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Meet Danny Brassell of ReadBETTERin67steps.com in Aurora

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Danny Brassell.

Danny, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I am on a mission to bring “joy” back into education by transforming struggling and reluctant readers into more passionate and proficient readers. While schools do a decent job of teaching kids “how” to read, what good is that if students never “want” to read. I show kids “why” to read. It’s ironic because I hated reading as a kid.

My father was a librarian, and I always avoided books like the plague. Movies and television and video games were more to my liking. It wasn’t until I began teaching in inner-city Los Angeles that I became a reader. Confronted with students who came from highly dysfunctional homes and limited resources, I became ashamed of myself. I grew up in a highly-rich literate environment where I had both my parents in the home reading in front of me and to me, and I always had easy access to reading materials.

Working as an educator as a teacher, tutor, administrator and researcher over the past 25 years, I have seen what works and what doesn’t. The best way to help children read more, read better and love reading is to instill simple daily reading routines.

I speak all over the world on reading motivation to audiences ranging from preschoolers to rocket scientists, and I have developed an online virtual training system that shows parents, teachers and schools how to dramatically improve children’s reading attitudes and aptitudes in 67 days – just over two months. The program is already in English and Spanish, and I recently returned from trips to train families in India and Egypt on how to use the system. It is quite rewarding to work.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
When I teach students of all ages, I always ask, “What’s the opposite of success?” Most will shout, “failure.” That is incorrect. The opposite of “success” is “not trying,” or “quitting.” Failure is essential to success, and 25 years working with students of all ages has taught me what works and what doesn’t with struggling and reluctant readers. Perhaps one of the greatest blessings I have had in my business career is meeting my business partner, Nestor Santtia, who has helped me expand my vision of literacy around the world by treating it like a business. Before meeting him, I encountered my fair share of shysters and con artists who did not care at all about my mission. And what I like most about Nestor is he is not a greedy jerk, as he always says, “You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.”

Life is too short to be around negative people, but my experiences with negative people have helped me surround myself with plenty of positive people. And I am grateful for all of those experiences.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
I developed the ReadBETTERin67steps.com program: to help parents, teachers, schools – whoever – inspire children to read more, read better and love reading. We’ve developed the world’s leading reading engagement program. While most so-called online classes simply “expose” users to information, our system allows me to deliver content by making it much more interactive. And its accountability management systems increase my users’ information retention. Put simply: the lessons stick better.

Our Interactive Virtual Reading Training team – we call them “INVERTS” for short – anyway, our INVERTS that put together the programming and the technology behind this state of the art platform have over 20 years of experience creating and implementing the most engaging and effective training systems in the world, and now users can have it working to help them and their students to love reading in our ReadBETTERin67steps.com program.

The program is designed for 67 days. Why? A lot of folks say it takes 21 days to change a habit. To those poor souls, I say, “show me the research.” Actually, I know exactly where the number comes from. There was a great book in 1960 by Dr. Maxwell Maltz called “Psycho-Cybernetics.” Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon, and in the preface of the book, he commented that he noticed it took most of his patients about 21 days to get used to their new faces. This number was purely anecdotal and based on his own observations.

Well, a lot of big-name, personal development, self-help gurus – people I admire – grabbed this number and started publicizing that it takes 21 days to change a habit. And what’s worse, a lot of people started accepting that number without knowing where it came from.

Anyhow, in 2009, researchers at University College London decided to study actual habit formation. They observed that it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days for their study participants to change a habit, and the type of habit determined the length of time. For example, if you want to drink a glass of water before dinner, it may take 18 days to turn that into a habit – but it takes people 254 days to quit smoking.

And the researchers found that the average length of time it took people to change any habit was 66 days. Well, I don’t like the number 66, so I threw in a bonus day just for my users!

Here is the important point: saying it takes 21 days to change a habit is not just an inaccurate statement. It’s an irresponsible one, as well. For example, let’s say you are trying to lose weight, and you follow a diet plan perfectly for 21 days, but fall off the wagon on day 22. You blame yourself. You tell yourself you failed. But in reality, the number 21 was completely arbitrary. And research shows that it takes an average of 66 days – more than three times 21 days – to change a habit.

So that’s why the ReadBETTERin67steps.com program is designed to take place over 67 days. In 67 days – just a little over two months – I help users help their children read more, read better and love reading. I know that the way to make kids better readers is not by assigning them more dreary exercises and administering more tests to label them. No, experience has taught me that true motivation lies within, and the simplest path to motivate students to read is to get them excited about reading.

The more excited you are to read, the more likely you are to read. And the more you read, the better you get. Most training programs provide a stagnant website, or a workbook or a bunch of videos. But we understand that effective training has to have good content, repetition, role-playing practice opportunities and accountability. I’ve never had to ask a child to watch TV. I’ve never had to ask a child to play a video game. And I never want to ask a child to read.

Most reading programs focus on teaching kids “how” to read, but what good is it teaching kids how to read if they never “want” to read? That’s where I come in. I teach children “why” to read. We need to make reading so desirable that kids choose to do it on their own.

The ReadBETTERin67steps.com virtual training program allows users to access 24 hours a day, seven days a week from anywhere in the world. And our experienced team of “INVERTS” have helped us design the program in a way that draws people to use the program. Our users “want” to use the program. The more they want to use it, the more they “will” use it. And the more they use the program, the more we can help kids around the world read more, read better and love reading.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I don’t believe in luck. I believe in God, hard work and learning from my mistakes.

Pricing:

  • (INDIVIDUALS) $497 – lifetime access to program + certification of completion
  • (SCHOOLS) discounted, based on volume

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