Would you like to know how Jerry Banfield went from being a police officer to an online course instructor because you will see everything is possible?
The Second Jerry Banfield Show – From Police Officer to Online Course Instructor!
John asks a question, do you keep working on your career and building yourself up while you've got a job? Essentially, do what you really want to as a side hustle and use your job to kind of make that possible. Is that your question?
I've got great experience to share about that.
The show came about initially in my head, as I can make this kind of a side thing I start where I will do the show like a little side project, but I'll make money online as my main thing and that'll fund it, so I don't have to make money out of this show.
I might want to back up a little bit like, "Okay, how did I make all this money online to begin with? And what made that possible that you can use today?"
Then, we'll get to your question which will tie perfectly into that.
I was a police officer 11 years ago, risking my life and giving my whole body, mind and soul to a stressful job, which was fun, risking my life for less than $40,000 a year, going to work and being ordered around, and told what to do all day, putting myself in dangerous situations.
I'd been doing that for a couple of years. In fact, the first full-time job I got out of college was a correction officer where I risked my life for $20,000 a year and I resented it.
I remember going to restaurants and not tipping because I thought like, "This waitress makes more money than I do bringing food out to the table and I'm risking my life in prison for making less money than she is."
I had a very low mindset when it came to money like money was the root of all evil, something kind of nasty you needed to do to get by.
Once I got out of that state of consciousness, then my money started to go really well. I didn't get out of that state of consciousness until I kind of hit a complete bottom spiritually, financially, physically, and emotionally.
That was in 2014, I was drinking. I couldn't stop drinking. My health was terrible and my finances were going down the drain. I had built my own business online, but I was essentially just hustling for money all the time. I often was doing things I didn't really enjoy, which is ridiculous when you've got your own business.
You think you should be able to just create your own business and have the life of your dreams. You just feel like an idiot when you're showing up and doing work you don't even enjoy.
I hit this bottom in 2014 where I just surrendered, and I said, "Please, God, I'll do anything to serve you. Let me just stop with all my stuff and serve, do whatever you need me to do."
I started thinking about other people like, "What other people actually need me to do? How can I match what I need to what other people need?"
I got into teaching online courses from that. I was attracted to this website called Udemy.com.
Has anyone taken a course on Udemy?
Nice.
I was attracted there in 2014. I was one of the earlier instructors on it. I looked around and I said, "There are not very many good courses on this website. I'll help it out. I'll make some great courses."
I tried to sell them and nobody would buy my courses. I got so frustrated I just gave them away for free. I felt like, "Well, I put all this work into these courses. I want people to actually take them. I'll just give them all away for free. At least people will take them."
I looked at, "If my business fails, then what would I have wanted to do? I would have wanted to share my experience with people. I would have wanted to help people. I'm going to just give all this away."
That's where some kind of miracle happened. I just kept giving my courses away and I gave hundreds of thousands of free enrollments in my courses, just everywhere you could put a free coupon.
I filmed courses every day, I borrowed $50,000 so that I would have some financial security because I knew as long as I had to keep making money to pay the bills, I wouldn't do what I really wanted to. But that's where I got into a place where I could see if I want to do work I love, I need to stop doing and refuse to do work I don't love.
I dropped doing everything else in my business so I could focus on teaching courses. That's when I took that leap of faith. I borrowed the money and I said, "Okay, I got enough money to pay the bills for six months. I'm just going to make online courses every day. I don't need any clients. I don't need to do anything else."
I took this guy's course that said how I make a thousand a day on Udemy and he laid it out. I said, "If he can make a thousand a day, I can make $2,000 a day."
I got up to $3,000 a day on Udemy within a year of taking that course and making that decision. I just went all in on it. My whole, I was obsessed with it. I got up to 72 courses on Udemy.
That's how I got my whole business online and how I made all that $1.6 million.
But what you can see is the mindset, the mindset shift, where I stopped thinking about "How can I make money?" and started thinking about, "How can I really help you? How can I really help anyone in the world who needs my help? How do I do it in a way that I love now?"
There are lots of things I could do to help people, but the trick was "How can I do something that I love to do that will also help people? This is not any good if I do things to help people, but I don't like doing it. And it's not any good if I love doing stuff, but nobody is benefiting from it."
That's where things went really well for me.
At some point there was a little kind of negative seed in there. I was still in that competitive state of mind and I wanted to be the number one instructor on Udemy.com. I did everything I could think of. I learned and did all these online ads. I collaborated with other instructors. I got into the top 10 and I was on my way to number one and they sent me an email wiping my whole account out because they can, it's their website.
I'd made every effort not to violate any policies and they just got rid of me anyway because I was also very loud. I told everybody how much money I'm making exactly how I'm doing it and other people were copying me.
I said, "Yeah, you just hire a guy in Eastern Europe to make a course on an in-demand topic, pay them a couple of thousand. You put that up on Udemy as your course and you promote it. Then it makes lots of money."
So there's a bunch of other people like going on Upwork, hiring people, putting these courses up, and several of my friends that I showed have done really well with that.
After that I got that email and my consciousness started to kind of do that flip, like, "Okay, now I'm in scarcity mode again. I don't know how I'm going now."
I essentially forgot what I really did right. I started thinking, "It's Udemy, and now without that, I don't know if I'm going to be able to pay my bills," which is objectively ridiculous.
I had almost a hundred thousand in the bank. I'm sitting here afraid of not knowing how I'm going to pay my bills and the more I stayed in that it kept manifesting.
Even when good opportunities came along, I'd somehow spend the money on something bigger, and that's how we got back to here.
I love you.
You’re awesome.
I appreciate the chance to serve you today and I will see you again soon.
Love,
Jerry Banfield
Edits from video transcript by Michel Gerard.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://jerrybanfield.com/online-course-instructor/