The Almanack Of Sam Ovens

^{Crazy… Until genius.}

“Life is a series of puzzles. All you have to do is solve the puzzles”

Imagine this.

You wake up every day not to the monotonous drone of an alarm clock but to the exhilarating promise of purpose.

You are no longer bound by the expectations of others but guided by your own aspirations.

You approach each day with the utmost clarity, knowing every step you take is a monumental stride towards your destiny.

This is the reality that Sam Ovens has created for not just himself but for thousands of others, including me.

In a world inundated with mundane routines, conformity, and the cacophony of societal expectations, here is a man who dared to challenge the status quo.

But he’s not your typical flashy entrepreneur you see flooding your news feed in this day and age.

Nor the self-promoter hawking the latest gimmick.

In fact, he’s quite the opposite.

A man who quite literally spent a large chunk of his prime years locked in a room.

An introverted character who doesn’t rely on wit and charm to win people over.

Instead, he quietly toils on projects which he knows will leave a monumental impact.

Letting the action do the talking.

And that’s why we love him.

Transitioning from an uninspiring internship to becoming a beacon of entrepreneurial success, Sam is a true testament to the power of vision and perseverance.

He has ignited a revolution in the realm of education and community, bringing together an army of dreamers and doers to rise above mediocrity and embrace their true potential.

His story is one for the history books and I believe he’s just getting started.

Proof that you don’t need to be loud to be heard; you just need a vision that speaks for itself.

So without further ado…

This is The Almanack Of Sam Ovens.

Crazy… Until genius.

Today on David to Goliath:

1. The Island Awakening

2. Learning The Hard Way

3. The Big Breakthrough

4. Online Education

5. The Manhattan Marketing Firestorm

6. Launching Skool

7. Partnering With Hormozi

The Island Awakening

Growing up in New Zealand, Sam was the epitome of a typical blue-collar family upbringing.

His world revolved around modest living, going out drinking with friends at weekends and the steady climb up the traditional corporate ladder.

College into a corporate job—that was the blueprint for success he knew.

At 21, Sam became the family success story by landing a job at Vodafone while still attending college.

To him, success meant an air-conditioned office and a steady paycheck.

But one-weekend trip changed all that.

Sam's girlfriend had invited him to her friend's beach house.

Expecting a quaint shack by the shore, he was amazed when they arrived on a private island, complete with a helicopter pad.

The island owner’s approach to life was a stark contrast to Sam's frugal upbringing.

All the lights on in six houses? Windows down with the air conditioning on? These weren't acts of wastefulness but expressions of freedom.

This man’s wealth afforded him the freedom to live life on his terms.

Sam stood there mesmerized, staring at a statue whose cost equalled 17 years of his salary.

Here, on this island, he got a glimpse of the true breadth of success.

“I don’t know if other people who didn’t grow up rich have this same type of experience, but being exposed to the type of wealth that can purchase a private island completely opened my eyes to a world I had never even imagined.”

Over the weekend, he observed the island's owner, a man who embraced positivity with unwavering commitment.

"Sam, I don’t listen to or watch or put into my mind anything that is negative," the owner told him.

At first, it seemed egotistical, but soon Sam realized the profound wisdom in it.

He began to ask himself how much of his own life was consumed by negativity.

By the end of his stay, Sam's perspective had completely shifted.

He asked about the island owner's career and learned he was an entrepreneur - a term Sam had to Google.

(yep, I’ve been there too!)

He now understood that entrepreneurship wasn't just a career - it was a mindset - a way of life.

It was then that Sam's real journey began.

“By the time I left the island, I no longer was satisfied with a corporate desk job and salary. I now knew how much more was available and I wanted it. I didn’t want a life preoccupied with saving money. I wanted the freedom to live however I wished.”

But before his monumental success, he was about to get a harsh reminder of what it really takes to own your own business.

Not once, but twice.

Learning The Hard Way

With the newfound mindset from the island trip, at just 21 years old, Sam made a bold decision.

He quit his internship, dropped out of college, and took the plunge into entrepreneurship with no prior experience whatsoever.

“Assumptions close doors. Intrigue opens them.”

His first venture, a job seeker network for the New Zealand market, was called ‘PromoteYourself’.

As he slaved away quietly in his parent's garage Sam was so paranoid that people would steal his idea he used to lock the doors and windows!

He spent a whole year building the site - cutting away into his life savings.

Then the big day finally arrived. The launch!

Sam was ready to open the doors to thousands of people, scale to the moon and escape off in a helicopter to his private island.

But then… Nothing.

It was at that moment he realized he’d spent a whole year and most of his savings on an idea that had zero market validation.

A brutal lesson in the world of business.

But as you’ll come to learn Mr Ovens is one persistent motherf*cker.

So off he climbed from the canvas to go again.

Round two and the second business he launched was called ‘ToTheDesk’.

Delivering meals from local restaurants straight to office workers, so they wouldn't have to settle for fast food or waste their lunch breaks.

Sound familiar?

Deliveroo? Justeat? Ubereats?

And that was the problem. He didn’t have the kind of resources to pull this off.

So yet again this business ground to a halt. Another twelve months, another $10,000 spent, and still zero revenue.

But as they say third times a charm.

“Utter frustration often precedes the breakthrough so stick with it and have faith in your journey.”

Sam at this point had learned business ain’t about fancy ideas you dream up in the shower.

It’s about speaking to a small sub-section of the market (niche), understanding their problems, and then providing a solution.

This realization was transformative for everything Sam built and taught moving forward.

But there was one huge problem.

Due to the last 2 failing startups, Sam was now out of money and $30,000 in debt.

Although he had picked up a valuable skillset along the way: Creating websites.-

“One skill I had picked up while running my first two failed businesses was creating websites, so to chip away at my debt and begin building some capital for my next venture, I started creating and selling websites to businesses. This was my first introduction to the emerging gig economy, and it began to reshape my idea of what entrepreneurship meant.”

And when I say creating websites I mean selling websites and then having a team of developers build them for a markup.

Smart.

To chip away at his debt and build capital for his next venture, he built and sold website after website.

Now that he had some capital behind him it was time to launch his third business.

This time it was a knockout punch. Well, kinda…

The Big Breakthrough

Sam’s third business was SnapInspect, a property inspection app designed specifically for property management businesses.

By this point you might be wondering if Sam was just throwing business ideas against the wall, hoping one would stick.

But there was method to his madness.

By the time he was ready to launch SnapInspect, he had made crucial strategic adjustments from his past 2 failed ventures.

His first business targeted everyone in New Zealand—too broad.

His second business aimed at anyone working in an office—still too broad.

With SnapInspect, Sam got extremely specific. His app was designed exclusively for property management businesses.

“Now at this point, you might think that I’m just shotgunning business ideas and hoping something sticks, but in reality, I was learning a tremendous amount with each failed business.”

This made marketing, sales and delivery much more straightforward.

But that wasn’t the only change in his approach.

Remembering his scars from the job board failure he validated demand by pre-selling. Before ever writing a single line of code, he contacted property management businesses and pre-sold $5,000 worth of software licenses.

By the time the app was built and live, he already had a real customer base and real revenue.

However as Sam found out, running a software business isn't cheap, and profitability often takes years to achieve. He needed more cash to keep up with growth.

Instead of looking to third parties, he continued creating and selling websites on the side, eventually expanding that side business into a digital marketing consultancy.

Remember, this was back when the transition to online was surging so website builds were in extremely high demand.

In the blink of an eye, his digital marketing consultancy was generating significantly more revenue with much lower overhead.

And through helping these businesses Sam kept on hearing the same recurring theme, again and again.

Yes, they needed websites built but they had a much bigger problem: Customer acquisition.

And few knew how to strategically deploy this in the online space.

“I began to see that customer acquisition was a huge problem that almost everybody had but hardly anybody knew how to fix. If you could find the recipe for getting customers, you could basically write your own checks.”

Sam knew if he could master the art of getting customers, he could write his own ticket to success.

That’s when everything clicked.

With this newfound clarity, Sam sold SnapInspect and used the proceeds to aggressively scale his digital marketing consultancy.

Little did he know this was setting him up for something massive.

Online Education

One inevitable outcome of mastering a highly sought-after skill is that everyone wants to learn from you or benefit from it in some way.

While many businesses hired Sam’s consultancy to run their marketing, more and more service-based businesses were asking how he did it.

Initially, he offered 1-on-1 coaching, but as demand grew, he expanded to coaching groups of 5 and then 10 at a time.

As this consultancy reached multiple six-figure revenues, more and more individuals approached him to learn how to build their own profitable consultancies.

“Armed with the knowledge of how to identify a niche, target niche customers, and sell to them, my students were experiencing success regardless of their business niche.”

Now, recognizing the need to expand beyond small groups, he knew he had to transition to an information product that could deliver value without his direct involvement.

Enabling true scale with high-profit margins.

Thus the first version of what we now know as ‘Consulting Accelerator’ was born.

An online course that anyone could take to learn how to build their own business in a relatively short period of time.

Much like his previous ventures, Sam didn’t hit a home run on his first attempt.

While the initial training products and courses he created brought in solid profits, they didn’t quite hit the mark he envisioned.

Sam noticed that many online training programs offered only a piece of the puzzle, stringing customers along without truly helping them succeed.

One of the biggest problems he saw with his students was their mindset.

As well as the customer acquisition tactics he knew he needed to delve deeply into the psychological matters of the human condition which were preventing people from fulfilling their potential.

He wanted to build a product so good that if any student followed through and put in the work success would be inevitable.

To achieve this Sam knew he needed a fresh start. To leave New Zealand behind and move to a city where David’s became true Goliaths.

So that’s exactly what he did.

The Manhattan Marketing Firestorm

As the story goes he was doing a virtual tour from New Zealand of the glass-to-ceiling luxury apartment in downtown Manhattan and a few minutes in he just said to the estate agent: “I’ll take it.”

The rest is history.

Complete with a fully customized Harley Davidson in his office, which Sam strategically put there to remind him that money is abundant, he finally had the environment to take him to the next level.

Add to that he also bought the domain Consulting.com and re-launched the Consultancy Accelerator.

The stage was set.

As testimonials piled up from his students and word started to spread Sam launched what he dubbed: ‘The Marketing Firestorm.’

Step 1: Facebook ads with long-form copy

Step 2: Register for webinar/sign up to email list

Step 3: Automated Webinar

Step 4: Buy Consulting Accelerator programme

Step 5: Upsell to ‘Uplevel’ or Quantum Mastermind programmes

Day after day he continued to tweak this automated machine and spin the flywheel faster and faster.

Over the subsequent years, Sam built Consulting.com into a powerhouse e-learning company, generating upwards of $36,000,000 a year.

Despite being extremely introverted and disliking attention, Sam’s meteoric rise from zero to six figures, then seven figures, and beyond to eight figures, drew widespread attention. The world took notice.

Sam’s story has since been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets, highlighting his extraordinary rise.

Within a few short years, his information business had created 52 millionaires, over 500 six-figure earners, and enabled over 20,000 students to quit their jobs and work for themselves full-time.

Sam’s students have become some of his best friends, and he celebrates their success at each stage of their journey.

When someone reached six figures, he sent them an invite to hang out.

When someone hit seven figures, he chartered a private jet, and they took off somewhere for the day.

“I wanted to give people everything they needed to legitimately succeed in one package, where they know the price upfront, and if they follow through and put the work in, they will inevitably succeed.”

But all this success and scale came at a cost.

He’d hired a big team, an office in New York and sold his soul to the content creation machine.

Sam dangerously tittered on the brink of burnout. Obvilion.

So yet again he changed location and re-shaped his business.

The sunny shores of California were the new destination.

Sam scaled his info business back down to a more manageable level with a smaller, efficient team.

It was at this time he had the biggest breakthrough yet.

What he observed is not everyone completed the online courses but nearly everyone was getting involved in the community. And they often said this was the best part of his programme.

Friendships were forged, business partners were found and people finally found a tribe of people where they could belong.

This realization planted the seed of community building, which was the inception of his biggest creation yet.

And when 2020 hit and the world went into a pandemic-induced frenzy, people craved community more than ever.

Yet again Sam Ovens was the man with the answers.

Launching Skool

How much time and how many interviews would you do to find a co-founder?

20? 50? 100?

Try 600.

With his information business completely systemized Sam spent an entire year doing interview after interview.

He wasn’t just searching for anyone.

He was searching for a genius.

When Daniel Kang first booked an interview with Sam he asked around and the feedback was astonishing.

Apparently all the top companies in the world had been chasing this guy for his development and coding skills. They were blown away when he chose instead to speak to Sam about his new project.

The subsequent conversation went something like this:

“I can build anything Sam all I need is someone who can dream”.

And that was that.

Skool, the online platform with the mission to help 1 billion people find community was launched.

A mixture of Facebook groups, Google Calendar and Kajabi all rolled into one.

Recognizing the need for a unified space where education and community could converge seamlessly, Sam set out to create a platform that not only disseminates information but also fosters a sense of belonging and mutual growth among its users.

A place where by sharing perspectives and insights, members contribute to a richer learning environment, reinforcing existing knowledge and discovering new ideas.

A platform that would change the meaning of education forever.

With this clear focus on creating a symbiotic relationship between learning and community, he and the team spent the whole of the pandemic locked away building Skool.com.

Today Skool.com stands as a beacon of hope in the online learning ecosystem with an unwavering ambition to redefine the parameters of digital learning.

This ambition aligns with a broader vision to dismantle traditional barriers to education, making learning more accessible, engaging, and impactful for a global audience.

Yes, it’s a dynamic interplay of challenges and opportunities, but Skool’s commitment to its foundational mission — to intertwine education and community in meaningful ways for 1 billion people — remains its guiding star.

And just a few short months ago they announced a strategic partnership that could well make this audacious mission a reality.

Enter Alex Hormozi.

Partnering With Hormozi

This one came as a surprise to many.

Firstly because Sam has never really been a front-runner for partnerships and stayed behind closed doors working whilst everyone else went out networking.

Secondly, even though Alex had already invested in a ton of companies with his business Acquisition, he’s never been public about any.

Which shows you just how serious he is about Skool.

With the obsessive building mindset and vision of Sam, the marketing and sales genius of Hormozi, it’s a match made in heaven.

Since this announcement they’ve now launched the Skool games, a monthly challenge where users compete to grow their community and the top 10 winners fly out to spend the weekend at Hormozi’s HQ.

And the last time I checked Meta ad library they’ve launched a Marketing Firestorm of their own. On a completely different level.

Estimated site traffic from Similar websites at the time of writing is now over 30 Million monthly visitors to give you an idea of the momentum they’re picking up.

And this is just the start.

As we delve deep into the digital age, where isolation can often overshadow connectivity, Skool’s model offers a refreshing counter-narrative.

But remember, Sam Ovens followed the traditional path: an alarm clock, a commute, a job with little meaning, four weeks of vacation a year, and just enough money to keep existing.

But he questioned it. What if it was wrong? What if most people were wrong?

Ignoring the traditional path and the voices of the majority led Sam to a life not just filled with immense wealth, but also with freedom, satisfaction, and meaning.

Over 20,000 students and millions more from around the globe are following in his footsteps.

“There's this saying, "The quietest people have the loudest minds,” and it’s true. My whole life, I grew up introverted, quiet and shy. I listened, observed and built a sophisticated world view. I didn't think anything of it at the time.”

If there’s anything to take away from this newsletter, be it the fact that people aren’t just "the way they are" but are built one piece at a time.

You can build yourself into whoever you want to be.

You can’t be the next Sam Ovens.

But you can be the next you.

Remember: Geniuses come in all shapes and sizes.

And a quiet lion is always more dangerous than a barking dog.

Until next time keep dreaming like a Giant.

But fight and believe in your dreams like a god damn underdog.

Yours truly,

-Nigel Thomas

P.S. I don’t care what anyone says about Sam Ovens because I can tell you for a fact taking his course, watching his YouTube content and implementing the knowledge changed my life.

I hope by sharing his story this changes the life of at least one more.

And if anyone knows Sam or his team please forward this on!