In 2009, our co-founder Rick Cecil sat down with Leo Babauta for a conversation about dream-chasing — the real version, not the highlight reel. Leo had recently built Zen Habits from zero readers into one of the most popular blogs in the world, with over 200,000 subscribers. He'd quit his day job. He was a father of six. And he'd done all of it by focusing on one deceptively simple idea.
"I focus on simplicity — the art of simplifying your life, of being productive by doing less."
What follows is drawn from that original "From There to Here" interview, and I think it holds lessons that every course creator needs to hear — especially if you're in the early days, wondering whether anyone's listening.
Writing for Nobody
Here's the part of Leo's story that most people skip past on the way to the "200K subscribers" number:
"The first month of my blog, I was writing basically for nobody. I got a couple of readers here and there. The second month I started getting more readers who were very enthusiastic. They really encouraged me."
I think about this constantly when I talk to course creators who are discouraged by small numbers. Your first cohort might be five people. Your email list might be 30 subscribers. Your webinar might draw a dozen attendees, half of whom are friends.
That's not failure. That's exactly what the beginning looks like. Leo didn't have some secret distribution channel or a viral launch strategy. He wrote for nobody, then he wrote for a few enthusiastic readers, and those readers became the foundation of everything that followed.
The turning point wasn't a marketing tactic. It was a commitment to usefulness:
"Writing 'Top 20 Motivation Hacks' taught me how to write a really useful post. That's basically what I've done from there on. I don't always succeed, but that's my goal. I want to write something that people want to share with their friends."
"Something people want to share with their friends." That's the entire growth strategy, distilled to one sentence. Not SEO tricks or paid ads or growth hacks — genuinely useful content that people can't help passing along. The same principle holds for courses. The courses that grow organically on Ruzuku are the ones where students finish and immediately tell a colleague about them.
The Fear of Not Being Good Enough
Leo was refreshingly honest about something most successful people paper over:
"I have a fear that I won't be good enough. When you put yourself out there as a blogger and a writer, you are pretty much saying that I'm good enough to write for you. And that's a scary thing because what if you're not?"
This is the same fear I hear from course creators every week. "Who am I to teach this?" "What if someone in the class knows more than me?" "What if I get a bad review?" It doesn't go away when you hit 200,000 subscribers, apparently. But Leo described something important about how he managed it:
"For me, it's been little steps. Each time I succeed, I feel more confident and I feel like I can beat that fear of failure — that fear of not being good enough."
Little steps. Not one grand leap where you suddenly believe in yourself. You teach one workshop. It goes okay. You teach another. Someone emails you to say it changed how they approach their work. You teach a third, and this time you're not white-knuckling through the first lesson. Confidence isn't a prerequisite for starting — it's a byproduct of having started.
Quitting the Day Job
One of the most striking moments in the interview was Leo's description of deciding to leave his day job once Zen Habits was earning more than his salary. Two words:
"Quitting was liberating."
But he was quick to credit the support system that made it possible:
"I told my wife about it, and she was totally supportive. Eva was with me 100 percent every step of the way. I'm really glad that she was because I don't know if I could have done it without that kind of support."
I don't want to romanticize this. Not everyone has a partner who's "100 percent" on board from day one. Not everyone can afford the financial risk. But what Leo's describing is something I've seen matter enormously for course creators: having at least one person in your corner who believes in what you're building, even when the numbers are small. That might be a spouse, a mentor, a mastermind group, or a handful of early students who keep showing up.
Keeping It Human
My favorite moment in the conversation was the most offhand:
"My kids hear about me doing the blog stuff, but they're not too involved in that... But once in a while, I'll be like, 'Oh, I have 50,000 subscribers. Let's go to dinner!'"
There's something deeply grounding about that image — a father of six, running one of the most-read blogs on the internet, celebrating a milestone by taking the family out to dinner. It's a good reminder that building something meaningful online doesn't require sacrificing everything offline. The best course creators I know aren't optimizing every waking hour. They're building something sustainable that fits their actual life.
What Course Creators Can Take from This
Leo's trajectory — writing for nobody, focusing on usefulness, building confidence through small wins, eventually going full-time — maps almost perfectly onto the path I've watched thousands of course creators walk. The specifics vary, but the pattern is remarkably consistent.
You don't need a massive audience to start teaching. You need a genuine desire to be useful and the willingness to begin before you feel ready. The audience grows from the usefulness, not the other way around.
And if you're in month one, writing (or teaching) for basically nobody? You're in good company.
This article is based on a "From There to Here" interview conducted by Rick Cecil, Ruzuku co-founder, circa 2009. The conversation has been edited and reframed for today's course creators.