[00:00:00] Bryan McAnulty: Welcome to the creator's adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. My name is Brian McAnulty. I'm the founder of Heights platform. And today I'm talking with Miguel Hernandez of Grumo media about how to validate a business idea, how he grew a successful video animation studio and YouTube channel, and how to grow an online course business.

All right. Hey everyone. We're here today with our guest Miguel. Herandez the founder of Grumo media and explainer animation studio. He's also a well known YouTube creator and a successful course creator. So Miguel, welcome to the show.

[00:00:50] Miguel Hernandez: , happy to be here.

[00:00:52] Bryan McAnulty: Cool. So you founded your company, , Grumo media in 2010, and you were creating these explainer animation videos for startups and for businesses who wanna showcase their product.

So why did you decide to open Grumo media and have you always seen yourself as like a creative person? So, okay. That's

[00:01:15] Miguel Hernandez: two questions. Yeah. The reason why I started Grumo media is because, , I was into video already, so I was already doing, , videos, a freelancer, not specifically marketing videos. It was more like industrial videos.

, but at that time, , I was writing outta money because I was trying to do also a software company that failed. And I was like, what, what can I do in order to, first of all, not work nine to five. Cause I wanted to be my own boss and not work nine to five anymore. And what skills do I have that could be marketable.

And that's when I thought, okay, let me, let me try as a, as a, as a child to do an, , an explainer video, because at that time that's when they were starting to become, , somewhat popular. And I, I saw an opportunity for that to maybe be something that could be, I could create a business around. , so I created a free video for, for one of my friends, a local startup.

, and then they really liked it. And from there I started getting to get more leads. So my idea was validated very early on and that's when I thought, okay, since I'm people are willing to pay for this type of work, let me see if I can scale it into more of a, , , studio where I can hire other people and eventually do this for a bigger clients.

Right. So that was the, , the idea now would I, would I consider myself a creative person? , Maybe, I guess I like to do all kinds of things, you know, like, , I like to do online courses, videos. , I like to invent things I like to play with Lego. I dunno. , so yeah, maybe a little bit of a creative, , individual, I guess.

[00:02:44] Bryan McAnulty: well, that's interesting. So actually that makes me think I wanna go a little bit out of order here. , yeah, so I realized like when we were looking up some of your content before this interview, That. Yeah, you do have all these different things that you're doing. So you did the videos you're course creator.

You're a YouTube creator. And I notice that you're teaching about a lot of these different kinds of tools that people can use different things like this. And your focus tends to be a. On, , more like simple tools that your audience can use to like, be resourceful with, rather than like, suggesting that they need a bunch of like complex tools to do something, , or get the job done.

Would you say that that like resourceful approach extends to how you run your business as well?

[00:03:27] Miguel Hernandez: Yeah, definitely. By design. I always to, I always wanted to keep my studio small, which means, , that I end up wearing many hats. , there was a time in the studio where I was hiring almost almost 20 different contractors and I was not enjoying the process of management people.

And also, I didn't want to scale to big, become a very big company for, so like, Flexibility that it afforded me to have a small company that paid my bills. Basically I was trying to build the lifestyle business from the beginning. Right. Mm-hmm now in order to run, to run a small company and be profit profitable as an entrepreneur, you have to be very, very efficient, , in terms of how do you organize everything?

How do you communicate with people and what tools do you use and how do you save money by not spending tons of money every month? , contracting all these services, right. So then I, I created my own solutions, you know, like I, instead of, , paying for a project management tool, I built my own out of, , , Google sheets.

And then I created a video, a YouTube tutorial, teaching people how to pro do project management with Google sheets, which still are very successful video. So yes, things like that where I can help other people, , organize or manage their businesses in a simple, simple, and affordable way. , I'm always been interested.

In doing definitely.

[00:04:47] Bryan McAnulty: Cool. Yeah, that's really interesting because, , like I like to take the same approach even with our business. , I want us to like the company size, I'd rather it grow slower. , yeah, like I don't want us to be a 10,000 employee company if we ever did become that. I don't think I would be really the right person to run it anymore.

because I like the creative part of it. I don't wanna be just a manager or something like this. , or even a traditional like CEO. I want to be working on the product. I wanna be working on the creative part of things. , so I can definitely relate to that. , another thing that was interesting, you mentioned that you kind of got this early validation.

Your explainer video when you did that? Yes. Yeah. , do you think if you didn't have that early validation that you would have done something else? Because we find that. Like for a lot of creators, it's very difficult to keep going. Especially like with courses, a common mistake that creators make is they launch their course.

They spend so much time doing it and then they don't have an audience yet. They don't get sales. And it's really hard to maintain that motivation without some kind of validation that even one sale to, to prove that to you kind of. So I guess the question is, do you think that. Getting that early validation really kind of changed the course of what you were doing or do you think you would've stuck with it, even if you didn't have that early validation.

And if you were going to do that, then how, how would you do that?

[00:06:12] Miguel Hernandez: So I've , the, so the story goes that before starting Grumo media, I spent almost two years trying to develop a small software. Precisely a project management tool that I already built and I sold to a small group of C Cisco engineers. And then I thought I could create like a software as a service type of business with it.

, my mistake was not to really validate the idea. And there was two mistakes, but the, the, the, the main one was not validating, , the idea, and then spending two years working basically by myself, , without involving any potential customers. And then launching two years later and basically failing because I didn't have enough traction.

And by that time, I've run out of money, time, and passion and motivation to do it. So that was a, a typical first time in entrepreneur mistake. And that's like, I, like you say, also very typical mistake. First time course creators make, which is, oh, I I'm gonna do a online course is gonna be very successful.

They spend two or three months recording videos, and then it's just crickets, which is very demoing. , so the second time around, I thought, okay, let me just find a customer first. And then I'll decide whether I wanna pursue this. So in the case of videos, that's exactly what I did. I, I found a customer.

And then once that was validated and they were paying me money for these videos, I decided, okay, I'm gonna pursue this. If, , after let's say three or four, , attempts, I was not able to find a paying customer. , so you have to give yourself some like deadlines or, you know, like how many, how many times, how many months are you willing to attempt to find paying customers or product market fit before it's a go or no go situation, right?

Mm-hmm so in my case, I was gonna give myself about six months and I was going to do a, my goal was about to do up to 10 videos even for, for free as a spec, in order to. Build a portfolio and see if I could validate the market or at least get some paid clients. And I got extremely lucky because I think on my second video, I was able to get in touch with the co-founder Reddit, Alexis Hanian, , through one of his previous startups.

And he loved the video that I did for them. And he actually introduced me to hundreds of startups. And I went from zero to like extremely busy, like 40 paying clients within one. Wow. Within one month of starting my company. , so obviously there was absolute validation after that. And two months after that, I got Astron Kocher to tweet one of my videos.

So it literally was like, I was like in heaven, right. Going from spending two years of basically starving to have, , an amazing level of validation within two months of starting my second idea with post explainer videos. , so yeah, I definitely do re. To set yourself like a deadline, you know, like say I'm gonna devote six months, not even a year, you know, six months maximum, give it your best.

And if you don't find validation, , move away from that idea. , or like when I saw my first online course, what I did, which is I think a greater strategy, if you have a little bit of an audience is to, before you build the course, see if you can charge for it. Now, if people are willing to pay for a course, that is not.

, produce, then that's the ultimate validation. And if you don't wanna create a course, you can always refund the money. So in my case, I said, I'm going to do a course on how to create explainer videos. I launch it in two months from now, , for those that sign up early on, , I give them a 50% discount, like the early adopter discount mm-hmm and, , I announced it to my list.

I think I had a thousand people on my email list at that time, and I saw like 20 courses within one. For 209, well, for 197, so half of the price and I'm like, okay, we're in business because you know, 20 people bought the course, right. That's like the right way of doing it.

[00:10:08] Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, definitely. Okay. Well, that's great.

That's really helpful because. I think people hear the idea like, oh, I should validate something before I do it, but it's always helpful to hear well, what is the exact process that another creator went through in how they went about validating it? , so that's great. And for pre-selling the course, that's something that we talk about a lot as well.

And people get nervous about that cuz they think, oh, well, is that really ethical? Because I'm selling it, but I didn't make it yet. But. As you said, you can always refund them. If you decide that really it's not gonna work out or something and or if you have their situation, maybe you only get a couple people.

You can still go ahead with it. If you think that it it's gonna have traction later and you can just give a better level of service to those people, and they're gonna be happy for that because they're getting even more from you than they thought they were paying for. Yeah, exactly. So let's see. , I wanna get into a little bit more of.

The videos. So you mentioned that yeah. You had, , a tweet, , with, , Ashton Kucher praising one of your videos. Yes. , and so now looking like about 10 years later from when that happened. Yeah. , did you sit, would you say that, , it's easier nowadays or harder nowadays compared to like 2011 to get exposure online?

[00:11:26] Miguel Hernandez: , I think, I mean, I wouldn't know exactly, , what I know is that if you produce great content, there's always going to be an audience willing to share it. Right. , so there's a lot of noise, but there's also a lot of more influencers. When I, , when Ashton Kucher tweeted, , my video, I mean, that was kind of like when social media started to take off, but right now there's lots of influencers with millions of followers.

At that time. Ashton, Kucher had 6 million followers now there's lots of people with more than 10 million followers. , so if you are, if you are. I mean that's ideal, you know, so it's great. Like there's a lot more people you could try to target with big audiences in order to get exposure than before, right.

, that doesn't have to be Stan Kucher. It could be anybody with even a hundred thousand followers. So if you make a list of like 10 influencers with over a hundred thousand followers, they're probably going to be easier to target than somebody like Ashton Kucher with who knows maybe 40 million followers.

I don't know how many they have. Right. So I think it is. There's a lot more people. There's a lot more competition. , but, , it's definitely doable.

[00:12:33] Bryan McAnulty: Sure. Yeah. That's a great point. All right. , and so where does the name, , Grumo come from? What does that mean? It looks like on your website, you tell a, a story about your kitten.

Can you explain a little bit more about that to your audience?

[00:12:47] Miguel Hernandez: Yes. So we used to have a kid called Grumo a Grumo means clump, like clump. I don't know. How do you call it a clump of food? I don't know, actually the real meaning of groom or in Spanish. You know, when you put, , let's say cocoa or flour on water or something like that.

And then some of the flour doesn't dissolve. Okay. And you like these little clumps that, what, what Grumo actually means? So this key thing was called Grumo, , because it was very fluffy and we really liked it. It was very lovely. Unfortunately, the was, , he, he, he had a very early demise at the book. We believe it was a coyote outside.

He escape and. But we don't know. We never know. Anyway, so we got very sad, but that we really had good memories of the kitty. And then I was trying to come up with a name. And by that time, I already had some read about picking names and picking names. Ideally they're short names, easy to remember, easy to spell, and they have certain meaning for, for the creator, you know?

, and so I chose gr on behalf of the litter, kitty.

[00:13:53] Bryan McAnulty: That's great. Well, so the videos that you produced for your explainer videos, , generally they're really creative videos and most of them are made for like tech, startups or apps, things like that. , but what we noticed is you don't tend to show like the actual product or the software, or even explain the technology behind it.

Instead, you're focusing on telling the story. And then explaining how that's going to solve a specific problem. So many entrepreneurs would argue that, well, they wanna show their complex technology features and everything that they've built in their promo videos. What would you say to someone

[00:14:33] Miguel Hernandez: who says that.

, well, I mean, if there's, you could, there's so many different kinds of videos you can create. It's what you're trying to accomplish with the video. Right. I think longer explainer videos are better for people that are already biting into your idea. So if you look at your sales funnel, people that are already like, or.

Are interested, , they're aware, interested of your solution. They may be willing to spend more time listening to a, , a video, a longer video, but if it's, if, if the purpose is just to bring awareness and, , just. Let people know about your idea then, , shorter videos are gonna be more successful just because of people's attention span, right?

And especially now in the TikTok generation, I mean, you, you have few seconds to really make an impression. So one of the reasons why the explainer videos are very successful is because less than 90 seconds, typically you get to not just, well, you get to create interest, , Through a little story. You do a little bit of explanation.

That's why they're doing call, explain videos, but just enough to get to the main selling point. And then you have a call to action, right? So you, you get a lot of the key points in, in very, in a very short amount of time. And hopefully you can make that video entertainment through, , a little story which will make the video more memorable.

And then now you have a, a powerful marketing.

[00:16:00] Bryan McAnulty: Right. Yeah. So we watched some of your videos and they do seem to follow like this clear structure. So yeah. You have the story that you're telling to explain a problem, and then you have a clearer solution to that problem and then the call to action. So is that correct?

, yes. Yes. It's always like that. Yeah. So why would you say that that's so powerful if you could just elaborate a little bit more?

[00:16:23] Miguel Hernandez: Well, it's storytelling. Like when you, if, if you think of. , a movie, right? So it has usually three acts, right? Where you introduce the characters and then there is some kind of a conflict, and then there is a resolution at the end, right.

So we tend to like, and re remember stories better than just pure information. , so that is true for any kind of video length. , so what we do, we compress the three story act into 90 seconds. So we introduce a problem that creates a conflict. Now, people want to know how we're gonna solve that tension or conflict, which we do on the second act.

And finally, the resolution is, well, obviously the product that you're selling, and then there is a call to action, which is if you want to solve this problem that we expose to you, then our product is the best solution. Right? So it don't make sense. It all ties up. Nice, nice and tidy. Yep.

[00:17:15] Bryan McAnulty: It's great. And so then, yeah, so we always have the call to action at the end, and maybe that's the only part where we really start to see anything about the product or the website.

, so this is obviously pretty important, but how is there anything you do about deciding what the call to action should be or like testing how that should work when you're making a video? In our

[00:17:39] Miguel Hernandez: case call to access were pretty simple. Usually would be always, , you know, show up showing the logo of the company, maybe a tagline and then maybe a, , a website, something like that.

Right? So by the time we show that call to action, we've created interest and now people are more willing to want to know what the solution is now. , realistically we do introduce the solution right after we, , express what the problem. , and then the solution is the problem. Then we go to explain a little bit how the solution is gonna solve that problem.

And then the call to action is just, okay, now that we saw showed you how this, , this product can solve that problem, this is the next step for you to take in order to solve the problem with our product. , but it's all wrapped into a little story. If you do it properly, otherwise it's, it's, it's a little bit disjointed

So another thing is that people don't realize that in order to have a successful, , , , video like this, so short, , you only have about 180 words where you have to put all this little. Because if you have an narrator, the average speaking speed is between 150 to 180 words per minute. , so within those a hundred, two, 180 words, you have to pull that whole story.

So every word really counts. So one of the hardest things of creating one of the explainers videos is to come up with the script and to make sure that it's really nice and tight and everything flows very well. And at the time it's very precise because every second and every word really count. Right.

Once you have that script, it's a lot easier to create a video that is successful, but people forget a little bit about the, the script part is quite a tricky thing.

[00:19:23] Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's true. So do you feel like any of that has carried over to how you approach like a headline for an online course that you create nowadays or anything like that?

[00:19:33] Miguel Hernandez: Yeah. Well, in a sense, , One of the trickiest thing to do a most important thing to do on, on online chorus is your sales page. Right? I actually have a couple of tutorials on my YouTube channel on how to create a high converting sales page on a, on a sales page. What you're doing is basically the same thing you're doing in an X video, but in written form.

Right? So if people don't wanna read the sales space, that's why I think having, , sales videos or explaining videos on. And online courses is very, , it's a really good idea because people have both options. You, you can either co convert people through the sales video, or you can convert them through the written form through the actual sales page or a combination of both.

So you have two converting tools in one page, which is really cool, but the sales page is usually very similar to the explainer video where you're gonna explain the problem. Then you're gonna explain the solution. You know, this is how this course is going to solve this problem. And finally, the call to action is well, , join the course today.

And ideally there's some level of urgency in terms of a discount or a countdown time or something like that because, , that increase increases conversions.

[00:20:41] Bryan McAnulty: Great. All right. , I have a more personal question. So on your website, you say that you also used, , videos that, , helped with relationships. And in fact, you met your wife thanks to a promo, , self promotional video that you used in online dating.

Yes. , so what, what were you, , what made you think of that? And, , and how, how did that help you out? Do you.

[00:21:05] Miguel Hernandez: Oh, I had out tremendously. , my wife is downstairs after 13 years, so obviously it was a successful strategy. , Well, I was working in video already at that time. This, this was, this was before I started Grumo media, but I already had experience doing videos, , for a television studio.

Right. , and at that time it was kind of when online dating was starting to become popular. And of course, if you want to find the right person, it usually doesn't happen the first date. , so to me, it was very clear that I had to use some kind of strategy in order to be as successful as. So my goal is how can I find the best possible woman in the least amount of time?

, because I didn't wanna spend date in years. Right? So I used a statistical approach, which was the same approach that I've used for almost anything else. And I said, okay, if I go on one date, what are the chances that that's gonna be the. Idea a woman. If I go into dates, if I, so I have also a background in, in sales.

I used to do door two door sales back in the day. And I remember they used to say, , you have to knock in at least a hundred doors to get 10 sales, if you're pretty good. And that is, , 10, 10% conversion rate. So then I thought in order for me to find a really good partner potential partner, I would have to go in at least 10 dates.

, so. Then yeah, you have to cast the net, which is created a profile on a dating site, and then you have to contact as many. Potential candidate as possible. This is before Tinder, by the way. So now it's very superficial and you just swipe back back, then you have to like, literally look at every profile and contact them manually.

So it was more of, of work. , so then I set myself a goal, which is I'm gonna go on 20 dates on two months because that's going to guarantee if everything goes well, that I like at least get two really good candidates. , but in order to maximize the quantity of the candidates, I need to make my profile stand out.

And that's when I thought I know how to do video. Why don't I do a series of videos where basically are commercials of myself. Basically. So like I explain your video of myself because nobody was doing that. So I know even if, if a girl who saw that, they'll be like, oh, okay, this is different. It's not the same profile.

So I got my, my friends to write a, a few scripts in one of them. I saved the world from the dead star of the star wars. , in one of them I'm just wearing some jeans and pretending to be super cool. Anyway, they were silly 32nd videos. I uploaded them and actually helped as I predict. To, to get dates. So, , it worked really well.

I went on the 20 dates as I planned, and then I found, , my wife actually, it worked so well that I found two great . My wife is gonna listen to, I found two great candidates. , so I got 10% conversion rate to the dot. , but then I eventually ended up, , marrying my wife.

[00:23:52] Bryan McAnulty: It worked . Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

If anybody wants to see that, that is on your website on the about page, I think right now, still, if they wanna see that video. , so aside from Grumo media, you also have Grumo school where you help people create their online courses and start online knowledge businesses. Can you tell us a little bit more about this?

Oh yeah.

[00:24:18] Miguel Hernandez: So. Yeah. So I also, I also said online courses almost at the same time that I started media. I started to create online courses because that's when I started to find that, , there was marketplace available and online education was starting to become bigger. And I thought, let me just create an online course.

, so since then I've created, , about 10 courses. And then the question was was how do I promote. And we were mentioning before, like you can either choose a marketplace or self-host. And I start at the, at the beginning, I was self-hosting through WordPress. It was a pain, the, to do that because those sites are not, I mean, WordPress is not specifically designed to host online courses at least 10 years ago.

It wasn't, and there was not solutions like, , like you guys have and other companies have where you can upload the course and everything. Is there ready for you to, to do that? So, , then I put my course on the marketplace. It did very, very, very well. And then I thought, okay, if I want to have more control over my customers, if I wanna charge premium for my courses, it's probably a good idea to find a hosting platform.

And that's when I started to put my courses also on a hosting platform and my premium courses on a hosting platform. And, , yeah, and, and the courses that I teach are all over the place. There used to be all over the place. In fact, there was one. What I taught people how to basically replicate my online dating experiment.

And it's all pretty well for a while. , but, , then eventually just focus more in helping people how to create and sell online courses and how to run an online business as a solopreneur or a single, , founder and more focus on course creation, app creation and marketing and stuff like that.

[00:26:04] Bryan McAnulty: Cool.

And yeah, you mentioned so that what I was curious about is we see a lot of creators will start on the marketplace and then they'll move to the self hosted option. And they'll try to just more so transition from that where the most common use of the marketplace is to validate the idea. And if you see you're getting sales, then you figure, well, how can I transition to that?

But, so you mentioned that you're actually still doing both of them. Yes. And you're using the marketplace. As something that's like your top of the funnel to get leads. Exactly. So in your case, you actually really prefer to continue using both right?

[00:26:42] Miguel Hernandez: Yes. Yes. And I found a lot of the top instructors do both because it doesn't hurt.

In fact, you are leveraging the marketing machine of the marketplace to get more exposure. So first of all, you're still gonna be generating income from the marketplace. And at the same time, you can use that exposure to promote your premium courses. So it's almost like, I think most people should have a data strategy cuz it doesn't really hurt as long as you have both the basic courses and the premium courses that you can offer.

Right. , so I usually say if you don't have a, an existing audience. Then the easiest thing is to start on a marketplace. Once you start building an audience, definitely you should consider yourself hosting because then you have, you can charge premium, you have more control over the, the product, the customer relationship, , and then if the marketplace happens to disappear, you still have your own, , business that you can run without relying on the market.

Yeah.

[00:27:39] Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's great. And yeah, cuz a lot of people online talk about probably because they have courses about it, but talk about how like the magic of Facebook ads or YouTube ads to grow your audience and, and get these customers, even if you don't have much of an audience. But in reality, we like to tell creators that you actually shouldn't focus on trying to spend money on ads, especially if you're not already experienced with it because it's really hard to do.

And so the marketplace in a way in your case is actually acting as free advertising for you. And not only that, but you're getting a little bit of money from it as well. So yes, that's great. Yes. And, , one thing that we like to do in this interview series is see if we can get some engagement between you and our audience.

So I wonder if there's any question that you would wanna ask our audience? , I was thinking maybe something about like the storytelling or anything like that.

[00:28:39] Miguel Hernandez: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So my question would be if, , you have a product or you have a company or you work for a company. How do you, what is your, I guess, strategy or principles, or to explain the story of your company?

Like, have you actually trained to explain what your company does in 60 seconds? And what structure does that? Let's say 62nd pitch follow. , cuz I have the one that I've been using for years. It's been very successful, but I'm always looking for different approaches to marketing videos that are maybe very popular now that.

I'm not aware of. So, and I guess the follow up question is what platform are you using today to promote that story of the company? , and which one is the most successful for your company?

[00:29:29] Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I think that's something really useful for very new creators to really think about and ponder because if they haven't thought about any of that, The answers to those questions when, when they figure it out can probably be really valuable to them.

Definitely. Cool. , so if you would offer a piece of advice to young entrepreneurs who want to open up their own media companies, their own online course business, anything like that, what would that be?

[00:30:01] Miguel Hernandez: , I would say, I mean, there's, there's several things that you have to be aware of. 1 0 1 is gonna be difficult.

Any kind of business is, is difficult in the terms that you have to at least devote to that new idea, at least six solid months, , where you're trying to build an audience where you're trying to build the product itself. And, , I would say engage, , potential customers as soon as possible to validate your idea, because if you're starting out, that's going to be the hardest part and the most important thing to solve as soon as possible.

Because at the end of six months, you're gonna have to make a decision. Do I keep going or do I pivot it? And if you have not done any validation, Pretty much wasted a lot of your time. So if you can find those early paying customers as soon as possible, whether it's an online course or a startup idea or a service based business, , try to find that validation as soon as possible.

[00:30:59] Bryan McAnulty: Cool, great. Well, I think that's really great. , that is all the questions I had for today, but where can people find you online if they wanna learn more about. ,

[00:31:08] Miguel Hernandez: well, very simple grumo.com, G R U o.com and that's, , happening to all my, , all my things online.

[00:31:17] Bryan McAnulty: All right. Great. All right, well, thank you so much, Miguel.

This was great having.

[00:31:20] Miguel Hernandez: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:31:23] Bryan McAnulty: If you enjoyed this interview and want the chance to ask questions to our guests live tune in on Tuesdays when new episodes premiere on the Heights platform, Facebook page, to learn more about the show and get notified when new episodes release, check out the creators, adventure.com until then keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.