Long time fan and supporter's view on HG's premium content offerings
I am a longtime viewer of HG content having started watching back in 2019. I have used the coaching system, membership, and 3 guides. Love what the team is working on and so grateful for everyone involved as it has all helped me so much in my own journey.
This post was prompted by my purchase of the recent Love, Sex, and Relationships guide {LSR}. I think the guide is good and has useful information, but I dont think it is great considering its price. It consists of just under 4 hours of content most of which is rehashed in the free livestreams Dr K did recently in promotion of the guide.
These two vods in particular:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2772708610
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2765685461
Providing the content for free is amazing, but that also serves to reduce the value in purchasing the guide. The guide is basically a rehashing of the same content as normal streams/memberships but filmed with a fancy camera in some alternative studio and cut into smaller videos.
I understand the HG team wants to move away from donation based funding towards product based funding. but buying a product that is basically already available isnt compelling. I personally bought the LSR guide as a way to support HG rather than for the content itself. Given my experience of HG content in the past i figured much of the content would be stuff already discussed elsewhere.
HG has a couple major issues they face:
Dr K is so capable of lecturing that its troublesome for HG to create separate paid for content styled in the form of a guide.
- I would wager he would be able to give a 2 hour lecture on any of his bread and butter topics with no prep whatsoever and it would still be some of the most compelling and informative content out there about the topic. Dr K and team want to help people, so they dont go the route of keeping 90% of the content behind paywalls while leaving 10% in the open to serve as advertisement. HG seems to be the inverse, 90+% of the material is free and open to the public, with 10% kept behind a paywall. I love it and think its a great strategy for spreading useful knowledge, but it comes at the cost in the value of the paid content sometimes feeling like its not worth the money.
Another issue they face is the reliance on Dr K as the focal point.
- Memberships has experimented with platforming various other creators and i think to great success. I for one am grateful for finding Joe Hudson in particular and have gone on to consume his content. But, showing off these other creators is not something that can be repeated on regular basis to great effect because it mostly serves as a way to find the content creator. If i enjoy joe hudson's membership lecture, well then i just go over to joe's existing content. One of the more interesting examples that i did enjoy was seeing Dr K's brother, Akash, it appeals to the Dr K fandom by seeing Dr K interact with this person who is close to him and also learning about a subject not normally discussed on HG. I liked it a lot and have gone on to read many blog posts of his on https://www.akashkanojia.com/ But i am unsure how interested in finance/entrepreneurship the avg HG consumer is.
For me, memberships has easily been the best product offering HG has ever made. The membership gives you temporary access to 90+ lectures, most of which are like 2+ hours. They cover topics at a level of depth rarely touched by the free content. I have consumed all the lectures and now back and rewatch old lectures. I still pay monthly mostly as thanks for HG and financial support to help them keep going.
Coaching was fine, but nothing crazy imo. I did coaching a few years ago and suspect there was a large variance in "quality" (for lack of a better term) of coaches. A friend of mind is going to begin coaching soon so im curious to hear from them about their experience with it.
In many ways i have outgrown HG content and product offerings. I have grown an insane amount since i have begun seriously engaging with the content in the last 3-4 years. Just a few years ago I was living as full hikkikomori (wouldnt leave apartment for 3 weeks at a time), depressed, virgin, horrible self-esteem, etc. Now i travel the world full time, socialize more fluidly and naturally, have much better awareness and self-image, go to gym regularly, no longer virgin, etc. There are still so many things for me to learn and still many things i struggle with, but the trajectory is up and to the right. I hope someone can gain some use from this post, especially the HG team.