Hello Udemy students…

[spacer height=”15px”]… and thanks for taking the time to indulge with me.

[spacer height=”15px”]I know your time is precious so I will get right to the point.  After much deliberation I have decided to start my very own online video training site.  In truth, this idea has been with me for several years, going back a minimum of 15 years (true).  The main reason I never started it (until now) was fear of failure and/ or essentially committing career suicide.  Please allow me to elaborate.

[spacer height=”15px”]As some of you know I’ve been a corporate trainer for over 20 years and am still currently active in the business, teaching both live and web based sessions for various large (recognizable) training companies on  a regular basis.  Even though I have independent contractor relationships with all of these companies suffice to say they might not be too happy about this new site because it may be viewed as a conflict of interest.  Sure, they have no legal recourse, but let’s face it sometimes people act funny and you never really know how they will react given a particular set of circumstances.   Some might support the idea; others might hold it in contempt, yet this is a risk I’m now willing to take.  No bravado intended, I simply decided, “eh… why not go ahead and try regardless of what might happen?”

[spacer height=”15px”]Along with teaching live classes over the years I also have delved into the area of online training, eventually discovering Udemy and creating a course mainly to see how it would fare in the marketplace.  I never expected to make a fortune off the class and since it was my first go-around with Udemy I was not sure what to expect.  Granted there are similar Excel courses on Udemy with a lot more students enrolled when compared to the Excel soup to nuts course, but I believe there is an explanation for this.  The part most Udemy students are not aware of is Udemy offers a whole host of tutorials for authors to learn how to market their course.  Sure, Udemy does a small amount of marketing on your behalf, but the real burden falls upon the course author.  So what I’m trying to say is outside of one simple post on Reddit, and sending an email to an old student list, I have never actively promoted this course, which is something other Udemy instructors heavily engage in- they market and promote like there is no tomorrow, and kudos to them.  I simply chose a different approach.  Basically after the course was launched I sat back and watched to see what would happen because I didn’t want to go “all in” with an expensive, time consuming, marketing campaign only to end up losing money.  Phrased differently, outside of minimal effort all the people that have enrolled in this course have done so through pure organic searching, and most important—ultimately deciding to place their confidence in me because they saw value in what was offered.  Of which I owe them a tremendous amount of gratitude!  

[spacer height=”15px”]All that being said here are a few key takeaways for you with respects to this new site.

[spacer height=”15px”]What this site is intended for:

• anyone who is looking to learn popular software at low prices
• people who view yours truly as a competent instructor
• taking the entirety of all the software knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years and make it available on my own terms, free from corporate bureaucracy, restrictive policies or other such non-sense

[spacer height=”15px”]What this site is NOT intended to do

• coerce, steal, recruit or co-opt any existing Udemy students
• disparage, harm, or demean Udemy in any way
• undercut Udemy’s platform to any degree

[spacer height=”15px”]Udemy has been nothing but great to me, and I am very thankful.   I’m merely informing you as to why I have not created any new courses for Udemy (even though it has been requested) and where you can find me in the future if you prefer.  Last, I am not going to shut down the Excel Soup to Nuts course because that would not be cool.

[spacer height=”15px”]The bottom line: this site offers my own online video training series for popular software applications, and each course on this site is $3.99 USD.  

[spacer height=”15px”]Please feel free to interpret this news as you wish.  If you have any questions, or would like to reach out, you can drop me a note at:

saying_hello  [at] Skootzi [dot] com, or via our contact form.

[spacer height=”15px”]Thank you so very much for taking the time to read this message!!

Dave

[spacer height=”15px”]PS- Some of you might want a full explanation as to how I arrived at this point, so if you have a burning desire to get an in-depth explanation out you can read the full story via this link:   https://skootzi.com/the-full-story/

[spacer height=”15px”]Useful links

Home page:  https://skootzi.com/

Current Catalog:  https://skootzi.com/catalog/