Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives

LUYC 119: Mastering Notion to Keep Productive with Francesco D'Alessio

Episode Summary

What’s up everyone! This week I’m joined by Francesco D'Alessio, productivity expert, YouTuber, and founder of Keep Productive. He’s here to talk about his course, Notion Made Simple, and how he’s helping people find the best productivity tools for their work and life. My mission is to help people find the right productivity software for their life and work. Francesco’s passion for tech and productivity tools paved the way for Keep Productive, a blog and YouTube channel that currently has 105K subscribers and more than 10 million views. His course, Notion Made Simple, is an 8-module program that teaches learners at beginner, intermediate, and advanced experience levels how to master Notion. The course is built to help people learn to use Notion effectively, from navigating the vast number of features to managing projects and databases. Tune in to hear Francesco’s tips about tech and productivity, and how he created Notion Made Simple. Episode Quotes "Just be patient. Good stuff comes a couple of years after, not next week." "There is so much more creative freedom when you are doing these individual courses." Listen to Learn 00:54 - Getting to know Francesco D'Alessio, Rapid 5 Questions 04:01 - How Keep Productive started, Keep Productive business model 09:53 - What is Notion? 12:01 - Notion Made Simple - Course goal and who it's for 15:58 - Pros of using Notion 18:12 - Notion Made Simple - Launching and lessons learned 22:42 - Importance of timing with courses based on tools 27:34 - Exciting things coming up from Francesco Connect with Francesco Keep Productive Keep Productive YouTube Channel Notion Made Simple Follow Francesco on Twitter! Looking for the Transcript? Episode 119 Grab the bonus segment! Francesco dives deeper into Notion and how he keeps his courses up-to-date. Grab it here: https://get.zencourses.co/extra

Episode Notes

What’s up everyone! This week I’m joined by Francesco D'Alessio, productivity expert, YouTuber, and founder of Keep Productive. He’s here to talk about his course, Notion Made Simple, and how he’s helping people find the best productivity tools for their work and life.

My mission is to help people find the right productivity software for their life and work.

Francesco’s passion for tech and productivity tools paved the way for Keep Productive, a blog and YouTube channel that currently has 105K subscribers and more than 10 million views. His course, Notion Made Simple, is an 8-module program that teaches learners at beginner, intermediate, and advanced experience levels how to master Notion. The course is built to help people learn to use Notion effectively, from navigating the vast number of features to managing projects and databases.  

Tune in to hear Francesco’s tips about tech and productivity, and how he created Notion Made Simple.

 

Episode Quotes

"Just be patient. Good stuff comes a couple of years after, not next week."  

"There is so much more creative freedom when you are doing these individual courses."

 

Listen to Learn

00:54 - Getting to know Francesco D'Alessio, Rapid 5 Questions

04:01 - How Keep Productive started, Keep Productive business model

09:53 - What is Notion?

12:01 - Notion Made Simple - Course goal and who it's for

15:58 - Pros of using Notion

18:12 - Notion Made Simple - Launching and lessons learned

22:42 - Importance of timing with courses based on tools

27:34 - Exciting things coming up from Francesco

 

Connect with Francesco

Keep Productive

Keep Productive YouTube Channel

Notion Made Simple

Follow Francesco on Twitter!  

 

Looking for the Transcript?

Episode 119

 

Grab the bonus segment!

Francesco dives deeper into Notion and how he keeps his courses up-to-date.

Grab it here: https://get.zencourses.co/extra  

Episode Transcription

Francesco D'Alessio: Well, I've noticed it at least is when I create the Skillshare classes. I felt more limited with my branding. Now with the Thinkific classes, I can point people towards my branding more. I have full control of the way that it's presented.

Janelle Allen: Welcome back to Level Up Your Course, where we pull back the curtain on what it takes to create learning that transforms lives. You will hear stories from business owners like you who share their success and their struggles. This is not where you come to hear passive income myths, friend. This is where you learn the truth about building a profitable learning platform. I am your host, Janelle Allen, and this is today's episode.

What's up everyone? Today I am speaking with Francesco D'Alessio, productivity expert, founder of Keep Productive, and course creator. Francesco, welcome to the show.

FD: Hello, Janelle. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be chatting.

JA: I am very excited. I think I found you when I began to obsess over Notion and so I'm excited. I know that you have a course called Notion Made Simple. We're going to talk about that, but before we get too deep into talking about all of the course stuff, we have a tradition on the show. It's called the Rapid Five, five quick questions to help listeners get to know you. Are you ready?

FD: I'm ready. I'm loaded.

JA: Number one is easy. What did you have for breakfast?

FD: I didn't have breakfast. I skipped it.

JA: Okay, fair enough. Number two, what is the last role that you broke?

FED: That's a tough one. Probably not meditating for a good two months, which wasn't good.

JA: I just started again and it's, it's so bad when you don't, right?

FD: You can just, you can tell the difference. Yeah. You're like, you're a little more snappy –

JA: -- and then it's like, what is wrong with me? Why did I stop doing this? I know. It doesn't make any sense. Okay. Three. This is a serious question.

FD: Okay.

JA: The zombie apocalypse has hit, Francesco.

FD: Oh no.

JA: You have six minutes to grab three essential items to help you survive. Not people. All of your loved ones are with you. They're good. Three items, six minutes to choose. What do you pick?

FD: That's a really good question. I'm just not going to bring any electrics. I'm going to say a jacket in case it gets cold and if I need to make a tent out of the jacket. Maybe a flashlight. I don't know. Just so that if an a dark and probably a notebook so I can write down on my thoughts as I'm going through this. So what I need to do on this Island or - we're not on the Island, but you know against zombies. I shouldn't think weapons. God, what am I doing?

JA: I was not going to mention, but then you could use your flashlight. It could double as well as a weapon. It would be short range. You'd probably get bitten and become a zombie, but you know, that's just how it goes sometimes. Right?

FD: I did do that on the spot. So to be fat, I think the most central stuff,

JA: I love it. Okay, fair enough. Number four, fill in the blank. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a blank.

FD: Airplane pilot, but then I realized that I had to have good eyesight, so I decided to look elsewhere. Software came up.

JA: Closer range.

FD: Yeah, that’s it.

JA: Last one. What is the hardest lesson you have learned as an entrepreneur so far?

FD: Probably just be patient. Good stuff comes a couple of years after, not you know, next week. So I always try and think about every day.

JA: That's so true. It's funny because I think you're the first person to say that explicitly and I think it's really important for people who want to become entrepreneurs to understand that because there are so many presentations or misrepresentations that make people think it is an overnight thing. So thank you for sharing that lesson with us.

FD: Thank you.

JA: All right, so speaking of being an entrepreneur, tell us about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get to become Francesco, founder of Keep Productive, YouTuber, productivity expert? How did you get here?

FD: Probably when I look back, it doesn't make any sense how I got here. I would say a very strange obsession with productivity software, early age of 15, 16 years old. I remember just going into school and being sort of knowledgeable of it. You know, the different types of software like Evernote, and there's different types of apps. At the time. And I remember too just teaching other people about it and it only took me four years after that to realize I should probably do some form of content around that. Naturally, like all things, it takes time for you to work out what the best way to do it is. So when I was in my end of the first year of university, I decided I would start a YouTube channel. I'd be involved in a few businesses before, like I had to create a workshops, um, company that was local in my first year at university and I was doing a few things like that. But this was my sort of sole project to my sort of little bit of a side project. So yeah, like that's when I under my name, a my channel was created. I was creating maybe four videos a week pretty consistently for about three years. And then I decided I would make it into Keep Productive, which is the title of it today, two years on. But during that period of time to give myself a little bit of sort of runway with the sort of side project, I freelanced for about two and a half years, three years and I freelanced in PR and marketing and I was just out of university so I was doing projects while I was in university, you know, making sure that I was ready to come out and I had the level of income I needed to be able to do it full time. And now I've only just gone full time on Keep Productive. So that's as of four or five months ago.

JA: One of my questions coming up was really all about building a business around productivity because it's interesting, you are probably within the past month, the third productivity person that I've spoken with and I noticed that when I was checking out your courses, you have free courses and then you have your new paid course on notion. And I was surprised at the number of free courses you have. So can you talk about your business model with Keep Productive? How have you turned it into something that's allowed you to do it full time?

FD: Yeah, sure. I think you had Tiago on is a brilliant chap. I learned a lot from him. He's a very wise person when it comes to courses. So the way that I approached it is a very much a scatter approach. So when I first started doing the channel, I decided to like do as many different things as possible and work out which one worked. So I remember I did go skills courses, Skillshare courses, and I didn't even look at doing my own sort of solo courses. I guess my idea with it was just to make as much content, see which one worked, and then pick the winning horse or the one that's running fastest. So yeah, with Keep Productive, we review lots of different applications across the productivity spectrum. So it's not just productivity software, it's like all of the assisting apps with it. But we try and make sure that's our niche so that if people are coming on YouTube, they're searching, you know, there's searching for Click Up, Notion, Asana, we hopefully appear first and we give them the best sort of honest advice about an application. So yeah, I mean that's how it started with YouTube. But I guess with the courses side, what I would do is, of all of those apps that I was reviewing, if the community that were behind Keep Productive were having problems or they were being aware of an app that they'd like to learn more about, I would just pick that one and create a Skillshare course on it or go skills course on it. And that's how it sort of evolved, I guess.
JA: Gotcha, okay. And so if they're a member of Skillshare or GoSkills, then they get access to that course.

FD: Yeah, that's it. I mean the model is still really changing for me. I think I'm in, like I've just finished chapter one of my courses learning and I'm about to hit chapter two in which I think I'm going to do a better job than I did in chapter one. But I think when you're starting out with courses, it's just like, my rule was just get them up and get them rolling and you can probably work out all of the issues later. I don't know.
JA: I think that you said something really key because one of the things that I have a lot of people who reach out to me about creating their first course and typically they don't have an audience yet. They're not really sure what to create, what their audience wants, but even though you feel like you're just creating, you're just getting it up, you're doing it based on what the community, your community, is struggling with or asking about or you know. That's the sense I think that's what I heard coming from you and that's absolutely the right way to do it because then you, you kind of pre-validate the idea, right? Because you know that there's a demand for it.

FD: That's it. Yeah. I mean I was just like constantly listening to people and looking at YouTube comments and just going, which one of these things that people struggle with or they want to, you know, apply to their own situation and just build a course in it as fast as I could.

JA: I love that you said YouTube. One of the things that I try to teach people in the group program is, you know, there, if you don't have your own audience, there's other platforms you can use to see what people are asking about. And so for you, I love that you said you went to YouTube because it's so much data there. There's so many comments and then there's other people who are teaching something that maybe you're thinking about teaching. So if it's not your own YouTube channel, it can be someone else's channel where you can kind of see what questions keep popping up.

FD: That's it. Yeah, 100% yeah.

JA: All right. Let's talk about Notion Made Simple. So for anyone out there who does not know what Notion is, let's start there. What is Notion Francesco?
FD: That's a really good question. It's always hard to explain that you can't see it, but I'm sure people are typing it in on Google or YouTube and trying to see what it looks like. But it's sort of like a website builder in what it looks like. But the cool thing is you can build your own productivity experience. So if you want a to do list, you can build it and Notion. If you want a calendar you can build it and Notion. Habit tracker, Wiki for your teams. It's literally, I call it a modular application where you sort of modulate your experience and um, no code to build it, which is pretty incredible. And it’s, it's a very popular app at the moment, which is great news, not just for the course, but for obviously the community and learning aspects of it.

JA: Yeah, I'm a Notion user. I'm a convert, so I'm going to go ahead and self identify in that way. So for people who don't know what notion is, please check it out. It's super powerful, but it's also, there's a steep learning curve. In fact, I will be completely transparent. Well, you know, because I reached out to you, I hired someone to just build it the way that I wanted it because I started using it and I realized I'm doing this wrong and I just wrote an article about this. I didn't know I was doing it wrong, but once I started seeing Marie Poulin she started doing webinars, which I'm sure you're aware. She was sharing how she sets up notion and I just had like you know the mind blown emoji. That's what it was for me where I realized there is so much more that this tool can do and I have been using it like an infinitesimal…

FD: I know you mean, it’s like you see these wonderful set ups and you're like God, I'm just using… There are so many like Marie’s set up, even me doing all of the Notion stuff, I'm like Oh I need to sit down in a good way there.

JA: Yeah, definitely. So your course is called Notion Made Simple. Who is the course for?

FD: Yeah, I mean the course is for really anyone that is looking at notion and just, you know, as you said, like there was a massive learning curve with that. I found from the comments people are struggling with it and I just put this course together, like eight module course. It's really all about taking you from beginner level to at a more advanced level. And we are probably the first one to do the course. I worked together with Steve Dotto on it and Steve was like, so I didn't actually have the idea to do this course. I thought about it, but then Steve was like, you need to do it, let's partner on it. So I give full credit to Steve for inspiring me to actually get the course done and get it sort of shipped out. So he's told me a lot about course creation in 2019 so, but yeah, it's, it's been really successful so far because obviously so many people need that training. So it's great fun to do that.

JA: Yeah, I'm looking at your sales page right now, which I love by the way. Um, kudos. It's so clear and easy to follow. What is the course goal? So what is it that your learners should be able to do after going through this course?
FD: The thing that I'll say is that I'm always learning about this course. So at the moment we're doing like module refreshes, so we're just click and consistently guttering, the course and re sort of developing it. Because the problem with Notion is that the actual content that’s free and available in the community is progressing so fast that you need to develop a course to make sure to match it. So we're like always learning ourselves. But the real objective by the end of the course is by module eight you have the ability to create a fully formed notion dashboard. That's what we call it. And it allows you, when you see your Notion dashboard to access all the information you need to be able to plan, organize and coordinate your information. So you know, for many people that comes in, different aspects that could be moving over from Evernote and all of that sort of Wiki information, their notes information or moving over from an app like Trello to begin project managing. So it's different for each person, but it's basically like just making it your home.

JA: Yeah, definitely. So you said something that we're going to talk about in the bonus segment about keeping the course up to date and particularly for people who are teaching a course that is centered around a tool, so a productivity tool or just a piece of software, an app that's always a consideration, keeping it up to date. So I want to talk about that, how you approach that in the bonus segment. For anyone listening, tune into that if you want to learn how to do that. So like I said, I'm looking at your sales page and you've got eight modules. So is there anything else there, a community or any other aspect outside of the course content?

FD: Yeah, I mean that's a really good question. So we have a discussions tab so that people can ask questions. Obviously, you know, my email is available to anyone who gets the course so that they can reach out. We have the first module free to sort of get people understanding of notion, get people set up with that. But I think the things I want to implement at least by the end of the year is we have a Notion newsletter that's attached to it so people can get the latest Notion of resources, um, outside of the course or bonus stuff that we're producing. But the things that I want to sort of implement is more sort of drip feed emails to help people sort of onboard with it so that they sort of know day to day, what they could be doing. Almost like a challenges and yeah, I mean just generally trying to keep it as bulky as possible so that people can sort of go crazy and the with Notion cause they, once you learn like a little bit the way that say a relational database works inside Notion, you can apply it to so many different aspects of your daily routines. So I think it's just more about just deepening it even further

JA: And that's what's great about notion. I feel like this is becoming an advert for notion, but that is the topic of your course. Yeah, that's an idea. What's great about it is exactly what you just said once you start to, because I think that the learning curve comes from people are used to using tools like Asana, which I still use. I think Asana is superior for project management compared to Notion. Some people would argue, my notion consultant who's setting things up, he absolutely disagrees, but the differences with tools like Asana, Trello, you think in a linear fashion. With notion, you begin to think in a nonlinear, very relational fashion and that's a very different mode for a lot of people, but once you start to think that way and see the possibilities, it just opens up everything.

FD: Oh yeah, 100% the things I seen people build inside of Notion once their mind collects is insane. Like I've seen people track, someone I met had a problem with their heart and they were tracking all of the data around their heart that that application was providing. Just to be able to see that and pass that on to the doctors in general, so managers, which was amazing, but in same time I've seen people use it as like a really powerful team tool. But yeah, going back to that, like these other tools, they are more traditional in that sort of set up, they sort of take you from point A to C, but I’d say notion gets you point A to Z, but just in a very different way. Sometimes if you don't have that guidance, then it's a little bit tricky. But then also we have other people as well who just go off, like who come onto a YouTube video, who discover notion and decide to just go and learn it themselves. Because it's actually quite a fun experience. It's, it's sort of like, you know, like if you've got a really plain notebook and just decided, actually I'm gonna make this look pretty funky inside and sort of design it however you want. So people do go off and discover it themselves. That's what's so good about the tool, I think.

JA: Yeah, absolutely. Because it can become whatever you want and you can change it as you learn it does it, it's not static in that way. So first of all, when did this course launch? When did Notion Made Simple launch?

FD: It launched in, I'm going to say about April time and we've been refreshing it a little bit that this sort of next start of the Q1 of next year is my sort of goal to get it really refined based on all the changes. But yeah, it's been a really cracking start. And I think the main reason why it was has been fairly successful was because it was the only one on the market. And we did a and Steve, you know, guided me into doing a fantastic job with the marketing. So, and obviously all of the free content that you produce on YouTube can be pointed towards that as well.

JA: Yeah. I want to talk about the timing that first, what have you learned, because I know that you said you feel like you're going into chapter two with course creation and you were launching courses with SkillShare. This is different, this is on Thinkific, it standalone, you created it. What have you learned throughout the process of creating and running this course?

FD: I mean, that's a really good question cause I, the way that I approached it was when I did my first couple of Skillshare classes, and there's even a Skillshare class on Notion, which is still there and it's still has like 3000 students, which is amazing. But the way that I see it is I still produce classes for Skillshare and I really liked the platform myself. That's where I actually first discovered a lot of Tiago Forte’s content. But what I noticed about it is that if you're looking to, you know, make some revenue, make some money off the course, it's not that much of a good money maker because you're limited by obviously the premium minutes, which is good, but at the same time it really depends on how well your course ranks and how much you promote it. And if you take it and compare it to say the numbers of the Notion course, it's a lot different. You make more money off of referrals on Skillshare than you do say the premium minutes. And also I think what I've noticed it at least is when I create the Skillshare classes, I felt more limited with my branding. Now with the Thinkific classes, I can point people towards my branding more. I have full control of the way that it's presented. And that's what I'm really enjoying. So I'm working on another course at the moment on Thinkific and I'm also doing a third one in sort of January time, early January time, and I'm really sort of getting the hang of it. I'd say that my issues at the start were just getting it out. But now it's like, okay I think I have a model that works and that's producing solo courses and continually updating them. Cause on Skillshare you don't necessarily have resources. So like in the description I was putting like doc droid PDFs but at the same time it was like not as intuitive in providing resources cause they're really focused more towards solely video. So yeah, I mean there's so much more creative freedom when you're doing these individual, like say you’re on Teachable or whatever.

JA: Yeah. It's, you know, much like you to me, when I very first started in courses, I was staunchly against anyone selling courses on Udemy but much like Skillshare. What I came to realize is it is a wonderful way to validate that there is demand for the topic that you want to teach. So for anyone out there who maybe is apprehensive about creating their own course using a platform like Thinkific or tTeachable or what have you, you can start on something like Skillshare or you to me and just see if there's a demand, are people buying your course and if so then you can move on, which is exactly what you did. I love that you shared your experience because there are a lot of people who are a little bit apprehensive about just saying, okay, I'm going to do this on my own and figure out how to market it and do all of this.

FD: Yeah, that's it. I think it's just like from what I learned at least is just getting them up because I think I have like seven Skillshare classes now and it still produces a good level of monthly income from that. And I'm still looking to add more, but what I see, what I categorize Skillshare as now is more beginner classes. And then if I were to create a course, it would be on think ethical solo course and it would be a much more depth than what I've done.

JA: So you mentioned that this course was the first Notion course out there. It's the first one that I saw. How important is timing with courses based on tools?

FD: Yeah, that's a good question because I guess it's important to some extent. So just to give you a better context, I found notion back in July, 2017 I didn't intentionally find out like I was having a coffee with someone and they said, I'm thinking of investing in this company. And I was like, Oh cool. And they showed me it and I was like, Oh, I'll maybe check it out. I did a review on YouTube and then sort of was like, wow, this tool is incredible, and I slowly produced like content on it. Maybe I was doing that first year, about 30 or 40 videos and that first year on it, so it'd be about weekly feature. It was probably on once a week or once every two weeks and then start of this year, it started just absolutely going crazy and it was getting featured in lots of places. The features were really bolstering up. When I was approached by Steve and we chatted and he sort of pushed me to do it, which I really am grateful for. It landed at the perfect time because nobody else is doing it. There were a couple people like talking about it and now only in the last couple of weeks, people, I think two other courses are going up soon, which is amazing cause it like the timing went perfectly. But I think if, for example, I did it maybe the year before, it would have been even better. So I guess timing is important. I guess if for example, let's say Marie Poulin is about to release one on Notion, I don't think timing's that important there because she has such a brilliant level of teaching and a brilliant level of advanced learning that, you know, it's going to do very well because it's so fantastic. So I don't think like timing, there's not really important because there's already a Notion course out there, but this one does so much more. So, you know, I put my costs down.

JA: No, no, no. I hear what you're saying. And I think that it's a very layered conversation because on one hand you're right, Marie has done an amazing job of building awareness. In fact, I just wrote about this, her primary business has nothing to do with Notion or productivity. And she's been able through her webinars to build awareness and build an audience and build interest. And in that way, she is connecting to the energy around notion right now. However, it doesn't take away from your course because you've been putting out content, you know, there's room for everyone. And that's something. But I also do think that when it comes to creating a course around a particular tool, both of you, in my opinion, are benefiting from just the energy around Notion right now, which is a good thing, but it doesn't necessarily mean that someone else can't come and build a course and find their place within all of it. So I know that's a thing that a lot of people think about, Oh, there's other courses out there on my topic, should I not do it? And so I think this is a great example of, it's fine.

FD: Yeah, I guess I've been fully transparent. I guess I was a little bit freaked out when I was like, other people are going to do courses, but then at the same time I was actually like my job at least on Keep Productive isn't to be the best it is. It's necessarily to be the curator of tools to then produce courses to help people. So at the same time, whilst Notion is a really important application at the moment it's not the only application I'm planning to do content on or at least courses and anyway, I think it's so much better for the end user. For example, if they're looking at both our courses and they're looking to go a lot deeper than I would point them towards Marie’s because I'm going to help the end user because that's gonna make sense for me in the future, it’s the longterm obviously value of having someone in the community.

JA: Yeah, you both take different approaches, which is, you know, speaks to differentiation. But I would argue, and this will be my point on the topic, is that's the power of also having an audience. Because what a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs who are starting out don't quite understand yet the power of having an audience and serving your audience is you build that trust with your audience. And so if I've been learning from you for a couple of years, chances are I'm going to take your course. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Other courses out there, because I know you, I trust you. You've added value to my life and helped me to accomplish things and that's insanely powerful. So I think that a lot of people miss that part of it when they're worrying about there's other content, there's always going to be other content. You want there to be other content out there because that means that there's a market. So yeah, definitely. Yeah. Cool. So we are down to the final three questions. Francesco. First one is easy. What is next for you? Anything exciting coming up?

FD: Yes, that's a good question. The course, I've got plans that should be released I think early January. I might just call it that now is one called the art of choosing the perfect to do list application. The main reason is because there's hundreds of to do this applications and it's hard to pick the best one. And I do see a lot of people switching between applications and I want them to stick with an app and stick with it for many, many years. So I've basically created like a methodology that will sort of guide people towards choosing the best one. But the idea of the course was born a fair while ago. I actually have a Skillshare class on it, but the idea of creating it as a solo course was a concept that I was like this needs to be its own course. It needs to have resources, it needs to have its own, you know, powerful message for next year about switching and saving money. Especially, cause when people switch applications they end up paying the upfront cost or the new subscription cost yearly, you know, so actually producing a course based on the same model of doing it from the notion course I think will hopefully be very successful next year. Awesome. Well we'll be sure to once your course courses live in January, if it makes January. Yeah, that's it. All right. Where can people find out more about you and your work? Thanks so much, Janell for having me on. As I said, I'm looking forward to dig into some of the episodes for myself. They can find me at a key productive on Twitter. I'm also an obviously YouTube just type keep productive or you know, search some of the nation videos. I'm sure I'll pop up. But I'm also at Francesco D’Aalessio D underscore a L E S on Twitter. And the good thing about Twitter is I, I'm starting to like do a little bit what's Tiago does and share some of the things I'm aligning about courses and things like that. So yeah, I mean hopefully I can provide as much value. If you wanna email me Francesco at Keep Productive. Don't call me.

JA: I love it. You have five different ways to get in touch with Francesco. Now you want to track him down or personally we will make sure that we link to all of your socials and everything in the show notes. Okay, last question. What is your why? Francesco? Why do you get up and do this work?

FD: Another good question. I just love helping people find the right software. It's a weird thing to be interested in, but for example, when you see somebody with the right software, you just let them go with it and they stick with it, they optimize it and they continue to improve it. It's incredible. It's sort of like giving a bicycle to somebody that takes the same trip to town every day. And that's really incredible. So I love hearing from people about how I've used that tool. Have they used their tools and how I maybe help them on their journey to that. So that's what gets me up every day.

JA: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing and I can't wait to talk about how you keep your notion course up to date in the bonus segment. We'll see you there.

Hey family, I hope that you enjoyed my conversation with Francesco. It's always fun to do something different and this episode was different in that if you've been listening for a while, you know that I don't often talk about tools, I don't interview people who are teaching a tool. So it was cool to get into that. And one of the things that we talked about in the bonus segment was the process for updating an online course that is centered around a tool or technology. So if you teach something that's technology based, particularly if it's around an app or a productivity tool like Francesco, you constantly have to worry about updates. So feature updates to the tool affect your course and you have to have a plan for staying on top of those updates for your learners. So Francesco shared his approach for updating his course with us in the bonus segment. And I'll tell you how to get that in a moment. We also talk about just his general tips for using Notion. Notion is an amazing tool if you are new to it or if you have heard of it, but you just aren't sure how to get started, Francesco, shares some tips on how to get started. So if you want to grab those bonuses, you can do it one of two ways. If you're in front of your desktop, head over to get.zencourses.co/extra and enter your info and you can grab the bonus segment. If you're on your mobile phone, simply text the word EXTRAEXTRA. That's all. One word, E X T R A E X T R A to the number 44222. One more time if you're on your mobile techs, EXTRAEXTRA the number 44222. You'll get a link to watch the bonus segment with Francesco and I and you'll be added to my email list where you'll get free content updates and you'll get access to all of the other bonus segments. It's a win win.
So last thing, if you are looking for more info on Francesco is YouTube channel in particular. You can grab that. You can find him by heading over to the show notes, zencourses.co/119. Once again, zencourses.co/119 for episode one 119 all right, that is my time as always. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for hanging out with me and I will see you next time.

All right, my friends, that is my time. Remember before you can level up your course, you must first level up your mind. As always, thank you for hanging out with me for another great episode. I do not take it for granted. I am Janell Allen and this has been level up your course piece.