I spent one week in absolutely beautiful Bangkok and everything in the knowledge economy changed?

What's happening?

I took the chance to give myself a mini Summer holiday. I got to unplug, zoom out from the business, and see clearly what's changing.

Apparently a lot!

So I'm here to share what I'm seeing and what my friends have been telling me.

The first thing I realized myself is that I'm spreading myself way too thin. I thought I could handle recording podcast episodes, making YouTube videos, running a community, and more and more.

Well yes, I could.

I just didn't have any time left to think.

That's not good.

Once I made the decision to kill a lot of things on my plate and shared it publicly, many people told me they had done the same. Like my friend, Cori Willis, said, "Give yourself the gift of mastering one".

This is the time when people are only buying unique products from people who clearly know what they are doing.

So instead of half-assing everything, be the best in one thing.

I have been writing to grow this business since the end of 2020. Writing has opened up so many doors for me. I must return to my roots — writing this newsletter, helpful emails, guides, text courses, and such.

Okay, now another thing I see shifting is how we sell knowledge.

David Perell, "the Writing Guy", just announced that he will be closing his beloved cohort-based course, Write of Passage. The reason is simple — growth and demand have slowed.

It is particularly hard for the bigger guys in the space because they have to take up more expenses to run the program. Revenue - expenses = profit. If you want profit, you want to keep your expenses low.

If you keep a tight ship which is very possible when you sell digital products, you can still be profitable.

But you probably don't want to only sell a video course.

Because people now value knowledge and information less. What do they value? Implementation and accountability. They want to get stuff done.

So there are more hybrid programs with recorded content, but there are also live workshops, review rounds, or a 30-day challenge to go with it.

This doesn't mean you don't create a video or text product. It means you have to be smarter about structuring what you sell.

A free email course is still the best choice if you want a lead magnet that draws in people virally and changes how people perceive you.

A video course can go hand in hand with you reviewing work from the customers, making it partly product and partly service. You don't want to call that a video course for sure.

What I'm saying is that passive income is not so passive anymore in 2024. It is time to be creative. Also, you can't afford to make big investments and bets because you don't know what works.

The Small School philosophy makes even more sense now - build small to grow fast:

• Small ideas — scope your teaching down!
• Small commitments — increase time to value!
• Small delights — engineer surprises!
• Small conversations — develop relationships!
• Small experiments — improve one thing at a time!
• Small investments — create an easy entry point!

If you are not convinced yet, I have something for you.

I recently bought a course impulsively. I'm not an impulsive person. So what happened there?

Because she is selling the right way.

I took the time to document what triggered my feelings when I was reading the sales page because that's exactly what is working these days.

​You'll learn so much in this video.​

Oh and as I said, I'm cutting down things, so this might be the last video you'll see in a while.

Enjoy!

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Cheers,
Kevon

I met up with Benjamin Boman in Bangkok! We've known each other for 2 years now and he has been an awesome student at Small School!

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