How A Golf Pro Built A 7-Figure Digital Business, With Eric Cogorno

Looking to turn your golf expertise into a lucrative online business? Discover how to leverage digital platforms to build a thriving coaching empire. In this episode, J.R. Lowry sits down with Eric Cogorno to delve into his transformative journey from traditional in-person golf coaching to a thriving online presence. Emphasizing the challenges and triumphs of this transition, he shares insights into the evolution of his business, the critical role of digital platforms, and how his approach to content creation has adapted over time. His story highlights the blend of perseverance, adaptability, and strategic thinking required to thrive in the digital age of golf coaching.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/eric-cogorno/.

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How A Golf Pro Built A 7-Figure Digital Business, With Eric Cogorno

Plus: Eric’s Practices And Tips For Personal Development

Introduction

In this episode, my guest is Eric Cogorno. While Eric is best known for the golf instruction he provides on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, he’s also spent nearly two decades building a reputation as a highly respected performance golf coach. He took the experience he gleaned from giving more than 20,000 in-person golf lessons to YouTube. His distinct style of clear language and simplified concepts have attracted more than 500,000 followers across his channels and many millions of monthly views from all across the globe.

Eric was born and raised in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and was a scratch golfer by the age of fifteen. He golfed throughout high school and while attending Lehigh University, he’s been featured on forbes.com and was voted as a Golf Digest Best In-State Teacher. Eric, welcome, and thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks, J.R. I appreciate you having me on here.

What piqued my interest in talking with you was a few months back, I interviewed this business coach, a guy based in England named Robin Waite. He works with solopreneurs and other business owners. He tries to get them out of the billable hours construct. As prep for the interview, he sent me this book that he’d written called Take Your Shot. That’s a parable of sorts.

Building An Online Presence

Basically, what he describes in it is a golf pro who’s working long hours teaching lessons, working in the pro shop. He’s pretty miserable. He never sees his family. He gets this golf client who happens to be a business coach. He gets the golf pro to completely rethink how he delivers his expertise. He does speeches. He moves online. He gets completely out of the billable hours thing. When I read your story, I thought, “This sounds familiar.” Tell us about your golf business.

That would be a nice little bow on top of how my golf career has gone. The short version is I spent my first ten years from age 18 to 27 trying to become an expert at coaching golf with in-person lessons and billable hours. At the ripe old age of about 27, I felt very burnt out and tired and realized I couldn’t do that for the next 50 years. We shifted things online on January 1, 2017. YouTube is our main stick. I am a golf YouTube guy. Also, trying to deliver world-class golf coaching to people all around the world at a very affordable price point, which I wasn’t able to access growing up. That’s the mission statement that we have and it’s been a fun few years so far.

Are you fully online at this point? Are you doing any in-person lessons anymore?

Our revenue is 98% online. I still enjoy the in-person coaching. I like the one-on-one time and the more intimate environment with the human, a close relationship like that but I recognize that it limits our business potential. I try and sneak in some in-person coaching here and there because I enjoy it. We’re about 98% online now.

Is it YouTube? I think you’re on others like Instagram and TikTok too.

Yeah, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. YouTube is our main hub. We tried to pick it up a little bit more on Instagram probably for the past few years. TikTok has been a newer thing. We’re just posting clips there. I haven’t been able to track a lot of success in terms of direct revenue from TikTok but probably about 80% of our revenue that is sourced from YouTube funnels down into products, membership sites, and stuff like that, and probably 20% from Instagram.

On YouTube, are you a paid subscription channel or do you just rely on advertising?

Just advertising?

I’m always curious how people choose because you’ve got these different models and paths you can choose when you get enough of an online presence on YouTube.

It’s been an interesting learning experience for me. We built a monthly membership site in 2018, and part of our process and thinking from a business perspective was always, “Let’s use YouTube to build an audience. Let’s go wider in the golf space and try and get as many people to know who we are as possible. How do we get a percentage of them to sign up for monthly ongoing coaching?”

We can get into this as we go, but I had some ideas of where we wanted to go with that, but I always was thinking, “A monthly recurring online membership site where they pay for coaching.” We try and put out a lot of free coaching and free tips and stuff and the one out of a couple of hundred people who wants a little bit more, we have those options for them.

Your business model is similar to what I’m trying to do with careers. The idea was to make a lot of content free and make it widely available. Help people get access to career guidance that they might not otherwise get with a paid membership tier that you can opt into that gives you more one-on-one coaching. It’s similar in spirit.

One of the things I’ve found interesting, and you’re further into this journey than I am is how wide the funnel is at the top to get down to people who are willing to pay into your monthly subscription program or even a one-off resume review or things that we also offer. It’s been a learning experience on how all of this online promotion stuff works. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons in the last few years.

It’s the same for us. I would always hear this, “1% of the audience will convert or 0.5%.” You get these ballpark figures that you can do some math on. Everything that we’ve done well has taken way longer than I thought it would. It took way more effort. I will say one thing that I would give us credit for is our golf niche we were in, we started on January 1, 2017. At that time, it wasn’t so crowded. We were not first to market, but we were early, which helped for sure. We’ve been very consistent. For the first 5 or 6 years, we did three videos a week.

Every week, I’d step into our meeting, and I’d say, “No matter what happens this week, we got to post these three videos on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday at 10:00 AM. Back then the algorithm, the same day and time in the beginning was more important than it is now. I always thought of it this way. We did about three YouTube videos per week.

To scale it for those people reading, let’s say they were ten minutes each so I thought, “We’re giving 30 minutes of free content every week.” At this time when we started, I was reading to guys like Grant Cardone and a lot who were like, “Get attention. Pitch your product.” I thought, “30 minutes of free content. If I do a 30-second pitch on each video that’s a minute and a half per week at 30 minutes for free.”

I felt good about that give-to-ask ratio. I pitched this membership site hard, especially for the first 6 or 7 years. We tried all kinds of different offers. I think a lot of people that I see J.R. would be interested in your take. I think a lot of us feel weird about even the ask or the pitch or how you come across with it, but I’ve found that it’s taken more push than I thought it would. Pushing in every single video and then giving them some irresistible offer. The offer that we sell in my mind is unbelievably good. The value that they get versus the price point.

I think if someone has a great product to offer, and I see a lot of people who have great products who don’t pitch it. They never try and sell it to the people. I so truly believe in our coaching program that I ethically feel responsible to say, “If you’re watching these, you want to get better at golf. These videos are good but if we could see your swing and work together, it would be so much better.”

Eric Cogorno: If you have a great product, you have to pitch it.

Why should you feel guilty about that? As you say, it’s 1.5 minutes out of 30 minutes of content that you’re providing. If people are watching your lessons, particularly if they’re coming back and watching what you offer on YouTube regularly, they know you’re there. They know what you offer. The pitch is expected. Do you have a team working with you as well?

We have a team, and I got so lucky in the beginning to find my new business partner, Mary Lengle. The short version of that story is she came in for a golf lesson and I was teaching a bunch of kids at the time. We’d have music playing. The kids were characters. It’s a fun environment. She had a PR background and she’s like, “Eric, there should be a show here. You should do a golf show.” I was like, “Funny enough you say that. I want to get into this YouTube thing.” This is probably 2016.

We ended up being partners with it and we’ve slowly added people to the team. It was just me and her for a while. We slowly added coaches to the membership sites. We’ve seven coaches on there now, which is great. I hired two full-time assistants, which changed a lot of things. I have a book here, Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, which might’ve been 2020-ish when I read that. Building a team was a huge part of this for us.

Are you all virtual or do you get together in person?

All virtual to the point where I’ve never met in person three of our team members.

You’ve got things down where they develop their lessons, put them up on the site, and work with people individually. Is that what they’re all doing?

Again, timing played a role for us J.R. We started early enough before a lot of golf coaches were doing the online coaching and I had spent ten years trying to get great at coaching. I went to all kinds of seminars and I met a lot of coaches. It’s because we started early and they weren’t doing it yet, I was able to get world-class coaches to join us and coach with us. I feel very blessed with that with the timing. Also, the other members of the team are my executive assistant. We have a full-time editor. It requires a lot of time upfront to train them. We like to run pretty hands-off like, “You work when you want. Do what you want to do so long as X, Y, and Z get done.

There’s a lot of power that comes from flexibility and virtual team models. They’re becoming certainly on the back of the pandemic more popular, especially for small businesses. We have a running debate, with the people that I hang out with about how big your company can be before you start needing people to be in person because you need to build that social capital that is harder to build when you’ve got a lot of people in the company.

That’s a great point. We probably have thirteen people on our team so we’re small. Me and Mary do the majority of the work. We will make sure we’re together in person once or twice a week. To me, that’s almost non-negotiable than in-person time. The energy and the vibe are different for us big time.

When you started on YouTube, how quickly did your audience grow?

It was slow. In our first year, at that point, I was coaching full-time. I’m going to do one-hour lessons all day. I said to Mary, “I wanted to start doing the YouTube.” We did a little bit, and it wasn’t working. I was like, “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.” I was like, “Why don’t you just film me coaching? I don’t have a lot of time. We could either do this during a lunch break or film me coaching lessons.”

We started filming me doing actual lessons, which I thought the content itself was so good, but the lesson I learned was that that’s not what the market wanted. That’s a lesson that I keep getting smacked in the face over and over. I keep learning like, “It’s not what I think is good content. It’s what the audience wants that makes or breaks our channel.” It was a huge lesson learned.

I thought we were doing these great videos. We did it for a whole year. I think in the first year, we gained maybe 700 subscribers. I think we made $200 in AdSense. You started getting AdSense back then. I think the rules were different. We made $200. We had 700 subscribers in that first year and then there was a flip that switched in year two for us. I was like, “I’m at my wits end here with this. I don’t want to keep doing this.” It was because we’re doing these great videos. I’m like, “30 people watched, 15 people.” It’s the same 20, 30 views type thing.

I went on and searched for people in the golf space who were getting a lot of views. I was like, “What are they doing in their videos?” They were doing how-to videos whereas I was doing live what we’re doing and they were all clickbait-y was what I thought in my head at the time. Do this one trick to gain 30 yards or whatever and mine were very straightforward non-sexy thumbnails and titles.

I think it was the next day, I was like, “Let’s do these tip videos.” We did add 30 yards instantly with this one and all kinds of clickbait things. It worked right away. We started getting a couple of hundred views, a couple of thousand. In the middle of the second year, we started getting more traction. Now again, we had a huge advantage. A few years ago, there were way fewer golf videos getting posted. To me, if we’d started right now in this environment, I think it would’ve taken more time but I think we were a bit fortunate to be early there.

I’ve heard that story from people that I’ve spoken to who got into that game earlier and took advantage of a less crowded market at the time. There’s something to be said in most industries for first-mover advantage. What were some of the other things other than changing the format of your videos that you think about that you got right or wrong in those early days?

It’s what the audience wants and not what you want is big. We focused way too little on titles and thumbnails. Now, we focus so much on titles and thumbnails. For every thumbnail we put out, we probably make 10 to 20 iterations of it and then pick one that we like. I heard a thing from MrBeast. He has this big YouTube channel. Some people probably know him. They were talking about 100 thumbnails iterations to pick one. I’m thinking, “We don’t even talk about our thumbnails.”

Eric Cogorno: It’s what the audience wants, not what you want.

Basically, they’re doing A, B, C, D, E, F, G testing. They are testing a hundred at once and seeing which one sticks.

They would create 100 and they’d be like, “Let’s go with this one.” We don’t even discuss our thumbnails. We’re putting them out there. I found that it has increased in importance as time has gone on in YouTube and the algorithms of the importance of the titles and the thumbnails. If I could go back, the second thing I would change would be better titles and thumbnails. I would’ve gotten more aggressive with being on the edge of clickbait-y sooner because I felt uncomfortable about it.

However, at some point in time, you keep looking at the market and you’re like, “These guys are using these titles and people keep clicking them.” So long as the content behind the title and thumbnail is good, I feel okay about getting a little borderline but that’s a big one. The next thing I would say is the hook or the first 30 seconds of the video. I never used to think about it at all and now we think about that a ton.

Our order of importance of the video assuming the quality is going to be good, the quality and the meat of the video is tricky because the quality and the meat of the video is the most important thing. You have to be good. The things you’re saying have to be good. I’m taking that for granted and then underneath that, it’s title and thumbnail and get them to click. Once they click, that first 30 seconds of like, “What are you going to tell them? Who are you and why should they listen to you?”

Give them something that they can expect to come. It’s like, “In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to fix your slice in two golf swings. There’s one thing in your swing that is so important that if you don’t get this right, you’re going to slice the ball forever. I’m going to show you two cool drills towards the end of the video on exactly how to do that. Let’s dive in.” That’d be like a new intro I’d do. The old intro would be like, “In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to fix your slice.”

The retention of those two videos is a little bit different. Those are some things that I would say but I will say this last point on this because we could probably do an hour just on this topic. There are so many little tricks and things like this, and I think this is with any good business strategy as well, particularly YouTube. The slice thing that I would show them has to be good. You can’t cover up a bad video with a good title and thumbnail.

I talk with a lot of people who want to grow their YouTube and I say, “Step one is I spent ten years getting great at coaching.” You have to be good at your thing first. Good at communicating on video and that sort of stuff. Also, those other factors help more but you could have a great title and thumbnail. If your video is not quality , the people aren’t going to come back or watch long enough.

What about Instagram? What’s been your experience with Instagram?

With YouTube, I don’t know if I’m an expert, but I feel like I know some stuff. Instagram has been like this for us. It’s grown. We’ve grown our audience, which is great. In 2021 and 2022 when the Reels first started, it helped us. It’s what I do on all the social platforms and anyone can do this you have to put energy and attention into it. I would just look and see, “What are people doing that’s working and model success?”

Eric Cogorno: You have to just put energy and attention into what works, model success, and adapt quickly.

When Reels first started popping off and like, “These guys are doing these videos. They’re adding music to the background.” That was new. I didn’t see that anymore. That started working and then, “They’re adding text to the video.” Music in the background, text in the video explaining things, and then, “Now, they’re doing thumbnails with actual text on the thumbnail”

For Instagram for years, we post a video and they auto-post what the thumbnail is unless you pick it or create it. I was like, “We create a thumbnail. Now, you post music in the background. Now you do Reels.” We’ve had a bit of a harder time keeping up with that. With Instagram, we’ve been in follower mode. We watched what works and we followed that. On YouTube, we probably spend 70% to 80% of our time doing what’s working, but we try and spend 20% experimenting and trying and do things. We try and get ahead of the curve as best we can of what’s next.

Instagram’s been very following the leader. We are fortunate J.R., I would say us, because we have a team in the editing. I would build just by myself but now we take a lot of our clips and we’ll post appropriate clips on the platform. I’m not creating as much content that’s purely for Instagram as I used to. I’d be like, “Let’s create this video just for Instagram.” Now, we’re taking clips from our YouTube.

Our advantage is if we have 2 to 3 ten-minute videos per week, I’ve got 20 to 30 minutes of content that we could clip up and use. That’s an advantage there. The one thing I will say about that I found too is on Instagram in particular, you can win in one of two ways. What I’m seeing is you either have to have great quality, which is great editing, great lighting, great video, popping, and attention-grabbing or what you say needs to be so good to get people’s attention.

On YouTube, if you get them to click, I’ve seen some people winning on YouTube with very light editing. It doesn’t need to be as good necessarily, as long as the meat is good because a lot of people on YouTube are going to click a video and they’re willing to sit or listen for an extended period of time. On Instagram, they’re scrolling. If it’s shitty lighting, doesn’t look good, and it’s a video on there, it’s very hard to grab attention, at least for us, we’ve found.

What’s been your experience with TikTok overall?

TikTok I downloaded it on my phone and I used it the first day to learn. I had to be on that thing J.R. for 2.5 to 3 hours in what felt to me like fifteen minutes. I immediately deleted it from my phone. I don’t know TikTok at all. We have a person on our team who posts all of it. I literally don’t go on the app at all. As far as I know, they take clips from the YouTube videos and then clip them up there.

It was dangerous. I’m laughing because the woman who started doing our social media is completely uncomfortable at TikTok. Now, we have somebody else doing it.

It was something that I felt like I could look at and watch. I just like to watch what people do and see what’s working, and what’s not working but with TikTok, I almost didn’t have enough discipline to leave that on my phone.

That’s one. I drew the line. I said, “I got enough social media platforms. I don’t need another one.” Talk about your subscription site or your website.

It’s CogornoGolf.com. The shtick is you go on and you pay a monthly fee. There are varying levels of service you want to get. It’s for those people who want service or coaching beyond just the free videos where we could see your swing. Also, it’s being able to diagnose the issues. “What is it you’re supposed to be focused on?” I think in all things in life, people often misdiagnose their problems, and that’s part of why they never make progress but definitely in golf.

I talk to a lot of people who say, “Eric, I haven’t been able to fix this thing for ten years. What have you been working on?” They say A, B, and C, and it’s completely different than what they should be focused on. You have to diagnose the right problems. How do you work on them? How do you solve those? Also, ongoing feedback, maintenance, accountability, etc. Those are the three things we focus on.

Our price points are anywhere between $60 to $150 a month. It’s where we live. Whereas the same quality world-class coaching in person is probably $300 to $500 per hour. The price point’s way dropped down. Online is not as good as in-person. Nothing is, but it’s probably 80% is good. The price point you pay is way lower. We wanted to do that for two reasons. One, I wanted to get world-class coaching available to anyone in the world. Golf is an interesting thing where it’s hard. At least then, it was hard to find great coaching.

You could live anywhere in the world and not have a good coach who’s been coaching for a long time anywhere near you. It was very hit-or-miss. It wasn’t easy to access. Now with the internet, you can click on a couple of couple of things. I wanted to be able to provide that but also when we first started, I just got introduced to personal development and Jim Rohn, in particular.

I did this goal-setting workshop that he did, create your dream life, and financial freedom thing. I was at this point where I simultaneously was like, “I’m burnt out. How do I make money online? How do we get world-class coaching to everyone?” I just went through this goal-setting workshop to create my dream life and do the math on what I needed for financial freedom.

It was one of only two things that were even possible in my mind that could create the levels of revenue that I wanted to create. It was a perfect storm of events that led us to create in the first place. The thing about golf is people are willing to spend money on it. For people who want to play golf, it becomes a bit of an obsession and it’s hard. It’s not an easy thing to master. The benefit of having coaching that’s good and accessible, there’s an obvious market there as you’ve discovered.

Impact Of Going Online

It’s a good market. They’re willing to spend money, which is nice and that’s a great point you made. It’s hard. There’s built-in recurring revenue. Nobody gets a golf lesson and solves the problem forever but that’s been a nice added benefit of the monthly recurring revenue. Let’s talk about what going online has meant for you. You’re working fewer hours than you were, right?

Yeah. When I was in college, I used to pick balls on the driving range. I used to be the little ball picker. I think at that time I made $6 to $7 an hour. I was eighteen years old. A quick story. When I was driving, picking balls in the range one day, it was August. I remember it was hot and our range was very bumpy. It’s not enjoyable to be at. I was like, “This sucks. I don’t want to be here doing this.”

I drove the golf cart into the side of the range and on the corner, there was a guy who’s one of my now great friends, Paul Viola, who was given a golf lesson, and he’s under this building. He’s under shade. I’m out there. It’s hot. I’m sweating. He and this older gentleman were hitting balls laughing. I was watching. They’re hitting a couple of balls. It seemed very easy to me. He made an offhand comment that he made $50 by giving this 30-minute golf lesson.

I’ll never forget thinking to myself, “I have to work eight full hours out here in this heat to make $50 pre-tax.” He just made it $30 given this easy golf lesson. I think I could do this. That’s how I started teaching in person was just that. I wish it was that I wanted to help people, etc., but it was very financially based. I started charging $30 an hour. In my first year, I stunk at coaching as you do your first year of anything.

I made $7,500. In my second year, I made $15,000. In my third year, I made $30,000. In my fourth year, I made $60,000. I remember I doubled every year for the first four years and then I got stuck in this $80,000 to $90,000 a year in-person range where I was living. I think there are several reasons for that looking back upon it now but that’s where I got stuck.

When I did my Dream Life Jim Rohn thing, the short version of that is I figured out I had to have about $4 million saved to spit me off enough money for $20,000 a month to live this dream life that I built in. I’m like, “Let’s say I can give myself a decade to save $4 million and you start doing the math on that. I was making $80,000 to $90,000 at the time, and I figured I needed to make about $1.2 million per year to be able to save, pay taxes, and invest enough.

Going online, a lot of it was that was the only feasible way. When I was making $80,000 to $90,000 a year, thinking about $1.2 million might as well have been like a billion. It was so far out of reach to me. It was a wild number at that time. Going online was the only feasible way. I kept doing the math and I was like, “I physically can’t charge enough money every hour to be able to do this.”

We went from $80,000 to $90,000 and then I remember making $150,000. I remember making $250,000 and then $500,000 and we clipped the $1 million thing. For me financially, it’s completely changed my life. We went from let’s say $80,000 a year to $1.5 million which is interesting to me too because I think a lot of the why I was making $80,000 to $90,000 was because of where my mind and energy was.

Whereas now, obviously the online helped, but it was a lot of thought, believing that, and seeing there’s a possibility but it’s completely changed my revenue. Also, to your point, a long answer here but in terms of the hours, I was working a lot to make $80,000 and then now our online system realistically could probably do 10 to 15 hours a week to 15X the revenue. It’s drastically different.

Now, it’s a process. This is eight years for us. Our business J.R. is designed to be a lifestyle business. I kind of figured out that math and how much. If I was like, “I wanted to make $10 million a year,” my work would probably look a little bit different for a while to do that. That was in a zone of the lifestyle of how I want to live and how much money do I make.

It took a bunch of energy in the beginning because in your first 1 year or 2 online, for me, we didn’t make any money so I had to still work full-time. This is a mistake I see a lot of people make. It’s like, “You got to work full-time and do the online.” It’s like, I wouldn’t quit your normal gig until this online thing is at least equal to or more. However, once we clipped the first 3 to 4 years of it I could start to shift energy. I would start working less in person and working more on this until we got to the point probably in year 6 or 7. Where we are now, 98% of the revenue is online. That’s a lot of big answers to your question, but to get some context.

There’s a lot in there. It comes back to what you said in the conversation. Everything takes longer than you want it to. You’ve got to be patient. I’ve heard that from a lot of people who have tried to get into the influencer game or tried to start an online business. You do have to be patient about it and you have to be consistent. If you keep doing that, you were doing your three videos a week and making sure that that was the one thing you got to every week. Sooner or later, people got to know you and you, you, you do build that audience over time.

We’re going to add one little piece to that too. It’s the consistency part. It’s the long-term part for sure. Also, one of the things we did well to give us credit is every set of videos, we would go back and look at and be like, “Where could we get better here? Where can we make a little small improvement?” Just like a compound interest thing, let’s say we would post a week these three videos. “Let’s go back and look at these. What’s one thing we could do better for this next set of three?”

It’s because you’re not automatically going to gain an audience or get better just from posting them. You have to make improvements as you go in, iterations, and adjustments. You know this. It’s like, “We can improve on the next set of three videos. Let’s make the titles better. Let’s make the thumbs better. Let’s make the lighting better. Let’s get this hook a little bit better. Let’s add a B-roll here.”

It’s these little tiny iterations. I look at our video now or someone goes on our YouTube channel and watches a video now, our first couple of them, it’s hundreds of small tweaks later for the same ten-minute video. It’s not good enough to just post and wait. You have to put a little energy into those small improvements set to set.

Personal Development

This is probably a good segue for us to get into the personal development thing that you’ve gotten involved in. You’ve got a separate thing you’re doing from the golf around personal development.

It’s funny starting at the beginning of something again which you’ve experienced doing some of what you’re doing as well. It’s interesting being at different times in the past. We started the personal development channel, which is always part of my plan to back to this Jim Rohn plan I put together. I’m about 5 years into the 10-year goals that I set. Lessons I’ve learned with Eric Cogorno is the working title. It’s the same thing with I spent ten years trying to get great at coaching. I feel like I have enough to be able to share and help anyone with and we do the golf stuff.

I’ve been heavily into personal development for seven years now so I feel like I’ve learned enough and experimenting on myself to be able to help other people. There is nothing groundbreaking. A lot of stuff we’ve heard before, but I find with personal development, you need to keep hearing it. You need to keep being reminded of it. You need to keep doing the same things. I want to share some of what I’ve learned as a big part of it. Just like golf, the personal development pool of potential revenue is a lot different than the golf pool. To hit our next levels of revenue we want to hit, we wanted to shift into a different market.

I’m sure one audience will help a bit with the other. Golf is a sport played by people who are generally more affluent. They’re the ones who are probably going to be more vested in developing themselves so there’s probably some crossover that you’re going to experience.

I have some people over there and I’ll tell you what too, J.R. The skills we learned have crossed over so well. We have such a huge advantage now because we know how to do videos. I know how YouTube works. I know how to structure a video. I feel like we’re starting on step ten compared to when we started before which is nice but it’s the same thing. It’s like back to day one. You are building something all over again, which I think is fun and exciting.

What are some of the topics that you’re covering or thinking about covering on your personal development channel?

I’m testing stuff out. If I’m being honest, I’m trying to figure out what I want to talk about, but then back to what I said before, most importantly, what does the market want? What does the audience want, we have to build an audience first. Goal-setting and manifestation. I’m even throwing stuff in there. We did some videos around handling fear, anxiety, and things that I’ve struggled with a lot, but it’s I would say all things personal development. Goal-setting and improving who you are. Have you seen any Jim Rohn? Do you know Jim Rohn?

Only vaguely.

He’s like Tony Robbins. I was very heavily influenced by him. It’ll be a lot of improving who you are type of content and then I think my plan is to do 100 videos to test and be like, “This is what people react to. These videos are good. This fear thing I’m not going to talk about anymore. Let’s double down on this goal setting and see what I think I can help the most amount of people in and go pretty wide early and then I’ll niche down. I’m going to try and go wide and then, “Let’s niche hard into this dream life thing or whatever we want to do.”

It’s because I see the business benefits of niching down for sure but in terms of building the YouTube audience, it’s an interesting starting place to go wide and then niche after versus the other way around. I think after two years, we’re going to do a video a week for the first two years to do 100. If we do another video two years from now, I have a much better answer to that then.

Discipline is something you talk about in yourself. What helps you maintain your discipline?

A lot of clarity on where I’m going. I look back on periods of my life when I was and was not disciplined. Discipline is doing what you’re supposed to do whether you feel like it or not. Motivated is I feel like doing what I’m supposed to do.” Discipline is I’m going to do it whether I feel like it or not. It’s easy to do the stuff that you agreed to do or want to do to change your life when you feel like it. I don’t know about you, but I feel like it and don’t feel like it an equal amount of time. It’s maybe 50/50 or whatever.

There’s a decent amount of days where I don’t feel like doing the thing that I need to do. Also, clarity to me on where we’re heading and why it’s important to me is big. One of the videos I did was about five daily habits that will improve your life. One of the things that I do and part of my every day is visualization, manifesting mindfulness for 15 to 20 minutes. I find I need that. This might be me being weird, maybe not everyone does, but I need constant, “This is where we’re heading,” imagining what that looks like and clarity on that to keep plowing through, especially during the bad days.

I put in the reps. I do 15 to 20 minutes every day of getting clear and visualizing where I want my life to be in 3, 5, 10 years. That’s so easy to say and not easy to sit down and do. There are hacks and stuff around all this stuff. There’s actual work to put in and I don’t think everyone needs to do all the shit that I do but that’s something that has helped me a ton that led to the discipline. That leads to, “I’m going to do this thing whether I feel like it or not.”

It’s hard almost. Imagine you spend 20 minutes every day for seven years thinking about this future you want. That pulls you so hard in that direction that it’s hard to be undisciplined. It’s harder to not do the things you’re supposed to do because tomorrow I’m going to wake up again and think about that future again. I’m so tied into where I want to go and the emotions I’m going to feel when I get there.

That’s one thing, J.R. I don’t know if you spend any time with that of your audience, but that has helped me to no end. Doing the goal-setting workshop and then spending the time on that future stuff has not only given me the discipline but given me everything else that I have to date. Freakishly does everything happen, maybe not exactly how I imagine it, but a lot of those things on my list keep getting checked off, which is cool.

It’s an interesting question idea what are you going to manifest? Honestly, I never had anybody pose that question to me until a few months ago. I was at a dinner for somebody’s birthday it was. She asked this question and she wanted everybody around the table to talk about what they were going to manifest. It was interesting to hear everybody’s answers.

It was awkward because some of us didn’t know each other all that well. It’s like, “How personal are you willing to get in all of that,” but it was a good icebreaker question in the end and it got me thinking about that idea of, “What are going to manifest?” What are some of the other habits of those five habits that you talked about in that video?

The daily workouts are big for me. Tony Robbins, I bought into that how you move your body affects the way how you feel and how your mind works. I found that to be totally true. Gym six days a week for me is non-negotiable. It’s the first thing when I wake up. I’m going to wake up at 5:30 and go to the gym for 45 minutes every morning.

The second thing I’ll do is personal development videos. To me, I look at my brain as a tank that I can fill with either positive or negative. It’s easy for me to be lazy if I’m being honest. I have friends who like to do stuff all the time and crush this and that. That’s not me. I could hang out and lay on the couch. I’m trying to force-feed positivity and stuff into my brain every morning. I try and hit 30 minutes of personal development.

I do that as I’m doing other stuff now. In the beginning, I would literally just listen to it and that was the only thing I was doing. I’ll do that as I like answering emails and doing some of that sort of stuff in the morning. I do that visualization that I mentioned for twenty minutes. I read. I do twenty pages of a book a day and I played around with formatting of that. I do well with non-negotiable things I must do. I do twenty pages. Whether I feel like reading more or less, I just hit the twenty. That’s a lot of personal development stuff.

Also, I added mobility, which is for me, physically fifteen minutes of stretching per day. The other thing about the discipline, as I mentioned before, I think the number one answer is having clarity on where I’m going. It is so easy to not do something because you don’t feel like it when you’re uncertain of the path you’re on. I think it’s so easy to not do stuff like that. I think the clarity, but the second thing I think that led to a lot of discipline was me doing those five daily habits.

Literally, I have them on a sheet of paper on the wall here, daily goals, weekly, monthly, and then my long-term stuff but I will literally write those things down. I’ve been doing this for eight years. I write down workouts, personal development, and mindfulness, and I check them off. I hold myself accountable and that’s way too much for some people but for me, it works to keep myself accountable.

That’s when you have a whiteboard in your bedroom and I know some people who do that they use for jotting down ideas or having their to-do list. For some people, it works. For others, they think it’s crazy.

A lot of my friends think it’s totally nuts and weird and it’s cool but it works for me.

What else have you learned about yourself over the last few years of doing this?

I think how to handle fear and anxiety has been a big one. I was always a nervous kid, had social anxiety, very introverted, and liked being by myself. My ten years of getting great at coaching helped because every hour, I had to be with a human and communicate with them. That helped, part of it but the more I put myself out there and learning how to handle fear and anxiety has been a big one and something that I focus on a lot.

Jim Rohn in the personal development influences and guys like Joe Dispenza now have become popular. Manifesting has become popular it seems but there’s just no denying the fact that spending that time for me thinking about that has one-to-one happened in my life. That is a fact that just has happened now. There could be a lot of reasons why now. I think the other thing that I’m learning more about is the untapped power of my thoughts and how my mind works.

On one hand, that to me is extremely exciting because if you had told me when I started how I live now, I live in the dream life that I put together. If you had told me when I was 15 or 18 how things are now, I wouldn’t believe you which leads me to believe what could life look like in 10, 20, 15, 20 years. I think we could use our minds.

I don’t even know the power of it yet, but the flip side of that is also scary to me because if it’s true that everything that I thought of and can you think of has happened, it’s like, “What am I not thinking of that I could be thinking of that I could be getting, creating, or doing?” To me, it’s a double-edged sword like that $4 million thing I told you about. It’s like, “What if I would’ve thought $40 million?” $4 million at that point might as well have been like I said, whatever. It’s like, “Am I not doing enough because of my thoughts?” Do you see what I’m saying?

Yeah.

That has been a big, big learning big learning curve for me. There are probably 100 micro answers to that question, but those are the macro ones I’m thinking of.

Do you meditate?

That visualization thing I do, I’ve tried different forms of it, but I’ll do breathing and getting present. How about you? Do you do meditation?

I’ve tried it. I’ve struggled with getting myself in the frame of mind to do it. At one point, I was trying to do it before I went to bed as a way of letting go of the day to help with sleep. I found that what I wanted to do was hop in bed and read a book. You’re like, “I just want to get through this meditation because I wanted to read.”

I did the transcendental meditation when I first learned it. I thought that helped. I have a mantra that I could just think of. Almost in the beginning thought of it as a game. It helped me a lot when I thought meditating was about not thinking at all. I then learned my interpretation of it is that you can bring yourself back to a central place or mantra so it’s okay for the thoughts to come in and out. I almost found it to be an interesting game for myself to play like, “How long could I sit here for and keep coming back to this mantra? Can I do a minute?” I remember I started with a minute on my phone.

For me, J.R., it works. I do it in the morning pretty early so I can do it and then do my visualization as a starter for what the day’s going to look like. That’s me at a phase now where my work looks different than it used to. I’m not as busy. I think before when I was in years 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., it was building. I would wake up and work. That was highly effective for me in terms of getting things done. My meditation, I probably would not have done first thing back then.

Do you do a workout first or the meditation and visualization first?

I’ll do a workout from 5:45 to 6:45. I come home, eat breakfast, and then I go right into the meditation. It’s probably from 7:00 to 7:20. From 7:20 until noon will be my main morning work period. I work better in the morning fasting and stuff. The afternoons for me are a hit or miss at this point.

I think for a lot of people, they say that they get their most productive hours in the morning.

It’s different too. We have a small team of people. We still have a team of people who do all of the main actions that need to move the ball forward. I’ve gotten honed in on the things that are important for our business for me, which is being in front of the camera, which is the main thing. We filmed every Monday from 12:00 to 2:00 for the past few years, give or take a holiday or two but we’ve got that time block. It’s the first thing we do every week. It’s the most important thing.

My importance is so much more than that. Being in front of the camera, coming up with the ideas for the videos, and being in the videos but then as soon as we film a video, I’m not involved with the production at all. I’m not involved with all these other things so I can now hone my focus on fewer tasks. I think a lot of us in the beginning, when we start something, you wear a lot of hats. You got to do all kinds of stuff. My schedule didn’t look eight years ago like it does now as a caveat. I wouldn’t be able to take an afternoon off before.

Influences And Future

Who have been your big influences besides Jim?

He’s in his own category. Grant Cardone when I first started had just come out with the 10X Rule, which I read and listened to his audiobook over and over. That’s another thing that works for me. Also, Who Not How. When I find a good book that influences me, I will read or listen to way fewer things, but I’ll listen to them over and over. Jim Rohn had this two-hour and four-minute personal development workshop. It’s harder to find on YouTube now, but I have to tell you, I bet I have watched that thing 3 to 5 times a week now for years. It’s the same video. The same stuff.

You hear things a little differently over time. You got to get reminded of the same stuff. It’s a powerful video but Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule was big for me. Not so much him, but the message of what the 10X Rule was which is if set your goals ten times higher, it’s going to take ten times more work than you want. That was a good eye-opener for me.

Gary Vaynerchuk in 2016 and 2017 when I was starting was popular. He turned me on to monthly recurring revenue and making money online. Those are probably my big three. Patrick Bet-David before Valuetainment, but when he was doing the personal development stuff, I looked up to and admired him. I would watch him a lot. Ed Mylett has been a guy that I like to listen to. Also, Alex Hormozi has blown up online as a business guy. I saw his third YouTube video he ever came out with just randomly. I was doing phone sales at the time and he was posting videos about that.

It was the first time I ever commented on a YouTube video in my whole life and I commented, “Dude, A) You’re unbelievable, and B) You’re going to be one of the thought leaders.” He and I are the same age. He’s since blown up and his content has been good. Those are some of the people that I would listen to. Also, in the background of that, in general, guys like John Maxwell I listen to on communication a lot. Before I go film a video, I’ll listen to him or Jim Rohn does a speech just to get the cadence of the talk and get in that flow. He’s not afraid to pause and leave a moment of silence. That flow I like a lot with my communication.

What’s ahead for you and your various ventures?

I think it’s to continue expanding and sustaining our golf. I want to live to be 100. I figure I’ve got 60 years of work ahead and I never want to retire, not work. I’m trying to build, “What does my work look like? What impact do we want to be able to have?” The golf thing for a while yet, but ultimately, the personal development I’d like to grow at a 10X size of what our golf is. That’ll take time. It took us a few years to grow the golf online like I wanted it to. I think it’ll take 5 to 10 to get the personal development rolling, but I’m committed to that. I’d like to do, be, share, and be the next generation of Jim Rohn, which are big shoes to fill so we’ll see but that’s the goal is to expand the personal development

Also, try and make an impact. At some point, there are financial goals for sure, and I’m sure you’ve experienced similar things. The financial stuff’s cool and all. The freedom of time is good, but the impact of the work is where my focus is shifting. How many people do I think it could help and how? How am I suited to help them? Maybe I’m as good or better than someone else? I’m going to try and figure that out over the next decade.

When you look back, what’s one thing you wish you had known when you were that eight-year-old kid?

I’m going to be a broken record, but the goal-setting mindfulness power. The power of visualization and attaching the emotions to it like a Joe Dispenza or Jim Rohn goal-setting workshop. I’ll even go beyond that. I know at certain times you might not be ready to hear a message. I don’t know if I was eighteen if I would’ve been ready to hear the messaging like I was at seventeen but if I could go back to when I was starting high school or even when I was mature enough like 15, 16, I would’ve started doing the mindfulness meditation visualization stuff when I was fifteen. I would maybe farther along the journey of impact than I am now.

Eric Cogorno: The power of goal setting, mindfulness, and visualization is profound, especially when emotions are attached to them.

However, I don’t know at fifteen if I’d have been able to take that in. It’s tricky, but that without a doubt is the one thing that’s changed my life the most that I wish I would’ve started doing sooner, which is literally, “Eric at fifteen, write down.” It’s like I never did this. I might’ve had loose goals, but what would be your dream life? Write this stuff all down. What does that all cost? What do I need to have to be able to pay for all that? That feels so unattainable when I first write it down but slowly but surely, as the days go on, you start to, “What about this?” Solutions seem to present themselves and opportunities, etc.

It’s like the video example that you talked about how hundreds of little changes that you’ve made to your videos have made them dramatically different than they used to be.

That’s a great point and you can’t see it. John Maxwell and Ed Mylett have a good video they did. They were talking about a lot of people who set goals and dreams, but they don’t do it because they don’t know what the first step is or they can’t see every step along the way. John Maxwell would say, “It’s comfortable moving into something without knowing every step along the way.”

He gave the analogy of the car at night with the headlights, which I thought was so good. I was like, “You can only see certain parts in front of you,” but to that point, it’s the same way of driving home. You can only see so far ahead of you, a couple of steps ahead of you with the headlights but if you know where you’re going, you know your end goal, you know you’re going home, it’s easy to be willing to travel the path without seeing everything. For me, it comes back to the clarity of what the angles are. It’s hard to drive down a road with just the headlights when you don’t know where you’re heading.

Closing

It is but I think even in those situations where you don’t know where you’re going, I think part of this metaphor of the car with the headlights is the road will be there. If you have faith that the road will reveal itself, you don’t need to know what the tenth turn you have to make it. You just need to know that you have a little bit further to go on this road.

I think that’s what Maxwell and others are trying to get at is this idea that you don’t have to have a complete visualization of everything that’s going to get you to the destination. You just have to be able to trust that you will find your way in increments along the journey. It’s a fun conversation. It was good to meet you and learn a little bit more about what you’ve done with your business.

Thanks. I appreciate it. Let’s do this again in another year or so when I’ve got another year under my belt in personal development and see what kind of answers I have to those questions then.

We will make that more the focus. We’ll call this the golf one and we’ll do a personal development one. That’d be great. Good luck to you.

Thanks, J.R. I appreciate you.

Have a good day.

Thanks.

—

I want to thank Eric for joining me to discuss how he has built a successful online business, what it’s meant for him personally, and how he’s now turning his focus to personal development as well. You can find him on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, or visit his website, CogornoGolf.com. If you’d like to work on your own career, visit PathWise.io and become a member. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for the PathWise newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks. Have a great day.

Important Links

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• Take Your Shot
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About Eric Cogorno

Eric Cogorno is best known for the golf instruction he provides on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, but he’s also spent nearly two decades building a reputation as a highly respected Performance Golf Coach. He’s intuitively able to combine the art and science of golf to design seemingly simple strategies unique to each individual student that lead to significantly improved performance for golfers at all levels.

In 2017, Eric took the experience he’d gleaned from giving more than 20,000 in-person golf lessons to YouTube. His distinct style of clear language and simplified concepts have attracted more than 500,000 followers across his channels and many millions of monthly views from all across the globe.

Bringing his golf instruction into the digital age, Eric launched cogornogolf.com in 2018, with the aim to make world-class golf instruction available to everyone and – through the process – create the biggest and best online golf school in the world.

Eric was born and raised in the Lehigh Valley, PA and was a scratch golfer by the age of 15. He golfed throughout high school and while attending Lehigh University. He’s been featured on Forbes.com and was voted as a Golf Digest Best In State Teacher.