238 How To Actually Build a Course Around a Problem

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Tom Geiss is the founder of GD&T Basics, a training company that teaches geometric dimensioning and tolerancing to engineers and manufacturers. It's a topic he'll openly tell you is boring to most people... and yet he's built a seven-figure business around it with a team of 10, no paid ads, and no sales team.

In this episode we talk about how Tom approaches building course content around the problems his students actually face at work, rather than just the material itself. It's a simple shift in thinking but it makes a real difference to how engaging a course becomes, and how much easier it is to sell.

We also get into how he's built a bridge between selling to individuals and selling to companies, which is something a lot of course creators haven't thought much about yet. And Tom shares how his thinking about marketing has completely changed since he started the business... going from someone who wanted nothing to do with it, to someone who now sees it as the core of everything.

Tom is a really thoughtful guy and it was a genuinely enjoyable conversation. I think you'll get a lot out of it.

🔎 Find Tom at https://www.gdandtbasics.com/
🔎 Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-geiss/ 

#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

Attention Is The First Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You can't not do things without attention. If they don't know you exist, it doesn't matter how wise you are, it doesn't matter how helpful you are. If you can really be passionate about the problem and about your audience instead of the solution, you will not feel slimy doing it. We really try to emphasize the problems and the process of solving those problems that can be used with this GDP. It's taking chaos and assembling it into just a pattern that someone else can follow. All of a sudden their eyes light up and they say, that would affect all these things we've been arguing about for so long.

What GD&T Solves At Work

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Hello, and welcome to the Art of Telling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies at performance in the online course industry. My name's John Antwerp, and today's guest is Tom Guide. Now, Tom is the founder of G D T FaceTech, a training company that teaches wait for it, geometric dimensioning and for instance, GDT. Now, this is a subject that he has learned to stop explaining the after. He started it as a side project while working full-time as an engineer, and he now teaches companies like SpaceX, Toyota, Disney, and Sharp Ninja. And after 10 years in business, GDT Basic is a seven-figure company with a team of X. He built the whole thing with no sales team, no paid ads, and no real focus on social media either. His success has relied on giving away 90% of the course content for free, building a rock star team and a belief that a boring topic doesn't have to become a boring course. And today we're going to talk about how you take a topic that Tom describes himself as boring and makes it really engaging, how ADHD has helped him with that, why he focuses more on companies than on individuals, and why marketing is the business. Tom, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. So talk us through a little bit. Who who are you helping and what kind of problem are you solving? I'm guessing most of us are not going to understand the much detail, but if you can give us the 10,000-foot view or something.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Of course. Really, what we what we do is we teach a very complex topic of uh really the rules of engineering drawings and products, right? Uh in the manufacturing industry, anything that you have in your house or anything that's manufactured, right? There has a design of it, a drawing of some kind, CAD model, a lot of you have have heard of. Um, then they need to have directions in order to manufacture it. And then they also have to be inspected, meaning they have to be checked to make sure that the original design has been met. So we kind of teach a language of how to process that using symbols and numbers and tolerances and things like that uh throughout the manufacturing process to make sure everyone's communicating it properly from design through to quality, all the way to the end customer and making sure that's true. Who are you teaching that to? Is that to engineers? Yeah, we do engineers, uh, machinists, uh, quality techs, uh, really most people in manufacturing.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

And is this the kind of thing that's taught if someone's studying engineering or whatever else it is at university, but they need to be up to date? Or like why is it that people kind of need it from you?

SEO Traffic And The AI Shift

SPEAKER_00 3:12

You know, one of the reasons I think we are so successful is it hasn't been taught well. Um I didn't learn it in school. Uh I had to learn it kind of on the fly. Um, but it's consistently used. And it's something that you kind of don't learn until you get in that first job and you're like, what is this stuff? Uh and you realize it's how everyone communicates um within the manufacturing world. So got it. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

So I think from a marketing point of view, and I there's there's some interesting, really interesting things to get into with your marketing, but I think that your website is your main traffic source. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yes, it is. Uh, you know, we get about uh 230,000 uh website visitors a month. So we're you know, we've we've built it very strongly on SEO, mainly Google SEO. Um, but of course we get it from other other sources.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

But and how's that doing now? Because I know some industries, the SEO has been kind of getting gradually worse and worse with AI snippets and so on.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

You know, we've been developing plans to mitigate that. I mean, obviously, you know, the with the AI shift and the the zero click searches and stuff. Um, but it's just been getting bigger and bigger, honestly. Um I mean, I I think I think the good thing is is good SEO tactics that we've had, you know, just really trying to be helpful and having really good stuff that people can value. Um AI likes that too, and we'll link back to your stuff and we'll quote you and have people curious for more. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

I was just chatting with someone this morning who um he had many years where he had over two million website visitors a month. And he's in the language space. So language space is it's a very high volume kind of game, right? High volume, low, low revenue per person. But still, that's a lot. That's a lot of people. And he was just telling me how much it's been dropping down and how he's now focusing on YouTube as like his kind of backup option, how he can make more content on there. So it's great to know that there's people out there who are still managing to make that work really well. And I was I was curious because it's like you've got something that's such an in-depth topic. I wonder how an AI snippet compare, like it's it might be that people are more likely to click through because they want the exact answer rather than like a Gemini summarized or something. I I'm just guessing here.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

And I think that's it. You know, I I think AI has not gotten to the point where it can it can be accurate enough to replace engineering act, you know, accuracy that we need in the information that we have. So um we've been trained that way to research things as opposed to just get an answer spit out by a machine.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That fits actually from a personality point of view within just it's I've I've interviewed a couple of people um on the podcast who've got an engineering background. And it's really I find it really interesting because m me and my whole team have all got like science backgrounds. Or a lot of them are engineer were engineers. One of them was a biomedical scientist, one of them was a structural engineer. Uh, my qualifications were in maths, uh, one was a computer engineer. It's like we have a very specific kind of way of viewing the world that most course creators don't. Most people, they're more creative, they love teaching, they've got good at creating content, they've got good personality for video, or they've got really good at creating a lot of blog posts, but it's a lot of a lot of YouTubers, but they hate spreadsheets and they hate maths and they hate looking at all the numbers.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

That's the most fun part. Yeah. It's like that's how I understand the world. That's how my whole brain works.

Lead Magnets And List Segmentation

SPEAKER_02 6:39

So it's really interesting to interview someone like yourself who is who has got a um uh an engineering background. The last one I remember interviewing was um a guy called Hugo Ortega who teaches people how to become uh how to get a job working on a super yacht where you can make a lot of money traveling the world and uh only works a certain number of months per year, and he works as a super yacht captain, and then he teaches other people how to, I know as an engineer. Yeah. So what's the next step? Someone gets to your website and then they um they've they've they've gone on Google, they've found your site. I know you're getting um a few hundred subscribers, I think 600 new subscribers per month at the moment. How are you getting people onto the list? What's the offer you've got for them?

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Uh so we typically have a lead magnet. Uh, our main lead magnet is the uh our we have a wall chart, a GDNC wall chart uh that we give away for free, includes all the symbols, you know, data, something that they could post up in their cubicle or at work that they could easily reference. So that has been the thing that I created day one of starting this company, even before I had a monetizable course to sell, um, was building an email list using that uh that chart. And that has grown over time. We've changed it, we've redeveloped it, that sort of thing. Um, we honestly have way too many lead magnets now, too. We've got charts for things, we've got data things, we've got um, you know, if if there's this one topic, you can have a chart on that. So um, but they do work. Uh, but uh nothing has still beat the uh the wall chart.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

It's typically about 80% of our opt-ins are from the I just looking at the numbers, is this is uh uh benchmarks rather than like an absolute hard and fast rule, but I would think it would be possible for you to probably 10x your opt-ins. Oh, absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

And I think um you know, one of the things that that we we see is a lot of people come visit the site and then they leave, right? Um the other thing too that we've found is when asking people is engineers, uh, you know, and and people uh logic and thinking are very protective of their emails. They they don't like a lot of the marketing things, right? They don't as I as I said originally, you know, I don't like sales, I don't like marketing when I was an engineer, you know, it always seemed like the the dark arts. Um so I I agree. I I definitely think we are we're actually uh changing our funnel right now. We're trying to create some better CTAs on the website. Um the biggest thing, you know, with the email list opt-in uh that we have is is honestly the segmentation, getting the right people on the list too. Uh, because we get a lot of B2C style people who are looking to improve their own careers and their own things like that. Um, but the real you know, ones that we're looking at are the managers, are the the hiring people, the people who are looking to train their team of 10 to 100. Um, it's almost like, well, I don't need a chart for that. You know, I just want to go and get the information. I want to see this stuff. So it it's kind of a balance. We, you know, I do think that one mistake that we have hit now is we've honestly thrown so much stuff at the wall. I mentioned having so many lead magnets and things that it kind of dilutes the focus, right? As opposed to having one really focused path that we want to send people down. And I think that's what we we are currently addressing right now in Q1 and Q2 has been the what is the one thing that we're gonna send people down, and we'll segment them in the email list, as opposed to making a little bit for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

So when you say segmenting them, so I saw one of the things you you said about like there's certain job roles that you want, you want the kind of the managers. And I see when you're opting into the lead magnet, there's got a drop-down asking what department they're in, you know, design, engineering, quality, production, etc. Is there other segmentation you're doing bes besides those those two?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Um typically we are, you know, we're we're doing lead scoring too. We use HubSpot. So we do some lead scoring in the middle there where we're trying to address are these buyers are they, you know, are they buying really for themselves or are they buying for a team? Because the way that we market to them is drastically different from those two approaches. Yeah. Um, the other thing too is, you know, that we're trying to get better at is this a technical person looking for information so we can talk technical to them, or is this someone like an HR or a training manager who talking about the benefits of GDT is gonna do nothing for that sort of market, right? Um, in terms of that. So uh, you know, again, I think, you know, one of the big things that we need to do better at is really just reducing the complexity, reducing the the worry of that, and kind of letting the market self-segment themselves by putting an offer in front that they would bite on instead of trying to put everything in front of them at once.

Fixing Opt-Ins On Blog Pages

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Can I show you something uh on the screen that kind of I think would help improve your opt-ins, even without doing all of those things? And I of course listener, I promise I will do my best to describe everything that I'm showing. If you do not watch the YouTube version of this, uh let me share screen. Okay, can you see that now? Can you see your website? Yes, we can see that. Okay, perfect. So if I go back to your home page, I'm going through to I can see that one of the places that I can get the opt-ins if I go through to your blog, which is I'm assuming where you get quite a lot of traffic.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Is that yeah, we correct. We kind of have two sides of the blog. We have one, which is more, you know, day-to-day kind of challenges that engineers and quality people face, either from a technical or even a non-technical standpoint, that GDT can help address. And then we have another side, which is really our reference page. It's almost like a library of true data about the GDT symbols. It's called the GDT symbols page. Um, probably the majority goes through the GDT symbols page because people are searching for those specific topics. And then the blog is really where we link to after those topics to be like, you want to learn more about this specific thing, check out this or this or this, where we do more of a deep dive on those.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Got it. Is this the symbols page? Am I in the right place?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yes, that is the symbols page, correct.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Perfect. Okay, cool. So what I'm seeing definitely on here, and then also I'm gonna just I'm just I'm just clicking around a little bit. Uh everybody listening and just looking at some of these pages and seeing where the lead magnets are linked to. And you see on this one here, so I'm going through one of the pages that's linked from the symbols page, and towards the bottom it's got a link for get your free chart. Yes, and then that takes you to a landing page.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Okay, cool. So if I show you, I'm gonna go to um tealswan.com. So this was a client of ours who we've managed to massively increase their opt-ins, and it's similar. They had quite a lot of website traffic, um, but they weren't getting nearly as many opt-ins as we thought they would do. So this is very, very different niche to yours. This is like the um uh like self-help kind of space. So on this blog post here, we've got the button for the Fire Free Guardian Meditations at the top, we've got a kind of an ad in the sidebar for it, we've got another one halfway down the page, which is similar but a little different, and then another one at the bottom of the page as well. And just by making that change, these guys were getting about 100 opt-ins per week, and that got them up, making this change across like every part of the website, um, designing these the the opt-in buttons beautifully, making sure that the they were put on all the high traffic pages, that eight times their their number of opt-ins that they were getting. Yeah. Now that's just one thing, but I think if we look back here, if we went back to you one of your blog post pages, um we've got kind of the same thing. It's only mentioned towards the bottom of the page. If you scroll down through the blog post, you got the whole blog post, and then at the very bottom you've got the get your free chart. I think if you took that and made that bolder, more nicely designed, front and center, really put it in front of people, that on its own would massively increase your opt-ins. No, I love that. Great idea.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

And then I'll I'll send you through afterwards, or I'll get maybe Yosip from my team to send you through afterwards, like a video of a few other tips of the things that we tweaked with that client and various other clients that could could work for you as well. Because I think that that massive website traffic you've got, you could definitely be getting more out of that. You know, you could definitely get more that goes onto your email list.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yes. No, I no, I agree. Yeah, you know, it's uh that's the thing with um with the pages we have. I think we're up to, I don't know, 400 pages uh on that on that blog. And so we're we're kind of trying to reposition, reorganize, you know, create certain like pages that have links to other pages on it to kind of organize a little bit. Um, that would be a good practice to do as we're kind of revamping and simplifying the the stream of content that we have for everybody. So beautiful. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's great.

Making A Boring Topic Engaging

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Yeah, no worries, man. Um now, one thing I want to get into, and I I mentioned this in the kind of the teaser at the top, was that you have said that the topic you're teaching, you you at least talk about it. I don't know if you're being self-deprecatory, but you've talked about it as being boring, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Oh, it's absolutely boring.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

It's absolutely boring to that rich person.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

I mean, to 99% of the people out there, of course it's very boring. If I started explaining it, you'd fall asleep.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Um how do you manage to make that engaging? What is what is it you do that to help make that engaging to people?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

So so the good thing about the topic that we teach is um it causes problems at work. Um the the solution, the medicine, it happens to be boring a little bit, you know, it's it's tough. But we really try to emphasize the problems and the the process of solving those problems that can be used with this GDT that we teach, right? It's it's kind of a language, but it's really just a set of tools that we offer. Um, you don't need to know all of the tools, you don't need to use all the tools. It's basically, you know, uh you can kind of consider the analogy of if you're building a house, right? Um there's there's the tool aisle at Home Depot or whatever, you know, uh, you know, store that you have for hardware, you know, and that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

I think something that's yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

You know, you got your power tools, your drills, your stuff like that, right? Yeah. So so there's, you know, we can teach you how to use a drill, we can teach you what a drill is, and we teach you all that stuff. But really, what they want to do is they want to build a house or build a room or renovate a garage or do something like that, right? So the tools can only take you so far. You obviously have to know them to be able to know they exist and that it's probably the best tool to use. But by reframing it in a way of getting the result that they're looking for, being actionable, as opposed to just you have to learn all this stuff that's in this, it's in an ASME standard. Um, you probably have the ISO standards over there, with British standards, you know, those those over there, same thing. Um, all these rules are written down, you know, somewhere. It's not like we invented them, we didn't create them. Um, but where we address is really what are the situations that our students are facing, right? What are the problems that they see? And utilizing how to actually solve those problems using this, you know, 300-page standard that is written like the the tax code, you know, it's not the most exciting document in the world, but showing them how they can utilize these rules on their drawings to fix these problems that they're seeing at work um is really a magic thing. Uh because all of a sudden they their their eyes light up and they say, that would fix all these things we've been arguing about for so long, you know. Um, so so really focusing on the problems and really focusing on the scenarios and the situations, I think has elevated us um, you know, beyond we have a lot of competition. We have there's a new GDT training company, believe it or not, like every week, it seems like. Um, but we have done a good job of uh sharing our industry experience, the real problems that we face, right? Um showing them how to connect these dots as opposed to just the data that's there, right? Um saying that you don't need to know all this stuff, you really don't. It's it's all there to help you, but at the same time, uh let us be the experts and we'll kind of show you just maybe the the five to ten percent that you really know. And that's a skill in itself. So, so that I think is where um where if you are teaching something boring, you have to really address what is the problem that it's solving and really get take that step back from the actual material itself to how is this material going to be used and how do you make that easy and not overwhelming for the unperson.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

And you folks, so I think about that kind of stuff a lot from a marketing point of view, like as in, you know, on a sales page, you've got to talk about the not the features. I mean, you do talk about the features, but then you talk about how the features connect with the benefit the person wants. And you're trying to get all the way down to the point where they go, Well, obviously I want that thing. You know, once you get that far, then you know that you've hit a benefit that really matters to them. And like helping people to see how their future is going to be different once they've done, once they've learned this thing, once they've done, they've they've taken the course, right? Well, how's your life going to be different in a a day, a week, a month, three months, six months? How are you doing that? It sounds like you're doing that within the course itself. Yes. How are you how do you do you do you just keep referencing back to that? Are you referencing that like within each lesson? How exactly do you put that together?

ADHD Strengths In Course Design

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I mean, we do have to do a lot of teaching, right? There's a lot of you know, showing them how to use the tool, right? So you can't skip over that, unfortunately. Right. Um, but the good thing is is that, you know, we bring up a lot of examples that they've probably seen. And we try to address, you know, we do have question help and things like that, of you know, really trying to identify the main key problems that the reasons the students are are getting into that course. And I think we also, you know, one thing that that I instill in our team is we kind of, even when we're creating the course, we still follow those like five rules of copywriting, right? Which is um, I have it, oh, I have it a post-it note here because it's just so I can see it. Uh, encourage their dreams, right? Justify their failures, diminish their fears, confirm their suspicions, or throw rocks at their enemies. Right. Even though that's a sales tactic and a marketing tactic, it's also a course tactic to make someone be able to go through something and feel better about it and continue about it, right? Um, it doesn't just stop at your sales page. It should be within your your product as well.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

And you'd mentioned before that your ADHD has helped you with this. What did you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

How's that helped? I mean, it helps and hurts. ADHD is a double-edged sword, you know, but um I think from a uh from a business owner standpoint, you know, we're all owning whether you're creating courses or not, you know, you're you're trying to start a business. Um first and foremost, the the willing uh or the the the ignorance that you can kind of have going into a problem is is a strength where you don't really think it all through. Because, you know, and a lot of times that that you know. Have that analysis paralysis. Well, sometimes with the the ADHD, it just allows us to just kind of go at something and see what happens, you know, and be a little bit tenacious with that. Um, I also think though that from a learning standpoint, you know, obviously uh, you know, I had to go through college. I I struggled in college. Um, I really did not do well in engineering school. Uh, not that it's an easy program or anything, but um, and so I learned that whatever would work to kind of keep my attention is something that I have to do for my students too. Because then even if they don't have ADHD, their attention is saved. If they do, uh, I need to be able to keep that attention.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Kind of the reference guide as a student. You know, like if it if it can keep me interested, then anybody else will be fine.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Exactly. And if I can if I can follow the path, if it's not just too much throwing stuff at you, if it's overwhelming. Like I, you know, as a learner, um, you know, it the ADHD kind of can cause you to have learning overwhelm where you focus on everything and you try to grab everything, right? You try to do everything. Um, and so when we're developing programs, that is something, uh, you know, as we're reviewing them, as we're releasing the content, that's something I'm able to kind of spot where it's like, guys, we're throwing too much stuff at them right now. You know, we're not creating a path. We're creating this collecting, you know, collecting dots as opposed to connecting the dots one by one and kind of showing them the right path to go on. What is the learner trying to observe here? Not just what do we need to get across. Um, so so I do think it really helps with that. It helps with other business sides too. You know, it definitely helps in marketing and sales. I never thought um I would benefit so much in that. Why is that? Um so what'd you say? What why is that? Why does it help with those? Um, I think it's it allows us to uh, you know, be more along the lines of uh a little bit more improvisational, I would say. Uh we are able to really kind of feel um a sixth sense of what the the user feels. And maybe that's unique to me, but I do think that the the ADHD and kind of the observing and kind of taking in, you know, overstimulated kind of thing, um, you pick up and you empathize with people a lot more. Um for instance, I I've empathized with people who struggle to learn, just because I struggle to learn and and I had some issues with that. Uh and so I really do think that you're kind of thinking in a lot of different directions, right? You have a very fast process or very low RAM. You can't do a lot of things at once, but you can um you can kind of address a lot of avenues very quickly. And and I think that allows you to spot patterns and see things that um that most people are kind of very short-sighted and focused on.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

I think there's so much benefit in figuring out how your own brain works. And and I used to feel so much like guilt and shame that my brain didn't seem to work in the way that uh the that I saw other people, friends of mine who are being successful who are becoming successful, I saw them working in a certain way, and I was like, oh, I should be working like that, and then I would try to do it, and then I would fail, and then I would feel guilt and shame, and I would try to do it, and I would fail, and I just go through the same lesson again, like again and again. It's like, oh, it's like just running into a brick wall repeatedly with no no success, but no lack of determination. And the more that I figured out that I don't know what the right label is for my brain, but I'm very, very good at uh spotting patterns and connecting dots between things. Like if someone explains to me for like three hours everything about their business, at the end of it I can go, oh, this is how it works, and explain it back to them in a way that they didn't understand themselves. But if I try to do six different tasks in a day, I'll I'll be in real trouble because I can't context switch. And I think it's the I think it's you were saying about like a two-edged sword for ADHD, right? Yeah. Um, I think it's the same thing. This is what I've gradually come to the conclusion of is I'm really good at like absorbing a lot of bits of information and then going, how do they all connect together? How do you simplify this down? How do you make everything make sense out of that? But the downside to that is I can't not do that. So if I if I have a load of a bunch of information come in about one task, and then I go and then someone's like, okay, now we're gonna do this other task. I'm like, whoa, no, my brain is still processing the first one and making sense of that. So I if I try and change, then eventually you were mentioning about like the RAM. What happens for me is like it feels like all of my RAM gets filled up, and I've only out of 10 blocks, I've got two left, and the other eight are just still trying to make sense of the last four things, you know. And I thought about I thought of this as a massive disadvantage for a long time, but I'm like, I realized recently it means I'm really good at uh single focusing. Like I can take a problem and just work on it for days, and I'm not, it just doesn't bother me at all. I'm not bored by it, I'm not like too, I'm not getting distracted. I could just work on that one thing. I just have to set up my life so that's the only thing that I'm expected to do. Because otherwise, and so it meant building a whole team around me who could take care of everything else, which was not easy.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

It takes time, yeah. You can't you can't just, you know, you do it one at a time. Um, I mean, you know, what you're describing though, uh makes for an excellent educator and an excellent, you know, um, an excellent course creator. Because you, you know, when you you have to be able to analyze this and find the patterns. I mean, that's that's all a course is, if you really think about it. It's uh it's taking chaos and assembling it into just a pattern, right? Yeah, that someone else can follow. And I mean, there's really two parts to that, you know, assembling the chaos and then making sure someone else can follow it. And it sounds like you have learned that's your strength, but you you and I kind of share that. I I do relate to that. I call it the freight train of attention, which is it takes a long time to get ramped up and get going on something, but once you know, yeah, it's a big, it's a big ADHD thing. I mean, a lot of people think ADHD is like, you know, squirrel, you know, and looking at something else, right? Yeah, it's it's more of not being able to refocus too. It's uh there's a thing called hyperfocus, right? And that's the I call that the freight train of attention. It takes us a while to get ramped up and going like a freight train, right? You have to build up. But once you're in there, once you're up to speed, it's great. You're flowing, you're moving faster than anyone else out there. But if you have to slow down and change, oh, you have a whole slowing down process you have to do. It's a freight train, right? It's got it takes miles sometimes to slow down a freight train. Um, and so it is a it is a strength and a and a weakness. Um, it but it's great. It sounds like you've assembled a team to mitigate those weaknesses and emphasize your strength, which I think, you know, in any business, in any any owner of a business, um, that's probably the number one thing to try to focus on is how do I get in my wheelhouse?

Turning Individuals Into B2B Sales

SPEAKER_02 29:10

I think one of the things with people who start businesses is you kind of have to, especially if you're bootstrapping, you kind of have to get good at or quite good at everything. You have to become a jack of all trades. You know, you have to become somebody who can do a bit of everything in order to get it up and running, because there's no one else to do any of it, so you have to do a bit of all of it. And then at some point, that stops being the right thing to do. The thing you then need to do is then hand over to other people who are better at that thing than you are. And it's really difficult because you've just spent years learning the way to do this is get good at everything. And then you've got to learn, right, now I need to get good at handing things over to others. And I've been really lucky because I've got um Josip, who I uh run the business with, and he is absolutely masterful at managing lots of things going on at once, and so his brain and mine are very good complements for each other, and I don't know how I would do if U tip wasn't around to kind of work on that together with. Um, I had a really interesting conversation with a guy. We just offered a conference and we were out for breakfast one morning, and I was describing how my brain worked, and he was like, he was laughing, and I was just like, All right, dude. It's not that funny. Like, okay. And he said, No, no, I'm just laughing because you're it's like you're describing me to me. You know, it's like you've just described my brain back to me, but more eloquently than I've ever managed to do it. And so I was like, Oh, well, that's interesting. So I started getting him to tell me how his brain works. I'm like, that might give me insights into how my brain works. Who knows? You know, maybe it's even similar in these other ways. Um and the the group we were with came to the conclusion that we only have one brain between us. And if one of us is in a bad mood, it's probably the other one's fault because we're just sharing this one brain in between. If I can't think about something, it's because he's in Australia, he's working on whatever he's doing. Um okay, let's switch, let's switch uh um focus a little bit here. You said that one of the things that you do in your business is you focus more on companies than on individuals. Yes. Why is that and how does that work? Because I suspect that's going to be quite different to what most listeners are doing.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, and I think um, you know, there's probably a lot of people out there that are teaching some sort of professional skill in some way, right? Something that would be strong in a corporate environment or in a even a small business environment, right? Um, that's just happens to be what we do. I mean, there's very few uh engineers that aren't working for a big company, right? So um, you know, when we started out, this kind of came by accident. We we actually went after, you know, the individuals looking to better their resume. And we actually went after the academic market too, uh, trying to go with professors and schools, you know, because I didn't get this taught in school. I was like, hey, I can I can go after that. Uh but what we slowly realized is when one individual changed, and based on the environment that they're in, um they're not in a vacuum. Other people notice. And so other the the thing that we teach really can only thrive as long as everyone knows what they're doing in the same way, right? One guy got good at GDT, uh honestly, it might hurt him over over the course, him or her over the course of this, just because um everyone else wouldn't know what to do. It's a very communicative tool. So we realize that there's more value in making this something that's shareable and making it more of a uh, you know, you you should really be training your whole team on this in order to really get the benefits. There's, you know, you would get, you know, 20x the benefits of training 10 times more people, right? Because now there's a lot more interaction, a lot more flow between that. So um, this probably doesn't apply to everyone's course that they're they're trying to teach out there. But uh, to those of you out there who are, you know, teaching some sort of professional skill that they have to use in a profession as they interact with other people, uh, this is really where we saw the the biggest benefit. And and honestly, it's where our, you know, our revenue numbers are were were growing. That's kind of how we exploded the business was going into that more B2B market, uh, but leveraging the individuals to kind of open the door for us.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

And then how does the how does that opening the door work? What's the what's the process?

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Um, so you know, when we when we have someone take the course, uh, you know, when we have individuals and still, you know, people directly buying from us for one or two courses, you know, like small groups or individuals, you know, buying direct from our website, like I'm sure a lot of the a lot of your listeners are having. Um they purchase the course. We we try to do an upsell after they they purchase the course, but we've realized that one of the strongest upsells that we can have is really just um, do you know anyone at your job that would benefit doing this? Because typically when they take our program and we've built this into that, they're realizing like, well, this is good for me, but this would be really good for, you know, John over in machining or the quality department is struggling with this issue right now. So we try to encourage that interaction. That's honestly something we're really going to be doing a big focus on in Q2, is how do we make that jump from the individual learner, turning them into an evangelist for their company and spreading the word that way? Um, because now it's better than an upsell. I mean, I could get them to buy another course, right? Yeah. Or I could get them to buy 10 or 20 through that company and trying to find that mechanism and how that naturally works. I mean, they're the best salespeople we have, are people who have succeeded through our course and are now using it and succeeding in their job. And so we want to leverage that uh a bit more and really help them to spread it because they will be able to use the skills they've learned better if everyone else knows what they're talking about now.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

So nice. Okay. So and that's what you're focusing on Q2 this year, is like how can you get better at that? And um, I know you wrote in the the notes you sent me before we we got in the call about building out your MQL funnel, which most people I think listening, that's not the language they're using. Marketing qualified lead, which is a more enterprise kind of a uh term, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 35:24

It's the under engineer in me. I have to start using these acronyms and stuff, you know, the GDT, right? So I have to learn marketing qualified lead. It's honestly something I didn't know even know existed probably three years ago. So yeah, uh, if you don't know what those are, don't worry about it. But marketing qualified leads are really it's really when your marketing system triggers, uh at least for us, it's when your marketing system triggers a manual review from a salesperson, essentially, of hey, this is someone that might be one of your target audiences, right? Yeah, for example, um, we just had this the other day. We saw um Toyota Manufacturing downloaded one of our things, right? Well, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

That's what we're just coming on, yeah.

MQLs SQLs And White-Glove Leads

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Exactly, right? We need is all automated and all that stuff, but um, an MQL is basically where the system knows to now say, Hey, that's that's a big deal. Like, hey, pay attention to that. We need a white glove approach for this. This is not, oh, let's just put them in a funnel and see how they do. You know, it's it's uh hey, let's see if we can help them, just see if even if they want to talk to a trainer or see, you know, like that. Um, so things like that, you know, is really what that is. And those turn into SQLs, where SQL is a sales qualified lead, where once they do the outreach, hey, the salesperson says, Hey, there's something here, right? Now we can we can reach out. So for those of you in the B2B space, you know, it it's it's really very similar to the B2C. It just has these, um, you can view it as like, you know, your funnels are your autopilot, right? But your um your MQL is really, hey, take your put your hands on the back on the stick, you know, you gotta, you gotta fly this one, you gotta fly this one manually because this is a big deal. Um, so you know, addressing that and making sure you have that kind of system in place is important. Nice. Um and for example, our students that take our course, you know, if they are at one of our target clients, they become MQLs, right? Because now, hey, we've got an in here. We've got we, you know, there's different personas, but you know, have an influencer, which is someone who potentially could influence a decision in the corporate world, and you have a champion uh or an evangelist of someone who is, we want GDT basics in here, right? They might not have complete influence or they might not have the power to do it, but they're going to be promoting us within those companies. And so that is kind of the stepping stone between the B2C world and the B2B. That a lot of I'm sure people out there who are selling B2C courses, but know that there's a corporate need for what they have, um, that's probably the fastest path to do that is really see who I should I just have a conversation with manually, right? It doesn't have to be everybody, but who's my target that I would want to have a manual sales process now for? Just a conversation, just a call, even just an email. Hey, is there anything I can help you with? What are you struggling with? Um, you know, that type of stuff. So so that's that's kind of the bridging the the chasm between B2C and B2B that we see.

Marketing Without The Slimy Stuff

SPEAKER_02 38:16

We were discussing this kind of briefly before we before we hit record, but like there's there's a lot of people who are listening to the podcast right now. And if this is you, and you you when when I describe this, if you think that's that's me, I see you, and it's okay. It's alright that you feel like this. If you if you feel like, you know what, I like making content, I like making courses, and I just, oh, I just don't like doing the sales for it. I don't like making doing promotions, I don't like writing sales pages. It's okay. Like a lot of people think that because of what I help people with and what I teach, that I'm gonna judge them when they don't like doing those things. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's the that's the reason I started the business is because there are people who don't like it, and I'm kind of here to help. I'm not here to like judge people about it. No, but you said that your original belief was that sales was beneath you. I'm an engineer, that's not something I want to think about. And now what you wrote when you uh when I sent you some questions before we got started was that you think marketing is the business. Could you talk me through that change in mindset that you've gone through there?

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I mean, it's a tough pill to swallow being an engineer. Uh, we have we were brought up by having sales decisions destroy hard work that we've seen being done time and time again. So naturally, the the the sales department and the engineering department, um, sales doesn't quite hate engineering. Engineering really hates sales. And so kind of being in that that mode, because you know, we're we're trying to get a result, we're trying to get things done, right? As an engineer, we are we are very focused on an outcome and a deliverable that works and is safe and is effective, you know. And sales trying to push that envelope based on not having any knowledge has always been kind of that that trouble with with at least me personally, and I think with a lot of the colleagues that I have had in the engineering space. So this is something personally with me, um, again, sales just based on my career. Uh, but the marketing side too, right? We don't like the slimy, you know, um thing here. We don't like, oh man, like if I see another LinkedIn post about, you know, just oh, I was, you know, another founder saying, I was talking to the janitor the other day, and here are five things I learned from, you know, about about my email funnel by just talking to him. You know, it's like this all this BS stuff that is out there that is such, you know, with AI kind of conversation. But I go on LinkedIn a lot. Is that what all the posts are like? Oh, it is. It's every post. It's now every post. It's just these humble brags and these, you know, these things about it, it gets ridiculous. So I shouldn't say it's LinkedIn's one of our best channels, but but we try to we try to do it in a different way, you know. Um so so you also kind of get that uneasiness because it's like, how do I do this without all that nonsense? Right. Um, but then you start a business and you realize really quickly that, you know, the from the engineering standpoint, let's let's say the engineer is the course creator, right? You're creating a course, you're delivering a result, right? You're engineering something, you're developing something that starts with a spec, has deliverables, meets a result, and is testable, right? That you can track and all that stuff, right? That's like the engineering side of that. Um but you don't realize that when you get into things, um you know, I I now that I run the business, the irony is very thick with this. Uh, if no one knows you exist, it doesn't matter how helpful you are. And I think that's really what the powerful thing that got me over it is you are the only one. I mean, when you start out, right, you're the only one that can remind people that you exist. You have to get in front of people, right? You're not gonna find your wife or husband if you don't go on dates, right? It just doesn't exist, even if you're like, oh, I I I really want to find someone, you know, it's the same analogy there. And you don't have to be slimy, you don't have to be salesy, you just have to focus on the problem and fall in love with that problem and make sure that you help people with the problem, regardless if they buy your course or not. And I think that's what I did. I mean, I my first step before I even had a course was I developed that website. Um, just because I wanted to solve this problem one way or the other. I even started writing a book. That was even going to be my first, like a reference guide was gonna be my first product. And then I realized, well, online course this is 2015, you know, online courses are huge. Uh, and so I developed an online course, but it wasn't until I found that audience and fell in love with solving the audience's problems and emphasis, empathizing with that audience and being part of that audience, right? I was an engineer that struggled with this stuff. I didn't get taught in school. I struggled with it, learning it. I had to learn it the hard way. If you can really be passionate about the problem and about your audience instead of the solution, you will not feel slimy doing it. And I think that's what taught me to be a better marketer, is it's just getting in front of people, right? That's you need attention. You can't not do things without attention, you know. So if they don't know you exist, it doesn't matter how um it doesn't matter how wise you are, and doesn't matter how helpful you are, if they're not taking my course, they're not going to get better at GDT. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

So if I didn't go through that process of just putting myself out there, right? And and get Rejected, right? You get you have to also get used to being rejected. Hey, I'm getting sick of this. Unsubscribe. Why are you guys doing all this? You know, like and I we we just got an email the other day. Um, kind of funny story. We did a uh we do memes in our email just to kind of have add some levity and stuff, and we did a breaking bad meme. Um, where the show breaking bad, you know. Uh and so um we we got someone the other day, we we got a you know, a lot of people enjoyed it, but we got emails from people saying that I'm unsubscribing, this is something I don't like companies that promote drug manufacturing. Is that what they thought that TV show was doing? I think that's uh and and you know, at a certain point, like people are gonna meet. It doesn't go well for him.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

I'm like, if the message of the show is you should do this too. I'm like, and I remember I went back to my team, I'm like, what was the meaning? It was just something, you know, with with Walter White on the screen doing something or talking, and um, and I'm like, you know, so every like you you do have to get over that fact of everyone shouldn't like you. That's a good thing, like and that's something you really have to do because if everyone like there A, it's impossible, it's not gonna happen. There's there's a lot of nonsense out there and stuff, but you really have to focus on, you know, who you're going after, and as I said, really empathize with them and fall in love with the problems they face and your ability to address those, right? And if you can do that and truly care about who you're serving, it's not marketing, it's it's helping, right? And I think that's what I instill in our we we do have two sales ladies now. Um, and they're not pushy salespeople. They're not like, oh, well, I need your, you know, I need you to get back. Oh, this offer is off. Like, oh, come on, what is it gonna take to close this? No, they're just like, you know, hey, we've got some openings coming up for training, we've got some, you know, availability. Here's this. But um, we really want to help your team solve this issue, the reason you came to us, right? You came to us because you just hired 20 new engineers and they don't even know the letters G, D, and T yet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

So Yeah, I think it's so important because it's like everyone has this impression of sales, which is it's not unfounded, but of the the slimy, scammy, pushy, because that's what bad sales is. Bad sales is often done that way by really annoying people who had never got any good sales training. Um, but it doesn't mean it has to be like that. It's like saying, you know, I um I went to a a shitty restaurant that served me bad food, and therefore that's the only, you know, I don't want to ever go to a restaurant because that's the other, it's like, no, well, just don't go to those restaurants.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Exactly.

Where To Find Tom

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Right? You know, it's like do it, do it well. It's like I say to people when they're uh talking about doing promotions to their audience. It's like everyone thinks it's either be spammy and sales y or don't send a promotion and don't make money. And it's like uh if only, if only we lived in a world where there was more than two options, you know? It's like it's like we just just do a good job, send emails that people will like to receive. It's not this, it's not easy to do that, but it's possible. And then you get to you know, make sales and make money. It's just like that's and well make sales, make money, sorry, but uh uh do but make sales in a way that you feel good about, and it's like this is this is possible, this is a thing that can exist. And if you're listening and you're not convinced of this, just listen to some more of the episodes of the podcast. It's like trust me, this is doable, you can do this. Um, Tom, this has been awesome. I have absolutely loved this episode. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. Um can you tell us if someone wants to go just check out or see what you've been up to and what you're doing? Like, I know that most people listening are not going to be into G D T, but if they're interested in how you're doing this, where should they go?

SPEAKER_00 47:50

Of course. Um, visit uh gdandtbasics.com. Um that is that kind of shows you our strategy, if you really want to see it. Um, the strategy of just prevent or just present value to everybody, and you will get that attention, right? And that's kind of what we've done. Um, you can also find me on LinkedIn. Uh, that's my only social media. I, you know, we I'm not the biggest fan of social media, like personally.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

You know, if you want to know all the Tom learn from walking through the park and watching someone fly a kite, then you too should go to LinkedIn slash Tom Dash Guys.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Absolutely. No, uh absolutely reach out on LinkedIn if if I can help you or um if you have any questions for me. Uh absolutely. You know, uh the the the great thing I have now, I have such an amazing team right now, and I'm getting more and more into um, you know, I I love talking to course creators. I love talking and and kind of seeing where y'all at. So um be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd I'd love to meet you.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Tom, this has been fantastic. I really, really appreciate you um and everything you've kind of shared with everyone today. Um thanks so much, and thanks to everyone listening as well. Really appreciate your time. Uh, we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, John. Take care.