it's not like medicine or something highly regulated like that, the requirement to go to a university is it's just not there anymore. Right? You don't need to go, you don't need to go to college to learn how to make money on, you know, no, you don't need to go to college to figure out how you can create your own career and, and create your own path.

[00:19:07] And that's what a lot of course creators have been able to do. Yeah.

[00:19:11] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. At the same time, having written a whole bunch of tuition checks in the last eight years, um, I'm still, uh, I'm still a fan of the formative experience, particularly for. You know, 18, 19, 20, 20 something year old. Like I said to my, we said to our son, so like, you're going there to learn how to learn, not, not to learn X.

[00:19:41] And that's what you're going to do the rest of your life. Cause you're not, you're not going to do one thing. The rest of your life is just not how the world works anymore, which is a wonderful thing. But you better have you better have the hardware and the attitude that you're a lifelong learner. You can constantly acquire new skills because that's your biggest asset.

[00:20:00] I think in, in a world of fast change.

[00:20:03] Marcio Santos: Yeah. Precisely. There's a few things that would highlight up. There's one is change as being the only constant in our world. And it's it's so that's one thing. The second thing that you point out is the hardware. You said this, the hardware that you're going to need, right?

[00:20:18] The hardware. And again, that's so, so true. It's really the emotional intelligence part of the equation is so much more important than the IQ part of the equation. And I think that's, that's a big part of why you go to you have experiences so that you can learn to deal with others and with yourself. Yeah.

[00:20:37] Yeah. And again, the CBC, the cohort base course model helps with that. Yeah. Because if you're trying to do everything on your own, like you said, the self-discipline part becomes too onerous on you. It's so heavy. You kind of outsource this a little bit when you're doing it with a group. Right. So that the discipline kind of gets thrown outside so that you're being pooled.

[00:21:03] Instead of having to push yourself, you're being pulled by a friend saying, Hey, Marcia, where are you? Where by a professor or instructor saying, Hey, did you get. Or by seeing other people's progress. And I would really love to participate that that's completely different than saying, oh, I shouldn't do this watch list versus, and I would love to jump in there.

[00:21:23] Yeah. I see what you're saying. It flips that equation. Going back to the first point of a constant rate of change, that that is something very serious. And again, I think that's why the cohort, the, the course market is going to continue to increase is that things are changing and things will, the, the workplace let's say is changing at greater complexity.

[00:21:47] And the complexity of change is going to happen at a much faster rate. Yeah. And so if we can combine that with living longer and having to work longer, then that means that into our sixties, maybe seventies and eighties, we're going to have to adopt a new. That's even more complex than the one we had before.

[00:22:08] So how do we, how do we deal with that? Not, not strictly on a technical level. No, but then emotionally, emotionally, how do you do that in psychologically? How do you say like, man, I used to be this type of person now I'm this type of person, like, who am I? And my friends were there and now my friends, I need new colleagues.

[00:22:25] And like, it's, it's hard to make those transitions.

[00:22:29] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, yeah. Especially, especially if somehow you've framed it and thought that you wouldn't have to, or shouldn't have to, it's got to be even harder as opposed to I get to how cool is this? Um, I'm going to backtrack on a backtrack the first half of what you were talking about.

[00:22:46] Cause it's really totally astute observation about outsourcing that, um, you know, outsourcing a little bit of the willpower. I might even, I might even say we could reframe that and say that we ended up creating a, we ended up creating a stronger structure by leaning on. Right. It's not just, you know, my ability to sit down or not sit down and do the coursework years as yours to do the same independently, but by leaning on each other, we're actually both able to accomplish more multiplied by size of group up to Dunbar's number or something like that.

[00:23:22] Wow. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, you're, you're absolutely right. Those are very astute observations about both the market and the imperative for continued to reinvent learning. Cause you're not gonna, you're not going to have one career. You're just not even in your 40, 50 sixties, seventies, as you said. Um, I'm a huge fan of, uh, uh, uh, Warren Buffett's Warren buffet and his partner, Charlie Munger.

[00:23:48] I mean, they're both in their nineties and they both go to work every day and they mostly spend the day reading and thinking. That's cool gig. I like that idea. That sounds like fun. Right?

[00:23:59] Marcio Santos: Right. And they've mastered, they've mastered these key fundamentals of being able to read, but not, I mean, read is the mechanism.

[00:24:08] What they're actually doing is gleaning insight and figuring out, out of all the noise, what should I pay attention to? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that is probably one of the, like from a technical perspective, the most important skills that you could learn today, regardless of whatever field you take, email marketing, for example, there are millions, millions, virtually millions of things you could do as an email marketing manager or a specialist or expert.

[00:24:35] Yeah. Millions. Yeah. Which one should you do now? Yeah. Yeah. And being able to decide that makes a difference between being a great, a great email marketer, having success and being an average and, and the distance there. It's humongous, like knowing a key few things that you could tweak and optimize can completely change your email marketing program, which will completely change your business.

[00:25:02] Matthew Dunn: That's true. That's true. And, and those, those, uh, those models and structures, as, as you said, what, uh, you know, what buffet Munger are good at, at gleaning, from all the reading, they're not, um, writing them down on a page two is not the same thing as understanding them and adopting them. Right. Um, and, and, and they change, right.

[00:25:31] It's not like they're completely timeless and, and, and nothing has to has to shift, but yeah, it's an interesting puzzle. I talk with some of the, some of the most, uh, some of the most, uh, sort of accomplished email marketing. Um, out, there are people that have gotten to know over the last few years, and it's interesting how much they have.

[00:25:52] They talk about the same things. Like they all get that the fundamentals and the keys are a relatively small set of things. But like I also get paid a lot to, to know that those are the key things and to apply those, you'll walk into a complex situation, big company and say, wait a minute, you need to do this a lot in that first so that we can then grow this.

[00:26:18] And, and like in series someone there should have known that, but they didn't apply that. And these folks who are really are top of their field, know that you have to it's, you know, it's, it's, it's like a coach ragging about your fundamentals, if you're on the basketball team or something like that.

[00:26:35] Marcio Santos: Yeah.

[00:26:36] Yeah. And it's hard to, it's hard to have a low it's hard to, it's easy to overlook. Right. Um, but if you even use an adjacent type of case study with. And you look at every off season, the things that he does, he's not looking at, at least from what I've observed, it seems like all he's doing is going back to more fundamentals.

[00:26:57] Is can his footwork get better? Yes. The Cal fundamental is that you can, his speed of from the, you know, pulling his arm back to moving it forward. Can that go faster? Yeah. He's not talking about launching a long ball, like 60 yards. Can I throw 63 yards? Can I start about that? Those are, it's really about the smaller tweaks and fundamental things that he can do to really just crush everything.

[00:27:23] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, uh, you know, older example, but Larry Bird, basketball player, like what, what did Larry Bird do in the off season? He shot baskets all day. Every day, he shot baskets and you do watch old footage of him. And it was, it was, he was a genius on the court. Yeah.

[00:27:45] Marcio Santos: You know, I heard, I heard this funny story.

[00:27:46] I don't know if you know the same story about Larry Bird, but I heard that he had to record a commercial back in the day with Michael Jordan. I think this was like a McDonald's commercial. I haven't heard this. And in the commercial, they had to miss shots. So they put them on the court, they got the lights ready.

[00:28:00] Camera's is like, okay, Larry, we need you to shoot, but we need you to miss. And it took him forever to actually miss, because like what you're saying, he was just so, so at such an expert, he's like, okay, let me try. And, but we need to, we need to hit the rim. Yeah. Oh, wow. Cause we needed to ha you need it to like bounce so that the camera could see it.

[00:28:21] It, it could like just throw the ball anywhere and get like air ball it. Yeah. We need to like hit the rim. Can you he's like, it just goes swish every time.

[00:28:29] Matthew Dunn: That's great story. And I mean, it, it kind of makes it what's the what's the Quip, everyone wants to be a, everyone wants to be a rock star. No one wants to play scales.

[00:28:38] You know, guys like that. All the time and, and, and end up with the payoff. I dunno if I buy, is it Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000 hours in a field? I, I don't know if I buy the exact number. I mean, there's ability, there's discipline, there's there's practice, but you find someone who's really good at what they do.

[00:28:58] And there's work somewhere on what we're talking about, funding, you know, F uh, fundamentals principles, and, and, and often learning those, learning those the hard way. And until you realize what counts and what doesn't count.

[00:29:14] Marcio Santos: And I think that's, that's the value of a coach is a coach will help you identify where you should place your attention right now, and how you could break down your work into something.

[00:29:26] That's, let's say like an experiment so that you could practice on the key thing. So from a coaching person, from a course perspective, for example, when I start with my clients, I always do. What, where, where are your strengths? Sometimes we, we always look at, um, your, your weaknesses or, you know, what you're lacking, but I always like to look at, okay, where are you strong?

[00:29:48] Do you have a strong LinkedIn following or Twitter following, for example, are you really good on video? Um, do you have connections at, at other companies that can help us with PR promote your course? Um, is there a knowledge, do you have a lot of years of experience in your field? What is it about you that makes you super strong and how can we leverage that for your campaign?

[00:30:08] Interesting. Interesting.

[00:30:09] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, so that's, that's, that's in some sense, identify your, your work of identifying their fundamentals and which ones are already dialed in, so to speak. And then which ones will need to be bolstered developed work.

[00:30:27] Marcio Santos: Exactly. And then again, what are, what are just the three things that we could work on and say like the next 90 days to really get you there faster?

[00:30:35] Because I have, like, our program has nine steps, but I don't buy the, the idea that, okay, go through step one, step two, go through all the steps, regardless of where you are. I think everyone comes at it in, at a different position and I try to get them through the program as quickly as possible because by doing that, they're going to make the revenue and they're, you know, we'll be able to help people.

[00:30:59] So it's, it's like that. I look for these, the best opportunities for growth and we focus. We focus there.

[00:31:07] Matthew Dunn: Got it, got it. So you're, you're, you're not just, here's the rubric, everyone follow it, regardless of where you're, where you're coming from and what you bringing to it. Uh, it's, it's fitted intelligently to the person.

[00:31:19] Are there, are there in your observation, any, um, any con. Characteristics attributes experiences that you see in people who find themselves saying, I can teach this. I've got a course in me. I've got a, you know, uh, coaching track in me.

[00:31:37] Marcio Santos: Hmm. I haven't, I haven't observed that specifically, but I think one thing that I have observed serve on the flip side is imposter syndrome and people feeling like, man, I don't know if I can teach that.

[00:31:50] I don't feel like I am an expert in that. I don't feel like I have enough credibility in that. Right. And I was having a coaching call just this morning with a super bright girl. And she's so talented. So skilled. She has so much going for her. But part of the job is like, you got this, like, trust me, you're gonna, you're going to nail this and wherever, whatever lies outside of your sphere, your sphere of comfort, we can learn that.

[00:32:19] Right. You're asking your audience to know. You should be able to learn as well. Right. And, and learning is there's, there's fast ways for us to learn. If you could actually buy somebody else's course and learn just like one small piece that could enhance your course. Gotcha. Because if somebody has it in their course, for example, they probably have case studies, they probably have examples and templates and frameworks that you could learn and adapt for your own course.

[00:32:50] You could do that in a book. You could do that by hiring a consultant. You can go on clarity, FM and call somebody. You could go on a podcast and learn, listen to Matthew DUNS. Uh, the future of email marketing, learn from the, all the expertise interview to accelerate your learning, right? There's tons of ways that you can hack your learning so that you can get there faster.

[00:33:07] Nobody's an expert at any at everything, right? There's this, there's this pencil problem that nobody knows how to actually make it. Some people some, because it's so complex. Some people might know how to extract graphite. Some people might know how to cut down wood. Some people might know how to paint and right to do all that, but nobody actually can do all of the pieces together and give you a pencil.

[00:33:32] And that's a simple, that's a simple product. So why should we expect that you should be able to do everything else, like build a company, an online course and all this stuff and market it and design it, launch it. It's things are complex, man. So give yourself a bit of a break and maybe some humble pie and realize that you need, you need support in some

[00:33:54] Matthew Dunn: areas.

[00:33:54] Right? I can't believe what you picked as an example because I don't, I'm sure there are other people or Fred it, but I read a fascinating book on the pencil. Uh, Henry Petroski book on the pencil, uh, seriously, the pencil. And one story, two stories out of that book one, um, uh, Thoreau, Walden pond, you know, the famous I'll, I'll go live in the woods and discover, you know, myself and I will be, I will live very simply, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:34:30] So here's the joke when it's not the joke, it's the truth. Uh, went the road, sat down and listed the stuff that he was going to take to go live in the woods in the cabin. The one thing he didn't have on the list was the pencil he wrote the list with. Hmm. And the punchline is, guess what his family did for a living.

[00:34:51] They manufactured pencils. I'm not kidding. Really? Yes. Yes. Interesting. Yes. And, and to me, I, I, that one just stuck in my head because it's, it's such a vivid example of that. The Axiom that successful technologies become invisible. The pencil was a revolutionary technique. Because it used to be your fingers got dirty when you were writing in a pencil, it's like, this is amazing.

[00:35:17] I can make marks. I can write all day long. I don't have to dip something in a, well, I don't have to go cut feathers off a goose. This is amazing. Right? And so his family, if you think about it, the business they were in was, was like high-tech of their day. Oh my gosh, you make a writing device that, that doesn't get ink on my fingers.

[00:35:36] And, and that, that works forever. And, you know, it's upside down and stuff like that. And yet to him, it was an invisible technology. When he meticulously with a pencil, wrote the list of stuff that he was going to take to the woods.

[00:35:50] Marcio Santos: Fascinating. That's a really good start. I'm going to remember that one.

[00:35:53] Matthew Dunn: It's actually Henry Petroski. I can't believe I remember. I've got it on the shelf upstairs. Yeah, it's actually, it's a, it's a darn interesting book. And there were a lot of, there were a lot of technological steps in the development, you know, of, of, of dad humbling. You know, puppy like the graphite and mining, which was fairly limited number of places that we could pull that stuff out of the ground before we started doing it synthetically.

[00:36:17] And then the manufacturing processes, like you've probably got hexagonal pencils is when it happens to be round, but the manufacturing processes to make the wood, get the graphite straight, put all that stuff together. Like that was high-tech in its day. There was, there were national, you know, national contention about who had the profitable graphite mines.

[00:36:35] Cause there was a finite supply of that stuff. It's like dang pencils, a technology. Yes, it is. And stuff we think of as high-tech now, uh, you know, if, if someone pulled a Walden two point, oh, if some kids said I'm going to go live by a pond and I'm going to be live and very simple, I doubt they'd probably put their phone on the list, but I bet they'd take it with them for sure.

[00:37:00] Right. It's a successfully invisible becoming a successful interview. Technology, what do you mean a cabin with no net connection? Didn't conceivable right. Try putting that cabin on Airbnb and see if anyone books it.

[00:37:18] Marcio Santos: Yeah, for sure. If you can't take an Instagram photo, did it really happen? Yeah.

[00:37:22] Matthew Dunn: Right, right. But back back to the, your root point that got me off on the pencil story, um, you're right. The notion that we should be able to, we, and any of us should be able to do all of the pieces required to run a modern enterprise.

[00:37:39] Now, even if it's a one person scale enterprise, like that's that daunting list of competencies really hard, and you can outsource, you can outsource them or, or pay someone to do them or pay to learn to do them if you want, if you're going to do them often enough. So stop thinking you have to be code complete just to get started.

[00:38:03] I think it's kind of messy.

[00:38:05] Marcio Santos: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's, um, launching a course, doesn't have to be complicated. There's essentially three parts that you need to master, but, uh, usually when you're first getting started, you might simply be an expert on what you teach, but not know how to market that. And that's a huge, huge barrier that you need to master to be have success for

[00:38:25] Matthew Dunn: sure.

[00:38:26] Sure. For sure. And that is, that, is that one of the biggest, um, sort of is that one of the biggest levers to, to turn what's what someone's got in, in the way of expert knowledge in a domain, into a viable business and product?

[00:38:43] Marcio Santos: Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So the three main parts are you have to master your product, you have to have a funnel and then you have to have.

[00:38:51] Okay. And so usually people will think that, oh, I just have to get people to buy. My course. It's like, yes. But before that you have to have a course that is trying to solve a marketable problem to an audience that is also marketable. Meaning that the group itself has to be in a, in a market. That's not stinking.

[00:39:14] So if you're trying to sell advertisement, you know, of course that teaches you how to buy advertisement in newspapers. That's not a good business, right? If, um, and then for the transformation, what we call it, the course transformation, we need to make sure that people are willing to pay for this problem.

[00:39:29] Like, is this a 3:00 AM problem? Is it. I have a bleeding neck and I need a solution now, or is this the type of, you know, it would be nice to have this solution. You'd need to have a starving crowd for, for your course, for your course transformation. Uh, if it's a nice to have people aren't going to buy, or your conversion rates are going to be super low, which means that you're going to have to spend a lot of time and effort to acquire people's attention, to turn them into leads and then to, to sell them into your course, which is all those three things are difficult to do.

[00:40:01] So, but if you're able to, you know, to master your, your, your products and the, the avatar of the transformation and the message, that's like the first step of the three. So I'd make sure that your course could be successful. It

[00:40:13] Matthew Dunn: sounds like, it sounds like you're a fan of a hundred million dollar offers.

[00:40:17] Marcio Santos: Very, yes, definitely. I get it.

[00:40:21] Matthew Dunn: I just read it a couple of weeks ago. I was like, holy cow, this is good.

[00:40:25] Marcio Santos: Yeah, I've read it back. The back to front. I have the auto, the audio version, the digital version. I've looked at it online. Yeah. It's really good. It's really good.

[00:40:34] Matthew Dunn: It's really, it's really good stuff. Yeah.

[00:40:36] And I've read, I've read a lot of different, you know, business and, and, and, you know, I've, I've read a lot of stuff in that domain. That's the top of the stack for me, I have to say like such, such clarity and simplicity in a way, talk about your fundamentals, right? Like what you just said, essentially quoting, I forget the, I forget the author's name, but you were essentially quoting him about, did a starving crowd.

[00:41:01] Marcio Santos: Yeah. Alex or mosey. Yeah. His, his example was elixir. Mosey talks about. Yeah. Business case, a business teacher who goes into class and ask people, you know, if you're starting a business, what's the most important problem in the kids re you know, say things like, oh, you need to have an idea. You need to have a market, you need to have a product.

[00:41:18] You need to have whatever it is. And he says, you know, you need to have a starving crowd. If you're selling hot dogs outside of the stadium at 3:00 AM, uh, I'm sure you're going to sell out. Yeah,

[00:41:29] Matthew Dunn: yeah, exactly. Yeah. Audit, hungry audience. And if your expertise is, you know, if your expertise that you want to, that you really feel a need to, sh to share in a course is for, is for what looks like and not starving crowd, then maybe you need to figure out whether that's the right course or where the starving crowd for that knowledge is.

[00:41:49] Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Um, sounds like you're pretty passionate about your space.

[00:41:57] Marcio Santos: Definitely not every time I get to, you know, to sit with the new course creator and brainstorm, however, Get them to six figures very quickly. Yeah. Like I just, I just love it. I absolutely love it. Every call I have and every time I see them progress and when we do a launch and we hit our goal it's yeah, I love it.

[00:42:15] I love going through for now, at least, uh, going through this experience with each of my clients is so it's so much fun. I

[00:42:23] Matthew Dunn: read, equip the other day, or it may have been, may have been headline on a newsfeed. And the guy said that he said, everyone's got a thousand bucks worth of content on their Google drive.

[00:42:34] They just don't know it. Interesting. Yeah. Right. And you're like, well, yeah. You know, whether it's that great Excel model or something that you wrote or whatever, like everybody's got, everybody's got something there tend to be darn good at it. And they don't think is actually that big, a deal imposter syndrome and that you cited a minute ago.

[00:42:55] Um, and, and we all undervalue what, what we know, I suspect. Yeah.

[00:43:01] Marcio Santos: Hmm. Definitely. I it's hard. It goes, goes back to that story about the pencil. It's like, once you've learned it, you're, you're now cursed with knowledge and you can't see it anymore. You can't see it anymore. So you, you, you don't know, you overlook all the steps, the 10, 20, 30 steps that you take to get X result.

[00:43:23] You kind of overlook them. It's like, I just do this. It's like, no, actually you do 50 different things, man, to get to that, to that end,

[00:43:30] Matthew Dunn: right? Yeah. Yeah. Or, and once you, once you, once you've internalized them, you forgot how hard they work. When you were looking, you know, when you're learning that, I mean, as I've learned new fields, it's like, ah, stuff that was just a monumental struggle that took days in and out.

[00:43:47] So I know to do that, that, that bet bet on the way there. How did, how do you know that? Well, probably cause I banged my head on the wall, not knowing it first, you know, the first 60 times I did it or something like that. Yeah. And, and, and I'm, I'm pleased to hear the active work, to bring the, the cohort model and the social dimension and that lean on each other, um, structure to the vital job of helping people continue to learn and develop, to develop skills, to keep up with a fast changing world.

[00:44:26] Marcio Santos: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's fun, man. It's exciting what you're

[00:44:29] Matthew Dunn: doing. Where does email marketing fit into this world of yours? Cause we were supposed to talk about that at some point along the way.

[00:44:35] Marcio Santos: Yeah. I was just thinking about that and email marketing plays a crucial role. So after I, after you get the product, right, like we mentioned, the second part is to build a funnel.

[00:44:44] And the funnel essentially is, you know, you need a landing page, your landing page, you need a lead magnet to give people, and then you need to have some kind of way to build trust with this audience. In the, in the phase three, we talk about the launch, right? Building traffic and launching your course. And the launch sequence is super crucial to email plays a crucial role in that sequence.

[00:45:07] So there's essentially two key flows that you need to develop for in terms of email marketing. One is a nurturing sequence where, you know, people will become new leads. How do we nurture them to the next step, whether that's going on a webinar or a free workshop or. For something to get them a little bit deeper after they've gotten your lead magnet.

[00:45:27] So having that nurture sequence and email is very important. The next flow that you want to have is a, is a launch sequence. So the launch sequence is out of all of these people that have become leads, which ones have displayed behaviors that tell me that they're interested in the launch. Have they signed up for specifically the launch, you know, a lead form, have they downloaded the course syllabus?

[00:45:52] Have they come to one of the launch workshops? So all of those three things, those behaviors could be indicators for a launch. And if people continue to read emails in the launch sequence, well, then you know that they're interested. Um, and then you could give them. Deeper into that in score them, segment them further, uh, and then have specific actions that you take to get to convert them into your course.

[00:46:15] So email is super important.

[00:46:17] Matthew Dunn: It's the, it's the permitted back and forth, um, information and knowledge and relationship exchange, mechanism of choice. Right. And you're not paying and you're not paying someone else and letting them control whether or not people see it

[00:46:36] Marcio Santos: fairly critical. Correct. I mean, it's one of, if not the most important owned channel that you can have inside your business.

[00:46:44] Yeah. And the, like you said, this back and forth, this digitization of the Congress. Is email's the best way to do that because really what the email is doing is essentially digitizing yourself or you as a salesperson or marketer and having the conversation with the person to nurture them through the funnel from, oh, I download a lead and I have it because I was interested in this topic, but now I'm going to have this conversation with you about, did you know that this is just one part of the puzzle?

[00:47:13] If you want it to get the transformation, are you, do you realize how close you are? Do you see that you're wasting time or that you're struggling with this? Do you realize that you don't have a clear path and have this conversation until the person says, you know what? I think Matthew is onto something here.

[00:47:26] I think maybe I should take this next step and join the workshop to get more answers, more clarity, more, more support.

[00:47:33] Matthew Dunn: Right. I taught a moment to really date myself here. I taught a course internal inside the company on using email for business communication before anyone had an email address. So this is corporate.

[00:47:49] And I called it frozen speech. Cause it looked at email messages in my inbox. It's like, this is not pros. This is not writing a letter. This is much more like a long slow conversation in terms of how we work with each other. And that was emailed for work purposes, not necessarily marketing, but I suspect much the same, um, sensibility tone.

[00:48:11] Cadence applies to marketing emails as well. So like talk, talk to me, not at me, tuck with me. Don't don't bump Bard me like funny that ping. You just heard on the mic. There was a, I got an email marketing outreach from, uh, from, uh, uh, company about their partner program and she did the followup thing, you know, like two or three times, Hey and carefully written conversation, uh, to try to get me to respond.

[00:48:38] I finally did cause I was interested. I said, well, I had been meaning to reach out let's schedule a time and I could tell she kicked over to actually writing it herself. At that planning. And you could just see the difference in a relatively small number of words, with how she handled the pros, how informed she was, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:48:56] So it is the vehicle of choice and a man that's a big asset when someone says, yes, I'm willing to hear from you.

[00:49:05] Marcio Santos: yeah. It's, it's, it's huge. Attention is the most important thing that you can have as a business today. It's important at every, every phase. Right? So if you're trying to attract new customers, attract new talent into your business and even keep the people that are working in your business interested.

[00:49:25] Yeah. You ha you have to keep their attention and emails is a great way to do that.

[00:49:32] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And even if there's, there's a, there's a wonderful, a wonderful, uh, expert in the email marketing space fellow named Dela Quist, uh, a friend of had many long conversations on the phone with him and he's, he's made the observation more than one.

[00:49:47] That, even the email that doesn't get read counts, like the fact that I saw three or four messages from, from the young lady that I mentioned about company X in my inbox, did I read them? Not necessarily, but by the fourth one, I'm like, okay. Yeah, I've seen her name before I recognize the company. Maybe I should open this one.

[00:50:09] So her first three may have looked like they were wasted. They were not. And, and that, that's probably part of the discipline of that funnel design you talked about is keeping the cadence going. Even if it looks like no one's home, because they said, yes, I'll uh, yes, I've opted in. I want to hear from you so stick with it.

[00:50:29] It'll pay off sooner or later, isn't it an average of six or seven touches before someone actually engages or buys or.

[00:50:36] Marcio Santos: Yeah. I don't remember exactly the exact number I've heard between anywhere from six to 16 different, different touch points that you need to make with somebody before they're ready to buy.

[00:50:45] Yeah. But, uh, definitely the, the email is super important. And as you said, not every email is going to be opened. Right. Um, but that doesn't mean somebody didn't read it. Right. So if you're using Gmail, for example, you can always see a preview of the email. You see the subject line, you see like the first sentence of that in your inbox.

[00:51:05] And that counts as let's say an impression inside someone's email inbox, which is a super personal space, super

[00:51:11] Matthew Dunn: personal space. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you, do you, uh, when you're scanning through one of your inboxes, I'm sure you've got more than one, like all of us, uh, do you look at who it's from first and subject line second?

[00:51:25] Cause I do.

[00:51:30] Marcio Santos: I think so. I think that's, that's how it's ordered. It's it's the first, it tells me they're first. Yeah. And, and they

[00:51:39] Matthew Dunn: call date from subject line, depending on your email.

[00:51:44] Marcio Santos: I'd have to cheat and look, because I don't remember me too, but I'm thinking about, I just saw Hanks' name the other day. He's a, he's a client.

[00:51:54] Uh, he was a client of ours from capital allocators. And I remember this was an old email that was unread. But as soon as I saw his name, like I stopped and I looked at the date, I was like, oh wait, no, that's an old email. I've already dealt with that issue. But it's so interesting how, how names of people, they can really jump out at you once you recognize them and you have a connection with them, their names really seemed to jump out.

[00:52:17] Yeah.

[00:52:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And I suspect, you know, this goes back to the first part of our conversation about the social element in the cohort, a name in my inbox. If someone that I've actually got a face-to-face relationship. I suspect it at a pure physiology level. My brain is going right. Is doing different stuff. When I see that when I get an email from you in the future, it's going to register differently because we had this conversation, right.

[00:52:43] It's like, I know who that is. My brain already knows who that is. It's not like I have to go look it up in stupid CRM, like oh, Marcio. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was a great conversation about that. Yeah. And, you know, motion attached to it, knowledge, history, all that stuff attached to it. And, and it takes some time and persistence to earn that, especially if you're only an email message for the, for the initial part of the relationship.

[00:53:08] Marcio Santos: Hmm Hmm.

[00:53:10] Matthew Dunn: And we thought this was simple, right?

[00:53:14] Marcio Santos: Yeah. There, there are many layers to it. Right. And as you, as you get into creating our course of marketing, of course, you start to realize that man, there, there are a lot of nuance things that you have to get. Yeah, that you have to put in place so that you can, um, really be scalable.

[00:53:33] Right? You could, you could hand write a bunch of emails, but it's going to turn into your new nine to five. And I think a lot of us when we're creating a course, yeah. The draw is, you know, how can I replace my nine to five? Or how can I, you know, quit completely and just do the things I love. And so the course as, uh, as my means to, to, you know, turn my key.

[00:53:56] Matthew Dunn: Right, right. Which is, which is, I imagine one of the fundamentals you have to help your customers understand is the investment of time in getting this email sequence written pay will pay off and pay off like crazy eventually, but you really need to do this. You cannot keep up and succeed. If you write them all by hand.

[00:54:21] Marcio Santos: Yeah, exactly.

[00:54:23] Matthew Dunn: Totally 24 hours in a day. And if you, if things take off, you couldn't possibly write them all. So, yeah. So

[00:54:29] Marcio Santos: yeah. So after going through a few launches and going through a few helping different clients with courses recently, so I work with, uh, CAHE from, from rodriguez.co, uh, capital allocators, um, dot com with Ted sightings and his team up there with the Robbie Crabtree, um, and a few other clients as well.

[00:54:49] And, um, what we've been able to develop thus far as a series of templates that will get you 80% of the way there in terms of emails. Wow. And the final 20% is crucial though. Yeah. The final 20% really is all about customizing these emails so that it fits the voice of the course creator, um, and talks about the key solutions that this course solves.

[00:55:16] Avatar. And even after I give you the templates, it's still going to be a ton of work to go through each email and really read them and really refine them to make sure that everything gels with gel as well. So it's something definitely helpful because it provides a framework for you to work with it.

[00:55:35] Yeah. And it allows you to be creative within that, that you know, that frame.

[00:55:40] Matthew Dunn: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Larry, bird's a better shot because half court, you know, a free-throw line, et cetera, uh, are constraints that he worked with him

[00:55:55] Marcio Santos: and exactly. And working with him in the second piece too. Yeah. You were talking about building things.

[00:56:00] The second thing that we help our clients build in our program is a funnel. So this is something that we, it's almost a done for you. There's still some, a little bit of work that the client has to do in terms of participating to build out their. Yeah, but essentially the end we built, we give them a funnel, like a fully functioning funnel website.

[00:56:20] Yeah. That they would probably have to spend hours and hours and hours trying to build, or spend thousands and thousands of dollars or hundreds of monthly subscriptions to get something workable that is systematizing, easy to, to use. Um, and we, we, we do that for them. It's, it's practically like a turnkey solution.

[00:56:39] Wow.

[00:56:39] Matthew Dunn: Wow. That's pretty compelling. You're going to be a busy guy.

[00:56:44] Marcio Santos: Yeah. We're starting to get busy. That's good.

[00:56:48] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I mean, unless we talked about the, you know, the explosion, the explosion of, um, you know, interest and engagement in, you know, in learning in new ways and learning new things, um, you know, it's not, not, not about to dive in.

[00:57:03] You've also got the big guys, the Amazon Google, et cetera. Realizing that they're going to have to help build their future workforce. Is it Amazon? I said, they're going to train. I think they said they're going to train 40 million people or something like that. And yeah. And in cloud computing, like it was just a crazy number.

[00:57:23] I think I'm worried about that. What do you think? 40 million? 40,000? I think there's 40 million. Yeah. Um, did you ever have you run a club across, uh, Clayton Christensen in your reading? Innovator's dilemma is the book that made him feel.

[00:57:39] Marcio Santos: It sounds familiar and I've probably skimmed that book before, but that's

[00:57:43] Matthew Dunn: definitely one of, definitely one to that.

[00:57:46] The fall, once he was a, he's no longer longer with us. He was a prophet Harvard business school. I remember him now. Yeah. I had a chance to meet him at a conference, uh, 27 years ago. Yeah. What, like incredibly smart, just, uh, and complete gentlemen. Um, but I had one of those brief hallway conference conversations with him and I said, Dr.

[00:58:09] Christensen, here's the thing I'm curious about education because we're, this is, this is 2099. It's a long time ago. Right. Um, we were talking about disruption in other domains and I said, what's going to happen to higher ed. And he said, I'm honestly concerned. And he said, I think we'll see corporations starting to take that job over.

[00:58:31] And if you look at the landscape now, I think he was right.

[00:58:36] Marcio Santos: Yeah. I mean, if, if your number is correct there with Amazon training, 40 million people, I I'm curious how that compares to how many graduates come out of Harvard, Yale, Stanford. I don't, I doubt it's, you know, I bet it would be a fraction of that per year.

[00:58:52] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Oh yeah. Complete fraction of it. And, and, you know, if, if you want to be a, if you want to be a cloud developer, um, speaking as one, you're not gonna learn that you're not gonna learn that in a comp site university, uh, curriculum. Sorry, they're just not there yet. They're not keeping, there's no way they could keep up because it's stuff you really have to know.

[00:59:12] Now didn't exist two years ago. It's like you just can't institutionally adapt. At, at the pace required, it's almost got to come from straight from the horse's mouth, right. Straight from the, from the companies who say, you know, oh, here's the, you know, here's the new machine that does X. We need someone to help us run the machine.

[00:59:32] We will train you on running the machine that we just invented. Um,

[00:59:36] Marcio Santos: yesterday. Yeah. Th th I I've observed this too with, um, different courses. If you're running a course, for example, if you're trying to teach a course on a new technology, be that something like a tool like notion or on something in the crypto space, like minting a new NFT or getting into the crypto space or something like that.

[00:59:56] Courses, courses, and topics where markets are booming is, is really a no brainer. If there's a type of technology out there or platform that you. That you love that you're super interested in curious about, and you have at least some experience, and you've been able to cross at least a few milestones, right.

[01:00:14] To, to achieve some kind of level of expertise, man. And you could create a course, you know, very quickly, very simply, um, and offer it up and people will buy it. Here's the,

[01:00:27] Matthew Dunn: here's the headline to validate what you just said. Amazon wants to train 29 million people to work in the cloud wall street journal a couple weeks ago.

[01:00:35] Wow.

[01:00:36] Marcio Santos: Big number. Huh? That's a lot of people that's. Yeah. So yeah. So cloud computing, um, there's, there's lots of opportunity there. So if anybody's listening, you're in cloud computing, don't think that because Amazon is teaching that you can also teach, you can also

[01:00:51] Matthew Dunn: teach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I suspect, I suspect someone with expertise in that domain who can, who can.

[01:01:00] Uh, DBAs realize it right. Who can simply not simplify, not simplify as in dumbed down, but simplify as in make comprehensible. Um, there's, there's a real market for that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's not, it's not gonna th that the up curve and uptake of that's not going to die off anytime soon. I don't think daunting to learn like daunting domain to keep up with really fricking hard, because the pace of innovation right now is so white, hot there's there's stuff that our company has in production that literally didn't exist a year ago.

[01:01:39] That is now vital part of the business. I was like, oh crap. We've got to learn that. Well, there's a big opportunity if we do okay, how's it work? How are we going to tie it into the other stuff? You know, learn, figure it out. And as you're saying, and then maybe pass that knowledge along. Well, cool. Well, we should wrap up since I tied up a whole hour, where does, where do we send someone who says, oh, that was a great conversation.

[01:02:06] I want to learn more. Cause I've got a, you know, I've got a course in may and I'd love to have a cohort where, and we send

[01:02:11] Marcio Santos: them. So you can head over to nerd digital.com forward slash future of email. And what you'll be able to do is grab a calculator to give you at least a ballpark estimation of what you can earn with your course today.

[01:02:28] So there's a quick story to go with this. When Ted side is from capital allocators called us, he was kind of sitting on an idea for a course. He had his kind of sketched on a piece of paper and he's like, you know, I went to this other course. I think we can do something similar. We have some ideas I've written.

[01:02:45] What do you think we can do? And three to four months later, we broke six figures for his first kind of put those two stories together to say, you could be sitting on six figures and not know it. Right? And so you can download this calculator, go to nerd digital.com, the R D D I G I T a l.com forward slash future email.

[01:03:06] And you'll be able to download the calculator, plug in a few numbers. And what it'll do is it'll spit out an estimation of what you can expect in terms of revenue for your course.

[01:03:17] Matthew Dunn: Nice, well, Marcia Santos, it has been a fascinating and wide rangy. Coversation a real pleasure. I thank you for making the time.

[01:03:27] Marcio Santos: Oh, I thank you, Matthew. Really appreciate it. And I hope we can connect again.

[01:03:30]