Ep. 13: Mastering Javascript (with Tyler McGinnis of TylerMcGinnis.com)

Tyler is an educator focused on web technologies like JavaScript and React.

Where to find Tyler

You can learn more at tylermcginnis.com.

Read the full transcript below.

Tyler McGinnis: This isn’t easy and it’s not supposed to be easy. And if it was, everyone would do it. And so I think again, like a big part of my philosophy is like…building courses is hard. But because it’s hard to get a really good product at the end of it, so far it’s been, it’s been worth the sacrifice.

Melissa Guller: That’s Tyler McGinnis and his online course membership program is all about JavaScript. But even if you aren’t very technical or have no interest in coding, what Tyler has done as a creator and instructor would work for anyone teaching any topic. Because the “staircase approach,” as he calls, it is a great way to make sure students don’t just buy your course. They actually learned something. So in this episode, Tyler shares how he structures his curriculum to help students get meaningful results. Plus we’ll learn about his buyer guarantee, which is probably unlike anything you’ve seen in a standard course offer. All of this and more in today’s episode of Everything is Teachable.

Announcer: Welcome to Everything is Teachable, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes to learn how everyday creators have transformed their skills and passions into online courses and businesses. To introduce this week’s episode, here’s your host, Melissa Guller.

Melissa Guller: Hey everyone. I’m Melissa from Team Teachable, and today I’m here with Tyler McGinnis. Tyler is an educator focused on web technologies like JavaScript and React, and he’s the creator behind typermcginnis.com, an online membership program that provides a linear project based approach to mastering the JavaScript ecosystem.

Melissa Guller: So Tyler, Welcome to the podcast!

Tyler McGinnis: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I’m thrilled to learn more about you. And I guess to maybe go all the way back to the beginning, how did you learn how to code?

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, so I was going to BYU at the time, which is just a school out here in Utah and I was doing information systems and it felt a little slow. There was a lot of kind of fluff around the edges of what I really wanted to learn, which was like writing software. So at the time, this was in 2013, I think, two thousand thirteen thousand fourteen and so I started researching, found this thing called like coding bootcamps, which at the time were like brand new and they were pretty revolutionary in the fact that it was like you go there, you spend a few months basically like knees deep in learning to write code. And then when you come out you actually know how to do the thing but you want it. And so I dropped out of BYU at the time, uh, which was a big decision move to San Francisco. My wife stayed here in Utah. I spent three months in San Francisco, kind of grinding, learning to code, and then I came back to Utah and then got a full time software engineering job. And there’s a lot of obviously details between those two things. But that’s kind of what got me on my process.

Melissa Guller: Well, it’s interesting because coding bootcamps today in 2019 I think are a little bit more well known and established. But even five, six years ago, that was such a new concept and I’m sure it felt very risky to maybe go off and do something like that instead of proving that, you know, the degree and the stable path was the way to do things.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, absolutely. I mean at the time it was like no one knew what they were and they’re brand new. They were, they weren’t really proven at the time, which was kind of the scary part. But I read some good reviews, talk to some good people who had just recently gone through the, uh, program I wanted to. And yeah, I liked it. So took the dive, I took out a big loan to do it, but luckily, luckily it all worked out.

Melissa Guller: And was your bootcamp, was that in person in San Francisco or,

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, it was hack reactor. It was in person. Yep.

Melissa Guller: Nice. And so you did the bootcamp. Where are you able to get a job right out of that?

Tyler McGinnis: I did, yeah, it was, uh, luckily. So I moved straight from Provo, Utah to pretty much the Tenderloin on like market and forth or something, which was a pretty good cultural shift for me. Uh, but yeah, after the boot camp moved back to Utah and then from there it was like, okay, I did the boot camp in the summer, so I still had the option to go back to school. But I interviewed a few places, got an offer, and then the offer was pretty competitive to what I would have gotten if I had like finished and stayed in school. So at that point, the decision was kind of made for me. See, I’ve got a full time developer job [inaudible] after the bootcamp, which was a pretty convenient

Melissa Guller: [inaudible]. So how did that job go? You had a full time job before, you know, spoiler alert, we’re gonna get into the fact that you’re doing your own thing now, but what was that early job like?

Tyler McGinnis: Sure. Uh, it was great. A lot of good kind of mentors around me. It was good to be able to just focus on getting really good at the thing that I eventually would teach, which was like writing software and learning to program. So did that for about a year. And then the natural transition for this conversation is I started teaching at a coding boot camp here in Utah, which was called dead mountain. I really enjoyed the in person teaching aspect of that. They hired me full time. So now I’m at my second job. This one is kind of a mix between obviously like writing software as I was doing before, but also teaching it and that’s kind of where I fell in love with teaching. Um, specifically like technical teaching and then that kind of, it really set the foundation for what I do today.

Melissa Guller: So you’re teaching in person, how did that shift towards you building things online?

Tyler McGinnis: So it’s funny cause this has, there’s such like a linear path to this. I don’t realize until I actually teach it. So I was teaching [inaudible] at the time and then I met this guy named John who runs a website called [inaudible] dot IO and they basically do like bite sized screen cast for software engineers. So he’s like, Hey, uh, I like the way you teach you. He was at a meetup that I taught at. He’s like, Hey, you should really consider like doing content for us today. Cut. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. Again, I already, I do, I love teaching technical topics. I knew I love doing it in person and making the switch to doing it online didn’t feel too, uh, kind of out of the ordinary. So decided to do that. So I started teaching on a CAD for about, I think for about six months to a year.

Tyler McGinnis: Uh, they were great because they really kinda taught me everything about creating a effective screen cast, specifically a technical screencast. So I did that for the deaf for about a year, and then I was at the point where I want, I really wanted to kind of do this on my own. A cat has this thing where like everything’s bite-sized, so they have like three to five minute videos. It’s really effective because you can kind of just takes out all the fluff. The problem with the way I teach is not necessarily that I’m fluffy, but I’m very long winded. Right. And then so the in-person lectures I was doing at that mountain, I can necessarily take those and apply them directly to a kid just because the, the format really wasn’t there. So I decided to start doing my own thing, which was basically like these full blown courses and that’s when I discovered Teachable and kind of the rest is history. I don’t know. I’m sure it’s not history cause we’ll dive very much into the details, but that’s the way I look at it.

Melissa Guller: Well it’s interesting to hear that you started not just teaching in person, but then contributing online content to somebody else’s kind of larger site. I feel like that’s maybe, you know, not as common, but it’s a really great way I’m sure like you said, to learn how to do these great technical screencasts, how to kind of grow that skillset on your own of teaching online even before you started building your own thing and audience.

Tyler McGinnis: Totally. Yeah, exactly. And that’s what was nice about it too is teaching online is a little bit different than not a little, it’s a lot different than teaching in person. And so the egg had role I guess was uh, it was just a smooth transition cause they had seen all the errors. Even even like little stuff that you don’t realize like setting up your microphone or like setting up like your, whatever it is you have to set up and like screencasting and what software do you use? Like there’s a bunch of little steps there. And so I think ache had really kind of helped me make that transition as smooth as possible.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. I know you’ve hinted at these like bite-sized segments, but certainly that’s one major difference between teaching in person and teaching online. This concept of really short five minute videos or learning segments, what are some of the other differences do you think, between teaching in person and teaching online?

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, the biggest one is just feedback. So when you’re in person, you’re getting like realtime feedback from all the students, right? And you can kind of adjust your lecture of the best teachers, adjust their lecture based on the feedback they get from students. When you’re doing an online specifically like recorded and you don’t necessarily have an audience, ah, there’s zero feedback loops. So you have to make sure that one kind of your path that you create is one that’s not going to lose students. Because again, in person you could just kind of fix it as you go. But teaching online you can’t necessarily do that. So that’s probably the biggest one. Just an I spend, when I look at like the breakdown of how I create a course, probably 50 to 60% of that breakdown is just like in the outline itself. And by the time I start recording, really all the hard work has been done just because I really focus on creating that. Yeah. That linear path for the students, so that way, because I’m not getting that real time feedback, I’m confident that they’re not getting lost as I go.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Even just little things like if you’re teaching in a classroom, you can see the look on somebody’s face. You can see kind of like a moment of comprehension teaching online. It’s just like you talk on at a microphone, nobody around. It’s just like crickets. It’s kind of an odd feeling at first.

Tyler McGinnis: There really is that really a spot? I luckily you get used to it. Yeah. Like I said, if you focus on really just taking the time beforehand to prep everything out, luckily because usually goes pretty smoothly.

Melissa Guller: So in that process for you, when you’re really outlining a course and spending some serious time there, how would you recommend for a new creator that they should go about doing that? What makes a good outline different from a great course?

Tyler McGinnis: So the way I think about it is you want your outline to be kind of like a staircase. And this is such like a simple metaphor, but I think a lot of people don’t really conceptualize it when they’re like teaching. So think of like the difference between like a walking up a staircase or like rock climbing, right? You want your outline and you want your course to be as close to like a staircase as possible. So almost by the end of the course the students like, Oh wow, that was like pretty easy. Like I don’t really feel like that was really hard. Cause usually people are used to learning being like super hard and super intense. And the reason for that is just cause there’s always like learning gaps, but if you can make it as much of a staircase as possible and even if you’ve like locked up, I remember I was in Ireland a few years ago and there was a staircase and it was created like I don’t know how many hundreds of years ago.

Tyler McGinnis: So it wasn’t completely even, and even that’s their case, it was hard to walk up because you can’t, you can predict how high the next step was. And so I dunno it and it just helped me with my metaphor. But yeah, just this idea of do you want your outline to be as linear and as smooth as possible? And if you do that effectively, the student will almost one they’ll enjoy taking the course because it flows really well and to the almost feel by the end of it it was relatively easy to get through it. But in that like easiness, they’ll walk away with like a real deep understanding of the concept. So that’s probably the biggest advice I have.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I think that’s a great metaphor. It also reminds me of anytime if you’re learning like a video game or even a board game, if you jumped right to level 50 it’s going to feel impossible because you haven’t learned how to play the game. And that’s what the early levels are for. They’re almost like teaching you how to do it. And so by the time you get to the end, you can do level 50 it feels like no problem. Like you could only do it because you went one level at a time. Totally. So another element beyond the outline is what content types to choose. So how do you use different types of content in your courses?

Tyler McGinnis: Yup. So the way that I do, and it’s kind of unique actually don’t know if anyone else that I’ve seen in this space does it this way. So what I found is that different students preferred different content. Mediums are like mediums to learn, meet, beating. Like some people prefer text, some people prefer video, the students are kind of on a range of what they prefer. So what I do is whenever I break down an outline, whenever you’re first introduced to a topic, so say we’re learning about like what a spreadsheet is, that’s not what I teach. But like for, for getting not, not too technical here. So say we’re learning like what a spreadsheet is. I’ll have a video introducing you to like a spreadsheet. Like this is a spreadsheet, this is what it does. And then I’ll have a tech section, which is essentially what the video was but in text form. And so if you prefer watching a video can watch the video, but

Speaker 5: if you prefer reading then you can just read it rather than watch the video or what I, I suggest you do is watch both. So you can watch the video, right? And then when you read the section you kind of get a good review of what you just watched in the video. So whenever you’re first introduced to a topic, that’s what I do. You get a video and then you get a tech section from there. There’s a few different approaches. One approach that I use is getting like hands on practice with that problem. So if, if the specific topic makes sense, what I’ll usually do is throw you into like an online code editor so you can practice the topic that we just barely talked about. Along with that, I’ll also have like a quiz that you can take to kind of just submit your understanding of the topic.

Speaker 5: And then finally after all that is done, what we’ll do is you’ll see that topic applied to a real world. No problem. So a lot of this specifically in my space is like software. So first you get an introduced introduction to the new topic. Then you get like hands on practice outside of the context of any real world project. You then get a quiz and then you’re, you have to take all of that knowledge and apply it to an actual real world project. The idea here, kind of what I’m optimizing for when I do things is to make it so when the developer is taking my course, they can directly go to work the next day and apply the topic though that they learned in the course in their production code base. So that may not work for [inaudible] what you teach if you’re listening to this. But what I found is that specifically for the software space, it works out really well.

Speaker 5: I think there’s so much great advice in there. Even just the concept of teach a skill, then do some type of real world example or the concept of having in text having it in a video. I think any creator can take at least some part of that away. Even if they’re not teaching, you know how to code. It’s so smart to come at it from different approaches because like you said, people learn very differently from each other. But I also love the quiz or the real world. It’s almost like a check for understanding to see if what you learned can be applied elsewhere. Totally. And what I found as well is my courses are like incredibly in depth to the point where like they’ve, they may be too in depth sometimes. And so what I’ve found, and this is kind of like advice for everybody, not just in the software space, is if you’re willing to put the time in to create a good course. [inaudible]

Speaker 5: really a lot of it, like I spent like probably three to five months on each course that I make. And the outcome of that is a course that is, are really high quality and it’s what people want to take. So that’s why specifically in my space I’m able to compete with a lot of the larger companies who have similar courses. Just because I’m willing to literally hit my head against the wall for like months at a time to create a course that I think is really valuable. Yeah, I think a, a lot of what creating a quality courses is just spending a ton of time that no one else is willing to do to create that course. That’s a great point. I think it sounds like a lot of time, like three to five months could feel intimating, but like you said, to make something that’s really high quality and that shares knowledge in a way that people will actually absorb and learn.

Speaker 5: It does take time, but the good news is a lot of people aren’t willing to put in that time. So if you are, it will really set you apart from other people. Exactly. Yep. And I know you also have, I would say a pretty unique guarantee about your courses and especially in the world of tech, things are always evolving. I think that that’s pretty unique. So deeply you share what the guarantee is. Yeah, totally. So I was sitting there one day and I was trying to think of what I can do too. Again, just differentiate my courses from all of the other more like big conglomerate companies that also do this [inaudible] with what I do, it’s just me. So all the content comes from me and pretty much every other company they have they like outsource the content, not necessarily outsource but they have like contractors who do it.

Speaker 5: So my guarantee is that every course on my website will be up to date with like the latest API within like six months. API being like the way that you do the thing like that, the programming language or the library. So the guarantee is that basically all my content will be up to date within like three months of there being like a breaking change to the programming language. That is a little bit stressful on my end because I’m always having to update stuff, but that’s just essentially a guarantee that I can make that no one else can make because in order for me to update my content I just have to sit down and do it. Where in order for everyone else to update their content, they have to go to the contractor or they have to convince them to do it. That’s just a big overhead for them.

Speaker 5: So that’s, that’s something that’s worked out well specifically in my space, just because I don’t know of anyone else who’s really doing it well. What’s fascinating too is I feel like there are a lot of online courses that are, you know, like Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 2013 again, you buy a new course when something new comes out first. Same thing as a book and it’s definitely a marketing play. You know how to get a job in 2017 2018 2019 2020 like I understand why somebody might go that route of needing people to buy the latest version to always have sales. But I love your approach because I think for me as a student, if I know that my course is always gonna have the latest information, it makes me trust you more. It makes me more excited about buying your course because I know I’ll always have the best information in the same place instead of feeling like you’re trying to squeeze every dollar out of me.

Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. I think so much of learning, especially online is as from a student perspective, it’s piecing together all of the material you need to then get to your outcome. Right. And so really my goal in this, it kinda goes back to the staircase metaphor cause I want to make it so when you’re done with the course you feel comfortable and you kind of know everything that you need to know. And with that, and the, where the guarantee ties into that is that not only can you be confident, you’re going to know everything you need to know, but you’re going to be confident that what you’re learning is actually irrelevant to how we do things today. Not, Oh it was a few years ago. That’s, that’s a great point. I’m sure people who come to your site and see the guarantee, it must feel like a relief for them to know that they’re getting the latest information. They’ll always have the latest information. And I know a big part of being an online course creator is getting referrals, getting students to talk about your course. And I know I’ve seen your website, I mean there’s a whole giant page of who are obsessed with you

Melissa Guller: and it’s fun to see and I’m sure it feels really good to get those reviews, but it’s also proof that what you’re teaching is actually working. And as a creator, that’s something I think we should all be aiming for.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think until like last month, and this is, I’m on like a year two or three of doing this now, I don’t think I’ve ever done any paid marketing. So everything that I’ve had is just through referrals. So yeah, that’s, that’s essentially like what I optimize for is if you really enjoy the course, you’ll tell your friends and that’s kind of what, what the whole business is built on.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. Actually, that’s a great segue. I’d love to talk more about how you do find students and how you market. And so, right when you were first getting started, like how did you find early traffic or growing early following to your website?

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, so I got really lucky in the early days what I was teaching, which was react, which is the Java script framework slash. Library. This was in like 2015 and she has been four years now. So the 50 I know, I really know a, so was teaching react, react at the time was like this new upcoming thing. A lot of people were talking about it. It had a lot of buzz around it. So I decided to create a course. I decided to make that course free. It was like a react fundamentals course. And when I launched it, I posted it to hacker news. It kind of blew up on hacker news and within like 48 hours, I had like 10,000 to 20,000 signups. There was obviously a lot of work before that to get at the point where I could get lucky. But that kinda set the foundation for things going forward.

Tyler McGinnis: Um, so I have to thank hacker news for that. And then from there, what I do, this is kind of interesting as well. So whenever, whenever I’m designing a course, and again this is kind of emphasizing the before ever like start recording anything. So when I’m doing the outline, what I’ll do as I look at the whole outline once I’m finished and I’ll look at what pieces of content could be nice stand alone blog posts or videos. So by the time I’m done, I have my whole course outline, I have then a bunch of pieces that I can take out of the course of publishes just like one off blog posts or videos. And then what that does is that leads to then that’s like free content marketing that I could use to then upsell the course. So that’s right. Really entirely. What I do is whenever I launch a new course, I’ll take it pieces of that course, publish them for free on my blog, we’re on YouTube and then that sell upsells the course. And that’s literally all I’ve done for the last like three years and it’s worked out really well.

Melissa Guller: I think that’s such a smart strategy too because in a lot of ways you’re starting with the end, the end being the course and what people will learn there and then taking pieces and giving them away for free or kind of like a little preview to upsell. I think maybe what a lot of people might be doing is just starting with the blog posts or starting with the YouTube videos and thinking about what they can talk about. But I love your approach because then there’s such a natural lead in to your bigger course, your product. It just makes such a nice fit of the free content to the paid.

Tyler McGinnis: Totally. And, and I don’t, my courses are so consuming. I don’t really have time to [inaudible] do any content outside of a course, so it works nice. I can just optimize

Speaker 5: for recruiting the best course that I can and with that course comes a few pieces of like content marketing that I could use. Well, I’m sure. What it also does is if you’re taking a small piece of the paid course, making it a free free preview video, blog post, whatever the content form might be, you’re going to naturally attract the right kind of people who are interested in that. Yeah. You’re kind of qualifying people who are coming in and hoping that they might want the paid course. Very smart. Exactly. Yep. I’m curious too, so you had mentioned that you did get a little bit lucky with hacker news and your first course went a little bit viral. How much time though did you spend creating that first course? Because I know there’s this misconception of, Oh it just happened overnight, but based on what we’ve already talked about, I’m guessing you had put in a ton of work before that moment.

Speaker 5: Yeah, so at the time I was working for a startup, I was like the lead engineer at the startups. So my days look something like I would get up at nine argue, it’s like an eight and then I’d start working on the startup by nine and I’d finish about 6:00 PM and so then I’d worked from like six 30 to like probably like nine or 10 unlike the Teachable Teachable course. And then I’d go with, there’s this big parking lot right by our house that was like, it was a bunch of businesses and obviously it was empty at night. So then I’d go skateboard for like 20 minutes, just like chill. And then I’d go back to work for a few more hours. And then I basically repeat that process seven days a week, probably for like two to three months before the course was done. Eventually I quit the startup and started doing this full time. So my hours weren’t as crazy and more sustainable. But at the time, yeah, it was a pretty big grind. And, and again it goes back to like this isn’t easy and it’s like not supposed to be easy. And if it was everyone would do it. And so I think again, like a big part of my philosophy is just like great and courses is hard, but because it’s hard to get a really good product at the end of it and so far it’s been, it’s been worth the sacrifice.

Speaker 5: Speaking of your online courses, I know you started with one, but in time your business has shifted toward a membership model, so can you talk more about that transition and evolution has looked like? Yeah, and that was a big decision on, on my end. So initially I sold like a bundle, which was you could buy individual courses or you could buy the whole bundle. It eventually got to the point where I wanted to switch to more like a SAS model, which was again a membership or like a monthly or yearly subscription pricing. The reason for that, the big, the biggest reason was at the time my courses were pretty expensive, so I had $250 for like a course that wasn’t the free course and I had like four or five of them. And what that did was that put for, for developers specifically, there’s a lot of developers and [inaudible] countries that aren’t the United States, right?

Speaker 5: Countries like Brazil, India, where in order to, for them to buy a $250 course, it’s going to take like four months, I’ll work for them. So that was a problem initially and there’s ways to solve that obviously with coupons. But then I’m generating coupons every day and it was just kind of annoying. So I decided to switch to a, a subscription model specifically for those individuals who could afford $25 a month. And with that, instead of paying $250 to get one course, they could pay $25 and they can get like six or seven courses now. So for them, if they were willing to put at the time that he technically get through all of the courses in a month for only $25 which was really nice for them again, because like their currency doesn’t necessarily translate well to the U S dollar. So that was part of it.

Speaker 5: Another. Another reason was monthly and yearly, like recurring revenue is just nice from like a business perspective cause you can like predict things better. So those are probably the two biggest things. There was one that was a good business decision because having recurring revenue is nice and two it just made my courses more accessible to people who didn’t live. Uh, in the U S yeah, in particular for a lot of people listening that recurring revenue I’m sure is a really interesting, possibly a new perspective they haven’t considered. Yeah. One off course purchases are, you know, they’re great but then you always have to ask yourself like where am I getting more students? But when you have a subscription model, I’m sure it must be a little bit of a relief to know that some amount of money is going to continue coming in each month. It is nice.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And you can make better business. This is just based off of that like hiring or like where you want to spend like ad money. Like you know, based on the previous months you can kind of forecast what you’re going to make. The downside of that for the solo content creator as it’s, it is pretty stressful because one, if you’re on the subscription model, people expect new content pretty often and too they expect that content to be like good and and UpToDate and so that’s why I have the UpToDate guarantee as a, as a way to like can I justify the subscription model? Um, and then yeah, I’m always trying to create new content as well. Yeah, and also I think important to note that you didn’t start off with a subscription model. You did start with creating individual courses. Everyone is unique, but I imagine it would be very hard to start with what you’re doing today.

Speaker 5: I imagine most course creators who are just getting started, it might be a better bet to start with one thing and then over time see how it develops. Yeah, subscription models aren’t great. Typically if you’re a solo creator or a solo like content creator, unless you’ve been doing this for a while and you already have an audience like you mentioned, like if I were starting again today from scratch I would probably just go with like the a LA carte buy the course option. But if you get to the point where you have a pretty good audience and the subscriptions there, there are some benefits to it. I know we hinted at the fact that reviews are a big part of your website. Out of curiosity, how do you ask people for reviews? Very non scientifically. So when they’re done with the course, I have a little link that says, Hey, if you enjoy this course, fill out this form.

Speaker 5: And then on that form it says, do you want to leave her a review? Like are you cool with being put on this like marketing page? Uh, most people are because they just took the course is that’s literally all I do. It may look like I, I do more like growth hacky kind of things to get their reviews cause I have so many of them. But it’s lit and I probably should, but it’s literally just a link at the end of the course that takes, I’d be like a Google form thing. And then yeah, as you, as you mentioned, like reviews are pretty much like the

Tyler McGinnis: only thing that I care about because like I have a pretty direct correlation with how good the reviews are. Like how much money I make. And so again, yeah it’s just making the courses as good as possible. People leave reviews, people tell their friends and then that kind of just brings in the next customer. So it’s, it’s a very nice and good way of operating cause it’s, it makes things pretty simple just by being an optimized like one thing. And what I’m optimizing again is just the equality of the course.

Melissa Guller: I love that idea because anybody can do that. You can put a really simple form at the end of a course, just ask people for a nice review. But I think just hearing that people are enjoying the course and that they found value from it is huge. I mean it’s the best marketing tool you could possibly have to have somebody else say that they really enjoyed and learned from your course. So I think that’s a great tip for anybody at any size in their online course creation, journey, beginner or even further along. I agree. And then maybe one day people can aspire to having a page like yours. We’ll put a link in the show notes, but on [inaudible] dot com I’ll brag for you, there’s just a massive, massive page of people who are giving you five star reviews giving you shout outs on social media. And I think that it maybe isn’t talked about as much the power of word of mouth marketing and people who just really love what you do and talking about it. We spend a lot of time talking about how to drive more traffic to your website and how to pay for Facebook ads or you know, those are important too. But just the sheer value that you get by having somebody else rave about your course is huge.

Tyler McGinnis: Yup, I agree. And that’s why even even the page you’re mentioning it kinda has like, it’s funny cause it has like performance problems because there’s, it’s like so big. But it’s one of those things where I like didn’t necessarily optimize it because that’s kind of a statement in and of itself. And so if everyone, like if anyone ever gives me crap for that then I just, yeah, I don’t mind having my reviews page have performance problems because our so many reviews. So that’s kinda

Melissa Guller: my mentality there that it’s kind of funny though. You’re a developer. That page with all of your reviews is a little bit slow, but you are making a point like even I can’t speed this page up enough to possibly account for all of this praise that I’m getting.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, well it’s like two, there’s what I wanted to focus on is like these are real people cause they feel like it’s so easy to like fake reviews nowadays. And so like every review has a picture. It has a link to their Twitter get hub. And so it’s like literally, I don’t know, a thousand pictures or something. And I’d like done my best to like optimize it enough so that it actually loads. Uh, yeah. Anyway, good problems to have.

Melissa Guller: It is and I love that it makes it feel very human. Like your website is just, you know, your name, Tyler mechanistic calm, you’re the one creating the content. These are real humans who are reviewing your course and they’re enjoying it. It just feels very real. It feels like this is a guy I would want to learn from. That’s good. That survive. I want, yeah, it’s hard to do I think today where there’s just so much out there, but lots of little things that you do. Like we’ve talked about the amount of time you’re putting into courses, the testimonials, the subscription model, the guarantee, like little things like that add up because not many people I think are willing to put in that level of care makes a difference. So your business has obviously evolved quite a bit and I know you do release new content quite a bit as part of your subscription model, but I’m curious to hear if anything has been maybe surprising to you about creating online courses or the business that you’re running today?

Tyler McGinnis: Great question. I don’t think there’s been anything. I don’t think I pick my head up from the content game enough to realize like if any like surprises. Like I have such a system now and I’ve literally explained like everything that I do on this podcast. Um,

Melissa Guller: so all the secrets isn’t revealed.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, they really liked, that’s literally all I do. Like create really

Melissa Guller: clearly high quality courses, make free content marketing from those courses and then get reviews and then

Tyler McGinnis: [inaudible] that’s literally like the formula. Uh, I’m sure there’s like a lot, yeah,

Melissa Guller: more like growth hacky stuff I can do,

Tyler McGinnis: but it’s just like it’s, it just feels kind of non genuine to me. So I don’t necessarily know if there’s been any surprises. I guess like going into this, I kind of had that same mentality where it’s like if I just created

Melissa Guller: the [inaudible]

Tyler McGinnis: most high quality courses that I can, it’ll kind of sell itself in a sense. Obviously with like some exceptions to that. So it’s almost been like a lack of surprises. That’s been surprising,

Melissa Guller: if that makes sense at all. It does. You know what I like about your approach though, you said you know, anything else would feel not very genuine. It’s kind of like with going to the gym or getting healthy, the secret to good health is like eating well, working out, however that means to you, but people want to hear that there’s like a magic pill or some secret trick, but it’s really just committing to something and it takes time. Kind of the same with an online course business, right? Like you’re putting a lot of time and effort into courses. You’re building something great. Students are buying it, they are reviewing it. It doesn’t sound novel, it doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but you’re still doing it. You’re putting in the hard work in a way that a lot of people just aren’t. So it does pay off in the end. It just takes, you know, a system like you have and just committing to creating something really good.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah. I think as long as you trust in that process, uh, which is a very like generic thing to say nowadays with the 70 Sixers of the basketball team, cause that’s kind of their thing. But like that, that’s really the idea is like if you’re just starting out trust that if you make a really high quality course and if you’re able to get it in front of people who can take the course in a good way,

Melissa Guller: a good way to do that is making your first course free

Tyler McGinnis: trust that everything else will kind of fall into place.

Melissa Guller: Assuming you,

Tyler McGinnis: I have the highest quality course that you can. That was kind of my philosophy going into it and to this day it really hasn’t changed.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. And with the free course, I think a question that we get a lot is how much content should I give away for free? Or if I make it free course, how big should that be? Do you have any thoughts or advice about that?

Tyler McGinnis: I have strong opinions on this. Uh, I’d

Melissa Guller: love to hear them.

Tyler McGinnis: One class, I was on a Teachable thing a few years ago and one thing I said was to make your free thing better than everybody else’s pay thing. And everybody just like loved that. So that’s like my tagline now I guess. But yeah, my, my first free course, it wasn’t, it wasn’t watered down at all. It was, it was like the best that I could do. And then I just released it. And so what happened was everyone’s like, wow, his free stuff is this good. Like I wonder why, what does paid stuff looks like? And then from there it was like, yeah, it just really set the foundation for the entire business. And so that’s, that’s what I’d say is make your effort make your free step better than everybody else’s paid stuff.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] well said. And in a great way, you’re not the first podcast guest who has hinted at something similar about how creating really high quality free content is the best way to earn people’s trust and to really have them enjoy what you’re doing. Whether that means high quality free course, maybe it’s a podcast, high-quality YouTube videos or blog content, whatever form you want. I would say you know to listeners, don’t hesitate to give away really good stuff for free. Yup, I agree. People will still pay later on for a more complete offering. So what’s I think different about free content is that usually it’s smaller pieces, like you said, maybe one small piece of a course and then what people will pay for is the full experience. Like the staircase model that you said, it’s the building of knowledge on itself. That’s not something maybe you would give away for free is like a full length amazing course. So I hope people listening don’t think that we want you to give away your best stuff in full form for free, but maybe it’s a small course that’s one concept or just little pieces of content here and there, it’ll make a huge difference. Yeah, I totally agree. So I think before we wrap, another thing I want to talk about is maybe what your day to day looks like now. So how do you spend your time working on your online business? What does that look like? Maybe a peek behind the curtain.

Tyler McGinnis: Yup. So I kind of have two modes. One is course creation mode and the other is like non course creation mode. So when I’m in course creation mode, it’s basically I wake up in the morning, I go to the gym, I come home and then pretty much all day I’m focused on whether it’s like creating the outline or creating the videos or the text sections or the quizzes or the curriculum. It’s kind of like all consuming. So there’s not really much I can do whenever I’m in course creation mode that’s outside of that because it is just so consuming. So that’s one and I’m in that mode a lot. Luckily right now I’m not in that mode, so which is why we’re having this podcast. So the other mode is basically like just all things like operational, uh, which is like a refunds and student success kind of things. And just like general businessy things. So day to day specifically, like I wake up, go to the gym, come back, and then I kind of just work all day, hang out with like the wife and kids at night. That’s, it’s, it’s a pretty generic, like again, there’s nothing really like fancy that I do. Uh, like all of the success I’ve had is just like, it’s just crazy how much work you get done if you just like, do the work is essentially like my motto and yeah, that’s, that’s what I do.

Melissa Guller: It is. I think, I mean I know said it’s not very fancy. I don’t know how many people really want fancy. Like, I think that could be a misconception people have about online business is that it’s either grow some massive Instagram following and then become an influencer and have all this online success or nothing. But I think there are a lot of creators who are more like you who have a skill. They’re sharing it online, they’re putting in a lot of hard work and it’s enough to support the lifestyle that you want in your family. But it’s not that you’re trying to have some like big fancy online existence.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah. Conglomerate, huge, uh, acquisition thing. Yeah. It’s just, it’s, I mean, yeah, it pays the bills. It’s, I love it. It allows me to do what I do. I live in a little ski town, like I have three ski resorts within 15 minutes of me. All I really need is an internet connection and then I’m good to go. So,

Melissa Guller: yeah. And then, um, out of curiosity, we’ve talked about how you are the content creator. It’s your business. Do you have any help in the form of any contractors or just anybody else who’s helping you with your business?

Tyler McGinnis: I have no help. I should. That’s a, that’s a very much a personal flaw of mine. Uh, I kind of do everything and I shouldn’t, especially at this point and I’m gonna probably try to fix that in the next year to be, as of right now, like if you get an email, it’s probably coming from me. If you do anything like on the site I’m going to see it like, so I’m, I’m support, I’m customer success, I am content person. I’m kind of everything right now. Probably not to get a good idea. I don’t know if you should like really mimic that. Especially like it’s Skella I’m doing things [inaudible] it’s worked out so far.

Melissa Guller: Well it is interesting to hear that it is just you cause I had often wondered if you had any support and most course creators I imagine do start off by themselves. You have to learn like a little bit of everything. But then you know, maybe in the near future for you or as people grow their own businesses, you do start to bring in maybe a virtual assistant to help with something or maybe for other people, a developer, a designer who knows what it could be for each person. I imagine it’s something slightly different, but it is exciting to hear how things are growing. Maybe, maybe you’ll bring on some help.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s a part of it too as you mentioned is I’m able to leverage, because I’m technical, I may be able to leverage a lot of like other resources to help me do things that non technical people wouldn’t. For example, I use Zapier a lot specifically with a lot of like custom little hooks that I have. So there’s a lot of like, I guess I use like little robots as my like form of leverage rather than like human leverage, if that makes sense. That’s a really like weird way to put it. That’s kinda how I look at it. And with that said, I, I think you’re totally right. I should use better forms of like human leverage. I just really haven’t yet.

Melissa Guller: But no, that’s a great point. Like you’re using the bots as your own little army and I think that what’s most important is you’re thinking about like how to make your own life more efficient. And I think maybe something I haven’t asked you yet is you are very technical. You’ve been able to build this online course business. Do you think it’s possible for people who are not technical to build an online course business as well or are developer or very high techie skills required?

Tyler McGinnis: Definitely not required. I think you’re fishing for me to say use Teachable, which is totally reasonable cause Teachable’s fantastic. And you should use Teachable. Um, so I didn’t, I didn’t do any, I didn’t leverage any like of my technical skills until like a few years. I don’t, when it became totally necessary for me to do it. So the first, literally like the first year or two of it was everything was on Teachable. And that’s what’s nice about Teachable as it really is. And I’m not, I’m not being paid to say this or anything cause I would never sell out like this to be honest. But like Teachable really is fantastic because even if you’re not technical [inaudible] especially if you’re non technical, it has everything that you need to create a course. And what I love about Teachable, and I’ve even told like anchors a CEO of Teachable this like Teachable is so cheap.

Tyler McGinnis: The I pay more to like convert kits and I would pay more to Vimeo if Vimeo was like hosting my videos and I paid a Teachable. So I don’t necessarily know how, how they do it. But yeah, if, if you’re looking to like great courses online, I think Teachable is the best way to do it specifically because it is so cheap. Like I, on my list of like expenses that I have, you’re like number four or five and as far as like value added, you’re definitely number one. So that’s, that’s my, that’s my Teachable sales pitch.

Melissa Guller: Okay. Well thank you. And I know I didn’t, you know, feed you cookies to make you say that or anything. But certainly we appreciate it. And it’s funny too, cause even when I asked the question, I wasn’t even necessarily fishing about Teachable, but I think that so many tools online these days, whether it’s Teachable, where we help you build and sell your online course or certainly like website builders or email service providers like ConvertKit like you mentioned, or even Zapier, which for people who haven’t heard of it in simplest terms, just connects different applications to each other. I think there are so many available tools online these days that you do not need a technical background for. And it’s really empowering more people to enter businesses like this. So it’s kind of an exciting time that so many people don’t need the level of developer skills as in the past.

Melissa Guller: So it’s exciting to see what people are doing with it. Yeah, I agree. I think there are skills too that you know you didn’t have because you’re a developer. For example, creating online videos, like that’s something that I know a lot of people feel maybe a little intimidated by, but even the tech for that these days you can buy a little camera if you don’t already have one on your laptop. Same thing with a microphone, like it’s easier technically to plug and play on those kinds of tools, but I think what stops a lot of people is not actually the tech. I think it’s just wondering, you know, who am I to do this or am I even a good teacher or why would somebody buy this from me? So there’s an interesting, I think there’s two sides of it. There’s the technical knowhow and then there’s the, who am I to do at the imposter syndrome, maybe side of things.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, totally. I think with the like the reality is you probably won’t be a good teacher at first. Like I was a terrible teacher at first, but like I mean you’re also like bad at riding a bike. Anything you do, you’re going to suck at it initially and then you naturally just get better. So I think, I think

Tyler McGinnis: you have to be willing to publish what is eventually going to be your like worst content because that’s the only way that you’re going to get better. And even if I look at like my first course, I bet I just barely the react fundamentals course that we talked about earlier, which is the one that guy when they got really popular, I just barely recreated that like six months ago. And when I went through and like what when I was updating it, I realized how bad it was initially, but people still like enjoy it and they still found value from it. I’m just way, way, way better teacher now than I was, you know, three or four years ago. And that’s the reality of it. Stuff like if being bad at a thing is going to stop you then like you’re in the wrong space. But if you can just embrace that and know that like the better you can be, get it, getting bad at it. Like you’re eventually just going to be good at it. I think that’s the main, that’s the mindset to have and that’s kind of what’s worked.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I think that’s really great advice. I think any course creator who is successful now, it’s easy to look at their like beautifully produced videos or their website and assume it always looked like that. But I think many creators look back on their first course or video, whatever it was. And it’s like cringe-y you know, um, that’s a good thing. It means that you’ve gotten better over time. So hopefully people don’t let the fear of like it has to be perfect or I’m not good enough at this. Stop them from just putting something out there in the world.

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah. And I think it, what’s, what’s fun about this and what’s fun about the internet is you can like literally go back in and verify this. Like if you look at any like find anyone who you think is like a fantastic teacher and go to like, they’re very early, like YouTube videos and you’re going to realize that like they weren’t that great back in the day. But now they’re like amazing. And that’s what’s nice about YouTube and specifically like this, you can look at this historical context with the internet. If you’re a developer, one thing I like to do is find developers who you really respect and go look at their like stack overflow questions, which is basically like a help forum for developers. And if you go back a few years you’ll find that they’re asking for very simple questions because again, they were just beginners.

Melissa Guller: Well before we go, where can people connect with you or learn more if they want to check out your courses or your website?

Tyler McGinnis: Yeah, Twitter’s the best. I am @TylerMcGinnis on Twitter, uh, and my DMs are open, so always willing to chat with anyone.

Melissa Guller: Perfect. Well before we wrap, any final words of wisdom or advice for anybody listening today?

Tyler McGinnis: I have given you everything that I have, so I don’t think so.

Melissa Guller: You’ve left it on the dance floor.

Tyler McGinnis: That’s a, yeah, it’s all good. It’s all gone.

Melissa Guller: Well Tyler, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the podcast.

Tyler McGinnis: Thank you so much.

Melissa Guller: Thanks so much for joining us this week. You can learn more about Tyler McGinnis is JavaScript courses and Teachable in the show notes at teachabele.com/eit13. Now before you go, we hope you’ll subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they’re released. And if you are enjoying the show, we hope you’ll leave us a five star review! We can’t tell you how much we appreciate your feedback and your support. So on behalf of Team Teachable, we hope you enjoyed this episode about outlining and teaching with Tyler McGinnis. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.