What’s up everyone! This week’s guest is Reuven Lerner, full-time Python trainer, computer scientist, and author of Python Workout. If you are doing courses because you have expertise and enjoy sharing it with other people, let that show. Reuven teaches developers and corporate engineers around the world to become fluent in Python. In his corporate training, he serves top tier tech companies like Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Intel, but he also offers Weekly Python Exercises, a set of 15-week courses to help learners become better Python developers. His online video courses consist of hands-on labs that empower his students to understand Python at a deeper level. Tune in to hear Reuven’s Python journey, plus how he creates engaging online trainings, creates his evergreen newsletters, and drives traffic to his website. Let’s dig in! Episode Quotes "There's a bunch of different ways to drive website traffic, so it's important not to put all of your eggs in one basket." "Narrowing down the service offerings on my website has been more effective." "If you are doing courses because you have expertise and enjoy sharing it with other people, let that show." "Informality is no longer seen as a bad thing, so be yourself and keep experimenting." Listen to Learn 01:28 - Rapid 5 Questions, Reuven's business journey 10:45 - Converting in-person to online training 14:40 - Tips for creating engaging online training 18:24 - How to build an evergreen newsletter 22:26 - Ways to increase website traffic 26:37 - Sales funnel and lead nurturing 29:25 - Importance of a customer-centric website 34:47 - The power of online courses during COVID-19 crisis 41:10 - Advice for online course creators 42:22 - Exciting things coming up from Reuven Connect with Reuven Check out Reuven’s Weekly Python Exercise Read Reuven’s book, Python Workout Lerner.co.il Follow Reuven on Twitter! Looking for the Transcript? Episode 123
What’s up everyone! This week’s guest is Reuven Lerner, full-time Python trainer, computer scientist, and author of Python Workout.
If you are doing courses because you have expertise and enjoy sharing it with other people, let that show.
Reuven teaches developers and corporate engineers around the world to become fluent in Python. In his corporate training, he serves top tier tech companies like Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Intel, but he also offers Weekly Python Exercises, a set of 15-week courses to help learners become better Python developers. His online video courses consist of hands-on labs that empower his students to understand Python at a deeper level.
Tune in to hear Reuven’s Python journey, plus how he creates engaging online trainings, creates his evergreen newsletters, and drives traffic to his website. Let’s dig in!
Episode Quotes
"There's a bunch of different ways to drive website traffic, so it's important not to put all of your eggs in one basket."
"Narrowing down the service offerings on my website has been more effective."
"If you are doing courses because you have expertise and enjoy sharing it with other people, let that show."
"Informality is no longer seen as a bad thing, so be yourself and keep experimenting."
Listen to Learn
01:28 - Rapid 5 Questions, Reuven's business journey
10:45 - Converting in-person to online training
14:40 - Tips for creating engaging online training
18:24 - How to build an evergreen newsletter
22:26 - Ways to increase website traffic
26:37 - Sales funnel and lead nurturing
29:25 - Importance of a customer-centric website
34:47 - The power of online courses during COVID-19 crisis
41:10 - Advice for online course creators
42:22 - Exciting things coming up from Reuven
Connect with Reuven
Check out Reuven’s Weekly Python Exercise
Read Reuven’s book, Python Workout
Check out Reuven’s newsletter about the business, pedagogy, and logistics of training.
Check out Reuven’s free courses, Ace Python Interviews and Python for Non-Programmers.
Looking for the Transcript?
Reuven Lerner: The list is what we would call evergreen. So whoever signs up today gets issue one, and the next week they get issues two and three, and if someone signs up a month from now, they will get issue one and then issue two, issue three and it's set up to go out automatically Mondays at 11:00 AM. So as long as I'm not referring to dates, times time-related things, and sometimes I do when people catch me on it, or I catch myself on it, basically as long as I write faster than most of the veteran list members have been around, it's great. And truth be told, if you end up writing every two weeks, they're not going to care. So two weeks ago, I wrote issues number one 104 and 105 of my newsletter, which means if someone signs up on my website today, they'll literally get two years of Python articles, and I don't have to lift a finger.
Janelle Allen: Welcome 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 hints, friends. 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 Reuven Lerner, a full-time Python trainer and computer scientist. He's also a writer and published author. Reuven, welcome to the show.
RL: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
JA: So I am really excited to chat with you. We've known each other for a little while, but this is the first time you've ever been on the show, and I know that you listen to the show. So we've got a tradition called the rapid five. Five quick questions to help listeners get to know you. Are you ready?
RL: I hope so. Yeah.
JA: Alright. Number one is easy. What did you have for breakfast?
RL: Oh, I had a dish called shakshuka, which is spices, tomatoes, onions, and hard-boiled eggs.
JA: Sounds delicious. Alright. Number two, what is the last rule that you broke?
RL: Okay, so we're only supposed to go a hundred meters from our homes now in Israel under the shelter in place rules, and I think we went a whole kilometer walking from home, and I was terrified.
JA: Yeah, I can. I can understand that. You rule breaker, you. Alright. Number three, fill in the-
RL: My family was all laughing at me, by the way.
JA: Number three, fill in the blank. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a blank.
RL: I wanted to be a computer engineer, write books, and teach. I promise you this was in my eighth-grade yearbook.
JA: And you did all of that. I love it.
RL: It Is shocking.
JA: Yes, I love it. Okay, number four. What was the last book that you read?
RL: Ooh, I am reading a bunch at a time. Oh, I know. The passion economy by Adam Davidson. Adam Davidson, everything he writes and does is superb, and this book is no exception. Every self-employed person should read this right away.
JA: Awesome. Well, I will be looking into it. Thanks for the recommendation. All right, the last one. What are the three things you are grateful for today?
RL: Three things: grateful for having a job, a job in general, but a job that I love, and that is in demand, and that keeps me on my toes. Grateful, a little cliched, I guess, but for having a family where everyone is healthy and we all getting along despite being at home together and I guess, grateful that everyone I know so far has been healthy during the whole coronavirus thing. Let's hope that continues.
JA: Yeah, definitely. All right. So tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey because for anyone listening, you have kind of a hybrid business model, right? So before Coronavirus, you did a lot of in person training, but you also have online programs. Let's just take a step back; how did you get here? How did you go from a computer scientist to engineer to teaching courses online and doing everything you were doing before?
RL: I always point back to when I was in college, I interned at Hewlett Packard, HP over the summer, and they would have meetings on occasion, and I remember one time, probably the first time that we had a meeting, they said, Reuven, you can stay here. We're having a meeting now. What did I know? I was 18 or 19 at the time. And it turns out there was another guy who also did not go to the meeting. So I turned to him and said, why aren't you going to the meeting? He said, Oh, I'm a contractor. I said, what's a contractor? He said it is the best. He told me basically what contracting was like and how consulting worked.
And I sort of tucked this away at the back of my mind. And when I moved to Israel in 1995 and my boss asked me what am I going to do for work? I said, well, I'm going to try consulting. He said, well, we will be your first client. So I basically arrived in Israel with my suitcases, and my computer and I had a client already, but I'd never done any sort of consulting and never ran a business before. I learned little by little how to do it. And so for the first few years, my work was mainly doing web application development, some Linux consulting here and there like system administration type stuff. And after about a year or two, my clients started asking me not to do the software development for them but rather to tell them how I was doing it and I and what I was doing.
And so that was my first taste of training, and I really enjoyed it a lot. But I saw it as one part of the mix. One of the many things I could do. And it was only about 10 or 12 years ago when I was finishing up my Ph.D. dissertation, I should mention, it took me 11 years. So finishing up is a long process. And someone asked if I'd be interested in doing some training through a training company and I said, sure, why not? I'll have someone market my training for me, and that's what I discovered, you could sort of do training full time and that I really liked a lot. And then, my schedule was booked months in advance, and that was sort of the transformation of me to doing corporate training, which in theory is the main part of my work. When there are no pandemics, every day I'm in a different city, different country, different company teaching them and I now have about ten different courses that I can teach ranging from one day to four days and from Python for non-programmers to advanced Python workshops.
And by the way, I just sort of fell into Python. I've been using it since about 1992, but I discovered that of all the skills I had and of all the things I could teach, Python was the one most in demand. And so after considering Ruby and PostgreSQL and a few other technical skills, the market spoke, and I haven't regretted that at all. About five years ago, I decided maybe I should start some B to C online marketing as well and selling products there. And once again, it was a long process, and it still is a long process of learning how I'm doing it, what I'm doing, making lots of mistakes. I decided to self publish a book. A bunch of my students from my courses had complained well not complained so much, but they had said, wouldn't it be nice if we had some exercises to practice after the course is done? So that we can continue and bridge the gap between the end of the course and actually doing Python programming in our work.
And so I put together a book, which I called Practice Makes Python, it was 50 exercises to improve your Python skills. I started selling it online, and I sold some copies, not a huge number. I was approached by Manning publishers, and they said, we like what you're doing here. Would you be interested in having us republish it for you? And I was like I am fine by myself. I have learned from other amazing consultants, and I, of course, am an amazing consultant that I can make a ton of money selling it on my own. Fast forward three years, four years. And I emailed Manning and said, Hey, is the offer still open? I think you guys are better at selling books than I am. And they have been nothing short of extraordinary from start to finish the book, which has been renamed Python Workout as we record this, it's a few weeks away from being printed.
We've already sold five times, six times more copies online in pre-release then I ever sold on my own. So on that front of the book stuff, they're better at it. But that opened the door to me selling courses online. I realized if I call it a course rather than a book, it was better for people. They're more willing to pay, and they're more willing to get it. And I now have 15 different courses online that I sell. It's not full-time income, but it is not a bad side income, and it's growing every year. And that's where, especially now with everyone at home, and on break and leave and whatnot, I'm starting to put more and more emphasis, both sort of publishing and recording courses and staying attuned to what people are just interested in learning so that I could put together new courses.
JA: One of the things that jumped out at me with that story is, well, two things actually. I hear from so many people who do face to face training, you know, whether they're traveling or whether they're local and they want to know how to jump into online courses, how to convert their content into an online format. So I definitely want to come back and talk through that. But I also noticed just the power of listening, right? So you were listening to your students and what they were saying, Oh, it would be great if we had such, such and such. And then you said, okay, I can make that. But also the second thing that jumped out that I really want to make sure people hear is how you've been able to focus on what people call your zone of genius. You had a moment where you thought; I can sell this book, I can publish it, I can do everything. And then you realized, why not let them handle that. That's what they do. I'm going to do what I do. Which has allowed you to focus on your teaching and training. So I just wanted to highlight those two things. But now coming back to moving from, well not really moving from, but taking your approach to training and converting it for the B to C online courses, how did you approach making that conversion for online format?
RL: Poorly at first, once again, making lots of mistakes. So I had, I think it was already around three years ago, three and a half years ago. I had a week or two without any corporate training, and no one really wanted those dates. So I thought, maybe I will try doing the equivalent of an open enrollment course online. So I'll say, I'll email my list. I should add that I started an email list a few years ago. At that time, I probably had about a thousand people on it. I now have about 15,000 people on it, and I email them every week with a newsletter.
I'm happy to talk about that cause that's actually sort of a cornerstone of how I'm getting things. So I said, well, what if I email my list and say who's interested in taking a course? And I offer a few different topics, and I'll do it just like I do in person training, they'll just do it online. And I was also doing WebEx and Zoom courses online, so I knew how to run that sort of thing and got a handful of people, a very small handful of people who were interested. So I did it, and I recorded it, and then I sold that. And so whoever wanted the live course could then buy it afterwards, not participating in person. And I learned a whole lot of things from that experience.
First of all, I sent out a survey to my list afterwards cause I was sort of curious, well maybe the timing was bad, and I asked them what time and day would be best for me to do this sort of course. And just before publishing the survey, I added an underline to that, and I said like instead of a live course, I offered them another option, which was I don't want live courses, I just want recorded courses. And something like 80%, you don't get 80% of anything for anyone. And 80% of the people that responding said they don't want live courses, they want recorded courses. And that plus the fact that then when people bought the live course but the recording of it, they were complaining, they would email me and say, okay, I understand that when you gave this course, you gave them 15 minutes to work on the exercise. Do I really need 15 minutes to pause the video? Like do you really need to sit around there sort of drumming your fingers, and looking at it, while you're asking people questions?
So I realized that I first of all need to come with more recorded courses because that's what people want. And second of all, I need to change my style, and it doesn't mean changing my teaching style per se, but I need to change the way in which I'm producing it. Cause I'm typically giving these corporate trainings if it's a day long, let's say eight hours minus an hour for lunch, minus the morning break, minus an afternoon break, minus exercises, and so forth. You can't replicate it. It's a different medium, a different format. So I started doing very short videos that in total would add up to the same content or truth be told much more than I can do in a corporate training cause I can throw whatever I want, however much I want. My Panda's training, which is about a certain data analytics librarian in Python, is twelve and a half hours long. A video. Oh, my God. Never again. But it's in five to ten minute chunks, three to twelve minute chunks, let's say with a lot of very small number of large ones and people so much prefer that, and I even got a chance to see now I have, well I just have like 15 different recording courses. Some of my corporate training clients have started using that for blended learning, and so I see people watching my videos. It's like on my own TA in many ways it's kind of funny, but I see that if I have an hour of video, they will take two to three hours to go through it because they stop, they pause, they try it. And so my sense of timing in watching them, even more feedback, even more understanding it. So I feel like now when I record courses, I've got a much better sense of what I'm doing, how to do it, how to make it useful for people.
JA: Yeah, I love that. Can you give us one of the big takeaways? You talked about just how you stumbled and tried things and figured it out. Now that you've been doing it for a while, what if you had to tell someone who's just getting started, and maybe they have your background doing in-person training. What's one big takeaway that you've learned?
RL: One of the things that I love about in person training is the instant feedback you get from your audience, and I will admit, one of my professional secrets to success is that I live and teach in Israel and Israelis are not shy or bashful about asking questions or telling you when you're wrong. So after I teach five or ten times in Israel, I'm ready for the rest of the world where even if they're more polite, I know what they're going to ask. I know where the holes are. It's been great. You don't get that teaching online, right? You're recording; you're talking to your computer. My wife has sometimes said, I don't understand how you this, talk to your computer as if it were a person. I guess the difference between being a stage performer and a television performer, you sort of have to imagine that there's someone there. But the big thing is you have to almost pretend that they're listening to you and one of the ways in which I do this is, I give lots of exercises, and people have told me that sets my courses apart from the others because it's not just hours and hours and hours of video, but I give exercises. I expect them to do them. I say I'm going to give you a few minutes, and you have to sort of pretend as much as possible and provide them as many tools as possible for it to be interactive even though it's not, and people seem to like that.
JA: One of the things that I teach in my group program is the learner journey and the importance of really understanding who your learner is, but also other elements. Where are they going to get stuck? Where are they going to run into a roadblock, where they are either going to need some additional information, or they really need to apply what you've learned, and even if they apply, are there any areas where they're going to get hung up? It sounds like you do a great job, and I'm sure your in person training helps with this. You do a great job of knowing where those sticking points are for your learners.
RL: Look, that again comes from experience. The fact that I've taught some of these courses, I would say, even probably by now a hundred times, really gives me an edge. I often make the analogy to a standup comedian where they tell the same jokes or almost the same jokes time after time to time, and each time they're tweaking them just a bit to you get the right reaction. The maximum laughs. My family would tell you that I'm not funny, but basically, I'm sort of always tuning my explanations to get the maximum learning experience, and it's only because I do it time and again and again. That gives me that. But I know like if I record a course and I have not taught it in person, I'm sure it will be not as good.
JA: Yeah, and for anyone listening who's thinking, well that's great for Reuven, he's a trainer, so he has that experience of going out there in person, and he can see when things are hitting, where the learning gaps are when people are missing things, but I don't have that experience. You know what I say to that is -teach your course. I'm a big fan of teaching your course live before you turn it into a self-paced online course so you can do a live workshop even if you're not going to be able to get as many people because times may not work for everyone, but if you can get even just two or three people to go through it live or if you're offering the same topic, if you're offering it as a service, that also works too because you can kind of find out where the questions come. I know I've said this, I feel like I've said this a thousand times now, but I just want to put that out there because it's so easy for people to say, Oh well that wouldn't work for me. But there's other ways to think about it and be able to get that same information.
So, Reuven, I want to switch gears and talk about your marketing because you have this training background, and then you just said, Hey, I'm just going to go ahead and do some B to C stuff.You mentioned you started your list first and foremost. How did you know to do that? Because I meet a lot of people who have a lot of fear and trepidation, and it takes them a long time even to see the value in having a site and an email list. How did you know to do that?
RL: For many years I didn't, and I saw people mentioned that they had lists, and I was like, come on like mailing list. Who's uses mailing list? I mean, we're cool now. We use the web, and we use blogs. Well, there's a guy named Patrick McKenzie who writes a lot about being entrepreneur in a program, what you should know. At some point, one of the things he wrote really stuck with me, and he writes about having a list. He says this is where you are going to make money.You should start a list. You should have started a few years ago whenever you're reading this, but you can't change the past. So whenever you're reading this now, start the list. And so that's what I did. I started a list. I seeded it with like a few people; I don't even remember how I got a few people on it. I did a few webinars, and I advertised those in various ways, and so people who signed up for the webinar would get on my list also.
And then I was terrible at the whole list thing. Honest to goodness, terrible at it. I would write a note. I should add I've written for many years. I wrote a column in Linux journal for many years. So writing articles about programming is not something that I find difficult. I find it fun and therapeutic in many ways; it helps me to work through a lot of things that I'm learning.So writing articles is not bad, but I wouldn’t do it because I said, I'm really busy. So I'd write about two or three months later and please no one listening to this, ever do this. I would say I'm so sorry that I haven't written it in a while. I hope it's okay. Oh my God, who was waiting, who was waiting by their inbox for my newsletter? Answer, no one. I spoke to a friend of mine, and he suggested a totally different way. It was like a revelation, how to run a list, and I adopted it right away, and I've done it to this day.
The list is what we would call evergreen. So whoever signs up today gets issue one, and the next week they get issues two and three, and if someone signs up a month from now, they will get issue one and then issue two, issue three and it's set up to go out automatically Mondays at 11:00 AM. So as long as I'm not referring to dates, times time-related things, and sometimes I do when people catch me on it, or I catch myself on it, basically as long as I write faster than most of the veteran list members have been around, it's great. And truth be told, if you end up writing every two weeks, they're not going to care. So two weeks ago, I wrote issues number one 104 and 105 of my newsletter, which means if someone signs up on my website today, they'll literally get two years of Python articles, and I don't have to lift a finger. So that guarantees my name, my expertise, my authorities in their face all the time. And then, when I want to sell something, I just do a broadcast to my list, and that is time dependent. But that goes out at a certain time. And the third sort of leg of that three legged stool is I have a bunch of things that all lead into my list. So you take an email course from me, you get on my list, you buy a product from me, you get on my list, even take a free course for me, anything that I can do to get people on my list because that is how I'm going to grow it. And I now have, as I said, like 15,000 people or so on it.
JA: Yeah, that's a great tip. So some people call that an evergreen newsletter or some people call it, I think Brennan Dunn calls it a shadow newsletter. It's definitely attractive for people who just struggle with the consistency because you do get busy, things happen. And a lot of times when people fall off from their writing habit or publishing habit, then we start feeling bad, and then we kinda get to it, and it just snowballs. So I love that tip.
So walk us through your marketing strategy. I know you've been doing a lot of work around marketing, starting with how do you get traffic to your website?
RL: A bunch of different ways. And I think it's important to stress. You want to sort of not put all of your eggs in one basket. I have a whole bunch of blog articles, blog postings on topics that I know are interesting. I know they're interesting because my students asked me about these questions all the time and so I figured it would be interesting to other people. And sure enough, I think like a thousand hits on my blog or on my website overall each day now, which is like astonishing to me. But it takes time. And again, this is a long game. I try every few weeks, and sometimes it's every two months, and sometimes it's twice a week to come up with these new articles that, over time, will then become authoritative, will rise to the top in searches. People will get there, and then when they get to my site, of course, they get the pop up saying, would you like to join my list to get more like this? So that's, I'd say a major part of it. Free courses. I now have two or three free courses that I offer, and those sign people up as well. Even for weekly Python exercises for one of the courses I do, which is I don't know what the term would be like time down. It's in a cohort, so it starts on a certain date. So I have a pseudo course you can sign up for called Join weekly Python exercise or get notified when the next cohort starts. So people say that they're like, Oh yeah, I'll sign up. Why not?
Speaking of conferences, whenever I speak at a conference, I mention my website. People come there; they see the popup, they join my list. On Twitter, I tweet about Python stuff. Not as often as I should perhaps, but I do. People see it. So you've all these different ways that people are coming on. Also, I'll add, here's where my in person training has really gotten me far, where at the end of every course I teach, I say, Oh, and by the way, and I also email this to them, I said, by the way, if you want, I run this free weekly newsletter. I've got X number of subscribers. If you want to learn more about Python and you enjoy this course, I'd suggest signing up, and people sign up.
I could see the companies I work with have a very large number of people on my list and not all of them, but some of them then go on and buy a whole bunch of courses from me. One guy said, wow, my daughter studied computer science. This is exactly what I want to get for her. I'm going to buy her all of your courses. I was thinking, Oh, that's great. By the way, he hasn't yet, but I’m not going to nudge him about it, that would be rude. And I'm always looking to expand. I've actually started trying to do some advertising, and that is with very mixed results. Facebook ads, Facebook lead ads are amazing at getting people on your list who then don't buy anything from you, I've found, but Facebook ads that point people to your website where they then have to enter information to join your list. That only about a quarter of the people actually click. Actually, join, but they then are very interested, so it's like a self windling out process, self-selection. I tried some advertising on Quora, and I tried some advertising on LinkedIn that didn't go anywhere. I've been uploading stuff increasingly to YouTube, and I've definitely gotten people from that. So it's all experimentation and seeing where you can get stuff from.
JA: YouTube is really great for discovery. I recently launched a YouTube channel at the behest of two of my clients who really built their businesses off of YouTube. And I had no idea how I had just missed YouTube all these years, probably because I've been so focused on podcasting. I found, I just had a great conversation with Tara McMillan about the power of podcasting and that it is not a top of funnel strategy. It's very much a nurturing approach for the middle of your funnel, which I thought was interesting, but YouTube is great for people discovering you, and then it is that top of funnel getting to your website, signing up for your list.
So definitely for someone who's listening, if you're not marketing, take some time to think about the different ways that you can get people on your list. And then I'd like to segue into talking about once you get people on your list, what do you do? So do you have funnels in place, Reuven? How do you nurture that relationship to lead people to purchase?
RL: So this is something that I've just literally last few weeks realized is missing and explains, shall we say missing revenue. What I currently do is at the bottom of my newsletter, it has a random sort of selection of, Hey, would you be interested in this course or that course? So people see that on occasion, or I guess they see it every week as soon as they scroll down to the bottom. But the existing courses I think are mostly buried, unknown, unseen. And so when I finally realized is what I need to do is take advantage of all this information I have about people and what they've opened and what they've clicked on and started actually creating funnels, creating separate campaigns to use the drip term, like a drip campaign where I know that someone has clicked on my object-oriented Python course and they have not bought it.
So what I can do is I can automate all of this, right? I can say if someone has clicked on this link and a month has passed, and they've still not bought it, then send them this campaign that will entice them to do it. It's so easy to do.I know how to do this in Drip, and so this is like a project of mine for the next month or two cause right now what I do is in addition to the things at the bottom of my newsletter when I launch a new course, I'll broadcast that to my list. I'll even send a few messages about it, and that's it. After that, poof. Nothing. And so people discover it sometimes, but not enough people. I mean how many people on my list really pay attention to every newsletter and then no surprise, they sign up, I run two sales a year, I run a birthday sale, and I run a Black Friday sale.
By the way, the birthday sale, I got this idea from other people, but I give a discount equal to the number of years old that I am.Someone was wishing me that he'll buy when I'm 102, so I think putting those funnels in place for each of my courses to automatically send them out, I think that could really be a game-changer for me.
JA: Yeah, I agree. I'm working with a client right now who's an architect, and he's similar to you. He has a hybrid business, so he does consulting, and he has courses, and he has realized that he has some funnels in place, but they are not working as they need to be. But it's definitely important to have a series of interactions in place to warm people up to the idea of {inaudible}. Especially if you're running ads and you're getting cold traffic, those people, they don't really know you, they don't know your work. So building those interactions and building that relationship and trust is super important. For the changes, we were talking about before we started, I know that you also recently made some changes to your website. Can you talk about some of the strategies behind changing your website, and what has the result been? Cause we engaged last year to talk about some making some changes and I see that you've done a lot of works. What have some of those changes netted you?
RL: Let's start off by saying that my website definitely looks and feels different now, and I'm happy about that, and I'll talk more about that in a moment. But I am consistently amazed that when a training manager at a company calls me and says, you do Python training, right? And I say yes. And they'll say, great you do. We'll talk about what their needs are and everything. And they are like on and on. And then they'll say, okay, can you send me a syllabus? I say, well, why don't you just take a look at my website? All the syllabi are there, and they'll say really? Which demonstrates they did not go to my website at all ever. Like I have to give them the URL. So my corporate traffic is not coming through my website in the slides it's all word of mouth, which is nice. And my site traffic is typically going through my blog. So the homepage of my website, I dunno how many people are actually going there first off. But in the past, it was basically here is a list of courses. I'm so great; you should buy my courses, say no more. And perhaps we needed a slightly softer, less egotistical touch, one that's a little more, you know, consumer centric thinking about what their needs are and also thinking about the different types of audiences who are going to come there. Like I wouldn't even say that's marketing 101, I would say that's like the prerequisite for marketing 101; it's very clear now like I am the brand; it is me. It's not like, you know, corporate gobbledygook. So they come to my website, and they see a picture of me. They see that I want to help you get better with Python, and they see a very limited number of options.
And this is one of the things that you helped me with my previous version was like, and here are a thousand things that I said for you, why don't you choose one of them? Maybe it'll be appropriate. So we cut that down a lot, and now I have that corporate training. I have online training; I have my book Python Workout, I have free email courses, my blog, and then about me. And even then like I've been tempted to take the book off there, but either my publisher would kill me, or I just would feel weird about it and narrowing it down in that way I can't prove it, but I think that it's been more effective. The one thing that I put on there, which I've had to fine tune is the schedule a call button. So I use Calendly, a SDU for like scheduling things.
I remember, like a year or two ago, my accountant's office said, what is this thing that you're paying for? I said, Oh, it's how people schedule meetings with me, and I don't need to coordinate events. They said, are you nuts? You're letting any one of the internets schedule a call with you? I said, well, it could really be useful. And who knows who's out there? I'll tell you who’s out there. A lot of nut cases. So basically, schedule a call is very nice and all, but I was getting all these people scheduling calls, and they wanted Python training on their own, or they like; they just wanted a chatter or whatever. So I had to really, really like fine tune what I say. And so now it says, are you an individual, don't click this? But then even if you click on it to schedule a call, one of the nice things about Calendly is it can ask questions. And so one of the questions is how many people are in this course that you want to schedule? And one of the options is one person, and I have a corporate training to pay for it. Like it could not be more obvious that this is all about corporate stuff. Truth be told. Have I gotten many people through this? No, but a training company in the US actually contacted me through this last week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and we're actually speaking like in a few hours. Will something come of it? I don't know, but it at least managed to narrow the funnel a bit.
JA: Those schedule a call buttons are a little tricky, right? Because especially for clients that I work with who are consultants, that's kind of the bread and butter way that they tend to get work right to convert leads to clients, but you do, once you start getting traction, you start getting kind of random people, right? You start getting random people booking calls, so you have to qualify it, and then it becomes, how do you do that in a way that doesn't push away the leads who are actually really good? There's a lot of different ways. I think that's an entirely different conversation, but I love everything that you've done on the site. I know the first time we worked together, it was a little overwhelming and I think what I just remembered is you had your blog and your website, there were two different URLs, and so now everything looks great, right? It's just all in one place. It's very clear what you do and what you offer, so kudos to you for taking that action.
RL: Thank you. By the way, I was so terrified of moving my blog over to be under the main website, not because it was technically difficult, but I was thinking, Oh no, people are going to lose it. It turns out people use WordPress, WordPress deals with this. Everyone does this. It was one of the simplest things I ever could have done. It took like maybe half an hour or something, including the time like setting up the Apache redirects. I feel so much better now that everything's in one place, well not everything, my online store is still separate, but that's like in the planning stages for having that integrated as well.
JA: Yeah, I love it. So let's talk about the elephant in the room. So we're speaking during the Coronavirus pandemic. What do things look like for you today, particularly being someone who did in person training? What does life look like for you today?
RL: A lot of unknowns. So I'm typically booked several months in advance. Let me just like even open up my calendar, so we're not talking mid-April. I was literally today supposed to be arriving in Pittsburgh for Python, the International Python Conference where I was going to have a booth, where I was going to give a talk, where I was going to be giving out tshirts. I was going to be doing tons of marketing, hopefully, get a lot of stuff out of that and clearly like I'm sitting at home cause no conferences, no flights, no nothing. The two weeks after this, I was planning to spend time with my family in the U S, but then May, June, July, August, we're more or less fully booked, and May basically my clients all said like next month we don't know what we're doing. Like all of our people are at home.
Will they be allowed to go out? Will they not? I guess I had some things at the beginning of April that were canceled and all of May was canceled and June, they're all saying hopefully, but we can't promise. What have I done as a result? Well, first of all, I was a little half foolish and half a little too abrasive on this. I actually double booked in June, thinking that the company told me that it was okay to double book. One of my clients basically, I thought, gave me the go ahead to push the weight to other dates, and no, I'd misinterpreted that. So I did a double bookie, but why would I double book? Because I work with a company all over the world and I do online training for them, and they are more than happy to have you do stuff on WebEx if their people are at home because heck, their people are home. Why not?
June is now three quarters booked, and July is half booked, and August is half booked with these WebEx courses. So even if people are at home, they'll still be taking them. And that allows me to rest assured that even if all of my in-person companies do nothing, I'll still have that. Lo and behold, when I spoke to my Israeli client about this, they were a little ticked off that I double book, and I must admit, they were right on this. They said, wait a second, if you have May open and you have half of July open, we'll take all those dates. And I said, really? You'll do stuff in May, like next month? And they said, we think so, let's give it a shot. So I might actually have undone the damage that they had done to me as it were. It could very well be the tomorrow they're going to call me up and say Nope, May is not going to happen cause everyone's still at home. It could be a day in advance.
JA: I had a question, was this because they weren't aware that you taught online? In other words, once they found that out, they said we could do that for May. Let's do it.
RL: The client for whom I've been teaching online for a while, for a few years, they knew it, and they like it. So I teach the people in Europe, the people in the US that's not a problem at all. And so that's why like they're willing to jump on it. The company here in Israel, I've only done in person training with them. And so for them, the whole idea of online training is new and weird. And also like their people are shell shocked. I've been working for home for years. You've been working for them for years, for these people to be told, surprise, you're working from home and so are your children and so is your spouse. It's a lot to absorb. So what they've basically told me is we're going to assume that a few weeks from now I'll be able to go there in person and teach. I give that 50% odds at best truth be told. They've also told me that if they would allow anyone to teach online, it would be me. But they have to get permission. Nothing is clear at this point. And so the keyword here is uncertainty. When three clients called me in the space of two days and said we're canceling all of our in-person courses in April, May, and June, because we don't know what's happening. I couldn't get angry with them. Like the whole world is going crazy. I can't say them, you owe it to me that not the right way to do it. In any event, but like it's certainly not the way we know. So I'm grateful that I have savings and grateful that I have the online option. I'm grateful that I have a whole bunch of clients, some of whom can do the online stuff for sure. And some of them not clear yet. And truth be told, I think everyone's going to go online for a lot of courses increasingly, but if I also show that I can be flexible and I'm willing to roll with them and not be a super stickler, they'll remember that, and they'll come back to me.
JA: Something that this entire pandemic has revealed for me is just the power of teaching online or in your case, the fact that you've been doing this, you got out there and maybe got out of your comfort zone a bit and learned how to do this and gain this additional skill really allows you to be flexible in that way and there are so many people who think online courses are a saturated market. Why should I teach my topic online? There's so many other people. It's not about that. First and foremost, there are still people out there, their entire, you know, countries as you said with Israel that aren't really adept at online learning yet, but more than that, it gives you an additional skill that you can then roll into your business model. And so I love everything that you shared because it just illustrates the power of learning, the power of putting yourself out there. You never know when that is going to work to your advantage, and right now, that's allowing you to still have client work and serve your audience. So just want to make sure I highlighted that for anyone listening start today, don't put it off any longer. If you've been saying you want to create an online course, just consider it learning a skill, and it's going to be useful in some way.
RL: Absolutely. I'll just throw one more thing here, which is when I go to clients now, like talk to them, I guess going to them, is it a bit of an exaggeration, but when I talk to clients, the fact that I now have like all this raw material I can do in person, I can do online, I can give you recorded things. You can mix and match for what's best for your employees. That helps to set me apart, and so, right. The sooner you get going on this, the sooner you'll make the mistakes, and the sooner you'll get better at it. And like you'll have this larger toolbox to offer to your clients. Yeah, absolutely.
JA: Well, Reuven, any final insights on course creation or just pivoting during a pandemic that you would like to share with the audience?
RL: Look, if you're doing these courses because you have expertise and you enjoy sharing it with other people, let that show, let that show in life. Things you do. Let the show in free things. You let that show in the recordings that you,
everyone's discovering during the pandemic that what do you know? People are people and they don't have to be so formal. I mean you should still like put on clothes before meetings as people are discovering, right? So, but basically the informality is no longer seen as a bad thing. So be yourself. Let your personality express itself and just keep experimenting and you'll see what works for you and your personality and your audience and you just keep doing more things like that. The overwhelming joy and feeling gratification you have when people you've never heard of buy your products online or email you and say, wow, you really helped me out here. And they are delighted to have spent money on what you've done. There's nothing like it, like you've helped them and you never even met them before. Amazing.
JA: Yeah, I agree. All right. We are down to the final three questions. The first one is easy. Anything exciting coming up for you?
RL: Yeah. Well my Python Workout is really going to be released. I can't say enough good things about Manning and they've shown me what a team effort is to put together a good book. Authors always say that it's very cliched, but it is true and I really feel so good about having gone back to them and be willing to eat crow a little bit and admit that I wasn't so great at it and work together with them to make something better than I ever could have done myself.
JA: Where can people find out more about you and your work?
RL: So they can go to my website, lerner.co.il, that L .E .R .N .E .R. dot C O. Dot. I. L. with education folks. I have to point that out and that is sort of a gateway to whether it's the blog, my paid courses, my free courses, my corporate training, all that other stuff. I'll also mention, especially for your audience, not only do I have my free weekly Python newsletter, I also do another newsletter called trainer weekly, which runs on a similar model. And that's all about the business pedagogy and sort of practical skills you need for training. People are welcome to take a look at that as well.
JA: We'll be sure to get the link to your site in the show notes. So last question, Reuven, what's your why? Why do you get up and do this work?
RL: I love the fact that I am able to earn a living helping other people improve their careers. Back in the olden days when I would actually go to my clients in their cafeteria, like every few times I would be in a cafeteria, someone came up to me and said, I just want you to know your course helped me to do X and Y and Z, and I couldn't have done it otherwise. What an amazing thing. What an amazing, amazing feeling to have to know that you're influencing people and helping them. I really get excited about that and I get excited about learning new things that I can then share with other people as well.
JA: Yeah, that’s a great feeling. Well, thank you so much for sharing what you've learned with us. I love everything that we were able to touch on in this interview and I hope that everyone listening gets a lot out of it. I know that they will. Thanks Reuven.
RL: My pleasure. Thanks, Janelle, for having me on.
JA: 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 Janelle Allen, and this has been level up your course. Peace.