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Sam Ovens — How He Built a $80M Course Empire, the Future of Online Education and Why He’s Going All-In on Skool
Conscious Creators — Make A Life Through Your Art Without Selling Your Soul
English - November 29, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 147 MBEntrepreneurship Business Investing Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
“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.
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(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