Melvin Varghese:
Hey there, it's Melvin. I hope you're doing well, having a fantastic day. Before jumping into today's podcast session, just wanted to take a moment to thank the team over at Upheal for supporting today's podcast session. So Upheal is basically an AI-assisted platform for therapists that makes it easy to create case notes and treatment plans for your therapy sessions. It works both for telehealth as well as with in-person sessions as well. I'll tell you more about some of the interesting stuff they're doing, especially around data privacy and things like that. But for now, if you go to sellingthecouch.com forward slash upheel and use the promo code couch 25, the number two, five and couch all one word. you get 25% off of UpHeal for the first two months. That's a very special discount for STZ listeners. So we'll jump right into today's podcast session. Hello. Hello. Welcome to today's session of selling the couch. I hope you're doing well, having a fantastic day. So today's podcast is all about rebranding. So what basically happens when you set out to build a business the way, and you imagine it going a certain way, but different circumstances, whether it's changes in life, or changes in the business landscape force you to rebrand. That's what we're talking about today. I'm joined by my friend Kavon Xiong from smallschool.is. And Kavon was a previous guest on the STZ podcast a number of years ago. In fact, back in 2021, I took Kavon's build in public mastery because I was terrified to post on social media. And I just, I could be really vulnerable like in a closed Facebook community by doing it more publicly. I just felt like I didn't know how to do that well. And I just thought like going through Kavan's course would be helpful. It was a live course I learned a ton. It's informed a lot about how you know, I post on social media, particularly on LinkedIn, and even the content here on YouTube, and on the podcast that I share, just sort of leaning into vulnerability, what does that look like all of that kind of stuff, we're going to cover a number of different topics. One is Kavan's going to share kind of the behind the scenes pain and difficulty of what it takes to build and rebrand. So Kavan basically has rebranded from build in public to small school and what that has meant at a practical level, like shutting down courses, all of that kind of stuff. And then what was Kavan seeing in the market that made him make that shift? And then specifically, how is he thinking about online course creation? What is he seeing in the world of online course creation where he's like, this is something I want to teach because I believe online courses definitely have so much potential. And we wrap up with talking a lot about where he sees course creators stumbling the most. I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. Here's my conversation with Kavan Xiong from smallschool.is. Hey Kavan, welcome back to Selling the Couch.

Kevon Cheung:

Hey Melvin, thanks for having me back. So happy to be here.

Melvin Varghese:

I'm so glad you're here as well. And we've never met in person, right? And it's amazing online relationships, right? Like we live around the halfway around the world from each other. And yet, back in 2021, I took your build in public mastery course, which was Honestly, one of my most favorite courses, and I think it gave me courage to post more authentically on social media. So one, I just wanted to publicly acknowledge you for that, for your courage to even put that out in the world. So thank you so much for that, brother. And then you are, you're one of the most real people, just as a human being, you're wonderfully kind and thoughtful. And I also love that we get to build these businesses, but also as parents, also navigating, you know, for us, this definition of success is not just revenue, right? And how do we holistically build that? And you're one of the people that I really look up to. So thank you for that. And I'm excited for our conversation.

Kevon Cheung:

Yeah, thank you for the nice intro as well. Yeah, definitely the parents part is tough. Still learning how to do it and still learning how to balance things. Talking to other parents helps.

Melvin Varghese:

Well, I've heard once you become a pair, it's like a perpetual journey, right? You just, you entered a different seasons and new challenges and all of that stuff. So yeah, absolutely. I wanted to start here, which is, you know, you built an entire brand called build in public that basically taught people how to use social media to create fans and buyers of products and services, but to do it like authentically, right? And it's how we met. I know you put so much blood, sweat and tears. I've seen your work ethic and just how thoughtful you are about stuff. Yet you recently rebranded to small school. In your newsletter, you said, I'm not going to lie. It was a painful few months. What made it so painful?

Kevon Cheung:

I mean, well, first of all, I invested a lot of time in nailing the niche building in public. It was the first topic I focused on. I thought I had a chance to become the spokesperson of it, and it did work. And then I have been running courses, meeting people like you. Things have changed, you know, after four years. And what I'm seeing right now is that when you focus on a common term like this, two things happen. One is you're able to ride it and you can rise fast, which is good. But when the trend goes away, you can also fall pretty fast. So overall, I'm just sensing the interest for this topic is getting less and less. And that prompts me to start thinking, okay, what do I do? Do I just keep grinding on this topic or do I try to expand myself? So after a lot of thinking, a lot of just imagining the future, I decided that it's time to kind of expand myself a little bit more. And to be honest, it's also the right time because four years ago, If I position myself as someone who's running a school, teaching various topics, it wouldn't make sense. No one would listen to me because I had zero credibility. But after four years, you know, there's a certain size of an audience who have been following me. So it makes sense to start broadening up. But the painful part, you know, it's kind of like your identity is getting crushed. and you need to rebuild what you're known for. I think that's the hardest part. Like for the longest time, people can just say, hey, Kavon, the building public guy. But who am I now? Like, I don't want that anymore. So to be honest, I'm still navigating because small school is about helping people creating small courses. Now we'll get into small courses later on. But when you hear the word courses, is everywhere a lot of people are talking about this so what is my new identity how can I still stand out that is really painful and to be honest I'm still slowly iterating that new identity but of course I'm not going to drop everything I'm still doing a lot of things I think you might feel the same when you are a solopreneur like single founder with no employees like full time employees, you have to do everything right marketing sales fulfillment delivery of the teaching. And then there's a big rebranding project on top. That's just painful. So much to do. So that's why I wrote it in my newsletter. Yeah.

Melvin Varghese:

Yeah. Thank you for articulating all that. I think, you know, a lot of times we don't talk about when these pivots happen. Sometimes it can, you know, it comes across as like, hey, here's our new name, you know, but most people don't talk about like how difficult that is. And you're right, like, especially as solopreneurs and I don't know. Like, I feel like a decent chunk of us, when we start businesses, it's sometimes really hard to tease our identity from the thing that we're building. And when the thing, when you pivot from the thing you're building, I feel like it's really natural to then, I don't know, question your identity on one level, but at least have some recalibration of your identity, right? And it sounds like you're going through that. Do you think, I don't know, this might be like an extreme question, but something I struggle with is sometimes I think very much in black and white, like if something didn't work out, like I failed. Do you struggle with that part of it? And if so, how do you navigate, like work through that? Because, you know, if you linger too long in that, that can really not be a good headspace.

Kevon Cheung:

Yeah, funny you asked that because that was the latest episode I released in my podcast. I talked about dealing with changes. I guess it's kind of scary and of course you pivot, you rebrand because the old one is no longer as relevant. So if it's going really well, why would you do that, right? But I don't see it as failure because For one, like I mentioned earlier, without that four years, without that identity, that chapter, I wouldn't be sitting here being on your podcast, chatting with you. It wouldn't be possible. So for me, it was a huge success because I was able to ride on the wave when the wave was still there. So I need to give myself some credit for that. And if things start to change, There's not much we can do. We can only find out new ways to navigate. But then a new thought came in as I was recording that episode. I thought to myself that if an entrepreneur doesn't have a pivot three, four years in the business, I think that's a failure. Because that would mean they took too long to start. They were trying to find a perfect angle to start, so then they don't have to pivot. But if you are a fast mover, you should be able to just jump right in and then be like, OK, I'm going to change later, and that's fine. So I don't know if it's true or not, but I feel like that could be it. We should prioritize in taking action over thinking.

Melvin Varghese:

Yeah. Just wanted to take a moment to thank the team over at Upheal for supporting today's podcast session. Upheal is AI-powered case notes. Now, I know for many of us there's a natural skepticism around AI, but the Upheal team actually uses a third party to make sure that all of the software that they're using is HIPAA compliant, GDPR certified, and all of these different things. The very cool thing with this is, now, Upheal might make perfect sense if you're doing telehealth sessions, right? You run the Upheal software in the background and it basically captures the information during therapy sessions and then generates case notes based on how you want them, whether it's SOAP or DAP or any of those other kind of sessions. But you can also use Upheal for in-person sessions as well. You can learn more about Upheel and the awesome work they're doing in the world over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash upheel and be sure to enter the promo code couch and the number 25 all one word for 25% off your Upheel plan for the first two months. This is actually a non-advertised special so be sure to follow that link and check it out. I think it's a great way to look at it. I think for me, when I started entrepreneurship, I thought it's about building one product, sticking for the long term. And I think there's definitely a part of that But I think the thing I didn't anticipate is that ability to pivot and sort of separate out, here's objectively what I'm seeing in the market. Here's what I thought was going to happen, but here's the reality. And this pivot really has nothing to do with my competence or my gut feeling three years ago on something. It's just more what the market's bearing out, right? These are new data points that I just didn't have. And I don't know, for me personally, the hardest work, and I don't think I've like fully gotten there with this, but the hardest work for me is not when there are pivots, not seeing it as I'm incompetent.

Kevon Cheung:

Totally agree with you. After being in business by myself for four years, I think my biggest mistake has been investing too much into one thing. Like you said, I thought I'm going to talk about something or run my course forever. I think that intention was great because that makes that topic something that Kavon can really put the heart in. That's a good thing. But yeah, we shouldn't expect things to last forever. Like I think previous to this chapter of my life, I was helping a founder run a kids coding school. What happened during COVID? The school was running really well, but then you need to figure out how to teach online. And then I was running another software company. Also, just right before COVID, we were focusing on real events technology. And then because of COVID, we had to figure out how to become like a virtual meeting tool. You just don't know what would happen. And I really don't see anything that can last forever anymore, especially in in the years that we're living right now. So yeah, my biggest lesson or advice to the listener is make it good, but then quickly spread it out and expand the business. Don't just put the eggs in one basket because that's what I did. And yeah, big hard lesson.

Melvin Varghese:

Yeah, I mean, and the thing is, like, I've seen enough, like, experts who have had way more success than I have, you know, have said, when you have a product, like focus on having one scalable product, and go all in on it, right. And so I think there's definitely wisdom in that. But there is this other side, which you're talking about, right? There's stuff you can't account for. right, as you sort of build that out, where you may have to make some harder pivots. I mean, I think I'm realizing that same thing, right? Like we had our online course mastermind as the main revenue generator during the pandemic, and it was doing fine. But then I think like as whatever we're calling this, I think, you know, we talked about it on your podcast, a rolling recession, right? Or inflation, whatever it is. It's making me realize like banking on a high ticket offer as the sole source of income, it's way too much pressure and stress. And it, yeah, there's just wisdom in strategic diversification.

Kevon Cheung:

Yeah. Those programs that you mentioned, I think, I know the few biggest one in our space online. I was looking at them when I was investing so much effort in revamping my experience in a course. But then now I kind of look back and I thought to myself like, what if they have multiple things running at the same time, but the version that I'm seeing right now is the one that is left. So we don't see the small projects next to it. Right? That is highly possible. And then of course, timing and luck can play a huge factor as well. But yeah, at the end of the day, every industry, every space, every period of time is different.

Melvin Varghese:

So… Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You're going all in on online courses.

Kevon Cheung:

How come? I'm a person who is always looking inside and outside when I'm deciding on a new direction. So after building in public, I looked at what I've been doing. And to be honest, I haven't been just focusing on building in public. I have products like email course engine, teaching people build a free email course as a super lead magnet. I also have like master classes that's teaching people how to build online challenges. So, when I see that I'm like, hey, I've already been teaching people around. building learning experiences. So a big part of me is just aligned with that vision and interested in that vision. So that's very important to me. I know a lot of people, when they look for a new direction, they would imagine new things and then, okay, I'm going to go down this road and then force themselves to do it. I cannot do it that way. I have to look at what I've been doing already, and then just say, okay, I'm gonna keep doing that. So I don't need to force myself. So that's me looking inside. But I think, of course, I need to evaluate the market a little bit as well. I don't think I'm like the super expert in this. But I do see personal branding, you know, audience, the voice, everyone has a voice. All this is becoming more and more important. I know we're post-COVID now, but I don't see it going away. And I definitely don't see only the people who run online business should have a voice. I see that basically, if you're like a professional, everyone is trying to build that social media image, that personal brand And I do see that if educational content like articles and short videos are not cutting it anymore because there's so much of it, what's the next thing that can build trust really fast for these professionals? And when I say professionals, it can mean someone running a training company and like a one man training company doing live facilitation. But of course they can expand that online arm of the business too, right? So I'm going in with small courses because I think if they have these small courses, they can actually use it to add a new revenue stream or expand their existing business. And it has nothing to do with online courses or info products, but just whatever business they are running. I see that as a different way to build trust with people. So again, that's just my hypothesis and gamble, but yeah, let's see what happens.

Melvin Varghese:

Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously like I'm a big proponent of online courses. We have a, you know, we have our mastermind. I have my podcasting course. And I think one thing I'm realizing is, you know, at the core, like people learn in different ways. I think there's also this real, I don't know, there's like real design. I'm nervous, like nuances, but I think by and large, I think there's this real desire for people to, learn stuff, you know, um, now the juxtaposition is, I feel like people are a lot less, a lot more busy, right. Post pandemic. Right. But yeah. So interesting to hear you talk about it. When do you think it makes sense for someone to add a course to, to kind of their offering?

Kevon Cheung:

I think because in the last few years there have been so many new creators just starting a new path, including myself actually four years ago. I think if you haven't confirmed or validated your expertise, then it's not the right time to start a course. start to create content first, make sure people are willing to listen to you. And then at a certain stage, you can package a different but awesome experience and then have that as your anchor of the business. But I think speaking of like that founder of a training company, right, if that person has tons of experience, like five, seven years running that, then of course, it would be a no brainer to develop the course, but figure out how to present that to their potential clients or like make it the obvious thing on their social profile, or have content created to that asset so that more people can see it. So, It really depends where you are in your journey, but I think the most important thing is what does it do? What does the course do for you? Are you interested in making money from the course or is it more something that bring people in and then after five days they're like, oh my god, I don't know who this guy is, but I'm falling in love with this person. That would be an amazing thing to achieve.

Melvin Varghese:

Yeah, so many good things there. I think I mean, this is like a general principle I try to follow is I don't teach anything that I haven't done successfully or at least like have enough like skin in the game where I've done it for multiple years. Right. And I think that's just like a general piece of advice I always recommend, because you know, there's an influx of information out available online now, especially with AI and all of this stuff, right? But the nuances, right, ie the lived experiences is often what's going to separate like good courses from like just average courses, right? So that's just Yeah, it's just I mean, I'm like, I love that you you honed in on that. I have two more questions for you. So the first one is, where do you see course creators stumbling the most?

Kevon Cheung:

That's actually related to what you just talked about. I think when we hear courses, what do we imagine? a few lessons, boring lessons, a few videos, and then you watch it, and then you're like, okay, I get a brain demo of what this person wants to teach. I think we can do better than that. I think most course creators don't know how to create an experience. So an experience is not just presentation in a video format or even in a text format. That's just the first step. I think there's so much more we can do in terms of like onboarding students, creating a connection. I really don't think courses have to be one way. It's so weird, like in school, in the real school, the students know the teacher and see them all the time and the teacher are there to guide them. But in our course space, most of the time the students are left alone to figure it all out. Like why is that the case? Can it be more like a real school? Can there be more guidance? And that's another thing. But also like even, so I have a small courses framework, right? Even small delights, like can you just, I know you have to teach a topic, so you have like 10 videos, but can you just add a little surprise in there? So that the student will go like, Oh, this is different. Oh, this is interesting. This is exciting. I want to finish the next five lessons. So like, I just feel like we still have a lot of room to play with the experience when it comes to learning online. So that would be exactly what the course creators today are not so good at. And hopefully I can make some contribution in this space, maybe through software, maybe through just teaching how to run good experiences. I don't know yet, but I'm going to take the first step by teaching other people these small little things.

Melvin Varghese:

Well, I mean, I will tell you, like, having gone through your building public mastery course, like, I remember looking forward to each of those gatherings, because one, I knew you would give it your all. But I think it was right, like that sort of surprise element, like, I knew it wasn't going to be straight lecture, I know, we would go into breakouts, I know, you'd have a little thing, like, you make it like fun and entertaining. I heard, you know, part of I think what becoming a good course creator you're like, most people think it's like 100% like information regurgitation, but it's like more like 50% entertainer 50% educator, right and educate like entertainer doesn't mean you got to like juggle over it like, you know, falls in the air while teaching nothing like that. But it's like weaving in your story, like doing something like you said, right? Like that surprises and delights folks. Yeah, you do an exceptional job of that. And I think, yeah, that that tip is such such a good one. The final question I had was, your new brand is small school and you emphasize the concept of a small course. What exactly is a small course?

Kevon Cheung:

Yeah, I actually spilled a little bit just now. Small doesn't mean the size of small, like you don't really need to teach a five-minute course or teach a two-people cohort. No, you don't have to do that. It means focusing on the right things, like As I mentioned, the small details actually would change the whole experience. And most people creating courses, they're more marketers, they're more like, oh, I want to fix the copywriting, I want to fix the sales strategy. more people should think about the learning experience of the students. But the other thing is also something that we talked about earlier, how we shouldn't be instantly thinking that we need to build this big thing. Because I actually struggle with this and I'm still struggling of having a big scope. Like I want to teach this one topic and then I keep adding, adding, adding more things to it. Well, partly because I want to make sure that people get what they pay for it. But weirdly, a lot of people have this mindset that in order to get people to this transformation, to this point B from point A, they need all these things. But I realized after teaching for four years, it's not true. A lot of these things, we just imagine that they need it, but it doesn't really help them. So it doesn't just apply to building the courses, but also building business. So I definitely want to instill that mindset of building small, just taking baby step to how they go about achieving their goal with small courses. Last thing, I think this is a very important one. I don't have a solution to this. You can tell that I'm leaning towards more the education side than the marketing side of things. But traditionally, when we start talking about like this educational terms, it sounds like they're coming from the traditional teachers. And it's really boring for modern entrepreneurs and creators to hear those. It's like, I don't want to learn those. I just want to sell more courses. So I think a big part is also like, how to teach this stuff but in a very simple way like just that simple like fifth grader can understand that would be a big challenge so now you get the full picture of small courses yeah small school yeah that's awesome come on i am so grateful for you uh where can we learn more about you and the work that you're doing in the world I think the obvious place is SmallSchool. SmallSchool.is is the website and I think that's a great place to start to discover all these new things that I'm doing. And social media wise, I mean, I used to be more active on Twitter slash X, but lately I'm spending more time building my podcast and my YouTube channel, which are both quite new. But you can search either Kavon or Small School, you'll find them. And Threads, I'm having quite some fun meeting new friends on Threads. So the username is very easy to remember. It's just Kavon, K-E-V-O-N. So you can find me there as well.

Melvin Varghese:

Kavon, thank you again for doing this and have a great rest of your day.

Kevon Cheung:

Thank you. Bye, Melvin. Bye.

Melvin Varghese:

Hey there, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kavan, and especially if you are in a season where you are rebranding your private practice or your small business, or you are thinking about adding an online course. I hope that today's session has been incredibly helpful for you. Kavan's website is again over at smallschool.is. And I was reflecting on this conversation and the one thing I just kept taking away from it was, you know, a lot of colleagues asked me like, Mel, when is the right time to launch an online course? The truth is enough of us struggle with imposter syndrome and feel like I need to only launch an online course when I do this. And yet that this keeps changing over time. So I don't know if that's always the best model. But I think one general framework is teach what you have built expertise in and you have some real world experience in. And success can look a little bit different. You know, sometimes success is financial. Like for example, With our podcasting course, I teach podcasting because I've been doing this for nine plus years now and the STZ podcast is over 1.8 million downloads, right? So I've had good success with it. I share those kind of numbers, just not if it's a flex, but just to share like, this is, you know, I've done it for this amount of time. This is, we've had some reasonable success with it. But I think that general framework is a good one. I've seen enough of our colleagues where they will say, Mel, I want to launch a course in a completely unrelated area that's unrelated to their private practice niche, to even the direction they want to go because they see an opportunity. But my whole thing is, you know, personally for me, I'm always thinking decades versus days. So if you can see yourself being there here in that space that you're thinking about creating a course for eight to 10 years, then consider it. If it's less, if it's like a, I just want to do it for a couple of years, then it may be a little bit more difficult, uh, to consider and, and, and really build out because it's also not just about the online course, but about the related products and services that you're going to offer. Have a great rest of your day and I will see you next time. Bye.

Narrator:

Hey, it's Melvin. I hope that you enjoyed today's session. Again, wanted to just send a final invite.

Melvin Varghese:

 join us in our online course Mastermind, which is currently open for enrollment. If you've been thinking about creating an online course and want to do this in community alongside other therapists, the Mastermind is definitely something to check out. You can learn more about it over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind. Have a great rest of your day.