Dave Ternier
Jared:
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Hello everybody 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 Lohman, Vice President of Customer Experience, and today I’m joined by my friend Dave Ternier, creator and founder of Country of the Week. How's it going Dave?
Dave:
It’s going really well, Jared. Thank you for asking. Yeah It’s going great!
Jared:
Awesome! Well Country of the Week. What is your elevator pitch? Tell us what it’s all about and I know...don't cringe yet. Like we’ll give you 30 seconds or less.
Dave:
Oh! Elevator pitch is so...I’m so awful at this. You know Country of the Week is simply an online educational program for children...pardon me, for families with young children ages 5 to 10 who simply want to share a little something about every country in the world for 200 straight weeks basically. So take 4 years and give your children the gift of what’s out there in the world on a country to country basis. So that’s essentially what Country of the Week is.
Jared:
That’s amazing! Four years of content you have. How long did that take?
Dave:
Yeah. It’s quite something to chew on. It’s a big bite to take but you know I’ve had some people say “Dave can we do...you know can we do a country every 2 weeks? Or maybe 1 or 2 countries a month?” And I’m like “You know what? It kind of defeats the purpose of dripping even just a tiny nugget to you about every country because you know in our program we’ve got 200 countries. So it does take some time. But you know it’s also about habit and routine and becoming a part of somebody's life in a way that maybe impacts how they see the world for not only a couple of moments but maybe a couple of years, maybe even a lifetime, so.
Jared:
Yeah. Well tell us about where this all started. I kind of know the story here but like this is a...I know this is really interesting so like...how did this happen?
Dave:
Yeah. I mean the short version and stop me cause I’m a storyteller. The short version is a number of years ago just...after just struggling with some of the news headlines that were out there and so and so forth. I said to my wife “Look, I think I want to teach our daughters something about every country in the world, one country at a time. I don’t want our girls to grow up learning what the world is like from just news headlines when they get to be that age. And our girls were 5 and 7 at that time.
So we just started out this inhouse weekly routine or I’d you know make a little profile sheet for the country of France, that’s the first one. And it would get put up on the wall beside our road map and for that week we would...I mean as able we’re a busy family household too, but you know as we were able we would just find YouTube videos about France or what have you. And as the weeks and months went on I started creating little activity sheets for them and then people started asking about it. They’re like “Hey! What are you doing? This is really fascinating what you’re doing!”
And so at one point I realized “Okay maybe...maybe this is something I can actually share with the world in a meaningful way.” So as to not only have impact on our children but maybe we can multiply that impact by many children you know around the world. And so that is ultimately what led to you know Country of the Week coming to life as you know it.
Jared:
Well before we get there. How many Dad of the Year awards did you win?
Dave:
Well if Facebook is any indication I think I won a lot cause there were a lot of comments and say you know “Holy Daddy of the Year!” But you know it was...I mean honestly this is...and I know you weren’t going there but this was just me scratching my own itch. This was just...I mean not only was it a, it was a value to the girls but it also was endlessly fascinating for me as a father. I mean I had a large roadmap up in the previous house that I owned before my wife and I got together.
And I don’t know you just...you look at the news in a different way if you can, you know then...you know look on the wall and see where places are relative to one another and having an understanding of just that basic geography. Not in any formally trained sense but just I knew the value they brought to my life. And so you know...I mean I say this was all built for my kids, I mean maybe in an underlying fashion this was built for me as well. But yeah, it’s just, it's become something our whole family just you know it’s a real part of our home life now.
Jared:
Yeah. Did you have a fascination with geography that kind of led you into this? Or?
Dave:
You know not in school particularly. No. I mean I was born in The Netherlands and moved to Canada when I was just 4 weeks old. My father is from Canada and my mom is from the Netherlands. So I suppose you could see there was always that you know kind of international element to my life and I was very fortunate my parents you know by no means were they affluent at all, but you know they always put aside just enough so we could always see the family in the Netherlands every 4...5 years of our life. That was always a really important priority for them and so I suppose I had some exposure to the greater world in a sense that I was always curious about it because there are so many cool places out there.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there is a part of me that always wishes I would have done what my father did, and that was...You know my father is now in his mid 70’s. When he was in his 20’s he hitchhiked France for 7 years and there was always a part of me that’s going “God, I wish I would have done that! Because obviously he got out and saw a lot of other countries as well right? And so, I mean I guess my interest comes from those couple of things.
Jared:
Yeah. I think another thing is it’s very...I don’t know if this is the right word but how humanizing this is like it inspires empathy. Like when you know something about the people like even if it’s something as simple as like what’s grown in that country or like you know. Knowing something about it just brings what I think a lot of us see...You know we see something on the news or we see something as you were saying and that is our whole world view of whatever that country is. And the reality of it is there’s so much more to you know no matter where you point on the map.
Dave:
So much more, yeah. I mean If I can add a little bit to that. You know I occasionally felt from some people sometimes you know “Oh Dave! Are you trying to make a place look greater than it is?” And I’m like “No! I’m just trying to show everybody what’s really cool about the place.” Because every place has that. I don’t care what you’ve learned from whatever your source might be, there’s no such thing as a country being an awful place. Carte blanche. It doesn’t exist even though I think a lot of...I think a lot of people struggle to live their lives in the way where they have space for anything but that.
So I mean I just... you know I really wanted to encourage my girls to... I mean you mentioned the word empathy, you know, tolerance, curiosity for what’s out there as opposed to being scared of what’s out there. Because I think the latter has taken hold of a lot of people so you know I hope that what I’m doing with my family and then with the families who participate in our program, I hope this may serve as a bit of an antidote to that.
Particularly before the news of the world really starts crushing down on young people, I mean you know my kids… girls were 5 and 7 when we started this. Do they follow the news? Of course not! But I’m building up a buffer for them I suppose. A baseline understanding of the world before they start hearing all of these other things that make sense.
Jared:
Yeah, yeah. And I love it! Well I’d love to kind of talk a little bit about like this started out as a little bit of a personal passion project if you will. Worked its way into something to where you kno, you started receiving some attention around it. I guess to start out like what was happening for you before this, like how are you putting food on the table?
Dave:
Yeah. I mean I have been self employed for you know over a decade. I worked in the entertainment space, I was in the wedding industry and specialized in emceeing weddings to I guess a uniquely personalized and uniquely high standard. And then I would DJ them as well and I was also working with the band and something like that. So my heart has always been in not only storytelling but helping people connect to a story and connect with one another. That was always my unique approach to the special events that I was a part of. Be at weddings or even be at corporate, and in some respect, I guess I look at this as a little bit of an extension of that. I’m bringing my love of connecting people to ideas and stories in a way that is more global in a sense. In a way that’s maybe more...I don’t want to say more impactful but just it’s in a much broader scope if that makes sense.
So that was my background. I always enjoyed working for myself even though you know...you know when you're everybody in the business you know you can’t get mad at anybody but yourself. You know there’s always days where you wish you could just go to the 9 to 5 at some point but I always enjoyed the challenge of doing things for myself.
But at the same time I always have said to everybody in that industry in the special events world that you know that was only gonna be one chapter of my life. And the reason for that was because no part of me can fathom the idea of just doing one thing for my whole life. I know that’s a story for some but it’s just I knew it was never going to be my story.
There are too many things out there that I find really really interesting so to not go and pursue you know many things in my life you know I think it would just have been a disservice to who I am.
Jared:
Yeah. Well let's go back to you know kind of our Dad of the Year conversation there. You’re getting comments on Facebook, you’re starting to see a broad interest.Let’s talk about kind of the journey from hey I’ve got an idea from my family to I’ve got an idea that’s relevant to the rest of the world if you will.
Dave:
Yeah. I mean it was essentially borne out of...I mean the comments on Facebook would be you know very supportive and you know...and some people would say “This is so cool Dave like you’re giving the girls such an incredible life on gift through this, we’re gonna do this too.” And I would say “You should! We’re having an absolute blast with it.” Not only is creating incredible family time with us for our girls but my wife and I are also learning a lot of things with the world we had no idea about, you know.
But inevitably the conversation always ended, be it weeks or months later when I’d follow up with the person well they didn't do it. Why? Because it was too much work right? Parent’s don’t need one more...generally parent’s don’t need one more thing to create and nurture and research for...I mean life is busy right? So it was sometime after that maybe... maybe some people were listening and saying “Dave, God! He was awfully slow wasn’t he?” I’ll tell you what my wife will agree with you cause it took me a while before I realized “Oh wait a second I’ve already done the work.”
I just need to find some way to box it up. It is not quite the right word but I need to just find some…
Jared:
Package it.
Dave:
Yeah. I need to find some way that I can deliver it to people in the way that makes it easiest possible for them. Because not everybody is as crazy as you Dave, not everybody is going to dedicate hours and hours every week because maybe they’d love to, maybe they just can’t.
So that led me to searching for some manner in which I could build something that would make it as easy as possible and as enjoyable an experience as possible for those who maybe wanted to engage with the program in their own household. And that’s what led me to ultimately creating Country of the Week as what it exists as today.
Jared:
Okay. This is something I don’t know the answer to. How did you find Kajabi?
Dave:
How did I find...that’s a pretty easy answer. I jumped online, did some looking for you know various platforms that might be able to host it. And then as I sometimes do I simply geeked out and I opened up a spreadsheet and I created a list of all of the features that I would want where I, the end-user and as the business owner.
What interaction would I have? How would I want this experience to look like on my side of things and the family side of things? And so I had a long list of features and I then just you know I think there were 4 different platforms that I kind of shortlisted. And then I basically went down the list and put check marks next to you know in the appropriate columns. Okay, you know platform A, you know checks off this one, this one, this one and not this one, not this one, not this one. And then I simply went with whatever one has the most check marks.
It was literally like that. I mean it was probably a spreadsheet with...I don’t know. I got a little granular but probably had 65 to 70 maybe different features and different modes functionality that I knew I would want. Now, did anyone have every single one of them? No, of course not! I have to get creative on a few but that’s how I ultimately made the decision. I mean it was just logically driven I guess you could say.
Jared:
That's awesome! So I assume it’s fair to say coming from kind of the wedding and entertainment industry, course building or however you would like to categorize...I don’t know if you consider this a course. What do you consider this first of all I guess?
Dave:
Yeah. Labeling it as a course has always been something I do struggle with a little bit. I mean a program, I know that might sound similar to a lot of people but I think it’s different. You know a course often feels like it has you know...not necessarily pass/fail type of things but I think a program maybe in my case sounds a little less structured. Maybe a course sounds super structured.
And one of the things that I...or maybe just say to qualify that comment is what we’ve built is very organic in a way where there’s not a set checklist or things people have to do every week. You know we simply provide the seeds every week for them to explore a country and then they of course go down the rabbit holes for as far as they want. So I guess it’s keeping that in mind that I struggled with the descriptor of a course. But program, family project...I use the word project a lot. I don’t know
Jared:
Ok, yeah. So project, program, course however you want to encapsulate it. Is it fair to say that like this was not...like this was not your expertise or necessarily your bread and butter doing this.
Dave:
No, no, no! Far from it, far from it. I mean I like generally organizing things and projects. I mean I do a fair bit of organizing and management when it comes to the events that I was a part of. But no, as far as being...doing anything in the education space, I mean a lot of people have said “Oh gosh! You know you probably wanted to be a teacher” and I’m like “No! It never actually crossed my mind. This is not something that I do per se.”
So all of these have been very new to me. I certainly have some experience in some basic web design and ad element of things so I didn’t have to learn that. Now there was certainly a learning curve to Kajabi and I mean we can speak to some of that if you want but yeah I don't have experience in the course side of things per se. No.
Jared:
Well that’s great! Because I think that there are…the majority of our listeners or maybe our target listeners probably we’re going to be in a similar boat. You know a lot of us have ideas, a lot of us...all of us have some type of expertise to share with the world. But like this is the step where it turns into you know where idea needs to translate into something that we can actually provide as a deliverable like a course, package program whatever it is. So let’s talk about like... what that journey was for you? Like what were the hurdles, what were the struggles of like actually taking this idea and packaging it?
Dave:
I mean the first one is just getting over the format of how to build things. I mean every...you know all of the different companies I looked at, they obviously all have completely different approach to building a...let’s use the word course for lack of a better term right now. But you know the biggest struggle I think was at least off the start was rather than being frozen by just what looks like a really really big thing to learn how to work with, just start with one detail. Learn how one side of things work and dig around, click everywhere, figure out what things do.
And I mean it’s a...I wish you knew the whole story but there’s a saying out there “Much a duck I killed the elephant,” and it’s got to do with you know look you know...and an elephant may be a really big thing to take on but one piece at a time. It’s just a whole bunch of little things. And that something that you know if I could impress upon anything to anybody just starting out on this you know, there’s no such thing as one big thing, it’s just a bunch of tiny little things. So one ship at a time, one block at a time, you know, figure it out and go from there. I mean that’s really where people have to start.
Jared:
Yeah. That’s great! I guess like for you, did Country of the Week start out as 200 countries or what was kind of your initial vision?
Dave:
God no, god no! I mean actually maybe to unders...for that point precisely I will say the girls and I are not yet complete. So we are still one block at a time building this in real time. You know the girls and I, we passed the 150 country milestone about a month and a half ago which is really exciting in this household because every 50 is a big milestone. We celebrate that and you know buy the girls a couple of little things and we really make sure to acknowledge it as an achievement in the house here.
But, no! I mean I had no idea this would become something I would do to 200. I mean I just started it out. And in fact when we started it out as an at home project, because I wasn’t looking at things from a 30K perspective so to speak I was actually making some mistakes. You know we’re like we did the first time it was France and then we did Singapore and so on and so forth. And 30-ish countries in I realized that I made a grave error and that we had done, you know, a percentage of South America that was greater than the percentage of Asia we had done for example right?
And so I had to actually kind of re-work the entire order of countries for country of what exist now on the website. So that people were moved around the globe in an equitable fashion so that you know when you're done 50% of the European countries, you’re done 50% of the African countries, you’re done 50% of South American countries that type of thing. So no, it’s a...I mean we are still you know biding us of one block at a time, one piece at a time.
And I think if you had told me at the outset “Okay Dave, you’re gonna create 200 countries worth of country profile sheets, and you know flag coloring sheets, and puzzles and all that stuff. I would have gone like “You’re insane!” But I guess because of the naivety that you know “Look if I want this country for this week Dave, that’s what I’m gonna do. And then next week I’m just going to create one more country.” And then maybe that and that in on of itself is the great example for how you should approach building any course.
Jared:
Yeah. For sure. I mean I can definitely relate to that internally. At the beginning of the pandemic when we went from in office to everyone working from home, I needed to figure it out quickly how do I stay in touch and communicate with my team? And so I just said “Hey I’m gonna do just a little video update, I’m gonna start talking to the team and give them something other than a slack message to you know to engage with.” I thought I’d be doing it for you know, maybe 3, 4 weeks. Here we are a year and a half, almost 2 years later and I’m up to the you know getting close to the 100 mark if you will. So it definitely resonates with what you’re saying.
Dave:
You just have to start right? Stop thinking about the big thing that might be. You just have to start.
Jared:
Yeah. Well let’s talk about like... what was the start of actually taking this to market? Like you’ve got the idea, you’ve decided to turn this into a course. How did you get the audience? How did it actually become a product if you will?
Dave:
Yeah. So that...I mean the world works in mysterious ways and I say that in the context of your question Jared, because I had been spending months building the website and the infrastructure on Kajabi and you know at some point I just had to pick a date when we were gonna go live right? I’m like “Okay you know feet to the flame Dave, you just got to do this.” So I picked a date and I publicly announced it on my Country of the Week Facebook page and to... you know my personal friends and followers on my personal page. And you know I’m like “Alright it’s out there in the world you got to stick to it now.”
Little did I know that the date that I picked, which was the very end of February 2020, would also be two and a bit weeks before the world changed as we know it. So you know on my side of things as has been mentioned I worked in special events for up until that point. And I still do some work in that field. But in a matter of 2 weeks all of the sudden my entire you know...3...4...5 months ahead of after I launched this were now wide open. I didn’t have events, I didn’t have any. So it created an interesting moment where I had just launched this program that I had intended to just let it float you know. I have this other full time thing, I’m just gonna let this kind of do its thing, we’ll see where it goes over the next 12...15...18 months whatever. Well then Covid-19 came knocking on our door.
So at the outset I...you know my wife and I ended up just you know making a commitment to self supporting the project for a couple of months longer so we made it wide open and free to any cause...I mean I’m sure you know there may be people at Kajabi and many of our family and friends right? We saw people scrambling going “Oh my god! My kids are at home. What do I do with them right?” Everyone was looking for something.
So we made it available to people just...where it was just like go use it like...I don’t know what the specific, what the arrangement was but you know, if you like it after a couple of months then we’ll send you a link and then you can sign up here. But you don’t have to like whatever. And then I mean everything just starts to kind of roll and turn and tip upside down. So family routines now were completely off compared to where they were pre-pandemics. Any thoughts I had about how I would have messaged this to people, how I would have communicate what this might be to people, was kind of thrown out the window.
And it’s been something that, I’m sure many can relate, that I’ve struggled a little bit with how to get a traction going on. And I mean you know I had initially launched it at the end of February because I was thinking of, see how it goes over the summer and then I’ll come up or formulate a plan to really give this a good marketing push in the fall. Because in the fall at least here in North America and the Northern Hemisphere is when school starts.
So that’s when all of our new family routines kicked in again after the summer right? This when karate starts, this is when you know piano lessons start. So maybe this is when Country of the Week will start for a lot of people right? Well of course come the fall we all know what happened right? School was...I mean people wouldn’t have enough time to think about one other thing.
So that’s something that...yeah it’s been a challenge but you know as you know from a previous conversation, we can talk about this you know something really special did end up happening with the local province here related to Country of the Week that kind of transformed a lot of my world.
Jared:
Yeah. Let’s talk about that because I think that’s key to the story.
Dave:
Yeah. It’s a...I mean basically a friend, a dear friend encouraged me to get a bit of a press release written up about it to have just a local media and newspapers here publish about. And that is something that to be honest I didn’t think much would come of it but I’m a changed man 100%. If anybody’s listening here and they think, press release what? Have somebody who has a little bit of media experience help you put together a press release. It’s a one page thing and you send it out to some local media, some local newspapers, radio, whatever it might be. Because you never know what they might want to do a story on. Sure it’s probably a for profit company that you set up but if it’s unique and interesting enough and has some degree of originality to it that makes it newsworthy. You’d be surprised you might pick it up.
And this is what happened with me! The very morning that a newspaper article was published, I ended up receiving a phone call from the province of Manitoba. And long story short they ended up a...they basically ended up providing you a grant to make Country of the Week available for free for all Manitobans for a period of just over 3 months, as part of a Safe at Home program that they have put together where they wanted to supply products and services for free to Manitobans to help facilitate the uncomfort of a really stringent lock down we went through.
And that was just I mean a boost to my new little startup in ways that I can’t describe. Not only was the funding you know greatly appreciated but all of a sudden every bit of media wanted to talk to me.
Jared:
Yeah. What a problem to have huh?
Dave:
Oh my god! It was just...It was so wild. Had I let my belief that a press release was a waste of time. And let me tell you all day we spent 20 to 30 hours agonizing over every word of this darn press release. Had I let my idea that this was a waste of time prevail, none of that would ever have happened. And it’s okay to question yourself, it’s okay to have pretty firm thoughts on things but you know it was just one of those many moments in my life that proved to me that anything that I believe if I believe it too strongly, I maybe in the stream to lose sight of what other truths might be out there that my god forbid be contradictory to what I believe. And I mean we can go into a whole broader conversation about this but that's all about right now.
But in my case I mean it really...long story short, over 600 Manitobans ended up signing up through that Safe at Home program. And I mean of course you know I assume most of them will just do the free and then that would be it right? But you know I think I’ve had between 10% and 12% of them converting to paid memberships and not just months and months but annual membership. And the feedback we’ve gotten from those families on just the role of Country of the Week is now playing in their everyday lives as a family, I mean it’s just been extraordinary. So yeah it was really something and that’s certainly a critical part of the path that I’ve been on.
Jared:
I love it! So you’ve got your kind of...let's call it your spark like you now have a little bit of momentum, maybe even a little bit more than a spark. But naturally I think that for most people like you know that’s the catalyst that drives you and propels you forward. What did kind of the next steps beyond that look like now that you’ve seen a little bit of success, what happened next?
Dave:
Yeah. I mean...I mean it really carried on for more than just the 3 months because obviously those who signed up at the very end of the 31/2 or so months of promotion you know, their 90 days started then. So it was really a 6-month journey, a bit of a roller coaster.
You know I think one of the greatest things that came out of it where it taught me a lot about what Country of the Week will look like when it really scales big. You know, what does dealing with the whole lot of customers in the backhand look like? You know what do all those interactions look like? How can you modify and tweak little processes and little automations? I mean you know I rapidly learned that I did not have enough automations running things in the backend. I mean I probably went from you know 30 or 40 automations running everything to you know probably 120 to 140 now, which just from my small little business, to me sounds like an extraordinarily large amount but it was just an incredible way to test drive a lot of things in a very very quick short period of time.
And I think it really accelerated my learning in how to manage Country of the Week as it scales overtime. I’m not in any urgent hurry to scale it because I do have some event work still going on but it was just so valuable. So that the time coming out from that was really taking all those lessons learned and you know once something quieted down a bit, I was able to you know get in and implement some new things and changed some things around.
And now for me really and truly it’s going back to what made my event company so successful and that was word of mouth. And it was because of how I engaged the people who I worked with and the stories I was able to tell with them. So now my focus is on you know how to engage with those who are currently enjoying Country of the Week and how do I...how do I have them become people who go and shout about What Country of the Week is to their world.
Because that’s always been a strong passion of mine, word of mouth. I just think it’s one of the most...everybody says it’s the most valuable form of marketing but I also think in the same sense it’s also one of the most under-appreciated. I think we spend a lot of time you know working on Google AdWords or whatever it might be and we neglect to focus on how could we leverage word of mouth for doing more for us. Now obviously that looks a lot different in this world than it did in my events world but that’s the journey I’m on right now.
Jared:
Yeah. That’s so true. I mean I hear that on interviews, I see it all the time. People immediately jumped to like I’ll pay an Ad strategy and so often forget to start with your network. You know it sounds like for you this was your personal Facebook page where you started this out.
Dave:
Yeah 100%. Yeah it’s I mean everybody knows 10 people, who knows 10 people, who knows 10 people. And if one knows anything about the orders of magnitude you know all of a sudden you’re talking hundreds and thousands of people. Now you know my offering Country of the Week may be a little more niche but nevertheless right? You just...I mean I just had somebody sign up from Australia the other day who you know heard about it from another mom, who’s doing it in Australia. She posted about it in a Facebook group and said how much fun she was having with it.
And it is those types of organic prompts that I want to encourage to happen more frequently. Obviously I’m not gonna tell people that they go out and do it but how do I delight people, how do I excite people in a manner that they want to. By their own accord go out and tell the world about this amazing thing that they found. That is what really really intrigues me and that’s the path I’m on at the moment.
Jared:
That’s so cool! Well I guess tell me a little bit more about like... what’s changed in your life? And I know this is probably a lot given that you’re in a live events industry. But how is this journey ultimately impacted that?
Dave:
Yeah. You know it’s a...so this first thing when I say is gonna sound a little out there. And maybe critical to the special events world, I certainly don’t mean for it to. But the special events world has a large component of what everything might look like. And in some cases to spend endlessly on what that end thing will look like. And you know the expectation that one needs to spend X number of dollars on their wedding gets a little out of control and really impacts people, sometimes in a pretty negative way. I mean I can’t tell you how many, you know, stories I know of people who spend oodles and oodles of money on their weddings. You know $30K...$40K…$60K and are ultimately unhappy with the result.
And where I’m going with this is Country of the Week and the adventure of the girls and I have gone on because of it has really made me realize in a more concrete fashion than ever before about the role of money plays in our lives. Because the moment you start experiencing and seeing the role of money plays or maybe it cannot play in other places around the world. That really makes you kind of look at home a little bit differently.
So I mean that certainly had an impact on our lives but a joke I make is my girls want to go everywhere now. And that’s not really a joke but I think it’s one of the great successes as well. I mean...I have our youngest daughter, if you were to give her a plane ticket right now Jared, to a place of her destination she’d tell you she wants to go to Uganda.
Jared:
Wow, that’s awesome!
Dave:
How many young girls are there that that’s the first place in their list? And I mean it’s changed our lives in a sense that I think we look at travel now completely differently. I no longer simply wanna go to some place and just be a tourist. I wanna go and experience the place in a way that’s you know more authentic and maybe more impactful to my family and I then would have otherwise been.
And seeing that idea creep into the lives of the families who now interact with Country of the Week has been really really wonderful. I don’t know that I would say transformative but really really motivational. I mean I get messages...I mean I got a message just the other day actually from one of our families in Australia again. And her boy in the school, he was in their car to do a kind of a shortlist speech on something that they learned about that past year. And he chose to do his speech, she probably told me on Country of the Week and so she recorded and sent it to me.
And I mean I just...I can’t describe the internal feeling of gratitude and appreciation that I felt for that. You know, knowing that this young man now has been impacted by something that the girls and I created at our kitchen table. I mean that’s pretty remarkable. And listening to him as part of his speech rattle off the places he’d love to go now was just incredible.
And you know I love listening to podcasts. So you know I was thrilled to be on this but I mean I’ve heard plenty of stories on the Tim Ferris show for example about people whose adventures abroad and learning about other palaces really impacted their lives for good. And even Tim will tell you about it. I mean he spent a year in Japan and he’s spoken many times about the impact that had on his life.
So should any of what I’m doing lead someone to take maybe a trip like that or maybe they don't but they just have a different outlook in the world. I mean I just...I can’t describe the feeling of satisfaction and knowing that maybe something we did here in our small prairie home in Manitoba did something to somebody so impactful.
Jared:
I love this! Well for anyone out there who’s interested in checking out Country of the Week, where do you want to send them?
Dave:
Yeah. They can...I mean countryoftheweek.world is the domain I ultimately landed up on so countryoftheweek.world is where people can find out about what it is that we’ve created. I mean the regular handles are on a you know social media Facebook, Instagram and so on and so forth. If people want to simply download some free activity sheets, I do have a special link that people can head to and from that link they’ll simply get a free download of some of the activity sheets that I’ve created.
And I should say you know it varies from country to country. I’ve got a lot of activity sheets created for some, I've got you know, fewer for others and it’s very much I guess a representation of how Country of the Week operates in our house. Sometimes we go deep down the rabbit hole of a place because there was something really intriguing about it or we just had lots of family time, other weeks we don’t.
So it comes and goes from week to week and you know like I said we’ve taken an approach where we plant the seed every week for people to explore the place and then they get to choose how far down that rabbit hole they go. So yeah countryoftheweek.world/free-activity-sheets and there’s a hyphen between free and activity and sheet. So free-activity-sheets. And they can learn a little bit more about what is is that we’re doing and how we you know...and of course they’ll see how we’ve used some of the Kajabi functionality to deliver that as well and hopefully that’s a learning tool for some people who maybe just going to start out with this.
Jared:
Yeah. We’ll add those on our show notes as well so it’s easy for you to find. Well thank you Dave for joining us. Absolutely love your story, love where you’ve ended up. Really appreciate you joining us today.
Dave:
I appreciate it as well Jared. I mean you and the whole team have been incredibly supportive and I mean that is certainly been one of the things that’s really made me satisfied with my choice of word about this, where to build Country of the Week. So on behalf of my 2 daughters Kiana and Marika because I do say that you know this is our project together which I want to thank you as well for all the support and looking forward to seeing where this adventure ultimately takes us as well.
Jared:
Yes! Can’t wait to be a part of it and follow that journey with you. Similar to what Dave said in terms of sharing that word of mouth, we love that as well. If you don't mind hop on to your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review, share this with your friends, we want to expose this to all kinds of entrepreneurs, aspirational entrepreneurs. Anyone who could take advantage of some of these great and hopefully inspiring content. So with that said thank you all for listening and looking forward to seeing you next week on the Kajabi Edge Podcast.
