Hi everyone, welcome to the Q&A about creating and launching simple online courses. Tad wanted me to do this for you all because I've had quite a lot of experience doing this over the past couple of years. I have created and launched over a dozen online courses by myself. And I think I should mention I don't even have a virtual assistant. So I literally do everything by myself. I'm the one who teaches the online courses, creates them. This is all my original material that I create. And I also clean my own toilets. So I do it all. And I'm grateful that I can still maintain a really good life, work-life balance. And I, you know, so the key really is doing it in a light and simple way. Which I think if you learn how to launch online programs, online courses elsewhere, you typically learn the product launch formula and it's a very involved and laborious and kind of a high-risk, high-stress situation. Because there's that dream of, oh, this better be a, you know, five-figure launch or something like that, or six-figure launch.  And I honestly burned out doing that. I made a lot of money doing it, but I was like, I can't, I can't do this for, I did it for like three, four years. And I'm like, oh, God, this is, this is too much. And so I basically, I've been in business for 10 years, actually 11 years now. And for the first, basically for the first half of my business, for the first four or five years, I did those kinds of intense product launches, big five-figure launches usually. And then for the past five, and then I burned out and I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. This is terrible. And a lot of people do. A lot of people that I started with back in those days, joint venture partners are no longer around. And there's only a few people still around, people like Tad, who don't do those giant launches and wear themselves out. So I really hope that I can inspire you to consider a simpler, lighter model, which I think is actually better in terms of marketing and business building because lighter and simpler means more nimble and more able to test the market instead of, oh my God, this thing is the best thing in the, you know, since sliced bread and I better put, you know, thousands of dollars or more into launching this thing. And usually it doesn't work. It doesn't even get that money back because I've worked with so many people, partners and clients on doing those giant launches. So anyway, like I said, the first half of my business, first five years was in doing those launches or helping other people with those giant launches. And then this past five years, so years six through 10 of my business, now on year 11, has been unraveling all that high risk product launch, internet marketing type of strategy and coming back to a much more, I like to say authentic, but basically a much more human scale and more sustainable, like personally sustainable scale for doing business as a solopreneur. And so I have, I know, I don't have, I haven't had any virtual assistant for a couple years now. What I've learned to do is to automate what I can with Zapier. For those of you who don't know Zapier, it's a software that can do so much for you in terms of automating things. Z-A-P-I-E-R.com. So you might want to look into that and start learning that yourself. And I'm happy to answer any questions about that too. And so lighter, simpler launches allow you to be more nimble, be much less risk and be able to basically move forward to test the market and really figure out what people, you know, the way I think about our calling, sort of our purpose in our business, I think of, I think of, I think of marketing as, as the activity of a business trying to find its calling and a calling in my, in my opinion is where, you know, not my opinion, I should say there's an old quote by Frederick Buchner that says it's where your deep gladness meets the world's deep hunger, right? It's that intersection that like imagine two circles. It's like your deep gladness and then the world's deep hunger and where those two intersect is your calling. And how do you find that intersection? That's really where everything becomes so much easier in terms of marketing. I mean, kind of like what Tad talks about. Tad talks about how marketing is not trying to push people, you know, to make them buy something, right? But marketing is really about filtering out who is really right for this offer and to have an honest conversation with them about it. And so the way I do it is by launching simply, because when you have a conversation with a potential client, you know, you can only do it like one to one. But if you want to launch courses, you need to have many people buy it, hopefully dozens, if not hundreds or more. So it's really about launching more frequently different ways of talking about your work and different aspects of your work until you discover, oh, you know, I have this big house, which is your work, your body of work is like this big house. Okay. And this big, not even a house, I would say it's more like an estate, you know, or a castle, right? Imagine that's your body of work. And there's many ways into the castle. You can come in through the garden, you can come in through the bridge, you can come in through the back door, you can come in through the gate. There's lots of different doors. Once you come into the garden, there's like five different doors you can enter. And so think of your body of work as that castle, and there's lots of different ways. And you just want, you're really curious, how are people going to want to come into this castle? Are they not coming to the garden, or would they rather come into the bridge, or would they rather come in through, you know, the field, or how do they want to come in? And when they come into the garden, they're going to pick the red door, or the green door, or the purple door. How are they going to come in? They're going to climb the stairs, and then go in, or how are they going to, so once they come in, then they're in a room, you know, you, they came into the, through the red door, there's a red foyer, and then, oh yes, this is what I expected.  But you have to test out which color door they're going to like coming in more. And this is where we start testing the different offers, different titles of your courses, the different courses themselves, et cetera. Okay, so please go ahead, those of you who are here live, and post your questions below. And let me know, what I'd love to know is, if you haven't yet launched an online course yet, what's been your block, where are you feeling like, okay, if I, if I understood this, then I feel more comfortable launching the online course. So where, where are you with that? And I'm just going to be, be silent for a moment while you, and, or the other questions, if you have launched courses, and it didn't work as well as you wanted to, what would you like to improve on? Okay, so I'm going to take a moment and look at your comments, and give you the chance to also comment below on your questions. Great. So, all right, great, great, great questions.  Where does online course fit into your business model? And I want to, and eventually I'm going to finally do a, do a diagram on this, but I don't have a diagram yet. You have to imagine yourself or, or go ahead and draw, draw a piece of paper here. So I want you to imagine a series of circles. Okay, and I know, has anyone heard me talk about this before, the concentric circle business model? Go and comment below. If you've heard me talk about this before, then maybe this will add to your, your understanding of it or any questions you have about it. So I want you to imagine that you are in the circle of the concentric, you are in the center of the concentric circle. That's you, your business, and, you know, that's where the creativity comes from. It's, you can imagine this as the sun. Okay, this is actually that's a, that's a better analogy. It's like the sun, right? And it's like the hottest, you are the hottest right in the center. And then just outside of, of your circle is your one to one clients, your, your premium clients, the people who are paying you the most, and therefore have the most access to you. And therefore you have the most responsibility for. Okay, so most payment, most access, most responsibility for their transformation, right? That's the closest to you circle. And then one circle out from that is your group coaching programs or your group, coach, group, group client programs. Some of you might be doing small group programs or larger ones, but it's basically where they have some, they have some regular access to you in a group setting. And sometimes they, you know, your group programs may give you, give them some one on one access to you as well. Some of you are, might be in TAD hard grades mentor mentoring program mentorship group. And that's an example of a group program. Is anyone here in TAD's mentoring group? Let me know if you are. And because yeah, that's that's an example of where the mentoring group or group program is where they pay less than they would per month than your one to one. Okay, one to one would pay more per month. If you know, group program pays less per month. Okay, less, less than the one on one, less access to you one to one. Okay. And you have less responsibility for, for each person in the group compared to your one on one clients. Okay. And Bernadette's in the mentoring group. Yes. So beyond the outside that circle of mentoring group is your online courses. So this is where the online courses fit. Your online courses are scalable. The mentoring group is not scalable because you can only serve a certain number of people in a group program setting. The one on one obviously is not scalable. Okay. So this is where, you know, if you were to do one on one only for the rest of your life, you know, you have to keep on, you have to work very hard and to be able to save enough money to retire, etc.  With the online courses, you could, so this is how I define an online course in the way that I define it. It is unlimited. Okay. In terms of how many people can sign up. It's a, it's a truly DIY do it yourself type of experience. Now you may still have a monthly Q&A for, like this is my model. Okay. And I want to show you what I do is once a month, I do a bonus, what I call a bonus Q&A call. For any of you who have signed up for any of my courses, you know this and I've just put the link there in the chat. It's georgecao.com slash bonus Q&A and I'll just share my screen so you can see how what it looks like here. So this is how I give people access to me who buy a scalable online course, right? It says, hey, did you purchase one of my courses within the past three months? If yes, you'll receive recordings for these bonus Q&As, but you don't want to attend live, you know, sign up below, right? And then I say, well, what kind of things you can ask? And then I always have basically two times a 9am Pacific time and a 3pm Pacific. So this, this 3pm Pacific is good for like Australia, Asia, obviously North and South America. This 9am Pacific is good for North South America and Europe. And so it's like two different times, two different days. And so this is how I give people access to me, even though the online course is a scalable model. Does that make sense? That's what I recommend really as well. So I'm really just giving you what I, what I recommend as, as a business model. Okay. And, and I, okay. So the online course, obviously they pay less than they would compared to the mentoring or group coaching program. And they have relatively less access to you, a lot less access to you. And they, you are less responsible for them. So this is really important to talk about. This is where a lot of, a lot of people I know this are kind of falling down or getting into trouble with their online courses is they give themselves, and this seed you recognize is they give themselves too much pressure in the transformation they must make for the students of the online course.  Have you, have you experienced that, that, that feeling? It's like, Oh my God, this course must change people's lives.   So because the online course model is a do-it-yourself and scalable, what I mean by scalable is it doesn't matter if 10 people buy it or a thousand people buy it, you don't do any additional work. This is important because if you're doing a lot more work for every person who buys it, that's not an online course in the way that I define it. That's now a group coaching program or group mentoring program. You see, because every person who comes in, you feel responsibility for, you spend time with them, you have, you know, you only have a limited number, but online course is 10, maybe 10,000 people will buy it eventually. Okay, so that's what I want you to really consider. And by the way, please feel free to comment below if you, if you hear any concepts that you think are, are useful to you because I always love to know what's really landing with you, otherwise I have no idea. Even just a few words is really helpful. Or if you have any questions. So, so, so that's the, that's the third level out, you know, you one-on-one as a first level group programs, a second level online course is a third level do-it-yourself scalable. The fourth level out, if your business model is books and audio books. So Kindle, Paperback, Audible, okay, books. And books are obviously, they cost less than an online course. They have almost no access to the author. You buy a book, you don't go, I'm going to call up Michael and say, what did you mean by this paragraph, right? Whereas with an online course, you could have some bonus Q&A and go, George, what did you mean by course session number three when you said this? Well, I won't answer. So I don't have a bonus Q&A for the book buyers, right? That's because that's even more like maybe a thousand people will buy your online course or 10,000 people will buy your book or vice versa. It could be smaller scale, 100 people buy your online course, a thousand people buy your book. So the book and, and do you feel responsible to the people who buy your book for profound deep transformation for every reader? That would be ridiculous, right?  I'll call you next week, Khaleen, did you read the book yet? No, you don't. But with a one-on-one client where you have the most responsibility, you go, Hey, we talked about that, that change you were going to make. How come you didn't make that change? Like you could be more, right, more accountable to the one-on-one clients and your group, group clients as well. So books are the, you know, scalable paid model, where you're not really not responsible for deep transformations, respond, the response. In other words, as you go out, the responsibility becomes more and more on the client or the student or the reader. You see what that means? It's, you can kind of see this, this model here because it's more and more do it yourself. So, and then finally, the last, the fifth circle out, it's everybody. Okay.  It's truly scalable. It doesn't matter if a million people saw your YouTube video or one person saw it, you don't pay anything else. You don't have any other work to do, right? Except maybe comments you might want to respond to. So basically you have the least responsibility for the free content. It's free, right? And then they have the least access to you compared to the other levels, right? Actually with my book readers, I even have them fill out a book, book survey.  And when they fill out the survey, they get to ask me a question that I like to actually email them back and respond to it. So I actually do have email contact with my book readers. But, but can you see how this model might work for your business, this concentric circle model? Where are you at? I'm really curious, which one of, which one of these levels do you already have? So you in the center, one on one group programs, online courses, books, and audio books, and then free content, which is for everybody. So do you have any questions about this, first of all, and therefore where you, where you place the importance and the, and the transformation and the pricing of your online online courses? Okay, good. So Gabriel says, I have one to one group classes and free content. So then I would ask Gabriel, your group classes, you might want to now segment out into, into, you know, higher touch group versus a do it yourself online course, where again, 10,000 people could take it or one person could take it. It's the same, same amount of work. And online, you know, so that's, that's what I would suggest and ask Bernadette says, I'm in a group, but not, not much going with one on one yet. So, and then some of you said, I have one on one. Okay. Here's the thing. I have, you know, I have clients who say they don't want to do one on one, they just want to do, do scalable things. And other clients say, I'm not ready to do courses, I'm just, I'm only doing one on one right now. It's, it's, it's not that you have to go in that order. So I just want to be clear. It's not that you have to do one on one first in a business model, then group them. No, you could start at any level you want. And if you want to make money faster, one on one is the way to make money the fastest because you, you charge the most. So you have to convince the fewest people to buy from you. You just can, you know, you just do enough marketing for 10 people to sign up with you. And you know, you have much more money than you do enough marketing and only get 10 book readers.  I'm like, wow, all that work, you could have launched an online course and you would have made 10 times the amount of money, or you could have launched a one on one service and made 10, 10 to 20 times as much money. It's like people do these, these massive, so much effort launching a book. It's like, come on. And I get it, launching a book can bring you additional, you know, clients for other levels, but, but, you know, it's just think about, think about the, if making money is, is a priority for you, then understand that the thing that's closest to the center of the sun will make the most money with at least effort, generally speaking. So now, now one, one, one, one thing I'll have to say is that one on one is probably easiest to launch. And then group programs are actually ironically not as easy to launch because you know, it's kind of this in between a online course and a one on one group program. The pricing is also sometimes awkward, etc. So I would actually say one on one is easiest to launch. And then online course is probably the second easiest to launch. So let's talk about launching the online course. Oh, and Helene says, can you clarify a big launch compared to a small launch? You know what, I'm going to, I'm going to start putting, putting these questions on, putting these questions on, on, on the documents that we know what we're talking about here. And I'll answer the other questions as well earlier. We've been up to now. Now I'm talking about, talking about these models and concentric circles. Okay. Okay, so now let's talk about big launch versus a small launch, right? So a big launch is where you're like, I'm going to ask all my friends to help me, you know, get the word out about this. And I'm going to prepare multiple videos that go in the sequence. And I'm going to make people opt in and they're going to get the videos and then they're going to get this PDF and they're going to get a Facebook group.  All right. The shopping cart is open. You know, the shopping cart is open for like five days. And then you close the shopping cart. Have you all seen this? You close the shopping cart because now it looks very scarce. And then it's like, oh, we're going to, you know, the shopping cart is closed. And then you suddenly open the shopping car again for another few days. This is internet marketing manipulation one-on-one, which is what I always talk about, you know, kind of laugh at and say, well, maybe we don't have to do that kind of stuff, really. First, the small launch is kind of what I do. A small launch is basically this, right? Let me tell you. Small launch is basically this. Two emails. One is early bird. One is regular price. Okay. Three social media posts. Okay. Let's see. Clarify, vote on the title of the course. Okay. That's one social media post. The second one is pre-launch, pre-launch, pre-launch slash early bird price. Okay. And the third one is it's ready to go.  Okay. And sorry, let me do something here. And like I said, any questions you have about any of this, please feel free to ask. Okay. So three social media posts and that's it. You might have, maybe, maybe JV, maybe, maybe you have a good friend, colleague, you know, colleague willing to promote for you. You know, good friends, a few, maybe a few, right? A few good friends, colleagues willing to promote for you. That is a small launch. And this is what I do every single month. Now, some of my courses are two months courses. And that's why I do this every other month, but most of my courses are one month courses. And this, what I just outlined for you is very, very doable on a monthly basis. Can you see why this is doable? Because two emails is right, doable, right?   Okay, one week, okay, one week. And then after that one week is over, I give like two buffer days, plus two buffer days, then regular price email, okay, like the price email, still too pre-puting. So that's it, two emails a month, plus three social media posts. So, you know, minus three weeks before, okay, minus three weeks before the course starts, I say, Hey, everyone, I'm thinking of teaching this coming up. What do you think, which, what, what do you, which title do you like the best? And I'll add comments to my Facebook post, this title, this title, this title, this title, and I ask people to like the comments. Please look at my comments below and like the ones that, that you, you find most interesting. So that's minus three weeks before the course starts, minus two weeks before the course starts, right? So this is, this is minus three weeks, minus two weeks. Okay. All right, everyone, the XYZ course is ready for, for registration. I haven't put the sales page together yet. If you would like to buy the course before the sales page is ready, you can get it at a pre-launch or a cheaper price. Okay. And then minus one week is, all right, everyone, sales page is ready for you. Lots of details here. It looks pretty, you know, and honestly, my sales pages are relatively, relatively simple. I mean, if you look at, sorry, if you look at, look at a sales page, okay, this is, this is a sales page. The image was found on Unsplash. So it's free. Okay. I, this is, this was, this was a voted, a voted title. My audience voted on this title. This is the best title that, that we came up with together. Okay. And then, you know, I gave some context to, to the course. Why, why is this course so important to me? Why, why am I, why do I think this is important to me? And it could be my own story or it could be I've helped people in this area. And that's why I'm teaching this or, you know, or the world is going in this direction. That's why we need this course, you know, the context could be, could be one of two things. And who is this for? You know, who's this for? This is for people who have this or this or this or doing with this situations. And what are you going to be covering in the course? Well, we're going to be covering this. Okay. We're going to be covering this in the course. And then, and then when is the course? The course is, I have, I haven't even updated this, right? Because this is over and I should update it to say, I need to update this to, to, for example, this is, this is what happens when I have a, once I update the course, it'll look like this. What you'll receive blah, blah, blah, there's no dates here anymore. Whereas here, there are dates. Okay, this isn't going to be happening when and then you're going to receive these things. And then a bottom line is, Hey, this is going to be fun. And then you can buy it now. And then, you know, some testimonials. So that's, you see how, how shorter, how much shorter the sales pages compared to the ones you've probably been taught to write, right? And it works because I, like I said, these are successful course launches. They're not five figure course launches, but I launch every single month. And actually, a few of my courses have already reached five figures that are evergreen, like this one. So let me, let me give you the links here. Sales page examples. Okay, let me, let me put it on here. Examples. Okay, examples are georgecow.com slash jv. That's one example. georgecow.com slash framework is another example. So these are, these are, okay, this one, this one has dates on it as of, as of October 14, I'm going to update it soon. Evergreen. Okay, so check those out. And you can feel free to model your sales page after mine. All right. Okay, so, you know, Trudy asked a question that I'm sure a lot of you are asking, which is, Hey, what if I don't have a big list? And what do I do instead of emails to them? No big list emails, but what instead of emails? Okay, if you have no big list, right, you should still email your list, obviously, whoever they are, but you should email friends, colleagues who wouldn't mind. Okay, who wouldn't mind. And ideally, one-on-one emails is really most, most thoughtful, right? It's like, hey, Gloria, most of the email can be templated, but, but say hi to Gloria. Like, hey, Gloria, just want to say how's it going?  You know, I just want to let you know that I'm really excited about this upcoming course that I'm launching. And in case, in case you know somebody for whom this would benefit, I would be grateful if you could, you know, forward this email to them. And here's, here's the description of the course. Okay, so yeah, so that's, that's, that's, that's how you would, and then plus Facebook ads, that's what I would do. How many of you have already done Facebook ads before or know how to do them? I really, yeah, Gloria, awesome. I really recommend it because Facebook ads is the most reliable way. Oh, and of course also, also FB profile posting. So like regular friends type of posting and, and anywhere else, else you're on social. Okay. Um, but yeah, so this is really how you do it. If you don't have, if you don't have a big email list, or when I say big, I mean, really, it's all relative. What is big, you know, it's, it's everybody is smaller.  And, and, but what I mean is, if you need to, to make more sales of your courses, the more you should be doing these additional things as well. Okay. Okay, versus are you sending out this file afterwards? Yeah, I, I, these are, these are really simple notes. I can certainly send them out afterwards. Yeah. Okay. So let me keep going with the questions here. Original questions didn't know how to begin. Okay. So hopefully we've, we started talking about this, but please keep asking me questions so that we can get into some more details. I'm sure of my topic, but working on it. Okay. So this is, I just want to talk about this real quick here. If you do, it's like some people tell me, George, I don't, I'm not sure how I can turn my work into one on one courses. Like it has any of you ever thought that like, how can I, my work is so experiential. How can I turn this into a one on one course?  So even if like, I'm going to, I'm going to give an example.  Okay.  Well, you don't just see a client and go, all right, client, good luck. Good luck on your shamanic journey. Uh, just tell me when you're done. No, you say, well, here's, here's what you're going to do.  I don't know anything about shamanic journeys. I've done one before, but you're going to close your eyes. You're going to lay down on the floor. You're going to now imagine this.  Right.  You got it. So this could be a do it yourself online course. All right, everyone. I'm going to lead you in the shamanic journey now. And I know that I would rather be doing this with you one on one, but because, you know, it's, it's much more affordable to do this as a DR by course. I hope you will follow these steps, step by step, and then please comment below or tell me, email me how this experience was for you. And I'm in the next session of our online course, I'm going to go over common, common questions from clients in when they're not able to get through their shamanic journey or whether, you know what I mean? So like you have common questions in the next session or common pitfalls or, or you have another session that's about a unique type of shamanic journey. Like let's do shamanic journey for, you know, working through a relationship problem. Right.  And the question is how will you, how will you sequence it? What should be session one? What should be session two? What should be session three? Got it? Okay. And yes, Trudy, thanks for your questions. I'm going to be sure to get to that as well. And thank you Christopher for your comment there. Okay. So, not sure about the costs. Okay. So let me now tell you what, what are the technology platforms that I use, right? Tech platforms. Okay. I use YouTube, right? YouTube for my, so I'm going to, I'm going to just go ahead and show you this here. I use a combination of MailChimp. MailChimp delivers. So, okay, I'll just go through the whole sequence for you to show you. Creating courses, I think is the one, yeah. By the way, if you want to actually go through my online course about creating and launching online courses, very meta, um, TAD is of course helping me promote it. And if you buy it through me or through, through the, the link that I'm about to give you, um, TAD gets 50%. So you're kind of supporting TAD as well, which I think TAD is totally worth supporting.  So I think it's pretty worthwhile. Um, hopefully this Q and A is worth 60 bucks, but, uh, but this is worth 60 bucks. And this is, let me, let me show you how I, how I show people transparently that this is an affiliate page, right? Sponsored by TAD Hardgrave. And I actually, I'm going to update this and say recommended and sponsored by TAD Hardgrave. Right. So, um, so someone comes here, I'll just walk you through the technology of how this works. Let's say you come here, you read through this, oh yeah, sounds so great. Well, yay. Great. You buy this, right? Okay. You click on this. Okay. And then it goes to this PayPal page. And then you log in, you make the purchase. And once you make the purchase, Zapier, okay, I'm not going to show you Zapier. It's really confusing to show it to you, but, um, well, I'll show you just as a sense of it. Okay. Zapier, I'm going to log in here. So I use, so, so thus far, what technologies have we used thus far? We have a website, a web page, which a lot of you use WordPress. I use Weebly. These days, I'm much more excited about Wix. So I might be switching to Wix. I'm really highly recommended if you're, if you, if you want a no maintenance, like I've been using Weebly for 10 years. I have had none of the problems that WordPress people have in terms of security updates, maintenance updates, blah, blah, blah. Yes, WordPress does a lot more. But Weebly is the simplest web building platform that I know of, and I've used it for 10 years. Unfortunately, recently they were bought out by Square. And so, um, okay, so let's see your website. Okay. Recommended is Wix.com. So that's what I recommend now. But Weebly was bought out by Square and they stopped innovating as of a year and a half ago, and I'm so disappointed in them. So I'm probably going to switch over to Wix at some point. And Wix doesn't do as much as WordPress, but I'll tell you, it is just like a solopreneur. If you're not a techie, if you're not great at programming websites and stuff like that or doing those techies type stuff, just go with Wix. I mean, I've run a six-figure business for 10 years using Weebly. Come on, right? And Wix is even more sophisticated than Weebly. So Wix is perfectly fine. And Wix keeps on improving itself. So I really am really, really great. Okay, so recommend, okay, so website, right, to PayPal, PayPal button free, no monthly fee, except they take, accept 2.9% transaction costs. Okay. So that's the cost thus far. You don't pay any monthly fee except for your website, whatever your website you pay for. And then when someone buys through PayPal, let's say they spend $100 with you, PayPal takes $3. Okay. So yeah, it's cost of doing business. It's fine. Okay, PayPal button. Okay, PayPal buy button. Okay. All right. So once they buy, then what happens is you could, you could, I use Zapier. Oh gosh, skip this here. I use Zapier. Let me just show you my sophisticated zaps. Okay. So I'm not going to talk through this. This is going to take five hours if I want to talk through this three hours actually. But basically when someone buys in Zapier, and then I tell Zapier, hey, listen, if the item of the PayPal button starts with this title, simple book sell, but this is a different course, then if that happens, then add them to a Google spreadsheet. So I have a Google spreadsheet that logs students and what they're buying over time. So I have a database and Google spreadsheets. And I also add them to MailChimp. All right. I add them to MailChimp in my workshop course participants group. And I add them to a, sorry, I add them to the workshop participants list in MailChimp. And inside that list are several groups. One of my groups is called book creation. This is a separate course. So they're added into the group in MailChimp. Okay. So thus far, we've got, we've got website. We've got PayPal. We've got Zapier. Okay. And then we've got MailChimp. So that Zapier is what, is what has replaced my VA.  But if you don't know what how to use Zapier, you can have a VA do it for now. So VA, please VA, VA will receive your PayPal emails. Hello, VA, please whenever you receive the PayPal email, please add them to the MailChimp group. Okay. So MailChimp list group. And by the way, this is all talked about in detail in my course that you buy for 60 bucks. But I want to give you an overview here for those of you who are wondering, well, what's, what's really involved here? Because Zapier I pay $25 a month for. Okay. So really affordable because $25 a month, I've automated like more than a dozen courses for $25. Really good deal. Right. Okay. Now MailChimp, I put them into a list and into a group in the list. And then when they enter a list, okay, when they enter a list, right, creating courses. Do I have courses? Do I have that? Yeah. Creating online courses. Okay.  Okay. You get put into this online course immediately after contacts join the grouping, create online courses. MailChimp sends this out. Okay. MailChimp sends this out. Now I'm going to show you, show you the email. Okay. Okay. So the email says, hey, you've registered. All right. Would you like to see the delivered elsewhere? If so, please reply. Let me know. This is still a manual process, but this is really, really rare that someone does this once a week. I have to do a quick update on my database. And then click here for the complete resource guide. Okay. So this is the full resource guide for the whole course. It kind of walks through how do you decide on a course topic? How do you pre-sell the course, preparing the course itself and all that stuff? 35 pages, right? So this is using, what is this using? This is using Google Docs, which is what? It's free. Okay. So thus far, we've got MailChimp list group. We've got Google Docs free for the resource guide. Okay. And what else does email say? And then the training videos, three training videos, okay, where does the training videos hosted? The training videos are hosted on YouTube. Welcome. And that was, that was my cat right there, too. The cat has passed, unfortunately. So, but you'll get to see the cat. So this is an unlisted video on YouTube. What does it mean? It means nobody can find this on YouTube, except for the people with the exact link, okay, with the exact link. And so I use the MailChimp automated email to send out the three videos, right, for the course. And then if they want an audio download, instead of watching YouTube, they want to just listen on the go. Well, I put it on Google Drive. And again, this link is only available. And you could, people can download it by clicking on the download button on the upper right here, or they can play it directly. And so we've got Google Docs, we've got YouTube for the videos. Okay, we've got Google Drive for the audios. Alright, and what else? And then click here for the chat log. So, you know, when I teach the course, I teach it live. When course is taught live, I use Zoom, just like I'm doing right now. And then the chat log from Zoom is also put into here, okay, put into a separate Google document. And then what else? And then, oh, at the end of the course, okay, at the end of the course, at the end of each course, where is it? In your course. Okay, at the end of each course, I have a feedback form at the end of each session. And the feedback form is hosted on, guess what, Google Forms, which is also free. So now you've got Google Forms for feedback. And this is my entire technology platform for online courses. There you go. Now, K-Rus says, how do you convert video to audio? When recording on Zoom, it automatically gives you both video and audio separate file. Okay, so that's how I do it. Okay, so let's keep going here. Gabrielle says, okay, oh, I want to talk about you, the means and Trudy, Trudy had asked about that. Okay, so I don't recommend you to me to be your main course platform. Okay. Okay, to put courses there. But don't let it be the main place. Why? Can't collect emails. Can't communicate with students about other courses. Consider spam on you to me, right? I mean, yes, technically, you can have what's called like a bonus announcement at the end of your course to talk about your other courses, but almost nobody. Okay, almost nobody makes it to the end of any Udemy course. So that's really important to know. People usually, seriously. And so no one's going to see your bonus announcement at the end, dude. Okay, so it's okay to put it there because, you know, let Udemy do its thing, right?  But I really recommend selling courses yourself so that you can collect email addresses and tell your students about additional courses that you have. I've had several clients come to me, right? And say, George, I've built up a huge Udemy audience. I have had a client who had like tens of thousands of Udemy students. He's made six figures on Udemy. But the problem is it's not sustainable. Because now he can't communicate with those students about additional things. His entire audience is stuck on Udemy. He can't bring them out. That's not good. You've got to have the control over communicating with your own people. Okay? So, Gabrielle asks, how do you guide, Gabrielle, how do you guide the production of your lessons or material to you feel that it's at a point that someone will find valuable? This is one of the biggest lessons I teach in the course itself, right? And this is why I talked about the concentric model thing. You are giving yourself too much pressure about what is valuable.  I mean, I was doing this and I still do this. And I'm like, oh my God, I got to put more into the course because otherwise, here's the secret of course creation, okay? One of the secrets. People, and I'm going to turn this off here, people want something easy and light. They bought the course with a fan, just like, course is a lot like nearest resolutions, right?  And then once you get into the course, you're like, oh, I hope this is entertaining. I hope this is easy. I hope this is short so I can feel like I finished the course. That's what people want, Gabrielle. Let me know if this makes sense. So what people would rather have from you, what consider valuable to them is if they could get like two or three valuable interesting pieces of information from the course that's actionable, my God, that's great. And plus, I'm not talking about selling $2,000 courses, right? That would be called a mentoring program. You know, that would be much more appropriate. But when I say, do what yourself courses, the pricing, let's talk about pricing. If you're not sure how to price it, let me just make it really, really simple for you. Price it between 15, between $10 and $40 per course, per course hour, $10 and $40 per course hour, right? So for example, you know, my, my course on creating courses is three hours. And I price that 60. So that's $20 per course hour. So $10 and $40 per course hour, got it? So at that kind of pricing, again, even if it's $40, if I can take, if I can take one actionable thing away from $40, that's cheaper than meeting with you one-on-one. Think about this. It's cheaper than meeting with you one-on-one. And I get one actionable thing that I'm going to keep using in my life. That's worth, worth the way more than $40, got it? So of course, you're not going to say one actionable thing only in the course. You'll probably have two, five, let's say five ideas in once, in one hour session, you'll have five actionable ideas. And everyone will pick one of them that they want to take away. Some people will take all five and go, my God, this one session is enough for me. I'm full. Okay. So I hope this helps. Any other questions? We've got five minutes left. I've been talking the whole time. And I want to welcome, if you have a question that's hard to type out, please unmute. And I'd love to ask, to answer your question now. A question? Yes. Hi, Trudy. I have a WordPress website. Okay. And so should I use a plugin on there for the course? And which one is the best when you recommend? Oh, okay. You know, I wish I had more experience with WordPress. I don't have a recommendation for you, unfortunately. Does anybody have a recommendation? Oh, you know what? It's like on the tip of my tongue here. I actually have clients who host courses on WordPress themselves. So I will find out and I'll include it in the notes of the replay. Yeah. So get back to you on that. So garlic, is that right? Is that your name? That's a cool name. Nice. So it says, if it sounds like, okay, so, oh, yeah, that's a great question. And then Christopher, I'll get to yours next after this. Okay. So it sounds like you're consistently creating, okay, let me share my screen again, sorry. Sounds like you're consistently creating new content. Is this creating a lot more work than we launch in the same course repeatedly? Well, yeah, it certainly is. It keeps me on my toes. It gets me, like once I create a course, I'm like, oh, I could create another course on this or another. You'll notice this happening with you as you create. When you create, you'll have more to create. Okay. So you'll actually want, you'll actually find yourself wanting to create even more all the time. So, yes, I do create new, but I have a, I have kind of a two-year course schedule now that I've finally put together. Sorry about that. Course schedule. Here we go. So basically, annually, I teach these courses. Okay. In the even years, like 2020, I'll be teaching these courses. In the odd years, like 2019, 2021, I'll be teaching these courses. And then I have additional ideas. So basically, I already have, oops, sorry about this. Where is my, where are my notes? Here we go. I already have a few courses that I've redone. And it's really fun to redo courses because I already have all the material, but now I'm just improving on it with additional research, additional case studies, and make it look more, you know, yeah, make it, make it look even better, et cetera. So yes. But yeah, you don't, like I said, you don't have to launch something every month like I do. Even if you launch one a quarter. By the way, I'll say this, I really, really, really recommend that all of you really think about launching courses soon. If you already have launched your one-to-one service, or if you don't want to, like, I have some stay-at-home moms that say, you know, I can't do one-on-one. My kids won't allow me to do it. Then their business model is launching courses. Okay. So when to launch courses as soon as possible, and here's the key, I'm going to do this all caps, please get into a rhythm. I can't miss, I can't spell that, of launching courses. Okay. So, okay. And here's the thing. Even if people don't buy the first few, give it away to your best clients and favorite people. Okay. All right. Because you got to get into this habit of launching light courses, again, three-session courses, two-session courses, four-session courses, pick your number, or even a one-session course. And then once you get into that rhythm, your audience will say, oh, Trudy is serious about these courses. So they're going to be more used to your announcing it on a regular basis and they'll start buying it. Okay. So I hope that this is helpful. All right. One more question from Christopher, and then we will go because we're right at the end of the hour here. Christopher, sorry, not all caps here. Can a course just be one session or best to put it in a couple parts? It can be once, you know, the first year I was doing courses, they were all one-session courses at two different time zones. I would just repeat the course at a different time zone so that people, you know, all around the world could actually do it. Last thing I will say, no, I'm not going to go into that. I think it's too much right now. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. I hope, you know, if you all want to kind of get into all the details of it, I hope you'll decide to buy my online course on creating courses and TAD gets 50% of this. So we all get the support TAD as well. And you get all the, you know, further additional details, hand-holding one-on-one. And more importantly, I think, you'll get to come to my bonus Q&A calls and we will do additional hand-holding on those calls where you can ask me any questions.  So is this useful a session for you all? I hope this was helpful. I know we communicate a lot of stuff here, but I will be sure to send out these notes along with the replay. And that's all for today. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. And I look forward to hearing about your progress. If you want to let me know your updates about launching your online courses, I will cheer you on. So, all right, everyone, take care. Bye for now.


Take it, y'all I'm in the dirt, say the game and then that's a reverse Never rehearse, jump in at first Call up the nurse, put the beat in the hearse This is absurd, change the preserve Don't get on the tracks, man, then they better swerve Know if they're stupid, I gotta see Cause it, I've been spinning, and it's life that I've been living


Inner Sanctum Mysteries Good evening friends of the creaking door. This is your host to welcome you once again into the Inner Sanctum. Come in. Meet Edgar, our electrical wizard. At school he was voltage the most likely to shock him dead. Edgar's wife was a dull name so he plugged her into a wall socket. Now you should see the way she sparkles. Yes sir, now she's the light of the party. Ever roll your eyes over the dream of a half million dollars? Hmm, you did. Careful friend of that dream would become a nightmare. We're in White Oak, a gloomy estate somewhere along the jagged coastline between Frisco and Seattle. On the floor in a corner of the library staring blindly at the ceiling is an old man. Across the room is a young man mortally wounded but fighting to keep the thread of life from snapping. Ten feet away from him is an old-style floor safe. The door of the safe is blown off and the contents scatter and lying nearby. He tries to get up, but he can't. His hand creeps to a bundle of cash and drops helplessly over it. Gus, Gus Miller. Yeah? Open your eyes. Come on son, show fight. Don't cash in yet. Who are you? Sheriff Ben Lomax, Gus. Gus, how'd you know my name? Went through your bags. You've been masquerading as Tom Reed in the county hospital. You take a lot of killing, but next stop is the county mort. Ray for me. You wouldn't be busting with curiosity about me, Sheriff. You wouldn't be busting to talk, son. I guess I am if you'll listen. That's what I'm here for. Gus Miller's my name. Check back on my pedigree and you'll find I've been a number more than I've been Gus Miller. As a kid, I went right out of an orphan's home into the big jail at San Quentin. Number 562317 was my name for ten years. 562317. Every night before turning in I swore that 562317 was how many bucks it would cost society. Square accounts with me. Come on. I was a day out of the clink, laying around the Frisco docks wondering where I could hustle a buck. Big liner just came in out of the Pacific fog. One of those slang pleasure liners. I watched the passengers getting off.  Munger was Tom Reed tricked out in a white sailing suit. My eyes kept wandering over them. The thought kept jabbing at me that he was a guy I could be if I played my cards right. We're about the same age, build, average looking guys. Except that Reed was a little pale around the guild. All Reed had on me was a bankroll. When you drive it, Carl rolled up and Reed went to it. I went after him. What scheme I had in mind, I'm not clear on anymore. Yes, is there something you want? Hey, driving north. Looking for a ride, are you? Yeah, looking to get a hitch. Okay, hop in. I'm Tom Reed. My name's Gus Miller. How far are you going? As far as I can get, I guess. No destination. How far are you going? About 200 miles, White Oaks. Ever hear of White Oaks? No, never do. The show place of the Pacific Coast. I'm the last of the reeds of White Oaks. You bragging or crying? Both, maybe. Why are you so tough? You're too rich for my blood, maybe. I suppose there is something indecent about too much money at that. Have you got too much money? A half million in three days. Why in three days? My inheritance comes due then. That's why I'm back in the States. How do you collect a half a million? There's a bank teller piled up in gold pieces in front of you? No, a blind uncle you haven't seen in years taps his cane along the floor towards a safe that's been in the family for generations and opens it. And hands you a half a million, just like that? Just like that. My father distrusts his banks. I turned a figure over in my mind. A half a million. I saw Reid looking queerly at me out of the corner of his eye.  I don't know what you're talking about.  Uncle Walter will never detect the masquerade.  That's what you're telling yourself, Einstein? Where are you all the time on Poser? Dad's somewhere. You've murdered me. If I hadn't the idea like that for a minute, Reid's openness put the kibosh on it. We chewed up about a hundred miles and I caught that funny look through us and Reid's face again. I watched the hand clap over his heart. Reid seemed to sag and the car began to circle wildly. I grabbed the wheel in the nick of time. I pulled it aside and shut the motor. What's hit you, Reid? My heart. How bad is it? The Honolulu doctor gave it a year. I've been shortchanged by two weeks. Get me to a doctor. I stalled.  Reid's eyes were on me. They were dying eyes, but I caught a twinkle. As if we were amused over something. Here's your chance, Milly. Just sit it out under the stars. Forget the doctor. What I like most about you is your sense of humor. I'm taking you to that doctor. Thanks, doctor. But don't bother it. It's too late. Bury me somewhere as Gus Miller. You'll be Tom Reid for three days. It was too late to play Boy Scout and race for the doctor. Reid was the deadest man in the world. I told myself that Reid's dying crack practically made me his heir. I didn't have to tell myself anything. The little man was counting 500,000 in my head fast by 50s. I found a natural lake about five miles up a side road. The region was a dead end, not a house or a human anywhere in miles. I swapped clothes with Reid, weighed his pockets with stones and said goodbye and let him slip. Well, our downtrodden hero is on the upgrade now. A half million Spondylics. Nice pay just for giving a corpse a bath at a roadside lake. Guests might run into something unexpected at White Oaks. Still need the time to try or fry. Let's see which it is, shall we? I got to White Oaks in an electric storm where the skies give me a 21 gunshot. The house was up in an elevation. Everything about it seemed to say keep out. And not a soul inside it. Where was the blind uncle? Anybody home? They're tapping, coming at me out of the shadows. I could feel my voice crawling. Oh, Huckle Waller. Give me your hand, nephew. Sure. I felt the warmth of a Reid hand. Your hand is perspiring. It's close in here. I've been in a rush since Frisco. Is that wrong? Your voice, it's... It's changed. For the better? It's deeper. Blaming on the Honour who will climb it. It's been a long time, Uncle. Yes, it's been a long time.  Margaret? She's coming tomorrow? Yes. How is Margaret? She's grown into a fine woman. She'll make you a good wife, Tom. When did the wedding bells ring out? The day you take your inheritance, as your father wished it. You and Margaret were playmates as children and your father wanted someone close to have his money after you. This letter from Margaret came the other day. If you'd like to read it. Sure. I'll read it in bed. Good night, nephew. A bride went with a 500,000. I opened her letter. I needed a line. I read the opening paragraph again and again until it was whispering in my brain. I wonder how it will be. Meeting Tom again, Uncle Walter. We were practically infants the last time together. The questions that keep crowding my mind. What does he look like? What does he think about? Will he like me enough? And will you like me too, dear Uncle Walter? I had all the line on her I needed. Margaret didn't know Tom Reed from Adam. The next morning I drove into the one horse burg they called town. I wanted to buy a paper and some odds and ends.  They started the car when he drifted over. You going to White Oaks, friend? Sure. How'd you guess? The car. It's the job Reed rented in Frisco yesterday. Can I ride along with you? You're going to White Oaks? I'm Tom Reed's guest. Okay. Sure. How about a friend of Tom? Well, kind of. I was the purser on the ship he came over on. We hit it off and I got invited to his wedding. What'd you do with Tom Reed, mister? I'll get you. I get you. You're playing at being Reed. You're wearing his clothes. You're driving his car. When you pay for some junk at the store, you flash the wallet. I remember seeing on Reed. But you're needing a sweat. Maybe we can do business. How much? Half, if you just masquerading. All, if you killed him. Didn't kill him. A heart attack did it. I just ditched the body. Is it half? I'll let you know. What are you stopping for? I can't hold myself for a minute. Find my smokes here. This compartment. I thought you said smokes. There's smokes. With all six bullets. Get out of the car. Start for the woods. Is that how you want it? That's the way it's gotta be. All or nothing. No deals with a blackmailer. He sat down on a slow, wriggling motion. Then fell over on his side into the weeds. I started to drag him through the weeds. I looked for a place to hide him until I could get some tools and bury him later. And suddenly, there's another horn back in the road making my crazy. Some motor's unable to get past my parked car on a narrow road. I left Trace as he was and ran to the car. He was a girl. And a snappy convertible. Move over. I can't get by. Sure. Are you hunting? Hunting? Why, yes, sir. I heard shooting. Well, I took pot shots of some rabbits. Any luck? No, I'm on bad shot. Too bad. Am I on the road to White Oaks? Sure. You wouldn't be Margaret. Yes, I'm Margaret. Hello. I'm Tom Reed. You're Tom Reed? Disappointed. Don't mind my staring. Aren't you going to show me the way, Tom? Well, you keep staring to get my curiosity up. I'm sorry. Like she couldn't control her eyes. Keep them put. I followed the direction of her stare. And suddenly, it hit me. Murder was written all over me. There was blood all over my clothes and my shirt right down to my shoes. It was as if Tracy's corpse was standing beside me, telling it to the world. In those woods, you killed somebody in there. That's what those shots were.  Now you're talking crazy.  I grabbed his gun and finished him. You don't believe me, huh? No. And you're not Tom Reed. You've got a picture of him grown up, huh? Yes. Nice and frank and open, huh? Being that honest is going to cost you something. Well, don't you scream or something? I'd rather do this. Stay exactly where you are. Let's open the gun in the maroon convertible. You know how to shoot it? Try me and see. Kid, I got to try you. Whether I like it or not, I got to know. Here's that. I'm shooting for a girl. My turn. Now, I'm shooting first made it easier for me. The way it was like self-defense. I'm still kidding myself. Funny, it was a long goodbye. I met a girl and killed her. All in less than five minutes. 500,000 was coming a lot harder than I figured, all right. I was running out of time. Play now is to grab what was in the safe one way or another and lamb as far from the two stiffs and the blind uncles I could get. I got to the safe and began to work at the dials. And there, Uncle Walter tapping his way to me. Tom. Tom. Yes, yes, Uncle Walter. Oh, Margaret hasn't come. No, not yet, she'll be long. Give me your hand, nephew. Well, where is it? Here. What do you do? Read palms of your fingers? Yes, nephew. There are flecks of dirt on the palm. It's as if you've had your hands on the ground. That's not bad.  You didn't know to smell of blood. Let go of my hand. What's wrong, Tom? I will skip that. Now listen carefully. I got a gun in my hand pointing right at you. You had to tap your way to that floor safe and open it with no stalling and no questions. I said no questions. Well, I don't know the combination from memory. I said no stalling. If you listen, the combination is on the memorandum pad in the library desk. Get it. He tapped his way along the floor to the desk, stooped over a drawer, and stayed there in a crowd like a guy in a trench.  Are you crazy, old coat?   He shot me with a perfect mark on my shirt like he could see right along with anybody. He aimed in the direction of my boys. I figured I moved to a side quickly and emptied my gun. That's all that's left. You fixed the glycerin charge in the can and blew the safe wall? It was a trick I picked up in the pit. There are chemicals in the storm, white oaks. Nervy you. Still going for the money with all those bullets in here. Like you said, I don't kill easy. Well, you're tough, but the joke's on you all around. Sure it's on me. Dying empty handed. Oh, it's on you even more than that, son. The old man wasn't blind, and he wasn't Uncle Walter. You're kidding. No, for a fact. Like you, he was just playing along. He'd been the butler before he killed Uncle Walter. You see, he never thought Tom Reed's bad heart would allow him to take that trip from Honolulu. Well, what's funny, son? The joke was on me all around. Funny twist.  One barren blessing, though. He's got all the time now in the next world to count off that 500,000 infractions. May he rust in peace. Well, friends, it's time once again to close that creaking door. Until next week at the same time when we'll be back with a little hunk of horror. You'll be sure to listen, aren't you? Until next week then. Good night. Pleasant dream. Inner Sanctum has come to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.


Tech, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Global Connections Today, and we're talking about Africa, the forgotten continent. It's not the news that much, but there's plenty happening there, and there's plenty to study there. And the primary question is, should the U.S. pay more attention to Africa? The answer is yes. We're going to find out the detail about that from Dr. Roopmati Kandekar, who is a global strategist who joins us from time to time. I'm talking about global issues like this. Welcome to the show, Roopmati. Hello, Ajay. Thank you for having me on your show, and always my pleasure, Jay. Great for you. I have a question for you. It's an overarching question that I've been thinking about in anticipation of this show. Of course, every country is different in Africa, but a lot of them were colonial colonies before and turned to their own form of government. Maybe they anticipated that would be democratic, but it turned out to be not so democratic. So my question to you is, would those countries, would Africa be better off today if they had remained colonies? Such a tough question, Jay. Such a tough question. Africa has always presented colonialism as a problem that they have inherited in their legacy. So when you say this, it does seem seeing the state of affairs of Africa today. It does seem that they would have arguably been better off under being a colony because, see, Jay, they have not emerged out of that phase. Africa is a continent, continent of 54 states. And the ancient name of Africa is Albululan, that is Mother of Mankind or Garden of Eden. Now, Jay, this is a continent which has got 60% of arable land. So that is so important in today's contemporary world of climate change when you have something of this sort of, it was known as a dark continent because of the forest cover. We have ancient civilization like Egypt over there. We have, like you said, the colonies of France, Britain, everybody coming in and ruling these places. But why hasn't Africa come into the mainstream geopolitics or the political infrastructure is the question that we are going to address so it's a very intriguing question. 54 nations lost and forgotten every day. Yeah. Well, you know what troubles me is they're not, they're not recognized, that included in international organizations. And they're always the subject of NGOs and charity, what have you, and people trying to fix what ails them. But it's clear that the global north doesn't see them as part of the global north. They are the global south and the global north sees them as somebody that you have to help out. And there are many organizations and countries that try to help them out. But even now they have so many problems. They are not experienced in civil society and democracy. They are still, even though they're not colonies, they're manipulated by businesses, by governments, by NGOs, and by sponsors of terror. And the U.S., to the extent that it wanted to do some help back when, I mean, a social level, had the Peace Corps and the Peace Corps, I don't think is there anymore. We probably need another Peace Corps. And they have diseases. They have Ebola and other diseases. And 90 people died yesterday on a ferry at Mozambique, I guess Mozambique and the mainland because they were trying to escape cholera. There are so many diseases and they have to health condition in Africa, not so good. And then you find that there are weapons in Africa and that the same suppliers of weapons, that supply weapons, the terrorists in the Middle East supply weapons to those countries. And in fact, here are two countries, they're really developing at best Tanzania and Congo. They're throwing missiles. Missiles they have. They don't have clean water, but they have missiles. And then you have, in East Africa, you have wars and civil strife in Sudan. You have civil strife obviously in Somalia. Some people consider Somalia a failed state and they provide the pirates there. It's not a civil society. You have central Africa with the Congo. And if you want to invest in the Congo, be careful because you may lose your investment overnight because of political changes. They have the resources. People want the resources, but they don't have a stable environment for investment. And West Africa, wow, Rwanda, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, all these are rife with terrorism and opportunism. You know, Russia is there, China is there, Progochian made his fortune there from Russia before he got killed. So West Africa is not so good.  So they reach out okay, but it's not in the way you would hope. So it's not just violence, it's chaos, and it's also corruption, and it's really hard for the global north to deal with this. And one other thing I want to mention is that the news is that Jacob Zuma was disqualified from running for the president of South Africa because he was involved in some kind of crime. And he was banned from being a candidate and he was sent to jail. This was for contempt of a court commission and a conviction, rather. And they reversed that. So now Jacob Zuma is running for president and everybody knows how to spell his name. And he may very well be the next president of South Africa. You remember South Africa? South Africa was the one who brought the charges for apartheid or genocide against Israel. Boy, did that lie in their mouths that South Africa, you really wonder who's running South Africa. South Africa has been anti-Israeli for a long time. And then let's see, oh yeah, another very interesting story I found. The sub-Saharan Africa, that is south of the Sahel, which is the band between the desert and the green belt, is supposed to be on an economic improvement. But poverty is ubiquitous. And so whatever economic improvement they have is an article in Reuters about this. Whatever economic improvement they have is not nearly enough to deal with the poverty. So they're still ridiculously poor. And on top of that, guns. Guns are all over Johannesburg, which is one of the biggest cities, greatest cities in the world. And it sounds like some of the cities in the U.S., I have to say. But everybody carries a gun in Johannesburg.  And there are so many places that are dangerous and corrupt and unpredictable and not worthy of investment. And we, the United States, isn't really there. And I think what I've described tells you why. It's so many problems. So many problems in different, different places. And each country is, you know, Latin with these problems.  Any problem, it's over there. And Jay, we can boil it down to four parts, political, social, cultural and military, like you said. Politically, they have not been able, no state has got a successful government or, you know, successful elections. Democracy and democratization processes have not reached the masses over there.  Economic Jay, political elite, have corruption in it. So they concentrate the money that comes in. And so the poor remains poor. And the rich corrupt people remain corrupt. And they fund the civil wars. So this instability, fueling instability is a big factor in African politics. And what you spoke about, the radicalization, militarization of Islamic fundamentalism of the Boko Haram, the Akib al-Shahab, all of these people, ISIS supporters, these people are well armed. They view Western symbols as negative and they attack it.  So this kind of unrest that happens in society, they have not been able to come out of inequality, unrest, poverty. And like you said, every health issue is over there. And the COVID pandemic hit them even harder. Now, all this is in a continent which is the richest in mineral resources. And who else other than China and Russia to come and mint it out? And Jay, if we go to politically speaking globally, it's a voting contingent of 55 nations. So they, 54 nations, so they want these people to vote for them. You know, that crowd which stands behind you and plots, Russia and China love these people for just that. There is no development done. There is no investment, investment just for selfish reasons, but not to give in. Like you said, colonization was much better. At least they were giving something to it. But these people are just taking out everything. China has given loans, taken out land for lease for hundreds of years, their mineral rich, gold, chromium, oil, everything. It's sold out. And this is because of the leadership of Africa Jay. It's very necessary because they don't have good leaders. We had Nelson Mandela, he was a personal achiever, but something for the country or something for the African Union was not done. Or he didn't have time. We don't have a great leader in Africa. It's rich with resources. It's everything is there, but they have no order. They have no discipline. And they have not been able to implement all these things Jay. And that's why we call it the forgotten continent, because in geopolitics, when they don't have enough of economic prosperity, when will they develop military equipment and have a say in international politics? Like today's world, everything is about war and domination. When will they come and put their say in it? They're busy fighting internal rifts and within each other. So that's a very sad point about Africa Jay. Well, there's an African Union, but I don't think it means much in this context. And there are some countries that would like to do good in Africa, maybe some of the former colonial powers because they have roots there and they have language there. But there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of political or geopolitical will for them to actually build the country. And the reason I think is that it's too dangerous for that is that the people in the countries are not particularly happy with them. They remember the bad old colonial days. And so the former colonial powers are kind of at risk. They're in danger. They hang around. I mean, the French left Mali because they had to. And there are a whole bunch of countries in the region of Mali. I guess that's West Africa. Mali, Burkina Fasa, Niger, where you have terrorism, you have the influence of Russia. And you have all these competing groups that are all out to fight with everybody, and especially the Europeans. So how can you actually build a society that way? Remember, these countries have no history of democracy, no history of representative government. They only have a history of sort of this tribal competition and this tribal violence. And it just plays itself out with modern weapons. And of course, there are a lot of people there who are angry at the next, at the next tribe. I mean, I think the most interesting story is about Rwanda. The Belgians were there in Rwanda. And they created the division, the Hutsis and the Tutsis, and had these people killing each other. But they were all Rwandans. And there was an artificial division. And I guess the Belchists did that for a reason, but it was not a good reason. And the result was awful. So there are those who would like to see the divisiveness. And in Sudan, we have two warring military leaders who are both Sudanese who are fighting with each other. And in the crossfire, the civilians are getting killed. And they have no society.  Forget about it. There's no, there's no economy at all. It's failed state. How do you, so this is what we ought to spend some time on, Rupati. How do you rebuild these countries which are headed downhill and which are, you know, proxies at best and which have weapons, disease, and disorder and have had that for years? How do you take a country like this and make it into a civil society? This may be the end of our show. I don't think there's a lot of answers, but do you have any answers for that? Jay, there are some answers. We won't let it end ever. But in the G20, Modi bought the African Union as members onto the G20. He bought them into the Bricks fold. So he kind of gets these into the Solar Alliance. So he kind of gets them into these areas where they can be prominent. And Jay, what happens with these people is that they don't really establish themselves. And it's lack of leadership, Jay, lack of a good leader who comes out and goes for it. Now, the UN went into Libya. The entire coalition went, came out, regime change. But there was no building of the Libyan infrastructure. And that's where it hurts them. So it's never going to be enough if there is no rebuilding and restructuring of Africa. And the will to rebuild and restructure has to come from within Africa. There's a lot of migration of young population, which happens on the coast.  So that's the kind of rate of the young population moving out of Africa. So when this young population is not there to build Africa, it's it doesn't have a future, Jay. Yeah, that's such an important point. That's such an important point. Thousands of migrants are leaving Africa, seeking in quote, a better life in Europe. And going all over Europe, even way up in Scandinavia, and finding a better life because the life in Africa was, you know, so unappealing to them, they were starving. And so they effectively crossed the desert and make their way and take tremendous lethal risks to get across the Mediterranean. And then they take all the inconvenience and risks of being arrested and detained in Europe before they can reach a destination that will accept them. This is going on for 10 years at least, at least in great numbers. I think it's a very good point. So you have to ask why are they leaving? Well, just starving you, you tend to try to find a better place.  I think it is climate change. As some of these areas are no longer capable of agriculture, even south of the Sahel, you can't grow anything. So you can't eat. So you have to leave. Or it could be violence. It could be threat to you and your family. You know, you can't find a civil society and you have to go. I mean, we should completely understand that. And it runs a kind of parallel, not exactly, but a parallel to the immigrants trying to cross the southern border of the United States. They can't stand being in south of that border. They can't stand South America, many countries are really in unlivable. So the question is, you know, A, this is another show, but if you have a lot of migrants entering the EU, what ultimately happens? There was an article recently, I forget what country it is. I think it was Sweden, where some imams stood up and said, you know, in five years' time, we're going to have the majority of the population in this country. Really? In Scandinavia, are you kidding? But, you know, and then he said, we have many children, five, six, seven children per family. And if you people here in Sweden don't care to have children, that's your problem. But we are going to keep on having children.  And we are very politically conscious, and we will be in your governmental institutions also. So that's another show, but that what's happens when you have large-scale, you know, migrants. But in the South, in the global South, in Africa, with all these countries, and it's really hard to figure out which one you want to go to. Ruban, you don't want to go there and retire, okay? I just want to be clear about that. It's not what you want to do. What can we do? You know, is it in our interest to allow them to decline this way? NGOs are not enough. Government charity programs really are not enough. We have to take affirmative steps. Otherwise, you know, what happens in Africa will affect the world, don't you agree? Absolutely right, Jay. Absolutely right. And corruption, fuel is corruption. So that's why this problem of NGOs and private organizations, when they find that the political system itself is corrupt, they have a chance to also take the share in the KJ. And that happens. And nothing trickles down to the actual population. So corruption in politics is a big factor which hampers any country's development. And like we have seen in Japan, the declining population, like you mentioned, the Scandinavian problem, these people need the potential youth. That's why any country, when you measure the index of development, you also measure what is the percentage of young population. That is so important. And this migrant population coming into a country and affecting its policies and politics is a good example is Lebanon. Lebanon was a Christian country. Today it is not. In a matter of one generation time, it has changed demographics completely. So these African youth, they migrate for the sake of the same thing, economic prosperity, better prospects, how you migrate from an agrarian to an urban scenario. It's the same way they're trying to leave Africa and go to the well-developed Europe or well-developed America. But what happens is, Jay, they bring along their burden, their own burden. And that is affecting the American way of life. I was just saying a little time back that skilled migration is very good for a country, for a developed country. But unskilled migrants and migrants who are burdened to a country's economy, not in one or two years, not in five years, but in 10 years will have a very negative effect on American development, American way of life and American democracy. Jay, because what happens is these people come with a target. And like how we have mentioned the Boko Haram and all these people, they have targets of Western civilization and they want to destroy it. The same mindset, the same indoctrination is what comes with these people. And when they are frustrated and not in par with way of life in America, they will become a negative burden on American society. That's why Africa becomes important for us, that it does not bring out these negative elements, this radicalization or indoctrinated migrants or the corruption which is there. You have very good leaders coming up in the UN forums. But do those same leaders go and do the same thing in the village? It's never possible. It's rarely a possibility. They live very well in Europe. They come up in the European forums, they're in Europe. And life is sweet in Europe. But when they go back to their own country, maybe not so sweet, so they prefer to be in Europe. They prefer to participate in these forums. So this is a hard question. What do we do? If it is in our interest to build Africa or at least some of Africa, some of the countries. I'm reminded of some of these places in the Sahel and south of the Sahel where it used to be green, but it's not so green anymore. It used to be arable.  Now you can't. When Israel, when the Israelis first arranged their Kibbutzim, they made the desert bloom. It was a miracle. They found ways to get water. They found ways to take arid land, desert land, and make that agricultural land with some of the finest agricultural crops in the world. I mean, there's a great resource in that. There's also a resource in all these minerals you mentioned, a few of them that was also cobalt. And cobalt is very important. A lot of these are, they're critical minerals for development of technology and computers and cell phones and the like. And you've got to get them. And Africa has them. That's why Russia is there. That's why China is there. They want that. And there's diamonds and gold and all these things that people want. But you can't just take that away. These countries should have a benefit from that, right? They should participate in the profit from that. And unfortunately, they don't have the capital structures to do that. So what happens is people from far away come and just take it using violence if necessary. So the question is how do you make, how do you rationalize all of this? Let's assume for a moment this is not an easy assumption that the United States is the beacon, the city on the hill, that the United States has a morality that wraps around the need to deal with the global South and Africa. And for that matter, Latin America, because it's a parallel. So query what do we do in terms of foreign policy? What do we do in terms of incentives to business? What do we do in terms of developing a presence there? How about I know I wouldn't serve? I don't know if you would serve. What do we do about a modern day Peace Corps? Because the old Peace Corps wouldn't work now. It's overtaken by events. But something like that where we put our young people there, we try to help. We put our doctors without frontier there and try to make people healthy. We try to show them how to make money. I mean, we're not doing nearly enough. So if I ask you, what else can we do? What's your answer? Jay, it is such a big issue that we have because the diseases that come out of Africa are also so wild. Ebola was something which the body had to be buried many meters deep. So the contamination was at that level. And it was a fatal fatality rate was so high. So this kind of who has that about diseases and civil wars. And it's so rampant in Africa that then you consider a holiday, you will go for a maximum safari in Kenya and come out or Sun City in South Africa and come out. But you will not go for a tour of how we go backpacking through Europe or backpacking through the east coast of America. We will not do that because it is just a pick and choose and come out your exotic holiday is done and you come out. So Africa has become that kind of Nick pick and come out Africa as a continent Jay has got so much of potential. But you see now it's been one year since they have been in the bricks one year since they have joined G20. Where is the vocal or you know, where is the stamp of authority? Nothing. They had a weird rendezvous when they spoke about Israel being a genocide in apartheid. It was useless. It was absolutely useless. South Africa made a fool of themselves. So this kind of dormancy in international politics day, it has become a mainstay in African politics. No country wants to take the lead. No country wants to shine on the global state. Every country is trying to move day. India is trying. South Saudi Arabia is trying. Israel is trying. Small, small countries which are, you know, not even miniscule part of Africa, they try to make the economics thrive. They try to, but you don't see the drive in any of the African countries and it's sad to say that they are very fine with it as long as the rich political elite get their money. And the poor class stays poor. The tribal society is very subsistence level happy. The migrants are moving. This is the entire situation in Africa. Nobody wants to develop that. Let me give you a scenario. Okay. Let's say that Joe Biden wants to do a kind of a pivot to Africa. And he says, as a matter of American national policy, we want to pay attention. Because we're saying here, and I think it's true, that Africa is a forgotten continent. And so we're saying, he's saying in this my scenario, that no, we didn't forget. We are remembering Africa. Let's remember Africa.  We understand, you know, their background, we understand that we have a kind of historical nexus with Africa. We're going back in. We're going back in. And we're going to pick a couple of countries we think are worth spending quality time with. And we're going to be a presence there both politically, geopolitically, agriculturally, industrially investment, and we're going to make the desert bloom in that country. We're going to build great cities. We're going to make it so attractive that people will come from around the world to be tourists there. And we're going to make sure that nobody messes it up. We will not permit any terrorism. We will not permit opportunism. We will not let Russia or China take over. We will help the development of democratic government in every way we can. And we're going to show you how to do that. We're going to show all of Africa how to do that by picking some emblematic countries and working with them. And we're going to make a big deal out of this. We're going to tell everybody, we're going to show that the United States can help that continent as any continent. Your thoughts. Jay, Utopia, it would be for Africa, isn't it? And Biden would really score big brownie points with the population here itself in America by helping their motherland, like you said. But, Jay, the thing that is that they look at Africa as a, what do you say? It's not the mainland part. Now, UK, when they were thinking of building a deportation center, UK thought of Rwanda as the center for building this refugee center. They would deport the extra migrants to Rwanda. That would be the UK detention center. The thought of developing good countries in Africa would be such a beautiful prospect because everything is there. But what lacks is the democracy and the democratic infrastructure, Jay. They don't have that. And till Africa is indoctrinated, no. It brings in these democratic structures and abides by these. They have one election. They have two civil wars, three civil wars. They have, you know, one leader elected, they have one coup. So this kind of instability, political instability makes it a banana, republic, banana continent. So this kind of, if you don't have political stability, you don't get economic progress. That's the rule of the law. So this plan of Biden, like you said, if it was to take place, I'm sure the diamonds would get sold in good markets, not blood diamonds. You know, you would have good gold, the Egyptian gold being the highlight of the world again. So these kind of things would come back into prominence. Africa has got the potential, but not the guidance that works. That's what it lacks. Big time. Well, let me, I mean, maybe this is a long haul kind of thing, although I don't think, let me say that I don't think the world has a lot of time. The world needs to do things to correct these problems quickly, not over decades. But let's assume for a minute that we decide that if you want to build a democracy in any country, in Africa or otherwise, you have to educate people. You have to show them, you have to give them history to show them where it's been successful and when it's been successful and why it was successful. And then you have to give them the tools to appreciate politics, to appreciate democratic politics and to get into politics and to be a voice in shaping a better political environment. So education is every country, especially including this country right now. But what about that? Do you think that's a priority in terms of the scenario I described? I think the foundation of Africa is not democratic. You remember a long, long time back in one of the programs I had told you, that India has always been democratic. 2,500 years back, we had democratic structures in our country. So today, India is a colony which has overtaken the colonizer in terms of economic growth. We have overtaken UK in terms of economic growth because the foundation was such, we had democratic institutions, we had rule of the law, we love the people. But Africa as a continent with so many countries, their foundation like you mentioned is tribal. They have subsistence living. They depend on nature. They live in nature. They don't believe in leaders. They move around as nature guides them, where the desert goes, where the green meadows go. They move along with that. The boundaries are very immaterial for them because it's a continent connected with nature more than politics. And that's why you have these, the minerals must be useless to the tribals. But for the outside world, it is minerals and rich resources. So that's what happens there. For them, it is just part of their environment. For us, it is rich resources. And this foundation of tribal will need a lot of time to develop. And I'm sure it can just be preserved as a land and a continent rather than harnessed for its political energy because we have seen that when you harness it for political energy, it gives rise to more political unrest, more civil wars. There is more money pumped in. There is more bloodshed. Radicalization is a big, big problem in Africa and what comes out of, you know, you have these centers. We had ISIS centers in ISIS and Al Qaeda centers in Africa. So this is kind of a dangerous breeding ground for terrorists, which will affect us in any part of the world. So that way it has to be kept very sane and safe rather than developed.  The concentration is to keep Africa as the garden of Eden. Like first we said, it has to just be kept as that. Well, you know, we've had a number of shows with Project Expedite Justice and a lot of them have dealt with these civil wars, war crimes, atrocities all through Africa, from the west to the east and the east to the west.  For example, you know, the children being abducted, hundreds at a time being forced into military service, guerrilla warfare service by the terrorist groups. That still happens. It's still happening. And what happens is the NGOs and the organizations like Project Expedite Justice, they investigate and they make a big file and they prepare a case to go to the Hague. And then it takes years for the Hague to even look at that. And the standards which are actually developed in Berkeley for, you know, proof of evidence of this kind of atrocity are really hard to, you know, hard to meet. And so the result is there's not a lot of accountability. And I guess the theory behind a lot of this investigation is we need people to know what happened because in truth, a lot of atrocities in the world take place. Nobody knows. It's kept a secret. You know, here in the land of the First Amendment, we think that everybody knows everything, not true. In some of these places, nobody knows nothing and nobody wants anybody to know nothing. And so when you have atrocities and war crimes, frequently it's never revealed, never found.  But they're not so interested in accountability. It's almost rare that some of the people who are doing atrocities are actually punished. They're revealed, maybe, but not punished. And so I say to you, you know, if we want to, if we want to stop the atrocities and the civil war and the violence and the outrageous things that happen, we have got to find a way to stop them from happening. We've got to impose moral guardrails on the people who would do this. And that itself is a pretty big project. Again, you need a government that is real.  And so they're compromised and they cannot do anything about it. So my question, my next question for you, Rupati, is what about international organizations? You've made a reference to the G-20, to BRICS, to the United Nations, the African Union. And these organizations, are they of any effect? Could they be of any effect? Jay, all these organizations, they call the African Union as observers, as members, as, you know, as part of their meetings. But Jay, any concrete implementation does not take place because when you talk of Africa, the contributing element of Africa as a whole with 54 nations is not that much as Europe with 41 nations is or Asia, ASEAN with their members is. So Africa lacks that accountability and the domination in international politics. And all these international organizations and forums are such that unless you stamp your authority on every issue, you fall irrelevant. So African Union, with kind of it being, I told you, because of the economic problems, they don't have military domination. And if you don't have military domination, you're saying international politics gets reduced to a very large extent. It's all about war. The modern world is all about war and economy. And Africa has none of these. So that is the reason why it lags behind. And in these international forums, it just plays a voting game. You need Africa for the numbers. You need it. They look towards China as the only non-colonial partner for them. They look to Russia to help them veto. And Russia and China look to them for the gang that they give in voting. So that's the only relation that the African Union has in international forums today. And it lacks a vision for itself in the future. What is its role in climate change? Because they have not been able to economically develop. They don't have a role in climate change. But like we said, it has got the maximum arable land. It's got the maximum forest cover. It's got the maximum number of amount of minerals, mineral-rich continent. So potential is high. So climate change contribution, they can contribute the highest. But what do they contribute to if they don't have economic prosperity? So these important issues which are going on in the world, the wars, the economic prowess that each country shows, the climate change issues, these are the issues which the migration, these are the issues which dominate international politics in Africa, is right on the bottom of the list. Right at the bottom of the list. So let me ask you my Charles Dickens question. It's from the Christmas Carol story that he wrote. And Ebenezer Scrooge is forced to look into the future. And he sees the ghost of Christmas future. So I want to ask you my Charles Dickens question. What happens if we do nothing? What happens if Russia and China do what they want, that the terrorists do what they want? But the G20, the UN, the African Union, and the United States keep on forgetting. Essentially turning their backs on trying to build a new continent in Africa. New countries, new ways of life. What happens if we do nothing? That's my question. We'll have a new colony of China, which will be tribal. That is it. China has leased land and lend them so much of money. It has got leased for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's got claim on all their minerals. But they will never develop Africans to be developed. They will keep it tribal. So we'll have a new colony. That's it. Well, if you follow the Chinese model, they won't be violence. They won't permit violence. They won't be corruption because they won't permit corruption, or at least not visibly. So maybe there's a benefit in all of that. Maybe that's what they're working for so that they can control the population, control the civil society, make it a China civil society, and take all the resources. It's simple. It's transactional. Maybe that's where this is all going. Well, we're mighty kind of car. It's wonderful to talk to you and explore these possibilities. This has really been an education for me. Thank you so much for joining us here on Global Connections. Thank you for having me. 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