In today’s article, I discuss the soft launch of Tomii Academy which started a few days ago, and the difficulty of the process necessary in launching an education business in particular. To do so, I traveled across two continents, three countries, devoted 15 years of my life to content creation for my Academy (with a three year delay due to the global lockdowns), and spent well over 10,000 hours of work to make this dream a reality. Among my prior endeavours of launching a consultative research firm, this platform, and my substack newsletter, launching Tomii Academy was by far, the most difficult and time consuming. Even though my prior firm was my first entrepreneurial company, the process required to do so was a very distant second in degree of difficulty to launch. The gap in difficulty, in my opinion, is as wide as the gap that I imagine exists between hiking to base camp at Mt. Everest and actually summiting Mount Everest (though I’ve never done either!)
For example, simply to create content that was compatible with learning management system (LMS) platforms required an expensive purchase of multiple software programs and hundreds of hours of testing to ensure the content could be displayed over proper format to be viewed across multiple delivery devices (desktops, laptops, iPads, mobile phones). In fact, from the time in early 2020 when I had first planned to launch my Academy before global lockdowns threw a monkey wrench into my plans, until today, I tested multiple LMS and unfortunately wasted money on software programs that became obsolete with the advancement of better LMS platforms since 2020.
In addition, recording audio files that accompany the written courses was laborious as I recorded many of these files while in lockdown and thus had to painstakingly use audio software to edit out annoying background noise for over a hundred hours of files, as during lockdowns, I had zero access to a professional recording setup. In addition, I had to spread recording out over multiple years as one cannot speak eight hours a day every day without losing one’s voice and my Academy includes more than a hundred hours of audio content. And finally, even uploading content on LMS platforms took three full eight hour days to accomplish, which should grant you an idea of the amount of content my Academy contains.
Lastly, I discuss the dilemma I faced when pricing my courses as I wanted to price my courses to accomplish the goal of making my courses affordable to all that wish to take them while not undercutting my value, as even valuing my work at an absurd rate of just $2 per hour for 10,000+ hours of my time (required to create this Academy) resulted in course prices well over $1,000 per course, a price I felt might price many people out of access. And even though I certainly believe that my work is worth well over $100 per hour, let alone $2 an hour, I decided to price my courses in a manner geared towards accessibility.
Thus, I chose not to mimic the business models deployed by today’s biggest social media influencers of only catering to the wealthy class by charging $7,000 or $10,000 per course, as many of them have decided in delivering product that, in my opinion, contains little value to justify such high prices. As these influencers have reaped tens of millions of dollars in profits by catering to only the wealthy, though this is the most valuable model to produce the highest levels of revenue, my desire for my Academy, if you continue reading, is to balance my need for my Academy to produce enough revenue to pay my bills with the need to grant widespread access to everyone.
In the end, I had to balance the need for this Academy to sustain me with granting accessibility to people’s desire to really learn valuable content that will change their lives for the positive. But, because I am intimately familiar with the discipline and work ethic required to accomplish positive change in our lives, while I don’t expect anyone to match my 10,000+ hours of work to accumulate the financial resources to enroll in my courses if they currently lack the means to do so, I certainly expect efforts well above those engaged in by the average person to do so, for I never created my Academy with charity in mind. And when I use the word charity, I only refer to the segment of people that truly are not committed to helping themselves. I always created my Academy with the intention of requiring people to put in the type of extraordinary effort that will lead to sustainable positive change in their lives that will increase their level of meaning and happiness multiple times. Thus, I feel extraordinary commitment to do so should be a requirement of anyone that decides to enroll in my courses.
Are any of you familiar with the Gordon Ramsey show “Hell’s Kitchen”, in which Ramsey transforms restaurants from abject failures teetering on the brink of bankruptcy into the talk of the town and multiple times revenue in just a week’s time? If you are, then you are aware that after Ramsey leaves and is no longer on site to whip the chefs and owners in maintaining their newfound work ethic, these restaurant employees revert to their old ways. Consequently, the vast majority of restaurants Ramsey turns around, sadly end up permanently shuttering their doors just a few months following Ramsey’s departure. And the reason they all fail after Ramsey transforms them into booming successes is the lack of commitment to excellence from the chefs and owners, pathetically displayed only during the single week of Ramsey’s presence. In the end, the indifference of the restaurant owners and chefs translates into an utter waste of Ramsey’s time and efforts that transform many restaurants from delivering food that was barely edible to their customers into places that deliver not only excellent, carefully crafted fresh dishes but also excellent service.
Likewise, as having the financial ability to pay for reasonably priced courses is the first sign of dedication to a better life, I ruled out a low-cost. high-volume model that not only undercuts the massive time and effort I put into creating this Academy but also severely undercuts the value of those that choose to enroll in my courses by providing an easy out to quit. Secondly, if you read the fact sheets, you will discover that after I recover the large sunk costs necessary to launch this Academy, I plan to give away scholarships to low-income workers that want to learn, can’t afford the courses, and lack the college degree to attain a job that will allow them to afford my courses. My scholarship program will ensure access to people that truly don’t have the ability to increase their income streams but truly desire to learn how to think more critically, discover sustainable meaning in their lives that is the necessary root of happiness, and build wealth in a holistic manner that benefits not only communities at the local level but the global community on a macro level as well.
Lastly, the reason I put in more than 10,000 hours of my life, including weekends in which I worked every Saturday and Sunday for years on end when all my friends were out partying, is because Tomii Academy will be my legacy. After I move on from this world, I plan to have set up a team by then to create a ratio of about 80% free scholarships and only about 20% paying subscribers every year. The maintenance of about 20% paying students out of all students that complete my Academy courses every year will serve the goal of producing necessary profits to fund paying the salaries of the team that will run my scholarship program long after I have departed from this world. In addition, if I haven’t been able to translate my Academy coursework into many languages by the time I leave this planet, some of that 20% of fee revenue will go towards translating all my material into dozens of languages to make my Academy accessible to all, regardless of language. Lastly, by the time I’m nearing the end of my life, if I have determined I can accomplish these goals with a 90% giveaway/10% paid model, then I will implement this ratio to be biased as much as possible to free access of all my created content.
The point is, that even in death. I intend to spread monetary and investment truth across the world. The more monetary, financial and investment truth spread in a world filled with lies about these very topics, the more the opportunities for people in the investment world to continue to accumulate wealth on the broken backs of the exploited will dry up. My desire is to eventually destroy the entire scamming nature of the investment industry and to transform its realm of abundance built on the broken dreams of others into a parched desert that experiences decades of drought. And this is why I spent 15 years of my life creating all content for Tomii Academy solely on my own, with zero outside help in content creation from anyone. I intend to positively impact the world and to revolutionize a global academic system severely deficient in promoting education that improves people’s lives even after I leave this world for the eternal afterlife.
So give us a visit at TomiiAcademy.com as there are substantial discounts on our coursework right now during our soft launch for the remainder of this month. Though I spent two full weeks testing our learning management system (LMS) to ensure that all coursework will be delivered smoothly and to be able to develop an instructional guide about how to use the LMS efficiently, I still expect a glitch here and there during our soft launch and this is why I have chosen to not yet release all courses. I will be release, over the next few weeks, the remaining not-yet released courses detailed in our curriculum, after I’m confident the platform is operating smoothly.
And I hope this article provided valuable insight into our pricing model!
Bless up and Godspeed to all,
John Kim
CEO (Chief Education Officer), Tomii Academy
