How to create an online course without quitting

Want to know how to create an online course without quitting?

Chances are you want to know to create an online course

The truth is I quit creating my online course, Kickass Investing. Not once, but 5 times before ACTUALLY launching.

Everyone these days wants to start an online course. It’s the easiest way to get started with “digital entrepreneurship”.

Why? There’s…

• No startup cost
• No inventory
• It’s scalable
• You can be location independent

Literally I was telling my mom the other day it’s better than buying a house for rental property.

With an online course, you don’t need to worry about a 20% downpayment to pay for the asset, shitty tenants, or worry it catching on fire.

All you need to get started is website domain for less than $100 per year to setup a digital asset that pays you month after month.

Although it sounds easy, executing it is always 1000x harder.

And in today’s article, I want to talk about my journey of launching my first online course. Because the truth is that I quit not once, but five times over five years.

Want to know why? You just gotta read the article 🙃

It started with a buying course on creating online courses

When I was in pharmacy school, I never wanted to go into entrepreneurship.

It just seemed way too risky for me, especially when you compare it to a government pharmacist career.

For the longest time, I wanted to serve as a pharmacist in the US Public Health Service. It was stable and secure. What more could you want?

As stable and secure things were with pharmacy, the truth was that I wasn’t happy. But what else could I do?

This all changed when I met Joe Jitsukawa, co-founder of JK Films. And I remember telling Joe about how I wanted to quit pharmacy. So Joe recommended me to read two books:

1. Start with Why
2. Rich Dad Poor Dad

From that moment I picked up those books, I was hooked on starting my own business.

I wanted shoot for more and have a bigger impact on the people through business as a medium.

So in 2014, Joe invited me to be his roommate and I got the chance to live with him and some of the JK crew.

And during that time, Joe and I decided to take this course by Ramit Sethi, called Zero to Launch.

It was one first programs that taught people how to setup and create a multi-million dollar online business through digital courses.

And that was the birth and vision of Refugee Hustle. We wanted to create transformational experiences through online programs.

Although Joe decided not to continue with Refugee Hustle, I still wanted to create online courses.

I thought… easy. Just give me 6 months and the money would come. Who knew that I would be completely wrong?

Finding an idea for an online course is hard

Ever feel like you’re good at a lot of things, but an expert at nothing? That’s my life in a nutshell.

If there’s two things that 20 years of schooling screwed me up in entrepreneurship, it’s…

1. You have to be “well rounded” at everything you do
2. You have to have the perfect idea on your first try

Both are complete bullshit by the way.

I spent a whole year trying to figure out my idea and perfect it. My course first started as a life coaching or personal development course.

I spent another year working on it only to come to realization of… “Who the hell is going to buy a personal development course?!?”

Two years of my life gone. Those 5 AM coffee shop sessions and lunch “breaks” at the pharmacy working on my course were now sitting in my recycle bin. Fuck.

Sure what I wanted to teach was personal development. But what people needed was something sexy.

What did they care about? What’s something that people want to learn and solves a specific problem that I can teach?

At the time a lot of my CVS pharmacy friends were new to their 401k, Roth IRAs, and investing in general. They would ask me how to do it and I’d set them up for free.

And it then hit me – investing.

I thought… Hmm. Are there other people out there that want to learn about investing?

At the time, I read this article by Noah Kagan or Tim Ferriss about just shoot an email or ask your friends on Facebook saying…

“Hey I’m thinking about creating a program on [SUBJECT]. Are you interested? And if so, what do you want to learn?”

I had them optin to a new email list and shot them this email:

Over 200+ people replied and told me exactly what they wanted to learn about investing and what was holding them back.

Also I bought all the books and looked all the investing courses online. They all had one thing in common…

They were boring. Every. Single. One.

Great. Now I had an idea and something to teach. All I had to do was execute.

What building an online course is really like

Now that I knew what my readers were interested in, I took those questions and outlined my course.

So the hardest part is done… right? Creating an online program never goes as planned.

Here’s the truth. It was more like procrastinating and making excuses of why my course was taking so long for those 2 years.

Every single time I told myself – this doesn’t feel right. This isn’t good enough.

“Perfection” was slowing me down. At this rate – I need a lot more than 6 months to launch a course. It was looking closer to 6 years.

Everyone from my friends to family to my readers kept asking me – when is your investing course coming out?

All I could say was that… it’s on the way. But seriously who was I kidding?

I forgot that skills take time to build

When I started building my course, I didn’t know how to…

• Use a camera or edit a video
• Build a website (I still don’t know how to)
• Market a product online

Even though I learned how to setup a YouTube channel and use Final Cut Pro to edit my videos, it still took me three years just to get good.

So when it came to technical shit, like building a website or setting up a marketing funnel, I asked … why can’t I get this to work?

So I quit. Not once. Not twice. But five times. Every time I came back because I “wanted” to finish it. And every single time it would end up oin the back burner until…

In 2018 my dad passed away and lost my job

It was probably the scariest time in my life. Everything in my life was in flux.

My stable income? My father who was that constant person in my life? Gone.

Combine that with all the free time in the world made me ask myself – what the fuck am I doing with my life?

When you have drastic changes in your wealth, health, or relationships, it does two things:

1. Digs you in a deeper hole
2. Propels you to take massive action to get you the fuck out

The only thing I had left in my life was my investing course.

So when I came back to Los Angeles, I spent a month to shoot and edit 30+ videos for my course. I wrote another 100 pages of email copy and workbook.

But when it came down to setting up the website – doubt crept up again and I made excuses about setting up a website.

So I quit one more time and moved on to focus on growing my high ticket closing agency and threw Kickass Investing once again on the back burner.

And it wasn’t almost a half a year later when I was sitting outside of Porto’s with my pharmacy friends. We started to talk about pharmacy school loans and investing with my pharmacy friends, when I realized…

I was a selfish asshole

Some of my friends thought about investing, but never got into it because they thought it was too risky.

My other my friends were still paying of their pharmacy loans and had ZERO assets to their name.

And I couldn’t help but think – Wow. I’m an asshole. And I was an asshole because I could help them.

The truth was that I had the expertise and ability to teach pharmacists and millennials how to invest using the concept of tacos 🌮

The only problem? I was letting my own bullshit get in the way from creating an investing resource that could change the course of their lives.

Investing changed my life. It allowed me to…

• Payback my student loans while building an assets in the stock market
• Invest $20,000 into Dan Pena’s billionaire mentorship in Scotland at his castle
• Make money decisions completely off ROI rather than just “sticker cost”

Instead of focusing on what I thought was good enough, I forgot about the people who I promised to help so long ago back in 2014.

My own personal friends and readers needed this. So why was I holding back?

Why was I being asshole by holding this knowledge back to the world?

I made excuse after excuse and got caught up in my own head. And I realized – if I wanted this to happen, I couldn’t do it by myself.

I needed help.

I looked for help from my friends

Solving technical issues was never my strength, but I still needed to figure out a way to build, design, and setup a website with a marketing funnel.

Sure – I could theoretically figure it out, but clearly it wasn’t working because I was avoiding it for years.

The truth was I couldn’t do it by myself – I needed help. As a new entrepreneur, it’s a tough pill to swallow. I was always the one helping others rather than asking for help.

Then I reread this great book called the Go Giver. Here’s a great quote:

The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving

The Go Giver

It got me thinking… how can I create a win-win solution for everyone?

Then it hit me. One of my close friends was a digital marketer, who specialized in building kickass websites.

His name? Rich and Niche. (I highly recommend him. Tell him Kevin sent you and he’ll take care of you)

We wanted to work together for the longest time, but never knew how. Maybe this was a cool way for us to start working together.

So I asked him and in less than three weeks, I had a website. Rich did this all this while managing his 10 digital marketing clients. What a BEAST.

There’s a lot of people who say, don’t do business with your friends. But in my opinion, working with my Rich was the best decision of my life.

Not only did he deliver on my website and technical aspects, but he also helped me stay on track when I was falling behind or feeling overwhelmed.

Because the truth was it wasn’t the technical aspect was holding me back. It was self confidence.

After five years, I finally finished my course

If someone was to ask me – what are you most proud of?

Launching Kickass Investing is up there. Right next to repairing my relationship with my dad 7 months before he passed.

No matter how many times that I wanted to quit, I never gave up. Here’s three things I learned it would be this:

1. Invest in an online program that will help shortcut the process
2. Find the right people to help fill in your weaknesses
3. Don’t let your own bullshit get in the way from building great things for others

A lot of blood, sweat, and years went to this project. For the last five years, this course and project has been apart of my life.

Will you help me hit my goal?

My goal is to get 1000 people by the end of this year to start investing with my FREE Kickass Investing Masterclass.

Because the truth is every single person on this planet should be investing. And if you don’t, you’ll miss out.

It would mean the world to me and be an honor if I helped you kickstart your investing journey.

• Worst case scenario? You’ll get a free masterclass.
• Best case scenario? You’ll get a free masterclass, setup your Roth IRA, and be on your way to investing to your first million dollars.

If you’ve been a supporter of Refugee Hustle over the years, check out my FREE Kickass Investing Masterclass here.