EPISODE. The Bet That Never Fails: Building a Top YouTube Brand Through Consistency and Pivots - Eric Cogorno
Transcript
Eric Cogorno - 00:00
During that course of time, and this gets skipped a lot when I talk to people who look at the YouTube audience now and say, how do I do this, that, next thing? Those first six or seven years, I put all of my energy on trying to get great at my craft. All of my time was like, how do I get great at coaching and studying? I used to go shadow coaches on the weekend and watch the best coaches in my area, go watch them coach for a day and pick up what they did, what I liked, what I didn't like. I was all in. All of my focus was getting great at coaching.
And I think that's an important base because all of the strategies and little hacks I have for how to build social medias underneath all that is the fact that like you have to actually be good at the thing you're talking about.
Gary Montalvo - 00:49
Bring it. Some of the biggest moments in your life will come down to one thing. A bet on yourself. That's exactly what my guest today, Eric Cogorno, has done his whole life over and over again. As a young golfer with ambitions of going pro, he quickly realized he wasn't good enough to make that happen. But instead of giving up on the game he loved, he made a bet. A bet that he could still create a career in golf, even if it didn't look like he originally imagined. That bet led him to golf coaching, and later he made another bet.
This time on social media and YouTube. Before he had all the answers, before he had a big audience, before he was sure if it would even work, he went all in. And it paid off. Today, Eric runs a wildly successful golf coaching business and has built one of the biggest online golf communities out there. But his success didn't come from having the perfect plan.
It came from trusting himself enough to take action before he had all the answers. This episode will challenge you to rethink what it means to be ready and show you why sometimes the biggest risk is never betting on yourself at all. Let's get into it.
So Eric, I'm really excited to have you on the show. So I have the honor of working with a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. you know, common journey for entrepreneurs is they start a business because they have a passion. They have a skillset or something they really love and they want to just very innocently share that with the world. And they go off and start businesses and then they realize that that passion or that skillset is
literally like 10 % of the actual business. So I'm excited to have somebody on the show who has successfully turned one of his passions into a business. So thank you so much for being here.
Eric Cogorno - 03:19
Yeah, Gary, I appreciate you having me on here,
Gary Montalvo - 03:21
Absolutely. you, when, how did golf come into your life? When did you become passionate about golf? And, you know, tell us a little bit about that.
Eric Cogorno - 03:32
Yeah, so I grew up playing all kinds of different sports, Gary, right? Like my dad played different sports. I played baseball and basketball and football growing up. And my dad used to golf on the weekends with his friends. Like every Saturday and Sunday, he'd go golf with his buddies. And so when I was up until the age of, say 12 or 13, I had never played before. But I always have kind of curious about like what this golf thing was all about. I looked up to my dad when I was younger. He was like a hero to me. And so just wanted to really hang out with him.
hang out with him and his buddies and get into the game. I thought, you know, I'm pretty athletic. can pick up this golf thing, problem. And so I kind of bugged him for a while to take me down there. I think he liked getting away with the
Gary Montalvo - 04:15
Yeah.
I'm sure.
Eric Cogorno - 04:19
He maybe wasn't like, I think he wanted to spend time with me. He wasn't so pumped about the idea of me coming to Lawnmere maybe. But then eventually he ended up taking me and golf for me, Gary, was the first thing, athletically, that I tried that wasn't pretty easy right away. Not that I was fantastic at baseball and basketball in day one, but I've always had good eye-hand coordination. could work my way around sports stuff, but golf was hard. And so…
I think one of the things for me, obviously outside of me wanting to go spend time with him and him and his friends is that the difficulty of it almost like made me more obsessed with it. think because I wasn't good at it right away, similar to their sports, I almost like doubled down on like, my God, what's going on?
Gary Montalvo - 05:09
It's more nuanced, think, right? Like, I feel like golf, I mean, not that I know anything about anything, but I feel like golf is like more subtle calibrations, right? Like it's, is that right?
Eric Cogorno - 05:21
That's definitely right. It's so micro. it's like, you know, in baseball, if you miss hit, it's a foul ball. You get another swing. Basketball, you miss a shot. You keep playing. And golf, when you hit a foul ball, you got to go play that ball. Right. It's like, it's the difficulty level is very high. And so I think that drove me, Gary, you know, and then like when I went to go play with him a little bit, I was used to winning, you know, like when I played other team sports and stuff, like we always had good teams. I was lucky to, you know, we won a lot of games. I didn't lose a lot.
Athletically when I was younger and then here I go play golf with my dad and his buddies. I'm just getting what you know, I'm beat down every weekend and so I think the combination of Me not being good at it and then like hating to lose when I was younger Took me from being introduced to the game to getting obsessed with it
Gary Montalvo - 06:08
I was just, I was literally sitting here thinking, I wonder what that drive was that had you focused on something that you were not exceeding at when you had all this other places where you can just go play that would be much more rewarding. But it sounds like you have a competitive streak and you were like, I don't want to lose. I'm going to figure this out.
Eric Cogorno - 06:31
No doubt, Gary. mean, when I was younger, you know, I was a shy kid. I had lots of like social anxiety, lots of fear about stuff when I was younger. And so I got really competitive and hated to lose. I think you hear that a lot, but I hated to lose even more than I enjoyed the winning. I think just out of like fear and being embarrassed to lose, et cetera, which was a nice driving force to work hard, you know, when I was younger. And so, yeah, I certainly had that with golf.
And, you know, this we're talking now, I was probably 12 or 13 years old. So I'm like a middle school kid at this point, you know, and like from that point on from middle school until the end of high school. And I've had these things, Gary, where like when I do something and then I'm inherently not good at it right away, when you're never good at something to be, but I'm like, all right, this is difficult. I'm not good at this. I've always either had this fork in the road where I'm either like, hey, I'm not going to do this at all. Like zero.
or I'm going to really like lean into it and dive head deep into this. The same thing happened when I started coaching, but from middle school till high school, I was all in on golf. I thought, this is what I'm going to do now. Like I want to go play on TV, go be a professional golfer. And that took about all of like one professional tournament to realize, hey, I'm nowhere near anywhere close to as good as the rest of these people. And so that's how the coaching career got started.
Gary Montalvo - 07:54
So it's interesting because I think there's a really valuable lesson in that, because a lot of people, their instinct is to shy away from those things that they feel they're not good at. And I think it happens a lot to entrepreneurs where, I'm not good at the money, or I'm not good at the numbers, or I'm not good at social media, or I'm not good at speaking. so you, instead of...how can I learn this, right? How can I figure this out? Instead of embracing yourself from a perspective of let me train myself to do this, they avoid it, right? They avoid it, they focus elsewhere and they pay a price for it, you know? And so I think there's a real valuable, what you're saying is so important, I think a life lesson, but as an entrepreneur especially, this real value in approaching things from how can I figure this out? And then, working is almost like a training program for yourself, if you will, right? Like how do you break this down so that my brain can embrace it?
Eric Cogorno - 09:03
Yeah, 100%. And I think as I've gotten older, Gary, I've like recognized that that's the reality. It's not a like binary or a black and white or I am good or I am not good. It's almost always like I'm currently not skilled at this, but I can build the skill. Right. Like that can improve our time. But as a young kid, I didn't know that. Yeah. I thought it was just like, I'm either good or I'm not good. And that's that's all she wrote.
And I think as I've gotten older and gotten better at things, I've learned that no one's good when you start and you build the skill by doing.
Gary Montalvo - 09:37
Yeah. when did you, so you sounds like the trajectory was to go pro and you did a tournament and was like, nope, I'm not doing this. And so then you decided to go into coaching at that moment.
Eric Cogorno - 09:50
Yeah, so like the the when I got to college, I you know, when you're younger, you play sports in your little local area. Like I was I lived in a little bubble. You know, I was not exposed to things when I was growing up. So if you're kind of the best athlete in your little town, you think you're like, you and then you go two towns over and you're like, OK, wait a minute. No, there's you I'm not actually that good. So I kind of started really having in college right away before I even played in the pro tournament. Honestly, like my first or second tournament.
we played some of these schools. I went to Lehigh, it's like a small division one school in Pennsylvania. So we played some bigger schools. And Gary, I'd go play with like the like worst guy on like these mid-level teams and they were so good. You know, they were so good. So was like, my gosh, what are the guys at like Miami and North Carolina? Like, how good are these guys? So, you know, I'm also realistic with myself, I think in terms of what am I willing to put in and what am I gonna get out with it?
Eric Cogorno - 10:48
And the odds of me being able to go play were so, small for the work. And so that's a backdrop to like when I'm at this point in college, I'm realizing I'm not good enough to go play. I happened to go to school when 2008, 2009 financial crisis was happening. So like when I was getting recruited to go to school, these kids I went to school with were getting MBAs out of Lehigh, six figure jobs right out of school. So I'm like, all right, this is great.
I've got this backup plan. can go just do finance. I'll make a hundred grand a year out of school. And then like the semester later, man, those same kids, like couldn't find jobs. This is happening in my first year of college. And so that's happening while I'm realizing I'm not good enough to go play golf. And I'm at this point, I'm working at a golf course, making minimum wage, Gary. I didn't, I grew up with no money, not poor, but probably like very lower middle class. And so
I had been working at this golf course and I used to pick balls in the range. I don't know if you guys are familiar with but there's this guy out there, you hit the ball at him, right? He's picking the balls in the range. And so that was me. And so I'll never forget, like how I, leading to how I got coaching here. That's the backstory, right? So like, I'm like, gosh, what am going to do with myself now? I'm not going to go play pro. These guys can't get jobs. What am I going to do? I'm picking balls in this range one day. If you can imagine it's August. So it's like humid. It's like 90 degrees.
I had gone out maybe partying the night before. was like a little hungover. It's like seven AM in the morning and hot already. And I'm on this range, Gary. And it's like a bumpy hilly area. Like driving this car out there is not super fun. So I'm not in like a great mood, right? And I pulled the picker around after my first pick. And as I had been picking the balls, I was watching, there was this guy at this golf course. He's the golf brother, his name's Paul. And he was giving this guy a lesson.
And they're underneath this like shaded area. There's a fan going in there. They're like laughing it up. It didn't seem like he was working that hard, right? And I pulled this card over, right? I pulled this card over and I'm like, I just happened to walk by and he made an offhand comment, not braggy, but just so he happened to make a comment that he had made $50 given a 30 minute golf lesson. Now I'm 18, 18, 19 at this time and I'm making like, you know, seven bucks an hour. Yeah.
Gary Montalvo - 13:02
Yeah.
Eric Cogorno - 13:06
And so it didn't take long, Gary, for me to say, wait a minute, I have to pick balls out in this range for eight hours to make 50 bucks. And you used to then 30 minutes in the show laughing up this guy. And so that's Paul. I then said to him immediately, hey, I'm interested in teaching golf lessons. And I gave my very first lesson the next week.
Gary Montalvo - 13:25
Okay. And when did you, how did it become the entrepreneurial enterprise that you have now? I mean, let's talk a little bit about that, right? Just to give context. I I gave the listeners a little bit during your introduction, but you have this online coaching business. You have a large following on YouTube.
All the platforms really and you're like one of the go-to people for people who are looking to get coaching online and golf, right? Did I miss anything?
Eric Cogorno - 14:09
That's good. I appreciate that. yeah, how we got from like, Hey, I'm going to start coaching next week to this where we are today is like my site, I asked Paul, Hey, I want to start coaching. So he gave me my first couple clients. That's how it got started. He said, Hey, okay, I'll give it to this. We'll do a little revenue share. And my first year coaching, I made $7,500 kit kit.
Gary Montalvo - 14:23
Yeah.
I'm sorry, let's stop there for a second because that's actually, just realized that it was pretty ballsy what you did to go ask this guy, you know, like, hey, give me a shot. And I'm just present to how many people don't even take that step, you know?
Eric Cogorno - 14:51
Yeah, it's a good, I appreciate that Gary. It's one of those examples of like good timing, good fortune, but then I also put my foot forward. I took advantage of him and I had talked to this guy a couple of times. We kind of, you know, had a nice little relationship going. He worked at the course. I was doing the pick of the ball. So I knew he was. It wasn't like he was a stranger, right? And I just said, look, Paul, here's the situation. Here's where I'm at. I didn't tell him that, you know, it looked like what he was doing was easy. I just said, hey, I'd be interested in.
Gary Montalvo - 14:59
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Hey, you look really comfortable under that fan there.
Eric Cogorno - 15:27
So, and he was fortunate enough where I said, I also, Gary, I think is important in that initial part, I brought it up and made it a good thing for him. Meaning I said, hey, I want to start coaching. Yeah. I'll say, hey, I want to start coaching. I see you're coaching a lot. I see you're busy. I'm sure that you have people that come in that maybe you don't feel like dealing with or you don't have time for. How about if I coach them and we'll split the revenue so you can keep your...
You keep 25 I'll keep 25 and I'll do the lesson type of thing. So I made it.
Gary Montalvo - 15:58
So good.
So good. I'm so glad you said that because so many people don't approach it from like what's in it for me, not what's in it for you and what's in it for us. So good.
Eric Cogorno - 16:11
Yeah, and I get people in that. I'm sure Gary, you've experienced the same way too, where people will be like, hey, you know, want to come, I'll work for you for free or, know, I want to come, you know, shadow or this, that, the next thing. Whereas like that, that's even like, that's not only not better for me, that's like intrusive for me. Like if someone, I want to say, hey, here's what I can do to help you, right? Leading that way. And so that's how I got my first couple lessons. And, you know, I didn't go from, I made $7,500 my first season, right?
So I from minimum wage to like making $25, $30 an hour. And then every year I doubled for the first like five years. I went from 7,500 to 15. Now at this time I'm working at the course, you on the side. So I'm kind of teaching part-time. 7,500 to 15 in year two, 15 to 30, 30 to 60, and then 60 to like 80, 90. And what I did in those first couple years, Gary, is another example, like when I started playing golf, when I gave my first couple of golf lessons, I was so bad as you are. No one's good at their first lesson, you know?
You're insecure. You give way too much information. It's like, it's a mess. I retain clients because I showed how much I cared, but the tactical stuff we were doing was no good. But you still, you know, I still retain some clients. I really tried to make sure I knew enough then were like, hey, no matter what, when they leave here, I'm going to go above and beyond. Like I'm going to really, because I did care, show that I care and do everything I can help them. And so I retained a lot of clients with that more than the results they got in the beginning. And so word of
Gary Montalvo - 17:43
Another lesson for those of you listening there.
Eric Cogorno - 17:46
Yeah,
like in year one, right? I'm not going to go get results like I can in year 10. You know, I just don't know the tactical, but I can care a lot. I can go above and beyond. And that means something. And so that got me a lot of word of mouth. It's kind of how I built my business in the beginning, which I think is typical, right? I got this person and they said, Hey, I got a buddy wants to play. Okay, cool. Bring them in type of thing. And in year
You know, and during that course of time, and this gets skipped a lot when I talk to people who look at like the YouTube audience now, and you know, how do I do you know, this, that next thing? It's like, man, I spent like, man, those first like six or seven years, I like put all of my energy on trying to get great at my craft. Like all of my time was like, how do I get great at coaching and studying? I said, I'm gonna go shadow coaches on the weekend and watch like the best coach in my area, go watch them coach for a day and kind of pick up what they did, what I liked, what I didn't like. And I was all in, like all of my focus was getting great at coaching. And I think that's an important base, right? Because all of the strategies and little hacks I have for how to build social medias, underneath all that is the fact that like you have to actually be good at the thing you're talking about. You know?
Gary Montalvo - 18:58
Yeah.
It's so good because I feel like it's probably a product of the social media world that we live in where you just see the shiny end result and often don't see everything that it took to make that happen. So it looks easy in some ways, right? Like, you just got to be great on camera or hey, you just got to have the right equipment or hey, you just got to know the right tactic or the right, you know.
but there's so much to that and I often find that people are trying to rush to the end, they're trying to rush to the result and instead of taking the time to, yo, this is about you honing in your craft. And it's not even like the idea of like paying your dues somehow, it's like frowned upon now, like people just want instant success. And it's like, no, you have to learn, the, what,
The lessons that come from that sweat equity cannot be replaced, cannot be taught, cannot, you know, it's like, it shapes who you are as a person. It shapes the future of how you build your business. It influences so much. So I'm so glad you said that.
Eric Cogorno - 20:09
Yeah, it's harder now, Gary. Totally agree. it's because now everything's like dangled in front of you. You know, like it's just easy to see those shiny objects. When I was doing this. I'm sure you've had some experience, too. Like when I was really getting great at my craft, this was pre me seeing like all this stuff online. I'm fortunate, I think, that we were maybe before the social media now. But the thing I realized was like and for all of us, the getting great at the craft, like that's an
That's the equity that we have forever. Like no matter what happens, if we're really good at the thing we do, there's ways to monetize that. There's ways to build the dream life we want around that. Like that's the core thing that must be there and just simply cannot be skipped. Right. And it's like, and it's a continuation. It's a, it's an ongoing never ending process with that. But I think that's important as the base because everything else that I might say now is very secondary to like the fact that that was.
you know, that was in there. And so, you know, I built up a nice little in-person business. We got to the point where I'm like, you know, 26, 27 years old, I'm making 80 or 90 grand a year. I live very frugally. So I like even already at that point, I more money than I needed. Yeah. I never had grown up. That was a new, you know, a new thing. I wasn't buying Ferraris or anything, but like, you know, I had some little, you know, extra money. And then how we get from there to the online thing is I had a series of events happen.
which depending upon what you believe in and a greater power, the universe or whatever, I just had a remarkable set of circumstances happen to me within one week. So the short version, Gary, is, so I'm 26, 27, I built up this little in-person business and it's a Saturday afternoon, just like when I was picking balls, fast forward seven years. Same range, same summer, same hot. There's a theme here with me. I'm like outside in the heat when I come to these realizations.
Saturday afternoon, I'm on a range. had probably given like seven lessons that day. So for people who do services or, you know, coaching, it's like, you know, one-on-one, seven hours in a row, not a lot of- It's a lot. Yeah, mentally, right? Yeah, a lot. Mentally. Drain. So I'm standing there on the range and like, and I realized, you know, I start going through that last coaching session. I'm just kind of going through the motions. Yeah. Like I'm just, not really there mentally. And I just thought to myself, like very clearly, I was like,
Gary Montalvo - 22:18
You're drained.
Eric Cogorno - 22:33
Oh, man, I'm not gonna do this for you know, Tom 5060 seven years old, like I can't keep doing what I'm doing here. So that happened on a Saturday, right? This is like a mid afternoon Saturday. That night. I was getting ready to go out with my friends. I was in the bathroom back then had more hair I was doing my little hair dryer in the bathroom. And my friend sent me a video. And it popped up on my phone and it was a Tony Robbins video. Now I had never heard of Tony Robbins. I had never talked to my friend about this. He's like, Hey, I saw this video. I think you would like it. Right?
with my good friends. I clicked on this video and it didn't do anything for me for whatever reason. I just like I watched I was like, okay, cool, whatever. But right next to it, the recommended video was from a guy named Jim Rohn. And it was a two hour video called the day that turns your life around. And I boom, I pressed on that. And I'm not sure exactly what words to use to describe how I felt. But like when I listened to him talk, everything he said Gary just like
hit me right in the heart. Just like everything he was talking about, he was talking about personal development. He said, you you should be spending more time working on yourself than you do on your job. I thought, what the hell does that mean? Right? Like what's, what's, what's personal about? never heard of personal about. And so I just like, it really hit me the right time, right? That, that same, that same day. And right after that video was a goal setting workshop, Jim Rohn goal setting workshop. It's still on YouTube.
Gary Montalvo - 23:49
Yeah.
Eric Cogorno - 24:01
three or four part video totally changed my life. Like cannot highly recommend that enough for anyone listening. And I was feeling enough pain at the time that I took action. And I actually went through this goal setting workshop. Right? I took out a little legal yellow pad of paper like I have right next to me. And I went through and did the goal setting workshop. And the short version of that Gary is it's like, you know, you're sort of imagining your dream life in the future. And you're writing down like if you could have whatever you wanted.
No logistics, no strings attached. What would you have your life look like? And I had never done that before. Like I had done pretty good in school. I went to a pretty good college. I graduated high in my class. never, no one ever told me about that. I never did this goal setting stuff. I kind of loosely knew what I wanted to do, but I never like got specific and clear and like thought about it. And it was the first time in my life, man, this was the day after, this is Sunday, first time in my life that I ever let my mind.
like consider and expand about what would be possible other than like what I was doing that was right in front of me. I had never like let myself dream like that.
So I did that workshop and I did that every, I did it like eight times every week for like eight weeks. And after the second week, I happened to be given a golf lesson and a lady came in named Mary, who's my now business partner. So I'm burnt out, right? I did this goal setting workshop. I'm starting to think about what my life could be like outside of this one-on-one coaching. This lady comes in for a lesson. And right before we had this lesson, I used to do these group lessons, Gary, they'd be like,
20 or 30 kids, I'd have music going. We're busting each other's chops. It's like a fun, cool training environment. And she came in and she's like, Eric, you should do a golf show. There's something really cool going on. I should do this golf show thing. And she had a PR background. said, you know what's funny? You said that. I don't know about doing a show, but I'm thinking about doing this YouTube thing. I had been looking online and had, I was watching guys like Grant Cardone and Gary Vaynerchuk at this point.
And so I'm saying, okay, I'm thinking about doing this YouTube thing. And her and I, again, short story, we ended up talking and we posted our first YouTube video probably two months after that. So the backstory I think matters, Gary, because it's like, I felt pain, which I think was the motivating factor for me to act. I was like burnt out. I had got introduced to this Jim Rohn thing and kind of expanded my mind for the first time.
And I met someone who could help me make it a reality. Like all that happened for me around the same time. And I'm not sure if you remove any one of those three that my journey would have went the same way it did. So long story, but that's like how we got to my in-person to do
Gary Montalvo - 26:51
It’s such a good story. literally have like this grin on my face the whole time. And there's so there's so many juicy lessons in what you're talking about. You know, I like to talk a lot about, I believe we're being spoken to at all times. But we don't listen, you know, and, you know, how many people have that experience of, I don't know, man, this, this, this work sucks, or I'm not happy right now. But you just keep on trucking, like that's how life is supposed to be. And you just like, that becomes like your bar, right? And so the fact that you're willing to go, you know, listen to that intuition wherever it's coming from, like whatever you believe is coming from somewhere, going like, wake up here, right? There's more. So that to me is, you know, huge. The, that you… that you follow the breadcrumbs that life starts to put in front of you. when this, something that you've never experienced before, you knew nothing about, you're listening to this guy talking language that you've never heard, and you were open enough and humble enough to try it and go, me go down this road. me, especially for men, feel like it's like, yeah, I know everything.
So that's also so good. And that you were willing to swing out in a whole direction called YouTube that you knew nothing about. were just like, there's so many, there's so much value in what you just shared there. And I wanted to break it down that way so that people can see all the little lessons in there that are there for people. No, so good, so good.
Eric Cogorno - 28:44
Yeah, man, I appreciate that. It's like, it's funny when you tell a story about things we've done in the past. And it's like, you know, five years of things get turned into two or three sentences. Obviously, there's a million things that happen in between the two. But I think that gives the big bookmarks. And just to put a little bow tie on that, is like...
I've come to realize now later, right? There's these couple of pivotal parts of my life. Pivotal part was that thing on the range I met Paul, I started coaching, right? Lean into that for a couple of years, get really good at it. Pivotal day, I felt burnt out, did the Jim Rohn thing, met Mary, boom, pivotal, pivotal point there. And all of these things that have worked really well for me since that Jim Rohn goal setting workshop, very clearly I can see a direct correlation.
to how when I did that dream life vision and I got clear of what I wanted my future to look like, which then expanded, you know, as our visions do and that me doing it once a week and writing that down, allowing myself to think and dream, then turned into a daily visualization, right? That I later put in.
The clarity on where I want to go has led to all of the things that have happened after that. Like it set a clear destination that allowed the roadmap to take place. So like the only reason I did YouTube was because when I did my dream life vision and I started to do the math on it, I needed to get to certain financial figures. So at the time to give scale, I'm making 80 or 90,000 bucks a year, right?
I do this dream life vision thing. My goal, Jim Rohn says, hey, everyone's goal should be to be financially free. So you have enough money invested that pays your bills. I thought, gosh, that would be unbelievable. I had never met someone in my whole life that was financially free. Every family member I've ever had worked till they died and never had any money. So I didn't even know what that meant. was like, holy that would be amazing. And then I thought, and I'm in my late 20s, this is I thought, what would be a timeframe that would be
Gary Montalvo - 30:46
Yeah.
Eric Cogorno - 30:54
really unbelievable to do it. But what about if like, by the time I'm 40, you know, what if like 10 years, I could live my dream life with complete financial freedom? Like, okay, that's a destination that for me moves me moves me enough. So when I did the quick math on that, the short version was like, I needed $4 million invested to kick me back enough money, like 20 grand a month to pay for all the stuff that I wanted to have. house in Florida, house in Pennsylvania, the cars, the this, that the next thing was 20 grand a month.
So for me to get to 4 million divided by the years that I had to do it, I needed to make like 1.2 million a year. It's like a hundred grand a month. Now when I'm making 80 or 90 grand a year, coming from a kid who's never seen anything with money, dude, 1.2 million a year might as well have been a billion. That fell so far away from the first time I ever even considered that it might be possible. I'd never thought about that before. And then I started to think, you know, Jim talks about like,
Gary Montalvo - 31:40
Yeah. But it was the.
Eric Cogorno - 31:53
Tony does like, how do you get that and you model success? So I thought, okay, is there anyone in the world who makes 1.2 million? Like, is this even doable? Like, obviously, yes, right? Is there are there any coaches that people who do what I do make 1.2 million? Yes. Are there any people in my industry golf coach to do? Now, now we're talking only a couple, like one, two or three people. So I'm like, okay, what do they do to be able to make that amount of money?
Now what I'm doing at this point is one-on-one coaching and that's it. That's my only source of income. The guys who made a million a year, they did events. They would do golf schools. They had an online membership site, right? They would have these other sources of income. And so I'm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Maybe a couple hundred people know who I am, know that I coach golf, maybe in my local area. So I'm like, well, I can't get, I'm not sure how to get to those numbers. I thought, okay, well, if I was going to do a membership site and I needed to make that or golf schools, how would I do that?
Like, where are these people that I need to get? And YouTube, this is 2016, 2016 and 17 was like, that was the place. That's where people are going to search for golf videos. So I didn't wake up one day. My point here is I didn't wake up and be like, you know what? YouTube sounds good. Let's do that. It was very detailed of like, here's where I want to go. And the only way to get there for me to build my audience. And then what's the best way for me to build my audience?
And so things that I have done, Gary, that like have, I've actually followed through on and that have moved the needle for me, for me, it doesn't come like, I'm going to take an action first and get clarity later for me. It comes from clarity on where I want to go first. And then that dictates the actions to get there.
Gary Montalvo - 33:31
But that's so good, because I think it's the other way around for many people. They just start taking actions without having a real clear direction, a real clear... I think that in my experience, there's a lot of fear and hesitation around clarity when it comes to dreaming, when it comes to setting goals, when it comes to creating plans you know, I think on the one hand, probably the biggest reason is just fear of disappointment, fear of failure that, you know, I'm going to let myself dream. I'm going to go have this big thing and then I'm going to, you know, fall flat on my face or what if it doesn't happen and you know, all of that. I think another reason is what if it does? And now I have to go be responsible for that, right? Like now, you know, like now that I've put myself out there, I have to be willing to take the punches that come with putting yourself out there, right? And then I think another one, there might be more, but this is my top three, is just like a lack of imagination. You know, that there is a…a way that you just don't give yourself permission to play and dream and what if, right? So I'm really loving your story in that you're saying this is really the first time that I gave myself permission to actually what if I could, what if I could make this happen? And it's so powerful, because I really think that we don't often give ourselves that permission.
Eric Cogorno - 35:28
So yeah, totally aligned with everything you just said there we could probably talk hours about each one of those three individually Yeah, I think the main sticker would be like if we were doing a coaching session and someone said that to me I Would say a like totally understand that me too like totally get where you're coming from. I've been there as well but like ultimately for me the proof the proof is in the pudding type of thing of like I have such a distinct life of like before I started doing dream life vision and after
There's just like such a clear line in how my life has gotten better in all areas. And who knows, you know, if it would work for everyone when they're going to do it or not. But what we know for sure is if you don't do it, it definitely won't work. Like there is a grand total of zero percent chance relative to what we're talking about about getting that dream life stuff. Yeah. If you don't go for it. And I think the other thing, Gary, too, is like going for it doesn't need to be a big, huge thing like dream like vision. Here, when you say dream life, we think like.
Oh my gosh, it's like big huge thing. A dream life for someone could be, know, hey, I'm working 40 hours a week to make, you know, 80 grand a year. It'd be awesome to only work 20. How could I figure out to make the same amount of money in half the time? So it also doesn't need to be like a big grandiose thing. It can be. Yeah. It can be little micro, you know, little micro things. The other little point on that one last thing, Gary, is like, anything I've ever written down, maybe for someone who's listening, is like thinking, maybe I, hey, do I want to do this or not?
anything I've written down that I've thought about, I've gotten. Now, most of it, a lot of it has taken me longer than I thought. It's been a whole heck of a lot more difficult than I thought. The road to get there often is not how I think, right? But like the getting there things is almost 100%. It's pretty wild. And so if that's true, and I'm able to do those by thinking about it,
and then continuously daily thinking about it. And I get 100 % of it, even if you get little bits of that and you got 20%, 30%, 50 % on your list. Like, imagine what that life could look like compared to what it looks like now. Right. like, the getting clear on it part, like I almost, I don't want to go on and on about this, like, I almost like a core fear of mine, Gary, is like, what am I not thinking about?
that I could be thinking about, that I could be doing, that could impact other people or help make my life better. Like, I think it's so, so powerful. I think it's the most powerful exercise we can do. And not doing that doesn't mean you're not going to be successful. But I think the odds of success decrease dramatically. And also, like some of my friends, you end up being successful on paper, but not living a life you want to live. Because you weren't clear on where you wanted to go.
Gary Montalvo - 38:26
Yeah. And, and aside from success, it's, you know, something that happens is you don't get to know yourself to be the person that you could be. Right. There's a way in which it keeps the game small for you because you're not expanding yourself. And so, you know, that does contribute to your fulfillment in life, but it also contributes to
what's possible for you. People think that the way they are is like fixed and that the way they are is like something other than just what they're practiced at. I mean, I'm sure you as a coach, you get this, right? It's like people, like, I'm not good at this or I'm not good at that. It's like, well, yeah, but it's because you're practiced at doing it this way. And so once we...
teach you a different way or give you the awareness more than anything of how you're doing it that's not working, then you have the ability to go, okay, let me, I can catch myself now when I'm doing it. We're just a series of practices, man. And once you start to change those practices, different results come about. So you're highlighting that so well. And if you...
And once you start to expand and get to know yourself different, then even the vision expands, right? Cause now there's a, now you know yourself to be someone who can hold more. And so you give yourself permission to dream more, to, to, to, you know, and it doesn't have to be, I have a hundred million dollars in the bank, you know? Cause I think a lot of people go, I don't want that. I'm like, okay, fine. But what do you want? You know, like what, what could it, you know, what does that look good for you? So good. Okay.
So, you know, just because you had this idea of YouTube and just because you knew you wanted to get there, that's the reality. YouTube is a very complicated beast. So what was the process for you like of learning how to navigate this very complicated world that everybody thinks you just post stuff and then just wait for the viral?
a factor to kick in when we know it doesn't work like that at all. So let's break that. Before we go into like some of the strategies with iLove, I mean, know there could be like 7,000 podcast episodes just on that. I wanna just talk about how you approached learning the skill sets.
Eric Cogorno - 41:06
Yeah, there's two things that come to mind right away. One, I had that partner, Mary. So for me, anything I've done really well, I always have another who with me. And honestly, as I look back upon that, and some of the things I'm doing now, having someone else for me, and just the accountability factor of it is so important. And I recommend that to a lot of my friends as well, if they're struggling to get something going.
I'm like, man, sometimes having another person in there with you to make sure you show up all the time and keep you going. That's been a difference maker for me because prior to this, dude, like I wasn't afraid to quit on stuff. You know, like I might even call myself a quitter. Like I would quit on things for sure. And YouTube in the beginning, you know, it was not easy. I mean, we posted for a full year. Now. We started in 2016, 17, so the landscape has changed.
Right? There was far less competitive back then. There's far less people posting golf videos relative to what it is now. I think that's true in any industry. So the competition has changed. So there was more, there's more eyeballs to go around now for sure. There's more people on YouTube, but there's a lot more people posting. So we weren't super early to market, but we were early enough that I think that was an advantage. We were early. I had a partner, so I had someone to keep me accountable. So I think those are two big variables, right? If I'm being honest.
I like to think like, I'm good on camera and I'm a good coach and this and that, but like those, I don't know, those two things were big for me early on. So we posted our first full year. I'm coaching full-time at this point still. So like I'm making my same income coaching. So I said, hey, I'll do this, but I need to do it like only where it fits in. So it wasn't a priority, it was an add-on. So we would film a videos we posted like once a week for the first year. No one watched anything. We made $0.
You know, it's you get your couple your friends listen, you know type of thing 10 15 20 views and Then a full year went by and we're filming these videos and I was kind of getting frustrated by it like alright You know this this isn't working. What's going on here? And I went and looked one day which I should have done earlier at like what the people in my Market who were having success were doing right model success again And I saw the people who were getting views were doing these like tip style videos
almost clickbaity, more like, hey, how do, it'd be like, you know, how to lose 10 pounds overnight type of videos. Whereas I was going more into the like depth of the like detail stuff that I thought was really good content, people weren't clicking. And that was a valuable lesson that I learned, if people don't click it, how good it is doesn't matter. So we made a switch overnight from like basically our videos before were documenting me coaching people into these tip style videos.
And instantly when we made that strategy change, doing the videos that I saw people in the market were actually watching, what they wanted, not what I wanted to do. That was a lesson that I've learned. And I think there's a fine line there, but just like a business, you're like, you you sell products based on demand. Like you sell based on what the audience or the customer wants to buy, not what you would buy, right? You're not selling to yourself. So the demand for people to watch the videos is based on what they want to watch, what product do they want.
And you find that out by seeing what they currently are consuming, right? Like what videos are they watching? What products are they buying? So when we made that switch and started doing those how to stop videos, instantly things changed overnight. I think up until that point, we had one video that got like a thousand views, which I was pumped at. It's like the first time you make any, it's like this is the best, right? All those early results. So a thousand views was great. And then we did it with one of those first videos. We filmed three videos, like, all right, F it. Let's do these.
Gary Montalvo - 44:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric Cogorno - 44:50
tip style videos. This was in the, this was probably a month like 14, two months in a year or two. We filmed three videos and the first one popped off right away. Meaning like we got like 10,000 views. It was like 10 XR normal. And then it just kind of snowballed from there. And so we focused the first two years all on building audience, not on making any offers, not trying to monetize at all, just like, let’s.
member of Gary Vee's in my life big time at this point. So jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, hook. So I'm like, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give. So lots of free free content. And that strategy change was really important. Early to market had someone to keep me accountable, looked at the market, made a nice pivot there. That was a good point. At the end of year two, so maybe month like 18, 19 was when we finally launched our membership site.
which was based on what I mentioned before. So, okay, who are the people that make the million dollars a year? What do they do? Events and membership site. Hey, we've got to this eventually. So we launched a membership site at the end of year two and then launched the golf schools the following year. And then we were off and running, you know, and it's been a, it's been a, we're getting into year nine, which is crazy to even think about. Freaking nine years doing these videos. And it's been a, you know, an upward curve the whole time. And of course, like I mentioned before, when we're telling these stories, Gary,
A gazillion things are happening in between all this stuff. But like the macro zoomed out look is like the a lot of the people that I coach now to grow their socials. The mistake is just keep posting and good things will happen. What it really should be is just keep posting. And then after every set of videos, you have to look and say, OK, what is like one thing that I could do to improve this to the next set? Not seven things.
What is one thing? we posted, let's say, let's say we ended up posting three times a week. So we were ruthless and consistent. was Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Gary Montalvo - 46:54
This is not the first year though Was that the first year you say you were posting once a week? So when did you switch over to three times a week?
Eric Cogorno - 47:05
Once a week for year one, as soon as we made that switch when those three videos hit, then we started doing twice a week and they were doing good. And then we're doing three times a week. The three times a week kicked in when we launched our membership site because my thinking there was we're going to use this YouTube as like top of funnel to get people to sign up for this, this membership site. And so I thought, you know, we do every video is about 10 minutes.
Gary Montalvo - 47:13
Okay.
Eric Cogorno - 47:32
So thought, okay, we're going to give three 10 minute videos per week. That's 30 minutes of free content, which I think affords me the right to pitch my product for like 30 seconds in every video. you know, it's 20 and a half minutes of free content and then a minute and a half of pitch. So every video for seven years we did, I'd mentioned, Hey, cornellgolf.com. Like if these videos are helping you, man, I could really help you if I could see your swing, right? Head over to cornellgolf.com. boom. So.
We yeah, we increased at that at that point and then we promoted that site on every video That's another big drop for a lot of the people that I work with is they don't promote their products You know, sometimes I'll go work with someone and they'll say, you know, I'm not selling any of my thing I said well I watched your video and I clicked out of links and I couldn't even tell you were selling the thing I know you're selling it. Whereas I would I would say that in every single in every single video One of the big things that gets lost there is I think a lot of people don't
believe in their own stuff enough, where they feel compelled to sell it in the videos. So for me, what my solution for that, especially in the beginning is to make the offer so good that even if you're learning how to make your service or product better, you know, as you're going, make the offer so good. Like our starting offer was $39 a month and they included a swing analysis and access to videos. Like the swing analysis stuff is like $150 a month thing. So the value was crazy.
So I'm like, holy shit, guys, like, this is incredible. Like, you have to go take advantage of this. I really felt that. And so I would pitch that in every single video. And it takes a long time to people to buy. Like, you know, they got to hear that pitch 10, 15, 20, 30 times until I hit them on the right day. They're feeling enough pain, you know, whatever the case is, we're like, okay, I'll click it. so lots of consistency with posting. I'm giving a given a bunch of things here. I don't want to be overwhelming, but lots of consistency of the posting.
pitching the product in the post, having the right give to ask ratio, but pitching the product in the post. And then only have them do one thing. Like one of the difficulties with social media is if we go, hey, Gary, at end of this video, if you don't mind subscribing, liking, sending to a friend, comment below, sign up for my workshop, go to my school. No one's gonna do six things. They won't do anything. Whereas I'm like, hey, there's one thing to do here, guys. Go to cougarnogolf.com. Go to cougarnogolf.com.
Go to gogornogolf.com. And then every set of videos, it's imperative that we go back, we would go back and look at every three per week and say, okay, what's one thing we can improve for next week? And every meeting, right, we would film every Monday at 12 o'clock without fail every Monday of the past like nine years, 12 o'clock, start of the week is the most important thing. We're gonna film at 12 o'clock. I'd start every meeting with, okay, let's just post three videos this week.
Like that's the most important thing. Just make sure we post three videos. And then what's one thing we can do to improve the last set of three? Like, okay, hey, the lighting could be a little better or the audio or the intro or the title, just one little thing. And you start making one little improvement every week, you know, over nine years. And the videos start to look good compared to what they started with. So there's a couple of tactical things in there. Hopefully that'll help.
Gary Montalvo - 50:49
Yeah, I think that one of the, that's really good, because I feel like one of the, oh, there's so many lessons. Number one, I really want to highlight your willingness to stick it out for that year while nothing was happening. And yeah, in retrospect, maybe you could have, you know, analyzed quicker, but I find that most people stop being
consistent really early on because they're not getting the result that they want, right? And there's so much value in sticking it out long enough that you're getting momentum. But I think the critical part of making adjustments, not making adjustments all the time, because some of y'all be adjusting everything every five seconds and then you have no way of tracking what's actually working and what's not because you just keep like,
ADHD and the whole thing. But doing it for 30 days in a certain way and then going back to analyze it and review. And I love the way that you're saying, how can I make this a little bit better? Because I find that one of the things that holds people back is that they want to make it perfect from the beginning. And now, especially there's so much equipment,
You know, it used to be that you needed like a lot of equipment and a lot of stuff to shoot some of these videos. Now, most of us can do it on our phones, you know, a couple of a couple of orders from Amazon or Ring Light and you're good to go. But you also have to be willing to start and get better at it and not try to start and be a pro right away because.
There's so many things that you're gonna learn along the way that you can't know what they're gonna be until you actually get going on the journey, right? There's no way for you to learn those things but until you are at it.
Eric Cogorno - 52:56
Yeah. And something that's helped me a lot, Gary, that might help as well is like, think the reason a lot of us want to quit along the way is just that gap between our expectations and what actually goes on. And so I think going into it, setting a different bar and expectation can help alleviate a lot of that. Like now, if I were to guide someone about building their social, I'd say, the first hundred videos are just practice. No stress, no expectations. No one's going to watch.
Just you got to get into the habit of, can I complete the task of doing the hundred? You'll inherently improve a bunch within that hundred, right? But like, just getting the posting of the hundred. And the other critical language change I would do that's helped me a lot is I used to approach things as like, I'll do, I'll do it until X or like, I'll try it for two years and see what happens. Whereas now the things that have worked for me is like, I'll do it period.
I will post the videos three times a week until the end of time, regardless. Like that's it. I'm in, burn the boats, a hundred percent committed. Cause worst case scenario, you do the work and you post the videos and no one watches and you are where are now.
Gary Montalvo - 54:10
and you get to know yourself to be a someone who keeps their word and is consistent and you know yeah
Eric Cogorno - 54:17
Yeah, yeah, it's like, what's the worst case scenario of doing this? Like, what's the worst case scenarios, a little bit of wasted time, but the added confidence you just said have actually fallen through on on your word of something. And so the point there is, think, just like make the expectation doing the thing and the work versus the outcome of it. Super easy to say and harder to do. I totally get that. But I think that mindset around it's very, very helpful.
Gary Montalvo - 54:44
Yeah, as we wrap up, you know, the something I'm really present to in all the goodies you're dropping is when people often approach social media or YouTube, they're often trying to figure out how to like, hack the algorithm. What are the SEO words? What are the things? What's the time of the day do I post?
what kind, what's the length, there's all these ways that they're trying to hack this. And what's really fascinating to me is that you did not talk about any of that. A lot of what you, everything you shared are lessons that are very in your control. And not really about strategy, but...
more about the mindset and how you grow something, learn something, review and improve something.
What do you have to say about that?
Eric Cogorno - 55:55
appreciate that. I know I feel that for sure. I think it's very much the same of like, I've got friends, for example, who want to get in shape. And they get lost in like what exercise I should do at the gym and miss the fact that you just have to go to the gym. It's not about what type of chicken you eat. It's like that you do the chicken and the broccoli, right? It's like the zoom out. What am I what am I trying to do here? And this all ties back in my mind, Gary to like,
If you do the dream life exercise or spend some time getting clear on where you want to go. I've had so many things like the, the, the clarity of the dream life pulls me through a lot of shit along the way. The bad days, the certain things not working, the not sure exactly how to do something because I'm just like, Hey, we're heading North. We might take a right-hand turn. I might, a tire might go flat. I don't know what's going to happen along the way, but we're, definitely heading in this.
Direction and that makes a lot easier when the short-term stuff is uncertain when the long-term stuff is more certain and So like it's easy for me to say this stuff about YouTube because I was thinking about a 10-year goal the whole time Like I'm we're going through the process of posting those videos because I'm trying to get somewhere That's 10 years in the future. So if this one video in month four on a Tuesday doesn't do well Not a big deal, right? So long as I keep doing this this and this
So I just think that I don't mean to be a broken record on that, but I think the clarity on the longer term stuff sets the stage for a lot of the other stuff and like the tactical pieces, which I love talking about too, but just that's like a layer two thing. It's like, Hey, are you going to do the, work? Right. We real quick on this. So we just did like, I do this mentorship program for other golf coaches and they all come in and they want to know the same thing. Hey, what's the title? You know, the thumbnail, we're going to get that stuff.
but like week one, let's get clear on where you wanna go here. Like what are you trying to accomplish, right? And why? And then week two is making commitments. Like based on this, where you wanna go, we say, hey, to get there, you're gonna need to post twice a week, three times a week, once a week, whatever it is. And like until we complete those commitments in the beginning, the title you use, the thumbnail you use, the length of video, the time of day you post, the keywords, that's all good stuff, we'll get to it but very, very secondary. You gotta go to the gym first, right? into the habit of going to the gym first.
Gary Montalvo - 58:25
So good. So good. Eric, this has been such a good conversation, man. You have so much knowledge, so many, you know, but I love that it's like stuff you've learned on the court, if you will, you know? And the way that you approach figuring out the things that you don't know.
It's inspiring, but there's something really simple about the way you break it down. And I often think that people make it so much harder than it really is. And so I'm really glad to have had this conversation with you, because I think it's going to make a difference for a lot of people.
Eric Cogorno - 59:09
Thanks, Kerry. Very, very kind of you to say that. I really enjoyed this. I could talk with you all day. Whenever you want to do it again, man, let me know.
Gary Montalvo - 59:15
Yeah,
let's do it. Let's do it again soon. Are you? How can people find you?
Eric Cogorno - 59:21
Yeah, so if someone wants to look and actually like see the stuff I'm talking about, Eric Cogorno Golf is our golf YouTube channel. That'd be a good place to go to see like the tactics, like actually see what we do, that I'm saying how I pitch the products, how we do the title, send us all that stuff. And then we have a new personal development channel, Gary, it's called Lessons I've Learned with Eric Cogorno. That's where we do more videos like this, more personal development, more business tactical stuff.
Gary Montalvo - 59:44
I'm excited about that. did not know about that. So I'm glad I asked the question. We will put the link to all of those. I think we need to put the link to the dream life exercise too, because you referenced it so much. Or unless you have your own version of it.
Eric Cogorno - 1:00:02
I'll send that to you so we can put that there too.
Gary Montalvo - 1:00:05
Okay. All right, brother. Thank you so much. I hope you come back soon.
Eric Cogorno - 1:00:09
Thanks, Gary.
Gary Montalvo - 1:00:11
If there's one thing Eric's story makes clear is this, life is not going to go the way that you planned. You might start out thinking that you know exactly where you're headed, only to realize the door you were working towards is never going to open. Maybe you realize you're not good enough like Eric, or maybe the market changed, or maybe you changed. That moment. The one where you have to let go of the plan you thought you were going to follow is where most people get stuck. They see it as a failure. They start to hesitate and stop and wait for clarity before taking the next step. But Eric's journey shows us something different. His success didn't come from sticking to the plan. It came from pivoting, adjusting, and trusting himself enough to take the next step, even when he didn't know exactly where that step would lead him.
And that's the real lesson here. Your success is not gonna come from having the perfect plan. It's gonna come from being willing to pivot, to take action and to bet on yourself over and over again. So here's my challenge to you this week. Where in your life are you holding on to that old plan that no longer fits? Where are you resisting a pivot because you're afraid to start over?
See if you can shift your perspective. Instead of seeing the change of the failure, see it as an opportunity. Instead of waiting to be sure, move forward and trust that clarity comes from taking those next steps. Because the truth is, betting on yourself is always a risk. But not betting at all? Well, that's the biggest risk of all. That's our show for this week. If this episode spoke to you,
Don't forget to hit follow or subscribe. Not only does it help you stay up to date when new episodes drop, it also does an incredible deal in helping me grow the show. And also, don't forget to share this episode with someone who needs to hear this. Until next time, keep pivoting, keep betting on yourself, and keep playing the ownership game.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Ownership Game with your host, Gary Montalvo. Make sure to like and comment on your favorite podcast platform, as well as subscribe so that you never miss an episode.