What Are The Biggest Mistakes People Make Trying To Build a Successful Membership or Community Website in 2024?
Are you struggling to make your membership website a success? Discover the key pitfalls that could be holding you back in this must-watch video for anyone building an online community in 2024. We delve into common errors such as poor content management and pricing missteps, providing actionable solutions to propel your site toward success. Take charge of your membership website’s future.
#1 – Calvin, can you tell the listeners and viewers why you started your journey with Simplero and what you see as the fundamental problems it solves?
#2 – Based on your and the team’s experience, what are some of the critical mistakes people make on a semi-regular basis connected to building a successful membership/community website?
#3 – Can you give some positive insights on how people can avoid the mistakes you outlined in the previous question?
#4 – How do you see AI affecting eLearning and building membership and community websites in the next 18 months?
#5 – What particular digital services and tools can you use that you can recommend to the audience?
#6 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of your business journey, what advice would you give yourself?
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The Show’s Main Transcript And Links
website from the initial idea all the way to the finished product. Here’s your host, Jonathan Denwood.
[00:00:16.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 63. We got a great guest this week. We got Calvin Correli
here, the founder and CEO of SimClero. It’s a platform. It’s a marketing, membership platform. It’s superb. We’re going to have a great discussion. We’re going to discuss all the things that you might be worried about. And Kelvin’s got a lot of knowledge to share. So, Kelvin, before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great discussion, maybe you can give a quick introduction, a 2036 introduction about yourself and about Simplero.
[00:01:01.160] – Calvin Correli
Absolutely. Jonathan, it’s amazing to be here with you. Hey, everybody who’s watching, listening. Thanks for being here. I created Simplero back 15 years ago now because I got into teaching spiritual growth to entrepreneurs. That’s still my passion. For me, whenever business owners run into problems, it’s always a personal problem that shows up in the business. I would go as far as to say that it’s pretty much always a spiritual problem that shows up as a business problem. That’s my philosophy. I started as a coach, and I needed some software to run the business, and I didn’t like what was on the market. Because what happened then, and that still happens today, oddly enough, is people use five, seven, nine different platforms, and then they have to glue it all together. I want to solve that problem and just make it super simple, be able to do it all in one platform. That’s what Simplera is.
[00:01:57.950] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Like I said, before we go into the central part of this interview, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Are you tired of hosting providers that can’t handle high-traffic loads?
[00:03:13.310] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out we have a fantastic Facebook Community, the Membership Machine Show. If you have any questions about membership, any questions about technology, software, WordPress, or anything like that, just join us on that Facebook group. And me and my team are always there to answer your questions and try and be supportive. So go over there and join us on there. So, Kevin, I think you covered it. I think you covered very quickly in your intro, question one, actually. But I don’t know, maybe… Because you said you were a coach yourself. You wanted an all-in-one solution. But it is a big jump, isn’t it? From being a coach in the spiritual area and then deciding that you wanted to build a software product. Did you have any prior experience in the software or did you have any friends or resources? Or was it you just thought, well, I’m just going to go for it, and it’ll be a journey? I don’t know.
[00:04:25.640] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, I know. I had a lot of experience. So I actually grew up programming. My parents were programmers in the early ’70s when that wasn’t a thing. I’m from Denmark, and there were literally five computers in the entire country, and my parents would be working with one of them using punch cards. You had little paper cards that you would punch holes in, and that’s how you communicate with the computer. There’s no keyboard, there’s no voice commands, none of that stuff, just punch cards. I learned I learned how to code when I was five years old. My mom actually started a software company in 1980 and grew that to 50 people and market leading. I grew up around software. It wasn’t a stretch. I was already in software business as I tried to do I was for a long time, I was in consulting, so I’d be programming for higher. I had a 13-person team at one point in a little consulting firm and worked for MIT Greenpeace International and other big organizations. But I always knew I wanted to do product. It was one of the things that led me to spiritual growth was that I was struggling.
[00:05:39.420] – Calvin Correli
I was like, I kept failing at getting into the product business. At one point, I just felt like such a complete failure. Pain is what causes us to grow. I’m sure you’ve experienced that.
[00:05:54.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, the tremendous event.
[00:05:57.050] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, right. At the low point, that’s when I started to seek help. First, therapy and some coaching, and then that’s what led to the spiritual journey for me. I realized that all of the problems that I was facing were similar in nature to all of the issues that I saw all my friends who are also entrepreneurs face. That’s when I realized, oh, my God, this is something that it’s not just me that’s broken. We’re all facing the same issues. Why am I What am I doing? Like limiting beliefs, emotional places where we get to stop, and all that stuff. That’s why I started coaching. It was natural for me to do then the software that went along with it.
[00:06:44.900] – Jonathan Denwood
I think, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking a little bit. It’s funny that you bring this up because I’ve been thinking in the past couple of weeks about this. I think the one thing I really struggle with is that I’m no different from the majority of people. And there’s nothing unique about me, Kevin—absolutely nothing. I have no actual conception of how I come across. I have a false conception of myself and how I come across to other people. But I don’t know. I’m surprised at some hints that people’s perspective of me is totally different from my own. Sure. Yeah. I’m not going to say the word normal, but normal doesn’t exist, does it? I don’t know if a lot of people have the same thing. What are your own thoughts about that?
[00:07:40.360] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, I mean, as they say, you can’t read the label from inside the bottle. We can never see ourselves accurately. We can never see ourselves the way that others see us. So I think that’s totally normal. And for some, I guess for some, there’s a bigger discontinuity. There’s a bigger difference, and for others, it’s less, but it’s absolutely normal. Especially when we go unconscious because our conscious mind is only… It can only focus on one thing at a time. We run all the time by our unconscious programming. So we’re not even aware, we’re not seeing it. And so, yeah, you’re normal.
[00:08:23.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, like I said, I don’t think normal exists, doesn’t it? It’s just the average exists, doesn’t it? Now, I think we use regular. It’s an understandable term, though, isn’t it? It doesn’t get me hot and bothered that people utilize it because it’s totally understandable, isn’t it? All right, let’s go on to question two because I don’t want to get some free therapy from you. I’m taking me bonkers. I realized that about five years ago. I’m a hopeless case. I’m bonkers. You got to be bonkers to be an entrepreneur, I think.
[00:09:03.240] – Calvin Correli
For sure. Yeah. I mean, the other part of that, though, is that we’re all one. We’re all like we think that we’re separate individual beings, but we’re really all part of… We’re all part of one thing. And what is, is. And this whole idea that this is normal and this is not normal or this is typical or not or whatever, that’s just a mind’s judgment on stuff. The reality is just what it is. It doesn’t give a crap about our decisions on it.
[00:09:34.570] – Jonathan Denwood
No, so true, especially mine. So there we go. So if I want to area two. Now, obviously, you’ve been in this business of software and membership and helping people build really great courses and a great business. And I’m sure you get a buzz when people… Because I’m in the same area as you, but we’re WordPress-focused. But I get a great buzz when I get feedback from people who are using our setup that they’re getting some great success. But on the other hand, I see the same patterns of self-reliqu. You can’t tell straight away. I’ve had people have a chat with me, and they’ve had the most… What’s seen It seems to be the most wackiest membership idea possible. And it’s been hugely successful. I’ve had other people explain something really coherent, and they’ve not pursued it. Based on your great experience, are there any patterns that you can… It’s a big question, but we got a bit of time. We got about 20 minutes for the first half, this second question. But have you got 2-3 patterns that you have consistently seen through all the people that you’ve helped you and your team? And maybe you can share those with us.
[00:11:11.070] – Calvin Correli
Yeah. Are you thinking patterns in what sense? Of what? What they’re kinds of things they’re teaching?
[00:11:16.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they don’t do the groundwork. I’m a great believer, it’s a bit like a house, Kevin. If you don’t get the foundations right, the rest of it can look fantastic, but it’s probably going to have all crack. After a few months, it’s all going to have cracks in it. It’s a good chance it’s going to collapse. People tend to focus on technology. They also focus on the course, but they don’t focus about who they’re really going to help and what are the problems of those people. It’s 101 of marketing in a way. But so maybe you got some thoughts about It’s all right.
[00:12:00.900] – Calvin Correli
Yeah. I see the same. It’s one of the things that we always help people with is who are you for? What is the problem that they have? And how are you solving that? And let’s make sure that we get really clear on that and that we speak in a language that your prospect has. Because we all have this problem that we solve the problem. Now we understand what the root cause of it was. And now we start to learn the lingo, the language that we learned then when we learned to solve this. We started to speak differently than we did before we had this problem. Going back and remembering what it felt like to have this problem and what language, what words people would use is so important. I think it’s something we all tend to skip. I don’t know, it just becomes ingrained in us. We start to talk this advanced I was talking in this talk. I would say in general, what I see people do is they make stuff complicated because they’re confused and scared. When you’re afraid, is there going to be enough people who have this problem? Oh, no, I’m afraid there’s not enough.
[00:13:21.480] – Calvin Correli
Let me solve two different problems. Are there going to be enough of this type of avatar of dream customer? I’m not sure. I should work with two two different avatars or three or five. Am I going to be able to sell enough of just this product? No, I probably need 10 products and 10 offers. Or, oh, shoot, I just got an email from someone or a friend told me about this cool new tool that can do this, that, the other thing. I should probably add that tool as well. People end up with a business that’s very complicated, both in terms of technology, in terms of avatar, in terms of offers, in terms of systems. Maybe they got into funnels and then I would build these intricate, complicated funnels. It’s not necessary and it’s not helping. I remember speaking to someone who is an early founder of one of the players in our space. I’m not going to mention any names, but he told me that they specifically designed the software to have a bunch of knobs that you could fiddle with on the page builder because they knew that their dream customer were scared of actually going out and selling stuff because then you might get rejected.
[00:14:38.520] – Calvin Correli
Now we have to actually deliver in the coaching also. They wanted to stay in that dreamland of fiddling with the things so that they could feel like they were building a business, but they weren’t actually doing anything. Have you seen that?
[00:14:53.070] – Jonathan Denwood
All the time. I’m a great He’s become a personal friend. I’ve interviewed him three times, and I’ve been to some of his conferences, and I’ve gone out with him and his wife, and I think he’d be okay to say we’re friends now. And that’s Rob Rowland, the joint founder of Drip, the email marketing. He runs Tiny Seed, and he’s got a podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us. I learned from He’s strong. He’s wrote a number of books, and I’ve read all his books. It’s very insightful and very successful, but really a very open, likable person, very generous. He can send the check to me after it. I’ll send him this podcast and you can send the check to me. But he got this concept because he’s about startups and they’ve got this idea of a minimum viable product. I think you should apply that to a minimum viable course. Because I feel people really put themselves, especially if it’s their first attempt at building a course, they put themselves under an enormous amount of pressure. They end up building what I call these war and peace courses. I think you think in what you were saying, they build these 20-hour courses, less structures, all video.
[00:16:33.710] – Jonathan Denwood
They worry about landing pages of bundles. And then they’re going, and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea at the right time. They’re going to build in a community at the same time about the Mighty Network group or going Buddy Boss. When I push back a little bit and say, well, you need trying to run before you can walk. I get tremendous resistance. I can see in their body language on the Zoom that they start tightening up any pushback at the dream. What’s your own experience? And would you agree around this terminology of a minimum viable course?
[00:17:25.450] – Calvin Correli
A hundred %. It’s one of the things that is, again, it’s much more I think the first hundred times we do it, we’re scared of that meeting with the market. When I started doing online courses, that was in 2008, because I had this realization, oh, my God, I need to teach other people, other entrepreneurs about spiritual growth. I was like, how do I do that? I have a programming background. How do I run? Seminars, workshops. I don’t know how to I discovered online courses. It was so great because I could sit behind the screen because I was terrified of people, bullied in school and all that stuff. I was so insecure. Having that safety of the computer was so much better. But I think that meeting with the customer can be terrifying for us because we might get rejected or it might be to not meet their needs. For me, that feeling of I’m talking about something and I’m excited, I’m passionate. People in the audience are like, why is he talking about that? I’m not interested. I don’t give a care. And they start yarning like that. That was something that I was terrified of.
[00:18:36.490] – Calvin Correli
And so we want to put everything into it. Plus we love learning. That’s why we started studying. Most people don’t give a crap. It’s just like my car is broken. I don’t need a lecture on how the engine works. Just fix it so it can get to work. So I totally see the same. And it’s the same thing. We can fill it with the knobs instead of just get it out there and start serving people and see how people actually respond to it.
[00:19:07.840] – Jonathan Denwood
I think in that feed, because I found out in my own entrepreneur journey, there’s been elements of the offering that I thought the end users, the customers, were going to be delighted in. They’re not interested in the bits. That’s the bits that I thought were that. They’re the bits that they’re really interested in. Do you think that’s the same with your first course? That’s why it’s important to get your first students in and use it.
[00:19:44.560] – Calvin Correli
Totally. Yeah. No, nothing survives. None of our fantasies survive the meeting with the market. The market will always tell us what they want, and we learn from that. And that’s the only way we learn to grow.
[00:19:56.860] – Jonathan Denwood
So do your homework it, try and find it, and you agree with the minimum viable course. What’s he confused about?
[00:20:07.240] – Calvin Correli
One thing I was thinking, Jonathan, is one thing you could try next time that you have a prospect or client that’s like, yeah, I wanted to do this and all this thing in the community. Instead of pushing back, judo it and go with them. That’s awesome. That’s exciting. Let’s do that.
[00:20:25.140] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m English, I’m down.
[00:20:27.040] – Calvin Correli
Then you go, first up is this, and then we do this. Then you’re not pushing back, you’re rolling with them. Then you’re just guiding them on the journey. Trying to get that.
[00:20:41.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Like I say, you’re totally great. I struggle with it because I have English and I’m down, as I say. People said to me, you’re really… They said to me, you’re brutally honest. I don’t think I’m brutally honest, but other people say I’m brutally honest. That always worries me because people that say, I’m brutally honest, they tend to be real jerks. I’m not a jerk. That’d be sad. Getting to my eye. You’d be the jerk. Oh, God, that’d be the worst thing. There’s also this, and I think it Obviously, membership courses have trends. A few years ago, it was gametisation, wasn’t it? That was the big… And then micro learning. I think for the past couple, probably longer than that. It’s been community, you hear. Don’t get me wrong. I think if you got a great community as part of your membership model, I think you can make the whole thing a lot more sticky off offer a lot more value. But I think people totally understand the amount of effort. It’s like putting a membership site on steroids when you’re really building a real community. What’s your thoughts around this whole thing? Because you must all the time have these conversations as well when people come to you for your advice.
[00:22:24.650] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, I do. I do think that community This is, I don’t know, a really solid thing. It’s a good thing. I don’t know if I would say the future. There’s always like, it’s the here and now thing. People tend to value the as What happens is that social media, the game of social media, the bar gets higher and higher. The quality of content, the production value, the quality of stuff that you have to put out to win the game of social media Media gets harder and harder. The quality goes up and up. Ads gets harder. For traffic, people are putting out better and better stuff in social media, which means you can get more and more of what you are looking for in terms of specific answers through social media. Courses I see having less perceived value than they used to. I’m not saying it’s zero. It’s not as attractive on its own as it used to. But the The internet that I see that’s really crushing it right now is that you have a little bit of content, and then you have, say, weekly group coaching calls where you deliver more content and you do Q&A with people.
[00:23:43.950] – Calvin Correli
Then all those It could become part of the library. Then you have a community portion where people can discuss. Now they meet on the call and meet and see each other. Then it’s like, Oh, I saw you there, blah, blah, blah. That starts to build that bonding. Because if it’s just like, Here’s a Of course, here’s a place where you can talk to a bunch of strangers that you’ve never seen or met, that tends to get a little bit hard. But that model works tremendously well. It provides a lot of value, and it’s pretty simple to set up and get rolling.
[00:24:15.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and it avoids… It also has the benefit of avoiding what we’ve said previous, where building what I call this war and peace course. There you are. Because I’ve valued… I don’t I don’t know if you have, but I’ve had, I won’t say it’s been a tremendous amount, but I have known, how many? About four, six. And they were… I can’t make a judgment because it was outside side by field, but I sensed they were quite knowledgeable about their subject matter. They’ve been at it for 18 months plus, building out this bloody course. They got all sucked in into these landing pages and it was going on forever.
[00:25:06.480] – Calvin Correli
No, it’s crazy. You don’t need any of those things. Social media, they’ll buy chat, enroll them into a 5, 8, 10K offer. You can do that. You don’t even need sales calls. You don’t need any funnels. You don’t need anything. Just enroll people into a high-ticket offer. Works great. By the way, I run a coaching program like that because, again, that’s why I got into this business. I have my own, call it Simplero Academy, my own coaching programs where I work with coaches and other people who are building business. We work on strategy, we work on simple systems, and we work on the spiritual side of things together. Most of the members are also in Simplero, but it’s not just specific to Simplero. It’s this exact format. There’s community, there are weekly coaching calls, and there’s some content to get you started. We have some accountability. Yeah, super simple format, easy to keep going, and lots of value.
[00:26:10.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think somebody has to have an audience before they can launch a successful course? Or can they develop an audience in the same time they’re developing a course? Or is it all jumbled up? And it really depends on each individualvisual scenario?
[00:26:32.310] – Calvin Correli
I think having an offer, like a course, is a great way to build your audience. Because just building an audience for the sake of building audience, you don’t know if it’s actually going to convert into what you wanted to do. So it’s a huge gamble. And any marketing that we do is going to cost money in some way, whether it’s your time or someone else’s time that you pay or ads or whatever, JVs, whatever it is, it’s going to cost you something. And so Do you want to have a way to make that money back and validate that it’s worth it to make that money back. So I would always be doing it at the same time.
[00:27:08.080] – Jonathan Denwood
I also like it from one to the other. I also like quite a bit, actually. But there we go. Yeah, but I do agree with your outline because it gives a focus, doesn’t it? I think the other way, trying to build an audience without the course, it sounds okay, but you got no focus, have you?
[00:27:32.580] – Calvin Correli
No, no. And you don’t have to actually create the course. You just have to create an offer and a title or something, a simple thing that you can tell people about. You don’t even need You don’t have a sales page or anything. You just have to say, Hey, we’re doing this program. It’s going to start in three months. Sign up now and then we’ll join. And once you have five, six people, you’ve got a program. Now you’ve got a group program that you can run. To just get people to sign up early once before it’s even a thing, you don’t even have to know what it is. I remember I talked to Ryan Dice over a digital marketer and they started their $10,000 certification. They obviously had an audience, where it was like, Hey, we don’t really know what this thing is going to be, but if you come join. That works well when you have an audience, but it works… So we’re going to be building the audience. But a lot of times, if you can If you can build that trust in yourself with people, even if you don’t have an audience, that’s what we do.
[00:28:36.700] – Calvin Correli
We get people to know us, then we get them to like and trust us, and then we make an offer. And it doesn’t have to take a ton of time. Typically, I saw a stat the other day that once people spend about 47 minutes with your content, that’s an average how much time they need to spend in order to be ready to buy from you. I can be listening to your podcast. This conversation right here is 47 minutes. When someone’s actually listening to this conversation, boom, they’ve spent 47 minutes with the both of us. It doesn’t have to take that much. Then you can make an offer and say, Hey, I don’t know what is it going to be like yet, but I do know that I can help you with this problem. You have this problem. Invest here with me. If you hate it, I’ll give you your money back. I’ll buy it back from you at full price after if you get fed up with it. But enroll people into a program that doesn’t exist yet and then deliver. What gets people hung up many times is, well, what if I can deliver?
[00:29:37.540] – Calvin Correli
They lack confidence in their own abilities because they’ve never done a program like this before. They might have expertise, they know they can up people maybe one-on-one or in certain circumstances or whatnot, but now it’s a different format. The way I think of it is you can always overdeliver and you choose to work one-on-one with people until they get the outcome. You can always, if you know with yourself that you’re committed to delivering the outcome for these people, you’re going to try this format and figure out how it works. But if everything goes to crap and it just doesn’t work. You can always work one-on-one with people to make sure they get the result. Overdeliver for your first people. And if you know that about yourself, that you will do that, just go for it.
[00:30:27.050] – Jonathan Denwood
I feel it’s great. I think we’re going to go for our break, folks. I really enjoyed my chat with Kelvin so far. Hopefully, he’s enjoyed it. He seems relaxed. He seems to get my English humor to some degree. I’ve been living in America for almost 17 years, Kelvin, but I still think I’m still very, very English. We’re going to go for a break, folks, and we’ll be back in a few moments.
[00:30:53.520] – Calvin Correli
This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress.
[00:31:03.420] – Jonathan Denwood
If you or your client are creating any online course, training-based membership website, or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms. Com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast20. That’s podcast20.
[00:31:29.440] – Calvin Correli
Enjoy the of your show.
[00:31:32.200] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast of knowledge from Kevin from Simply Hero. To say he knows his stuff would be a slight understatement. I just want to also point out, if you’re looking to build your membership community website on WordPress, why don’t you have a look at WP Tonic? We really supply all the tools, all the support, great hosting combined in one package. If you’re I’m looking to build your website on WordPress, we’re a great solution. So go over to Wp-tonic. Com and book a chat with me, and I’ll see if we’re a good fit. So let’s go on to AI. I’m a bit sick of it already, to be quite truthful. Everybody’s talking, but I have dyslexia, Kelvin. That’s one reason why I got into coding. People said, How can you code if you got dyslexia? Well, because it’s structured, logically, folks, unlike the English language, which is structured very logically. So I got into it and I got into technology to help me, and it’s fantastic. My handwriting is like a doctor’s. I’m readable. But I’m a quick typist, and I got all my tools and everything. I got into AI and it’s been just fantastic.
[00:33:08.590] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s just more fantastic tools that helped me be more productive. I loved it. But on the other way, everything, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the software market is putting the word AI into their product. I’m very enthusiastic. I know Kajabi done some things, and there’s some other platforms, but it’s very early days. But I am very… And obviously, it can help you write content for your course, or I think it will write very dry content. But a lot of people… My ex-wife was like this. My ex-wife did her degree at MIT, and she was much better educated than me, but she got this She had a blank page in front of her. It take her days before she could write the first sentence. It’s never been like that, actually. I’ve been able to knock it off straight away. You might be filled with grammar mistakes and spend I’ve done many mistakes, but I can knock it out pretty quick. But I think it really helps people get over that hurdle, the blank page. Then if they edit, they got to edit it quite a lot for it to make it strong. But I think we’re only on the early days of AI connected to education and courses, because I think it could offer the ability to Because I think people have different morphologies on learning.
[00:34:53.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I think AI offers the capacity to be able to customize the actual course or the learning materials to the individual. How would you respond? And have you been thinking about this lately? If so, what are some of your thoughts?
[00:35:12.010] – Calvin Correli
What is this AI thing that you’re talking about? I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. It’s everything.
[00:35:19.420] – Jonathan Denwood
You got me worried there.
[00:35:21.920] – Calvin Correli
You can get the ding, schimble back.
[00:35:23.670] – Jonathan Denwood
I can ramble. You probably know, I can really ramble.
[00:35:30.630] – Calvin Correli
No, yeah. I mean, you cannot be Ascension being at this point. And now I have thought about AI. So we definitely thought about it. We have a little bit of AI going, but not a ton. I’m like you, right? When it comes to writing or creating content, I would much rather just sit down blank slate and just speak from my heart. Just say what’s on my heart, on my mind. For me, that’s easy. That’s fun. I enjoy it. Whereas reading stuff and editing stuff makes my eyes bleed. I hate it. So for me, AI is this machine that just spews out words. There’s so many words. And most of them, like you said, are not very good. It’s not really… It’s not edgy. It’s not human. It might get there, but that’s not the direction I see it going in.
[00:36:31.210] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s corporate speaking on steroids, isn’t it? Yeah.
[00:36:35.340] – Calvin Correli
Maybe with the right prompts, you can get it to do something else, but I have not figured out how to do that quite yet. Especially some of those Chad GBT and Bard and whatnot, where they’re so obsessed with safety that they on purpose makes it throw out this boilerplate language all the time. Well, there might be and you never know. So, yeah, I think what’s going to happen, it reminds me of there’s an article years ago by an early software influencer named Joel Spolsky, where he talked about Microsoft’s strategy was fire and motion. They would develop these new APIs all the time so that all of the engineers of all the independent software developers would be busy trying to figure out how to use all these APIs while Microsoft’s own developers knew which APIs to give a crap about and which to ignore. Then they were much faster at developing stuff. That was part of their strategy to outmaneuver some of those key players like Lotos or whoever was causing them problems in the software space. Ai feels a little bit like that sometimes, but it’ll spew up so many words that now a human needs to actually read and make sense of.
[00:37:46.160] – Calvin Correli
A human wasn’t involved in spewing them out in the first place. That’s the danger that I see, is that we just flood people with subpar content. We flood the internet with subpar content. The thing was going to happen, I think you’re right, that having AI is super helpful. I talk to ChatGPT every day for figuring out what can it help me do and what can it help me do. It can help with a lot of things.
[00:38:10.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Because you become your friend.
[00:38:12.760] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, exactly. My little Tamagotchi. It’s my go-to over Google these days. So poor SEO people. But I think it’s super helpful to ideate and come up with the first draft and that stuff, especially when it’s something new and you don’t have the muscle yet. But I think what it’s going to do more than anything is increase our desire for real connection, real human connection, real human caring, real human putting care and love-We’re going to be out.
[00:38:52.410] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry, I’m at living here, and of course, we’re over Stream Yard, so there’s a slight delay. So Do give me some slack here. I’m not being rude, but I love my one-liners. I’m just thinking, you’re saying that you’re not going to find much of that in America anyway, are you? Sorry, Kevin. I Sorry, that was bad, wasn’t it? I just couldn’t resist it. I’ll shut up. You were in mid-flight as well, weren’t you? Yeah. Don’t get annoyed with me. I’ll shut up. I’m sorry. Going off you, guy. I was just thinking you were saying community. I don’t mean that, really. I’ve been so impressed with the work ethic of Americans in general and the can-do attitude, which is really missing in British culture. But in some ways, the only thing is I think American in general, needs a little bit more compassion for other people a little bit. That’s my only Are you concerned about American society?
[00:40:02.790] – Calvin Correli
Well, I have a long list of concerns about American society, but that’s a whole other conversation. Where in the US are you based?
[00:40:09.060] – Jonathan Denwood
I live near Lake Tahoe. I live in Carston City, the capital, the capital The Battle of the Barda.
[00:40:16.960] – Calvin Correli
All right. Sweet. And what brought you to the States?
[00:40:20.360] – Jonathan Denwood
My ex-wife, I met her in London, and she was working for a merchant bank. And she took her eye on me. She thought, Oh, I have a bit of that. I was running a successful business in dry cleaning, but I did other things. She was a Californian girl, so we got married in the UK, but she made to get clear that she didn’t want to spend all the days. Britain is a beautiful… Have you been to England at all?
[00:40:52.280] – Calvin Correli
I have, yeah.
[00:40:53.100] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a very pretty country, but the welfare is rubbish, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s just I’m from Denmark.
[00:41:01.790] – Calvin Correli
It’s not too different.
[00:41:03.920] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I’ve not been to Denmark. Actually, I’ve been to Norway, Sweden, and Norway. And they’re just breathtaking. But even Norwegians, I lived there for 18 months, actually. And Bergen. I lived in Bergen, I lived in Bergen, and Oslo for a while. And beautiful, but the winters, my God. Yeah.
[00:41:26.470] – Calvin Correli
That’s the thing that I love. Today, it’s overcast, but it was one of the things that I love the most about living here is that it can be winter, it can be cold, but the sun’s out and you got great sunshine. In Denmark, nine months out of the year, it feels like you’re not sure if the sun got up today or not. I can’t tell. It’s just dark and gray and wet. I’m like, oh.
[00:41:47.410] – Jonathan Denwood
London from October to April, it’s like folks, it’s like Seattle on steroids.
[00:41:59.780] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Even though you’re divorced or is her kids are- She had enough of me.
[00:42:08.240] – Jonathan Denwood
She departed. What made you stay in the US? She had enough of me. She departed. What made you stay in the US? Maybe it’s my lack of humor.
[00:42:12.800] – Calvin Correli
It probably was. What made you stay in the US? Did you have kids?
[00:42:17.880] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I really had to think about it and I was tempted. I went back to the UK and I’m still close to my family over there. I was thinking about it. It’s It sounds so insular, but it is. It was just the weather. When you get away, you get used to anything. That’s one of our strengths and one of our weaknesses, isn’t it? We can get used to anything. But when you’ve been in a country that you actually… See, I live in Northern Nevada, and it has full seasons, folks, but it It has almost over 300 days of sunshine. So it’s high desert with Alpoint Mountains around it. When you get used to 300 days of sunshine, you can’t go back to a country that only has 100 days of sunshine. Yes. Sorry. I’m going off straight. I really interrupted you. I went on a spin there, but I would take- I think I finished my thought.
[00:43:29.720] – Calvin Correli
Ai is going to make it. It’s super helpful tool. People are scared about it. But any other technological development is going to be a tool. It’s going to be like a bicycle for the mind. It’s going to make us better, faster.
[00:43:41.740] – Jonathan Denwood
But do you think it’s going to be able… Because this is E It is a language model at the present moment. I think one of the problems with the discussions, in no shape and form am I expert on this. I do have a friend who is an actual expert in AI. They’ve seem to got things really mixed up because you got the thing of general AI, which I think is still probably a bit distant. Then you got these language models that like the mimic and do a great job like the Churner test, it’s got to the stage where it can mimic back and forth. You’d be hard-pressed to tell if you’re talking to a human or you’re not. It just depends on how boring the individual is.
[00:44:42.730] – Calvin Correli
That’s a good point, Jonathan, right? Because Could you imagine a ChatGPT language model that would actually talk the way that you do and respond the way that you- That would be a nightmare, wouldn’t it? I’m sure you could create one, but humans are just We’re all idiosyncratic. We all have our little quirks and specialties and weirdnesses, and that’s what makes us human. That’s what makes us relatable. And so, yeah, you can build it into a robot, but will it ever get to feel like a real human? Probably. At some point, we’ll figure it out.
[00:45:18.880] – Jonathan Denwood
But do you think they get to the stage where the course material of a course of a training could adapt by the inputs of the students. It becomes a more customized learning experience. Do you think in the near future we could get there or is that far fetched? We’re talking about 5, 10 years, which you go so far out, anything could happen, wouldn’t it?
[00:45:49.070] – Calvin Correli
I would think it’s probably a little further out. Again, you can use AI, a language model, to just ask it questions directly. Then you can use these… You can create these custom GPT things where you know you feed it a specific knowledge base and you can ask it questions about that knowledge base and then they can give you answers. I think that’s definitely something that we’re going to see. In that way, it becomes a personalized learning path through material that already exists. I also see that movies and computer games could I go in the direction where it’s generated on the fly. There’s not like, I just get the AI to generate a movie for me and it’s totally personalized to me and it’s like a 90-minute feature film on something the things that I like. I could see that happening. So maybe with course content as well. The question, though, is if that’s the case, is that how we still want to learn or is there a better way? I don’t know the answers to these things.
[00:47:00.290] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I don’t think anybody does. It’s fascinating to think about it, though, isn’t it? Well, I think it is. Let’s move on. Let’s go on to some of the real fun questions. What are some Are there some of the digital services tools that you utilize in your own business or on a daily or that maybe has come on your radar recently that you feel like you’d like to share with the The audience.
[00:47:31.830] – Calvin Correli
Yeah. The short answer is Simplero, of course. I run in my entire business on Simplero. We run everything on Simplero internally. I use that every day, which in part is why I’m also the product lead on the team. I have lots of little improvements because I’m using it every day. I’m like, Oh, this, and why don’t we do that? Here’s how this could be better. So, Simplero. Aside from that, my tool stack is simple. Chatgpt, Instagram, the social media is in general, Descript for video editing.
[00:48:19.600] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve heard a lot of people like that a lot, actually. Yeah.
[00:48:22.540] – Calvin Correli
I like that a lot. It’s super helpful because it makes it so simple to just go make the content edit. When we I’m recording this on my side as well. I’ll take clips from this and I’ll throw it into Dscript, take clips.
[00:48:37.560] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great to hear that because I think your staff asked me to send a copy If you got a copy, I won’t have to do it.
[00:48:46.960] – Calvin Correli
I’m recording only me because I can’t record you.
[00:48:49.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I still-Oh, well, I will still send them.
[00:48:51.570] – Calvin Correli
I will still send them with the Dropbox link. I always have two cameras on me at any time so we can take that and then I send that to my video editor and then pulls out clips and then he mix in the two different angles. But the script is making it super easy. You can move stuff around. Now, if we take this clip and then, oh, being a set here would be a great hook. Let’s move it up to the beginning and that stuff. It’s super easy to do the content editing. Then he throws it into, I don’t even know what he uses, Premiere or something to do the final postproduction. Yeah, that’s the tool we use all the time as well.
[00:49:32.480] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s really fascinating where all this is going to go. Like you say, you’ve been on this journey for 15 years. Obviously, as we said, I’m very English. As a child, I always was watching Doctor Who and the Time Machine, Doctor Who’s TARDIS. If you had your own time machine and you could go back to the early- I’m trying to say What if I told you that I do and you do, too? What, a time machine?
[00:50:06.260] – Calvin Correli
Yeah.
[00:50:09.130] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not sure if I would be actually very frightened of that. I have no idea what I would say to them because it’s a ridiculous question. Well, gone. So you do have a time machine.
[00:50:22.300] – Calvin Correli
Well, I mean, here’s the thing, we know from quantum physics that time doesn’t exist.
[00:50:28.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, well, the problem I’m very good at my… I’ve always been good at… My ex-wife was really good at algebra and calculus and all of it. She was an engineer. I’m pretty good at business math. I was even quicker than hers sometimes. But where the hell am I going with this? I’ve lost my track, actually.
[00:50:56.290] – Calvin Correli
You’re about a time machine.
[00:50:57.420] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re about the time machine. I’ve told you, go on, you take over because I’m getting a hot mess in this interview, Kevin. I apologize. Go on.
[00:51:07.370] – Calvin Correli
I interrupted you.
[00:51:08.910] – Jonathan Denwood
You were saying if- You’re just getting back because I interrupted you a couple of times. I don’t know, I’ll get against you.
[00:51:17.030] – Calvin Correli
So you’re saying if I had a time machine, what?
[00:51:20.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, what would you say to yourself?
[00:51:22.400] – Calvin Correli
Yeah. What would I say? I would say… I had this This vision of being that spiritual business coach to hundreds of thousands or millions of people all over the world and providing the software that would make it really simple for people to start a business, especially coaches, but really broader than that. Then for most of the time, I didn’t really truly believe in the vision. I didn’t value myself. I didn’t have a self-worth that allowed me to believe that I was able to actually do this. When I look back, that vision was spot on. But 15 years ago, when I got into spiritual coaching, it wasn’t a thing. Now, it’s quite common, but I was like, it’s probably just me and low self-worth. I have nothing. I don’t know. It’s probably just because I’m so broken that I need this and everybody else is cool and they their shit together. And it’s just me that has issues. And so what I would do, what advice I would give myself is believe in yourself 100%, a thousand %. Totally believe in yourself and your vision And I would impart on myself that I am worthy. And so that’s what I would offer to people watching, listening, is believe in yourself and your dreams and your visions, and know that you’re worthy of whatever it is that you envision for yourself.
[00:53:03.210] – Calvin Correli
Because I genuinely believe that.
[00:53:05.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I really say this… I don’t know why this little memory stuck my mind, because it’s about three or four years ago. I was at a local gas station And we tend to… I’m a creature of habit. I’m really am a creature of habit. So I go to the same gas station and I got to know… I go to a different one now because But I was going to the same gas station and there was a girl in there and we chatted a few times. And then going in and she’s putting my stuff in her bag because I bought some extra stuff. And she said, I’m going to be… What did she say? She said, I’m going to be stuck here forever. I’m not worthy. And I don’t know why, I just looked at her and I said, You’re a daughter of God. You’re worthy of everything that you need to get out of that fault pattern. I don’t know what made me say that, but it was struck. It was quite sudden, her total disillusion about herself and her life, really.
[00:54:25.540] – Calvin Correli
It’s so common and there’s no need for it. It’s like, no. I mean, it’s even like, what if you’re unworthy? So what? Go for it. Just do shit anyway, right? But that’s how the psyche works.
[00:54:40.440] – Jonathan Denwood
No. You’ve torrédi my rambling. I’ve drunk too much coffee this morning. I’ve been drinking too much coffee. But I think it’s been a good discussion, actually. You’ve dealt with me really generously. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it and you’re agreed to come back at some time when we can have a-How long it? How long it? I think we discussed some good general topics because I think one of the problems on this journey is that people make it too complicated and they put themselves under too much pressure too quickly. And just doing it, you’re going to learn so much and you got more time than people think. And I think you agree with that.
[00:55:26.850] – Calvin Correli
You and your son?
[00:55:27.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:55:28.270] – Calvin Correli
I named my company Simplero for a reason. Because I do this, too. And Simpl has always been my tonic, just to make it put it back on your your company name. Simple is my tonic. It’s what solves my pain.
[00:55:46.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Because I’ve learned through a lot of stuff that I’m not trying to be nasty, but any fool can make something complicated. It takes a lot of effort to make something difficult easy. You It’s a lot of work. Interesting. What’s the best way for people to find out more about yourself and your company, Kevin?
[00:56:10.510] – Calvin Correli
Yeah, go follow me on Instagram, so calvincorereli@oninstagram.com. I do have… I recorded a video a week or so ago about the three steps to get to 10,000 a month as a coach. If anyone here is watching and would like that, DM me, follow me on Instagram, DM me, and then mention this podcast. So I know where you’re coming from, and then just say 10k. Just write 10k and name the podcast. I know where you’re coming from, and then I’ll send you that video.
[00:56:45.550] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Like I said, if you want to support the show, go to the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. Join that. My team and I are always on there. We will be back next week with all the internal discussion or another great guest. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
[00:57:07.030] – Calvin Correli
Thanks for listening to the Membership Machine Show. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes, and leave a rating to support the show. Until next time.
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