76: Turn Your Knowledge Into an Online Course with Tom Libelt (Part 1)

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Impulsive is the name of the game for Tom Libelt. But, thankfully, those rash decisions, along with some grit and determination has turned Tom into an incredibly successful serial entrepreneur with a wealth of experience under his belt, ranging from coffee shop owner to expert in re-marketing ad campaigns.

In this episode, Tom and Estie dive deep into the marketing aspect of online courses, including what to include in your course, how to find the right target for it and how to build your remarketing ad campaign. We also discuss Tom’s real struggle with EBS, the incurable, yet manageable Entrepreneurial Boredom Syndrome and how to keep going when it seems like an endless treadmill of building your business, getting it systemized, getting bored and then starting again.

 

My Guest: Tom Libelt

Tom Libelt was born in Communist Poland, but he escaped to the US at the age of 11. Some of the adventures that shaped him are:

  • Age 7: Laying on the back seat of a car that was smuggling liquor back into the country (was supposed to cry and scream if the immigration wanted to check).
  • Age 9: Helping pops push products at soccer stadiums in Eastern Europe… was hustled a few times by Russians in the other stands and learned his lessons.
  • The only games Tom played around the house had to do with money changing hands (don’t ask as he’d have a hard time explaining this one).
  • The medical field was terrible and all his teeth back then were fixed without any numbing.
  • His first computer was a Commodore 64. It took over 10 minutes to load a game from a tape deck. If it did not… he had to use a screwdriver to adjust the magnets in the tape deck and try again.
  • Grew up in a generation that ran around for hours without any supervision.

 

Episode Highlights:

[5:37]: Because in Poland, everyone thought if you work in a corporate job in America, you made it. But no, not really. I quickly realized I’m just a number.

[13:09]: I was at a house party in Chicago. And I was very impulsive back then, and someone just said like, “Hey, you know, if you want to become an engineer, you should go to school” to someone else, they weren’t even talking to me. And I was like, I’m gonna go to that school. So then I sold everything and I went to Full Sail.

[16:19]: I was, again, impulsive. And I was like, Okay, I’m done with New York. And I was looking around for something to get into. And I started looking for businesses, and I found a coffee shop in Atlanta, the size of Starbucks, and I bought into that and just moved down. I quickly realized that’s not a good business for me. I don’t like being a watchdog, making sure everything’s working. I don’t drink coffee.

[33:49]: Well the thing with re-marketing is, you can often get between four and ten X on your spend with re-marketing. If it’s done with cold traffic, it’s not the same level.

[39:33]: Well, to sell a course there are some basics… The main thing is, you got to figure out a good transformation in your course, right? So from A to Z, like you said. I want to take you from being a regular, confused business guy, to never having to pay for marketing again.

[51:32]: The safest way is to start with warm traffic which is organic, then re-marketing and then paid to cold. What I find a lot of people are trying to do is skip the warm traffic, skip the remarketing, because they don’t know what that is, and just go straight to cold. And that’s the worst way to do it.

[56:40]: I’ll start something new and then I get tired of it. So I build a system, I sit around for a while, and again, and again, and it just never stops. And I was in the middle of building a system, and I know myself well enough where I just sit on the couch and think, when is this gonna end?

 

Resources & Links:

 

For part 2 of this episode, where you can hear more about marketing your online course, go to estierand.com/76-2. 

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About the author, Estie Rand

I love turning ideas into money, and helping others do the same. I help small business owners with everything from marketing to fiscal management, business plans to staffing, database architecture to work/life balance coaching and I love it all! What do you need help with today?

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