Helping Doctors Start Online Courses With Dr Amar

hi good evening spq is uh dr martini how are you doing hello i'm here with dr soda we're going to talk about top five ways like profitable passive income so uh tell me about yourself sure so i'm a er doc and i'm mostly based in hong kong and i uh since covered i was just working 80 to 100 hour work weeks feeling burnt out and almost like reconsidering my path to medicine and at the time i was looking for other ways in which i could supplement and potentially replace my clinical income and so i started looking online and at first i had a few businesses didn't really work out but eventually i stumbled upon starting sharing my expertise online and now um i pride myself on helping other busy doctors share their expertise online and make wildly profitable passive income that's wonderful um thank you for uh you know taking your time with us and uh you know sharing your knowledge and uh so tell us about you know just the different ways that passive income could be generated by physicians you know especially you know using or even without using their degrees sure so there's i'm sure a lot of people have heard about the classic passive income sources like stock markets real estate but the problem with those is that you don't really control them and it's we've all seen what it was like over the last few months the market was super volatile and even if you were to invest in real estate um it's not something you control and at the same time you also need a lot of starting capital to start and so initially i didn't really have that much starting capital and so i was looking for another way in which i could generate passive income and so i stumbled upon the way of starting an online course where you can share your own expertise online and believe it or not there was there's not a lot of overhead and there's not a lot of complexity and when it comes to uh different ways in which people can monetize their own expertise different ways in which they could package their clinical expertise online the opportunities are really endless so i've helped clients i've helped other doctors start non-clinical online courses such as teaching other people how to do real estate but i've also helped medical students start online course on how to improve exam performance by uh using cognitive behavioral therapy and so there's definitely different streams it doesn't have to always be clinical and it doesn't always have to be non-clinical the great thing about doctors is that we are already considered experts even though sometimes we might not feel like it to the outside world we are already considered experts in our in our day-to-day our job is mostly to solve people's problems and if we can package that expertise and sell it online then i think this could be a very lucrative opportunity yeah i think that's great um i know definitely other professions you know individuals who are physicians who are generating courses online depending on what their expertise may be you know maybe they took an online class and decided to use that knowledge to help others so what um what exactly inspired you you know i know you said you had some other businesses that didn't quite work out uh what were certain like classes or certain things that you learned from your prior businesses that didn't work in order to implement it towards you know your current business that's a great question so uh initially when i first started out i was doing e-commerce and that involved selling your own physical products and the biggest lesson that i learned there was that physical products simply don't scale so when it comes to a business you have a when it comes to a business let's say you're selling a physical product especially during covid there's a lot of shipping times shipping fees which leads to a lot of customer complaints customer emails and i was stressing myself out just trying to manage this business not to mention with physical products the profit margins are very small and i was just stressing out and eventually i decided to sell that business to a friend it was actually profitable but i it was just too much hassle so i just sold it to a friend and so when i realized that i realized that actually selling digital products is a much better way because you only have to build it once and you can sell it an infinite amount of times so if you build an online course you only have to record yourself in front of a whiteboard in front of a blackboard explaining something or in front of a powerpoint slide you only have to record it once but you could distribute it to an infinite amount of times while you're awake while you're asleep and it's continuously making you money regardless of the circumstance so that's what really drew me into digital products but when it comes to the second uh business that i started it was on digital marketing now uh digital marketing for those that are familiar is basically learning how to advertise on different social media platforms like facebook instagram and so on and even though that that business didn't really work out the way i wanted to because the market is very saturated it gave me the essential skills that i now have to help my clients in order to help them get more students and help them get uh help them package their expertise and sell it online on multiple platforms oh that's that's great um how long have you been doing you know with your current business how long have you been um and then you know just building it up from there how long did it take for you to start from scratch to where you are so my current busi my current business uh didn't really become official until very recently uh in the past past few months but i've been helping different clients uh essentially sell their online courses so before i even worked on doctors specifically i was actually helping other people in e-commerce niches in digital marketing initiatives on selling their online course but again because it was a very saturated market and i kind of want to go back to my own roots as a as a doctor and help my own people i realize there is a huge opportunity that um that where i can actually help doctors package their expertise so one of the recent clients that we actually took on is a university of pennsylvania professor and his work is on the cutting edge research on the treatment of epilepsy right this is someone who has spent their life's work finding the treatment of epilepsy that being said his his work could actually change and is it his work is actually life and death it could really impact the lives of millions of people that being said he didn't really have a way to package his expertise and sell it online and because of this we we are potentially looking at someone's uh the next treatment for epilepsy which is trapped inside the mind of this professor instead of being packaged and distributed online and so i was able to bridge that gap and now i'm actually working with him to bring his online course to life for a busy position uh how long like how much time does one need to devote towards you know starting up your course you know the process you know whether it's recording typing out material and then obviously there's marketing behind that too so um you know there i've read where some folks have a strategy where you know you want to first build value and then you share your product and then some folks say well no just go ahead and share your product and you know kind of like beta test it and then from there you can you know generate um you know a list of clients who buy into it and then after they get their products and then they you they take feedback and then basically expand it from there so um you know in terms of those strategies like what do you recommend and you know starting off first question you know from a physician standpoint if you all have busy schedules you know uh where do you find the time and how much time does it take to kind of get things you know up and running okay so i'll answer the second question first so when it comes to actually um doing the beta test and alpha test and all of that like setting up all the webinar a lot of physicians simply don't have that time right so i answered the first question which was when i first got started i was already working 80 to 100 hour work weeks during covid and especially working irregular night shifts i was on the verge of burnout and but i was still able to build this online course on the side on the weekend and keep in mind this was coming from somebody that didn't really have a proven process to follow i didn't have a mentor i had zero business experience i had zero marketing experience but i just had to piece together everything that i've discovered and learned either by my own in order to build out an online course completely from scratch and it took me one month to launch my first online course and it was really just uh just working on the weekends in a few hours um but now like to be honest like my current program the majority 80 to 90 of the content was actually built during that one month if anything i actually removed more content in order to simplify the process so that anyone can actually repeat it and get success okay great and uh and then you just pretty much created your thing and then did you were you kind of like building up your social media um you know uh your your presence along the way or was it something where you just kind of unleashed your products and then kind of took the feedback and then you know kind of went from there okay that's a good question so a lot of people they might get intimidated when they especially they see all the young kids these days posting on instagram and facebook and now recently there's tick tock it could be very overwhelming right um but we teach you uh or exactly or actually my method doesn't really involve any uh any of that i didn't start with any social media following i i have like 800 people on instagram but they were just my close friends so i didn't really have a large audience uh so that um so having an audience is not required in order to have a successful online course business okay well that's great to know because i think a lot of people are intimidated by the fact that you see these social media influencers or these teachers you know where they have like thousands like hundreds of thousands or millions of followers and uh you know you're a physician who's busy has no experience and then all of a sudden you're like okay well i think i might want to do this but who am i you know in the social media world uh to be able to go out and just like you know sell something so i think that's really reassuring i appreciate you you know kind of giving your you know your advice regards that um so uh what else like um so you basically have created um this course you do it um you have this video session and everything um what else have you been doing along the way uh to you know to like further your business a lot like you know in terms of scaling um what is your approach in regards to scaling you know a business once you have it up and running okay so um that's a good question but uh one thing that i really uh want to stress is that at the moment especially uh i much prefer to have a very strong and i i much prefer to work very closely with my clients because that's the only way i can ensure that they will actually get results and one of the problems when it comes to people with scaling is that oh they would grow really fast their profit margins their profit would actually go up but then the more and more they scale and the faster and faster they scale then i feel like the clients get kind of detached away from the the face of the company if you will and sometimes even when i go on the calls with my clients they're really surprised because it's very rare these days when you could pick up a phone and suddenly you find that the head of the face of the company is actually speaking with you on the opposite end and that's something that i really don't want to lose touch with especially since i'm so early on in my own journey um and uh that's that's something that i really hold dear right especially my relationships with my with my clients that being said when it comes to scaling i do plan to grow this business and we do plan to make our first few hires in starting next month in early 2021 and we are announcing our next cohort starting next month and our prices are going to rise ever since then so that's my approach to scaling oh that's great uh so what are some examples of courses that you know you're like that can be done sure there's a question from one of the members of the group about that sure so um the opportunities are really endless and i don't just say that i actually mean it with a lot of case examples would you like me to share my screen sure okay could you all right could you see my screen yes all right great so what we do is we help uh uh we help busy doctors leverage their clinical expertise with the power of the internet to make massive impact and massive income and one of the best clients that we i'll go through a few of our best examples so [Music] so this is natalia she is an anesthesiologist and when we first started working together she was already investing in real estate um that being said once we started working together a few months in she just hit her 74 75k month recently in september and this and she calls this a better investment than real estate because it's less work and she actually owns and controls all the profits right this is a real business that she can put her name on and be proud of and for every one dollar that she puts in she makes over seven dollars back right and this is the power of the internet using um using the methods that i uh talk about so this is an example of someone who is a physician but teaching a course on that teaching a non-clinical course on real estate right and then we have another example so uh this is jackson he is a surgical resident and one of the first clients that i worked with and one of the problems was that he just didn't really have the time right as a surgical resident i don't know if a lot i don't know if we have a lot of surgeons within our community but probably too busy to to come on a uh to watch this session but he was getting burnt out overworked especially during covet and so this really challenged me because i had to really simplify my process down into a very step-by-step and repeatable process and when we first started working together he didn't really have an idea on what he could teach he just didn't he considered himself an expert but he just didn't know how to find the right idea so we sat down we started working together and using my simple system we were able to help him launch his online course in just the first week and now he's teaching other physicians on how to network effectively in conferences and this is the best example this is tommy he is a eye surgeon so this is an example of someone that's teaching something that's clinical okay so uh this is this is tommy he was already doing lasik operations every single morning and lasik surgeries are not cheap right they're two grand a pop and if he does 10 of them in a single morning that's 20 grand in a single morning but tommy was a very generous guy he was already giving uh giving up a lot of his time teaching for free at different universities at different conferences but this was just one-on-one uh one-on-one group teaching and the problem with this is that this does not scale because it has a one-to-one relationship with human time it's just math but by privatizing his services he is now able to reach a global audience of international ophthalmologists and actually teach his methods to a larger group of people and extend his uh international and global reach and now he's actually earning more with his online course than he did as a 20 grand a day lasik surgeon which is absolutely crazy and here are just some of his his results so these are some just some of the better examples of the results that i've helped my clients achieve and uh and uh yeah i'm very proud of their success and i can't wait to see where they start growing does anyone else in the group have any questions any other questions for uh doctors okay yep so um dr zoda yes um so there is a link for the business in the website and we will be posting that um at the end of this session so do you have anything else uh doctors with regards to you know your business or you know just in general like uh you know i know mindset tends to be a huge thing uh people oftentimes get scared or they have you know just this fear of okay well i don't know really how to kind of start from here you know and just they just kind of get in their head um so you know what general advice you know what you provide for the members of the group you know for those who are sitting there you know watching it or maybe on a replay they'll watch it and you know they're burnt out they're tired they clearly want it you know out or at least a way to potentially go part-time but they're scared you know or they're they're just not quite there in terms of how do i get started sure so i think um people actually acknowledge that most of the a lot of doctors are already moving online whether it's entrepreneurs who want more who want to spend more time with their family and less time at the hospital whether it's academics who want more ownership of their professional success whether it's other doctors who want just more uh to improve their healthcare advocacy campaigns and so on and so forth so people realize that there is an urgent need but what holds most people back um i found is that there's no time there's no money and they're scared of the uh they're scared for whatever reason or they might not feel like monetizing for your services is something that's uh it feels kind of yucky especially the word sales so i'm gonna go through these one by one so with time first of all uh again using my own example i built my online course in one month using only my weekends while working 80 100 hour work weeks jackson the surgical resident i just showed you we were able to simplify this course and launch it in the first week so it's completely doable and to be realistic it requires around a few hours each week but it pays off dividends down the line when it comes to no money uh using my methods i teach you how to launch your first online course in the first four weeks without spending a single dollar and this is just using free software like google slides like free recording software and so on and so forth excuse me and finally when it comes to the limiting beliefs behind monetizing for your services i think that it's very it's um as doctors we just want to help people and at the end of the day i've considered doctors to just be people that solve problems right a patient comes into your clinic you are there to solve their problem and if you are able to offer a solution that can actually improve their lives improve their health they're more than willing to actually pay for your services so when it comes to the word sales or selling your online course i totally understand why people might feel like it's a bit yucky they start thinking of people from wolf of wall street like a bunch of bullies pumping their chests and shouting at you at the phone and trying to shove things down your throat that's just that's just not the case because if you are offering something of value you are giving an option for uh your potential student to make an informed decision on whether they want to be a part of it or not so those are the three most common uh things that hold most people back and i'd say that the most important thing is just to get started right if you're interested if you're listening to this and if you're interested just learn a bit more about what the space could actually entail because online the online course the online education industry is estimated to hit 350 billion dollars by this year and kovid has just accelerated that because there's people like you and me sitting at our home on our desk making this type of money and so i think uh i think just get started don't let these things hold you back at least explore a little and see if this is the right fit for you yeah i know i absolutely agree uh i mean i i'm probably one of the least textile individuals out there you know relatively to my peers and uh i mean i created the facebook group actually and that was the first time like i had no idea what it was obviously along the way you kind of learned and uh build and you know you take advice and everything and you know i think that that's the main idea is it's all you know it's a learning process it's a trial and error you learn a few things makes the mistakes you build on that etc and i think having a course um may actually kind of help uh you know launch your your business a lot faster than trying to do it on your own but you know either way life is a journey um there's another question uh so how tech savvy do you have to be to get going that's a great question so uh when it comes to tech uh one of the first well a lot of the clients that i have one of the the reasons that they're hesitant to even start something is they imagine a bunch of coders writing like designing your own websites you have to know computer science you have to hack into the system like there's none of that we basically uh one of the things we really pride ourselves on especially with our new program which was just released starting this month is that we have actually taken all the guesswork outside of the entire process so when i was first starting out i had to learn everything from scratch right that's why it took me an entire month just to build my online course but over the years uh especially working with uh well not over the years over the months especially working with so many clients i was able to repeat that process and so what we did in order to make this journey as simple and as frictionless as possible possible is that we worked with the best website designers to create plug-and-play templates for all of our clients so that they don't even have to go through the tech headaches or go through the trouble of installing their own website they can just download our templates and install it in just a few clicks very simple stuff and second of all we also have a proven process a proven sales process of turning strangers into paying students and we've completely engineered this to work simply and seamlessly and again you can just install that in just a few clicks so we've really tried our best to take away all the tech headaches to take away all the time and wasted money and frustration in order to make this process as seamless as possible um another question so if so one of the uh questions was if they have no idea you know what type of course or the topic of their course would be with the course itself or would you be involved in helping brainstorming the complex abilities of you know the type of course or the topic to teach per se yeah that's a great question so a lot of people just don't know where to get started they see the potential of starting an online course but they just don't know what they could possibly teach and this is something that we work on on week one day one in our own program we hope you get crystal clear on finding your idea that is actually monetizable and could actually help people and that people are willing to actually pay for and we help you throw that into a actual six figure online course okay is there market research that has to be involved as well um behind that or i mean what is your a general approach when it comes to something like that that you know to basically determine that yes this topic exactly will sell versus not sell so this is uh something we called validation in order to test whether idea actually has market value whether it is market demand and we go through our own unique system in week two which is uh how to sell your online course so uh without getting too much into detail we basically uh ask the market for feedback and essentially improve our own offer improve our own messaging to determine whether this is something that's actually worthy of building and how many weeks is your program our week our program is only four weeks and is there ongoing support after those four weeks or yeah that's a good question so the entire program is four weeks but that doesn't mean the entire program is four weeks but it's actually completely self-paced so all the doctors that sign on to our program they go through that journey at their own speed right and at the same time our support for you never ends after those four weeks right we don't just leave you in the wild and fend for yourself giving you the knowledge and the skills that you need right we're with you every step of the way and we really pride ourselves on our multiple levels of support so we have weekly q a calls where you speak with me directly and i sit you down diagnose any issues that you might be facing and help you devise a strategy in order to move your online course business into the six figure range and at the same time we also have a community of digital doctors where we share our successes and share our resources and help each other along the way of our journey to financial freedom so on top of that you also get lifetime access if you sign up um starting this month um and and yeah that that lifetime access to all future updates as well as any downloadables like website templates plug-and-play templates and all of that okay how much does it cost um this depends so right now uh we are doing a discounted price but we plan to increase the price starting in our next cohort next month and does anyone else have any questions all right well uh do you have anything else that you would like to share uh with us uh i think we're probably approaching towards the end of this are there different levels to the program okay uh what do you mean by that what do you mean different levels there are courses out there where you have um one level and then you know some folks will upsell their course and then provide a more intimate level of you know involvement etc so um i don't know if that's something that you do per se but there are folks out there that will do sales and basically say oh you pay more you get more time with me one-on-one etc so i guess that's kind of what they're asking yeah that's a great question and to be honest i've i've joined some of those programs myself and i've always hated having to having to go through the program knowing all of this but then there's like this cliffhanger and then you're you're forced to pay for the next episode of this of the season i absolutely hate that so that's why we uh we don't we don't offer any upsells it's just this program we give you everything you need to start an online course and we leave nothing no stone unturned okay and uh how i know you have the much human energies i imagine that's a group q a and then uh like how much time do they get specifically with you one-on-one with regards to their own you know individual course needs or business sure that's a good question so actually the weekly cause is one-on-one right so a lot of programs they would actually charge you a lot for these one-on-one coaching consultation programs but again like i previously mentioned i really pride myself on my relationship with my clients and i really especially since i'm pretty early on in my own journey i really want to ensure their success and i think the best way to do that is to have this intimate and one-on-one work to work closely together in order to make their business a success now that being said this is something that uh these one-on-one calls is something that i'm doing exclusively for this cohort and potentially for this month and next month but starting next year early next year i might move to the weekly q a calls so um yeah okay and then with this particular code are you planning on continuing that level relationship or is that eventually going to branch out into what do you mean by that uh well i mean you said like during this particular cohort maybe the next cohort you're going to be you're doing more of the one-on-one phone calls and everything uh you know does that level of interaction eventually is that going to change with those initial words or is that something where things are going to be just more unified and streamlined along the way sure so i'd say like right now um uh right now uh based on the clients that i'm working with i can afford to actually spend so much time uh to do these one-on-one calls but as we start getting even more and more students in our community then i'll start moving into weekly q a calls weekly q a calls right and uh have you ever had any clients uh that did not succeed and if so what were their uh okay that's a good question so it really depends on how you determine success right so i've had and another thing is not all our clients are willing to share their own progress some of them just join our program they um i tried a few weeks and then we i tried to reach out to them but i couldn't reach out to them you know um so not we don't have all the data to be honest uh that being said i've worked with i'd say that i'd say that there are those who drop out of the program and eventually using the business fundamentals that we teach them in our own program they start and launch another uh another online business it might not be online courses but they might launch something like a an agency right so it's really hard to determine uh uh how many people actually failed but when it comes to how many people actually succeed well i probably i pride myself on my client results and especially with the online course business most of my clients actually become profitable starting week two because week two we already teach you how to get your first few students and remember you can build all of this without spending a single dollar for the first four weeks so you're already profitable you're already cash flow positive and all you have to do is just reinvest the profits that you actually make into scaling and growing your online course so one of the things i love about this business model is that there's just not a lot of overhead and not a lot of complexity involved if it doesn't work no worries at most i might have wasted one month of my time and if it does work then the opportunities really are endless we've had now two or three quotes specifically how much what is the cost of the course as we speak um during this cohort group okay sure so i don't reveal my prices uh online because i like to actually work um we offer a strategy call where you could sit down book a call with me and then we could discuss your situation and we could see if we're actually a good fit to help because first of all i want to make this really clear our program isn't for everyone and it's our program isn't for everyone and not everyone will get success in our program that's why we're very selective with the people that we actually help because we want to ensure that we actually get our client results and i won't offer you anything if i don't feel like i can actually help you and the reason we want to do this is we want to keep our we want to keep our clients success at an industry high level and i don't want to work with people that aren't willing to put in the work that aren't willing to invest in themselves because of this i think that the best way to uh decide whether we're a good fit to work together is to book a call with me at my page and you could learn more about what i do and and so on and so forth um so uh again we will post the website uh link um in the message section you know based on one of the replies and then you can get in touch with dr zoda uh via the website put in your email address and then your in your name and then basically at that point you can schedule a one-on-one session with dr zoda in the discussion further potentially what your goals may be you know going forward with a potential online business and uh how long are these strategy calls they're around 30 minutes okay so 30 minutes i think that's a good amount of time and then you know at that point i'm sure if you're a good fit then you know he can you know present you with you know what the course that you're you know the course and also the cost of the course as well um and then any other support that maybe needed any questions does that sound about right yep and i do want to stress that it's not just a online course right it's a it's a fully fledged uh you might consider it a coaching program you because we are with you every step of the way you get these weekly consultation calls with me to make this actually happen for you to make uh to improve your chances of success and so it's not just a course where we where we give you the content you watch it at your own pace and we leave you to fend for yourselves no we're with you every step of the way we hold your hand we guide you through every single step until you eventually get the results that you want and achieve the financial freedom that you deserve any other questions all right well i think that's about it again dr zoda i appreciate your time and uh speaking with us and everything and you know the group really appreciates it and uh you know we'll we'll definitely post your information and if anyone's interested they can certainly get in touch uh thank you for your time and thank you for this opportunity to share this platform um i hope that what i said could inspire just one of you uh to start looking into an online business and potentially an online course business thank you thank you all right thank you thank you again for this opportunity