How to Grow Your YouTube Channel with Eric Cogorno

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Eric Cogorno – YouTube Golf Education

Listen as Eric discusses his process and the path he has built and followed to lead to the success that many YouTubers, myself included, can learn from.

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Video editing requires a lot more work.
07:30 Three buckets: content, editing, and engagement.
15:22 Watched goal-setting video, expanded mindset, new possibilities.
21:42 Realizing need for backup plan after college.
24:31 Coaches feel insecure and over deliver.
28:39 Utilized social media for financial and coaching growth.
35:49 Seeking insight on coaching and taking action.
39:26 People have pain threshold for achieving goals.
47:45 Delegate tasks to specialists for faster, better results.
51:40 Analytical guy trusts gut, values quick onboarding.
59:39 Slow and steady growth, prioritize main goals.
01:03:58 Analyzing content for patterns and themes.
01:09:49 YouTube is my main focus, not Instagram.
01:12:34 Key conversation can make 1000s. Marketing efforts initiated.
01:22:14 Confusion over golf and desire to learn.

Podcast Transcription:

Eric Cogorno [00:00:00]:
And I think a common trait of a lot of coaches in the beginning is when you feel insecure and probably in a lot of transactions, we tend to over deliver or over give too much talk and too much information. Like when I get a golf lesson now, James, just to put in perspective, I might give a student one, maybe 2 main things to work on. Probably like if you delve into someone’s business model and you’re like, hey, we gotta focus on, like, this one thing first. Same thing with a golf lesson. But in the beginning, when you’re nervous, you know what’s going on. I might be slinging out 10 things. I mean, I’m giving them all kinds of stuff to do and then nothing gets done.

James Kademan [00:00:35]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and strength and successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found at draw in customers .com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie and calls on call answering service, as well as the Bold Business Book. And today we are welcoming slash preparing to learn from Eric Cugorno, how to build an online coaching business. So, Eric, hopefully, I didn’t butcher your last name too bad. How is it going today?

Eric Cogorno [00:01:08]:
Yeah. Everything’s good. You said that perfect. Most people have a hard time with that. That was, that was perfect, man. Everything’s great. Appreciate you having me here, James, and look forward to, providing some value for the audience.

James Kademan [00:01:17]:
Yeah. So just so the audience knows, I was on your YouTube channel just a little bit ago, and I was watching one of the videos, the one that you had right away that pops up. And I wanna ask you about this before I forget because we’re on YouTube, lots of people on YouTube. The editing that you have in your YouTube videos seems to be excellent. And from my experience, editing videos takes about 50 times longer than it takes to record the video. So can you tell me before I forget, tell me about your process for editing, if you hire someone, if it’s you, and just the story of where it started to where you’re at now with your editing.

Eric Cogorno [00:02:01]:
Yeah. Sure. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. So I got incredibly lucky that when we started our YouTube channel, I had a partner. I had a business partner and still do have a partner named Mary Langel. So she has done all the filming, all of the editing, behind the scenes. And so, like, the ultimate hack, you know, with building the social media, if you can find someone good to do it with, is certainly finding someone who’s good at that.

Eric Cogorno [00:02:25]:
And so, you know, I’ve gotten better on camera on the speaking and the coaching part. I like to think that’s my strength and my niche. And, like, when I tried James, when I first bought a camera and I tried to film myself and edit it, I literally had a hard time getting the camera on. And that’s Oh, no. Serious. Yeah, dude. It was it was a disaster. And so I think a lot of people who try and get into social media have the the exact problem you just mentioned, which is, like, dude, it takes so long.

Eric Cogorno [00:02:53]:
The back end of the video, like you said, is way more difficult than the actual filming itself. For example, if we we put out a 10 minute golf video, it takes us 10 minutes to film. We don’t script it. We turn the camera on. We do it one take and go, but it might take, you know, 6, 8 hours to get the video together, and then we come up with, like, 20 variations of thumbnails to pick through titles. Like, all the back end stuff to your point is is takes a lot of work. And so I don’t have any great strategies to do that on your own because I’ve never had to. I would say my advice and hack would be to find someone who’s great at it, unless unless you’re someone who’s thinking you wanna build and develop the skill over time.

Eric Cogorno [00:03:37]:
What I see James a lot is like us, maybe someone who runs a business or coaching or we we do things to make money. And then we end up spending time learning these other side things. Whereas like, if we just would have focused on us doing the money making activity, we could find someone and pay them to do a far better job, you know, than we’re than we’re able to. So so definitely higher higher help. But the short version of the story, man, is, I coach golf since I’ve been 18 years old. And Mary came in for a lesson one day. And at that time, I was coaching a lot of junior golfers. So we would have, like, 30 kids there, James, and there’d be, like, music playing and joking around busting chops.

Eric Cogorno [00:04:15]:
It was just a fun cool environment. And she was in the PR world, so she came in for a lesson one day and I had these like 30 kids there. She’s like Eric, you know, this this should be like a show. There’s like a show here or something. And I said, gosh, it’s so funny that you say that because I had just decided that I wanted to do YouTube. This is 2016. Like, okay. Hey.

Eric Cogorno [00:04:33]:
I just decided I wanna do YouTube, but we talk right then and there about building a YouTube channel. And, and this is our this is our 8th year now posting, posting golf videos, and we just started our new personal development channel. So it’s funny starting, starting from scratch there again, but that’s how it all started.

James Kademan [00:04:50]:
Nice. That is awesome. So she came in for a lesson, and next thing you know, she’s your business partner editing, doing super awesome things, helping your business grow.

Eric Cogorno [00:05:00]:
Thank you. 100%. Yeah. And, like, that’s a great example, James, as someone who’s like, I was good at the golf coaching part, but I would have been terrible at everything else, the filming, the editing, so on and so forth. And so had I not found a partner, I probably would have never done it.

James Kademan [00:05:16]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [00:05:17]:
You know, like, it it can be such a you know, I mean, like, it can be such a wall to climb that doing it in addition to your main thing. If there’s a way to figure it out, getting help early on, it’s just has helped me tremendously.

James Kademan [00:05:29]:
Yeah. It’s interesting. I went to a workshop on YouTube. I mean, we’re talking 15 plus years ago, long time ago. YouTube was definitely a thing. I don’t remember exactly, but I feel like it wasn’t the thing that it is now. And the guy essentially said, put up something because something is better than nothing. Mhmm.

James Kademan [00:05:55]:
And he had his iPhone. He has little stand for his current

Eric Cogorno [00:06:01]:
stuff

James Kademan [00:06:05]:
current stuff included, and that’s more or less what we do. I mean, there’s editing and stuff like that, but the quality of some of the edits that I see in some of the other videos that are maybe shorter form. This one, I guess what we do here with the podcast, I’m not expecting someone to just sit down, grab a bowl of popcorn, and watch this. Be cool if they do. I’m not expecting it. It’s long form. Just you got you’re listening to this more than watching it. In the case of some of the shorter form stuff, the editing that goes into that is just it’s next level.

James Kademan [00:06:36]:
It’s next level. I think of the one of my favorite guys to watch is, Ryan f 9. Because when I get into motorcycles, he’s got this channel. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the channel. Mm-mm. But I think he’s a video guy motorcyclist that happens to work for a company that puts up these YouTube videos. And it’s a it’s like a 10 minute documentary that somebody put in many, many, many hours in. It’s a that is one where you could grab a bowl of popcorn and watch it and just be amazed.

James Kademan [00:07:10]:
It is surreal. And I think of myself as far as editing goes, I wouldn’t even know how to do 3 quarters of the stuff that they have done in those videos. So it’s it’s always interesting, and it’s I’m happy to see the videos of the cool editing and stuff because it it’s just impressive. It is crazy impressive.

Eric Cogorno [00:07:30]:
It is. You know, I think there’s 3 I think there’s 3 buckets. You know? There’s, like, people who are good if the content’s good. Maybe the editing is not as good, but it’s like, gosh, those story tell, the, like, meat of the video is so good. Then there’s people who have great editing and graphics and stuff, but it’s kinda like, yeah, the the meat or what they give you is okay. And then the middle bucket, like, the I what I see is the people who can do both of those who are, like, great info, great story tell, good EQ, they connect with the audience, and they can find ways to make their videos engaging outside of a few anomalies, I think, are the ones that, like, hit grand slams.

James Kademan [00:08:08]:
Right.

Eric Cogorno [00:08:08]:
Fair. Fair. Fair. Yeah. And it’s a it’s a it’s an interesting game. And I think things have changed a lot too. I don’t know how deep you wanna go in this, but, I mean, like, obviously, since TikTok came in and, like, when we first started posting in 16, 17, you could get away with longer formats, less b roll, less eye candy, just more talk to camera. It seems like now when I look at our stats and watch time, that, like, we’re really cognizant of we have a camera switch every 3 or 4 seconds, different angle.

Eric Cogorno [00:08:35]:
We’ll have b roll every 20 seconds. Like, nonnegotiable things just to keep people’s attention span. So that’s that’s been an interesting thing to follow in the past couple years.

James Kademan [00:08:44]:
Yeah. You raise a huge point. As I was looking at, even just YouTube wanting you to post those little shorts. And my first thought was what in the world? Right? I’m old guys, so I don’t care about the shorts. I I because I like to listen to longer form stuff because you can just throw it in the car, you hit play, and you just move on with your life. I don’t feel the need to click every 5 seconds for a new video. But apparently, I’m in the minority because there seemed to be a ton, and YouTube is trying to push. I think I imagine to compete with TikTok.

James Kademan [00:09:20]:
Like, push that short form video. Push that short form video. So it’s interesting to see how the market itself has evolved, but you’re totally right. B roll every few seconds and zoom in, zoom out the text, the fonts, all that kind of stuff. It’s like a constantly look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Don’t go away.

James Kademan [00:09:39]:
So it’s very interesting, good or bad. It’s very interesting to see how it, how it has changed. And that just goes on the the producer to make sure that they get the edits in there instead of just clicking record, click and stop, and click and post. The world has changed a little bit. A lot of it.

Eric Cogorno [00:09:56]:
A lot of it. Yeah. You know, it’s it. I think the the glass half full thing, the positive the positive note I would kinda wrap that up with is if you’re someone that’s doing it, the good news is there’s so many opportunities in all in all forms. So because there are shorts now, you can be great at shorts. You can be great at mid length. We do a lot of 10 to 12 minute. We’ll call it mid length.

Eric Cogorno [00:10:17]:
And you could be great at long form. I think you can win in any of them, eve even if you don’t do them all at the same time, which is nice. That’s cool.

James Kademan [00:10:24]:
Fair. Totally fair. So let’s go back to you. When you’re teaching golf, you’re teaching these kids, teaching the PR woman, things are going cool. Were you actually thinking of venturing off into something more, I’m gonna say national, but I guess it’d be national, international, and even not directly in person. Like, that’s a big step.

Eric Cogorno [00:10:47]:
Yeah. Initially, I wasn’t thinking that. And then so kind of what happened was I started teaching golf, let’s say, age 18. I spent my first 5 to 10 years really focused on getting great at golf coaching. And one of the things, James, is I talk to people about building socials and online brands, especially in the world we are now, it’s easy to want to skip that phase. Like, all of the advice that I’d have of building an online brand, big YouTube channel, online business, etcetera, and I would think you would I would assume to say the same thing as, like, that comes after the assumption that you’ve got a base of being great or getting great at the thing you do. I’m in the golf coaching world, so I talk to a lot of people who are in coaching or selling services. And so, you know, if I’m one of the best coaches in the world, all the other stuff gets a lot easier.

Eric Cogorno [00:11:38]:
But if I’m not that great at coaching, it’s, you know, I gotta get really good at these other things and then that usually doesn’t last anyway. People people sort of figure you out. You know? Yeah. So, like, I had enough awareness in the beginning to know, okay, I’ve gotta get good at this. And frankly, when I first started coaching, just like I’m sure your first podcast, the first things we do, we stink at naturally. We haven’t done it before. So I gave some terrible golf lessons. I mean, really bad in the beginning.

Eric Cogorno [00:12:04]:
But I didn’t know any better. Like, I was trying my best, just giving way too much information, insecure. And so sort of at an obsession of, like, okay, I gotta get better at this thing, like, I stink at this. I spent 5 to 10 years getting really, really good at coaching first, and then by the time I was, like, 28, like I said, 10 years in, dude, I felt tired, burnt out. I was working, you know, good at what I thought was a lot of hour. You thought, it’s not physically taxing being out in the sun on the go on the range, but you’re, like, out in the sun all day. It’s just like and I thought to myself, gosh. Like, there ain’t no way I could do this when I’m 50, 60 years old.

Eric Cogorno [00:12:40]:
Like, no way. Now there’s a lot of things that happened at the same time for me that helped me. So, like, at that time right before that, I had watched this. You ever see, like, The Minimalist? These minimalist guys on, like, Netflix and YouTube and stuff?

James Kademan [00:12:53]:
Yeah. Like, tiny house stuff or living off the land kinda thing.

Eric Cogorno [00:12:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I got a little minimalist kick, okay, before this point where I was, like, got rid of a lot of my stuff, brought my expenses down. I live very cheap. And, this is sort of on my search for, like, happiness and and feeling good and stuff. And I went through that phase, and it was good, but it didn’t it didn’t feel like enough for me. I was like, hey. Let let’s say at this point, I’m coaching golf, James.

Eric Cogorno [00:13:18]:
My 1st year, I made $75100. My second year, I made, 15,000, so I doubled. Then I made 30,000 doubled. Then I made 60, and then I made 80, 90. And I kinda got stuck at, like, 80, 90 grand a year at this in person coaching. But I was living on, like, 30.

James Kademan [00:13:36]:
So I

Eric Cogorno [00:13:37]:
didn’t do you know, I wasn’t bad? It was great, dude. I was like Sounds like it’s pretty sweet. Yeah. It was all good. But then it was like, deep down, I didn’t feel, like, satisfied.

James Kademan [00:13:47]:
Ah, there you go.

Eric Cogorno [00:13:49]:
Yeah. I felt like, okay. This is great, but this financial freedom thing and this, you know, it just didn’t give me what I was thinking it was going to, which I think is a common theme for a lot of us when you sort of hit goals and milestones. And so I coupled that feeling with, like, hey. I feel kind of tired, burnt out, 20, I can’t do this forever. And this again, this is like when I wanted to do YouTube and I met Mary. Things for me have seemed to just beautifully be timed. Like, just lucky quid, would it depending on what you believe upon.

Eric Cogorno [00:14:18]:
Yeah. I very, very lucky. And so at the same time that this was happening, my friend sent me a video from Tony Robbins. Oh, yeah. Randomly I was I remember I was in the bathroom of my apartment and he texted me this video. He’s like, you should watch this, the thing from Tony Robbins. And I watched it, and I liked it, but it didn’t, like, do anything to me really at the moment. But in that little recommended thing right next to it, there was a video from a guy named Jim Rohn, and I clicked on it.

Eric Cogorno [00:14:47]:
And when I first listened to Jim Rohn talk, it was the I think it’s called the day that changed your life, it’s a 2 hour seminar. It was like my whole world changed. Like listening to that man speak and how he made things seem so simple. Sort of those things when someone says something where, like, you’re like, duh. Like, why didn’t I think of that? You know what I mean? It’s like, oh, yeah. That’s obvious. And so it was the first time I was really exposed to personal development. Right? The idea of, like, Jim says, focus more on making you better, than than getting good at your job, like focusing on improving yourself.

Eric Cogorno [00:15:22]:
And right after I watched that video, there was the next recommended video was a Jim Rohn goal setting workshop. That’s a 2 part 2 part video. It’s like an hour long and I sat down, I pulled out a legal pad like I’ve got here right next to me that I take notes on and I did his goal setting workshop and he said, you know, basically write down everything you’d want, just dream life, no circumstances, no logistics, just like if you could dream up this dream life in 10 years from now, like, what would it look like? And I did that and wrote them all down and, you know, how long would I think this would take, so on and so forth. And that was the first time that I my brain felt like it was allowed to think big enough to, like you know, I I’m writing this beach house, house here, cars, this, that, financial freedom, so on and so forth. And I think looking back upon it, I got stuck at 80 to $90 a year because that’s as far as my brain was, like, seeing. And I think when I did this goal setting workshop, it was the first time I really allowed myself to, like, what would even be possible here? And I wrote those things down and gin the whole thing there was, like, you’re trying to do with financial freedom. But can you have enough money invested that spits you up money every month to pay for it? So I looked up all these things I wanted, and it turned out it was, like, $20 a month. A month.

Eric Cogorno [00:16:41]:
So that was kinda nice, a month. Alright. So it wasn’t like a1000000 a month. I was like, okay. $20 a month. Now this time, I’m making 80, $90.

James Kademan [00:16:50]:
It’s a

Eric Cogorno [00:16:51]:
good start. Yeah. Good. It’s a good start. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So $20 a month to pay for this dream life that I wanted.

Eric Cogorno [00:16:57]:
You do some quick math on it, 6% return, so on and so forth. I figured out I needed, like, $4,000,000 invested. Need 4,000,000 invested to spit me out about $20 a month. And this I did this when I was, like, just before 30. So I said, okay. Wouldn’t it be nice to have this dream life buy? I’m like, well, damn. Imagine being fully retired when I’m 40, you know, 10 years from now. That’d be cool.

Eric Cogorno [00:17:20]:
So take 4,000,000, divide it down. I’m like, I’ll make an 80. It’ll probably take me a good 3 years to get this thing going. If I give myself 7 years, 33 to 40, do you divide that down? So, like, how do I I I I’ve got $0, basically. How do I save $4,000,000? And that led me to, hey. I gotta make about $1,200,000 a year to pay taxes, live my dream life along the way, and save money. And that $1,200,000 a year, then I started to think, like, I’m coaching golf, charging a 100, $150 an hour, whatever I was. Like, I I physically can’t teach enough hours to make this sort of money.

Eric Cogorno [00:17:57]:
Just that doesn’t work. It doesn’t add up. Yeah. So I’m like, okay. So my point being, the YouTube and when we did all this stuff, all this stuff was timed. I was kinda burnt out. I’m listening to Jim Rohn. My brain’s working for the first time.

Eric Cogorno [00:18:13]:
But I believe the only reason that we’ve stuck through this long enough and did all these things is because I allowed myself to think about making 1,200,000 a year when I was making 80,000. And and as you know, I mean, dude, from going when I’m making $80, me thinking 1.2 might as well have been a 1,000,000,000 at that time. It it felt so far away. But then but then it makes you think, like, what would it actually be like to do this? And the only thing I could come up with is if we had a membership site where people were paying a monthly recurring thing. So I thought, okay, 2,000 people at $50 a month is a $100, you know, a month. That’s 1,200,000. And that’s where we launched our YouTube and gogorno golf.com. That’s been, like, the sole business objective for the past 8 years.

Eric Cogorno [00:18:57]:
That’s a long story, but hopefully, I think that paints the, like, why we do a lot of our stuff is after the clarity of that bigger, longer term vision.

James Kademan [00:19:08]:
Right. You’re you’re totally right on every level there, Especially when you talk about thinking big or big to you at one point, you know, the 80 to 90. Hey. We’re cool. We’re comfortable. Where things are moving along, I don’t have to worry about where I’m gonna eat. I don’t have to worry about where I’m gonna sleep. And if my buddy say, hey.

James Kademan [00:19:26]:
Let’s go out tonight. I don’t have to shake the couch to try to get 50¢ out of it. Just you’re having a good time. But it’s interesting because I found myself in those ruts before I call them ruts for back then. You’re just like, I was just comfortable, but comfort is often not a good place to hang out, at least not for very long. So it’s interesting when you’re just like, what would it take? And then would I be willing to take it? And it’s so interesting how just one little video is just like mind blown. What if I did this? Woah. That’s cool.

James Kademan [00:19:57]:
I love it. Tell me, I wanna back up a step and ask you about the golf thing specifically doing this, offering this coaching and stuff like that for golf. Because there’s a lot lot of coaches out there for different things. Right? Whether it’s weight loss or business coaching, whatever. Insert thing here. Golf, I know a lot of people that golf, and I know 2 that I would consider to be good at golf. So to coach golf means that you gotta be phenomenal at golf. So tell me about that learning curve and trying to get around or through the I’m not good enough to coach kind of thing.

James Kademan [00:20:37]:
Because I imagine there must

Eric Cogorno [00:20:38]:
have been

James Kademan [00:20:38]:
a little bit of that.

Eric Cogorno [00:20:41]:
Yeah. So, like, when I, you know, when I grew up, I was playing all kinds of different sports, baseball, basketball, football, golf, etcetera. And I started golfing because my dad golfed. When I was little, my dad would go golf on the weekends with his buddies. And when I was little, I think, like, a lot of us did, I looked at my dad like he was Superman. So So I I didn’t really care about golf. I just wanted to go hang out with him and his buddies on the weekend. And then it turned into, like, I wanted to beat him and his buddies on the weekend.

Eric Cogorno [00:21:03]:
And, by the time I was about in high school, 15, 16 years old, I was like, okay. I’m gonna just focus on golf. I got to the point where I could shoot around par probably in, like, 11th grade ish. I got pretty good pretty fast.

James Kademan [00:21:15]:
Wow. But I

Eric Cogorno [00:21:16]:
spent a lot of time on it. Like, in my early years of high school, it was, like, school golf and that was about it. Like, I really, really hammered those in. I’m like an all in or all out obsessive sort of, you know, guy. We can’t tell you a lot of us are. So I got pretty good pretty early relative to, like, my local area. Right? So I went and played in college at a small d one school. It’s, like, good enough to be competitive, but not definitely not good enough to, like, think I’m gonna go play pro or anything.

Eric Cogorno [00:21:42]:
And, you know, the when I was in college, my first event in school because I’m still thinking a little bit. You know, when you’re younger playing sports, you’re playing literally, you hit a home run, you think you’re gonna go play, like, baseball one day. Like, as soon as you get out of your state or something, like, you’re getting you know, you got no chance. Dude, my first my first event in college, I remember playing with a kid from Louisville, which is like a decent golf school, nothing great. And he was just so significantly better than me, and it was so clear and obvious I’d never be that good. And he just went to Louisville, not like Miami or, you know, North Carolina or whatever. And so, like, pretty quickly, like, I need a backup plan. And it’s funny the golf coaching thing because at that point, I worked at a I think it’s funny.

Eric Cogorno [00:22:24]:
I worked at a golf I worked at this golf course, and I I don’t know if you ever go to the Ranger. It seems like you get a guy who picks balls in the range. That’s what I did. I was out there in the in the little picker picking balls in the range. This is 2,007, 2008 ish. If I’m making minimum wage, this is, like, $6 an hour, 6.25. And I’ll never forget. I’m picking balls.

Eric Cogorno [00:22:46]:
It’s August. It’s hot in Pennsylvania. Our range is bumpy. So I’m in this car, bumpy up and down. I’m hot. I may have even been hungover. I remember not feeling well. And I brought this little picker on the side of the range.

Eric Cogorno [00:23:00]:
And one of the guys who’s by now one of my great friends, Paul Paul Viola was teaching golf there. And I’m taking these balls out and putting them in this thing. I’m not super happy to be there. And he made an offhand comment, not bragging, just made it that he made $50 given this 30 minute golf lesson. And so I’m thinking to myself, man, I gotta work 8 hours picking this range to make $50 pretax, and he just made $50 in 30 minutes. And I was watching it. It was like, they’re joking. He’s in the shade.

Eric Cogorno [00:23:29]:
You know, this guy hit, like, a couple golf balls. I’m like, this looks pretty darn easy. So I actually got into the coaching in the beginning just out of, like, economic, hey, this would be easier to make $50 in 30 minutes versus pick the range. It wasn’t like a passion thing. Like, I I wish my story was I really wanted to help people play better golf

James Kademan [00:23:49]:
and that’s why I got into it. My dream is to make the world a better place by playing golf. Right?

Eric Cogorno [00:23:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds nice, man, but it was just, like, made more sense to do financially. And, yeah, and started coaching. Now I never thought, like, once and Paul, the guy told him I wanted to coach, he was nice enough to mentor me. He started giving me some of his clients. I think I started I think I started $30 an hour was when I started. And compared to make it 6, I was like

James Kademan [00:24:14]:
Yeah. Top of the world.

Eric Cogorno [00:24:16]:
Yeah. Miles a bottle. I thought, like, this is really, really good here. And, I never felt insecure about my ability to play the game, but I felt very insecure in the first beginning about my ability to teach the game.

James Kademan [00:24:30]:
Oh, okay.

Eric Cogorno [00:24:31]:
And I think a common trait of a lot of coaches in the beginning is when you feel insecure and probably in a lot of transactions, we tend to over deliver or over give too much talk and too much information. Like, when I get a golf lesson now, James, just to put in perspective, I might give a student 1, maybe 2 main things to work on. Probably, like, if you delve into someone’s business model and you’re, like, hey, we gotta focus on, like, this one thing first. Same thing with a golf lesson. But in the beginning, when you’re nervous, you know what’s going on, I might be slinging out 10 things. I mean, I’m giving them all kinds of stuff to do and then nothing gets done. But I think that’s a, necessary evil. So, yeah, I started coaching just out of financial.

Eric Cogorno [00:25:10]:
It made sense. And then and then I think I just felt so bad about how bad those first couple things went that it just drove, like, a 10 year I mean, I’ve read every book, watched every video, studied everything golf swing related possible to try and get try and get really great at it.

James Kademan [00:25:29]:
That is awesome. You are so right. So right. When I started my business coaching practice, I would charge by the hour. And I remember the majority of my first meetings would go 2 and a half, 3 hours. I’d wanna go 4 hours where I was just, you know, you’re pitching and catching and having a good time with this person. And I break it down and I was like, I didn’t make anything on that because it went so long And you meet with them the next week or next month, whatever time. They didn’t do anything you told them because you just gave them so much information that they essentially got inundated and said, I don’t even know where to start.

James Kademan [00:26:07]:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. You’re so right. So right. It’s funny. That’s funny. So tell me when you what made you decide to branch out into social media and stuff like that? YouTubes and all that kind of stuff, YouTube, TikTok, whatever, besides just selling memberships on a site. Because me talking 2010, 2015, membership sites were kind of the jam.

Eric Cogorno [00:26:33]:
Yeah. It it’s, yeah. At that point, when I had watched that Jim Rohn and I started thinking, hey, let me get into this personal development, and I started watching some more YouTube stuff, I was watching, like, Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, and this is like 2015, 16. Right? So like they’re still newish to it, but yeah, it was a lot of like recurring revenue, build membership sites, so on and so forth. And in the golf space, there wasn’t a lot of people doing it. Oh. There was, like yeah. There there was, like, 2 or 3 people who were pretty early, like, first to market posting on socials and doing, membership sites back then.

Eric Cogorno [00:27:09]:
Different ballgame now. So there was a there was a demand for it. I could see things were going online. Right? I could, like, I could see that happening. And then, again, my options felt limited. Like, when I did that dream life thing, I did that before we started the YouTube channel. So I kind of was like, this is where I wanna go. How would we even get there? And so when you start thinking about getting 2,000 people to sign up, I’m like, where am I gonna get 2,000 people from? So in person locally in my local market, maybe a couple hundred people knew who I was, maybe.

Eric Cogorno [00:27:42]:
And Grant Cardone used to always say, get attention first, build audience, Get attention first, build audience. Get attention first, build audience. I used to listen to his 10 x audio tape like it was going out of style. So, I took a lot of that to heart and, and and we’re like, okay. If I wanna get 2,000 people, I need more people to know who I am. First things first. So where can I get people from? And at that point, you know, YouTube was the best option. So we started doing, posted our first video January 1, 2017.

Eric Cogorno [00:28:12]:
And we’re like, okay. I’m gonna do 3 videos a week. In all 3 of them, I’m gonna promote this site. I’m gonna use this as a vehicle to get them to the site, and we give them 10 to 15 minutes of great free content, pitch them for 20, 30 seconds. I found in the beginning, but again, back then, I could get away with longer, like, pitches compared to now. That feels a little different to me. But I promoted the site in every video 3 times a week for 7 years. And, so that was all, like, pretty clear to me of the direction we were going.

Eric Cogorno [00:28:39]:
Now the journey there was, you know, way harder than I thought, way longer than I thought, etcetera, etcetera. But, social media and why we did that was because I I wanted to get to that 1,200,000, 4,000,000 financial freedom thing, and it just felt like the only way I could get that many people to sign up for something. At that point, I also was flirting with, like, hey, I could do golf schools, get 10 people to pay $2 each, $20 a week. So, like, that was part of it too. And I’m like, where are these people at that would do that? I didn’t plan on, hey, when I get this YouTube and audience stuff, that’s gonna help my in person coaching, but that was a nice side benefit. You know, my when we first started YouTube, I think I charged, let’s say, $100 an hour. Went from, like, a 100 to 150 to 200 to 300 you know, to higher and higher fees. So that was a nice ancillary benefit.

Eric Cogorno [00:29:29]:
But just Grant Cardone really beat into me, build your audience, and get attention.

James Kademan [00:29:33]:
That’s where

Eric Cogorno [00:29:34]:
that game plan came from. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:29:35]:
Tell me about the get attention part.

Eric Cogorno [00:29:39]:
So, you know, I think the moral of the story of how he what I remember him saying was, basically, if people don’t know you, they won’t buy from you. And I was like, that’s simple. That makes good sense to me. True. And then I thought, like again, I’m thinking in my mind at that point, maybe a couple hundred people know who I am, like, in the golf space. So if 300 people know who I am, how do I sell 2,000?

James Kademan [00:30:03]:
Right. That’s assuming a 100% sales to everyone you know in the best space. Right? Right.

Eric Cogorno [00:30:08]:
Like, they’re gonna tell their friends. They’re all gonna sign up. So yeah, then I started thinking and I didn’t know about conversion rates or this and the next thing. So I’m just thinking like, oh, man. Like, alright. If I could get 10,000 people and 2,000 people sign up. And then the reality is, like, we needed 100 of thousands of subscribers to get 2,000 people to sign up for something. So I didn’t factor that in.

Eric Cogorno [00:30:29]:
I also didn’t factor in churn rates and people leaving. So there were some lessons learned there. But, yeah, it was all like people need to know who you are, not personally, but, like, that you exist. Like, if I don’t know McDonald’s is a thing, I’m never gonna go there and get food. Right. You gotta know it exists. And, yeah. Like, when people say stuff, James, like this on a podcast, one thing we’ve been good at because as you know, like, the advice I give so many people advice and they don’t do anything with it.

Eric Cogorno [00:30:56]:
I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. One thing we’ve been good at is, like, when someone says something like that to me and it makes good sense, I’m like, man, we’ll go we’ll I’ll go all in on that. So that yeah. That’s all thanks to Grant Cardone.

James Kademan [00:31:09]:
Yeah. You know what’s interesting? There are a lot of mentors. I’m a big Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn. Very it’s interesting. It’s interesting to hear them speak because even though I feel like a lot of this stuff is like you said, it’s like, well, people pay to listen to this. This is common sense. But then you think, well, you’re listening to it, and you’re being inspired by it and you know it, but you still it feels good to hear it. And it’s interesting just to hear the 2 different personality types.

James Kademan [00:31:41]:
Tony Robbins is a punch it in your face kind of guy, and Jim Rohn is just a slow southern lean against the chalkboard. I remember the first time I heard him, like, you’re 10 seconds into the video thinking, who is this guy? But then after another 10 seconds, you’re just like, tell me more, Jim. So funny. Yeah.

Eric Cogorno [00:32:03]:
It’s

James Kademan [00:32:03]:
cool. It’s very cool.

Eric Cogorno [00:32:04]:
Yeah. It’s I and, dude, I think for anyone who’s listening and watching, if if you haven’t been exposed to Jim Rohn, I just simply cannot recommend highly enough listening to his things. Like, his his that once 2 hour seminar I mean, for the past 8 years, I’ve I’ve listened to that probably 2 to 3 times a week still today. I listen to it over and over and over and over and over, and there’s still little things that I glean from it. And I find that even though I’m immersed the world, I wonder how you feel about this. Like, I still need the reminders. I still need the, like, mindset. I still need the the things.

Eric Cogorno [00:32:40]:
And I like people who say things like a John Maxwell too, who say things so simply and so direct where it just makes so much sense that it’s just then what do you wanna do about it? There’s no confusion. You’re like, I get it. That makes perfect sense. That’s exactly what I should do. And then it’s just like, am I gonna do am I gonna do this thing or or not do it? And I think to the point of the seminars and pain and listen to people, like, that Grant Cardone 10 x tape, I think I paid $25 for. I mean, that has made us 1,000,000 of dollars. Nice. At $25.

Eric Cogorno [00:33:11]:
You know what I mean? But it’s all because, obviously, I listened to it and I’m like, hey. We’re gonna take action on it. We’re gonna do something about it. But I don’t ever listen to something, one, like that. I I think I think you I think we a lot of us need to, like, listen to less people, but, like, go deeper, you know, and just listen to those couple core concepts over and over and over. That’s helped me at least along the way.

James Kademan [00:33:32]:
Yeah. You know, it’s funny you say that about the that $125 cassette being totally worth it. Many, many multiplies over. I was teaching a business planning class a few years ago, and I came across a Craigslist ad that I shared with the class. The Craigslist ad was Tony Robbins personal power 2. Unopened. Brand new. Right? So and the funny thing was they were cassettes.

James Kademan [00:33:57]:
So we’re talking early 20 well, I guess it’d be late teens, early 20 something. I don’t remember if it was pandemic or not. It must have been before that. Anyways, so I shared this with the class. Right? This guy is selling this set that he probably paid a few $100 for, selling it for $50, cassettes, which means that it’s been sitting on a shelf for 20 years. So this guy bought that thinking all I have to do is purchase the cassettes, and that’s enough. And after 20 years of it sitting on a shelf, him never even opening the cassettes, he decides, you know, it’s probably time to stop dusting this thing and let somebody else share it. And so I was trying to use that as a model for the students to say, look.

James Kademan [00:34:36]:
It doesn’t matter. Like, you can’t pay for this information and just have it, like, sit on a shelf near you and you just absorb it by hanging out next to it. You actually have to listen to it. You probably have to listen to it a lot and go back to your notes and stuff like that. Like, this is a repetition thing. This is not that I did my push ups one time, so I’m fit for the rest of my life. This is this is exercise. You gotta do it routinely.

James Kademan [00:35:01]:
So I totally get that. It was funny to me because there’s a student in there that didn’t even know because that’s where I’m like, that’s how long you’re on this guy’s show. That’s how long. So it’s interesting. I totally get it where you gotta just keep feeding your mind. You’re even feeding your mind the stuff that you’ve heard a 1000 times before. It doesn’t mean that you’ve heard it enough if it’s the right thing. Right? So I totally understand that.

Eric Cogorno [00:35:24]:
I think that’s right, man. I’m curious to get your take. I had a couple of thoughts there. I think, yeah, Jim Rohn says, stay in guard at the door of your mind. Mhmm. I love that quote. What goes in and what goes out? And I always feel like for me, I’ve got this, like, cup that could be filled every day. And it’s like it’s gonna get filled either way and I can either fill with positive stuff or negative stuff.

Eric Cogorno [00:35:43]:
So for me, especially in the mornings, I’m just trying to jam positive stuff in there to, like, fill my brain with as much good as possible.

James Kademan [00:35:49]:
Totally.

Eric Cogorno [00:35:49]:
I’m curious your take, man, because it’s like because I think you you do a lot more coaching helping other people than I do. Spend a lot of time trying to think about because we could give great advice or anyone can give great advice, but obviously, we know if you don’t do anything about it, you’re not gonna just you gave a great example there. Like, why did that guy not listen to the tapes? And how do you get people to do to do the thing? And I always just go back, and I’m curious what you think and what you think are the main things. I always go back to, like, when I did that goal setting workshop and I got so clear on what that dream life looked like, and I, like, really deeply felt the emotions associated with, like, what that would be like and I was so in and committed to it, it felt so much easier after that clarity to do the stuff and take the steps. Whereas I think my whole life before that, when I didn’t have, like, a big enough, clear enough picture of things, it’d be really easy to, like, fall off, quit along the way, never never take action. So I always just have been thinking about that a lot. It’s like, do you think the lack of clarity and, like, oh my gosh, that would be so awesome? Like, is that what holds people back from doing it, or what do you think people don’t take the action?

James Kademan [00:37:10]:
That’s a very good question. I don’t have anything that I would necessarily consider fact, just perception for, I guess, so take that for what it is. I feel like there’s broadly speaking, I’m gonna way over generalize here, but I feel like there’s basically 2 types of people in the world. There are those that are comfortable, and they’re comfortable being comfortable. And then there are those that are geared more towards growth. And I feel like there’s something more I wanna learn, I wanna absorb. And the more you learn, the more you learn that there is to learn. And you’re you’re always hungry, always thirsty because just sitting on a couch watching a football game or something like that isn’t fulfilling to you because you wanna learn.

James Kademan [00:37:52]:
You wanna hang out with people that are interested in learning. But I found a lot of people are just cool. They’re comfortable just being wherever it is that they’re at. And it’s interesting because I was talking with a contractor friend of mine, And he says it’s interesting, James, because we are fighting and pushing for growth personally with our business and all that stuff. Right? It’s just a constant gain. But he’s like, we don’t want everyone to be there because we need employees. And if everybody’s fighting for growth, who’s gonna be the employee? So it’s interesting interesting hearing that, a lot from him because he’s got a ton of employees. I got a fair number of employees.

James Kademan [00:38:37]:
But it’s interesting because I look for employees that are confident in growth driven. But he made an interesting point, like, if they’re too growth driven Mhmm. They’re gonna go somewhere else. And it was inter it’s an interesting kinda I don’t know. Maybe internal civil war kind of thing. Or just like you want to hang up with people that are interested in growth, but a lot of times, people just aren’t. I think of all the they just had a garage sale citywide garage sale near us. And my wife likes to go garage sailing just to buy junk, I guess, or look at other people’s junk.

James Kademan [00:39:16]:
And every time I go to a garage sale, these are not something I hunt down. So I just hang out with her. You end up at a garage sale. How many exercise videos do you see that are still in the package

Eric Cogorno [00:39:26]:
Mhmm.

James Kademan [00:39:26]:
Or just unopened? So I think people have the mentality, like, that’d be cool. I’d like to get in shape, or I’d like to start a business, or I’d like to do insert thing here. But in the end, there’s pain. Right? Exercise to a point there’s pain. Starting a business, certainly some pain. Dinking around with social media where either people give some negative comments or you don’t get as many likes as you wanted or something like that, then you’re talking about pain there. So I think to a point, there’s a tolerance level that people are either willing, to do to get the thing that they want. Or I also wonder, maybe they’re just like, you know, hanging out here.

James Kademan [00:40:10]:
I can afford to to go to the beach for a week every year. What’s the big deal? What’s the big deal? I’m cool. I’m comfort. And anytime that I see somebody comfortable, I feel like I always treat it like a tree. Right? Through the growing or dying. So if a tree ever feels comfortable, like it’s not trying to tear through dirt, it’s not taking on wind, The tree is gonna get weak. But it’s the trees that keep standing up during the hurricane stuff, and they they dig through the dirt, you know, dozens of feet in the ground. Those are the trees that lasts, I don’t wanna say forever, but a very long time.

James Kademan [00:40:51]:
So I feel like some people are just they’re happy being comfortable. And it’s Very cool. Interesting because to me, a lot of times, it’s challenging to have conversations with those people. Mhmm. Because you’re like, what did you do today? And some people would be like, I read I watched the coolest video. It’s amazing. Right? This guy inspiring this quote, that quote kind of thing, or I’m growing my business, or I had this little challenge. It’s always fun to talk to people who have a challenge, and they’re interested in overcoming it.

James Kademan [00:41:19]:
But a lot of times, the people that you see that are comfortable are just like, you know, what is it? I would ask, how’s it going? And they’re like, it’s going.

Eric Cogorno [00:41:29]:
I don’t know if you

James Kademan [00:41:29]:
ever hear that.

Eric Cogorno [00:41:30]:
Yeah. Sure.

James Kademan [00:41:31]:
And I’m like, what does that even does that mean you’re not dead? Like, what does that mean?

Eric Cogorno [00:41:36]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:41:37]:
So I don’t know if that’s that’s a helpful answer answer you’re looking for or not, but I feel like, some people just maybe they don’t even know. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t know. I think of the first I’m gonna dare say the first real job that I had. I had a lot of jobs when I was younger, but I get this job as a printer repair guy. I got fired from that printer repair job for attitude, which is totally justifiable. Anyways, I was really good at fixing printers. Great.

James Kademan [00:42:10]:
I had other technicians from other companies calling me when they would get stuck. So I was really good. It essentially was dying industry. But, anyways, I got fired from the job. And at the time, I was really upset. Cause I’m like, I’ve never been fired. What in the world? Right? You take it personal attack. And then I think if I wouldn’t have been fired from that job, I would’ve I would’ve stayed at that job.

James Kademan [00:42:33]:
I wanna say forever, but printer repair is not that much of a thing.

Eric Cogorno [00:42:35]:
So I

James Kademan [00:42:35]:
would’ve stayed at that job until that business folded. And then I would have been like, I got skills that nobody cares about. Right? Like I can fix printers like that. We don’t have those anymore. So it’s interesting how a little bit of pain was introduced into my life. Right. Getting fired. And then that triggered me to eventually, I started business, started a podcast, write a book, all that kind of stuff.

James Kademan [00:43:01]:
From, like, if that outside pain that I had no control over or limited control over, if that didn’t happen, I’d still be some guy that would just be happy making my $10 an hour or whatever it was having up just being comfortable. I’m not not necessarily happy, but comfortable. Happy enough, we’ll call it.

Eric Cogorno [00:43:23]:
Yeah. Now I that very interesting, man. I appreciate you sharing that. I think that’s, yeah, it’s spot on. I think about the what I story I told before where, like, what led me to do all this stuff was was the was the pain put into your plans. The pain was like, I can’t do this forever. A great point. Toll totally true.

Eric Cogorno [00:43:41]:
Yeah. It’s interesting.

James Kademan [00:43:42]:
Yeah. So the interesting thing, what would happen if you didn’t come across that PR lady? Like, where are the trajectory of your life and stuff like that?

Eric Cogorno [00:43:52]:
I’ll say this based on me buying my own camera and trying to not even be able to get it turned on, probably no YouTube.

James Kademan [00:44:00]:
That is

Eric Cogorno [00:44:00]:
awesome. Probably no YouTube. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:44:02]:
That’s awesome. Tell me, I wanna dig into the partnership a little bit. If you don’t mind. Business partnerships, I’ve had some. Some have been really good. Some have been less than really good. So tell me, how has the partnership worked with you?

Eric Cogorno [00:44:16]:
Yeah. It’s been great. I mean, I I think I got really lucky meeting Mary. He’s great. Our business has worked great. Yeah. There’s, of course, great, like, over time from here to here. There’s ups and downs, but I kinda go I guess, like, kind of a saying the same thing a lot, but it’s like, I think it’s been great because we both had a lot of clarity on where we’re going.

Eric Cogorno [00:44:36]:
So we had stumbled along the way. It wasn’t like, hey. What’s going on? It’s like, no. We’re, like, we’re heading here. This this, you know, I think I think the clarity along the way helped a lot. It’s been interesting hiring people and employees. We’ve had great people on our team along the way too, but I could see where, like, sometimes I’ve had the, you know, you gotta try 3, 4, 5 people out to find one that’s a, you know, an a player. But I think I just got really lucky where she was an a player right away.

Eric Cogorno [00:45:02]:
And so, yeah, it’s been really, really, really, really good. I don’t think I would have done anything that we’ve done now without her being there. It’s been a very, equal relationship. And we’ve been good along the way of, like, just figuring it out. Like, hey. This is where we’re going. This is what we’re dedicated to. We both get really clear together on, like, the path where we’re going, and then we’ll figure out the, yeah, the the minor stuff, along the way.

Eric Cogorno [00:45:27]:
So, yeah, it’s been really good for me and, like, high again, like, a highly recommended thing that I would say to other people who are if you’re really good at a thing and you wanna stay focused on being great at that thing and find someone else who could, like, run the business or do the back end stuff, as you’re building team members. There’s just and having accountability. You know, the other thing James is like I think just having someone else there, for me at least, to have, like, hey. I gotta show up every Monday. Like, you know, we filmed every Monday more or less for 8 years, like, without fail. Yeah. I mean, minus, like, a holiday or 2 here and there. Like, we basically, every Monday, we’ll film and go over our stuff.

Eric Cogorno [00:46:06]:
So, like, not every Monday do I wake up feeling like I wanna film videos.

James Kademan [00:46:10]:
You know? That’s awesome.

Eric Cogorno [00:46:13]:
So, like, some days you go in, obviously, it’s easy. But the other days where it’s not so easy, it it would have been really easy if I was by myself to just not go do the work. I like to think I’m disciplined, but, you know, I don’t know. So I think the accountability of a partner for me too is super super, super helpful. I’m sure people have bad partnerships, and it’s not always gravy like mine has been, but but mine’s been mine’s been really good.

James Kademan [00:46:36]:
Yeah. There’s partnerships, good, bad. It’s a relationship. Right? So it’s just like any relationship. It can go south or it can grow or I mean, it’s how much work you’re willing to put into it. But the accountability piece, that’s huge. Huge. That’s a Yeah.

James Kademan [00:46:52]:
That’s a very oh my gosh. That’s probably worth it right there. It’s incredible thing to have.

Eric Cogorno [00:46:57]:
The The other thing, James, too, I’ll come across when I talk to people about stuff like this is like yeah. For example, excuse me. So I was making I was getting a 100% of my 80 to 90 grand a year, whereas I could have a partner and theoretically with growth and stuff, it’s like, okay. If I get x percentage, I’d rather have 50% of $10,000,000

James Kademan [00:47:17]:
Mhmm.

Eric Cogorno [00:47:17]:
Than a 100% of a 100 grand type of thing.

James Kademan [00:47:20]:
Right.

Eric Cogorno [00:47:20]:
So things that I don’t think I would realistically be able to do by myself, meaning I’m not willing to do the work required, learn the skills, put in the time, but I am willing to give a chunk of something to someone who is. And the older I’ve gotten and the more that I go, I wonder if it’s the same for you. I think I more realized that, like, what is it? Dan Sullivan or the Who Not How? I mean Okay.

James Kademan [00:47:44]:
Yep.

Eric Cogorno [00:47:45]:
Who Not How book. I mean, just finding the right people and who’s around you to do things faster and right away versus me trying to learn not new skills, but, like, skills that are in a different category than what I’m great at. That has been a big big learning lesson for me too. Whereas in the beginning, I tried to wear I think in the beginning, you probably wear a lot hats no matter what, but try to get good at too many things at once. We’re like looking back now, I should have hired people and put people in roles sooner. I was just scared and that’s okay. But it’s like, okay, I could have given this golf lesson, another golf lesson for a $100, hired someone for 20 or $30 an hour to do that task and they’re way better at it than me. Right.

Eric Cogorno [00:48:23]:
Like, that would have made a lot more sense. That that’s something I wish I would have heard and implemented a little bit sooner.

James Kademan [00:48:28]:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I mean, you’re right. You’re right. Getting other people to do the things that you’re not as good at or even don’t wanna take the time to to learn or to do so that you can do the things that produce. That’s a big step. But there I mean, employees are challenging, vendors are challenging. So I completely understand the apprehension or the being, like, tiptoeing in there because they’re, I mean, in the end, employees and vendors, those are relationships as well. Some good, some not so good.

James Kademan [00:48:57]:
And their their work because it’s a relationship. So I think of the employees that I have and have had where some are just like, I wanna buy you a car. You’re so awesome. So incredible. And others where I’m like, what do you do? And neither one of them tells you that in the interview. Right? You have this one interview where you’re essentially saying, hey, you wanna get married? Right? Raise a family together over this 130, 60 minute interview. It’s interesting. I’ll I don’t know how else people do it.

James Kademan [00:49:34]:
I don’t I suppose they have 10 interviews or something like that with the same person. That seems weird. But at any rate, I totally understand the apprehension. But you’re right. You’re right. Once you get a team and that team is solid, you can do incredible things multiplying. Incredible things.

Eric Cogorno [00:49:53]:
Yeah. It’s and, you know, one of the other things too, I wonder if you learn the same thing is, like, I’ve learned the value of of spending more time upfront trying to find the right who in person. Like, I Alex Hermosio, he has been popular, you know, lately. I watched a lot of his stuff, and he he has great way, I think, of perspective of things. And he said something along the lines of, like, one a employee could be worth, like, 10 b employees.

James Kademan [00:50:16]:
Oh, yeah.

Eric Cogorno [00:50:17]:
Or one a plus. Yeah. It’s interesting too when you’re like and if you if you haven’t found an a before, until you do find it, you don’t really understand how valuable that is or the difference of, like, oh, wow. That’s what an a a plus person looks like. I think I’ve been pretty lucky in the people that we have. We have, like, a team like 15 people. So I don’t have, like, thousands of employees. We have, like, some people.

Eric Cogorno [00:50:41]:
Right? And I just think we’ve been lucky to find good people, but then after those first few when I realized that, like, my first guy that I hired was an a plus guy. Nice. Yeah. Looking back upon it now, I didn’t know at the time, but, like, the people we’ve learned after, I’m like, oh my gosh. Like, oh, that is that is what that looks like. And so I think because he was so good, it gave me a lot of clarity on what a plus looked like to be able to hire well after that, which is just lucky, I think.

James Kademan [00:51:12]:
Yeah. So how do you in the interview process, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you distinguish or attempt to distinguish, I should say, between the a, a plus, and the b players or even c’s if they make it to the interview?

Eric Cogorno [00:51:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I’d like to think I have pretty good, like, EQ and can get a grip on someone pretty quickly. So, like, you know, the simple shitty answer is it’s a lot of gut feeling for me.

James Kademan [00:51:38]:
Alright. That’s alright.

Eric Cogorno [00:51:40]:
Yeah. Like, I’m an analytical guy, like numbers and this, that, that thing. But but, really, at the end of the day, it’s more of a gut a gut feeling. And I also think I found, like, I could you could tell so fast in the 1st, like, week or month, like, the people who have been great for me required very little training. The people who I’ve had to overtrain, like, the people who’ve required a bunch of training for me were never ended up being a people. Oh, interesting. That’s been an interesting learning thing. Now maybe they didn’t know, like, the specific skill as well or may maybe we need to teach them some things, but, like, got it quick, required very little from me, you know, once we did an onboarding.

Eric Cogorno [00:52:22]:
And so, you know, I’ve got a set of things that I would talk to someone about, but it’s a big gut thing. And and and, honestly, that gut thing for me happens in early in the conversation.

James Kademan [00:52:31]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [00:52:32]:
Like yeah. It’s like Shay can’t speak first couple sentences. I feel like I could get a quick judge of who’s in front of me. That’s not right all the time. You know? Fair. But, yeah. But I think the the amount of training required for the 30 days with me has been, like, the leading the indicator that’s been the the biggest factor.

James Kademan [00:52:52]:
Alright. Very cool. Is are all of your employees local to you, or do you have some remote?

Eric Cogorno [00:52:59]:
Yeah. All remote. All remote. Okay. Yeah. So Mary and I, my business partner, will be in the same spot. But our employees would be, like, editors, assistants, coaches, things that people could work remote where we are. Because they are you know, 90 8% of our revenue comes online

James Kademan [00:53:17]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [00:53:17]:
From either from various sources of YouTube or from our membership side or affiliates licensing agreements. So it doesn’t require us to be in the same the same spot. And, like, 7 of those 7 of those are coaches. Oh, really? Do the online coaching. Yeah. So they can coach from remotely from wherever they are. And all of like, our full time assistants and stuff, it’s all it’s all digital, which has been nice. Don’t have me, like, office, or anything like that, which is been low, low cost.

Eric Cogorno [00:53:49]:
Okay. Yeah. Low rent.

James Kademan [00:53:50]:
Very cool. Tell me I wanna delve into the the making money online thing. I volunteered for, I don’t even remember. Yeah. I wanna say junior or something or other. Anyways, I was essentially, I taught a few classes at the 3rd 4th grade level, talking about business and community and stuff like that. One of the questions we ask the kids is what do you wanna be when you grow up? And there was a class I was in half those kids said they wanna be YouTubers. Half.

James Kademan [00:54:24]:
And I was like, man, when I was a kid, we had firefighter or astronauts, you know, for doctor kinda thing, but YouTuber. And I’m like, alright. How do you make money on YouTube? And they’re all looking around and they’re like, merch. I’m like, great. What’s merch? I look around and they’re like, we don’t know. We just know money on YouTube selling merch. So you, having actually done it, can you give us a little bit of the outline of what people your experience with it and what you can expect and and how the game

Eric Cogorno [00:55:01]:
works? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we it’s sort of the old thing of, like, having multiple streams of revenue. You know, like, an average million there is 9 streams of revenue, you know, so on and so forth. But, like, they had one thing that they mainly made money from and made 9 later. YouTube, for us, is we’re kinda the same way. We get a lot of little things that pay us now. Whereas the main thing from YouTube, you know, we’re shooting for is AdSense.

Eric Cogorno [00:55:24]:
And so I’m gonna talk to you as if you don’t know any of this even though you do. It’s like you put videos out once you get past a certain threshold. The ads that we all see when you watch a YouTube video, they pay Google, and then you split it. I believe it’s 5545. Let’s just say you get half. So, which goes to show you how much money they’re making off of that. Every single creator, they get half of all the AdSense, which is wild. So you get about half of the AdSense.

Eric Cogorno [00:55:48]:
So to scale that, our 1st year of YouTube, just the AdSense wise, we posted 3 times a week for a year, made $0. I think it took 12 months to get to a 1,000 subscribers. Yeah. Okay. So we yeah. We had a 1,000 subscribers, no money after year 1. Now when we first started doing our YouTube videos, I didn’t wanna do these, like, gimmicky videos. I wanted I was like a golf coach, and I’m like, let’s film me doing lessons and give them real stuff, you know, I thought.

Eric Cogorno [00:56:20]:
And so it’s very literal. Like, the title stuff, and that was very literal. And my business partner, Mary, said, hey. We should do these, like, different tip which is, like, tip videos. I didn’t wanna do it. A year goes by, we’re doing videos. They’re getting no views. I think the quality inside the videos are really good.

Eric Cogorno [00:56:36]:
So far, I’m like, these are good videos. We’re not gonna get views. And so I went online, and I’ll I’ll get back to the answer to your question right after this, but just to give some context. I went online and I searched, like, the people in my golf space and, like, who are the people that were getting views? And I’d look at our videos and look at their videos, and their videos were, like, how to gain 30 yards in 10 seconds with this amazing, incredible, unbelievable, never before seen tip. Right? And mine was, like, how to put better. I’m like, okay. Yeah. I could see where, like, people are clicking this versus mine.

Eric Cogorno [00:57:03]:
Our thumbnails are just like a picture of me, kind of colors were off. It was, you know, just whatever. Theirs was like this, like, cool, beautiful stuff going on thumbnails. So became apparent that we needed to go in that route. Year 1, no money, 1,000 subscribers. Year 2, I’m buying, like, okay, let’s do this tip video. And instantly, the first set of 3 videos we filmed, we did, like, gain 30 yards with this one swing tip, like, fix your slice forever. You know, they’re like, click baity, borderline clickbaity sort of titles, and that instantly changed our business.

Eric Cogorno [00:57:36]:
I think we went from, like, a1000 to 40,000 in year 2. We made, like, maybe $20 in year 2. So still, like, nothing, but something. And then in year 3, we went from, like, 40,000 subscribers to, like, a100. And then I think we went from, like, a 100 to 200. I you know, we kind of kept getting big bigger, bigger, bigger. AdSense was the main thing online. So let’s say now we do, like, between a 150 to $200,000 a year in AdSense.

Eric Cogorno [00:58:07]:
It’s like Google pays you that from YouTube. Our membership sites are main generator. That’s the people paying their monthly recurring revenue. But in terms of YouTube, like, let’s say, a 150, 200 grand, that’s like we have, like, maybe 300,000 subscribers on there. We get I think we get 3 to 5000000 views a month across all socials. So probably, like, 1 to 2000000 views a month on YouTube itself pays us the 152 100 k. And then we do affiliates, which is probably our, like, next biggest category. So, like, products that I would promote within a video that we would, get a percentage of.

Eric Cogorno [00:58:46]:
Let’s say we do a 100 to $200 a year in that. So that’s, like, our second thing. And then there’s a lot of, like, little spin off. I mean, we sponsorships now. So our goal this year is to do, like, 20200 to $250,000 in sponsorships. That’s like a company that pay me to wear a shirt, hat. We do, like, a little promo within, club stuff like that. That’s obviously gotten bigger as the audience has gotten bigger.

Eric Cogorno [00:59:13]:
So, you know, for us, like our style channel, we we we could do, like, $1,000,000 a year, let’s say, in, like, YouTube specific revenue. But it was, like, 0, 20 grand, you know, like, a 100. And then, like, once we get you get past kind of a little peak there, then it can hockey stick quite a bit.

James Kademan [00:59:29]:
Just okay.

Eric Cogorno [00:59:30]:
Yeah. That’s that’s what I found. So we had our biggest year on YouTube last year ever, which was awesome. Nice. Congrats. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah.

Eric Cogorno [00:59:39]:
We were getting better, some little wins along the way and stuff like that, but I think it’s a slow process. And I think for a lot of a lot of us, it’s you know, if if we make a let let’s say along the process, we would make 500 grand on YouTube, let’s just say, for example, then I’m trying to make, like, 5,000,000,000 with the main site thing. So I think you gotta kinda scale up as you go of whatever thing you’re you’re trying to, you have to make the making money online the secondary thing, you know, and make your main thing keep your main thing the main thing. Like, I talk to people all the time. It’s so funny. Half of the 3rd grader said YouTube merch. I tell people a lot, they’ll come in and it’s like like like, for me, let’s use me. If I’m making 80, $90 a year in coaching and I’m making 0 on YouTube, like, I’m not gonna quit my coaching and go full time YouTube and make 0.

Eric Cogorno [01:00:34]:
And I kept doing full time coaching like that for probably, like, 4 years until I was like, okay. Hey. Now I’m making as much money in this area as I am in this area. And then all of a sudden, I’m making way more over here. Now I can decrease this side. So I see some people, I think, make the mistake of, like, jumping all into it and then getting rid of their main thing, whereas I think you should keep your main thing advice to myself, I would say is, like, main keep the main thing the main thing until the side thing spits off enough. And it’s I mean, gosh. Everything for me has taken longer than I’ve thought.

Eric Cogorno [01:01:07]:
Oh, that’s the game. More work than I’ve thought. You know?

James Kademan [01:01:10]:
Totally the game. Yeah. I get it.

Eric Cogorno [01:01:12]:
So I think you just have to have, patience with it. And and one last thing on that, James, is, like, I think a lot of what gave us success is every we’ll do a set of videos. We we look at every set of videos and just try and, like, improve one thing. Like especially if you’re in the beginning of doing it or building and you post once a week, let’s say, and you have 4 videos to look at, like what’s one thing from this last set of 4 that I can improve for the next month? Not 10 things, like one thing. Okay. My hook and intro could be better. Great. Next month, I’m gonna make the hook and intro better.

Eric Cogorno [01:01:46]:
And and then the next month, like, oh, my thumbnails on as good. And, like, model success, it’s one thing we have going for us. It’s very easy to see what does work. Very easy because it’s right there.

James Kademan [01:02:00]:
Mhmm.

Eric Cogorno [01:02:01]:
So, you know, if your thumbnails and titles are not in the same ballpark as those that are working in your industry, that’s the starting point. The longer I I play this online game, the more I learn that the stuff you do to get someone to click is more important than what you give them after they click.

James Kademan [01:02:22]:
Isn’t that crazy?

Eric Cogorno [01:02:23]:
Building audience.

James Kademan [01:02:24]:
Yeah.

Eric Cogorno [01:02:24]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [01:02:25]:
Yeah. It’s not the book. It’s the book cover.

Eric Cogorno [01:02:28]:
It’s not the book. It’s a book cover. That’s a great yes. Exactly. Same thing with YouTube videos.

James Kademan [01:02:33]:
That’s it. They tell you not to judge the book by its cover, but we totally judge the book by its cover.

Eric Cogorno [01:02:38]:
And the worst thing I think, Jane, for a lot of us, like, this is how I felt in the beginning is, like, imagine you you have a you have a great video and you tell them great things. You think it’d really help people and no one launches at them. I have some videos. Worst case scenario. So do we. Yeah. So do we, man. Like, I I we put out what I thought were so many great videos and no one’s watching.

Eric Cogorno [01:02:59]:
Now I think, like, having said that, great book cover. Now inside the book too, you’re gonna try and you know, you wanna give them a great product, obviously. But Mhmm. Yeah. You gotta find ways to get people to click and get their attention. And and think about just like we do when they’re scrolling through or looking at something just like our behavior. Like, what’s gonna pop up on that screen that’s gonna make me click and watch it? Mhmm. And so we try and really ride the edge with, like, click baity, you know, like, you think about, like, what would wow someone.

James Kademan [01:03:30]:
Right. Yeah. It’s interesting how that curve has changed because I I have a 10 year old son, so it’s interesting to look at what he’s watching and what he’s some of it, I’m just like, how are they getting millions, millions of views on this? It’s just it’s cringey. But on the flip side, I’m like, well, they’re doing something right. They know their audience. So what can Yeah.

Eric Cogorno [01:03:58]:
Exactly. And that’s like, you know, I have that same thing. It’s so funny you say that, man. Sometimes I’ll see stuff like that. I’m like, oh my gosh. Like, I I would never watch this, but I’ll watch it and try and, like, analyze how they do things. And I think at the end of the day, if we look at those sort of things, like, unemotionally and analytically, you can see patterns, great hooks to grab attention, story tells that keep them interesting, you know, the promise of something later, the same sort of plot, you know, like along the videos as you go, you can see themes amongst a lot of these people who know the game. And then the trick is, like, how do we use those themes in what we’re trying to do if applicable? Like, if applicable.

Eric Cogorno [01:04:36]:
Right.

James Kademan [01:04:37]:
That’s cool. Tell me the social media landscape has changed over the past. Let’s call it 5, 10 years. Right? TikTok wasn’t a thing a few years ago. Now it’s a big thing. And I’m old enough to be on Facebook, but there’s some people that aren’t. Right? Instagram, all that jazz. And who knows? In in a year or 2, there’s probably gonna be something else that comes along.

James Kademan [01:05:01]:
Right? It’s just there’s always something. How do you stay on top of social media and keep track of what is hip, where your audience is, and all that jazz. And if you can tell me when you post something on 1, are you posting it on all? Or you’re like, this is a Instagram kind of thing. This is a Twitch kind of thing or whatever.

Eric Cogorno [01:05:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good question. Yeah. I think for us, it’s, I’m very, very vigilant about keeping the main thing the main thing, like, really aware of that. So I’m like, hey. We do YouTube. We do YouTube.

Eric Cogorno [01:05:36]:
We do YouTube. We do YouTube. Now we do we do YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are kind of our main 3. So in the beginning, we did just YouTube. I did some little personal Instagram stuff. Then we started adding Instagram, and then we started adding TikTok. TikTok, we take clips of a so YouTube video we do, let’s say, it’s 12 minutes. So there’s always, like, 3 to 5 30 to 60 second clips within that 12 minute video to be repurposed.

Eric Cogorno [01:06:05]:
So we’ll repurpose those for TikTok. I don’t make any organic TikTok content, not that that’s right or wrong. I don’t even have TikTok on I don’t even have it, but one of our people on our team does it. They post and clips the videos. I went on TikTok once on my phone and just, like, 2 hours went by, and I was in, like, a dark hole. I said, I gotta get rid of this freaking thing. So I don’t even have it. I got that rid of that.

Eric Cogorno [01:06:26]:
I know how easily I get distracted, James. Right? So, like, I look at things to get into, like, how do we stay on top of things? I look at it. I see what’s going on. I’ve seen so much success with YouTube, and I think YouTube and Google are gonna keep pushing in that direction. I don’t see that going away. So I would rather really be great at this one thing and keep pushing forward than have my attention split on multiple other things. That’s how we perceive it. Not that that’s right or wrong.

Eric Cogorno [01:06:55]:
I think to do all the platforms well, you need a team, a people, or you’re doing it full time and that’s, like, all you’re doing. I don’t see a world where you can be great at a main thing, let’s say, coaching golf, and be great at YouTube and be great at Instagram and TikTok and email, whatever, unless you got a team of people. Like, Gary v. I love Gary. Gary v, I’ve learned so many stuff from. And the way he talked you know, he’s talked over the years about putting out so many pieces of content and stuff. You know, either you need to do that full time or you need a team of people doing it. So I would do less but better

James Kademan [01:07:27]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [01:07:28]:
Would be would be what I would look for. I think YouTube is still is gonna keep growing. It’s behemoth. I think it’s gonna keep getting bigger and bigger. I don’t see Instagram going away anytime soon. We lean into Instagram. Originally, I created unique content on Instagram. Me creating a video.

Eric Cogorno [01:07:45]:
So every Monday, we film 2 YouTube videos. Used to be 3, now we do 2. And then I would film Instagram videos after we were done. So all I’d batch it on one day. And it was scheduled. It was prebooked. That’s something that helped me a lot that I think helps people is, like, when I was coaching full time and started doing content, it wasn’t like, oh, I’ll do it when I feel like it. It was like, hey.

Eric Cogorno [01:08:04]:
This is Monday, 12 o’clock, nonnegotiable, every week. And it was the start of the week. Like, this is our most important thing, so that helped me. So now we do Instagram clips. So the same thing, just clips from the videos, and then we upped our posting from 3 times a week to daily. I’ve seen pretty steady growth doing that. So I wanted to test that versus me creating videos. Wanna remove me from as much of that as possible.

Eric Cogorno [01:08:27]:
So we just repurpose those those videos. To your point, our editing is so good. Like, our editing team, I think, do a great job. I appreciate you saying that. I will tell them. Where then then we have great edited clips.

James Kademan [01:08:39]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [01:08:40]:
So we film this video once, we edit it once, and then we can clip them up and put them on other platforms. Honestly, I think that gives us about 70 to 80% of what we would get if we took the time to, like I think we could grow more if we’re like, hey, let’s dedicate x amount of hours to post on these platforms. But I’ve lost I’ve been on Instagram for 10 years, and I’ve made maybe $500 directly from Instagram. I make almost no money from there. We don’t make any money off TikTok. Some people do, make a lot of money. YouTube makes us a million. I’m like, okay.

Eric Cogorno [01:09:11]:
Like, if anything, let’s double down on this this thing that this thing that that works well. So I think less but better. And, like, if you can’t do one platform, great. You’ve got no business doing 2 or 3 or 4. It’s how I look at it. But at the same time, it’s like, you know, there’s these platforms you wanna get on and be early to market. Like, who knows what’ll be next? And if you’re like, the people who are early TikTok, crushed. People who are early Facebook, crushed YouTube.

Eric Cogorno [01:09:37]:
So it’s a great point. Trying to keep the main thing the main thing while being aware of and open to, like, the new opportunities. What do you think?

James Kademan [01:09:49]:
Boy, I am not anywhere near you in success on YouTube. I’m not on Instagram, which is, I believe is a mistake, to a point, but on the flip side, I don’t know Instagram, and I’ve had some false starts with employees that were trying to help with that. So I’m like, it’s the whole thing, like you’re saying, keep the main thing the main thing. So I put all of my focus at least for the podcast on YouTube. And for the for the call answering, we really don’t do a ton with social media at all. I’m not saying that’s the right way at all. I’m saying that there are priorities. Like, it’s a list of priorities, and we gotta take care of these before we get into the social media realm.

Eric Cogorno [01:10:40]:
Mhmm.

James Kademan [01:10:40]:
I have had what I would consider to be false starts with the call answering service, social media stuff, where I had crew that would post. I paid a company to post. And in my experience with that industry, it’s b to b. It was lukewarm at best. That said, YouTube, podcast, I mean, we boom. It’s pretty much I’m gonna dare say we just started marketing our YouTube channel fairly recently, past few months. So that has now surpassed audio. So where before audio, we were getting 3 to 4 times the podcast downloads through the podcast channels for audio only versus YouTube.

James Kademan [01:11:28]:
YouTube, we’re starting to push because I’m like, we gotta monetize this thing, man, so that we can step up our game. And I haven’t figured out a good way to do that from the audio side. Least not a practical way to get the kind of revenue that we’re talking about to get editors and stuff like that, like, really get in there, spend hours on stuff. So YouTube has been the, like this looks like the most practical way. But that said, we’re nowhere near I mean, I don’t know. We’re at 17018100 subscribers. That’s nothing. We are nickels inside a couch.

James Kademan [01:12:03]:
So that this is a year that I said we gotta figure this out. Otherwise, before the podcast is fun, it’s knowledge, it’s out there for the world to see, but we would get we would get 12 views or something like that. And I’m sharing it with a guest. And I was actually embarrassed because I’m like, we there’s incredible information in that thing. Right? That guest shared their story. They shared the, whatever it is in their profession. They shared stuff that I mean, it’s just like the Grant Cardone thing. Right? It’s $25.

James Kademan [01:12:34]:
Right? That if the people that were in that world would take an hour to listen to that conversation, that hour of their life would make them 100 of 1,000 of dollars. But it’s not click baity. Like, they don’t they don’t know it exists, so they don’t do anything with it. So I felt like we gotta market this thing and get this out in front of people because I know that we have good information. I know that we have incredible content. I feel like we need to do something to just tell the world. Right? And that comes down to marketing. So I hired some people to help market it and push it.

James Kademan [01:13:08]:
But I would not consider myself an expert even even a fraction of an amount. I am certain that there are 4th graders out there that could run circles around us. So

Eric Cogorno [01:13:19]:
saying. Yeah. Which is funny to think about.

James Kademan [01:13:23]:
Yeah. I gotta hire 1. But

Eric Cogorno [01:13:26]:
Get that merch going, Yeah.

James Kademan [01:13:28]:
Get that merch going. The authentic business adventures T shirt.

Eric Cogorno [01:13:33]:
Yeah. So I I I think honestly too just with that, James, it’s like, what’ll be really cool to see is those 3rd and 4th graders and stuff that you talk to, 10 years from now is that as everything matures and the market matures and what they do, I think there’ll be all kinds of new avenues going on that are

James Kademan [01:13:51]:
Oh, yeah.

Eric Cogorno [01:13:51]:
Money making opportunities, you know, that that we don’t we don’t even see now. I think the thing that’s interesting, though, is, like, you know, at what point do certain it’s not that it’s saturated because there’s just I mean, there’s so many eyeballs to be able to get, but it’s, obviously, the more people that come in and and and you’re posting. Like, if you just look at the pure amount of videos posted on YouTube now compared to 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 59, it’s, like, staggering. It’s it’s hard to believe.

James Kademan [01:14:20]:
Just trying to figure out the hard drive storage alone, let alone getting it to you as soon as you click. Cereal.

Eric Cogorno [01:14:25]:
It’s like that.

James Kademan [01:14:26]:
It’s

Eric Cogorno [01:14:26]:
you know, if there’s if there’s a 100 people on the corner trying to sell this hot dog, it’s like, how are you gonna be the the person that sells yours and standing out and getting attention and just being great? You know, I think those just core tenets are still gonna still gonna apply. But but the more people there, you know, the more creative you gotta be, the better you gotta be, the more you gotta the more you gotta stand out. And, yeah, it’s an interesting interesting process.

James Kademan [01:14:49]:
Yeah. It’s just like anything else in business. In the end, it’s a game. And it’s kind of fun. Right? It’s a game because it’s kind of fun to figure out how I I always think of it like chess. Right? Chess is it’s fun game. I love playing chess. I’m gonna say that I’m pretty good at it.

James Kademan [01:15:06]:
Not great. Pretty good. And it’s interesting to play with people that are you’re way better than because then you feel like, oh my gosh. I’m a grand master. And then you play with someone that’s even even marginally better than you. You’re like, okay. I’m a toddler. I don’t know anything.

James Kademan [01:15:21]:
Yeah. So it’s interesting because I feel like right now in the YouTube game, I’m a toddler. Even though that I’ve I’ve tried to absorb a bunch of information to learn, that is a game that I still have not wrapped my head around. So that’s where I shifted gears and said, we gotta pay some people that know what they’re doing. Yeah. I clearly don’t.

Eric Cogorno [01:15:40]:
Well, one one of the things I think with the podcast too with the algorithm, you could grow. Like, you could hockey stick pretty quickly. You know, if you find a way to get a guest, that’s, like, very clickable.

James Kademan [01:15:52]:
Yeah. You know, what’s interesting. I had Peter Egan. I don’t know if you know who Peter Egan is.

Eric Cogorno [01:15:57]:
I don’t know the name.

James Kademan [01:15:58]:
Who So Peter Egan’s an author he wrote for both Cycle World and car and driver. No. Not car and driver. Oh my gosh. I just swore. Road and track. So in that world, I’m a a gear head that way, especially with motorcycles. In that world of magazines remember magazines.

James Kademan [01:16:19]:
Right? Most authors, writers, in my mind, aren’t that good. They know the they know the stuff. There’s only so many ways you can describe how an engine sounds. Peter Egan takes it to I mean, it’s art. It is phenomenal. And so I would just pick up a magazine and I’m reading road and track, and I subscribe to that magazine purely to to read his one article every month. Every once in a while, he’d have this thing where he went on a a road tour or something like that. So he’d have a few page thing, but I was subscriber purely for him.

James Kademan [01:16:58]:
And when you read all the articles around it, you’re like, not Peter Egan. Peter Egan is he’s just on this pedestal because he is it’s kinda like the whole, like, there’s a bunch of b team. They’re okay. Kinda entertaining to read. But then you read Peter Egan and you’re like, woah, promise land. Right? So So, anyways, I pick up a psycho world magazine, and I’m just paging through it, and I’m reading. And you’re like, yeah. Good.

James Kademan [01:17:23]:
Good. Good. And I come across an article, and I’m like, holy cow. This guy sounds like Peter Egan. Right? Sounds like and I realized, oh, it is Peter Egan. Well, anyways, I learned from the articles and subscribing for years that he’s actually, like, a half hour away from me.

Eric Cogorno [01:17:40]:
Oh, wow.

James Kademan [01:17:40]:
I tell my buddy, like, it would be cool to interview Peter Egan. The next day, my buddy’s like, I talked to Peter. And I’m like, what are you talking about? You talked to Peter. Like, it’s like someone saying, like, hey. I talked to Jesus. Like, what are you right. Or, actually, I talked to someone at Google.

Eric Cogorno [01:17:56]:
Yeah. Right. Gotcha.

James Kademan [01:17:57]:
And he’s like, I found his number. I called him up. We chatted for a half hour. He’s expecting your call. So I call up Peter, and I’m like, hey, Peter. How’s it going? Do you mind if I interview you on the podcast? He’s like, yeah. Come on down. So I go to a shop and, I’m a moron.

James Kademan [01:18:16]:
Like, it was like one of these, like, how does now work? And then so I’m trying to grab all my camera and stuff. And I forget to grab or I forget slash don’t remember to grab the, the power the plug in thing for the camera. I don’t realize I haven’t charged that camera in months. And through some stroke of pure good luck will, I don’t know what you wanna call it, divine intervention, that camera stayed on for 45 minutes. I don’t know if that camera’s ever stayed on without being plugged in for more than 20 minutes. So it’s one of those, like, the world is on my side. The universe is just, like, make this interview happen. So, anyways, I’m in the garage of Peter Egan, this guy.

James Kademan [01:18:56]:
Right? He’s the reason that people are authors in that world. Like, he has probably inspired more people on motorcycles and cars than Henry Ford. It’s amazing. Amazing. So, anyways, I go through this interview. It’s all great and grand. Even the end of the interview, I have to do with my phone because the battery eventually did die. And it was probably more for Peter than for me because I I would have chatted with that guy for 10 hours.

James Kademan [01:19:22]:
Anyways, I post that video, and it gets, like, a 100 views. So, anyways, eventually, that video starts to gain traction by people that are looking for to hear from Peter Egan. I think it’s where they’re searching specifically for him.

Eric Cogorno [01:19:39]:
Yes.

James Kademan [01:19:39]:
And it’s not he’s not normally my typical audience because, like, typically, we’re interviewing entrepreneurs, business owners, and stuff like that. But I’m like, independent writer? I’ll count that. Gray area? Sure. But he made his own money doing his own thing. And talk about a storyteller. Holy cow. That guy’s incredible.

Eric Cogorno [01:19:59]:
Yeah. Now, like, let’s let’s leave in, like, you like, a 100 x stat, right, where you’re like let’s say him, for example. Imagine you had you somehow, someway, you got, like, Joe Biden or Donald Trump on a podcast. Sure. You would instantly either one.

James Kademan [01:20:11]:
That’d be incredible.

Eric Cogorno [01:20:12]:
Yeah. Likewise. It would be, you get millions of views Yeah. And you would instantly get all the growth you wanted. You know Now let’s say you can’t get you can’t get those 2 guys. It’s like, but who who else is in between you that you could find a way to get them and get an instant pop? Like, Patrick Bet David’s a good guy. Do you know do you know

James Kademan [01:20:30]:
You know, I just it’s interesting you say that. I just came across one of his videos on Joe Rogan, and I just read his book, the your next five moves or something like that.

Eric Cogorno [01:20:39]:
Yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [01:20:39]:
Yeah. I just discovered that guy a few months ago. Interesting.

Eric Cogorno [01:20:43]:
He’s he’s a I I he’s one of the few guys that I look he’s not that much older than me. I think he’s, like, in his maybe mid 40. I really, really look up to him. Like, really admire how he carries himself, his family, everything he does. I think he’s such a stud. He’s a guy where, like, if he goes on a podcast, no matter how big or small, that podcast get 100 of 1,000 of views. Yeah. So another because it’s different now.

Eric Cogorno [01:21:05]:
Like, when I when I first started doing videos, it it seemed like everyone had a slow growth grind.

James Kademan [01:21:12]:
Mhmm.

Eric Cogorno [01:21:12]:
Now with the algorithm and TikTok and stuff, you could, like, pop out of nowhere. But, like, that’s another thing that’s interesting is, like, you know, you could get 5 years worth of growth in 1 week with the right guest.

James Kademan [01:21:24]:
Right. Totally agree. Totally agree.

Eric Cogorno [01:21:27]:
But it’s gotta be, you know, Patrick Bet David. He’s the killer.

James Kademan [01:21:34]:
You know what’s interesting is when you said said Donald Trump or Joe Biden or something like that, my first thought was, I bet they have some cool stories. I think part of my problem Yeah. Is that I’m not really looking at it at the money side because I got money coming in other places. It’s really just to get their story and to learn how do they end up where they ended up and what makes them tick kind of thing. Because to me, does he enjoy me, like, chatting with someone like you who’s got cool stuff going on? You just learn so much, and you’re like, that is amazing. Because, especially, the thing that attracted me to what you have going on is golf. I am a terrible golfer. Terrible golfer.

Eric Cogorno [01:22:14]:
Okay.

James Kademan [01:22:14]:
I have a hard time just even my my father-in-law is a very good golfer, and he’ll come visit us and he’ll watch golf on TV. And I’m like, what? I don’t I can’t wrap my head around that at all. So it’s just pure. Like, I gotta learn from this guy. I gotta learn what the story is. Tell me about golf and people learning golf. And I have seen more people throw golf clubs, not me because I’m like, that’s not gonna help. But I feel like if I threw a golf ball, it might go closer to where I want it to go than if I hit it with a club.

James Kademan [01:22:47]:
But I’ve seen golf get people so mad, so mad. And I’m like, I gotta learn more about this. It’s interesting. So to me, I mean, the money thing I am, I’m after that purely because from a game, the biz the biz the what do I wanna say here? The game of business. Yeah. Money is one of those ways that you measure success. So I’m like, I feel like this is this is one of those things where I wanna be successful in this arena just to see make it happen.

Eric Cogorno [01:23:19]:
I’m gonna I’m gonna I we just met here, James, so I like you a lot already.

James Kademan [01:23:23]:
Oh, so good.

Eric Cogorno [01:23:24]:
Oh, I’m gonna give you a I’m gonna give you a personal challenge.

James Kademan [01:23:27]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [01:23:27]:
And I I think I think we should challenge you to see if you could get Patrick Bet David

James Kademan [01:23:33]:
Alright.

Eric Cogorno [01:23:33]:
On a podcast by the end of 2024. So that gives you a couple months. Yeah. Find who’s in his networks, who could be you know, who knows him, who could talk to him. Because that one, yeah, that that one big pop could change everything quick. And I think he’s a guy who, you know, is willing to go out and and and he’s a gettable, big guy. So I’d say I’m gonna I’m gonna check-in and see, to share these next couple of weeks. I think you could do it. Think you can do it.

James Kademan [01:24:06]:
I gotta figure out how to get a hold of this guy. But if I got ahold of Peter Egan, I can certainly find Patrick Bet David.

Eric Cogorno [01:24:12]:
I think you can. I got faith in you.

James Kademan [01:24:14]:
Plus, man, that guy’s gotta have some cool stories, fun guy to talk to.

Eric Cogorno [01:24:18]:
Oh, he’s the best dude. Great storyteller. He’s one of those guys, I think when you listen to him talk, at least for me, I’m, like, enthralled. I I I’m so, like, at present when I listen to him and and hear what he talks about. And I think what he has has a lot of juice and meat behind it. It’s a good message for a lot of people. He’s got good things to say. And, he he would he would grow your audience big time.

James Kademan [01:24:42]:
Yeah.

Eric Cogorno [01:24:42]:
So I’d

James Kademan [01:24:43]:
tell him I love it.

Eric Cogorno [01:24:44]:
People whammy.

James Kademan [01:24:45]:
I will do And

Eric Cogorno [01:24:46]:
I’ll come back on right after him. I’ll be next. They’ll go right back downhill. Hey, it’d be too funny.

James Kademan [01:24:54]:
I love it. I love it. Eric, I think I kept you too long in the show. We went way over time, so I appreciate you staying on.

Eric Cogorno [01:25:03]:
Yeah, man. No. I enjoyed it, man. I appreciate you having me on. I’m gonna keep track of, of the, episodes. I hope with some of that stuff was was valuable. And, yeah, let’s do this again maybe next year after you do that with him, and and you’ll you know?

James Kademan [01:25:16]:
Oh, hells

Eric Cogorno [01:25:16]:
see how big of a pop. Yeah. That’ll be fun.

James Kademan [01:25:18]:
Yes. I love it. I love it. Yeah. He he would be a cool guy to have in the show. I don’t know if he’d be as cool as you, but and he shouldn’t priddle along to the audience as well, so I appreciate that.

Eric Cogorno [01:25:29]:
Thanks, man. My pleasure. I appreciate you having me.

James Kademan [01:25:32]:
Awesome. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, you know what we need to do. Thumbs up, subscribe, and, of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those friends like me who are terrible at golf and could use a lesson or 2. Eric is the guy. Eric, I forgot to ask you, where can people find you?

Eric Cogorno [01:26:01]:
Yeah. If you go on YouTube and just Cogorno Golf, c o g o r n o, we just started a new personal development channel, lessons I’ve learned with Eric Cogorno. That might be more, more in line with the audience as well.

James Kademan [01:26:12]:
Nice. I love it. Lessons I’ve learned.

Eric Cogorno [01:26:14]:
Lessons I’ve learned.

James Kademan [01:26:15]:
Yeah. That’s cool. I love it. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Eric Cogorno. How to build an online coaching business? Trying to think what else I have for you, Eric, but I think you got the website. Is the YouTube channel That’s great. If they just type in Eric Cogorno, they’ll find you? Yeah. Awesome.

James Kademan [01:26:34]:
I love it. My name is James Kidman, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at callsoncall.com. And, of course, the Bold Business Book, a book of the entrepreneur in all of us, available where ever fine books are sold. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at drawandcustomers.com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.