Dr. Raj Balkaran (Founder of the Online School of Indian Wisdom)
Jared:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Kajabi Edge podcast where we talk to real entrepreneurs to give you an edge on Kajabi. I’m your host Jared Loman, Vice President of Customer Experience and today I’m joined by Raj Balkaran. How are you doing today Raj?
Raj:
Fantastic, it’s so great to be here on podcast with you.
Jared:
And maybe, should I, I should probably call you Dr. Raj or do you prefer Dr. Balkaran or what, what’s the preference?
Raj:
You can call me Raj, you can call me Dr. Raj, I'm sure you have been called much worse, whatever, whatever you’re comfortable with.
Jared:
Good stuff, well let’s get started. Tell us about the, about the doctor title, tell us a little bit about like how that came into play?
Raj:
Okay well, the doctor title comes from having a PhD as opposed to commonly medical degree, people are medical doctors obviously. But when it's PhD, which is typically the terminal degree in a field, they’re considered an expert in that field and as per our society’s custom, the doctor title is afforded to such a person. In my case, like my degree’s technically, where in religious study. The study of comparative religion, and I focused on eastern religion - Hinduism in particular, and to get more nerdy and more detailed, I study the, the ancient indian myths of the great goddess, the great Hindu goddess. So I study old Sanskrit stories to the point that they call me Doctor now.
Jared:
I love it, now that, that’s really cool. And I think probably the reason that stood out to me, I don’t know if I’m correct on this, but as I understand it, it’s only, it’s only in United States I believe or maybe Canada as well, that we actually use the term doctor for both the medical practice as well as for, you know the, the PhD. Is that, does that ring to you?
Raj:
Well the PhD across the western academy, so even in Europe, even in Australia..
Jared:
Okay
Raj:
In India, whenever someone attains a terminal degree in their field, a PhD that, the, a PhD is technically a doctor of philosophy.
Jared:
Got it
Raj:
Technically and so, so that title is accorded to them where it gets a little tricky is a title like Prof. like someone may have a full professorship or not, they just maybe a session instructor, cause that could be a little more tricky and dependent. But generally the title doctor is accorded to anybody who has the highest degree in their field.
Jared:
Very cool, well that’s, that was just a little curiosity coming into play there. I guess where that really makes a lot of sense is, it actually relates perfectly to your business. You are, founder of the online school of Indian Wisdom. What’s kinda like your quick elevator pitch? Tell us what that's all about.
Raj:
Yeah, I don’t have a, a canned elevator pitch but essentially I present, you know, ancient Indian wisdom from old Sanskrit text in a way that’s relevant to modern life. And I sort of bring together academic training and also traditional linear training, I’ve trained with masters and their tradition. Bring that together, presented in a way that makes sense for modern life and that’s pretty much what I do at the school.
Jared:
That’s awesome. Well let’s kind of just rewind just a little bit, tell us a little bit about who you are, what was your journey prior to becoming Dr. Raj? Where did this all begin?
Raj:
Yeah you know, there’s a journey before the Dr. Raj and there’s a journey since the Dr. Raj, and the journey since the Dr. Raj is really the, the meat of the entrepreneurial journey.
Jared:
Okay
Raj:
Let’s start with that.
Jared:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Raj:
Yeah so, I did degrees kind of part time, on and off throughout my adult life, worked in between, had a bunch of practical experience. And then I decided to do a PhD cause the dream job was to teach undergrad to be a college Prof type thing. I finished my PhD in 2015, in my particular field, there are no jobs. Part of that is just the nature of the academy where profs live a long time, they’re productive well into their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s even so there’s not a whole lot of retiring and institutions aren’t really funding you positions because they tend to get away with hiring somebody for 5k a course versus like, you know, a 100k a year type thing. And so they hire session instructors and that’s the business model for the universities these days so there are very few jobs in my field. And when I came out that was the case, I was shortlisted for a couple of jobs. I really felt like staying in Toronto especially given, certain shifts on the globe, shall we say. But you know, without work on my field the funds dwindled and dwindled and dwindled and I rang in 2016 with literally 4 cents to my name, literally I had 4 cents, not even a nickel in my checking account. Line of credit was maxed out, credit cards are maxed out, I’ve done 3 degrees right? And I just had this, this really intense experience of like, how on earth can somebody you know, intelligent, caring, hard working in like a major metropolitan in Toronto? You know, I literally have probably 20 jobs in the course of my life at that point, all kinds of different work.
How on earth could I be pennyless? Or maybe not quite not penny less, I have 4 pennies apparently. How the hell is this possible? You know, and I’m like okay what the heck am I supposed to do? But I love to teach and they’re people out there, so I sent an email out and said, would anybody like to take a course on Hindu goddess? Somebody’s people or people in my extended networks, some were students at, that have stayed in touch from me teaching continued studies in University of Toronto, which I did on and off for about 10 years. And before I knew it within a week, I had enough money to survive that month. If it wasn’t for my mother’s generous christmas gift, which was monetary, that year, I don’t know what I would’ve done for that holiday season. And despite that I rang in the year with 4 cents to my name. I have to do something. Just that one email, a couple follow ups and had enough students to teach for them, I said okay I could repeat this, I repeated it. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t work, sometimes there was tweaking involved, or conversations involved.
I was in this strange position of loving people, knowing people where I will, loving teaching, having all kinds of things to teach, not ever having taken one business course in my life. I was really struggling with online medium because I was an old fashioned meet and greet, you know hands on, you know, real, you know, sort of real life person. That’s how I did on my winnings and dealings, wasn’t even on social media at that point, believe it or not. And so, you know, I struggled but I had this intuition that I couldn’t explain that online was way the goal, and it was extremely difficult because I really struggled with tech and I know nothing about business. Now I know much about business, but at that point, you know, I didn’t know very much at all.
So I was embarrassed this learning curve of you know, slaying the how do I create this website dragon, you know, what the heck do I do with the email list? How do I get that going? All these moving parts that sort of have to come piece by piece. And I did that alongside continuing to publish if I had a professorship. So at this point, over the last 6 years since I graduated, I’ve published easily more than the average prof in my field, maybe two combined. And that was all done while supporting myself selling courses, eventually selling online courses. Fast forward a couple of years, I wish I found Kajabi before 2021 because it’s never been smoother for someone like me to run an online business. Because in this one platform, you have something to manage your contacts, you have something to send your emails at with, you have something to build your, your platforms, your sales pages, you have, you know a learning management system where students can log in, and I founded the school on March of this year and it was just a crystallization of these kind of one off online courses, you know, using google drive and a bunch of emails and, you know, sort of old school.
Jared:
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I wanna, I love to do, I think, I love to really zoom in on, kind of that earlier stage to where you were running into some of those struggles. What were some of those struggles that you were facing as, as you’re trying to get up running?
Raj:
Well, overwhelmed, overwhelmed at how out of your comfort zone it is, like certain things I’m skilled at, certain things I’m not. And there’s all kinds of skills involved in setting up on a platform, right? So there was a very real challenge of struggling to set up an email. So I started on email on a website, set up a website for yourself, figure out a logo, you know, figure out the name of a platform all that ahead of platform called Power of Myth, it was an homage, you know Joseph Campbell, few decades ago and I was, the courses were based on comparative mythology right? And it went for a while, and then I’ve decided to just disband that in 2018, focus on the one on one coaching, cause people wanted one on one coaching, and then there were challenges there in terms of how to a set up on scheduling systems, how to keep in touch with people, how to you know. So there were various challenges with the actual nuts and bolts of just doing business. On top of there is the overwhelm, but the real challenge is you know, it’s the same with me as it is with most human beings, same with all the clients we come and coach with me, right?
The real challenges aren’t the practical ones or the emotional ones. Shame, I felt like an escort, I felt, I really had this internalized myth upon intended like sort of a, in a pejorative sense, I had this myth about like, and it’s very much invoke at the academy, you know a serious academicism don’t market themselves, they don’t deal with the money, they don’t deal with the public, what is this? Right? I’ve always loved dealing with the public so that wasn’t too much of an issue. But I really felt like I was, you know, selling myself in some unsavory manner and I had to overcome that, and understand that money’s energy, and money is how you communicate the value and you exchange value, money is not what we think it is, money is much more than that. So that was one series of challenges that I had to overcome.
Jared:
Well I’d, I’d love to hear like, what did you learn throughout that journey? Like what was, what was the lesson if you will?
Raj:
There’s a number of lessons, one lesson is that whenever you are trying to find out why you’re on this planet? You have to know why everybody else is on this planet. And it’s really difficult, I mean as cheesy as it is, right? Like every superhero movie you’ve ever come across based on, you know, principles of comparative mythology from ancient times. The hero at the beginning is always, you know, is always encouraged to stay in the status quo, to stay in the ordinary, to take the safe path, to take the known path, right? And when you are trying to do something that in your heart you know needs to exist when you’re creating something new, when you’re entrepreneuring, when you’re birthing something into the world. Very few of anybody have, will have any real sense of what that should look like that you shouldn’t be doing, and unless you’re guided by that, and then it starts emerging, you will be dissuaded and you will be discouraged, cause no one will get it, cause it doesn’t exist, right?
And you know, I was online, I was on Zoom teaching in 2017, in my field I was sort of alone in the wilderness. Fast forward a few years, COVID, complete change of consciousness, now so many university profs are online teaching. Some of them even have podcasts, right? So I’m sort of alone in the jungle with a machete for a while and now there’s a bit of a settlement there. But that required me to really dig deep and ignore all of the, the voices of what a normal career, a normal path looks like. So now it’ll be one major lesson that I learned, which is you know, finding why you’re here and what you want to do, and, and, and you’re not gonna find a model for and this is necessarily in the world already, if you’re carving your own path. So that’s one thing that comes to mind.
Jared:
That’s great. Tell me I, I know that we, we discussed this in a matter of a few minutes but the reality of this was, is this was a probably a lengthy journey, what did that, what did that timeline look like for you?
Raj:
Yeah so another really important life lesson with anything consequential or any significant is patience and perseverance. And there, what is that brings together two very opposite skills. So some people are very patient and they’re happy to wait for things to happen, and some people are go-getters and they wanna get bleeped on, and they’re not particularly patient. And there's a sweet spot for anything major, a degree, building a business, building a body you want, whatever it is, right? Is you’ve got to, it’s not pitching a tent, it’s a pyramid, you gotta, you know, put some bricks up and then go do something else, and put some more bricks up and go do something else. It’s the long game, it’s a long hole, it’s not for the instant gratification crowd. And it’s not for the people who stay knocked down when they’re knocked down, you get knocked down 7 times, you get up 8 times, you keep going. Right? Failure is just a plot twist, failure doesn’t have to be the end of the story, it just depends on how you respond to it.
So, course is offered, it goes well, people are happy to pay for it, great. Next month, it goes well, 3rd month, quirk, okay nobody wants this course. Is it the content? Is it the people? Is it the timing? Right? So you kinda have to be a scientist right? Be like, what is it that’s not working? What can I change? How do I reach the people that I wanna reach? How do I get more people into my field? Is there, is there a fit between what a marketing, who I’m marketing to, how I’m positioning it? Do they understand? Are they, okay, are they naturally passionate about the Hindu Goddess? Okay, yes I love that or do they have no idea? Do they want to know that this may help women’s empowerment? This may help with balancing out a more artistic consciousness? You know, I’m like, communicating the real value of these courses to the right people and this is like, this isn’t fast food, this is a gourmet, right? This takes time and pivoting and reiterating, so, so it’s taken all together 6 years before entrepreneuring and founding this online school formally. Mind you, is it a whole bunch of other things? You know, but it’s, it’s not something that happens overnight.
Jared:
Sure, well let’s talk about a little bit more about that audience, in your space, like, how do you go about? Like you have all of the knowledge, you have the wisdom, you have all of the pieces of the puzzle. How do you go about identifying and finding your audience?
Raj:
Yeah, you know, an audience is, it’s something that, when you’re ready to market something you need an audience, and yet to have an audience you need to have built one for much longer than the, you know, previously right? You’re ready for that apple but you haven’t planted a tree yet, you know? So it will vary from person to person. But having a clear sense of who yourself is for and who’s interested in your stuff, that’s key. Because when you, when you try to be for everybody, you really end up being for nobody, cause nobody really knows you for them, right? So you know, if I have a school of Indian Wisdom, if someone’s not interested in Indian Wisdom, clearly they’re not interested in school. It’s not a school of comparative religion, it’s not a school of Indian religion, it’s not a school of whatever it is, it’s fairly niche. So you have to have a sense of what people in your circle want from you, cause they do want something from you, and you do have something to offer. And if you already are a content creator or an expert in your field, you will be known for something and valued for something. You’re intrinsically valuable but that content could be valuable to people. And if you pay attention, you'll be able to discern who that avatar is, who that archetype is, who’s that person who just loves taking your stuff, focus on that person, cause that’s what you’re here to serve. Where do they hang out? What does it for them? What do they want from you? And ask them, so it’s clear.
Jared:
Yeah, does your content define your audience or does the audience define your content?
Raj:
It has to be, it has to be a synergy, the, the key is, right offer for the right audience. The offer might be great but not resonating with that audience. So the offer, the content has to resonate with the audience that you’re trying to serve, but it’ll depend, it’ll depend on the person's specific journey. Some people may have blogs, you have an audience, some people may have Youtube channels, you have an audience, some people may have hobbies, you have networks, you have interests, right? So at the end of the day, in my view, a business, all the business is, is a sustained way of serving people. It’s how, how can I best serve people? And then let me work out the nuts and bolts and monetize that, so I can continue to do that, and serve more people on a greater scale.
But the end of the day, core of a business, especially when related to the online education or platform with Kajabi, the core of your business is service. Like, what am I here to teach, share? Who needs me? Who needs what from me? Then, you have to tweak, okay well, how am I communicating? How are they registering the thing they wanna know? Are we speaking the same language? Are they calling it something different? Right? Then it’s a question of, of communication? Now you could be with the love of your life, or a parent? then you may have trouble communicating, much less someone you barely know online. So then it’s a question of well, how do I reach that person? Are we speaking the same language? But I would say it is a little bit of cart and horse, but I’d say the, the driving factor is not the offer, it’s the audience.
Jared:
I guess, how did that, how did that materialize in your journey of, of creating this content, it sounds like you, going back you talked about how, you know, you were, you created more content than, you published more content than any other academic in the space. Was that also a, kind of a materialization of you, you know you knew the audience was? Or how did you kind of make it from I’m producing this content to I’m producing content for my audience?
Raj:
Well this, so my path has different, there’s, there different moving parts to my career, but two huge buckets are scholarships, producing scholarship. Books, articles, book chapters functioning as an academic, and that’s a certain kind of content and then there is online teaching right? that’s now congealed into the school. I also teach online in a place called The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, where I get to teach people, you know, based on the Oxford University, but much like The OCHS, the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, the school of Indian Wisdom is geared towards online teaching and content that people want, not necessarily researchers or scholars. There is an overlap and that many of my students won academic articles, and some of the academics, you know, might be kind of intrigued about this online school thing that’s, that I’m doing, but they’re kind of too parallel content campaigns, right? And each of them require you to know your audience, to know what they’re interested in.
Jared:
Yes, so tell me like, I guess just like thinking about like, the minds, that if I’m a listener, I am, I’m a college educator and I’m thinking about you know, I’m producing a lot of scholastic focused things. What, what for you was the kind of the driver to say like, I wanna move outside of this scholastic focus?
Raj:
Yeah, yeah okay. So so, some of the seminars and talks have given, actually to people in humanities degrees and encouraging them to, to pursue their dream of producing scholarship, irrespective of the state of the job market, irrespective of professorships. Think of yourself as a self employed scholar, think yourself as someone who’s going to produce scholarship and find a way to, to fund your production of scholarship whether or not you have a university job. And the natural fit for most educators is teaching cause they have much to share and also gone are the days when a great prof is someone who can’t teach, cause teaching is an occupational hazard. Gone are, gone are the days when someone’s brilliant because they can barely communicate an idea and can’t be bothered if you communicate to an undergrad class. And now it’s such that scholars of the humanities have great research portfolios, great teaching portfolios, lots of experience, so teaching is very important.
So what I would say to the typical humanity scholar who always see as interested in, passionate about a field of study, I’d say it pan outs a little bit, and understand, understand why this is so important to you, and most scholars don’t realize that believe it or not. They’ll do a book on a topic and they don’t really grok why this is important to them, and people on the planet outside of like, you know the 5 people who’s gonna read this expert's book, you know, on the great goddess of whatever, you know. Why is this so important to you? Like what is it related to? You know, when you find that relevance and it becomes quite easy. When you find that, that, that why I care about this as a person? Why does this matter to me as a person? You find other people that it matters to, and they’re they’re excited to learn from you.
Because look, there’s so much online content as it is, this is, some academics really feel it’s beneath them or like, to mess around with this online world and a, everything I say is look like, people are, they’re so much fast food on the market, should the gourmet chefs just cook, you know, for the private clubs? Like why, why are the gourmet chefs not opening their restaurants? You know, who should be creating podcasts on the fields and courses on the fields if not the world's experts? Right? And so it’s a bit of a paradigm shift, and there’s also a bit of a really honing in on why you care about this stuff so much and I think that’s a great way to, to think about how to package or how to, to market courses?
Jared:
Can you talk a little bit more about like, how that happened for you? like what was your journey in that? I just wanna understand like, you probably could have persisted down the academic path, you probably could have just stayed with what you were doing and focused on, and I wonder what, like what was the light that turned on, the light bulb that turned on for you that said, this is where I’m going?
Raj:
So part of my experience is, when I was a, I finished my masters, so before and during and after the PhD, I thought continuing studies at the University of Toronto, you know, these aren’t sort of full time salary jobs, you know you get whatever you, a few hundred bucks for a course, here or there. But the courses are geared towards adults who want to learn out of interest. And that was sort of, you know, just part of my path, teaching the public, translating complex ideas in ways people can understand, you know, and that was formative.
Currently, the Oxford Centre of the Hinfu Studies, that’s also their continuing studies per room that I teach online. So this idea of bridging of expertise with public interest, this is where I live. I tried to make my scholarship as accessible as possible, but I certainly tried to make scholarly findings available to the public, in a number of ways. So I, I post these events that The Oxford Centre of the Hinfu Studies where I’ll find 10 seasoned scholars in a field and create these online weekend school and people can you know, you know pay the fee for, or what have you’ve been attendant and learned a bunch of stuff, or have a podcast called New Books and New Religions where, I’ll interview somebody who just come out with a book once a week, let’s talk about it in a way that makes sense to everyday people. I mean, you know, so that that bridging has always been sort of very important to me.
The real light went off when I understood that many learners, continuing study learners, they want the spiritual content. They want it in a responsible way, and it’s something that, because of my academic training, I was very sheepish and even embarrassed about certain settings, right? Because the perception is, okay well now this guy is on a proper scholar because his doing his [inaudible 22:46] stuff for he’s got this, these cultural investments, but whatever people have stuffs right? But I, I understand more than ever before that the sweet spot is sharing the scholarship, and then sharing the, the spiritual interpretation, sharing the, the live, life wisdom. Like why is this text so important? What are these teachings all about? How does it help me? You know, what does it have to do with my life or life in general? And so it took me a while to figure that out, but there is a sweet spot of drawing from the scholarship and drawing from the spiritual training, and then making it applicable to somebody right now, you know, modern, western life. And for me that’s like, you know, for me personally that’s the highest expression of, of this knowledge and and, these teachings that I’ve been given right? Sharing them in a relevant way.
Stopped at 23:38
Jared:
So it sounds like, the root of this was, you had content that you felt was applicable to, to anyone and you wanted to ensure that that was shared with the broadest possible audience?
Raj:
Yeah, the, at the end of the day you know, probably congenitally and also by training you know, I’m a teacher right? I enjoy teaching. And a part of also demoralizing about finishing my PhD and being kind of like, okay I’m broke and what’s going on is because for me PhD and all that work and training was a ticket to teach undergrads, that’s what I wanted to do. I mean I’m obviously just learning these ideas, and I obviously love to write, speak and publish but it was a ticket to teach, and it didn’t ripen. And I was like you know, why has that forsaken me? And I’m like, no, biggest blessing in disguise ever, if a professorship ripens, fantastic. I have the opportunity of teaching undergrads with sessional contracts here and there, it’s something I’d like to do more of. But because that outlet wasn’t available, I had to find someone else to teach. And then all of this continuing studies training came, top of mind, I’m like hey, why don’t I just randomly email people and ask them if they want to buy a course? Like, ridiculous right? Like the thought was like, and I was shocked, I was shocked at how easy it was to support myself that month. As I say, it would even flow, but for anybody out there who has something they're passionate about and wanna share, right? Like what’s, what’s the best path forward? Finding a set up where you can work for yourself, teach on your own terms, teach what you want, when you want, who you want, for the most part you know? Isn’t that, isn’t that the highest expression of teaching freely? Right?
Jared:
Sounds like, it was the, the first step was really just putting yourself out there.
Raj:
Yeah, yeah, I’d say so. Let’s say there’s that, there’s resistance cause of your comfort zone, there’s you know, fear obviously. What will people think, right? These, these, these random you know, these voices in our heads, right? What will people think? What if they say no? You have to get over the fear of rejection, you have to get over these, the value system of all certain people will think this or this or this. You really have to tune that out and have the courage to move forward, and if you are lucky, find a community, well that’s Kajabi, for a while I had, I was connected with and working for a company called Miracy, right? Find a tribe of people who, who have similar values, similar aims, similar, similar vision cause then that’ll really help you to tune out, folks who just only understand the 9 to 5 grind, that’s all they understand, that’s all they value really. They don’t, they, they can’t think beyond that, right? So yeah getting, the first step is really just putting yourself out there.
Jared:
What would you say is, I mean throughout that journey of, it is very common I think for all entrepreneurs or all prospective entrepreneurs, they struggle with this, you know, the building that confidence. Like, what, what for you, I guess once again kinda going back to that light bulb moment, was that, what was that for you? To where you finally found that, that sense to move forward?
Raj:
Yeah, understand that you’re a messenger, and don’t take personally the people who wanna shoot the messenger. Understand that it’s about a mission and a message or something about your ego. When you understand that, then you don’t care how much you get might hurt cause someone rejected you or you’re broke or this didn’t work or that didn’t work. I’m walking worm food, great. But I have a message in me, I have training in me, I have passion in me, I have something to offer people in me, and I’m not gonna let their egos or my ego block that.
Jared:
Well, tell me a little bit about like, when did, we kinda like covered this a little bit already but like, where, where do Kajabi really fit into this? Like at what stage of the game?
Raj:
Yeah, so I started formally teaching online 2016, 2017, I had this platform called Power of Myth, I had this, this Squarespace website, courses around zoom, all that. 2018, I something shifted, people just really wanted coaching, so the vast majority of my, my sustenance, my income in 2018 was focusing on the coaching, to the point where I dissolved the online platform. I thought okay well, maybe after we think this, you know, similar with 2019. And then 2020, everything changed, not just, I mean everything changed for me and obviously COVID.
But 2020 I got a job out of the blue, I, it’s so silly I make all this in content but I don’t consume any. So I discovered, I discovered that the Oxford Centre of Hindu Studies had these online courses and I thought wow these are fantastic, I wish I knew about these. So I emailed them and I’m like look, why don’t, why don’t one of you come on my podcast? Cause I’m sure there’s tons of people who would love to know about these courses. And so, Nick Sutton the Director of Hindu Studies ends up coming to my podcast, we chat about learning, about the pitfalls of strings in academic learning, about the, the the you know, the power [inaudible 28:31] studies education. And when we finished the podcast he’s like, why don’t you come tutor for us? I think you could, sure, why not? So here I am, I’ve done a bunch of online teaching, sure why not? So I take this course with, take this this, this post hearing at the OCHS, and I was also really intrigued by another platform called Yogic studies.
And I reached out to the, to the, the founder of the Yogic studies, Seth Powell. He's a, he’s a, he’s finishing his PhD at Harvard currently, and it was clear to me that he’s just way ahead of his curve. Like I’m with, the only one with the machete, he’s got his machete doing his thing and we’re, this is this is, this world in a, be a settlement of some kind. And I, I had him on my podcast, and after that he’s like, why don’t you teach a course for at Yogic Studies? I’m like, sure. At the same time I was starting to teach online again, more privately in 2020 cause people was showing up and they wanted a course with some Hindu goddess, they wanted a course in all kinds of things. So I was doing some course informally, but really it was, what was it?
A game changer for me was teaching as a guest instructor at Yogic Studies who uses, guess what? Kajabi. And I was like, wow this is a really cool platform, and I kind of filed that away, I just filed that away as a really positive experience. And then I continued teaching, people were asking for more courses, I’m using Google Drive, I’m looking to why, why don’t I just check out on the Kajabi platform? Why don’t I just check it out?
So I set up for the trial, and I’m like OMG, where have you been all my life? Like, like I’m serious, I’m like, okay. I was looking for a customer, sort of support solution I was looking for, I’m really good at corresponding so I’m super organized. So I can do tons just with the Google Calendar and contacts, okay. Note, some people like, follow up like, but I was looking for, sort of a customer management program for years, and nothing really felt right that worked for me. I used Mailchimp for a while, in in the years where I was sending mailings out, especially the Power of Myth time. There were at least desperate pieces, but to have it sort of all there, like, yup I’m gonna use this platform and I’m not just gonna use this platform. It’s time to stop, kind of like you know, a course here, a course here, a course there, people can’t find you, look you’re a good cook, that’s great, you need to put a sign up, a sign on the street so people can find you.
And then there’s this, there’s a journey of a, what do I call it? Is it some kind of institution? Like, what do I call it? Like, there’s this whole journey that included a number of students. And I like the idea of school and I wasn’t sure if it was a school of an Indian religion, school of who knows what, whatever. And then I hired someone for a logo, did some work on the Kajabi platform to create the website, and some landing pages. And you know, it’s, it’s an evolution you know, every month I learn something new, you know.
But right now, it literally feels like I’ve been using this platform in this school like forever, because it’s it’s, everything’s there you know. And, and I know it sounds ridiculous but that’s probably the main pitch for Kajabi, like it’s all in one platform.
Jared:
True.
Raj:
You don’t need these other solutions. But I’m like, I was like, why didn't I know about this before doing this Yogic Studies course at said platform. And then I was like, imagine all the people who don’t know what I do, don’t know that I exist, don’t know, you know, what I can help them with. And so, it kind of was this experience of like, yeah, nope, I need to get out there.
Jared:
That, that’s great. I think that, that leads in perfectly like, where, where are you at today? and
Raj:
With the online school you mean?
Jared:
Yeah yeah, what, what’s changed for you as a result of this, kind of this journey for you?
Raj:
Yeah well apparently, you know, I have an online school that’s visible to people and people know about, and becoming known of course. Students can find me and study with me, there’s no, what’s really changed is, people can now find me and I can easily set up courses and run them, right? The tools are there so I can just, whatever. I literally, well, send an email and say, hey did you guys want to, would you guys want to look at, next month or here are some options and then, okay. Then I’ll come up with a title, find someone to just create a landing page, and boom, send an email out and hey, here is the course for next month you know.
And so that, the, the ease with which, not to say there aren’t trials and tribulations, like with anything. But the ease with which I now have, sort of this, this apparatus whereby, I can teach and monetize that. The school is now literally my paycheck, it’s my professorial paycheck quote and quote, it’s, it’s my means of sustenance so that I don’t have to worry about whether I have, how many clients I have this month? If the people at work would be great? If not great? When they have a bunch of things that I, I write, I publish in all of the academic articles are pro bono, I don’t get paid for any of that stuff. So the school really empowered me to really do everything that I want whether I’m paid for or I’m not.
Jared:
I guess tell me a little bit more about like, what's next for you? what’s, what’s next on the horizon?
Raj:
Yeah, so the school’s 2 or 3 months old and I think there are 4 courses fleshed out there. You know in an alternate universe I wouldn’t have any of the academic stuff and can really just gun it with the school, focused on that or, or vice versa or just focus on the scholarship. But I think it’s something where I feel called to nurture both children, right?
Jared:
Sure
Raj:
And so, with the school, what’s next is, there’s an upcoming course called Sacred Body Looking at Ancient Indian kind of models of subtle bodies and channels, and all that stuff. There’s gonna be 2 or 3 more courses for this year that people are interested in learning about. And really I feel that once I finish a stint of academic writing and get them off my desk, I wanna grow the school. I wanna reach people, I wanna find, it’s, it’s working relatively well right now even with just word of mouth or, or whatever, as you talks or like courses elsewhere. And I wanna find a way to grow it, so that it can be more impactful, so that’s sort of what's on the horizon for me. And also, certificate programs, like, like developing it into a, well, okay there’s an Indian mythology stream, okay well there’s this Goddess stream, for people interested in that stuff. There’s this kind of Yogic esoteric stream or whatever, like just developing the curriculum based on what students want. And I really suspect I’ll be networking with other platforms and institutions before too long.
Jared:
Well for any listeners who are interested in kinda getting to know you a little bit more, how should they, how should they find you?
Raj:
Yeah, so my personal CV site is just rajbalkaran.com and there’s a link there to the school, but that, but that site will give you sort of the overview of the scholarship piece, the coaching piece, the school piece. But the the school is actually courses at rajbalkaran.com, you can feel free to check out courses, or create a code, a coupon code for, for this audience just use 50 off and you could have any of the courses you wish with half price. Beyond that, you know, feel very free to, to send me a message through any of the contact pages. If you’re interested in content so are you, or maybe you’re engaging me search you know if you have a questions by all means if I can be of service to your educational and spiritual journey, you know. Feel free to reach out.
Jared:
Well Raj, thank you so much for joining us today, really appreciate having you on.
Raj:
It was fun, my pleasure actually.
Jared:
Well for any listeners, really appreciate your time today. We want to expose content to entrepreneurs all over so please feel free to share this with your friends, subscribe. But that is all for today, we look forward to seeing you all next week, on the next episode of our Kajabi Edge podcast.
Did this episode help inspire you to start your own online business with Kajabi? If so, head on over to kajabi.com/edge or mention the Kajabi Edge podcast in the where did you hear about us field when signing up on our homepage. Listeners who sign up from our show will receive an additional success call with one of our customer success managers on top of the call, all new customers receive. That’s 2 calls to help guide you along the way to success. So head on over to Kajabi.com/Edge, that’s K-A-J-A-B-I.COM/E-D-G-E and start writing your story.
