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Conscious Creators — Make A Life Through Your Art Without Selling Your Soul
Sam Ovens — How He Built a $80M Course Empire, the Future of Online Education and Why He’s Going All-In on Skool
Nov 29, 2022
01:45:16
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Quick takeaways
- Building a strong and engaged community can benefit your business by allowing collaboration, idea sharing, and insight from like-minded individuals.
- Having a family can enhance teamwork and adaptability skills, influencing long-term thinking and smarter decision-making.
- Finding the right technical co-founder requires perseverance, patience, and utilizing networking and personal connections.
- Empowering creators and building a community-focused platform is crucial for the future of online education, emphasizing the value of collaboration and trust.
Deep dives
The Importance of Disrupting Yourself
To be a successful innovator, it is crucial to disrupt yourself before someone else disrupts you. This means taking proactive steps to challenge and improve your own products and services, rather than waiting for outside forces to force change.
The Value of High-Quality Ads and Community Building
Creating high-quality ads that truly resonate with your target audience is more important than simply promoting your brand. It is better to not advertise at all than to produce subpar ads. Furthermore, building a strong and engaged community can have significant benefits for your business, allowing you to collaborate, share ideas, and gain insight from like-minded individuals.
The Impact of Family on Business Thinking
Having a family can positively influence your ability to work in a team and deal with chaos. The experiences and challenges that come with being a parent can enhance your skills in managing teams and handling unpredictability in business settings. Additionally, having a child can shift your mindset to prioritize long-term thinking and make smarter decisions about time allocation and partnerships.
The Process of Finding a Technical Co-Founder
Finding the right technical co-founder can be a challenging process. It often involves extensive interviewing, seeking referrals, and working closely with recruiters to identify candidates. Utilizing networking and personal connections can lead to identifying highly skilled individuals. Having a technical assessment proxy can also simplify the evaluation process. It may require perseverance and patience, but finding the right technical co-founder is crucial for success in tech-driven businesses.
Importance of Building a Platform for Creators
The speaker discusses the decision to build a platform called 'school' for creators and the future of online education. They emphasize the importance of empowering creators and building a community-focused platform. The speaker highlights their observation that traditional education is failing and that the key to reaching a large audience is to provide value and support to creators. They also discuss the evolution of e-learning, the changing economics of the internet, and the role of community in fostering growth and knowledge sharing.
The Power of Community and Collaboration
The speaker emphasizes the significance of community and collaboration in the online space. They draw parallels to historical periods, such as the Renaissance, where collaboration and interdisciplinary interactions led to great innovations. The speaker highlights the value of finding communities of people with shared goals and interests, as well as the importance of establishing trust and open-mindedness within these communities. They discuss the positive impact of engaging in meaningful discussions, seeking feedback, and actively working towards improvement collectively.
Balancing Engagement and Value in Community Building
The speaker explores the challenge of balancing engagement and value in community building. They emphasize the importance of creating an engaging platform that meets the needs and expectations of its members while providing substantial value. The speaker shares insights into the decision-making process behind building a community platform, considering factors such as notifications, user interface design, and gamification elements. They highlight the role of setting clear goals and values for the community and continually improving and adapting the platform based on user feedback and needs.
“People are burned out of courses and no one really enjoys them. So like notice what people like, people like masterminds - they like hanging out with other people and interacting. It's more about the people. It's less about the content.”
— Sam Ovens
This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Sam Ovens (@samovens), CEO and Founder of Skool — a community platform for creators.
Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter.
Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA.
(02:37) - Balancing family and business
(03:28) - How his mental models about business changed since having a child
(04:51) - The process he went through to find his tech co-founder
(11:11) - His approach to building a great team, so he can get his time back
(14:25) - When Sam was working 15-20 hours a day - Would he do it again?
(15:51) - When they downsized the company to make ensure it’s fun end enjoyable
(17:55) - Example of how he turned non-fun tasks into fun tasks
(20:28)- Tasks that he got rid of during the process of downsizing
(25:09) - Lessons learned on building great products/courses in the online education world
(29:01) - How the product evolved over time
(30:08) - Thoughts on cohort-based courses and their future
(33:44) - Non-intuitive lessons he has learned over the last decade
(39:44) - The switch from trying to pull things from the market, to listening to what the market wants
(41:27) - Importance of communities in courses and education
(43:17) - How to create more engaging communities
(46:41) - Transitioning from a creator with an audience, to a seven-figure zen style business
(50:26) - Sam’s unique approach to launches and selling
(53:37)- How Sam sells using Loom videos
(54:54) - Core mechanics of an offer
(56:24) - How to create rush and scarcity at the launch of a course
(58:55) - How he goes from beta testing a course to the next step
(59:57) - Getting good at pre-empting things in business
(01:01:42) - Why he decided to go fully-in on Skool
(01:07:17) - The convergence of info marketing, creators, and tech
(01:11:01) - The pseudo-abundance of content on the internet
(01:17:44) - The gamification of communities
(01:20:27) - Creative trade-off decisions they made in Skool
(01:21:53) - How he thinks about the community's success and KPIs
(01:23:34) - How he keeps the quality of the community high since it’s gotten big
(01:29:59) - The importance of mindset as a creator
(01:32:36) - How a community can create unsaid rules based on members personalities and how to deal with that
(01:35:54)- Personal ideas that he changed his mind about after learning about them from a community
(01:36:53) - Books that have been most impactful to him
(01:37:16) - One piece of wisdom that changed the game for him
(01:37:44) - One person he is grateful to
(01:38:11) - What it means to be a conscious creator
(01:38:47) - Things he is most excited for in the next 5-10 years
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