I am very excited to share with you an interview that I did with my good friend Kim Shivler! We talk about the journey that I went through building out my own online school. And how that has led me down the path of offering the ecourses up on my website as products rather than building my own platform for the school.

Check out her brand new podcast here.

Also, if you are interested in checking out my ecourses, click here.

Transcript

Kim: Welcome everybody to eCourse Stories. This is your host, Kim Shivler. Today I am so fortunate to interview Joe Pardo. Joe is an author, speaker, podcaster, web designer, and super entrepreneur. I call Joe a super entrepreneur because during this interview you’ll see all the wonderful thing he’s doing as an entrepreneur to help and inspire other entrepreneurs. As the host of the Dreamer’s Podcast, Joe considers himself a recorder of dreams as he interviews others about their dreams and how they make these dreams come true.

His inspiration interviews are designed to help everyone reach for and achieve their dreams. Joe has also had a passion for website creation since he was very young and built WordPress websites to help entrepreneurs launch their business. His book 31 Life Changing Concepts inspires people to change their lives for the better. Wow, I hope you can see why I call Joe a super entrepreneur. So today we’re going to dig into his business and passion and where online courses fit into this story.
Thanks for joining me, Joe.

Joe: Oh, thank you for having me, Kim. It’s so nice to be here and it’s so great to see you not that long ago and hopefully very soon again in Philly I think like two weeks, three weeks. It comes so quick doesn’t it?

Kim: Yes, it’s the week of the 18th.

Joe: Oh, wow. Yeah, it does come quick.

Kim: Yeah, and I’m going to Podcast Movement next week.

Joe: That’s awesome. I wish I could go. I was supposed to. Unfortunately due to money and of new baby it’s a little tough for me.

Kim: Yeah, it’s a big trip when you’ve got a new little one at home. And mine was last minute. I actually wasn’t going to go this year and then having just launched the podcast, we decided, you know what, I really needed to dig in and get there. So I will be there and then back for a week and then in Philadelphia, so I do hope I’ll get to see you again.

So let’s jump in and start talking about your businesses and online courses and how they all fit in. Because your business is so multifaceted, all the things that I just went over that you do and I see all of that working together to empower entrepreneurs, to build their dreams from the podcast, the book, your coaching, your websites. What makes you tick? Why is that important to you?

Joe: So for me … well, let me start with the podcast, because the podcast Dreamer’s Podcast, the idea was founded because I found out that apparently interviewing people was a thing that we could do as podcasters and I was like, “I could do that?” And I was like, “I know a bunch of business people because of my family’s business background and all that.” I was like, “But I know a lot more people who live their dreams.” So and I was like, “This is great, because I won’t get bored of it.”
Cause for like about two years before that I was told, “Hey, Joe. You should have a podcast.” And I’m like, “Well, what would I talk about?” “Oh, you love Disney, so it should be a Disney pod.” I mean, I’m wearing a Disney shirt right now. “So it should be a Disney podcast.” And I’m like, “I would get bored. I could probably get ten episodes in, wouldn’t even know what to talk about anymore.” Cause I go four to six times a year, but I don’t live … like if I live down there I think that I could maybe come up with something that would be … I could really stick to.

But for me as I go I know people who live their dreams and that way I could connect all of the common threads from these people that it doesn’t matter what your niche is, or your background, what industry you’re in. But it fits. Like you can make that work in a way that even though I’m not super niche when it comes to like, “Oh, we’re just this kind of a show or this kind of a show or even super niche where it’s like it’s only people that fit into this very small category of people.” It’s very broad because I get bored.

So to go along with that thread of it it’s like, “Okay, when I write books, when I do courses, when I do all of the different things that I put together and I’ve done, film making, a DJ album.” I also DJ, that’s what actually started this whole journey was my first DJ album. I get bored easily so I like to keep things interesting.

Kim: I love that and I think that that’s a theme I have noticed with other entrepreneurs. We either … I don’t even know if it’s always for me like I have the same situation. It’s not even always getting bored sometimes, it’s that you have so many varied interests that you don’t want to miss out on anything.

Joe: I would agree.

Kim: Even though I’ve been … I say I’ve been in technology for over 20 years and I have but it hasn’t always been a straight course. Technology’s always had something to do with it. But in those years I’ve taught high school, I run a programming and out placement service, I worked in Corporate America, I was in IBM’s worldwide sales team, I’ve quit all of that and owned a day spa. So it’s like you just have to kind of keep moving. So I think that makes you a normal entrepreneur, but not normal for the rest of the world, maybe.

Joe: Well, cause I’m actually working on two more books and a game, a party game, a party card game for people to come over. So like we like to have big parties here where it’s like 10, 15, 20 people or more and there’s only a couple of games that we have that we can play with everybody involved. So I was like, “I have this idea. I want to put it together.” I just haven’t had the time because Ava got here and it’s been … everything’s been slow trying to do it all. It’s been tough.

But it’s sitting … actually sitting right on my desk. So the idea and the rules, I’m still like always thinking about how I’m going to improve it or how things work. I’m playing through it in my mind. It’s just a matter of getting the best version of something stood out so that when I do, like sure there’s going to be things that need to be changed or worked on. There’s always going to be problems as we as entrepreneurs are problem solvers, professional problem solvers. So it’s like, “Okay, if I can get the best version out of mind, that way I can save time on creating all these cards and doing it like …” It just saves time in general.

Kim: Right. I like what you said there. The best version of it that I can get. So one of the things when I work with my clients and I always … I have a saying, “Done is the new perfect.” Because you can get so into the manusha that you will never release it. I don’t use that as an excuse to just put out pure crap. You still have to put the work in. But you’ve got to also get it together like you said, get it to where it is going to go out at the best it can be right now because you can always tweak it later.

Joe: Definitely. Actually and based around my books like that’s why I did my own artwork for the books, cause I know I wanted to do a book where it was a picture book because I don’t like reading books that much because I’m very slow at reading, so it’s like, “Hey, I want to read a book that’s no flop, right to the point, and it’s going to have pictures in it.” And I want it … like I work with my brother in law and he’s cn artist, he did the artwork for my first DJ album which is great. But I knew that if I work with him it’s going to slow me down. I want to get this book out. I want to do it. Like let’s go. So I was like, “You know what? I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it in my own way, front to back and with the tools I have available.”

So I’m not an artist per se. But I did it and I want to show with the power of … and part of it is show the power of what you can do as “not being something.” So I’m “not an artist” but this is what I was able to produce. So go out and produce something of yourself even if you aren’t “something.”

Kim: I like that. I like that a lot. So that brings me then into … okay, you’ve built this book, you’ve done something that maybe you weren’t formally trained in, but you did it and got it out there. So you’ve got all of this going on. Let’s bring that into when did you build your first online course?

Joe: Okay, so the first online course came … I actually … I think the domain name is registered about a month from now. So I think I’ve registered it in July. I didn’t actually get to dig deep into it till after my first conference, cause I think … I don’t know if you mentioned, but I also run a conference, a podcasting conference of my own here in South Jersey. So that was in September and then after September I focus heavily on getting the courses done.

So I think I launched in about November. So I registered the domain in July, I know what I wanted to do, started building out the course work for it, like the outline and then finally start doing the videos and everything after I got the whole conference thing out of the way. It was called Your Dream Platform to go along with the whole dreaming thing, the dreamer’s theme.

And basically what I wanted to do is create a platform for myself where the goal was to teach people like, “Look, this is how you go about doing something. You build that platform first before you go and necessarily make all these products and everything like that.” So I wanted to have a place where when people say, “Oh, Joe. How did you go about writing your own book? Joe, how did you go about making your own website? How did you go about doing this?” “People, look. Here, take my your dream platform. I’ll give you like a seven day free trial so you can go and check everything out. And then if you want to keep doing it you can pay for it.”

For me it wasn’t really like, “Hey, I’m going to cash in big on this whole course building thing, cause that’s what everybody else is doing.” For me it was like, “Hey, I have this following and these people are asking and I have friends that have following, they’re asking that person and they don’t have a solution for them.”
So I was like, “Well, if I do these course I could put it, bundle it as one big thing.” And I had this whole idea to arc it so that eventually everything was going to be there from like how do I host a live event? Like cause I have conference background. Building a conference background. And then … what were some of the others? From Facebook ads to Google ads to like … there was going to be lots and lots of things and obviously the value was going to grow and the price was going to grow with it.

Now I ran into a whole bunch of problems that we can get into a little bit later. But yeah, that’s basically the idea was, was that I had a place when people found out about me and they were like, “Hey, how do you do this?” I had a solution for them.

Kim: Excellent. Yeah, we will go into those other things in just a minute. I first just want to put in there for everyone listening the way you did it and the reason you did it is truly the best reason to build an online course. It’s because you have knowledge that someone else is asking for, you’ve already got that following, and it’s not like you said the bandwagon of just put something out there and make lots of money. It’s just not reality.

Yes, people do make courses and make lots of money. But it’s not like you just push something up there and then automatically the money comes rolling in. You have to have the audience or build the audience or market to the audience and you really do need to have something that people ask you about or want from you. That is the best way to get in and the thing to build a course around.

People ask me a lot of times when they come to my classes, “Well, what will I teach? How do I know what to teach?” And that’s one of my things, well, what do people ask you about all the time? What are you happen to share with people all the time? That’s the perfect place for a course.

Joe: Definitely. Yeah. We’ll get more into the whole reason that I’ve pivoted since then away from the whole Your Dream Platform, but it is important to find maybe what you’re really good at is like training cats. Now you would go to you, Kim, or I would go to you, Kim to … of course you would go to you. To find out like how do I go about building that course and how do I go about marketing that course and all that stuff because you’re actually showing people how to do the course. You’re the course for the courses.

Kim: Right.

Joe: Versus like somebody who wanted to learn how to train cats, then they would want to come to me because I’m the guy that can train cats.

Kim: Exactly.

Joe: Don’t write to me about training cats. I don’t know anything about that.

Kim: I’m thinking I’m the first to tell you just don’t even try.

Joe: Okay, dogs. If you want to train dogs that would be more along the lines of what we would be making a course about.

Kim: Exactly, when do people ask that person about … Now I do still teach my basic WordPress classes also just to keep my fingers in the pie that is not just how to build an online course. But absolutely, whatever those people are, their expertise, whether it’s cooking or starting a business or building a sales funnel or whatever it is, that’s where their class can come in and help further establish themselves as experts.
So one of the things I want to ask you before we go into the whole change of the platform and everything is at least at this point and maybe it’s changed since the beginning, you’ve selling and delivering your course over Gumroad.

Joe: That’s correct.

Kim: And so normally I really I wanted to talk to you about this because usually when I teach, so I’m teaching either building and learning management platform using WordPress and an LMS, learning management system or a 3rd party like Teachable or Thinkific. And so I’d like to know kind of a little bit, let’s talk about the difference in those and why you chose Gumroad to do this.

Joe: Well, so the reason for the … well, should I go on the reason for the pivot?

Kim: Sure.

Joe: Okay, so originally I had everything setup through yourdreamplatform.com. It was a sprawling WordPress site where I had actually stitched together a lot of different plugins to do what some of these plugins that charge like $80 a year or a month or something to that effect.

Kim: It could be either. The WordPress LMSs, most of them are 50 to $200 and most of them have lifetime license, but some of them are annual if you want updates or support. And there actually are now two Freemium ones that are pretty good that you can actually use without paying unless you want to use Stripe or get their support package.

Joe: Okay.

Kim: And then the other ones like the Teachable and Thinkific. I know Thinkific has a free option. I think Teachable does. But then they’ve also got like you mentioned if you want more features they’ve got at $40 a month plan and $80 a month plan, that kind of thing. So depends on which platform you would go to and what the pricing would be there.

Joe: See, when I got started I didn’t know how many people I had that would be buying into it. So I would always try to go for like how do I do this for free or as little money as possible? And I basically stitched together using WP Simple Membership and that was the foundation for building the whole website into this platform of like, “Hey, this is where you go. You login, you pay.” It wasn’t super simple for the people to pay. Like there was like one or two hiccups where as long as you knew to click on a specific spot, like a specific link in the process everything was cool. There was a couple of things and I wrote to them and they just … I don’t know if they ever went back and fix it.

But since then I’ve transitioned. And the reason I transitioned was because I realized just how hard it is to sell people on a course that as the price continues to go up and the value can go up and the more courses I keep pouring into this thing, it was getting tougher and tougher to find people to buy it.

And the reason is because like we were just saying I wasn’t trying to necessarily go out and market this thing in a way that brought people to this brand, the Your Dream Platform. I was trying to market myself through that brand that nobody knew versus my brand which is Joe Pardo or Super Joe Pardo and people already know that. So it was like I was trying to take people that I knew and then pass them off to something else that’s like, “Yeah, it’s Joe Pardo, but it’s …” Marketing two brands is very difficult, very, very difficult. It’s not something I would recommend even for seasoned vets unless you have a team of people behind you and tons of money to do it. You really should just stick to marketing one thing at a time until it’s well established.

So as the price continued to go up it was getting increasingly difficult for me find out of my own people that … people that were willing to part with that kind of money, going from a 140 bucks, to 200 bucks, to 250 bucks, to $300. Like it just got difficult and it got difficult for me cause as a one man band I had to find the sales and create the content and put the content together and then upload it to the website and with Simple Membership every single page, like every single video was on its own page.

So I had to like create the page and I had to create the menus and this is all if you understand WordPress, like it was very … it was very time consuming which is to me would have been fine if I’m selling handover fist, I’ll spend the time, no problem. But it wasn’t. So what I decided to do was basically take the whole website down except for the people who already have a membership, they get a lot of … it just basically goes straight to the login at this point and they can login with all the videos and courses are still there. But what I’ve done is I transitioned those people out and I moved all the videos into Gumroad products and then I put together lead pages, I used lead pages for each of those courses and sold them individually from my own website.

So now not only am I not marketing, “Hey, everybody has WordPress course.” I mean, you have a WordPress course. I have a WordPress course. Everybody’s got it. And it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I was trying to market that, “Hey, I have a WordPress course that’s like nobody else’s or better than any … a better mouse trap type of thing.” Versus, “Hey …” The original idea was, “Hey. I’m Joe Pardo and if you like what I’m doing based on what you see from my website, maybe you want to go and buy something from my shop which now I have these courses available right in the shop.”

The reason I went with Gumroad is cause it’s simple. You upload the videos, you upload the PDF, you have it in little sales page and it integrates right into lead pages, so when they click the buy button it’s like a drop down on that page and says, “Okay, put in your credit card number.” And that’s it. And then they have access to the stream it or download it. Sure, I’m paying 5% on it. But to me that’s inconsequential because I’m not selling tons and tons of these courses. When you get that mass amount of courses that’s when it’s like, “Okay, now I need to figure out how to get that down.” We got to get that down 3%, 2.5%, no fee on top of that, no 30 cent fee on top of that.

And actually with Gumroad you can actually get it down to where I think about where PayPal is now with for like $10 a month. So if you’re selling that many things 10 bucks a month is nothing, and now all of a sudden you’re saving on all of these fees. You’re saving a good chunk on these fees. But the great thing is I don’t have to manage the … cause I was streaming all the stuff from my own site before. So it’s like there’s bandwidth management, and that’s also that I understand but the thing is, is that wasn’t the only thing I was doing. So time management at that point becomes a huge factor.

Kim: Absolutely. And I’m so glad you went into that because it’s one of the things when I teach people is, yes, there are pros to building out your own platform. You own everything; you can do whatever you want. But there’s a maintenance cost to that in the sense of whether it’s your time or somebody else’s time, that site has to be kept up to date, everything has to be … you have to handle the support for it if something goes down or isn’t working right.

For the bandwidth what I usually recommend people do is buy Vimeo Pro because for $200 a year you’re not getting charged bandwidth as like Wistia and most web host, they actually will hit with additional bandwidth charges. But still there’s like as you said an absolute extra.

So with Gumroad, just to understand, they either stream it live or they actually can download the videos? So that brings up a question that I get asked by people a lot and since there’s that option her I’ll ask you. Were you concerned about people being able to actually download them, have them, was it a security consideration for you, or a intellectual property consideration for you?

Joe: It was. And I asked my good friend Matt who I’d co-host … or he’s a co-host of the Dreamer’s Podcast about that. Cause he actually buys a lot of courses online. So he was a good source to go and say, “Hey, when you buy a course. Do you care if you only can stream it or do you care that you can download it?” And his initial reaction was, “No. I love to be able to download it cause I’ll store it on my laptop and for when I’m on the go, if I’m at work, I don’t have access to the internet I can still watch those videos, or if it’s on my phone, I have that choice.”

So yeah, so it was like, “Alright, yeah, it’s a little bit of a concern.” But honestly since the brand focuses on me anyway, if it gets my face out there more. If somebody were to steal it and put it up to Youtube and it got my face out there then I wouldn’t have such a big problem with that if it actually caught on and people were watching it. So cause the time was already spent and the money … I was pretty much … I’ve compensated myself for that time that I spent to build those original courses, so at this point it’s like it’s just gravy.

Kim: Yeah, and I love your answers. Thank you for answering that, because it’s a question I get all the time. I have my answer, but I always like to ask it to others. My other point with that is really with technology today so you don’t set it as a download, all it takes is a screen casting program to grab everything you’ve got anyway. And so what you have to do is either … your choices for protecting yourself really are the digital marketing copyright and that type of thing and if somebody puts it somewhere where you don’t want it it’s going to that host in getting it taken down which I have had to do by the way.

Joe: Congratulations.

Kim: Yes. I had a contract with someone several years ago for a video I did for him and he specifically hired me to do it. But he paid me such a rate that part of the deal was this does not go online. This is only for this very specific use because you’re not paying me enough for it to be this. And sure enough I found it online and we had to go have it taken down. But it’s not the technology piece of not letting it be downloaded that’s going to protect you in today’s world. It’s just too easy to do a screen cast if that’s all it is about stealing a video.

Joe: Yeah, definitely. So yeah, you have to … and at that point your penalizing the people that actually paid for it. You know what I mean? Like that’s not a good customer service if they want to be able to … especially if they’re paying a $100, 200, 300, like there comes to a point where it’s like, “Okay, if you’re that worried about it maybe you should have did like a Youtube version, a scaled down Youtube version and just put it up for free.”

Kim: Right.

Joe: If you get to that level of like, “Oh, it’s a $5 course.” At that point just do ads on Youtube.

Kim: Exactly. I’m interested now I’m thinking about it, I don’t think my videos are downloadable. Of course, my courses are a full platform that people come into and there’s forums and that kind of thing. The manuals are all downloadable. I’m not sure if the videos are. I’ll have to look. Not that I would mind somebody downloading them. It’s just I’m not sure if there’s a link to do that on each page.

Joe: Well, with Gumroad it actually imprints the person’s name who bought it on any PDFs that they download. So you’ll know like …

Kim: That’s nice.

Joe: Right. Unless somebody goes and scrubs all that out before they do it, you’ll know who did it.

Kim: That’s nice. I saw a plugin that would do that many years ago, but I haven’t tried stamping them that way. Right now it’s just if you take any of my courses and go through, each lesson has a two to five minute video and then the text, the step by step text, and then there’s a download for that. But I don’t think there’s a download for the video. I’ll have to look into that.

Joe: I don’t know with the video. I don’t think the video has have stamps yet. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s coming. It’s just right now it’s just the PDFs.

Kim: Yeah, that’s so cool.

Joe: But your face. If your face is in them. That was one of the things that somebody brought up to me and I was like, “Well, my face is in the bottom corner of every single video.” So you would have to like crop my face out and then you’d be missing out on some of the … it wouldn’t be ideal to do that.

Kim: Okay, so you do that. Now that’s interesting and that was something I would have not asked you about. I’m glad that came up. So even when you’re doing a screen cast, you do a screen cast where your face is down in the bottom, the way that Steve Dotto does.

Joe: Yeah, and it was mostly because I didn’t want to have to put like some kind of stamp across the center of the screen that say, “Oh, this is Joe Pardo doing it.” Like it’s my face, so it’s pretty obvious that. If somebody is saying, “Oh, I stole this content and then I’m going to pass it off as my own.” And I think that … it really is the … that’s more of the thing I guess I’d be more concerned about, somebody taking my video and then trying to sell it without my permission.

Kim: Sure.

Joe: If somebody posting on Youtube, hey, if that gets big, then they’re going to be looking up to see who this guy is that’s talking.

Kim: Yeah. I get that.

Joe: That’s free promotion to me. But selling is another. That’s a whole another thing.

Kim: And I think that that’s where when people ask me the question I think that’s more of their concern is someone stealing it and trying to pass it off as their own and sell it that way. I think that that’s been more of the concern when people ask me. So I appreciate you giving the feedback on that.

So we talked a little bit about marketing and the fact that you were kind of split between brands. Now that you’ve settled more on Joe Pardo is the brand and you are marketing it that way, will you have any courses or anything like that come up through this brand as opposed to just staying?

Joe: Well, I mean, so far I’ve released all the courses that I’ve built so far. I still have the whole course like syllabus that I want to go and create courses for each of them. It’s up, cause as you know building courses is not super fast. Like you could do it and depending on what you’re trying to teach it could be not super, super long. But it’s not super, super fast. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m going to take this afternoon and build this course and then boom all of a sudden I’m selling up for 20 bucks a pop, 30 bucks a pop, 40 bucks a pop.”

And it can be, but that’s only if you’ve done the work to build that brand of like somebody to market it to. To be like, “Hey, look there’s this course that’s going to be awesome for you.” And there’s actually some courses that I’d like to do that are maybe branded more towards the business side of things, like coming from the business background operationally and or if maybe like a dreaming type of thing where I like basically … cause I have my book, the second book I did was How to Dream Big and Win, and maybe doing a course based around that would probably be a good idea. It’s something I could bundle together with the book.

You know what’s funny? Is when I was getting started everybody was like, “Joe. I don’t see the vision. I don’t see the vision. I don’t know how else it’s going to come together. You don’t have a business plan.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I do it. It’s in the head. It’s up here. And everything is going to fit together.” And it really has. It all fits together with the Joe Pardo right now.

The downside to building a brand, a personal brand is if I die tomorrow it’s over. If I stop doing it tomorrow it’s over. There’s no like, “Oh, well, there will just be residual like building a company where the name doesn’t matter, the personality doesn’t matter.” So it’s definitely difficult to do that personal branding. But I think for me being an outgoing person, wanting to be a speaker, wanting to write books, wanting to be the face of my own brand is not … for me it just works.

It’s like when people are like, “Oh, I’d love to have a bakery.” And I’m like, “Yeah. I would not because I don’t want to be getting there at three or four in the morning to do the baking, to make the donuts as they say.” That’s just not me or even a restaurant. Like, yeah, sure it’d be fun. We’d have a great time. I would love wasting bar rescue. It’s going to be awesome. But it really won’t because there’s day to day drudgery that we’re going to have to go through to make it work and getting there super early and dealing with the personalities and all that. Like there’s so many things. It’s just not for me. But it could be for somebody else.

So that’s why I try to teach people like, “Hey, you need to let go and figure out what it is really that you love about yourself and what it is that you love about life and the things that you love to do within the things that you do now and then amplify those things up, so that it’s not 20% of the hundred percent that you do. It’s 80% of the hundred percent that you do and 20% … well, you can’t love everything about everything that you do.” But sometimes if you make enough money you can just outsource it to somebody else.

Kim: Exactly. That’s the idea. I love what you’re pointing out though and first of all I think from the way I see it and the way I see it all tying together I think your business even though is multifaceted as I said it does all stream together. I think you’re so key when working with entrepreneurs. Whatever it is it does need to be passion and you need to think through what does this mean in the day to day. So many times the entrepreneurs like you said, “Oh, I want a restaurant.” “Really? Why don’t you go work in one for six months and decide, do you want a restaurant.” Because for me my father owned restaurants and he now owns the Bed and Breakfast.

If I died and God said, “You have to run Bed and Breakfast for the rest of your life.” I know I would have gone to h***. That’s me. It’s not something that works for me. Like you said I’m not someone who wants to get up at four in the morning and cook for everybody and I don’t want people coming to my house. I don’t actually even want my family to come to my house much less strangers to come stay in my house.

So it’s very important for the entrepreneurs as they’re building these things out to really think about those things and I think that that’s a value that you really bring to them. And perhaps there’s an online course in there somewhere that would include some surveys and pieces of information to help them get to that, right?

Joe: Yeah, definitely.

Kim: Help them get to some real interaction with you as their coach to help them get to, okay, this is in your mind a bit, but let’s really put down what does that mean because when you own it, look, until you get to that point, if you ever get to that point where you can hire everything out you’re maybe in there fixing a toilet at night because that’s what happens, right?

Joe: Yeah, even if you have the money maybe you can’t get somebody and you need to do it. Bed and Breakfast, no, I would never be able to do that. But I think to me the 20% there would be I get to have people come to the house and learn stories and meet interesting people, and I love that. So for me that would be the 20% of things that I like and everything else would be like, “No, I don’t like cleaning. No, I don’t like making breads. No, I don’t like cooking. No, I don’t like all of that, maintaining the yard, maintaining the house itself, like no.”

Kim: Right. I get it.

Joe: Not for me.

Kim: Excellent. Yeah, you do. Your 80 – 20 is good, make sure the 80% is what you love doing. That’s funny. I love to cook and I do love people coming to my house to cook, but not people coming to stay. That’s a weirdness for me, but for people to come in and have me cook for them, that I actually really do love. That’s my deal.

So we’ve really kind of extended our time here and I want to thank you for coming on and sharing all this because I really love that we … and I didn’t even know that Joe had done this, everybody. That he had started by building out that WordPress platform that I do teach people to do and that I warn people of, “Hey, this is great. It’s powerful. But it’s a lot to do. It’s not something you just think you’re going to do in a weekend and be done with it.” It’s an ongoing thing. So I love that we got to share that and also how all of your things tie together. Those courses are still out there, they will be in the show notes.

And one of the things you mentioned that I forgot to mention. Actually there’s two things I wanted to throw in. One is as Joe mentioned he does also run a podcast conference. Are there still tickets available?

Joe: Yes, there are. They are a $100 until August 2nd and the price goes up to 150 from there to the door. So yeah, they are very much available and we’re looking at possibly upwards to 300 people. That’s what we’re gunning for and I think we’re going to get … I don’t know if we’re going hit the 300 number but I think we’re going to hopefully close, compared to the 50 that we had the first year that we run it last year. So it’s a grassroots thing.
We gave away a whole bunch of swag last year like ATR, 2100 microphones. I can’t even remember … t-shirts. We have a ton of sponsors this year. It’s going to be great. And we upgraded from a school gymnasium to a hotel. So we’re moving up in the world and it’s really a grassroots thing, built for the community and the focus on creativity and community building versus just monetization and stuff like that. So we really like for people to come out and have a good time. It has more of a meet-up kind of feel slash conference.

So I call it the un-conference, but I found out that un-conference apparently is a thing and I couldn’t use that term. So we moved on from that term. But it’s really like not like a conference.

Kim: Right. Okay. But it is called the Mid-Atlantic Podcast Conference, right?

Joe: Yes.

Kim: And when is it?

Joe: It is September 9th and 10th. So we’re doing a mixer the night before at the hotel. I think it’s like 6 or 7:00 or something in the giant atrium that they have there. And then on the 10th it’s an all day event plus we have an after party at the hotel afterwards where people just hanging out, getting drinks. There’s a bar right there so everybody can be nice and happy.

Kim: Great. So everybody. I will have that, again, those links in the show notes. If you can be in the Philadelphia area around then, well, if you’re me I love Philadelphia so I’m going to try to make it. If you can be there then, grab your ticket before August 2nd when the price goes up. That is a fabulous price for a conference.

Joe: Well, thank you. Yeah, we really want to make it accessible. If you have found out about this and jumped on it earlier it was as low as $75 for a little over a day conference experience. So we really want to make it accessible because this isn’t a conference to try to show people how to make money in an industry or anything like that. So if that was the case then the price would be up more because we want you to come, learn, and then go and take that and make money versus let’s just come and have a great time and be more like a party.

And we have speakers, Mark Askowith is coming from Europe, from the UK. What’s her name? Jessica Kupferman from She Podcast is a featured speaker. Heather Ordover is a featured speaker. Tyler (Rockson?) from New York is a featured speaker. And Shane Whaley from the Juicing Podcast is a featured speaker. And we have tons of other speakers including Jessica Roads, Ramona Rice, there’s a whole bunch. I feel bad not mentioning all of them. But there’s a tone and we’re just going to have a really great time.

Kim: Excellent. Yeah, it sounds great. You’ve got a great speaker line up. Folks, if you are considering doing a podcast, if you have a podcast or even thinking about it, and you can be there I recommend going. The other thing I wanted to throw out there I was reading in your bio when you got the idea for the Dreamer’s Podcast, you got the idea on a plane to Florida I believe and you took it live in two weeks.

Joe: Yeah. We moved … generally I move fast.

Kim: I can tell.

Joe: And yeah, so it was two weeks from then. Cause I already had the background with the DJ-ing and audio equipment. I already had like everything. I just needed to know. I already know how to use WordPress cause I’ve been blogging like since about 96 going way back before I was even using WordPress or anything like that. So really it was just to find out like how do I get this onto the website, how do I get the feed, I do I get it to iTunes, boom.
We started recording and we went from show week to two shows a week … to three. And then from three to five and that’s how we got up to so many episodes so quick. Because it was five days a week for like I think about four months, three and a half months. So all of a sudden we had all these episodes and I was recording. I was just looking at my calendar back in 2014 and like there’s no way I could do the schedule that I was doing back then cause it was like interview, interview, interview, talk with somebody, interview. People were coming over to the house to do interviews, like we were just … I was just going crazy back then trying to get it off the ground as quickly as I possibly could.

And yeah, two weeks is what it took for me to get it going. And I wouldn’t have any other way. Now we’re two years, over two years into it and we’ve raised money for charity, we’ve done live shows. The show is now live on Facebook Live, well the pre-shows at least, not the interviews. But it’s just been an amazing experience connecting with people from all around the globe and that’s really what I love to do. So it just makes sense.
Kim: I love it. And so everybody listening, whether you want a podcast … now it took me over a year to get my podcast launched, so I’m so in awe of this. Whether it’s a podcast you decide to do, if you’re wanting to build an online course or whatever it is that you’re thinking about, expanding your business, just jump on it and do it. I think Joe’s just a great example of that and that’s what I certainly encourage you to do cause you won’t extend your business without it. Whatever your idea is that’s what’s going to help you build further.
So Joe, where is the best place for everybody to find you?

Joe: That would be joepardo.com. That’s got everything there from all my articles, the Dreamer’s Podcast is there, you can get the links for the Podcast Mid-Atlantic Conference there, you can get my books, you can get the courses, you can get the Youtube channel that I just launched that I need to get more involved in. Hopefully in the month of July I have a lot of time open then. So we’re doing it, we’re doing it big, and it’s just the way that I go, man. I just go. Go, go, go. And thank you so much for having me on, Kim. I really appreciate it and I look forward to having you on the Dreamer’s Podcast because obviously you are living your dream, your cats are living their dream, and it would be awesome to have you on there.

Kim: I look forward to it. Yes, I can definitely say we are living the dream, particularly my cats who have figured out they live in the cat’s Ritz Carlton. So thanks again for being on. Everybody, the show notes will all be at ecoursestories.com. Thanks for listening in and I will see you again next week. That’s a wrap.