He got his parent’s blessings to drop out of college. Naturally, Marc Thibodeau’s parents were concerned initially. He felt like it was a waste of his time since he didn’t learn any of the practical aspects of marketing or business. So, he made his case before his parents by showing his parents his plan for dropping out. Today he’s the Co-founder of CoachLab, an all-in-one platform to help coaches and consultants launch products, subscriptions and more.
Listen in as he shares his journey and what he calls “cheat coades” to get where you want to be with Jonaed. Special
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I Will Teach You How to Be Rich
No Degree Podcast EP 41 with Marc Thibodeau Transcript
[0:00:00]
Jonaed: Welcome to the 41st episode of the No Degree podcast. Today’s guest is Marc Thibodeau. Marc has always had a passion for entrepreneurship. He wanted to get involved in business ever since he worked at a grocery store in high school. When Marc was in high school, he took an online marketing course. He went to college for a bit.
He hoped he would learn from the experts. Unfortunately, he didn't learn any of the practical aspects of marketing or business things. He felt it was a waste of his time. He met his mentor who eventually became his cult founder for his current business Coach Lab, an all in one platform to help coaches and consultants launch products, subscriptions, and much more. Learn how Marc learned marketing and utilize it to help his current business grow. Subscribe to our Patreon@patreon.com/nodegree. Every contribution is appreciated. This show is impossible without you. Let's get the show started. Hey Marc, can you give a brief introduction of what you do today?
Marc: Yeah, for sure. I'm one of the founders at Coach Lab and basically what we do it's an all in one platform for coaches and consultants to build their brand more quickly and effectively. We realized over time that a lot of coaches just want to coach and they don't want to spend a lot of time just increasing their workload. WordPress has this problem where you always have to add plugins and add-ons, stuff like that.
So we're giving them all the tools that they need. So, you know, template funnels, stores so they can create their products, subscription. They can also have a calendar and et cetera, just to have everything in one platform so they don't have to have the hassle to search for everything.
Jonaed: Wow. That’s awesome. How did you get the idea for that?
Marc: I was a consultant at first and then my co-founder was a consultant. He was my mentor before he became my co-founder. We were kind of picking like what we wanted to do on this market because we had the product ready to go and we just wanted to know which market we want to go to.
And we realized that a lot of coaches and consultants have this problem where they just want to do the work instead of actually increasing the workload with stuff they don’t really want to do. We tried it out to see if coaches would be a good fit and so far we have no regrets. We went from site to Coach Lab, and we have no regrets in going in that direction.
Jonaed: That's so cool. Now let's kind of take it back. How was high school like for you and what did you want to become in high school?
Marc: What I wanted to become in high school was like a majority of many things. Like I would change every single day what I wanted to do, architect would be a cool idea. Halfway point, I wanted to be some sort of youtuber for sure, around that space as well and even carpentry was something that I was interested on. But I always had in the back of my mind that I just always wanted to not having somebody in the back of my ear telling me what to do. And then I didn't really know how business worked back in the day. I wouldn't even think of owning a business back then.
Jonaed: Does any high school kid really know how businesses run, right? We have the ideas like, hey, you just make money but it's a lot more complicated than that.
Marc: Yeah. Yeah, totally man. But one of the things I realized is that high school didn't really prepare me to do business so I had to learn everything on my own and when I was in 12th grade going to college, I wanted to learn how marketing worked because I was talking to my brother a lot and he's in business as well. He was like, “You know, marketing is a good skill to learn so you should learn how marketing works.”
I said, “Sure.” So the day after I graduated high school, I started to take this online course, which it was about going from zero to 60 in digital marketing, where there was a job or just entrepreneur and all. Basically, for me was just to learn how marketing worked and it was a really great course for me to begin how marketing worked.
And then I was going to college and I was curious, and I was like, I hope college actually teaches what this type of people teach because they're actual experts in this industry. I hope college talks about that as well and I went to college. That was farther from the truth.
I mean, I was asking the teacher, I was like, “Hey, are we going to learn about like, SEO? Are we going to learn about email marketing? Are we going to learn about social media?” He's like, “Yeah, yeah, no problem. We're going to learn all that.” We never learned a single thing about that. And then when I was in college, I just felt like it was a waste of time at one point because I was like, well, look at all these experts and making online courses about learning all the things you need to learn about business and marketing. I'm just here stuck in college, just learning about how to make a billboard ad. You know what I mean? So I just felt like I was stuck in college. At one point I was kind of depressed being in college and that was like the first year.
Before the second year, when I was at summer, I actually found my mentor, who is my co-founder to this day. He would teach me more about marketing than anybody else. He was a great person to learn by. He ran a community called the Gridless Life, which is people that just want to live a simple life and not have all this technologies.
[0:05:05]
I was running his social media and stuff like that and that way I learned how to do social media marketing and all this stuff. And then he’s seen my progression that was making over time. Fast forward to under a year later he asked me, “Hey, do you want to be a co-founder to what I'm doing?” I said, “Absolutely.”
Jonaed: Wow. So how did you meet your mentor?
Marc: It was a referral from my brother. I had an idea in my head that I need to have a mentor, which is like, everybody. I think everybody needs a mentor, right? I was like, “Do you know anybody who’s good at marketing that I can learn from?” He said, “Yeah, sure.”
So a few days later he comes back and he said, “Hey, I know this guy, Dave, you know, he's pretty good at marketing. He used to work in an incubator before, you know, he's really smart.” So I said, “Sure.” So, I messaged him and then we went back and forth. A few days later we decided to meet. Essentially I thought it was going to be like, maybe a 30 - 40 minute conversation ended up being about like three hours.
Jonaed: Wow. That's amazing.
Marc: Yeah. I mean, we built this amazing connection and he even told me the other day, it's like the first time we met, “I can already tell you can be a good co-founder. Even though you didn't have the right skills at the time.” I was like, “You know, that's pretty good, right?” And, you know, keep in mind that my mentor Dave is not a few years older than me.
Jonaed: How old are you? Just to tell the audience.
Marc: Yeah, I'm 20 years old and my mentor is more in his forties here. I think he's 42. He's a young guy. I mean, he's high energetic, he's super happy, super positive all the time. I'm super happy that I got him as a co-founder and we share a lot of the same core values as well, which is something that is really more important. When you have a co-founder, it's like worse than marriage because you get to see them every single day, right? So you better hope that you pick the good co-founders.
Jonaed: Did you have any part-time jobs throughout high school or something like that?
Marc: When I was in high school in my last year, I used to work at a [Phonetic] at the grocery store and that's when I realized I don't want to work for someone because people telling me what to do is -- it feels like micromanaging and I just don't like that. Before that I used to work as a night guard from my uncle's trailer park, which is like the chillest job in the world because I can work at the same time that I was night guarding. So that was pretty much my career as a high school student.
Jonaed: Nice, nice. Now, how did you start the social media for your mentor? Like how did that happen?
Marc: Yeah. I think it was just like something that he just didn't want to work on and he just asked me. So, one day I was just working then he called me, he said, “Hey, do you want to do my social media stuff? I have a lot of things on my plate and I just don't have time for that, you know. Do you want to do it? Plus they will give you experience on social media marketing.” I said, “Totally.” And then I started doing that and then I did that for a good four, five months.
And then I started my first startup, which, unfortunately didn't work. After that, he asked me to be a co-founder. I was pretty lucky that I went from startup to startup right after that.
Jonaed: So, do you mind talking about your first startup and what did you learn from that? Why did it fail?
Marc: I went to an incubator and you still need that. They don't have consultants because at the time I was a consultant and there was these two guys that were working on a cryptocurrency company and that's something that interests me. I just asked, you know, “Hey, I think this is a good idea. I want to be a co-founder of this.” They said, “Sure.” We worked on it for a while then we just realized that it wasn't really working out on the stuff that we're working on. It's just a lot of things that we just didn't really align, like value-wise so I just felt like it wasn't the right starter for me. But they're all cool guys, but it wasn't just the right starter for me. Like I said, I was fortunate to go from startup to startup.
Jonaed: What would you have done differently in the sense of how would you have identified that it wasn't a good startup for you at that time? Was there anything you could have done?
Marc: Yeah. One of the things definitely would have done is to know more about the co-founders and about the way that they work and then the way that they behave. I mean, a lot of the things that makes startups very successful is founders that share the same core value and a lot of techie founders, they're more straightforward and they don't think about anything else. But when it comes to like the CEO or COO stuff like that they're more like visionary, they're more open stuff like that. So there needs to be a balance of things that makes co-founders more balanced in the sense that they don't have to argue every two minutes about -- should we do this? Should we do that? Or I think we should do this. Stuff like that.
Jonaed: Okay. Awesome. Now, what lessons did you really take forward after that, that you're using in your current startup?
[0:09:56]
Marc: I think that the main thing that I've learned from that is having the founder with the same amount of values as well and that's something that is very underestimated for most founders. You have to know your founder for a long time. Like my mentor, I knew him for about a year so I knew him and I knew how he worked. At the same time he knew how I worked. So it wasn't a question of like, I hope I can trust this guy as a co-founder. It was more like we can work together. We just need to figure out what we need to do that's moving forward and then just making sure that they're having open communication.
So they don't lie, they don't hide secrets from each other. They keep an open communication and just making sure that the start-up goes well, and if it's not going well, then they need to talk together to see how they can fix it.
Jonaed: What are some good marketing resources that you learned marketing from? You mentioned you took like an online course, can you give some advice on how you would recommend someone to go about learning marketing on their own?
Marc: In my case, the first online course that I've ever taken, I still recommend people to use it. I actually recommended somebody a few months ago to take this course Digital Marketing course. It's for people that just have no experience in digital marketing and from going to no experience to have the skills to get a job with no degree.
Jonaed: How much does that cost?
Marc: Last time I remember it was about $150.
Jonaed: Yeah, that's nothing.
Marc: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a lot of courses that they sell about like $3,000 and it is like the basic, right? I recommend that course any day. And even Udemy, there's a lot of great courses on Udemy for like $12. I'm sure that you've taken some of those courses in Udemy and you liked them, right?
Jonaed: Yeah, I think I took a video editing course. And I'm not the best video -- I didn't really finish it, but look, I got the fundamentals and I thought it was well worth the money.
Marc: Yeah. I mean, it's well worth the money for sure. I think one of the best course I've ever taken was, and it's free actually. You can look it up on YouTube, it's called Y Combinator Online Startup School.
It teaches you how to start a startup and actually go from zero to $10,000 MRR. Basically it gives you the right resources and the right mindset to start as a founder and I have no risk taking that course. I mean, they teach you the things that you need to know. So the main thing that I've learned, and this is something that people very underestimate is talking to users, right?
A lot of founders, they just don't talk to users and they just assume that they're going to get sales. Also, not just about sales, but also build relationship with your users because I talk frequently to my users just making sure that they're good, how I can help and just making sure that they get a six out of five star experience. So that's my goal with them.
Jonaed: Now, when did you learn that talking to users is very important? I know people who it's easy to think, hey, my product is amazing and it's easy to think like, hey, this is how it should be. But at the end of the day, the customer is always right.
Marc: Exactly. It was day one from Y Combinator. There's a video called How To Talk To Users and one of the main things is that a lot of founders, they create something for them, which is good to start, but like founders also need to create a big solution to a problem that someone is facing. I'll give you an example. So, if you think of Dropbox, for example, they built a tool that basically helps people put their storage online without using a USB, right?
The way that he talked to users was he went to local libraries with people that had USB sticks and he would go to people and just be like, “Hey, when it comes to putting your storage on your computer, like, you know, what's the problem.” He's like, “Well, I just wish there was a tool online for that.”
I think this is his origin story where he went on a trip and he was in school at the time and he forgot his USB stick so he couldn't really do much work there. Number one thing is just pretty much like, do you have that problem and see if other people have that problem as well.
Jonaed: Okay. What are some insights that you learned, you know, generic insights that you learned by talking to users that you would have missed by not talking to them?
Marc: Knowing our market pretty much like the way that we went on the approach of getting coaches and consultants that we just literally talked to coaches and consultants and see what tools are they using, what they like about it and what they don't like about it, right?
And based on that, we could kind of like mold it in a way that it's fitting for them. That's the main thing is just like, you want to learn what they use, what they read, what they do. That's pretty much when it comes to that.
Jonaed: What are some mistakes you've made and some challenges you faced?
Marc: Challenges you face about talking to users?
Jonaed: No, just in general, just general throughout your journey.
Marc: Reading books is something that is super important as a founder to do, to keep your mind sharp. I went for a long stretch of just not taking any online courses and not reading any books. That kind of brings you to a lazy mindset where it's just like you can know of you can be better just by like taking a few online courses per week and just like making sure your mind is sharp.
[0:1504]
Working out is important as well. Founders are -- their job is required to have their mind sharp when they work. When they don't read books, when they don't work out, when they don't take online courses, their mind just becomes less sharpened. So definitely that's something that I do now and that's something that I just want to make sure that that I keep doing for sure. So that's the mistake that I've made is just not doing that.
Jonaed: Was it that when you didn't work out, you didn't read or was there a time that you've read, but didn't work out the time that you worked out, but didn't read, did you have that? Or it was just like, hey, I didn't do anything and I did all this.
Marc: I think it was just like the pandemic thing. There was no gyms open, and then I hadn't like no weights at home. So it's just like my motivation for work. And I was just like plummeting and the COVID stuff, it was almost like a seasonal depression whereI just felt like not doing anything. This is about April to like…
Jonaed: So, like six months ago.
Marc: Yeah, exactly and that was something that I just like, yeah, I had enough. I was just not doing anything, so I want to be a good founder. I need to step up my game and then hopefully where I'm at, the pandemic and the COVID stuff is not as bad. So it opened earlier than most people did. They got me back going into my feet there.
Jonaed: These things happen slowly, right? It's like one day of not working out, one week of not working out, two weeks. When did you realize like, hey, I'm different and I got to snap out of this?
Marc: I've been always a heavy person since I was born so that's just something that if I didn't work out for four days, I just felt lazy. I was just like, I have to work out and I have to work out. I just forced myself to just basically go back to working out slowly but surely. And like, yeah, you can't just say I'm running a marathon when you're not ready to run a marathon.
It's just like, you know, starting from three days a week and then four days a week, and now I'm actually doing a challenge right now, it’s called the 75 Hard challenge. You have to work out two times a day. You have to drink one gallon of water, read 10 pages a day. You have to follow a diet, no alcohol, no cheat meals, et cetera. So that helps me keep a mind chart, is that 75 days…
Jonaed: For 75 days?
Marc: For 75 days straight, yeah.
Jonaed: So how far are you into it?
Marc: I'm on my fifth day today and I went jogging this morning. I really didn't want to go, but I did anyway and that's going to help me put my mental game sharpened.
Jonaed: That's amazing. I used to wrestle in high school and one of my favorite quotes from a wrestling camp was discipline is doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it. You know, sometimes like you don't want to run, you don't want to do that, but you just got to do it. And even a little goes a long way. Now, when did the book play in? So you started going back to the gym, what was the book situation? Like you stopped going to gym and stop reading at the same time?
Marc: It was kind of like an on and off thing. I would read like two books in a row and then I would just not read for like a month, month and a half and then I start again. So I just decided to read like two chapters a day and then that's less demanding.
So I did that. And then I can just like read every day now. Usually I need to read like five chapters a day and that's not really effective. So I just basically found a strategy to just read one or two chapters a day, and that's how it helped me read every day.
Jonaed: Okay, do you end up reading five chapters sometimes or you kind of stick to the one to two and…
Marc: If I'm like really intense in the book I could, yeah. But usually, I kind of stick it to one, one to two, because Coach Lab is a lot of work. But if I'm really intense in the book, for sure.
Jonaed: Yeah. Now, did you face any repercussions or issues with your parents when you stopped college or they were pretty supportive of you.
Marc: Yeah, that's a good question. They were supportive all the way. Actually with every parent, they are kind of concerned, like, “Oh, what are you going to do when you're dropping out?” I had a plan and I basically showed them my plan, this is what I want to do. It's not like I'm quitting college and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. So I showed them the plan and they said, “Hey, if you think that's the right move for you to do, go ahead. We don't have any problem with that.” So I'm pretty fortunate to have parents like that, that supported that journey.
Jonaed: You mentioned your brother and your brother was in business. Do you mind sharing how he influenced you?
Marc: My brother, he's not in this anymore. He's working for an AI company in Calgary but he was doing a biotech startup before actually. He knows a lot about startups and tech startups and marketing and so that kind of gave me almost like a cheat code for me knowing how to start up and giving me the right resources to work effectively and just making sure that I'm okay.
I know the right things I need to learn in order from going from A to B when it comes to starting a startup. So I kind of see my brother and my mentor, now my co-founder as kind of like cheat codes for me to get where I want to be.
[0:20:03]
Jonaed: Yeah. Have you ever felt insecure about not having the degree?
Marc: There was a little bit of FOMO. I'll kind of explain the story. I kind of debated whether I wanted to leave college for a good two months. I was talking to my mentor. I was like, “I want to leave college, but I just have this fear of having no degree and nobody's going to hire me and stuff like that.” He's like, “Well, based on my experience, I've seen a lot of people that have no degrees or people that hire people and they don't even ask for the degree.” We're going to a new era of having jobs with no degrees required. For example, it's good for you to have a college degree. I'm not going to be like, “Oh, you have a college degree. I’m not going to hide your head but it's not an obligation for you to have. I mean, if you can prove to me that you can do the work and you're dedicated and you share the same values as the company does. I mean, it's a no brainer for me to hire, right?” I think that's the mindset of every company should have.
I mean, I can understand, you know, doctors and engineers, they need to have a degree. But when it comes to marketing and plumbing, stuff like that, you don't need to have a degree. It doesn't make any sense for me to go two to three years in college to know something that I can learn in a few weeks.
Jonaed: Yeah. Now what are some things that you're still working on and what are some topics that you're still trying to learn more about and how are you going about learning them?
Marc: You can never stop learning about marketing and startups. I mean, YC is still something that I watch to this day. I still watch a lot of, you know, Udemy course keeps my mind sharp to making sure about SaaS and stuff like that. And also like learning about our users as well. So like learning about our industry and kind of know what is the mindset of a coach, right? Like I said, my founder, he’s been a coach, he's been a mentor and he's been a consultant so he has that mindset and for me as a 20 year old is important for me to learn that as well.
Jonaed: Now, you're extremely young and into business and obviously there are a lot of courses now, how do you separate a good course from a bad course? Because there are people who are paying these two, three, five, 10K, you know. I've heard of crazy numbers for -- and it's basically like two or three books, repackaged and up charged.
Marc: Yeah.
Jonaed: So how do you sort of avoid that and what would you recommend so someone can be more cost conscious or at least smarter about it.
Marc: There's a lot of YouTube that expose the fake gurus. You know, I'm not going to mention any names, but a lot of times those fake gurus, they sell the dream instead of actually learn what they want to learn. Like if they show their Lamborghini that they probably rented, they sell. If they sell the dream, you know, that's a red sign, a red flag, I mean, a lot of things. They don't really talk about what you're going to learn, it's more like, you know, you can achieve this and you can achieve that.
I basically know from five seconds that I can tell this is not a good course and courses that are between $3,000 range, like you must give me a shit ton of value before I even consider paying that amount. One of my main course right now, Dan Martell, he’s a SaaS Coach and he's giving me a lot of that value before I even considered paying for his coaching. He's a good coach. He actually teaches what he preaches and a lot of fake gurus, they never had the experience of actually doing stuff like that. If you teach how to sell stuff on Amazon, but they never had any experience, like that's a red flag.
Background check is very important as well. If they say you can make $30 million on e-commerce, but if you check, they never made anything or they try to make something, but they fail dramatically, that's a big red flag. This is kind of one of the things where it sounds like a good thing, but they kind of overuse it. It's like testimonials and social proof, like, oh, this person made $30 million.
Jonaed: All that can be easily faked. Screenshots can be faked and all that. You have to really do the background check, but how did you avoid it? I just know so many people who are sort of your age, their funnel is targeted. You’re the prime demographic. How did you realize because a lot of people don't realize till they buy the course and they’re like, oh crap, it wasn't worth the money. Or they buy in then they were like, they spent so much money that they justify why it's the best course ever.
Marc: I think for me, it's more like what do I get out of it? So it's like, I want to learn this. Well, is this person teaching this for free before I even consider buying his course? Yeah, for sure. Let's go back to the example with Dan. Like he has a lot of free materials and a lot of free resources for me to use. I'm like, well, imagine if I pay him right, imagine the information he can give me if I pay him, right? Paying and what was a really good idea, it was a good investment because he was giving me a lot more than the free resources.
If it's giving you a lot of value before even offering you anything, that's a good sign for you to invest in that course. But if they're, like I said, like selling you the dream of having the Lamborghini or the Tesla before telling you about the product that they have.
[0:25:02]
Jonaed: I mean, that's so true because they all have these webinars and the webinars will just show the possibilities, but it won't show any tangible info. So it's basically, get as much tangible info that you can because you know, the paid info is going to be much better.
Marc: That's the main thing that I look for. I don't know if you follow some of those channels that expose fake gurus.
Jonaed: I think Mike Winnet is one of them who exposes a lot of them.
Marc: You’ve seen the bingo thing?
Jonaed: Yeah. I’ve seen the Contrapreneur Bingo and I'll put that in the show notes. It's just very good because I just see it so much. It's like people who don't make any target, people who don't make a lot and they get them into debt and they don't really get much out of it. And it just really sucks because there's just like these Udemy courses that are $13.00 there, some courses $150.00 to $500.00. I mean, I've paid, whatever the $2000 to $3000 for different courses, but again, they weren't selling a dream. It was something very specific like XYZ and the people lived the life. Again, I would not recommend them as the first courses that you kind of take, more of after you have gotten your feet wet.
So now you don't have to disclose your salary, but what's the typical salary range for someone in a startup, like early stage. You know, like a young person who's in their twenties, what can they expect to make?
Marc: I think a lot of people in my age think that there's just going to start a company and they're going to make million dollars just out of thin air.
Jonaed: I wish it was like that.
Marc: Me too, man, but that's not the case. I think one of the main things, when it comes to the salary, before even considering about how much you're making, just making sure that you love what you do. And even though you're not making any sort of money at the start, at least it's just making sure that every day you still love what you're doing, right? But at the beginning stage, I mean, it really depends on what you're selling and what's your price. It's hard for me to give a clear answer on that, but it really depends on what you're selling and what's the price of what you're selling for sure.
Jonaed: You’re around a lot of people who are in startups. Who shouldn't be in startups because it's really not for everyone. Who would you kind of say is not meant for startups?
Marc: There's a lot of people that they think they can be an entrepreneur, but really they're kind of like they have the wantrepreneur mindset where it's like, they always talk about how they want to build a successful business and how they always want to be the next Elon Musk. But they never really do anything.
These are not the type of people that should really be in space because starting a startup it's not easy and a lot of people just think, like, if I start a business, somehow we'll just make money. And like a lot of people that have the mindset wantrepreneurs and also like people that just want a secure salary. I mean, some of these figures, they talk about like they really shit on the 9 to 5. Talk about like it’s the worst thing ever. But it's not, there's a lot of people that they just prefer a job.
Jonaed: Yeah, steady schedule, a steady paycheck. They don't have to worry. They have no obligations because I'm pretty sure, look, if I had a kid right now, I would be in a totally different position. If I had parents I got to take care of. That salary is something I need and some people just like stability, right? I mean, for me, I don't need it, and you, you know, you crave something else, but that's perfectly fine.
Marc: Yeah, man. I mean, it's everybody's direction, man, but a lot of people it's better for them to just have a 9 to 5 job and people that just have no money, don't sort of startup. If you really have no money, have a lot of debt right now, if you're over $10,000 in debt and you have a lot of things to pay, it's not a good time to sort of startup. That's pretty much the answer to that.
Jonaed: No, I think that's some great advice. Now are you still in contact with your high school friends? Who are your friends now?
Marc: I still talk to some of the people that I have in high school there. I mean, we all had good times in high school and we still talk once a while. You realize over time, you hang out with them in high school, just because you have no one else to hang out with. You don't even know who you are in high school. So you just hang out with anybody that thinks you're cool. I barely hang out with people that I have in high school, because they don't really share the same core values as I do. I'd rather hang out with people that are in entrepreneurial mindset.
It's not because I don't like hanging with them. Like I love having conversations with them. But I'd rather surround myself with people that have the same sort of mindset as I do. Like I said, I have good relationship with them. I'd rather hang out with, you know, people like my brother who has the same mindset and my co-founder as well and people that are in my space as well.
Jonaed: Yeah, no, I mean, that's very important. What are some books that have really impacted you? Like if you had to give three books, two to three books that you would say, “Hey, you know what, if you want to learn XYZ, this is what you got to do.” What would you recommend?
Marc: Yeah. So the first book that pops in my head is the Purple Cow by Seth Godin. The book basically talks about creating a product that is worth talking about. I'll tell you a little bit of background about Purple Cow. So, imagine you drive by a field every day and you see cows and like just regular cows and then one day you drive by and you see a purple cow.
[0:30:07]
That is worth talking about to your friends, right? So you need to create a product that is so remarkable that people will talk about it as well. I got a book, a thing here, another book that is a good book to read is, I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. I don't know if you've read the book, but it’s a really good book and it's basically giving you the starter pack on how to set up your life financially.
You don't have to worry about money anymore. So it basically gives you all the right advice for you to make sure that your money is always profiting.
Jonaed: And anything else, or those two are kind of what comes to mind?
Marc: I have a book here. Let me just check. There's nothing popping in my head, Small Giants, which is a great book and it's about companies that choose to be great instead of big. A lot of people, they think they need like a hundred employees to build successful companies. That's not simply true. There's a lot of companies that have…
Jonaed: Yeah, it was a small team.
Marc: Yeah. It was a small team and they made over a billion dollars. So that just proves to you that you don't need to have a big team to sell an exit, right?
Jonaed: Yeah, that's cool. Any specific stories that you're dying to share that you find would be really helpful?
Marc: I really like the topic that we were talking about, the fake gurus, I mean, that's something that it's always in my head when it comes to online courses and I really want to make sure that people like buy the right course that people want to buy and…
Jonaed: The right courses are like they’re worth the money. It’s just you have to do your research. I think the ones I listened to, I got the typical email list. You know, you get the stuff and then the guy had a podcast and I was like, I listened to a few episodes of the podcast and it was over a hundred episodes.
I was like, wow, this is like all the free advice. They definitely put a lot of stuff and there's no obligation. That was one thing that sealed the deal for me when I bought that course. The other one was the person has several books published and I was connected to them for a year. It was also the right timing because I think the right timing is also very important because it's like buying how to start a SaaS, but you're completely broke and all that stuff and you're in a bad position in life right now. It's not the time.
Marc: No man. I really want to learn about your advice about making sure that people buy the right courses. I'm just curious, like you asked me about the question, I'm like, how can you detect it? I just want to know your perspective on that.
Jonaed: You got to learn marketing, right? What these guys do is like they have you in their funnel. You have to know sales and marketing. Because once you can identify sales, you can identify when you're being sold to, and you can identify how they're doing it. I really love what you said. You have to identify that they're giving you value because a lot of people will think they don’t sell products, they sell hopes and dreams and the product is secondary.
So it's like they keep on. I think Mike Winnet has the great one where it's like the Contrapreneur Bingo. If they're using all these tactics, if they're just really being super aggressive, I find that the best courses, they're not high pressure salesman, they're not like, hey, you have to buy this. You have to buy this. This is amazing. And then again, do look on forums for reviews. Look on that stuff because forums, I can create a 100 testimonials if I really wanted to. You go take photos, you go take this. You could pay people like $50 for a testimonial and all that. But I think just really knowing the sales, knowing the personalities of the people, and then a lot of the fake gurus, they have bad people who work with them, have bad things to say about them.
People who have bought their product have said they got ripped off because you know, they'll say 30 day money back guarantee and they won't get their money back or all those things. So I think it's like little bits and pieces, but it comes down to sales and marketing. You know, those two things you'll understand like, oh, this is exactly what they're doing. Why are they selling me a life or a dream because they know that's what people like. It's less tangible. So that's kind of what I would do and I would say read a lot of books. Books are like $5 to $10 and maybe an expensive book is like $20.
Read a couple of books on marketing, on sales and all that and then once you learn enough, you'll see that a lot of these people, all they do is turn the books into videos. In my opinion, there's no point in paying $2,000 for a course when it's $10 for the book.
Marc: I can give a quick lesson on when it comes to reading books for sure. I have no doubt that reading books is definitely one of the best investments that I've went on over time. No doubt in my mind, the good thing about reading books, it basically gives you the right mindset of the philosophy, like a lot of Seth Godin books, it's all about marketing, right.
It doesn't really give you the practical skills, but it gives you the philosophy of the new age marketing. The permission marketing, just making sure that you get permission before you even offer something. Making sure that your product is remarkable, that people talk about it, all these things. Once you have the mindset of the actual good marketer, then you can see tactics that would help.
[0:35:01]
That's a good thing as well. Books are definitely a good thing. But one of the things about reading books is that people read books just for the sake of reading books, which can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing as well.
If you want to learn more about like marketing, don't go read a financial book. Make sure that the book that you read has to a certain extent, a solution to the problem you're having. And that's my direction when it comes to reading books. Because you don’t want to peddle something. You don't want to read something and then you just forget it. Four weeks later, you're like, “F***I forgot what, you know, what were the books? What about, right?. So just make sure that you read the book and then you actually test after reading a book, you test it to see if actually works and then it kind of keeps in your head.
Because when it comes to people that dropped out of college, usually they're the type of people that they learn through experience. And me like, looking at a textbook for like three hours, I can't do that. I really cannot. For me, it's like, I need to read it, which is very important, but I also need to experience it as well and then that will jam in my head.
Jonaed: I think to add onto that, one of my favorite quotes is knowledge without application is useless. It's very important to read, but if you don't apply what you read then this essentially just stored back somewhere and it's not making more sense. So it does make sense to read what makes sense is going to solve a problem for you.
And then sometimes read a book again. Like there are some books that, oh yeah, I would recommend you read again, just because the first time you're kind of getting the principles and ideas. The second time you already know the principles and ideas. Now you're thinking a lot while reading the book, right? You're kind of thinking more about the applications.
Marc: Definitely I'd read it a couple of times. Like, there's definitely a couple of books that I've read them for two or three times, for sure. Like you said the first time, it's kind of in your head, but you know, it's fresh. It's the second time you're getting into it. But the third time you're like, okay, I got it definitely. A few books that I would definitely read again, like I said, the Purple Cow is a good book, Small Giants as well. All these books that help you do that. And I think another thing, and I think you might agree on, it’s like there's a lot of books that it's just filtered the same thing that they're talking about.
There's a few, two books that I was just reading and it just talks about the exact same thing throughout the whole book. Have you ever read the book, was it 10X?
Jonaed: 10 X. No, I mean, I'm not a big Cardone fan, so I didn’t read it.
Marc: Whatever people want to say about Cardone, I don't really look into his stuff. I think I need to research his stuff there, but I read one of his few chapters there and it talks about it's my duty. It's my obligation. Like I understand, I get it. Like you can look at…
Jonaed: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me the tangible stuff.
Marc: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can look at the book and you can see exactly what he's talking about. Just like whatever you do with 10 X. It's like, okay. I get it, give me stuff to work with, right?
Jonaed: Yeah, I mean, look, some people are very good at taking the same thing and some people swear by it, so, you know, to each their own, but now let's start to wrap up.
What advice would you have to yourself or someone in a similar position to you? You know, who's in that position before college or they're early in college and they're kind of thinking like, hey, this isn't for me. What advice would you have for them?
Marc: Self-awareness and just know what your values and you stand for. Because a lot of high school kids, they don't know who they are and they don't have any values and they have a lot of insecurities. So I definitely would take the time to take an online course about like finding your values or like see a therapist to know who you really are.
Because like a lot of people, they want to start a business, but they are scared of what people are going to say. I bring back having values is so important that once you have values, your insecurities will kind of just fade away, kind of like magic, right? I don't know if you read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
Jonaed: I know of that book and I know it's a very, very good book.
Marc: Yeah. I mean, the few chapters, like people are saying it's like basic, but it kind of brings you to what he's actually talking about. And it's definitely the best book when it comes to finding who you are.
Jonaed: Yeah, I think it’s a great book for a young high school kid or early college. It's definitely a perfect book for that. So how would people get in contact with you?
Marc: You can send me an email to coachlab.io. I mean, that's where I'm at as well. I mean, if you want to try out, subscribe, we're actually giving a special deal here. I don’t know if you want me to plug here but okay. If people are listening, if you're a coach and consultant, if you want to try out the product, we're giving a 20% discount for the first 10 people that sign up after this podcast. So that's pretty much it. There. I should have asked about the plug there before.
Jonaed: No, no. You know, honestly, I'm going to tell you, always give a plug. I was listening to podcasts and it was like, one mistake a lot of guests make is they don't have a plug. You have to have -- like, if you're going on someone’s show, have a plug.
[0:40:00]
Have an offer because it's just wasted. So you don't have to ask, man. If you're giving a discount and you're adding value, and as long as you're not selling, you're not one of the fake gurus. So, you know, and if you were, I wouldn’t have you on.
Marc: You don't have to worry about that.
Jonaed: No, I mean, thank you for your time. Thank you for the advice. I think this is a really informative episode, especially. I think a lot of people really get value out of this and thank you for sharing your story.
Marc: Yeah, no problem. Glad to be here, man.
Jonaed: Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information was valuable and you've learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. No Degree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about the topics without bias. If you think this show’s worth a dollar or two, please check out our Patreon page. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards making future episodes even better. Follow us on Instagram or Snapchat at No Degree Podcast. On Facebook at facebook.com/NoDegreeInc. If you want to personally reach out to me, connect or follow me on LinkedIn @jonaedIqbal, spelled J-O-N-A-E-D, last name, I-Q-B-A-L. Until next time, no degree, no problem. Nodegree.com.
Outtro: “Yes. You got no degree. No problem. No problem. Any problem we can solve them, we got this. Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. If you did, , you know, now you know. Let’s sing that again everybody.”
“No degree, No problem. Any problem, we can solve them. Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. No Degree, no problem. Any problem we can solve them.”
“Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. Yeah”
[0:43:02] End of Audio