I'm Tom Morello, and this is my masterclass. I'm Fred Faulkner, a husband and father with a passion for marketing and technology. I work at a top 50 consulting agency where I lead alliances and marketing for the digital experience of technology team. On this podcast, I share my thoughts, opinions, and experiences in business and in life.
This is my view of the world. Hi, my name is Fred Faulkner, and this is my Masterclass. Well, not exactly, but we're going to talk about masterclass today because it's actually one of the online learning sites that, you know, you can take advantage of in today's isolation world, the quarantine life as we are calling it.
And if you're going to sit around doing nothing, you can go through the infinite scroll of your phone all the time through all your social media. You can basically watch all of Netflix or Hulu or any one of the different online streaming services. It is. Okay. Or maybe you can actually spend some time and actually learn something.
And so I'd like to talk about my experience that I've had with Masterclass over the last year and a half. So if you're not familiar, Masterclass is an online learning website featuring lessons in a number of categories from cooking, to the culinary arts, to business, to sports, to writing, and more. One could basically compare Masterclass that something is similar to a Skillshare or Udemy But it's definitely not like Coursera.
You're not getting a literally a degree. You're not paying the money of a master's degree, but you are definitely getting access to knowledge and skills from some of the biggest names in their industry and areas of expertise. So as an example, Samuel L. Jackson, as you heard at the beginning of this podcast, will teach you acting.
Annie Leibovitz will teach you photography. She's been part of Vogue and a lot of other publications from Rolling Stone. Very well known, renowned, uh, portrait photographer. Penn Teller will teach you magic, and they literally do. They teach you sleight of hand. They teach you some of the tricks they pull off in their shows, but not all of them.
And if that's not enough, really, if you really want to get yelled at, Gordon Ramsey has two classes that will teach you cooking. All in all, there's more than 80 courses that are available from the top named celebrities in their field of everything across from history to negotiation to business. Uh, like I said, culinary arts, they're all over the map and it's actually surprisingly A really good website.
If you're, you know, want to dive in. I was first intrigued with masterclass exactly for that reason. It was the celebrity status. I've taken courses you need from Udemy. I've looked at Coursera certainly as you want to learn more and do other education. There's plenty of very smart people that are out there and they're doing a lot of stuff that, um, That offers great education that because skills you can actually learn and take advantage of, and maybe in the workplace.
So a masterclass is something that I would say is much more of the hobbyist component, or at least something that will get you like a primer to into diving into a degree or an area of expertise further. And that's where the big names come in, right? If you're going to learn acting, um, nothing against anyone who teaches acting, but why not learn it from people like Judd Apatow teaching you comedy or Steve Martin, or like I said, Samuel L.
Jackson. If you want to learn filmmaking, why not want to learn from a Scorsese? Uh, that's the type of stuff that you're, you're getting out of a master class type of thing. And like I said, if you want to get yelled at, of course, Gordon Ramsay is more than happy to do that. Although frankly, I've never taken any of his courses, but he definitely teaches two courses on cooking.
So, not this past Christmas, but the, you know, Christmas before, so back in 2019 ish area, 2018? 2018. Um, I started seeing advertisements online, they've been around for, for more than a couple years. Um, and it was a buy one, get one free. So typically courses will go for roughly around 90 bucks and we'll talk about what a course will entail.
Um, or it was 180 for a year for as many courses as you wanted to take. I will tell you, it's not hard math, um, if you take more than obviously one course, it's totally worth it. And it's not difficult to go through more than one course in a year. So if you're really willing to sit down and, and binge content that even if you're just going to consume it, maybe not even go through all the lessons, um, you know, I have a course I'm taking by Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine.
I'm not really learning how to play the guitar like him, but I'm learning how I could play the guitar like him or have an influence in how I want to play guitar like him or my own influence of how I want to build my own sound through him. That would take practice. That would take. learning, uh, the guitar more that would take diving in.
But if you just want to listen to him, talk about his style, talk about his influences, talk about how he developed his own sound and the pedals and the, the other components of what he's trying to mimic to give that, to give him his unique sound. Um, yeah, you can basically sit for four to five to six hours and listen to Tom Morello talk.
And that's exactly what his course really does. So I did, I pulled the trigger. I bought a, uh, a year subscription. I just renewed it actually because I wanted to make sure that I was actually getting my, my money's worth. But at the same time, they keep adding more, more teachers, more lessons into the mix.
And I kept getting intrigued by a number of new additions into the, to the realm of what masterclass was offering. Now the other thing is that for the 180 that I got, I actually was able to give a subscription away and my sister, brother in law are, are big foodies. And so I did give them the subscription because I knew they, I knew they would just be giddy, um, in case, you know, what a word.
They'd just be really ecstatic to actually have a course by, by Gordon Ramsay. So it was worth it for me to kind of actually get a Christmas gift out of it. But at the same time get access to a whole plethora of knowledge that, um, I was really interested in. Now each class is going to be. very different, uh, and generally the sense of what's covered, how in depth they go, um, and, and really how much knowledge you can get out of it.
So in the masterclasses that I've taken so far, and I've taken a few, um, as ranged from I've taken any Lebowitz from a photography standpoint, and she has a very specific style that if you're familiar with Vogue and Rolling Stone and just her whole approach to photography in general. If you'd like portrait photography, she, she's the name you want to learn from.
So if you go through her, her course, she talks about her method, her style, you know, her adoption of digital, where she kind of goes into her methods and And working with her, her subject matters and her subjects and how she captures the photography. And it's very interesting to learn process from someone like an Annie Leibovitz.
Same thing with Jimmy Chin. Jimmy Chin is a National Geographic, um, award winning photographer. He's the one that actually Um, film from a film perspective, uh, free solo, which was the, the solo climb up, uh, El Capitan in Yellowstone. So if you want to learn how he approaches photography, which is outdoor landscape, um, you know, kind of action photography, he's a very different course than what Annie's going to be teaching you from a photography standpoint.
I have a personal passion around photography, mobile photography, real photography. So those are two classes that. that I wanted to take. Now, each of those were definitely different timelines. In fact, I actually haven't finished the Jimmy Chin one, mainly because it's fascinating to learn his process and how he approaches projects and, you know, talking you through, like, if you want to be a National Geographic photographer, you're This is what you need to do in this.
I need to prepare and how you get shots. And, you know, I'm never going to be a National Geographic photographer, but, uh, you know, so I'm not as intensely ingrained in listening and watching his courses, but I'm certainly something I will continue to finish. Um, Andy, it took me a little while to get through as well, but I've, you know, kind of bounced around between different classes, but, uh, but that's just kind of an approach that you can kind of see is that these courses, are very different based on what you get.
And what I mean by what you get is that each course you take is certainly, uh, duration, number of actual lessons varies. So as an example, Jimmy Chin, who I have not finished, has 20, 20 lessons inside his course that range anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes per lesson. Um, Annie Leibovitz, on the same time, had 15.
15 courses, um, which again, varying lengths, I would have, and you really have to spend a good day with either of those, if not multiple days, just because it's a lot of dense content that you actually have to really think about to get through. On the flip side, Penn and Teller, who teach magic, I was able to do that, like, And two, three hours, it's 17 lessons and it would have taken me longer if I actually would have practiced the actual magic that they were teaching.
And which of course, then you can go back, rewatch, go back, rewatch and, and kind of get through and learn this. But I really was interested in just the concept of, of magic, how easy could I adapt and do different things. And if I really wanted to go back and spend time. To learn magic so I can actually do it with my kids or do it at family events and you get the little kids kind of going like, Oh my gosh, how did you make that ball disappear and make a bigger ball up here?
Like you could do that with practice and that's one of the beauties of masterclasses that you have the, you can spend as much time with any one of these instructors depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Now again, Photography. It's practice. You got to go back. Music. It's got to go and practice and develop your sound and Penn and Teller is there to help teach you magic.
But then you have courses like Bob Iger teaches you about leadership in business and Howard Schultz that teaches you about leadership in business. And those are very different courses because they're teaching you about leadership in business. Business strategy and insights. And in Bob Iger's case, um, it was really about, you know, talking through some of the case studies of the acquisitions of Lucasfilm and, uh, Pixar and Marvel and how those all came to fruition, including as most recently, this is very recent, is the Fox deal that they ended up acquiring as well.
And so the great thing about the Bob Iger one was And some of these others is that, you know, Bob Iger not only came up with the masterclass, but it was a companion. I kind of called it a companion to his book. So in conjunction with watching Bob Iger, which I got through in about two days, it's about, you know, maybe three or four hours worth of content.
Um, I then downloaded the audio book and surprisingly there was a lot of mirroring content, like almost literally word for word, which I kind of found a little bit hilarious. Um, but it did expand to make, they complimented each other. And so I appreciated the fact that I can actually see Bob Iger and listen to him talk through stuff in his voice and in the book, which actually he doesn't narrate except maybe the first chapter.
is to then listen to the full, you know, that was a good seven hour, five hour book to, to listen through and kind of blend those two courses together to get the real value out of what my masterclass was with the book itself. In addition, he, you know, all the masterclasses, Every, every masterclass has some lesson of a downloadable companion, and again, they all vary on what the topic is, um, but they also usually have like a downloadable PDF, which has got you, you know, something to go practice with, or lessons, or a workbook to kind of work through.
So, again, I've taken a number of classes so far, um, the most recent one I actually completed and burned through 18, again, 18, uh, lessons was the Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, One on advertising. I work at an agency, um, but I've never been in the actual agency side. I work in a consulting agency, but I've never really been in that, the creative agency side.
So this is really insights for me to kind of learn how does an agency, you know, kind of work. And this is one of the biggest names out there in the private, not owned by a, um, uh, operating kind of holding company agencies. And they did, you know, six Superbowl commercials. And again, Because this was recent, they actually were talking about Super Bowl 2020, um, ads, and how many they did, and what, what did that come from, and how was the inspiration for these things, and so I, I really appreciated some of the recency that they had with some of the classes that I actually was able to take.
Now there's a ton of classes out there. Um, certainly I've started a number of them that I have not finished. And some of them I actually want my kids to get involved in. So for example, I'm probably never going to be a pro basketball player, um, or really play basketball outside of just hanging out with my kids in my front driveway, shooting on our hoop, but my youngest son is interested in basketball and.
Steph Curry has a class and so he's teaching kids or anyone who wants to, you know, all the fundamentals of, you know, um, how to play basketball, how to shoot, how to dribble, um, strategy, looking at your opponents, understanding the game. And, and while I'm watching it personally to kind of maybe learn a couple of tips to try and teach my son, like I've encouraged him like, Hey, Um, let's sit down and watch Steph Curry.
You know, he hasn't quite grabbed onto that yet. Um, but I would love it if we can actually sit down and watch some of the stuff so you can get more excited about the game because it's such, um, a personable experience, you know, there's tons of classes that are out there. And even if you go to a camp, you're never going to get the one on one interaction.
Um, you will, in some cases, while Masterclass is not a one on one interaction, it does, you know, the way they produce it does bring it kind of just like they're talking just to you. You know, some of it is very much to you, some of it can be they're talking in a group setting to a bunch of other people that are in the room.
It just depends on the course. But I've found it is because of the high production value. Um, it is, that's, I think, one of the things that separates it from a Coursera or Udemy or Skillshare, even a LinkedIn Learning. Talking to a camera is one thing. Talking to a camera with a higher production value that goes with it, I think, does separate a masterclass from any one of those other platforms that are out there.
So one of the things that I actually appreciate about masterclass, but I have not actually taken full advantage of yet. I normally start a class and, and I kind of stick with it and I might bounce between classes, but I don't. intermixed classes, um, in lesson by lesson. But what a masterclass has is something they call quick lists and quick lists is actually a curation of, of topics into from multiple that you can learn from multiple people, multiple courses, multiple instructors, and it puts them into a quick list.
So for example, they have a quick list on a healthy amount of risk and you know, they talk about as risk and reward, but it has to, you know, it has to be understood and managed as kind of the way to describe the quick list. And that actually has four lessons in it from, um, Chris Hadfield teaches, you know, from space exploration.
He teaches risk motivations. Wolfgang Puck will teach success requires risk. Judy Bloom will say, you know, has a lesson on write what needs to be there. And Hans Zimmer, who does a lot of scores for, for soundtracks, for, for movies. Has one called takes, take risks. And these are each individual lessons from different classes inside masterclass, but they've curated them into kind of saying, if you want to learn about taking risks and what that kind of looks like, here's your, here's your curated set list of all of the possible.
Lessons you can have and put it inside this one spot. And so as you look at risks, they have everything from, you know, building your craft, you know, several quick lists set inside, you know, working in the kitchen, they have ones around idea, big ideas, uh, creative life. Uh, there's just all these different ones working well.
So working well has definitely, you know, components of business, um, acting musicianship, all those things and how you can collaborate together. That is just, you know, gives you those, those lessons at individual basis. I mean, I like this one is even about performance review and performance review is definitely about acting, but you know, so that Steve, Steve Martin, it's got Hans Zimmer from a music standpoint, it's got Shonda Rhimes from a A writing standpoint, Samuel L.
Jackson from uh, a acting standpoint, you know, and then also Thomas Keller from a cooking. And it's about giving critical feedback and feedback can be on what I just made for you for dinner, or it could be on how you perform on a stage, but it can also teach you lessons on how I, as a business person, can give better feedback to my employees, or I can give feedback to clients and how that all works together.
So. I really do appreciate the fact that they actually have another component of this, that, that works. And one of the last areas of masterclass that I don't take advantage of, but it seems to be a pretty healthy component of, of what masterclass offers is, is it a growing community? So as a person who takes masterclass courses would say, you know, I'm taking the Samuel L.
Jackson acting one, and I want to connect with other actors, or I want to, I'm writing a script and I'm learning how to write through a Judy Bloom or someone in the writing section. And I want to connect and collaborate. They actually have a very growing community that is, um, that are at a local level. So in the U S they have, uh, communities in LA and San Diego and Asheville, North Carolina and Canada, they have ones in.
Vancouver and Ottawa and Toronto. So around the world, there are these growing communities and cities that you can collaborate. You can network, you can, you know, get together and talk, you know, about your like minded interests facilitated through what masterclass has to offer through those lessons and through those inspirations that you're getting from.
From the, the, the courses in general. So it's not just taking, you know, watching videos. And I, and I think that's the interesting thing that they're doing is that it's not just watching videos. It's not just trying to fill out a workbook. It's, it's not just, um, Hey, wow. They actually learn, you know, self expression and authenticity with, by RuPaul, um, and maybe explore areas that you normally would not explore, but you can connect with others.
That are taking this information that they're consuming it as well and and grow and network. And I think that's a fascinating component of what they're doing instead of just pushing out content. So overall, and I would say if you're looking to spend a little money in this downtime when you are at home and you are looking to explore maybe other areas, um, that you have an interest in that is not something that you want to learn from someone you don't really know.
You have this opportunity for the celebrity focused, you know, site called Masterclass and I really can say I've been, you know, if you think about how you can spend time and learn, yes, 90 per course does sound like a lot of money. Yes. 180 a year for unlimited courses does sound like a lot of money, but I'm going to kind of frame it in this perspective.
If you were going to go see Samuel L. Jackson for an hour on stage, Just monologuing, talking about acting. How much do you think that ticket's going to be for you to go to a theater, an amphitheater, an auditorium, and listen to him talk? You think that ticket's going to be more than 90 bucks? Probably.
It's Samuel L. Jackson. He's probably going to, between all the other components of what it takes to actually pull that production leg off, it's going to be more than 90 bucks. Um, buying two tickets will cost you more than probably 180. Why not spend 180 and then get access to a Samuel L. Jackson, a Penn and Teller, a Bob Iger, a Tom Morello, um, all, you know, pick your, pick your flavor of, of what you're interested in from music and entertainment, culinary arts, writing, business, politics, and society, um, any of those types of things, you have access to all this information that I think, you know, 180 investment.
I know everyone's got different budgets, but, um, I'll probably be willing to bet you're going to spend that much in Netflix in an annual year, um, between the different price points. Uh, maybe not as much, but close to it. Uh, if you do Netflix and Hulu and, you know, anyone, the other ones combined, uh, maybe you do a little bit of a shift.
Maybe you take that money and put it towards something that is not just, um, the bingeable mindless kind of entertainment and, um, Maybe learn a little bit something new and something different from celebrities that you know and love so, you know, take a look at masterclass I think it's definitely worth it.
I've enjoyed the classes I certainly have enjoyed the opportunity to to grow into other areas and they're adding new courses all the time And I think that's one of the you know, fun things is that it's not You know, a set list. And when I started masterclass, you know, a little over a year, year and a couple of months ago, there was not 80 classes out there and, and they're continuing to grow.
And so like most recently Bobby Brown came on board or, um, Kelly Wurstler, who's an interior designer. Lynette, uh, Mera, Mera, Mero, and, um, Brian, I'm not even beginning to pronounce his last name, teaching mixology, and they're, they're famous New York mixologists. You know, I would probably love to learn how to make some cocktails in a unique way.
Now I can do that from the wonderful sitting in my home, in my, in my bed, watching on my phone, or sitting on the TV. So, these are, you know, again, Not so much to be a commercial, not so much to be, you know, levels of criticism. My level of criticism is probably, is probably this because nothing's perfect. So let's, let's just be clear.
Nothing is perfect. My level of criticism when it comes to masterclass really kind of boils down to this, this kind of thing. Some of the courses are definitely gonna be fluff. I would say, The advertising one with, uh, could be and Silverstein. It was, it was fluff. I enjoyed it. I consumed the content. I learned a little more about advertising, the creative brain, but, but frankly, it was a primer at best and entertainment, uh, you know, beyond that.
But I wouldn't say that I could walk into an ad agency and be like, Hey, I could do that job now. You can't. It just isn't the case. Same with, you know, Bob Iger. I probably, I enjoyed it because it was business. I enjoyed it because it was Disney. I enjoyed it because it was learning more about Bob Iger and how he, he came into his, his role as CEO.
Um, but honestly, his book was better. I enjoyed listening to his book on Audible. And then also consuming his content on masterclass and together in tandem, I felt like I got a really good kind of just learning out of that. Um, I enjoyed the case studies on Marvel and Disney and Pixar and some of the nuances of how each of those negotiations went down, but you're not going to walk out and feeling like, you know, you have a good business strategy, um, you know, course or part of your MBA.
So again, take it in, you know, take it in understanding what you're getting out of it. There's others that, you know, is intended to, you're going to have to kind of take some time and learn to it. And they, they approach those, those instructors approach it that way. Um, so again, the, the criticism is sometimes it's fluff, sometimes it's not.
Every course is slightly different. Um, the one that I'm enjoying right now in addition to also having to listen to the book is Chris Voss and the art of negotiation. So I've been watching his courses and also taking listening to his book called never split the difference. Those are, you know, when you can find those kinds of nuggets where you can combine two things together, I think you're going to get more value out of the course and, you know, and out of the subscription in general.
But again, there's, there's definitely some that are definitely fluff. There's definitely some that are. Um, they're great to listen to, but, but honestly, you're, you're watching, you're watching an actor talk to you about, or a celebrity talk to you about their, their passion, but there's not going to give you a ton of in depth knowledge on any particular subject.
So for what it's worth, take a look at Masterclass for what it's worth. You know, I think it's worth a subscription, but your, your, your mileage will vary on, on how much you kind of go into it. You probably will find a topic that fits something of your interest by over the 80 something that are in there I think it's close to 90 now.
So my recommendation is, you know, I've enjoyed masterclass. I think you should take a look at it But in any case if you're doing anything with your time now in this kind of downtime and quarantine All I really say whether it's masterclass or anything else Take some time. Don't just veg out. Um, don't just do home projects.
Don't just try and clean out a closet. Take some time to actually learn a skill. Take some time, whether it's a masterclass or Udemy or Coursera or Skillshare or LinkedIn learning. But take time to actually grow a skill, um, because you never know what's going to happen at the end of the day and where you might want to try and reinvent yourself a little bit.
And I think we have some, some time to do that now. Masterclass won't necessarily do that per se, but it'll definitely spark some interest maybe into doing something new. So that's it for today. I wanted to just kind of talk about my experience with masterclass. If you have any questions about masterclass, feel free to shoot me a note at Fred at masterclass.
com. at according to fred. com or at according to fred on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn. We'd love to talk to you about it and you know, maybe I can hook you up with a discount, who knows? So that's it for today and we'll talk to you on the next one. Hey, and before you leave, if you really liked what you heard today, I would love it if you subscribe so you can stay up to date when I drop a new episode.
If you really liked what you heard, I'd appreciate it if you gave this podcast a rating on Apple or wherever you actually listen to your podcasts and maybe even drop a review. It really would mean the world to me. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you on the next one.
Welcome to my masterclass motherfuckers. You wanna be a motherfucking better actor? Take my motherfucking class. When you're finished with this class, you gonna be an acting motherfucker. I'm Samuel L. Jackson and this is my motherfucking masterclass.
Yeah.