How This Doctor Made $30,000 In 30 Days By Helping Kids Regain Vision

all right welcome back dr zoda here and today we have dr tan mai with us now ton is a private practice optometrist specializing in myopia and he joined the digital doctor program back when he had a private practice that was doing reasonably well and he loved the patients and teaching other optometrists and seeing their success but he wanted to have more time outside the clinic to work because he wanted to and not because he needed to and ultimately to have more time on mentoring and teaching and seeing the growth of others and before we started working together he has done workshops and small conferences in the past but he wanted a way to teach young optometrists and help them open their own practice without sacrificing his time and since joining our program he's been able to launch his online course helping doctors grow a successful ortho character ortho keratology business without going through years of trial and error and if this is something you're interested in definitely check out optometrymasterclass.com all right and today we're going to dig into his story and go through every step of his evolution so let's start from the beginning like where did you first hear about us yeah so um i was just randomly scrolling facebook and i saw this this you know uh how does dr zoda uh you know made a six-figure business and i you know something you know part of me thinks um i i've learned to be very curious as i grow my own business basically basically before i had my own business i would have just skipped over and out like that but now that i'm in business i always think well if this ad is here it can't be here forever let's just convert it and it must not be it has to you know be doing okay and people must be having some success with it so let me just click on and see what happens and then i clicked on it and i watched your video and i was very intrigued and i put the phone call uh and why were you intrigued i was intrigued because i knew that um i had always wanted to do some sort of online class or a course of my own and and i was intrigued by your video that it made sense to me how you had this one slide that said you know you can do one-on-one consulting because i was thinking about being a consultant but you know that is very time intensive you sit down and just one-on-one and one-on-one forever but then if you make a course and make it evergreen you know it can go to a hundred people all at once and it just i was i i it was like a light bulb went on my mind oh yeah i just it's it's usually the same content again and again why not just you know memorialize it and then just have it split faster and reach more people i remember you told me you were thinking about starting your own online course for four years at that point right have you ever taken any action i never did i was just too busy uh growing my own business because i have a brick and mortar practice and i owned the whole thing and so you're hiring staff for money it was just too a time intensive but then i um i just realized i don't for some reason your ad spoke to me and then i just decided to get going and once i signed up the the action of signing up made me commit to it more if i didn't sign up you know i'm fine with committed ever oh wow and why did you decide to join the program and work with us specifically i i i was interested in doing it by i i didn't have a mentor to guide me to you know step by step what to do you know i didn't know where to start i didn't know how to market it i didn't know how to create the course itself the bones of it i didn't know how to set any of it up and so i figured if someone else had done it before and they've successfully done it before and then it sounds the reason that maybe they can help me do it too okay great and i remember like i remember our call and some of the people watching might have hesitations about you know starting in on starting an online course like this right i remember one of the hesitations you had was um just a time commitment you're worried about investing a lot of time and not really getting any results right could you tell me more about that i think that's my number one fear because money um is not supporting us tax which is not renewable and so i was afraid that what if i create a course and spend like a you know 100 hours or more i'm trying to build a course and then no one buys it and then i um you know i just wasted a lot of time and that's uh you never get time back so that was my number one fear and i'm gonna call you out but i remember during our call you were you were scared that this was going to be a scam right yeah i was you know because like it's one of those days that like i clicked on an ad and then i put the call and then i was on the phone with him and then he says you know here's the cost of the course i won't say how much um and i just thought i i've never met him before and i'm gonna hand him my credit card and we're gonna do this thing so i had to ask my wife and then she even thought are you sure because she's very risk-averse and then out of some reason i just thought you know it's just so unlikely that it is a scam and chester seems like a good guy but i can tell you because i can read i could read people recently when i was a doctor i see so many people and so i decided to go for it and absolutely it's been not a scam whatsoever it's been great the program is wonderful it definitely works that all the concepts that work all the concepts uh will work if you apply them you know and and and also not even just that it works it's the sequence in which you apply them matters you know the fact that you say you know sell the course before you build it then if it sells then you have proof it'll work now if it doesn't sell either you have to re-engineer it or maybe maybe you just scrap it and you just save yourself a hundred hours of time uh building something that no one wanted so that i that was very elegant and i like that a lot uh-huh and despite all those you know hesitations about um this just not working out investing all this time not getting results and maybe even scared that this is a scam what made you pull the trigger at the very end it's a good question because it's just uh [Music] i i i felt that um honestly i felt that um you would probably give me more individual attention than um a program maybe i've heard of before let's say i've you know let's say it's like someone really big in the digital marketing space that i could hire i felt like i wouldn't um i'd be i would i would definitely definitely get them and get someone that maybe just works or trained under them and then i just felt like i was part of a too big of a group i felt like your group just felt more intimate to me it felt like it'd be just i'd have more access because you had this great thing where you said we've got weekly phone calls and we will answer all your questions yeah and i was like wow really like what if i have a lot but okay and you've been great and so i felt like i wouldn't just be taking a course watching videos and then like if i'm stuck you know good luck you know i felt like i had a a a lifeline there to help me that's good to know and uh yeah we were talking about this a bit earlier um about the the way i sequenced my course specifically in that order to get the get the end result right which for our community is a hygiene standard of at least ten thousand dollars per month and um what what's your what's been your experience through the program it's been great i would say uh uh so far everything has worked out exactly if i if i just followed the program so far everything has worked out i you know first came up with the the niche you know who i'm targeting and kind of really defined it and then i came up with what i think would match that niche you know with the product that would have the right product market fit based on just my hypothesis that i think it would but the what was important is when i started to test the hypothesis and the way that i validated the hypothesis with a the curious genius question where i i i wasn't hard selling people i was just asking them if i made something like this would you be interested which is not a hard sell i'm just asking them a question and then um and then they gave me feedback and based on that feedback i was able to design something that addressed all their concerns so it makes sense that they would you know buy a product that basically answered their desires and so it was a smart elegant way to to design even just a way to sell the class uh-huh yeah absolutely i i know like from all the clients that we work with one of the biggest rate limiting steps one of the biggest hesitations is not being able to find that right idea right and uh some of the people that join they there's usually two groups of people there's people that have no idea and people that have too many ideas they don't know which ones to focus on and so which one would you classify yourself as when we first started out ah um i would say uh i had three big ideas because i didn't have too many and i did have zero and so i just i i i was kind of the man i just focused i was going to try to validate one of those three um and the first one i focused on was the one that i personally have spent the most on myself because i've spent money for this training myself i've spent tens of thousands of dollars so i was scratching my own niche and i was basically just taking everything i learned and just packaged it onto an online course essentially uh so um yeah that was my approach uh-huh and as far as um you know testing the hypothesis and getting gathering the feedback could you talk talk about a bit about that process yeah so i'd say this is based on what i've seen in the digital doctor community i feel like this is probably the hardest step for a lot of doctors is that they they don't know where to go like do i go on reddit look on facebook i tried posting in a group and i got kicked out by the admin and things like that for me i just i post on um facebook groups i didn't do edit just facebook groups it was groups that i was already a part of and already sharing ideas with and having conversations with other doctors already and so by the time i posted they already knew that quite a lot people do who i was and i was a reasonable person but um but but i guess the main thing i'm trying to say is that i posted in the right groups that had exactly where my my niche and target doctor was having conversations online and when i asked this question it's a question that a lot of other people have questions about and they don't know how to get started and how to go on my opinion management program and other keratology program and so since i asked that same question if i showed you how to do it you know would you be interested and that's when the avalanche of responses came in i got i right now i've got 174 pmf surveys yeah i i stopped collecting them i didn't i haven't asked anyone for but they keep coming in based on my original post and that's how you know you you've gotten that product market fit and uh and now you're um now you're building your course right now right yes so now my week three so the beauty of uh what you do is you say do the pmf survey first find out what people want and then based on that sell them what they want and then after you get um uh you know at least like i think was it five buying clients i've got how many at least but uh uh uh basically once you have people that have actually given you money right because that's the biggest validation of all credit card swiped is number one and uh and so i've gotten uh um i've i invited 10 people to my course only so i had 174 still responses i decided to start small because i was titrating the price and you were smart i was going to just blast the same price to all 174 people and then you're like stop dummy don't do that because you don't really know what the price is going to be why don't you test it i said yes you must test it so i started 500 uh i sold three right away i went up to a thousand dollars so another three right away and then i went up to 1500 and i saw um you know more as well right away um some some of them some of them though so i will say i did go back some of them that saw the thousand dollar price and 500 price they saw the original 500 though because it's just 10 people they saw the race over there they said please we just sat there for 500. i just waited like two days and you bumped the price up right and i i i did honor the price for some of them so i made a little less money but it wasn't a big deal you know i was willing to do it and so i i think overall um i'm still happy i've made thousands of dollars i'm just these first 10 people so right now i'm 10 for 10. i did not expect that um and i still have 164 people i need to invite but i'm just i think i'm going to raise the price a little bit more yeah so that's a 100 conversion rate so far yeah i did not expect that i would be happy with that two out of ten because you had said 20 is my goal and that was my goal i told my wife if i get two i'm going to start building this course or something because i'm excited you know um but i got 10 out of 10. absolutely you've hit you've hit the jackpot and i mean imagine if you imagine if you went about this alone you would have probably sent 174 surveys that's 174 grand that you're leaving on the table basically yes you probably made me like a hundred thousand dollars richer just by saying stop don't eat my own just yet just that one piece of advice i was like wow that just paid for the whole justice zone of course [Laughter] yeah that's amazing um yeah whoa would you be open if we you know dived into your website and sure want to have a look all right absolutely so this is the optometrymasterclass.com all right um so yeah can you walk me through like your website what was the thinking behind it and stuff like that yes yeah so i am a big fan of uh you know um just listening to to mentors and things so you said keep it simple keep it clean don't have a lot of text don't have you know flashy videos anything crazy like that so i just followed your template exactly almost the only thing i added was the testimonials on the bottom um but i i just copied your template and i i assume that you've tested it and it's worked and so who am i to question something i've never done if you have something that's tested right and so i that's my approach i just copied exactly what you told me to do from everything absolutely i think that's one of the reasons to be honest why you did so well it's because even with your email marketing right you pretty much just used our templates and you adapted it for your own specific niche and then with the websites you just trusted that this is the this is the data evidence-based best cleanest website that you can possibly have some people might think oh wow this is so so simple it can't possibly work you have to add you know some videos a blog a text over here uh and so on and so forth just to make something work but uh this is what we found to be the simplest approach because that is actually what scales in the end um and you've just done it exactly the way you know we intended to in the program and i think that's also accountable for why your results are so amazing and so let's say we're an optometrist we're interested in starting your program then we just simply click this we can opt in and that's gonna take us to your video right yep correct awesome so walk me through the this video right here like um i know you had one or two or three iterations of this video right could you walk me through that's right that's right so i i this is this is my third or fourth version of that i'm shooting the exact same video almost but uh i just kept shorting it because my first one was 26 minutes long i just felt that was too long but what i did was i asked so three of the students who signed up i asked them uh i i knew them actually personally before they signed up and so um they were destined to be my student because i was gonna make them but anyways i i just asked them to give me feedback and they said you know the video was good but it's just too long or it took you too long to get into the meat of it and so then from then on um i just cut cut cut there's a great saying i love by mark twain he said you know i didn't have time to write a short letter so i wrote a long one so um i spent more time to write a short letter basically and uh essentially i want to introduce uh the the the person watching first what they want you know what do they want from me first not i don't i didn't jump to you like let me tell you about me because people don't care about me they care about themselves and so i want to start with what they care about first and then i talk about what they want and then i talk about how i can help guide them get there and then i do a call to action and that now that's my entire video basically absolutely and would you be open with clicking on this checkout page yeah sure all right so you you guys whoever is watching this video and you're interested in buying your program better get it now because this is probably the lowest you are ever going to see it it's fine going up it's probably going up yeah so so basically yeah that's basically how the entire website is once you kind of people come onto your website they watch this short little introduction video and then at the very end they fill out their credit card information and they purchase your program and all of this you know you kind of just set it up once right and it just works in the background automatically forever and now once you say you purchase your program then you're gonna gonna get access to your entire course right which you haven't even built it yet until you got your first few customers right that's right so once i sold a couple that i started building it i'm almost done with it actually so i'll be done probably in a week okay so you already got 10 students without even creating a product that's why i didn't have anything to sell them except for my promise and i've got thousands of dollars in my bank account for something that i haven't built yet and then now i'm building it and uh and i told him it was a pre-order so no one's you know confused at all there's no issues i think a lot of people get hung up by the fact that you're signing something that doesn't exist but as long as you're up front saying hey this is you know the pre-order for it's like a kickstarter you know i haven't you haven't made the product yeah i don't have it but you're gonna kick start the project it's the same thing yeah and most importantly it's it's the best way to validate um your product because at the end it's a win-win-win for all three parties so i think we covered this in the program as well like elon musk when he launches a tesla that's what he does he has to pre-launch the he has to pre-launch the model without even creating it in the first place because based on that he's able to gather data on how many people actually want this car to begin with that way he's gonna know how many of those cars to make secondly he's gonna know what characteristics does this car have to have in order to satisfy the end customer and based on this data this is actually a win-win for both parties the people that pre-launch the course they get at an everyday discounted price whereas those uh where's the builder of the course the creator you get to actually create a course that is completely custom and actually solves the problems that your end student actually has so in other words you're actually creating a higher quality course than just blindly creating one from scratch that's right exactly exactly yeah so i i basically yeah that's why it's so great because you um based on the surveys you built the course addressing their concerns you know you you divide into what they want because you actually you ask them in the survey what do you want and then you ask them what's the emotional roblox what's the logical roblox and instead of doing your video you say i will do this to overcome your emotional roadblock and then this is the answer to the physical block and logical block and then it's there's reason that if you give them what they want and you overcome their own obstacles that they'd be interested in your product and that's exactly what happened yeah a lot of people that are watching this they might think um one of the things i hear a lot is well there's all the all the information is free out there right why would anyone buy your course yeah um well my question particularly unfortunately the information is not free out there you have to take uh yeah a lot of um ce lectures you have to get a lot of clinical experience seeing the patients yourself um so it's not out there yet but i think at some day it will be out there for free more rarely available but i think the main difference is um first of all when you pay for of course you value it more and you value the advice you get from it more and you're you're more likely to execute it but also the same thing uh as you always get what you pay for and so if you if there's a class that's free it probably doesn't have that richness of content it doesn't have that um the depth and breadth of knowledge that you need to help you achieve your goals because if if it did you know um a lot of people would already be doing or you would already be doing it and so um that's why uh you know your free advice almost never gets you there and i think at the end of the day um it's not information that people need right because i think we all know how to have a healthy diet healthy relationships how to make more money how to get your you know books in order but some people are able to get amazing results and make that transformation much like yourself through this program what people need isn't necessarily information what they need is kind of like a system to follow which is exactly what your course provides you you're teaching these young optometrists how to start their own business step by step step by step such that they as long as they follow the instructions and they you know basically go through the program they're going to get the result that uh that they wanted right exactly so yeah ideas uh diamond doesn't you know and so it's uh it's all about execution it's all about staying out of the whirlwind that is your life and focusing on just a few important things uh i call them uh the wig the wildly important goals from this book i record the four disciplines of execution and yes and i and that is correct the main thing the most important thing i do is give the information but more importantly have it step by step so as long as you follow the cookbook recipe then you will achieve your end result and uh and so we help execute and actually care that's the number one reason why people don't succeed is lack of execution not lack of ideas yeah 100 and uh you know even even knowing these steps is not enough you need to know the sequence in order to execute those events which you which you talked about right because if you do things in the wrong order let's say like for example if you were to build before you sold the outcome would be completely different right yeah yeah and exactly like if i let's say let's say i had three very very complete ideas but the third order was the best one and i didn't know that but let's say i spent a thousand dollars doing the first one try to sell it didn't work out there goes a thousand hours i go to the second one i spent a thousand hours doesn't work out and that and then i scrap it then i go to the third one and what if that was the golden goose but then right before i decided i said you know what i've already failed twice i've invested like two years of my life i'm not gonna do it and and you could have missed out on maybe a potentially game changer right and because uh you you spent too much time building before you sold it versus selling trying to sell all three of them and then finding out that the third one is to win it right away so yeah you're incorrect the syntax matters so much when if i say you know the dog bit johnny you know what that means but if i just use exact same words and say uh johnny bit the dog it's exact same words it means a totally different thing so it's syntax matters yeah absolutely well yeah i mean that that is your progression so far and i'm sure we're going to do plenty of other videos in the future once your winter course uh your students once you know the profits continue to expand and expand so what where what would be the next steps for optometrymasterclass.com yeah so the next steps is uh i'm just facing the course i should be done in about a week uh and then i'm the i'm gonna keep it still just to the pmf survey people so i will slowly uh invite more than just the first 10 and 174 that i've received just the pms survey people so slowly let more in just see how it converts at which price as i'm titrating the price and also those first few people allow me to um adjust the course itself because the course itself is not a finished product uh you know um which is fine right perfection is the enemy of good i say so um it's okay that the course is still almost rough and the first few students are going to help me actually prove it and i'm going to base it i'm going to change based on their feedback they're going to have questions for me that i did not address that i didn't even think of and i'll find that out and i'll be like oh i need to create um a lesson about this this burning question that a hundred people asked me about and then from then on uh i'll find the course and then i'm going to really open the floodgates and go into your model your week module 4 lesson about the you know advertising and all that i'm really stoked for that one uh and so that's when i will scale it once i've um you know once i've fixed all the 174 people that filled out the survey absolutely and using module 4 like where do you want to scale this course in the next 12 months yeah i would say i'm hoping that to be done with my price testing and my course reiterations you know the small tweaks in there in the next maybe two or three months um hopefully and then from i think uh hopefully and maybe the next month even and then if everything looks good then i will scale to um everything that you say in your module before i'm just i'm a dummy i just listen to chester zona i just follow i'm gonna follow step by step whatever your worksheets tell me to do the action items i just do it from the top to the bottom until i'm done so uh that's my plan yeah that's probably why you're getting such good results because you're you're following what's tested tried and true our proven system and uh i'm excited for you man and it sounds like you really hit the jackpot um so far you're making incredible progress and this is just the beginning especially once you unlock module four of the training that's where we pour gasoline into the fire and things could really start exploding so at this point uh i know our program isn't for everyone the digital doctor program isn't necessarily for everyone who would you recommend this to hmm yeah good question ah i'd say i'd recommend it to someone who um you have to be one of the major fears that people have is rejection they feel as if they put themselves out there and the world will say no yeah you don't know what you're talking about you know you're an imposter that prostate syndrome you know and uh i'd say if you have a really bad case of imposter syndrome you know um yeah uh you have to resolve some of those demons you know otherwise they won't go much as well it was you won't achieve what you want and so you are your own obstacle first and you overcome your your own roadblocks and so this course did help does help get you there though um but i think for some people they they they still struggle even um because they get in their own way and they try to do weird things um they may they jump to you know week two before you finish in week one and they're doing out of order and or they um i i guess uh just thinking about the comments i see on this the the digital doctor community and so i'd say maybe the number one thing is that people start to um second-guess themselves a lot like when one of the students they started just trying to drop the price right away that's the that's the first thing they thought i'm gonna drop the price in half and you were smart you were saying you know hold up you know let's test things first and see how it goes i think as long as you follow the tested approach where you're you're testing things as a scientist then that's the way to go and less emotional yeah so you think the main thing that holds most people back from taking action is just a psychological aspect i do i do i think i think everyone has something that they know they can if you're a doctor you know so much that you don't give yourself credit for so you have knowledge you have knowledge that people pay money for because you're going to be a doctor they actually literally pay you for your advice so it's not the lack of knowledge it's just lack of um the psychological role block of of thinking that what you have is worth anything and what do you think we can do in order to because to be honest i felt the same way when i was starting my own course uh i had so many insecurities uh one of them was so ridiculous looking back i was insecure about my voice my accent it's really hard to pinpoint where i'm where i'm from just based on my accent it's not american it's not canadian it's not necessarily like asian um that was my biggest insecurity the second insecurity was really just putting myself out there because as a as a doctor you don't really uh obviously like a lot of doctors our day-to-day we teach a lot we have to prepare lectures academics uh academic conferences we have to share our knowledge to our colleagues as well as our patients so pretty much every like all the information is there in our head already but for me i know those were the biggest insecurities i had when i was just starting out i was worried that my idea wasn't good enough i was worried that much like you if i invested a time maybe there's no return um for for for my time's worth and even just a bit of imposter syndrome like you see all these people out there that are doing uh you know quote unquote better you might you might see their social media profiles you might start to think that you need the social media audience just to get some students um which is completely ridiculous looking back i had all these limitations limiting beliefs that held me back so i guess my question to you is what do you think to these people out there maybe one of them is watching us right now um they know that they have the expertise they want to build a source of passive income to free up their time at the hospital to cut back on their clinical hours as well as to serve more people and make meaningful impact and really position themselves as a as a global educator teaching other people healing the world with online education what do you think we can do to help them cross that chasm and make this decision for themselves yeah yeah so it's you know how do you drive anyone to action and they say the first step to uh to doing anything in your life is uh desire and you need to start with why uh one of my favorite books is start with why by simon sinek and the reason why i like it is because it's truly what if you have a strong enough why you will get the what in the hell and um one thing that i that spoke out to me when i saw you know each other your facebook ad and you read your copy was it actually the first thing i did was i you know they say that when you get comfortable that's the number one thing that can really detriment basically when you're comfortable you can make a really bad impact on how successful you are because you're comfortable so your lack of desire right and so when i clicked on your ad it made me say yeah i could i could i could do more i could help more people i could i could spend and help other doctors do something i could spread my knowledge to help more patients you know i and so it created a higher sense of the desire because it i wasn't even aware and that i could do it and so i'd say the first step to helping more doctors overcome imposter syndrome your psychological barriers is having a strong why and a strong reason maybe you're trying to i know there's another doctor who's trying to help um uh pass victims of like uh like physical or sexual abuse or yeah but yeah that to me is a strong why and that doctor is trying to educate and help empower people who've had those issues and to me that's that's a strong reason like that doctor will probably follow through and execute because i truly believe they're on our mission to help and give more and help more lives and so that to me will overcome imposter syndrome it will overcome your barriers if you have a strong desire but you need to have a strong why and i would i would advise everyone to um they say this the two most important days of your life are the day that you are born and the day that you find out why and uh if you have a strong why and have you know something that you really want to give the world then you'll find a way but you have to kind of unfortunately have to look inside yourself to find out what your why is because only you won't know and i guess that's a beautiful way to wrap this up but the final question speaking of the the why what is your why yeah my why is um so i'm really near-sighted myself see i'm wearing glasses my vision is poor and uh it's really bad and uh what we're learning is that it's mostly not genetic actually that makes your vision bad it's actually mostly environment and so uh i am passionate about having no kids grow up like me because um i unfortunately am literally a hundred times more likely to lose my vision sometime in my life than the average person because of how high my prescription is and if it's completely unavoidable and so i am passionate about trying to prevent that from happening in young kids who have who stand no chance and unfortunately today there are so many kids that uh it's become epidemic and they're more kids that have that vision than ever before it's actually doubled since the 1970s so um anyways that's my why i'm trying to help more kids that's amazing and i suppose we're going to end up right here uh is there anything you'd like to add to this conversation yeah just uh you know no matter what you do if you want to become a good tennis player football player do an online course be a good doctor you need a mentor you need a coach it doesn't matter what you do in any discipline even tom brady has a coach you know even roger federer had a coach tiger boys has a coach and so um no matter what you do so i'm thankful first of all for for you doctor and chester zoda for being my coach because i don't know what i'm doing i still don't know what i'm doing i'm just following the cookbook and so far it's working and so um it's i'm thankful for you and thankful for the guidance that i've received and i'm really happy i hope that this will um i think this is going to go quite well you know i it already has gone well and so i think it's just going to scale up and be it doesn't have to be to me it doesn't have to be you know it doesn't have to be all i do and replace my income or anything like that but it's just something nice to help to help if i can help more kids and you get better vision and uh and spread the words helping other doctors do that then to me that's mission accomplished that's a check mark there and so that's what i'm going for absolutely i'm grateful for you as well i mean you've been getting great progress through the results and to be honest this is just the beginning uh your course once you've launched your course once you've gone into step four of the program that's when things really start getting fun and maybe we'll do another one of these uh by then yeah it'd be nice it'd be fun to see some who lily hasn't gone to you know where like a chesses or level yet but it's just starting out and seeing it happen live yeah it's very exciting and i'm just i'm just happy to help you bridge that gap and into the online course world so well that concludes this video and uh thank you guys for watching and thank you dr tom mai for your time and uh absolutely great thank you for your time