237 The Dark Side of Success Nobody Talks About

I've had the pleasure of meeting Benny Lewis a couple of times at conferences over the years, and I'm really happy to finally have him on the show. 

Benny built one of the biggest language blogs in the world, with over 2 million monthly visitors at its peak, a bestselling book, and a growing team. But at the height of that success, he was working 20-hour days, clinically depressed, and struggling with his health. In this episode, Benny shares what that period really looked like, how he got through it, and why he made the decision to completely simplify his life and business.

We talk about his approach to language learning and why speaking from day one is central to everything he teaches, how he built and maintains a highly engaged email list, the importance of finding your niche and owning a specific point of view, and what he's working on now as he prepares to relaunch his YouTube channel after years away from it.

It's an honest conversation about what it actually takes to build something online, what success can cost you if you're not careful, and how to figure out what you actually want from your business and your life. I really enjoyed this one and I think you will too.

#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing

🤝  Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Transcript

When Success Turns Into Burnout

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I had a bit too much success. The vlog was getting two million unique visitors. I said yes to so many things, but I ended up working 20-hour days just to keep up with it all. I am really stressed out. I hate my life right now because I work too much and I'm putting on a lot of weight because of it. I reached 125 kilograms. It's like a border of morbidly obese. I was in a very bad place in my life, clinically depressed and everything. After that experience, I decided I don't want to be rich. I want to be time rich.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies top performance in the online course industry. My name's John Ansberg, and today's guest Denny Lewis. Now, Denny's been completely nomadic for 23 years. Now in Borneo at the moment, just showed me his view is outstanding. And everything that he owns in the world weighs 23 kilos, which is like 50 pounds for a RR and listen to basically everything that'll fit in a check and a ticket. And he runs the blog fluent in three months. And it's massive, it's received over 2 million website visitors a month for many, many years. He speaks six languages currently and get buying a bunch more. And his passion is to inspire the world to learn a second language. Now, I've seen Benny when he is out excited about doing this, he will go out into like local markets, go and talk to local people, using what he knows before he's fully learned a language. It's just like I just want to get out there and talk to people, and that's the way that he's learned. I had the privilege of meeting Benny a couple of times at conferences, and I've just kind of seen the energy when he's able to go out and do this, and it's absolutely fantastic. So we're going to talk today about Benny's approach to teaching languages, why he thinks more unedited Frank takes as a way to build a strong following, and why you need to forget about a course business being a business and focus on making the course itself good. Benny, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me. So talk us through a little bit. Who is it that you're helping with your courses?

Building A Relatable Teaching Brand

Traffic Growth And Choosing Time Rich

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Uh so essentially my own background is I didn't get into language learning until I was an adult. I studied electronic engineering at university. My um initial stint into online language learning was seeing other people who were frankly much more talented than me and were natural language learners. And that's fine and impressive when you see those videos. But when you want to be inspired yourself, you need more of an everyday man. You need somebody you can relate to. And that's what I've tried to do with all of my content. I've tried to not present my language projects as impressive, but to break them down piece by piece to be something that you could potentially feel inspired to do yourself. And originally I didn't uh and throughout all of this, I haven't really thought of this as a business. When I started it, it was just a blog, and I had no intention to monetize it. I was just posting random things about this is uh one aspect of how I'm learning this language, here's another aspect of how I'm learning that. And it just gained so many followers so quickly that um I bumped into Chris Gillibo and he uh he he has like the$100 start-up or startup book and he's done lot of lots of stuff online and he uh gave me this inspiration to just write an ebook because obviously people were were on my blog hungry for uh a plan of action, and I was convinced to write that ebook, and when I put it up on the blog, I could actually instantly quit my job at the time I was a freelance translator, and even from like uh I did not wait for perfection, I didn't hire somebody. I literally wrote uh a rough thing in Microsoft Word and clicked file save as PDF, and that's it. Um with the profits, I was then able to hire an editor who could polish it up and hire uh a designer who could make a lovely um you know front page for it and all that. So uh from the profits I put it back in to professionalize the business a lot, but ultimately the way I've grown and scaled it is mainly by working with other people who are smarter than me, working with people who would help me hire a team, working with people who are obsessed with the numbers, like you know, like your mindset of like looking into the data. I hired somebody who was obsessed with the data, and I was like, you handle this because I'll I'll try to give you the all the numbers I can think of, but honestly, just for my own peace of mind, I don't really obsess over how my numbers are doing on a month-to-month basis, because what I want is to inspire people to learn another language. I don't want the most successful business in the world. Um I had a bit too much success during the stretch of time that the blog was getting two million unique visitors a month over like a 10-year stretch, which if you run those numbers, that that ends up being um, if I get this right, like you know, one-tenth of a trillion visitors or something. It's like a ridiculous number. So it was a lot of eyeballs, a lot of people oper uh offering me opportunities, and I said yes to so many things that I ended up working 20-hour days um just to keep up with it all. And after that experience, I decided I don't I don't want to be rich. I want to be time rich. I want to make sure I'm not overworking, and that's kind of what what I consider a true success is that now I only have to work a few hours each week and I can put the rest of the time into actually learning the language that I'm passionate about, which is kind of work because if I'm learning a language that's content I can create around it. Uh, but yeah, that's essentially in a nutshell from start to finish. So I'm sure you have follow-up questions on that.

Team Structure And Outsourcing Stress

SPEAKER_01 5:58

That's beautiful, man. Yeah. So do you still have someone in the business who who is obsessing about the numbers? You have that person still?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Uh so what happened was at one point when we were at that peak of the two million uniques a month, especially because I could I could be very easily rely on Google to send me that traffic. But because that's been dissipating over the years with AI snippets and uh difficulties with SEO, I have had to reduce my team, but I have trained the people who have been with me the most to take on different tasks. So I do have someone on my team who took over the data. He's not as obsessed with uh it as the guy I had who was the that was just his job. But he checks all these numbers, and if something gets very serious, then we have a call and we talk about it. But essentially I've outsourced stressing about numbers to somebody else. I don't want that job. I've re I don't want to ever stress about numbers. If it gets really, really bad, I I'll know about it and we'll talk about.

Email List Strategy And Monetisation

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So what's the do you focus on getting people onto your email list? Like what's what's your kind of system for making money with the business?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah, so one thing I did when I was originally kicking things off and I realized the email list would be very beneficial to growing my audience, is the uh like you hear millions of ways to to hook people and get them into your list, you know, give them uh an offer to uh to get the lead, like an e an ebook or whatever it is. But what I did because I realized the power of what I had was people were interested in the story of me learning these languages. So I would build up a lot of suspense and I would tell people if you're on my email list, you will be the first person to find out what my next language is. And I would say that multiple times on my blog posts and YouTube videos, and that's how I grew the email list that like at its peak was at 380 uh thousand um uh subscribers with an open rate of 40% out of that 380,000. And that open rate is one of the things, like one of the numbers that I do care about that I wanted to make sure we were maintaining because otherwise it's just a vanity metric. I've I've met people who have a half a million email subscribers, but then they you know they barely have one percent of people actually opening the email. So I I have pruned that list, it's no longer as big, which isn't what I'm what I'm most concerned with, because I want to make sure the people I have are actually reading my emails. And based off that, like originally it was ebooks, and I expanded on those ebooks in different directions, and nowadays what I have is a coaching program. Of course, because of the the brand name, it's a three-month coaching program to help people with their own language learning project. And I do coaching, uh like one-on-one with people, but the main thing is our um our group coaching program, and I've got a good team who co-run that with me. So that ultimately I only have to put like three or four hours a week into it for the calls that they are having with me, because I have such a good team of polyglots who are just as uh experienced with learning languages as I am to uh answer most of their questions. But of course, then they'll have the time with me during our calls and such. So I've I've dabbled in a lot of things and I've also because the blog was getting so much traffic, I I had ads on the blog, and you know, at one point that was 50 or 60k a month just just from the ads. Um, I've also uh worked really well with affiliates because when the with the email list, uh one of the things that I ask is not just your name and uh your email, but I have a drop-down menu for the language that you're learning. And I make sure that's a big drop-down. So even if you're learning Swahili, I can send you to Swahili Pod 101, which is a very specific podcast that you can subscribe to and that I will get revenue for sending that affiliate. And that's kind of obviously everyone's competing in the language space for Spanish uh learning materials and French and so on. But I've I've gone much broader. Obviously, I'll make more money from those bigger languages, but I've tried to cover many, many languages. And I at one point, even just Swahili was making me over a grand a month. And like, you know, when you scale that to all the other languages, then it helps you a lot.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Have you met Udo in the DC? Udo Golub?

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Um, I might have. Um remind me what what is a fantastic.

Saying Yes Too Much Costs You

SPEAKER_01 10:45

He's got a great, he's like a developer mindset and he teaches languages, but he teach it the the system that he's got was built out so that he can take it and go, right, if you are uh if you speak Swahili but you want to learn Tahitian, like there's no course for that. Like there is no, there's there's not a big enough market. But he can basically take his whole system and then replicate it out, and he's kind of working his way down from this language to this language, this language to this language throughout the entire world. And um, and then after he's got his like automated system that goes through it, then he has an actual person who speaks Tahilians, you know, Tahitian and Swahili. Um to go through uh the the the I don't know how many there are in the world who speak both of those, right? But to go through and kind of just check, does it all make sense, does it all work? So he's got like that go after that long tail of languages kind of uh uh uh system as well. Um okay, so you you'd built this out, it was doing fantastically in terms of the the amount of traffic. You said yes to a lot of things. Talk us through that, because I think that's like I think that topic for language for course creators generally is really, really important. Like trying to figure out what what do you actually want out of this? Are you trying to make more money? Yes, more money is always good, but at what cost? Like we had a guy on the podcast, um, he was making a million dollars a month selling courses, his best months, and it wasn't enough for him. And he went and started a new business running a marketing agency. He's like a big marketing guru type. And I was like, oh, that is not most of the people listening to this podcast, right? That is not what most people are after. They're like, no, no, no, no. I want an awesome life. So, what was what were some of the things you said yes to, and how did that like negatively affect stuff for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

The biggest thing by far was because my first book was so successful, uh, like the um the advance was 80k uh just for signing the book, and then the book itself became an international bestseller. Um, the the week the book launched, I had a guest post on Tim Ferris's blog, which he told me was his highest traffic post for the entire year when because you know it was just so relevant to his niche. And so I had a huge success with that first book. So I figured when I was offered to write four new books, I figured ah, I may as well just do all four of them at once. And I kind of got uh a bit too uh um too too enthusiastic. And on top of that, the when I wrote my first book, it was similar to writing a blog post. It's like this is what I think you should do. But the four books I took on were academic courses which have to follow completely different standards, and uh that's when I had to adapt the Uberman sleeping schedule, which is a polyphasic sleep, uh where you're only doing 15-hour power naps every four, four hours, 15-minute power naps every four hours, and it was just absolutely awful. I had a a sleep debt that I was paying for years after that I was had to sleep like 10 hours a night and I was still tired. So I I said yes too many things, and like one of the benefits of having a team is they um they take off a lot of the burden from me, but one of the other downsides is they push you in directions that you would maybe not go by yourself because, like I said, I'm not really business minded. Yeah, like I I have a very successful business, but that's not where my heart is. So I had people on the team who were very like they wanted Fluent Three Months to be the biggest company in the world, and one way to do that is we gotta like ride this wave and publish more books. And what I really should have done was stuck to what works, um, which for me has always been sharing my story, making YouTube videos or other kind of content to try to inspire other people who are learning. Because switching to the academic, um, you know, it's great in retrospect to say it wasn't the right idea. It could have been the right idea because other people in my space have gone that direction. Uh, but for me, it just it was um it was taking it away from uh sharing my story, and I I could have kept that in mind. Um, and then lots of other things, like I said yes to many conferences, and I think the only mistake, like if if I look back on it, I think there's a certain period, especially if you're younger, where you you should say yes to as many things as possible because that's how you grow your business. There's so many opportunities, you'll only find what's good if you test things out, things you may not know could give you benefits. And and the trick is to figure out when you need to turn that dial down a bit. Yeah. So I think as you're starting and if you're young, you should say yes to as many things as possible. But then when I started again into my 30s and I was like, you know, maybe running out of energy a little bit for these like mega projects that I have to be working late until night, then I should have said yes a lot less frequently. And nowadays I get so many amazing opportunities in my inbox. And I know if I said yes to certain ones of them, uh, you know, travel across the world, speak at this conference, but I'm like, I don't want to do that, you know. I I want to have a simple life. I'm traveling Malaysia right now, and like you said, everything I own in the world weighs 23 kilograms. I don't want to own a mansion, I don't want to be the most to most famous person in the world that's recognized in the street. Like I've gotten a certain level of recognition that people will know who I am at particular conferences, and even that comes with its own downsides that like you, if you're tired, you you have to put on a face and be energetic and you don't want to give a bad impression to people who know you. Uh so like there's lots of these things to keep in mind. I'm actually I'm actually happy that my level of fame kind of did not go beyond a certain amount, and part of that is engineered. I don't want more fame, I just want to inspire people to learn languages, and I'm really glad I've swung back in the other direction that now that's what I'm doing again. Um I did have to work with the right people to make sure I was outsourcing because that 20-hour day period, part of it was saying yes to too many projects, but part of it was also just running the business to a certain level and having way too much of an idea that I am the bottleneck. Everything has to go through me. I'm the only person who can write this article, I'm the only person who can approve this picture. And like ultimately, what really helped was I hired an executive assistant. And we had a call once a week where I basically just said, here's my to-do list, here's what I think I should do. And part of her job was to push back and say, Benny, you shouldn't be doing that. And I'd be like, Yeah, but but but I I I and she'd be like, No, no, no, no. Someone else can do that, someone else can do it probably better than you. Your time is better invested into making a YouTube video because that's your face, that's something we can't replicate. And I'm really glad the best decision I made was hiring that executive assistant and just listening to her. Because and I told her when I hired her, I am really stressed out, I hate my life right now because I work too much and I'm putting on a lot of weight because of it. I reached 125 kilograms, um, which is I think 270 pounds, maybe. Um so very like at the border of um morbidly obese. That like I was in a very bad place in my life, clinically depressed and everything. So I'm uh the best decision I made was hiring an executive assistant and saying, You are gonna help me to get things off my plate. And she subhired other people. She didn't have to do the actual work. Her work was to take work away from me.

Raw Takes, Niche, And Speaking Day One

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I think so much of the the balance, like based off of the the four-hour work week and like the overall goal of what is it we're trying to achieve, a lot of us with our lives, is trying to figure out how much effort, how much is worth putting into making more money. Does that give me more time? Does the does the work that I'm doing give me joy? How do all of these line up? Because a lot of people who've got to the stage where they have been successful, they are like type A personality, they are driven, they are wanting to achieve more, but also they want to spend more time with their family or more time traveling or whatever else. And I I work on it constantly, trying to just make sure that I'm getting the right balance of that. Because I need a certain amount of like having a project, putting being productive to feel happy. Like I need that. I need a certain amount of it physically, I need a certain amount of it mentally, but I but it's it's not infinite. It's like, okay, it's probably whatever, 25 hours a week, let's say, something in that kind of ballpark. And it's only on certain things. Like I'm terrible at multitasking. Like if I have to switch, not even like multitasking in the moment, like if I have to switch within a day from one project to another project, that's just like, oh, my day's messed up now. That's like I I would like a week on one project ideally. And I'm like, okay, if I have a whole day, if I have two days in a row on a project and then I switch, it's like, okay, I could deal with that, I can cope with that. Um, and then other people I know are like, they're only happy when they're switching all the time. And you kind of got to figure all of these bits out to try and make sure that you're actually happy with how everything runs. I want to switch topic a little bit. There's something that you said, I think it really fits with the kind of the the way you've been describing the way that you work and the way that your your audience like what your audience likes getting from you. You mentioned before that raw, unedited frank takes of what you've found to be the way to build a strong following. Why do you I've got thoughts about that based on everything you've been saying and what I know about you, but like, why do you think that works so well for you?

SPEAKER_00 20:43

So if you're going to be making a course and you're going to try and inspire other people, uh, one way is to be as broad as possible and to try to cater to everybody. So I could be thinking, I want every language learner in the world to buy my course. The problem with that is then you just you're competing with the likes of Rosetta Stone and Duolingo that just cater to the general language learner. But by really embracing things that might be controversial in how you operate, and by embracing your personality type and knowing that your audience may be like you in particular, like I've accepted that maybe because I'm a digital nomad solo male traveler, that there is a skew towards more males in my audience. I don't really necessarily have to change my content to cater to that, but it is just something to be aware of. And whenever I shared my language learning advice, I accepted that some things are going to be very controversial. And I have pushed the buttons unintentionally of some people who disagree with me. So in language learning, there's this uh opinion that you have to have comprehensible input for a certain amount of time before. You're allowed to speak a language. And a lot of people who uh and I feel like this is definitely a personality thing, that if you feel intimidated by the idea of speaking a language to somebody when you're not ready and feeling potential embarrassment, it's a very um engaging idea that you can just wait and put that off and focus on just like getting your level up as high as possible. Now, that's fine if you're learning a language for this kind of more theoretical perspective, but I am learning a language to speak it on the street with people. So I have to accept a lot of imperfection. I have to speak before I'm ready, before I'm fluent. I I push people, and a core aspect of my learning philosophy is you have to speak from day one. So you learn a few phrases and you have to say that with an actual human immediately. So uh that I've gotten pushback on that. And I one way I could have reacted is I could have watered down my message and I I could have tried to say, you know, uh um you can do it this way, you can do it that way. But what I what I've said just just to be less offensive is I've prequelled what I say by saying, here are my goals. If your goals are different, then don't follow my advice, very simply. And I and I've said if you want to be able to watch TV in your foreign language, I'm not really gonna be able to help you with that. If you want to pass an exam, that's not really something I'm gonna be talking about much. If you want to travel to the country and speak the language, then I've got some really bold suggestions for you. And I think that has really engaged with people. I've not backed down from that. And whenever I've been interviewed on podcasts with other language learners, there has definitely been that clash because they they would push back and say, yeah, but you if you make mistakes early on, they'll be burnt into you forever and you'll never be able to unlearn them. And then of course I disagree with that and I explain why. And that has given people a particular memorable reason to want to follow me. And it doesn't mean that they won't follow the other people. And I recommend they follow, like I would tell them, somebody who is technically my competition, I'll say, you should go follow this guy because he's all about how to read the language. And I don't really talk about reading and learning how to like follow a book through in the language, but you should check out this guy, he's great for that, and that really helps because with uh this something like a the language learning space, and so many people listening to this are in a particular space that might have so much competition that the only way to stand out is to have some kind of a niche within that, some kind of an angle that is uniquely yours. And my angle has been pushing people to speak from day one. The goal is you're going to go to the country and use the language, and I put less emphasis on all the other things, and it means people have appreciated that. And ironically, when I was first growing the blog, um the when I started my blog in 2009, the biggest language blogger at the time was a bit more academic and he preferred to do things like reading the language, and like it's so ironic that when he heard about me, he wrote nine blog posts about why Benny is wrong. And like wow, you really hit his buttons, didn't you? If you think about the logic of that, like when I personally, when I see somebody wrong on the internet, I don't want to send all my audience to that person because I'm like, I don't want to give this guy an audience, but he essentially transferred his readership to me because people are like, you know, this guy thinks Benny's an idiot, but you I I kind of like that that way of thinking about things, and like that, so having this unique perspective, you need to embrace that. So I have not backed down from that message, and I'm really glad I did because I could be true to myself, but I can also reach people, and no matter how specific your niche is, you will reach people. Like my my friend Steve Camp, he he writes and makes content about fitness, and fitness is such a broad thing. How could you possibly stand out with that? So he specified nerd fitness, and everything he does about writing about fitness, he has this nerdy aspect to it, and he makes Star Wars and Lego jokes and everything, and that has really galvanized people because that kind of meshes the the two interests together where a lot of people fit that that over overlapping Venn diagram. So there are ways you can take a competitive space and make it yours because you will be the only person doing that. Now, obviously, now I have loads of copycat people who have similar travel styles to me, but I can still make it my unique message in a lot of other ways.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

I think the language space and course creators, I've been able to see how many people have done what you're talking about, do it their own different way. Because I mean we both know a lot the same people who are langu language course creators who are very good friends, help each other out with their businesses. Now, some of them are teaching different languages, right? But some of them might be teaching English to people where it's their second language, but their style of doing it is like completely different. Like if you think about uh our friend Shona, who's teaching people who do want the academic approach, who do want to know how to it's it's a her business is perfect English grammar. And for anyone uh listening, sorry. And um it's it's for those people who want to get every single bit of grammar exactly right, which is like so different to what you're talking about that it's not it's like there's there's basically no crossover in that Venn diagram at all, you know?

Simplifying Life And The Shift To Video

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Yeah, and that's why we're good friends, because like I where that's the the great thing about like really finding your niche and and when that happens, you have no competition in the whole world, and everyone is your friend. And this is like that guy who said Benny is wrong nine times. I've hung out with him at conferences, I love him. And like I send people to him when they tell me I I want to read well in a language, so like you build each other up a lot more, and it lets go of this idea of competition. So like a lot of people in the space, I don't see them as competing with me because they have a really good, they're scratching a very particular itch that when people come my way, I'll gladly send them over to them. And I'm like, you like you said, you know, you want perfect English grammar, I have I got the lady for you. And that's kind of uh that works in your benefit too, because when they hear that they've been sent by Benny, then of course they might send people my way. So people appreciate that and you start to become part of a community when you embrace that. And I think too many of us like see somebody in the space and we're like, I want to be the new that guy. I want to take over his position. And I think that's the wrong way to go about it. This is not a zero-sum game. There are ways you can make a course that answers a particular niche within your industry, and you're not competing with other people. You're just um you're you're you're showing uh a part of the online community that didn't know their people existed. They finally find you and then they want to know your message. What's next for you?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Like, is it just more of the same? Is it like keep learning more languages, traveling around? Is there anything you're trying to change? Is there anything in the business you're working on? Like, what are you what's what's coming up over the next year?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Uh so I have been very successful in these last uh four years or so, uh six years since the pandemic, um, to simplify as much as possible. So I have I've simplified my team and I've simplified my life that I want it to be like one way to live the life you want is to earn a million dollars a month, and then you can buy whatever you want. But another way is to to live it such that you don't need more than two or three grand a month. And by traveling to destinations like Malaysia, and two years ago, I spent the entire year going across South America. I spent three months in the Amazon getting like boats through the river and getting buses about 20,000 kilometers just by bus. And like I can live this simple life because I've engineered it to be that way. So I do want to continue that. Um, I'm kind of catching up on not having done that for several years during the pandemic. So I still have that kind of burst of travel in me for at least another two years, um, if not much more. And then I'm gonna see if I want to pivot in a different direction. Uh like I do have a little bit of pressure from a business perspective. The fact that my traffic from Google is uh like continuing to diminish, that I have relied on Google a bit too much over the years. Uh, I still have a lot of buffer zone, fortunately, because I've got my expenses down so much. But I I'm going to reach that limit eventually, maybe the next couple of years. So I do need to be a lot more active with video again. Because I launched my YouTube channel in 2007, and I was like very active for about five years, and then my life took a different direction, and I focused on writing a lot more. But I really like making videos. I think that's where I'm going to be doing a lot more of my effort over these next years because blogging was great. I rode that train, I had a great time, but unfortunately, it's not I wouldn't really recommend people getting into the industry now start with blogging. There is still ways you can monetize it, way you can you can grow an audience, of course. There always will be, but it's just not as big as video always has been. So I that's kind of my plan is to figure out I have to figure out what kind of content works with people because I'm still coming from a mindset of wanting to record the kind of videos I was recording in 2011, but that's just not going to work nowadays. So I'm looking forward to the process of learning how to be a modern YouTuber and a modern TikToker. And I've had success on a bunch of viral TikTok videos. So I know, I know I already have a certain edge in that space, and that's what I'm going to be working on over the next few years. And as if I can gain a little bit of my traffic back to consistently get people joining my email list, then I'll be good. I don't I don't need a lot of money. I just need to maintain a good standard of living so I can continue traveling these cheap countries.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

What how how you've got the group coaching program you mentioned? It's three months long. Does it run for three months and then start the next cohort? Is it is it a cohort-based?

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yeah, yeah. So I I did I did try to see if I could get people on a consistent subscription basis, but ultimately that goes against the message. The message needs to be that this is an intensive project. Now we will sometimes have people finish one mission and be like, I still have the energy and I want to do another one, and they'll join another one immediately after. But it's just not going to work with our business model that because it's not our learning philosophy to have this level of intensity for such for like permanently. You can't do that. It's not not something you can uh maintain that level of energy. So I prefer to get people on bursts. So we get people for three months, we got uh uh all of our old ebook courses, we converted them into a process that you could follow within the circle uh community, and then also we have multiple meetups with language coaches, including myself, twice a month, where I'm talking to everybody, I'm hearing all their problems, I'm giving them the best advice I can. And we always have raved reviews from people, they really appreciate it. Uh, we've made sure to make it very affordable because there's loads of coaching programs, especially when you're talking with people, that'll get you into the grand or so, and we keep it at the$2.99 uh point price point. So it that also helps that uh that a lot of people can join. So it's an active community. Because I think I could probably I could make the same money if I up the price to like a grand or whatever, and we'd have much fewer people, we'd have three times fewer people. Like I know I could charge more, but then we'd lose the the the power of the community of you seeing other people and seeing them struggle and getting inspiration from hearing their stories. So I kind of like the the balance we've currently struck with it.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Nice. And then are you selling courses separately as well, or is the group coaching like the the only program that you are?

SPEAKER_00 34:38

That's the main thing. I mean, I still have a couple of the old sales pages for my old ebooks that uh you know, occasional people will have dug through the blog and they'll find the link and then they might buy one of my old ebooks. Uh, but the main thing is the boot camp, and I still do my one-on-one coaching for people who maybe they they want it to solve a very specific problem, like they're traveling to a country next week, or they want to ask me about uh digital nomadism, because I have a particular style that I I don't tend to see very often. There's there's millions of digital nomads, but they tend to be um they tend to gravitate towards English-speaking communities, whereas the theme of my travels is it's always the exception. Like you said, we hung out in Mexico. I'll hang out with that group for a very brief window, and then I'm back to months and months of only talking to Mexicans, and that's kind of what I'm be doing in Malaysia. I've only been talking Malay to the locals. I'm going to Taiwan this weekend, and the plan is Mandarin all the way. I'm going to travel deep through the country, and that's kind of the on a travel uh goal. Uh, that's what I'm aiming for, is to travel as deep as possible. I've personally been to every state of Brazil, every contiguous state of the US, um, every province of South Korea, um, every county of Ireland, and I like that kind of deeper travel that I'm not just in the capital city, I'm outside of it, and you do need the local language for that. So I I'm trying to inspire other people through like that tends to be one-on-one coaching. But the main thing I main source of income is our boot camp. So the community coaching.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

How do you launch it? Do you do a webinar? Do you do it through email? Like, how does that work?

Boot Camp Model And Pricing Choices

SPEAKER_00 36:22

So you can only join at the start of the month. Um, and that way everyone's on a similar timeline. Yeah. And when you sign up to our email list, you get a crash course for a week in we call it speaking a week, where we try to get you to have your first initial conversation in a language. And then after that, if you found the advice useful, we tell you about boot camp and you might go to the sales page based on it.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

So it's like a kind of challenge at the front. So is that paid for that speaking a week or is that free?

SPEAKER_00 36:52

No, no, no, no, that's free. That's just like when people sign up to the email list.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Nice. And you said you can only join at the start of the month. Do you launch that group coaching every month then? Do you have another cohort start every month?

SPEAKER_00 37:02

You can pay for it ahead of time and like so we can we'll make the sales consistently, and when people join, they'll still join Circle and they'll have access to all of our courses. Because keep in mind, I've written dozens of ebooks and we spent a long time converting all that content into a single course that you could follow with lots of different tips that get specific to your problems. So people would do that aspect, but then the core part of the boot camp is at the start of the month. So people join like every day, but they can't be a part of the the learning community until the start of the month.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Got it. Got it. That's cool. And how's that working for you? Like, what's the do you know I uh uh you might not know this. Do you know the conversion rate, like from the people on your email list to joining that every month, or could you give us some idea of what we're doing?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

I left that I left that up to somebody else. So like we we have we ran we ran A-B tests, we did a survey to find out the the avatar learner person, and someone else dealt with all of that because that's getting into territory that I I just I'm not passionate about. But obviously, it's important. So rather than just ignore it, I have outsourced stuff like that whenever possible.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Okay, cool. And that's someone in your team who does who does that.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

That well, that was somebody who did it intensively three years ago. And anytime we revamp the community, like we've rebranded it a couple of times, we've migrated to different websites a couple of times. Whenever we do that, I will bring somebody on and I'll be like, okay, I need to see from start to finish what is the user experience with this, what challenges are they facing? And then within the community, we we um like I'm constantly looking for feedback from people, and we get feedback that this part they didn't understand, that it was uh a link is broken. And we do we do get lots of good feedback from the actual learners themselves uh because they're passionate about the community, so they want it to work, and that that's been fine, but in terms of the sales funnel, it that's something maybe once every three years I'll refresh it. So I'm not running any A-B test or anything on it right now. I know I'm leaving money on the table, I know there's lots of ways I can fix that. But again, I I I don't like if I'm making enough money to cover my expenses and to keep the team well paid, then I I'm not really obsessed about over-optimizing things.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, I talk to people about this a lot because everyone when they talk to me, not everyone, but like a lot of people, uh I can see that they feel guilty that they don't know their numbers and they're not sending more email promotions, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

I'm like, I have zero guilt. I really zero go.

Funnels Without Obsessing Over Metrics

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Um, but a lot of people and people listening might be feeling this or might feel this when they're as they listen. I'm like, dude, all I want is for is whoever I'm talking to, I just want you to be happy. I'm just like, if being happy means I need to make more money per month, then it's like, well, let's fucking figure that out, you know? Yeah, let's look at what your options are and how can you do it in a way that feels good. If you're like, I'm I'm totally happy with how things are running at the moment, everything's grand, it's like, cool, great. It's like I have I only care about this stuff so much for people because I'm like, I talk to people and I see that course creators often are like, I really, really want to make more money, but I don't know how to do it in a way that feels good to me. I don't know how to do it in a way that feels like I'm still being uh honest with my audience, I'm still following my own uh way of doing things, and I'm not gonna feel spammy and salesy and whatever. It's like, okay, well, there are ways of doing that, but if you look, if you don't need to make any more money, you're like, I've got everything fucking figured. Then it's like, great, that's fucking awesome. What's the what's any challenges for you at the moment then? Is it is there any or is the challenge just learning Malay and then learning Mandarin?

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Well, no, no, it's like I said, like I I am uh aware that the traffic is diminishing from the blog. So there that is definitely a challenge. I don't want to reach a stage where I urgently need to start making money very quickly. So we have a runway, we have a good runway of at least like a year or two, um, where like the traffic is going down at a certain rate that it's um we're still covering all the expenses we need to cover. So that that is something I need to keep in the back of my mind. But rather than uh improve my marketing necessarily and the sales page and stuff, I I really want to focus on just getting more people on my email list. Yeah. And I think the easiest way to do that is is video. Um so that's kind of from a business perspective, that's what I'm thinking short term is I have to relaunch my YouTube channel, I have to build that up, I've to test things out, make mistakes, and then hopefully a year or two from now, I'll have a funnel from YouTube that is then balancing out the losses that I'm gonna be made, I'll have made from losing blog traffic. So um that that's kind of from a business perspective. And then from a travel perspective, it's just I like the pandemic really opened my eyes that I, you know, life is short. You never know when something's gonna stop you from traveling, whether it be a global thing. We have lots of war we have wars we have to worry about nowadays. Uh, we might have another pandemic, you never know. I might personally get into an accident or get really sick. I don't know. So I life is sh life is short, and I want to s I want to see as much of the world as I possibly can while I still can. Because I don't think I'm going to live forever. I don't think I'm gonna be able to do this until I'm a hundred. I I know there's a cutoff window, and until something stops me from traveling, I want to continue to see as much of the world as I can.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Wicked. So you've had a you you've got a YouTube channel, but you've not been posting to it recently, or because you said relaunch.

Depression, Honesty, And Human Content

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yeah, so up uh between 2007 and 2012 or 13, um, I was very consistent. Like every few weeks I had another video, um, grew it to over a hundred thousand subscribers. But essentially the last 12 years, I barely uploaded a handful of videos. Um it's a pity because I really enjoy making videos, and part of it was uh I when I was stressed and overworking, I I got into too much of a perfectionist mindset of thinking I can't make a video unless everything is perfect. And fortunately, I've let go a lot of that stressful mentality, and I just I just need to make it a part of my routine where I'm at the start of the week I'm deciding, okay, what am I gonna make? Do I need to research B-roll? Do I need to make a script? Do I need to think about anything? And then just set the time on my calendar and record the video and get it out there. So I have been traveling very intensively this year. I've been in a different city every week, but this weekend I'll be spending a whole month in Taipei. So uh I'll move there now this weekend. That'll give me a chance to get into a routine and potentially kick things off. And I think another mistake I made is at that period in my life when I I was really, really down and depressed, I put a lot of effort into a couple of YouTube videos that did not do well, they didn't get The views and that completely demotivated me and I gave up. And I I'm coming at it for with a very different mindset right now. That there the goal is not to make viral videos, the goal is to figure out how I can be a YouTuber in 2026. And that's going to have to involve videos that don't get any views. Even though I have 120,000 subscribers, the way YouTube works, that doesn't mean I'm going to get 120,000 views on the videos. Like some of them are going to flop, and that's going to be part of the learning process. And I think when I was not in a good space, I I was not able to handle that. I needed success with every video, or it would personally hurt my feelings. And I'm I'm glad I'm not in that space now that I'm going to be learning how to be a modern YouTuber.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Awesome. Love that. So the my team have done a lot of work on how do you get the highest opt-in rate from YouTube onto email list. Is that would it be useful for us to go through and have a little look and kind of send for any tips? Or is that so long since you've uploaded videos that actually it's kind of relevant? Like what would how can we help?

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Yeah, it's it's too it's too long because all the videos are are like I said, I I need to be a modern YouTuber. So all the videos that you would look at, they just like I didn't have the kind of mindset I would be having right now. Yeah. Like I my general idea is I have a bunch of like and I have two YouTube channels. Um the the um I have a personality YouTube channel and a language YouTube channel, and both of them have good subscriber numbers. So I know on the personality one I'm gonna focus a bit more on travel and the nomadic lifestyle. And so I know I'm gonna make uh probably a video about the transition I made, like how I sold, like I had a house with three bedrooms full of stuff. I had a piano, I had lots of furniture, I had a whole costume. Yeah, way more. And it was a process learning how to sell all of that. So I'll make one video about that process. I'll make another video about how everything I own in the world fits into a suitcase. The thing is, I know that video exists. I know a bunch of people have made similar videos about this is what my suitcase looks like. So I really have to brainstorm uh to figure out how I can make my message unique. And then my idea, and you can tell me what you think about this, is after that video, at the end of the video, then I would have the the hook, as it were, and I would say, by the way, if you want to live a lifestyle similar to mine, then I'd highly recommend you learn the language before you travel to the country. And if you want to do that, then you get a free one-week course on my email list. If you want to dive in even more, you can join my boot camp. So that's that's what I'm thinking is is rather than having like a sponsored mess message in the video, I I'll kind of use the end of the video to push my my own thing. I don't know what you think about that, because that's kind of my message, or at least not not even pushing boot camp, but pushing the free email list.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, pushing the free the free lead magnet, something relevant to that video is definitely the approach that works the best. Because I mean, as you know, building an email list and then making sales to it is it works fantastically well. It's much better than trying to make direct sales from YouTube. Um I mean, we've proven it a thousand times that that's the that's the model that works um works best. It works best for people because they get to know you a bit better, they get to experience content from you, they get to hear, you get to uh control what messages go out in what order in terms of like, right, we're launching the the group coaching again this month. You've got email one, two, three, four, instead of like, well, you don't know what videos they're gonna see at what time and when if it's gonna line up in terms of timings with when you're actually launching. So it's a it's a much, much better approach. Cool, okay. Well, I'll get like uh I'll get Yosip to go through and like uh Yosip's like our head of funnel strategy, um send you over like some resources or something that when you're ready, you can then look at and be like, okay, cool, I've got something. And then if you've got any questions for him after that, then uh he'll be around for you. So um that's awesome. Man, this has been great. I love seeing your energy. Uh the first time that we met was at not DCX London 2021, it would have been, and you were just coming out of your funk. You you gave a talk about like all of the shit that you've gone through with those books that you were writing, and then I saw you again would have been like uh probably October that same year in Mexico, and you were just like full of energy, and it's like you were ready to go and you were out talking to Mexicans, you were talking in the market, and it was great. And to see that you've still got that energy, like whatever this is, five years later, you know. Um, and in fact, it seems more so, it's just wonderful to see, you know.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

You really have every cloud has every cloud has a fit silver lining, and by going through those really rough years, it's giving me the perspective to truly appreciate my life. And and it's why I say I I have uh uh an idea that I won't be like this forever. Like I thought back in 2012, I thought I'll be traveling for the rest of my life, and then I was stopped uh for various reasons. So I'm aware now I will be stopped, and there's a certain appreciating the temper temporary uh nature of the world and knowing I get to do this amazing thing, I get to visit all these countries. So many people in the world can't do this. It's not about the money because there are some months that my expenses only amount to about two grand a month for everything for my accommodation, my travel, my food, my entertainment. I don't need that much money, but I also am aware I have a lot of flexibility in terms of the kind of passport I'm traveling with, the kind of lifestyle I live doesn't need a lot of expenses. I currently don't have a family, and having to support a family gives you all sort of different challenges. So I I know that this is something to appreciate, and life is short, so you definitely have seen me transition from uh being at the darkest depths, and that's also something I want to talk about. Like on my lifestyle channel, I want to talk about my personal process of getting myself out of the hole of an incredibly deep depression and you know, losing weight, although that won't necessarily be a big focus, but it's a part of the process. Um, because I think, especially nowadays, there are a lot of people who are struggling mentally and they need to see uh it's similar to my language learning that like I was a monolingual and then I became a polyglot. I was at the pits of depression and I got myself out of it. And I think anytime I've seen people talk about something like depression um from an academic perspective and say, you know, pick yourself up by the bootstraps, just get over it or something. It's really, really uh uh discouraging to people who like you have to tell them, I get it. I understand that it feels impossible, and you like you have to understand it in that moment it is impossible, but there's this little thing you can do that gets you one step, and then you go back to your cave and you accept that maybe you're gonna eat another pizza, and then people need to hear that. They need to hear their um that it's it's okay to not be okay, it's okay to be down in those dumps and that there are ways out of it. And I'm gonna talk about that. And you never know if that kind of message really uh jives with people, that could be a direction I might take my content in a lot more consistently.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

That's awesome, and I love that you're so open of that about that because it's hard for a lot of people to talk about that kind of thing, and people do need to hear it because it's like if you're in the shitty situation and it feels that everyone else is fine, then that makes it feel worse. If you're like even knowing, okay, someone else has been in the shitty situation, has felt has as crap as I feel now and has got through it, it's like, okay, that there's there's hope that I might actually manage that. You know, it's like in business, everyone, everyone talks about the successes, no one talks about the failures, right? And then it's like that's why it's so important being in like a community, because you go, everyone people actually talk about the shit that was hard, and they're like, oh thank fuck it's hard for everybody else as well. You know, like, oh my god. When you're having a shitty day, week, month, year, and you go, Oh god, this is why can I not manage to figure this out? It's like, okay, well, you know what? Other people have had that as well, and it's like it's all right, it's okay to feel like this, and you can you can get through this. So I really appreciate that about you, man. I really think that's that's awesome that you're willing to share that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Yeah, and and I like people would say that it's it's brave to share these things, but I've actually always found it enjoyable to see people's reactions because it's so well appreciated. And I hope more and more people will share uh these kind of dark times with others that like it's as as humans, like I I travel solo a lot. I I'm in places by myself, but I've related to these completely different cultures because there's so many things the human condition shares, no matter where you are in the world. And um, yeah, I I know true loneliness was not when I was in a country by myself, it was when I was in a difficult relationship at the worst time in my life, and that is something a lot of people can relate to, especially now that there's a lot more problems in the world. And I think a lot of content creators, a lot of the online space do share that overly positive. I'm I'm absolutely killing it. You know, all your Instagram posts are just success after success. And I and I think that people are sick of it at this stage. That you need to have you need to feel like you're talking to an actual human being.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

Well, this has been awesome. If people want to go check out either of your YouTube channels or your site, like where would you want to point people to?

Where To Find Benny And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Well, since they're in podcast listening mode, they can listen to my own podcasts. It's the language and travel hacking podcast. So I'll talk about both language learning and my nomadic lifestyle. Um, you can uh actually, if you're curious to see everywhere I've been, just type my name, bennylewis.com, and you'll see this interactive map that shows all the countries I've gone to. And that's also where you can click uh one-on-one consultation with me if you want that. And then on my website, uh you'll see lots of blog posts. You can join the email list. If you select the language you're learning, you'll get particular tips about that language. And then, of course, you can join our bootcamp, which is the thing I'm most passionate about because I created the draft one of that community back in 2014. So it's had 12 years of iterations and improvements. I'm really proud of it. We genuinely make a difference with it. So you can see uh if you go to fluent3months.com, you'll see boot camp uh mentioned there. So people can find me in all sorts of places.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

So that was fluentinthree months.com, Benny Lewis.com, and the language and travel hacking podcast were the main ones there. Wicked Benny, thanks so much for coming on, man. I really, really appreciate your time. Uh and I look forward to seeing you in a couple of months out in Mexico. That's right, you will.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

Yeah, I'll see you there.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

Perfect.