Ep. 14: Modern marketing (with Eugenio Oller of Emprende Aprendiendo)

Euge has dedicated the last few years to help aspiring Spanish business owners create and utilize YouTube videos. He is also the owner of Leader Summaries, Flash Libros, Suprive Agency, and Emprende Aprendiendo.

Emprende Aprendiendo was born with the vision of helping the maximum number of entrepreneurs and companies through knowledge. Their priority is to offer the best quality teaching, which is based on everything we learn every day.

Where to fine Euge

• Emprende Aprendiendo
• Euge Oller’s Youtube Channel

Read the full transcript below.

Eugenio Oller: At the end of the day, I think an entrepreneur is someone that searches for problems, and is capable of creating a solution for that problem.

Melissa Guller: Eugenio Oller has been sharing videos on YouTube since he was a teenager showing off his skateboard tricks. It may have been niche, but he built a following and discovered a love and interest in both YouTube and the world of online business. From a young age, Euge saw how powerful the internet could be. And on top of that, he realized that modern marketing wasn’t something you could read about in a textbook. So today he’s here to share not only how he’s learned which types of marketing and connections work in today’s internet world, but also how he’s used that knowledge to build his own digital marketing and business school for Spanish entrepreneurs.

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.

Speaker 4: Hey everyone, I’m Melissa from Team Teachable. And today I’m here with Eugenio Oller. Euge has dedicated the last few years to helping aspiring Spanish business owners create and utilize YouTube vídeos and online courses. He is also the owner of Leader Summaries, Flash Libros, Suprive Agency and Emprende Aprendiendo. Well Euge, welcome to the podcast!

Eugenio Oller: Hello, Melissa. Thank you for having me here.

Melissa Guller: Thank you for allowing me to butcher your name so terribly when I welcomed you. I’ll do my best.

Eugenio Oller: [laughs] No worries.

Melissa Guller: I’m thrilled to have you. To get started, did you always plan to start your own online business?

Eugenio Oller: Not, not like that. Like my, my is a little bit like with ups and downs in the online world. I studied abroad in Taipei and then in San Francisco and when I was in San Francisco, like I started to see all this like hype about starting companies and I immediately fall in love into that. But I only knew that like I was studying business administration and I thought that that will be enough to, to start my company. And I jumped into it and I wanted to do the first thing I wanted to do. It was like a business, like an Uber for everything. I think it will be like a Postmates in, in the United States. I wanted to bring that idea back to Barcelona, but little did they know that those kind of like big startups ideas, they need a lot of money. And luckily enough like I run into some mentors that stop me in the way and they were like really making me see the real thing that it was not like San Francisco and this thing kind of things.

Eugenio Oller: They need a lot of traction, a lot of luck and a lot of like money. So then what I started was in the eCommerce world, I started like a company of, we were selling personalized shoes and then we’re selling waters, but it was all like natural. Uh, after that I started doing YouTube videos. I was like telling my story and I was like starting to get a little community, but not like when I was in university, I wasn’t thinking of online business or anything. I knew I wanted to do something with business, but not like starting my own company.

Melissa Guller: I, that’s a good point. That even people who have maybe a business savvy or have an interest in business didn’t necessarily know about the online world. I think even in universities today, I’m guessing it’s not a subject that’s heavily taught

Eugenio Oller: for sure. Like I remember my marketing classes in in business school and they were horrible. Like I was telling how to put ads on TV and like do like this really old kind of marketing and they were not talking about like all these great things you can do on with the online world and I think to your point, I think people think that the online business, it’s like really polarized. Like there’s these big companies and these big startup with a lot of money and then there’s like all the people that are trying to scam you. There’s like a thing in between that I think you can build a solid business without need of a lot of capital or all that knowledge that you think you, you, you have to have.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, that’s a great point. And not one that we’ve explicitly talked about in any of our previous episodes. Where with online business, it’s really a level playing field. You don’t have to have a ton of money to start. You don’t need somebody else to lend you money. And frankly a lot of people were not taught how to run an online business. So that kind of evens the playing field because even if you’re just getting started, most people already don’t really know what to do.

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, exactly. It’s a, it’s a new world like to and also like the, the business of like selling courses and or information and all of that doing it well, it will completely make you a stand of the competition. Like people in our world thing that this is a crowded market, but there is like so much opportunity like right then left. So yeah, for sure.

Melissa Guller: So speaking of opportunity and going back to your own personal story, you said you started making YouTube videos, so kind of what happened next. Keep going on your story.

Eugenio Oller: Yeah. Well, first of all, I have to say that my first YouTube channel was like, this really needs weird subject. I I liked and I loved skateboarding, but I was falling all the time and I had a really bad injury, but I still wanted to do a skateboarding. So I was doing this little skateboarding with the tactics and the fingerboards and I record that, like my little tricks in, in my house. And I started to get these following, this is when I was like 17 years old. I didn’t do anything with that. They didn’t start any, any online course or anything. I tried to sell my courses on CDs, but it was terrible. Imagine like people were like buying massive, my CD. I had to like ship that to the guy maybe in the other part of the world. So the logistics were terrible, but on the way.

Eugenio Oller: Yeah. And like it was, it was insane. Like I was 17 and I was trying to do this thing that, uh, it was hard, but I started to see the power of, of the internet, the power of community, the power of like if I was playing with a little toy in my house and I had like thousands of views in my videos like that, I think it registered in my, in my brain. So when I came back from, from my master’s degrees and I was starting to do these small companies and a lot of them were failing, some of them were doing good. I immediately did the same process. Like, okay, I’m going to tell my story in maybe two years. I’m going to talk about what books I’m reading. I’m going to talk about like how I’m doing this company with the shoes. Like it was a real hustle.

Eugenio Oller: We had to talk with a lot of people to, to construct the shoes, to make them, to print them. So I think, um, that was the initial part. And when, when my YouTube channel, I think I was like three years uploading videos or more or less, yes, two or three years until one of them started to grow. I think it got like 1 million views in like a week. And for me what that was like, okay this is changing. Because after that there was like three or more videos that went into like a hundred K, 200 K views. And also my other companies, the watch company and the shoe company, they were also starting to grow. But I had to choose between this two things. Like I had my eCommerce business or this huge community I was developing about personal growth and business. So, uh, I decided to give those companies the eCommerce to my business partner and focus only on the YouTube site.

Eugenio Oller: And I immediately thought about these, um, like same thing I was doing with e-commerce but with courses because I was a cute fan of taking online courses. So I was like, okay, I know this market, I know this can work. So I started to do courses on Dyke first reading, like reading faster. And I then partnered with a big book company in Spain and I created this product that was like, it’s called flights liberals. And what we do is like, I did like 28 books, summaries on my best books that I was reading and that was one of my first products that I came into market with the online world. Well with online courses, sorry.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, those first courses then you are partnering with somebody else. So that’s a really interesting approach, right, because then you have the power of more than one audience.

Eugenio Oller: Yeah. Well this company, uh, the partnering was they, because I didn’t know if I could like get books and do the swim, the book summaries because there’s like issues with the authors and and all kinds of reasons. Yeah. But I had the lag that one of the big guys that was working on that company, it was a big editorial for books. They publish books. So he was a fan of my channel. So he was like, yeah, for sure. Like you can come like he, the only thing we want is like you, when you put the affiliate code on the, on the courses you say that you’re working with us and that, that was great. And at the beginning, my first course on the reading faster was from you than me. And I think it was good for my first course to be there because at the time, like IDN had any audience or at the end had anything going. But the problem with, with that kind of platforms, it’s good maybe if we, if you’re starting out, but the loss of control at the end was the day issue for me. So then when I discovered [inaudible], I was like, okay, they’re letting me make my own business. That that is like the big gap that, that I think they, they covered.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. And we actually haven’t talked about you, you to me at all in any of our podcast episodes, but I’d love to because you to me as a great platform, but maybe you elaborate more since you’ve worked with both. What is the difference between a platform like you to me and a platform like Teachable?

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, like, well first of all, like the, I was searching so much information for the perfect platform for four courses. I’m talking about months, like it was an issue because I wanted to, to be in a place that that led me provide a lot of value to my students because I really think that online courses, if you make a big promise about what you’re gonna teach, like after the experience of that client, if it’s outstanding, you will have him coming back for four more. So you than me had that. But the problem and the difference between UME and Teachable is UME takes control of what you’re doing. So what do I mean by that? And you then me, you upload your course, you put all your content and every client that you bring to you that me, you get 100% of the sale. But if they sell your course to their, the their audience, you get 50% that strategy for you than me is incredible.

Eugenio Oller: So form their business point. I think they nailed it because they incentivize people to go there and feel like they are in control of how much they earning with the courses, but there’s a caveat that if you let them market your course, they also have control on your pricing. What do I mean? Like if you put your course like for 300 euros or $300 the thing is like they can run promotions without you knowing, well they, they tell you but they don’t tell you like it’s going to be these days of the month and they bring the price down to like $10 you can opt out of this. You can say like, Hey, I don’t want to do it, but then you will not rank on your enemy so well this is when I was using you the me. I don’t know how it works now, but that was my main concern.

Eugenio Oller: Also, the emails that you were getting from your clients, they’re you, they miss, they let you use them like two emails a week or two emails a month or something like that. But the business control is for you than me. So I really think it’s very important when you start a business to think about control. Like there’s a, a good quality that says that, okay, who tomorrow can make a decision and destroy my business if there’s like one person or company that can do that, you’re in big trouble. So having your online course there, I think it’s good if you want to make, like if you just want to make like extra income and let them run your courses, but if you want to take it seriously and like start a business, I think digital is like the opposite. Like Teachable, they create a great product as an infrastructure.

Eugenio Oller: Like they, they make the students like happy to navigate in the course. Like it’s very intuitive. I always compare like the Shopify but for online courses that they think is a great revolution of, of like how easy it is to, to create your website, um, on all of that. But the different is like you own everything on Teachable. Like you put your domain, like the emails are yours, you can integrate it very easily. With all your autoresponders and everything, so I think it’s a big difference like, and they have their own customers. I think like Uma, it’s targeting the kind of people that there are teachers and they don’t want to go and make the hustle for four more party. If you’re going to take it seriously, like I think there’s, it’s a better option going with T tube. Yeah. Really well said and we didn’t, we didn’t talk about any of this before so that was all really usually hiring you for our marketing team recently told me that I don’t have to talk about detail the, it’s just how I see it. Like I’ve been a Teachable user for for a long time now and I really like appreciate that control that you give the the business owner. Like I, I see it as a different thing. Like I see like we Teachable, we are like in the same path like okay you want us like me for example as a creator and with my team to succeed. The other thing is different. It’s like okay, can we sass and like you can teach in our school. I don’t know if that can like make sense.

Melissa Guller: I think it does and we totally agree. There’s definitely a space for both you to me in Teachable in the world. And in fact, Encore, our founder used to be an instructor using you Tommy’s platform and he, I felt a lot of the same frustrations you did around controlling the price of his course, not being able to communicate with his students. And so when he built the first version of Teachable, it was to address a different type of creator, like you said, somebody who wants to hustle and for learning and really be in control of their own destiny. So absolutely, there’s a place for both in the world and with Teachable. We were just trying to do something a little bit different and appeal to those creators who really want to make a living earning money online. Nice. So actually let’s talk about your online schools. So when did you first come up with the idea to start? I’m totally gonna attempt it. This is it. And day [inaudible] I have to say. All right. Like a horrible name. No. And then what does it mean in English? For people listening,

Eugenio Oller: it’s like, um, entrepreneurship like apprentice, like starting your own company. Like we have like a specific word for that. Uh, so like, uh, learning, starting your business and learning like it’s like entrepreneurship and learning. Like the idea is like you can keep learning while you are creating your own business. I think that makes perfect sense. Yeah. But like I, you have to see how, how they completely destroy the name. Like people are saying like [inaudible] in the uh, and [inaudible] like it’s horrible now in retrospect, but the problem is like we reach a million subscribers like five days ago and congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for that. And we’re talking about this, this name thing and like my business partners and I were like, we cannot change it now. It’s like too late.

Melissa Guller: Well, you know what’s interesting about that though is in spite of the name that you do have, you’ve still obviously found great success. So I think even a little lesson can be for anybody listening. If you don’t get too hung up on the name

Eugenio Oller: forest show or like the name at the end and the logo, like after you create the value, they will ask you to say it, the name and the value to that thing that you created, not the other word. Way around.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, well said. And actually Teachable used to be called fedora, which is like a kind of hat and perfect it just so that he could get up and going. And he knew he had something great to build and didn’t want to get stuck on the name. And it wasn’t until a few years in that we rebranded to Teachable, which of course makes way more sense. So maybe that’s a nice little tip for any listeners in the very early phases. You know, just pick a name and go too much about it as long as you’re sharing something great. But back to your school name aside. So tell us about how it all got started.

Eugenio Oller: Well, the thing is like after I had some success with, with the the first eCommerce business also my first schools, things started to going well. But I started to remember what had I really learned in skin business school and I was like okay, things are not what they were telling me. So I saw like this big problem. At the end of the day I think an entrepreneur is someone that searches for problems and is capable of creating a solution for that problem. So I knew the business education university had a problem but at the end know what to do at the, at the, at the time. So after I started to get into some success talking to some mentors and other people, other entrepreneurs, I thought, Hey there’s like a thing we can do. I think and what I did was like select one of the the things that I really liked about business school and was the business cases where they talked about a company and they tell you their story.

Eugenio Oller: And I think it’s a really a interesting way of learning because your attention gets really engaged into the story of the company and why did he started it and what, what the entrepreneur or the founder did in the later stages and all that kind of stories I think makes people really engage. So I decided to create YouTube videos with my team about the stories about business cases, what they were doing and we started to to put these videos for free on like Facebook and YouTube and I really thought that it was gonna take us like for one year to reach, I don’t know like 50,000 subscribers and have these small community. But for my surprise, like in the first month one of our videos reach like 10 million views from on Facebook and another one also in YouTube reach like 1 million views and from from then every Sunday we’re like sharing these cases, business cases with the idea of creating this community.

Eugenio Oller: From the beginning we said that we were an online platform and online a Academy like we were going to sell courses. That’s, I think a little nuance that people are started YouTube channels and after one to sell the community gets like frustrated like, Oh, you’re going to sell blah blah blah. We were like telling directly to people like, okay, we’re doing these business cases for free, but there’s like a school behind behind here. So the idea was to bring the best teachers possible to teach entrepreneurs and business owners about this new, the new information. Like I thought like in business school, the information was like from years ago, business books were really old. I wanted this new type of studying, like I don’t know, things about marketing and things about strategy. So I wasn’t the one doing the one of the first courses, the ones that I thought I could like, uh, do.

Eugenio Oller: But after that we were bringing in new teachers and the thing is like, well we have this, these YouTube channels, these Facebook presence. And also we also have the, the online courses. So how many teachers are there now? Right now I think we’re like four and we’re going to launch a new teacher the September. He’s gonna teach about how to build your own um, sass company. Like the idea is that like we’re trying to read for people that already have experience in those worlds and we create like a good deal for both of them and we bring them to our community. That’s a really great idea to bring in other teachers other than just yourself because it really expands the amount of knowledge that your students can have. For sure. I think, and even if you, if you are not the teacher, like I see opportunities in different markets that if you really understand how to create and market your, your school, you can, you can even not be there.

Eugenio Oller: So it’s, it’s yes. Going out out of the books, I really wanted to bring the best of the kind of teachers in different topics. So the idea was that like try and search them and bring them, well I think you bring up an interesting point, which is that there are two fairly separate skillsets involved in having an online course business. One is creating a great online course, teaching something to the students, helping them achieve some kind of outcome. But the other half is finding students. It’s the marketing, it’s the business building side. For sure. I think I’m, I’m very lucky because I, I had this business background and I, and I had already successful eCommerce and I was running Facebook ads and I was running these campaigns with influencers and all of that. I also love to teach. So in my case, it’s like this combination of both of these skills, but I’ve seen other people that, Hey, I am just a teacher and that’s it.

Eugenio Oller: And there’s other people that, Hey, I’m just a businessman. So I think like being knowledgeable of who are you, it’s going to make things very easy because I thought I told you before the podcast, like right now we’re investing also putting money on other teachers to create their own schools. And it’s interesting because for me it’s very easy to make an online course. I can do an online course like in one month now. So I tend to think that other people are going to be able, so I put this like pressure on on these new teachers and it’s not always like that. Like everyone has his own rhythm, his own path and that’s why you were talking about the creative challenge that having deadlines and having this pressure I think is very good.

Melissa Guller: Do you think for people who feel more comfortable with just the teaching or people who maybe feel more comfortable with just the business side, would you recommend that they try to learn how to do both or do you think there’s a good argument to be made for finding a business partner or somebody else to come in with you?

Eugenio Oller: The best thing you can do is like find someone that is really good at what they are, not and double down on what you are good. I think, as I said, for me it’s both of my things that I love, like business and teaching. But if you’re really good at teaching, Hey, there’s probably someone there that you can partner with. And I’m not saying like don’t know nothing about business or marketing. Like you should read about it, you should like think about it. But if your super power is teaching, like you should, you should read more about how to teach better, like new methodologies, new systems. Because at the end of the day, if you’re running an online course or a school like your product is you’re teaching, so if you can better that and you can make it better, always a better product will make you more money at the end. Like it’s gonna maybe it’s not gonna attract more customers, but the customers that buy and have that experience of learning, they’re going to talk about you and they’re going to buy everything that you keep doing.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] I like how you call it a super power. I do think teaching is a superpower.

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, for sure. And I think it’s that super power that you can like improve over time. Like I don’t think like people are born with that super power. I got a, for me it was a thing that if you go and see my first YouTube videos, you would cringe night. They’re horrible. But it’s a thing that you keep doing, you keep doing, you keep like, and it’s also good for learning. Like I remember my, my first time that I was putting those videos, it was more for me than for the people there because first of all there were the, there were no people. When you start, there’s no one that’s listening. So that’s a good trick to start. Like if you want to start and you think, Oh, nobody’s gonna watch me or nobody’s gonna take my course. Hey, do it for you. Like the best way to like really learn in a deep level what you’re, what do you want to learn? Like it’s teaching it. Like if you teach it, you have to make it simple. If you have to make it simple, you would really put the effort of like making those complex ideas like simple to to understand

Melissa Guller: [inaudible]. I do think that’s a great piece of advice. If you have to teach something to somebody else, the level of understanding you need is so much deeper because it’s very hard to communicate I think, and to become a good teacher. It takes a lot of good practice for sure. Let’s talk a little bit more about your social media. Like we’ve hinted at YouTube a little bit, but I know you also have quite a following on Instagram these days and I think social media is a very hot topic in 2019 and has been for a few years, so I’m curious to hear more. How do you find an engage followers?

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, it’s, this for me has been like along subjects for a long time and well social media DNH is a way of communicating with your audience, with your people and I think it’s going to go even bigger. Like I have other YouTube friends that have a lot of followers and they’re always scared because they think, Oh, this may be, it’s a fat, it’s gonna go away. I’m like, no way. Like this is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Like at the end. What social media does is options for people to, to consume what they want. And I think there’s also benefits and also good things and bad things. Like if you use social media, uh, to produce content and to engage with your followers and to like create this community that’s gonna bring a lot of benefit to your business. But if you use social media to consume content and to, I don’t know, these spirals of like seeing other people’s lives that’s gonna get you away from your, from your goals.

Eugenio Oller: Like I’ve seen that on me. Like we’re talking about that the Instagram thing in someone was, was the first social media was you, I started to use, I was like making book summaries and when I started, even before they w that made YouTube tunnels. And the thing is like with with Instagram, it was so hard to get a following at the beginning and I can, I can tell some strategies that now I know to make it easier, but I think like if you really want to grow your business, you should focus on on some social media, but it’s not going to be what is going to make that click. The way that I would recommend someone to use social media with the online if you want to create a school is to create incredible free content on that platform without any kind of sale, like the actual content on the platform and then get really good at Facebook ads.

Eugenio Oller: Well, Facebook ads, you can put ads on Instagram and if you link your Instagram account with your ad, the thing is like a lot of people are gonna buy your courses, but also a lot of people aren’t going to start following following you because if you have good content, it’s a way of having awareness into your account. That’s how I keep growing nowadays. Like also obviously generate good content, but the thing is like it’s so difficult to get organic traffic these days. There’s so much people doing the same thing in a lot of meters. So I will focus on that like giving free value, like everybody knows more or less at this year how to use social media. It’s like give free value without asking for anything and then, uh, once in a while put some awareness into your products. But the thing is like, I think a combination of the free value and also getting really good with the ad. It’s gonna. It’s gonna be really interesting.

Melissa Guller: Hmm. I like how you talked a lot about storytelling a few times earlier in the episode too and sharing who you are and not just sharing like a pitch on the total opposite end. I’m curious to, storytelling I think shows up in very different ways on different platforms. It looks different in a blog post than it does on Instagram than it does on YouTube. Maybe for people who are just getting started or don’t quite understand which platform they might want to use. I know YouTube and Instagram are some of your biggest, but what are the differences between how you use those platforms? Yeah,

Eugenio Oller: there is um, half a team for all the social media and then there’s like little nuances about how to to use them at the end. Like YouTube is long form content, like 10 to 20 minutes where you give this value and the idea is like for your community there’s three pieces of content that I think you should start to think about. There’s one piece of content that is a call it curiosity plus education that the idea with this kind of content, let’s think about for example, my example about our communities, entrepreneurs and future leaders. Okay, we’re going to try and make one piece of content every week. That’s about curiosity and also location. That piece of content, it has the ability to expand the market. We’re trying to make it fun. We’re trying to make it that people that are not even in our market start to come to our market.

Eugenio Oller: For example, we put like, did you know the story about how Amazon started or did you know how the story about Amancio Ortega, the founder of thera, uh, how did he reach so many millions? So there’s like broad topics and we bring in this new new audience with those curiosity and after when they’re seeing that piece of content, we are starting to teach them but in a subtle way like at the end of the, the, the consumption of that content. They have to think, Oh, I’m, I have been entertained and I also know these new things like, Hmm, this entrepreneurship thing. It’s kind of cool. Let me go and seek more after, uh, that piece of content. That is one. The second one is, um, things that your market, we are all always search, for example in our market, the uh, how to do a business plan. That’s a thing that people will always search and we’ll keep searching forever and ever.

Eugenio Oller: That’s a con piece of a piece of content that they will run very good in the search engine engines. Like, if you put how to start a company in Spanish, that would probably be a video of, of us, like teaching you that. And then there’s like the other part that are things that are from nowadays, like things that happen in the last month. For example, when the new G D Rippy thing came and about the emails on how to treat data. Well, you can talk about that if it’s a thing that concerns your, your market. So I think those three pieces of content are key to following YouTube. And if you’re starting the one about the things that happened last month, forget about it because there’s no people still yet in your community. I would focus on, uh, the curiosity and education and also things that, that they will always search because that thing that, that kind of videos or content will always be there.

Eugenio Oller: That’s on YouTube. And I, the thing is, I need you to be half a search thing. So that’s how we structure the strategy. But in serum it’s like a different thing. Instagram, you want to put content that really has these, these hypey kind of look to it. Uh, in Ceram is very nowadays, like I wouldn’t focus a lot of of time making content that will last forever because it doesn’t work like that. Instagram is like, like a new feed, like something new every day. It really puts pressure on things that are now like even if you, for example, I use it as like, okay, I’m in vacation. Like, uh, here is where I am or I am in this conference. Like this is a picture with me and the conference. Like those kinds of things that are more in the present moment work a lot better on that platform.

Melissa Guller: I think you also said this, but I want to emphasize when you said that YouTube is a search engine, people can go there, search for different terms. That’s very different from how people use Instagram, which I’m sure we are all a little guilty of. You just kind of keep scrolling and whatever catches your eye, catches your eye. It’s not, Oh, maybe [inaudible].

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, for sure. But also, um, if I had to start now, I will focus on like YouTube where I will practice my communication skills like that. It’s free. Nobody’s like, you’re not charging for anybody to lose your content there. So it’s like a practicing platform and I also will focus on if I have already a product like an online course on the ads part, I think a lot of people are focusing on like content, content, content and that’s great, but sometimes you have a beautiful perfect piece of content that you put out there and nobody sees it and you’re like, okay, I put my soul into it and that can crush you with the, with the part of like me putting great ads, you can drive people into that piece of content and if you make a transition after into like a soft sale, then that’s what I normally say at the beginning. Like something that can people be willing to pay or like a low ticket or something like that you can make, I don’t know, even if you don’t win any money with a, with the ads, you’re bringing people at awareness to your brand, to your school and that has a lot of value too.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, that’s a great point. And if people haven’t learned anything about Facebook ads before, how did you, how to do that or are there any resources

Eugenio Oller: I would recommend? Yeah, I, when I teach people how to do like facial cards or whatever, even if that I have on online courses about that, I say don’t buy my course. First of all, go to YouTube, go to Google and search like the basics. It’s, there’s so much information about how to start your account. Like all those things are free. Like our courses, we focus more on like the advanced things because we know that there’s a needs a needs there because there’s so many free content. If you go to YouTube you will find so many things and maybe after that start searching for courses or for someone that can teach you more, but like it’s much more easy than people think. Like, and I heard that Facebook that there, no, they all obviously wanted to make it easier to you because the more easier it is to put Facebook ads, the more money they’re going to get because more people are going to be able to use it. So they’re starting to implement different strategies to make the distribution of your ads more easily because at the end of the day they have more data and they are smarter than you. They have algorithms and all of kinds of things that they are telling you to UAA. I know who your out. The answer is just focus on the content on the add, on the creative part. So I think it’s going to be easier and easier in the future.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, great point and good advice about seeking out what you can get for free first and then going now before we go, just maybe one question. I’m curious, have there been any surprises about running an online course business for you or things that you didn’t expect?

Eugenio Oller: Well, there’s always surprises when when starting a business and it’s a, it’s a great question because people think about their trip on the online business world that it’s going to be like steady, uneasy and the thing is like, obviously there’s going to be times that they’re going to be horrible things like, I don’t know. I remember doing a allowance and the last day of the lounge, Facebook canceled our account or something like that. Like there’s going to be like horrible days, but at the end of the day I really think that it’s all worth it. Like you don’t even want to have it all like in a straight line path. Like the interesting part, at least for me, it’s the adventure of not knowing what’s going to happen. And that is called wary of new platforms, new strategies, new ways of doing things that are gonna maintain you like alive, doing what you’re doing. And it’s not for everyone, uh, for, for everybody because I think like there’s a lot of people there that want more security and stable stability. But if this is what you want, is it going to be, is going to be interesting.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] and, and speaking of adventures, what is up next for you? What are you doing next?

Eugenio Oller: Well, the thing is like right now we, we bought a new company, uh, like two months ago also in the online learning space. And this is a company that has like 16 years in the market. What they do is like they partner with also uh, book publishers and they do book summaries. They have like 500 books, summaries for entrepreneurs and leaders. And the thing is like we saw that the company was doing really good in the SEO. Like they were ranking for a lot of good words, but they were not doing like email marketing and they were not doing like any social media stuff. So we bought it recently and now we’re going to make that thing grow. And probably in the future we will translate it to, to English and see what happens.

Melissa Guller: Well for people who are listening, they might not realize that everything you’ve done online today has been in Spanish.

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, for sure. Like from for now, like my, my, all my videos out there are in Spanish and I was thinking another lot of people were telling me to start doing continent and English, but I always thought that there was so much market in the Spanish community and we had so many more to do that we didn’t do it. And I also probably is because I’m a little bit insecure about how I express myself because obviously it’s not my native language and I’m very fluent when I talk in Spanish, but when it comes to English I’m a little bit scared maybe, but it’s something that I’m thinking about it like to start doing maybe content in English.

Melissa Guller: Well your English sounds great to me, but I totally agree with you that I’m sure the opportunities to take online courses into the Spanish speaking world are huge and I know with Teachable only, I think 60% of our users are in the U S so that means of course 40% are elsewhere. Some of them do use English, many of them don’t. But certainly it seems like it’s starting to become more global. The spread of online courses

Eugenio Oller: for sure. And that’s the thing that we want to do. Also, like we, we want to bring one of our courses in the future will be about how to create your online course and we will market to, to the Spanish community because I think there’s a lot of, of of opportunity, not only for teachers but for businesses. I think the, your online course, if you do it correctly, can be an introductory part of your other business, whatever it is. So yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of opportunity still and I don’t know, maybe you see me doing YouTube videos in English in the near future.

Melissa Guller: Well, I could keep talking to you for hours, but I do think we have to wrap it up. So before we go, if people want to learn more or check out your content online, where can they find you?

Eugenio Oller: Yeah, if you type Euge Oller into YouTube or wherever, you will find me. And also our Spanish Academy, our school, it’s Emprende Aprendiendo, which it’s a crazy name for me. And that’s it. Thank you for having me here.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. Thank you again for joining us, Euge!

Eugenio Oller: That was perfect pronunciation of my name.

Melissa Guller: Nailed it.

Melissa Guller: Thanks so much for joining us this week. You can learn more about Euge, Emprende Aprendiendo, and Teachable in the show notes at teachabele.com/eit14. 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 modern marketing with Eugenio Oller. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.