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23 Comments

What's holding you back from teaching online?

Tell me what's holding you back, and I'll share my thoughts and/or scour the web to find and summarise answers for you.

I want to help. Plus, you'll inspire future topics for Course Creators Weekly.

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    Building an audience and content distribution. I have 15 years of product+code experience, but havenā€™t built a community of listeners.

    Recently started writing on Medium to see if this could turn into something:

    https://medium.com/@calebwright

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      Hey Caleb!

      You don't necessarily have to have your own audience to begin with, although it's definitely a big plus. Blogging is a great start.

      What would you like to teach? Are there podcasts/blogs/webinars around the same topic and/or with a similar audience to yours? See if you can pitch your content. It could be guest blogging, or sharing what you know on someone else's webinar.

      You might find this episode from @Louis_Grenier's Everyone Hates Marketers podcast interesting: How to Build a Credible, Personal Brand From Zero.

      I've also summarised the epsiode in CCW #14, copying it here for completeness' sake:

      šŸ¤© Find a problem space you feel passionate and energised about
      šŸ’” Think about not a single skill, but combined skills that help you stand out
      šŸ¤ Build social capitalā€”genuine relationships without expecting things in return
      šŸ”¬ Consult and/or deliver live lessonsā€”you'll learn a lot and start to find patterns
      šŸ¤“ Learn as much as you can around your topic
      šŸ§  Synthesize learnings, develop your own opinions, and challenge the norm
      āœļø Get in front of other people's audiencesā€”guest blog posts, webinars, etc
      šŸ„‡ Be consistent, to become THE person people associate with your topic
      šŸ¤‘ Create your own platform and monetise as soon as you can

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        Thanks Merott for these ideas!

        For podcasts/bloggers, how do the economics work? Who pays who?

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          It's not about getting paid, but sharing your knowledge through someone else's platform, with their audience. It'd help you build your credibility, and you could potentially promote yourself to that audience.

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            Yeah, I get the value behind it. Iā€™m not clear on their expectations.

  2. 2

    The pressure to create videos, structure them, edit them, etc.

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      Perhaps you could teach without video, or few videos mixed with text-based content?

      I guess itā€™s hard to say without knowing what it is youā€™re interested in teaching. You got ideas?

      Iā€™m also curious to know, considering you have so much going on already, how important is creating a course to you? Is that pressure you describe really whatā€™s holding you back?

      1. 1

        Hey John, Iā€™d have thought videos are easy for you! šŸ˜

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          lol! i wish!

          i am committed to my craft... but that doesn't make the work, itself, easy.

          i struggle... just as much as the next person.

          but, this is my job. so... yeah. lol.

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            Makes senseā€¦

            You make it look easy from the outside, and people (including myself) fail to understand that none of this stuff is easy for anyone. Everyone struggles.

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              how can i help you?

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                You already hijacked Rosie's answer. Now you're hijacking my topic! šŸ˜…

                Kidding. I'd love to talk to you actually. I want to know more about what you do.

                In fact, this has been on my todo list for a while: "Reach out to John Saddington."

                Because of what @schoon said to me:

                I did a cohort-based ā€œbootcampā€ back in March that I think was the most successful group learning approach that I've seen. It was done by John Saddington of Yen.io

                I want to know more about that! Emailing you!

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                  lol. awesomee! thanks. @schoon was a great student.

                  :)

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    ā€šWho am I to teach others?ā€˜

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      Who am I to help you? (I've never created a course before)

      The truth is that because of my newsletter, I've been reading/watching/listening to A LOT of content about online courses for the past few months. That doesn't make me an expert on the subject. Not at all. But, it does put me just a few steps ahead of you. I don't need to be an expert to share my knowledge, as long as I'm sharing it with people who are a few steps behind me.

      Don't you think there are people a few steps behind you, that could use your handholding?

      You might find these pieces of content from my newsletter (CCW) interesting (in that order):

  4. 1

    Probably just the time it takes to organize my thoughts into a video cohesive enough that can be explained in a short title.

    I could probably rant for way too long on a training video.

    Distilling it all takes time.

    1. 2

      Interesting thoughts, similar to what @rosiesherry said.

      I don't have an answer for that. I wish I did. There was a video from Pat Flynn I summarised for the newsletter, in which he explains his process for outlining a course. Here's how I summarised it:

      1ļøāƒ£ Take a post-it note and write down where people are right now in their journey
      2ļøāƒ£ On another post-it note, write down where they want to go (the transformation)
      3ļøāƒ£ Brainstorm everything you can teach to help them get there, one idea per note
      4ļøāƒ£ Group your post-it notes into logical clusters, then re-order them
      5ļøāƒ£ Fill the gaps, remove the duplicates, and there you have your modules

      Pat (and so many others) also recommend starting with only a few people, and going through your process live, so you can refine and adapt.

      Here's the newsletter issue, if you're interested: https://xebel.co/course-creators-weekly/13-how-to-create-an-online-course

      Your first attempt is going to be BAD. You have to accept that, otherwise you'll never get started! šŸ™‚

      P.S. We should chat again soon!

      1. 1

        Super helpful step-by-step - thank you.

        I suppose those steps can apply to any single tutorial video, as well, to some extent. My focus is less on creating a full online course and more so sharing/teaching along my journey in digestible bites.

        Probably would help to zoom out and get a bit better focus on the bigger vision and those steps would help.

    2. 1

      This. Having taught a few classes at university, I remember how much time it takes to distill my thoughts on a subject. Itā€™s easy to just click together a few slides and start rambling or throw in some buzzwords, but I think this is a waste of other peopleā€™s time.

      So in short, Iā€™m not teaching online because it requires a massive up-front investment of my time and I donā€™t know how the return will be.

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        Hey Johannes, how about running a small, live cohort as a pilot? Do you feel that would require as much upfront investment as a pre-recorded course?

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          What do you mean by a ā€œlive cohortā€?

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            I mean live lessons delivered to a small group of people over a few weeks. More like group coaching. It's not scalable but a great way to validate demand for what you want to teach.

            Once you know there's demand and feel confident about the potential returns, you can invest more time into it. Plus, delivering the lessons live allows you to take feedback and iterate on your content until you have something solid.

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