Pip the Dog and I had a peaceful walk this morning but with the temperature at zero degrees Celsius it was bitterly cold. Luckily the sun was just coming up, so gave of some relief when we finally arrived on the fields.

So I did the ‘Wim Hof Method’ this morning and felt great afterwards, not the cold shower as yet, I plan to get into that when the weather warms up. I just did the 30 rounds of breathing and managed to hold my breath for 1 minutes and 52 seconds.

Some of the day was spent helping my Taiko Teacher with the online classes again and we’re excited to be announcing a go live date of 20 April. A few more things to get into place though.

Tuesday is the weekly supermarket shop day. I go to Lidl to get our essential supplies. It was quite an emotional trip. I felt very agitated by the shoppers who were not adhering to any social distancing whatsoever. I also got very upset, although I didn’t show it, with a lady who parked her trolley in front of a fridge area and proceeded to check items of her shopping list, totally oblivious of me standing at least 2 metres away from her waiting for her to move.

When I got home afterwards, I was still so angry, it actually made me quite tearful. My darling wife, Clair, said it was good that I got upset, as with all this COVID19 going on, people need to embrace any emotion that might come up.

I was amazed, shocked and quite upset also to hear the stories of care homes not getting the PPE that they so desperately need, so heartbreaking. Clair also shared a good-feel story of a carehome whose workers decided to self isolate with the residents, how amazing is that!

---

I promised yesterday to share my story of a business partner who has without discussion changed the terms of our albeit verbal agreement.

In 2012 I had joined a small business organisation in the UK and as I live in a small town I decided to search the business database that as a member I had access to, to see if there were any small businesses in my local area. I found someone, whose name looked familiar to me and reached out. He told me that we hadn’t met before but was happy to meet up and have a coffee. This gentleman was an expert in teaching people how to Mind Map. He had been trained by Tony Buzan, the educational expert who is credited to have invented Mind Mapping. So I have always been a fan of Mind Mapping but never really knew how to do it properly.

At around the same time I was doing some work for an e-learning company in London, who were using videos instead of text based e-learning sites for staff education, this was quite early on in the video learning explosion. I had been head-hunted to do some freelance selling for them. I decided to introduce the concept of video learning to the Mind Mapping expert, let’s call him Jason - not his real name - and although he sounded interested he didn’t sound very sure. We kept in touch over the months and he was finally convinced in taking it seriously, as I had shown him how other large educational institutions were moving towards or creating these MOOCS, especially in the USA but also in the UK.

I recommended to record on video his Mind Mapping course, but he said he didn’t want to publicise his best content, at that time he was still running physical workshops on Mind Mapping. So we began with doing a few trials, where he recorded an audio clip about a different topic that he was very well versed on and I would create a video clip with images that would transition into the canvas based on his narrative. It worked really well and he was well pleased with this. I didn’t charge for any of this work, as it was developmental just to see what was possible.

I continued to show him how he could capture the Mind Mapping course. I had seen a video clip on the web, that showed how Harvard University was capturing content, in a light box with a camera positioned above them and they were writing on a canvas or whiteboard presenting the content. So he was convinced eventually and we started capturing his content, by doing a lot of test work. Because drawing Mind Maps is actually quite slow, I would have to speed up the video content and ensure that his voiceover was in line with what was being drawn. The method worked really well, but it took hours to create.

We then started the process of creating a complete course, which would takes us about 6 months to complete. We had agreed on a platform where it would be hosted, one that Jason had come across and looked okay, it was quite new, but they had the right approach and were quite proactive, so that was decided.

I also produced other Whiteboard Animation videos to be part of the project, which again took many hours to produce. Jason’s voiceover audio quality was quite poor in places and it took time to convince him to improve the quality. Anyway a decent course was indeed created around early 2013 and it was finally time to launch it.

We had absolutely no idea whether this would work, I was super nervous of course, I had convinced Jason that we should do this jointly, but we had never discussed how the revenue share would go. I finally asked him that we needed to decided on this and he agreed a 50/50 split, as it was only fair seeing as all the work I had put in. Done! But should be have a written agreement or not? At the time he said not, but as we were getting closer he then decided maybe we should. There was some sort of agreement drawn up, but in the end we never signed anything, this was just a big mistake by me!

To our total amazement the course took off but it took a few months, but only when we joined the platform’s marketing scheme, i.e. they promote the content and then take a bigger share of the revenue. We launched in June 2013 and I can’t remember the price we started with, but by August 2013 in just one month, due to their promotion we brought in $3,523 in sales. Wow, in just one month!!

In the early months, the payment wasn’t automatic to me, Jason would let me know what the sales were and then sent me a PayPal payment, it was all a bit manual. Then via the platform you could allocate a percentage of the revenue to a fellow tutor and this is what happened. Around the same time, I do not remember exactly when Jason told me that because he was sending personalised messages to each of the students, that this was taking him a lot of time to do. Therefore he felt that my share should reduce to 40% instead of 50%, there was no negotiation, no discussion and seeing as he was in control of the back office where those percentages were adjusted, he just did it.

I wasn’t happy but swallowed it. By now I am kicking myself about not having done that agreement. Damn!

I also supported him by introducing him to companies where he would go and speak, I would film him, produce the video and have that as content on the course as well. I did so much work that he had no idea about!

Wind forward many years. In the past year he asked me to check all the content on the course, which have no automatically have captions created and make all the necessary corrections to all the videos, which I did. There have been a few more updates to other bits of content over the years too.

In addition, because I showed him how to do all this, he has created a further 10 course himself and even has billed himself as a e-learning creator, where he has gone into JV’s with other folks, presumably on a revenue split too. He has many times told people, with me in earshot, that if it wasn’t for me he probably would never have started this and never reaped the rewards of all of this online content.

Then just as we’re all into lock down I received this message via email, without warning or discussion.

When the course was first published it had about 4 hours of video content that we put together through our joint venture. Initially with a 50/50 profit share but this quickly changed to 60/40, the extra difference being the allowance for the time involved in answering student questions etc after we learnt that the lead publisher in the course had this more on-going involvement in the day to day course activities.

Over the last 18 months, in the bonus section of the course, I have gradually increased the course video content from 4 hours up to 6 hours and over this year I’m looking to add another hour or more of content to keep the course continually updated and to seek to maintain the bestseller status which of course benefits us both.

So I’m proposing that the revenue share changes next month from the current 60/40 to 80/20 ( the change wouldn’t come through until the June payment) and this to reflect the additional content that I have added to the course.

I hope this meets your approval

I am astounded! I really had never expected this from Jason and my opinion of him has sunk very very low. I did respond and declared my disappointment, especially as he’s been asking me for well over a year now that he wanted to improve the content to ensure we maintain the relatively high sales. But there was always a reason why he was delaying it. He was doing his own content, he thought the sales were okay and the reviews were holding up, so maybe it’s not necessary. But we produced it in 2012 and things get old and stale, I know a lot more now, compared to what I knew in 2012.

So there you have it. I have been stung many times in connection with JV’s that have been done verbally, where I have ended up doing the majority of the work and ended up losing money. This is for sure the very last time. Just before COVID19 started someone else I know asked me to get involved in something that is not my business and I was teetering on the edge, but now I know for sure that I will not be going ahead with this.

I always say that when negative things happen in life they are often hidden gifts. This is one such events. I am seeing it as a gift and allowing for it to show up in new ways.

Thanks for listening!

Michael de Groot