Day 6–100 Days To Becoming An Online Course Instructor
Don’t underestimate what you have to offer
Day 6. A day of gratitude, surprise, excitement and humility.
The feedback from my interviews is becoming quite consistent: nobody wants the emotions course that I wanted to write. Nobody.
And here’s the surprising bit… I feel grateful.
This interviewing journey has offered me such a fantastic opportunity. It has opened my eyes to possibilities that I didn’t think even existed. People — amazing people — have taken the time to sit with me and offer their wisdom. And it has been incredibly valuable. What a gift!
The biggest surprise for me today is that my audience is consistently telling me that they want my pearls of wisdom in consumable chunks. One interviewee said, “Deanne, remember all of those times in the office when you offered me a different perspective? Sell me that. For an affordable price and in a bite-sized chunk”.
Wow.
I have been looking at creating detailed courses that are clever and exciting and have a lot to offer. I thought they’d be awesome. Yet, my audience wants to pay for a version of me.
Surprise!
This led me to reflect on humility. In The Field Guide to Emotions, Dan Newby & Curtis Watkins provide a definition of humility that I love:
I claim exactly who and what I am, nothing more and nothing less.
Whatever this non-emotions-based-course that delivers my pearls of wisdom in bite-sized chunks happens to be, I want it to come from a place of humility. That felt important as I was reflecting on the interview feedback. Bite-sized chunks of my wisdom — nothing more, nothing less.
The final emotion that I am experiencing at the moment is excitement which, according to Newby & Watkins, elevates our energy level and directs us to do more (or again). This was a huge boost for me. I loved the energy.
And with this newfound energy, I felt it was time to look for some more practical knowledge.
Knowledge
It feels as though it might be time for me to understand some of the detail of producing an online program. Perhaps I am jumping ahead. Or perhaps I am not. Regardless, there are two pieces of knowledge that I think will be helpful:
- How do I launch a program?
- What platform do I use for a program that looks as though it might quite simply be digital downloads?
To be honest, I think this is more about the knowledge that I would like to acquire than the knowledge that I now have. (And I note the irony in she who has hangups about the word knowledge going straight in declaring the need to acquire knowledge. Thanks for not mentioning it.)
To launch my program, I think I am going to see what Jeff Walker has to offer in his book, Launch. I started reading it many months ago. I feel more committed to taking notice of it this time. I had a quick flick through it today. Although I haven’t pulled out any exciting quotes to share with you, I felt as though I could relate to it. So I think that is going to be my guide as I start to plan for life beyond the interview process.
I thought about all of the problems that selling things online are going to create for me. The biggest is that I will have to collect Australian GST. It is not necessarily an issue in the early days, because it will be a while before I meet the threshold where I am no longer exempt from GST. However, if my income exceeds that threshold, it will be an issue for me and I would rather plan for that now. This is one of the technical gotchas that has convinced me to give up on courses previously. It felt too hard.
With my newfound enthusiasm, I have been googling possibilities for setting up a shop that will collect Australian GST from Australians and will not require me to pretend to be a web designer to implement. I am going to continue to research this, although I now have some ideas.
I will report more on the knowledge I have acquired about the platform and launching when I have investigated these further.
Now, it is time to share my learning.
What I Learned
Today I learned two lessons:
- Don’t underestimate what you have to offer
- Possibilities are everywhere, sometimes we simply have to look underneath things to find them
It has taken me the best part of two years to believe that I have something to offer people through courses and workshops. Two years. And then I was today years old when I discovered that my offer even doesn’t have to be complicated — it can be as simple as the randomness that I call out in the office at work when people need some reassurance and support. I’ve been putting pressure on myself to succeed when my target audience would feel as though I was succeeding if I sold them my less cynical moments of wisdom in the office.
Don’t underestimate yourself. Don’t underestimate what you have to offer.
There are some offers that I have decided not to make because I thought technology was going to get complicated. When I finally sat down and had a think, some simple solutions, not previously explored by me, came to mind.
Possibilities are everywhere.
Progress
On Day 6, I have:
- Completed another interview
- Reassessed my approach for the remainder of the interviews — perhaps I will go out to my Facebook group or my blog followers and ask their take on the evolving idea that is coming out of the interview process
- Become excited
6/6/100 (Days on track / Days gone / 100) On track.
References
Newby, Dan, and Watkins, Curtis. The Field Guide to Emotions: A Practical Orientation to 150 Essential Emotions.USA: Dan Newby & Curtis Watkins, 2019.
Walker, J. Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula to Sell Almost Anything Online, Build a Business You Love, and Live the Life of Your Dreams. UK: Simon & Schuster UK, 2014
Take Me To The Previous Day or The Next Day