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The Online Course Coach Podcast

The Online Course Coach Podcast, brought to by TrueFocusMedia.com is THE podcast for the latest in online course creation tips, news, interviews and ideas. Whether you're creating eLearning for your company or a solopreneur building an online course to sell your expertise, this podcast will give you tips from Jeff Long as well as regular interviews from other industry leaders.
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Aug 13, 2015

image of Curtis McHale podcast artwork Curtis McHale shares his insights and experiences on membership sites and value based pricing. Most developers don't find a niche they love and can best serve, but Curtis has done just that.

Podcast Notes:

  • Curtis has helped companies grow 10x
  • He helps people live the life they want to live
  • He thinks of how he can help his clients better serve their customers
  • A membership site gives recurring income
  • Curtis uses RedBooth as his project management software
  • He says “no” a lot
  • He uses time blocking to create his ideal week
  • Check out Michael Hyatt’s blog on creating the ideal week http://michaelhyatt.com/ideal-week.html

About Curtis:

Curtis has worked in the web industry since 2006 by doing frontend coding, design, development and eCommerce.He got his start online at Western Canoeing and Kayaking, the biggest specialty paddling retailer in British Columbia. While working for them he did SEO work and brought parts of their site up to date gaining top Google rankings for specific search terms. He runs SFNdesign full time and specializes in eCommerce and Membership sites. Be blogs regularly and gives out great content at curtismchale.ca. When he's not working in front of his computer he lies paddling off of waterfalls, spending time with his family and walking his dog.

Find Curtis Here: CurtisMchale.ca

 

Aug 6, 2015

photo of Dan Miller of 48days.com I've had the privilege of getting to know Dan Miller over the years. I was first introduced to Dan through his popular podcast, I was able to attend several of his live events (think mini conference) with other entrepreneurs. It's there that you see how genuine Dan is. Since then, I've become good friends with Dan and his family. In this podcast Dan shares how he views online education and the opportunities that come with it. I love Dan's explanation of how to generate $150,000 per year by creating streams of revenue.

Download The Bonus Audio: “Dan Miller's Top Strategies for Marketing Your Online Courses”

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Dan Miller's Bio

Dan Miller specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success. He believes that meaningful work blends your natural skills and abilities, as well as your unique personality traits and your dreams and passions. He specializes in helping others create meaningful work and is a master at creative solutions.

 

Podcast Questions

  • Many people don't consider creating an online course because they think their knowledge or experiences in their business can only be utilized in working in their business. Why don’t most people think about transferring their knowledge to multiple areas, like creating courses, selling products or other creative outlets?
  • As an author, speaker and coach, most people in that category don’t have much success…what has set you apart?
  • Can you walk through your strategy for creating $150,000 a year?
  • What is your strategy for creating online courses or products?
  • Do you wait until hundreds of people to ask for a product or do you create one earlier?
  • How does an online course leverage your own time (teach once and keep earning)?
  • What are some ways you’ve used online courses and digital training products to leverage your time and grow your business?
  • What are your thoughts on sites like Udemy?
  • Are you working on any online courses now?
  • What are some tips for someone who wants to create an online course?
  • You’ve written New York Times best selling books, you’re a sought after speaker and coach, but what is your best marketing strategy in your own business?
  • What are some keys to your your overall success?

My notes and takeaways

  • Dan Miller uses his writing as the focus of his business, but doesn’t attach financial goals to writing
  • He puts on live events where he teaches others, as well as creates digital materials to teach
  • He builds systems, rather than trading time for dollars. The more products he can create to better serve his audience, the more money he makes
  • Dan doesn't create one product for one sale, but looks for opportunities to create a product once and sell it thousands of times
  • He recommends having one core message that is the same but the application can change by creating courses, podcasts, and other materials
  • Dan shares his success tips for creating online courses, that actually get watched.
  • If you’re struggling to market your course, Dan has several fantastic tips on how to get traction and build your audience, who in turn will look at buying your course
  • Find his books here,

Download The Bonus Audio: “Dan Miller's Top Strategies for Marketing Your Online Courses”

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Find Dan Here: 48days.com

Have a question for the podcast?

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Transcript of the podcast interview with Dan Miller:

Jeff: Welcome back to another episode. And I feel like I say this every time, but I’m really excited for this episode. And this time, I’ve gotten my friend and mentor, Dan Miller, on the show, and I, like thousands of other people, are drawn to him for many reasons. But the one that I initially was drawn to him for was his creative problem solving. And even though he is a coach, a speaker, a writer—and we talk about hat in the podcast—he is really somebody that, to me, is the essence of a creative thinker. We talk about how a lot of coaches, a lot of speakers, and writers, they don’t make much money, so how does Dan get so successful? Over the years, he’s built his audience in the hundreds of thousands of people, but he’s just as genuine hanging out with him in how in Franklin, Tennessee, as he is on his podcast and on his other materials.

And so I wanted to get him on the show to talk about really how he has found success. So even though he has hundreds of thousands of listeners on his podcast and readers of his book and blog and materials and his online courses, he gives a lot of good and practical insights, no matter where you are with building your audience. So yeah, he has a huge audience, and that’s great, and so maybe you’re thinking “Ah, it’s easy for him.” Well, he gives some really practical tips, even if you have a small audience or are just starting out.

Now I mention this later in the episode, but I got a chance to ask Dan kind of a really cool personal question about marketing. He is what I consider one of the kings of marketing. He’s very creative in his marketing strategies, so he gives some marketing tips and strategies to market your courses, your products, and even your services. And some of them were pretty creative, so definitely check that out. I made that a freebie for you guys, so if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller, you can learn more about that and download that free bonus audio.

So go to onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller to download that for free.

But before we get into that part of the show, I want to give a shout out to Paul U. And I’m not giving his last name there just for his own privacy, but he sent me an email and asked a great question, and on top of  that, he left an awesome review of the podcast. Now, he’s all the way from Australia—which, you know, doesn’t really matter these days what country you’re from—but, Paul, thanks so much for listening, for leaving that question and that review. And, man, the next time I got to Australia, we’ll definitely have to hang out. It’s definitely on my bucket list. I’ve been to five continents; unfortunately, I haven’t been to Australia yet. My wife has, so maybe we’ll make it a point to go there sometime very soon.

But he sent me a few questions that I thought would be helpful to answer on the show. And it sounds like his focus is mainly on finding a job in the eLearning industry. And so I think that’s great, because the eLearning industry is booming. Not only in small companies, medium sized companies, large companies—but also with individuals creating their online courses. So I think now is a great opportunity to surf the market with your skills. So to Paul, to you as a listener, if you’re thinking about getting into this industry, whether it’s just for yourself, just creating your own course to sell to your audience, or to get a fulltime job working for a company, now is a great time.

So one of the questions Paul asked was “Can you give me advice on how I can transition into the eLearning industry?” And so I sent him an email with some of my thoughts, but I wanted to expand on them in this podcast. If you’re looking at getting a job in the eLearning industry, there’s a couple things I would recommend. First of all, since we’re on the show with Dan Miller, definitely read his book 48 Days to the Work You Love, and part of that book is looking internally, finding out who you are, who you were created to be, how you’re wired, and that will really help you find out how you can best serve your future employer. And he also lays out how to target companies that you would love to work for, and send out the resume and do the traditional process, but in a different way, and in a way that, to me, is more effective. So definitely pick up the book 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller. It’s a New York Times bestselling book. It’s on one of my bookshelves here. I’ve actually got a couple copies—I think a couple of them are signed even… I’m kind of a nerd like that.

But that’s one of the things. Go through his book and find potential companies that have a fit and pursue them. Don’t look for different ads of different companies looking for people, find the ideal company that you want to work for and go after them.

Another thing is comment on the blogs of the eLearning companies that you want to work for. Get on their radar. This may take a while to target different companies, so start now. And this is a great way for people to get to know you. If you, every once in a while, pop into their blog and write a comment, it’s going to get noticed. Same thing with social media. Retweet their articles. Comment on their Facebook wall if they have one, and just get involved. Not in a creepy way, not every single post, but just subtly let them know that, hey, you’re interested in the type of company they are and the type of content that they’re creating.

Another thing is ask to guest post articles for them. You know, a lot of times, companies, they struggle for creating content. They know that content is good for SEO, for engagement, and things like that, but they don’t have the time, the personnel, the resources. So if you drop a line to a couple companies and suggest or ask that you could create some different articles for them, you might get some really good responses. I’m sure some of them won’t give you the time of day, and that’s fine, but think of a couple different really good articles. Maybe suggest two or three different articles and see which ones they want you to write.

Now you might be tempted to send out the same article to all the different companies…. Well, you might have to create a different title for each, different content, because you definitely don’t want to create the same article and copy and paste that to multiple companies. That’s gonna get you probably in some hot water and definitely not good for SEO.

Some other things you could do are create short video tutorials on your YouTube channel and build an audience up around you. And this will showcase your expertise when potential employers are looking at what you’ve accomplished. And so that’s a way to showcase, “Hey, this is what I’ve done. I’ve created all these videos. I’m not just passionate about doing this for pay, but I also like to do this in my spare time.” Also showcase work at your past jobs. What have you created? Who have you taught? What have you build? Show some different things that you’ve done to, again, position yourself as that industry expert in your specific area.

Find something that might be either challenging for a lot of people or something that you’re very experienced in that will set you apart from others. If you come in and say “I do everything from article writing to video creation to X, Y, and Z,” maybe in a small business, that would be advantageous, but in a larger company, you may want to have a specific area of expertise that you’re known for.

And then the last thing, and this list by no means is the exhaustive list, post articles on other eLearning websites. Websites like elearningindustry.com, and there are many others, that you can post your articles there, and then you can say “Hey, I’ve been a guest blogger/a featured blogger/a writer”—whatever the term may be—“for these industry websites.”

So those are just a few ways that I would position myself to serve the eLearning industry if I was looking to get a traditional job in that Industry. Now, you may not want to dive into the eLearning industry, find a company get a fulltime job, etcetera—you may want to build your own brand, build your own business, so maybe you can target ten or fifteen different companies and serve them. Maybe they’re small businesses. Maybe they have fifty employees, maybe they even have a HR department and they need training material, they need content, they need an LMS—a Learning Management System—and you can provide that for them. So it might be as simple as just creating—or finding ten or fifteen companies that you can serve.

And then lastly, another way is maybe you can build an audience and serve them just like Dan has in this podcast that you’ll be listening to.

So, again, those are just a couple ideas that will definitely get you off to a good start. Keep me updates, Paul, let me know how this advice comes through and what you’ve done with it. And to the audience, if you have a question, shoot me an email at jeff (at) onlinecoursecoach (dot) com, or through the contact form on the show notes page, will get to me as well.

Now I do want to read Paul’s review because, well, hey, it encourages me. Makes me feel good. So I’m gonna go ahead and read that. And again, Paul, thank you so much for the review. It’s actually in the Australian iTunes store, of course, because that’s where he’s writing this from. So that’s pretty cool to have different ratings and reviews in different countries. I appreciate that, Paul. He said: “This is a great topic for a podcast. I love Jeff’s enthusiasm and interesting guests on the show. Jeff helps to uncover the ins and outs of delivering great online courses, he certainly comes from a place of passion, authority, and authenticity. Check it out.” Man, Paul, that is awesome. I really appreciate that.

And to anybody else, I really love getting these ratings and reviews. It really helps get more people to see the show. You can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/reviews to leave a review in the iTunes store, and don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, or the other podcast apps, that’d be great.

So let’s get into the interview portion of the show. And a little bit of background on Dan, if you don’t know him, you are in for a treat. He is widely respected in several different areas. One is finding or creating work that you love, but he’s also built such a large audience that he has a lot of training material, online courses and content, that really helps. And he’ll talk about some of the products and some of the courses that he’s created, which is really cool.

I’m trying to remember how many years ago… Probably seven or eight years ago, I first was introduced to Dan through a podcast. I’m a big podcast listener, hence why I’m recording my podcast here now, and I came across his podcast where he just had a local radio station in Nashville, and I think he had a three hour show where he would answer question. And they took, I think it was an hour, maybe forty-eight minutes, of that show and put it on iTunes. And I stumbled across it and I just—oh man, I loved those episodes. Ever since, I’ve probably listened to every single episode. And he comes out with one every single week, so multiply that by the seven or eight years that I’ve been listening, and that’s how many shows it is. I hate to do math on the air, so I’m not gonna do that live. I’d run out of fingers.

So it’s really cool to hear his podcast, read his books, his blogs, etcetera, and then I had the opportunity several years ago to go down to one of his live events in Franklin, Tennessee, at the place called the Sanctuary, which is a really cool place he’s created down there, and get to know him, get to know his family, get to know the other attenders, and you see the family atmosphere that his live events are. And that’s how I got to know him personally. I’ve also had the opportunity to produce some videos for him and we’ve become friends, which has been awesome. We’re also in a mastermind group together, and it’s been really cool and a good source of inspiration, encouragement, and a way to see how a rising tide lifts all ships.

At the end of the show, I’ll give you a link to a bonus audio—but hey, I’ll just give it to you now in case somehow you don’t make it to the end of the show, which, come on, why wouldn’t you make it to the end of the show? But if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller, you can go to the show notes page where you’ll find a download to this free bonus audio. And I asked Dan a really cool question about his marketing strategies, and I think you’ll be surprised at some things he talks about that have been some of his best marketing strategies to grow his business. We’re talking about he’s a writer, he’s a course creator, and some of the things he talks about are really cool, and some of them might surprise you. So definitely check that out at onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller.

If you don’t know Dan Miller, don’t know about him, don’t know what he does, he specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success. He believes that meaningful work blends your natural skills and abilities as well as your unique personality traits and your dreams and passions. He specializes in helping others create meaningful work and is a master as creative solutions. He’s created several online courses, and we’ll talk about those in the show, but Dan, thanks for being on the Online Course Coach podcast!

Dan: Well, thanks, Jeff. I’ve been looking forward to it!

Jeff: Well, Dan, many people, they’re in their job, they’re doing their business but they don’t consider creating an online course because they think their knowledge or experiences in their own business really his kind of stuck working in their business. So why don’t most people think about transferring their knowledge to multiple areas like creating courses or selling products or other creative outlets?

Dan: I think sometimes we value less what we know so well. When something comes easy to us, we just assume that everybody knows that, why would that have value? Everybody oughta know that? And yet, that’s not true. We tend to look at things where we need knew learning, new knowledge, and other people are doing the same thing. So something that comes easily—because you have years of experience or expertise there—may be exactly the thing that is your Acres of Diamonds, so to speak. You can present and other people can access that.

Jeff: You just mentioned Acres of Diamonds. Great book. For the audience that hasn’t read it, give a brief synopsis of what that book is all about.

Dan: Oh, it’s a wonderful little book by Russell Conwell, written years ago, about this South African farmer who had a little farm. But he kept hearing about these people who were over on the Gold Coast finding diamonds. He thought “I’m not gonna die this poor little farmer hear on this decrepit piece of land. I better go find diamonds.” So he sold his little farm for a pittance and went to look for diamonds. A couple years past, finally in a fit of frustration, he threw himself into the ocean and drowned. Mostly a true story. Never found diamonds at all.

Back in the little farm the he sold, the gentleman who had it them found this interesting looking stone and put it in on his mantle. A couple days later, somebody came in, said “Where did you get that stone?” He said “Oh, right here in this little creek that runs through the farm.” Turns out that little creek running through the farm turned out to be one of the richest diamond mines in African history.

And the moral of the story, obviously—especially for being a true story—is that sometimes we overlook what’s right under our nose really does have value. You know, the old adage the grass is green on the other side of the fence is true for all of us. We think “Oh, if I could just get over there.” “If I just had this degree.” Or “If I just would have gone in that direction,” and we undervalue what’s right under our nose may in fact be our greatest asset.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s a great book. Definitely one of those, you know, gotta read it every now and then just to refresh your mind and get your creativity flowing. So, Dan, I know you specialize in coaching, in speaking. You’re an author. And really, you love helping others create meaningful work. And I view you as a master of creative solutions. So, because you’re an author, a speaker, and a coach, most people in your category may not have as much success as you or may not have any success. So what sets you apart from people in your industry?

Dan: Wow, that’s a great question. And a tough one to answer, because certainly, I wasn’t raised with any unique advantages. In fact, if people look at how I was raised, they would assume that what I was raised in was a disadvantage. We were very poor. Yet, as I look back, I think maybe that was an advantage. Not having radio or TV in our house, for example, drove me to books, which opened a world of opportunity to me as they do continue today. And in reading, then I became interested in writing, so that who series of what could have been a disadvantage actually was a great advantage to me. There’s nothing unique that sets me apart other than just clear focus and intentional action.

I am very intentional. When I decide I’m going to do something, I create a clear plan for that that’s gonna look like. I’ve never had a boss looking over my shoulder, so it’s always just been me. I’m my own harshest test master, but I decide what I want to accomplish and I have fun. I’ve never done work that I didn’t really enjoy, and I just have fun setting out these things that I’ve not done before. And believe me, that’s what excites me most. If there’s one thing that I’m going to sabotage quickly, it’s predictability. If something becomes predictable, even if it’s successful, I’m likely to start chipping away and sabotaging that, because I like a challenge of going into areas where I really am not very proficient YET. I love the learning process.

Jeff: That’s good. Now, I’ve heard you talk about how to create a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year through different revenue streams. Can you talk a little bit about that strategy?

Dan: Yeah, it turns out—you know, I did that kind of just impulsively, like most things. I just threw it out there. I’m big on what Eric Ries in the Lean Startup calls a minimally viable product. I don’t wait until things are perfect. I just put it out there, and I did a presentation on how to leverage your intellectual knowledge for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars this year, and it really got a lot of traction. In an interview then, with Michael Hyatt—his most viewed video he’s ever had. I had a pastor call me the other day and said he’s watched that video twelve times [inaudible 20:44]. But in that, I talk about identifying your core message. You don’t have to be an author, you don’t have to be [inaudible 20:52], you don’t have to be all those things. Just identify what is your core message that you want to share with the world? Then it’s a matter of repurposing time. How can you allow people to experience that in multiple ways?

As an example, people may ask me “Dan, I have this training that I’m doing. Should I do a workshop, seminar, ebook, traditional book, an online course”—well, you know where I’m going with that, Jeff. My answer is do them all. Allow people to choose how they want to experience your message. There’s no one right way to deliver. But the power of leverage is phenomenal. And it expands dramatically our ability to create financial income as a result of that. There’s not many coaches I know that make a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There’s not many authors I know that make that much money. But if they know their core message and the leverage that in multiple ways, then it really opens the door to that and more.

Jeff: Yeah, and that’s so good. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m such a big fan of your materials. Your ability to see all those areas or avenues that many people don’t, or don’t think about—about using that. Talk a little about your Venn diagram and how you’ve built that out for your services and your expertise.

Dan: Yeah, I use a Venn diagram, as you referenced, which is really—mine is three circles. And if you have three circles that overlap, at some point, all three overlap so you have something in the center. For me, that is my writing. Now, interestingly, I don’t attach any financial projections to my writing. My writing really serves just as a calling card, introduce people to the other things that we do at 48 Days. That  may seem counterintuitive, and authors, it drives them nuts because they want to write a book and then sit back and wait for those big royalty checks to show up in the mailbox, which they aren’t gonna—that’s not gonna happen.

But what I do is use writing just as an introduction. So then we do have live events at the Sanctuary where people can come and learn about a specific topic in a two day event. I do speak at different conferences where I get a chance to share that. We have a pretty robust product suite, as you know, so we have a lot of the products that we’ve already alluded to—traditional books, instructional manuals, three ring binders full of information, ebooks, audio courses. Just different things like that. And then the combination of those, and then us having relationships, we doing the coaching, we have a mastermind. Those are all just ways that people can kind of experience my core message, but they’re very different ways.

Most of those are systems that are in place that do not require my personal time. So if Joanne and I go somewhere for a week, it really makes no difference in my income. It’s not built on me just trading time per dollar. That’s another really key concept in this whole thing. You know, Jeff, about how to leverage your message. You have to move from linear to residual income. But we have so many options for which we can do that today, it’s just phenomenal. And there are people who are professionals who are paid very well, but they don’t understand any method of income generation but linear.  Attorney, dentist—they get paid very well. They do their work, get paid. It’s one and done. That bothers me. I would no sleep at night if I had that kind of a business.

Jeff: Now, what advice would you have for somebody—talking about the Venn diagram, and again, for you, that’s kind of these three circles that intersect and they meet in the middle, like you said with your writing. So it encompasses your writing, your speaking, your coaching, your events and all of these other areas. When you’ve coached people on maybe crafting their business or even their own Venn diagram, is there any guidelines for spreading that too thin? I know a lot of people, they want to create a course on personal finance and maybe a course or a podcast on a totally different topic. How do you reign in all your ideas, if you’re a creative person, and put them in the Venn diagram that has the most success?

Dan: Yeah, that’s a great question. I hope I can convey this—but if you have those three circles that are together, then we can draw over them a big common umbrella. Well, I want everything to fit together so that activity in any area of that Venn diagram fuels activity into the ones that it adjoins. So it’s not like on Thursday, I’m installing a sunroof in a car and on Wednesday, I’m doing landscaping, and on Friday, I’m speaking somewhere. No we don’t want unconnected things. We want things that have a common core, like that common message.

That’s where people get off track on this. They think “Well, this allows me to do ten different things and just throw them under the same roof.” They think that they’ll somehow just all work. A lot of people are too diverse in what they’re doing. I want the same message to be here if I’m speaking, if I’m coaching, if I’m selling a product, if I’m doing a live event. It still comes back to the same core message. I think if you do it in that way, you could be a landscaper. You could have the same applications that I have but they all oughta relate to that one core message. Like our friend Jeff McManus who talks about turning weeders into leaders. Wow, that’s great. You could do exactly what I’ve talked about with that being a very different message than what I have to share, but still have the same application for those multiple areas.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s so grea.t and that’s one thing, again, a lot of people try to spread themselves too thin or try to go here and there and do all sorts of things, but they don’t have that common message, that common theme that they’re trying to convey.

So let’s turn it over a little more focus on the eLearning and online course side. So I think I know the answer for this, Dan, but what’s your strategy for creating online courses or products? Do you wait until hundreds of people ask you or less than that?

Dan: I do. I have a strategy for that, and it’s pretty simplistic. My kind of motto, for years, has been if three people ask me the same question, I create a product to address that. And it’s really bene that simple. But that philosophy has opened a whole lot of doors of opportunity for me. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dan: I wrote, and it kind of evolved, 48 Days to the Work you Love. I just wrote up a Sunday school class. It wasn’t my intention necessarily, but people kept asking for it. I keep creating materials to address their questions, and in doing do, that went on to be a New York Times bestseller and continues to do really—really rock force out there. Then I started having people ask me “How can I do what you did as an author? I’ve got a book as well, but it only sold five thousand copies. How can I knock it out of the park with what you did?” Well, when I had consistent people asking me about that, I said—and I share openly, very open about what I’ve done and what has worked. But instead of just doing that repeatedly, “Why don’t we have an event here at the Sanctuary,” this little barn on our property. “We’ll just have people come in and spend two days and I’ll tell them everything I know about how to leverage your books.” So we did that.

Same thing happened with coaching, which is something I’ve always been doing as well, helping people through these inevitable, relentless transitions. And people were saying “How can I do what you’ve done in coaching? I hear people talk about you, I hear people talk about your results. How can I do that?” So we developed another training program for coaches. Now, again, those are very tightly woven together because the core message is the same, but at one level I’m help authors, at one level I’m helping coaches. That kind of strategy has just worked for me again and again and again. We’ve rolled out a lot of products where a couple people asked me about it, we just create a product to address that need.

Jeff: You know, I really like that idea, Dan, because you’re using your audience to give you insights on what they want. You’re not just creating training material, products, or things and throwing it out there and then nobody buys it. You’re waiting for people, a lot of times, to tell you “Hey, what if you had this?” or “Could you do this?” and then you create it for them. And so it’s really just—it’s not just meeting the demand, but it’s serving your customers, serving your audience in a whole new way. I think that’s really cool.

And so, to the audience, to the listener here, what is your audience asking you to do? Do you keep having the same questions come up? “Hey, what if you created this course?” or “Could you do this for us?” I would guess your audience, even if it’s somewhat small, maybe even people you work with, your family even, maybe they’re asking the same thing, and how can you develop a course or a product to better serve them?

Now, Dan, I know that you’re big on leverage. You said before, many times, that you don’t like to do one project for one person. You want to create something once and sell it to the masses. So what are some ways you’ve used online courses and your digital training products to leverage your time and grow your business?

Dan: Well, the things that I’ve done right to the bank—W-R-I-T-E where we show writers how to leverage their writing and produce significant income from that. Did that first as a [inaudible 30:59]. It was just Tuesday evening, I had seventy minutes, I just did it. Response was so phenomenal that I immediately saw the potential for turning that into an online course. So we just took the recording of that and a PDF of my talking and turned it into a product that is sold day after day after day now about seven [inaudible 31:21]. That’s the power of just recognizing what people are asking for.

Then that opened for the door for a live event that we did here several years [ago]. We did an even where people paid a thousand dollars to come to that, straight to the bank. So there’s been a lot of things like that where I’ve seen an opportunity threw it into a product people were asking for, and we turned it into a course. My goodness, the recent books I’ve written with my son, Jared, Wisdom Meets Passion. I was asked by a local university here in Nashville to teach that as a college course, which I agreed to do one time. Teaching it ongoing is not in my business model at all. I don’t want to be locked into four days a week going somewhere and standing in a classroom with thirty people. But I did it one time just to test “Will this go well?” Engagement was phenomenal. But in doing so, then I created a field guide that accompanies the book that is now being used.

48 Days to the Work You Love, there’s way more product. We’re just in the process now of relaunching the 10th Anniversary edition of the book, which is a brand new book, new workbook, all new online course training for that. And we’ve got organizations that are waiting in line to have that release.

Jeff: So what are some of the materials, or how are you building that? Is it video based, is it text based, is it both, are there quizzes? Kind of walk through that process. I know the audience would love to hear kind of behind the scenes on what you’re building.

Dan: We’re really in an interesting time right now, because some of what I’ve alluded to, on 48 Days to the Work You Love, that has been taught in a lot of different universities. It doesn’t line up perfectly with academic certification. I’ll just choose to teach it on the fly. But when we look at certification, there are requirements that defy everything that I stand for in terms of [inaudible 33:18-:23]. To me, education is broadening your life with learning and that will take place as you’re traveling through Switzerland more so than sitting in a classroom and just regurgitating what’s in the textbook.

Academic certification requires certain things like seventy-five hours of coursework. Doesn’t matter of the content can be conveyed easily in forty hours. You have to artificially create seventy-five hours. Their model, then, for proving your understanding of that, and that’s all we’re doing, is to regurgitate what was in there. So we have quizzes, tests, where you feed back information that was in the textbook. And what that means, Jeff, and this just absolutely destroys me, if that a student could get an A in the course 48 Days to the Work You Love and yet never get that first job, never get a promotion, never find their passion, work that they love, never start their own business. They could fail at all those parameters by which I measure success and still get an A in the course.

So I’m really outside the academic model. I’m happy to be there, frankly, because I think the academic model we have in the United States right now is the next bubble that’s gonna burst. And there are a whole lot of people that are saying that. People like Mark Cuban and Mike Rowe and some more people that are seeing what’s happening. It’s a really broken model where we’re encouraging students just to fill their head with the knowledge that you can access from an iPhone in three seconds. Why would to fill your head—what we want are to help people solve problems. Come up with solutions, unique ways—creative ways to relate to other people.

Those are the kind of things I want to convey, and so the proving confidence in my courses is not just a matter of feeding back what the materials say, it’s describe to me a project that you’ve worked on. Let me see a blog that you wrote. Tell me about the little lemonade stand that you had last year or the woodcarving business that you just started. Tell me somethings that you’ve done where you’ve put legs on an idea and created an economic model that will benefit you. And I mean, obviously you—get me on my high horse on this and you can’t talk, because it’s such a hot issue with me. I want my material to change people’s lives, not just fill their head with knowledge.

Jeff: Well, and it’s interesting because—and I haven’t talked about this on this podcast very much—I’m actually a terrible test taker. That was one of my weaknesses in school. I could know the material frontwards and backwards but when it came time for the test, it just threw me for a loop. I’m sweating bullets and I just didn’t do well on tests. And so, you know, just the fact that you’re passionate about not being so academic and more application driven, more results driven, is fantastic. And I think, like you said, that’s only going to be more and more prevalent as people want results. Doesn’t matter if you got a whatever grade. You could look through history at the people who failed college, dropped out of college, and they’re doing alright. They’re quite successful in life and in business.

Dan: There’s a lot of research to support that. Getting a 4.0 in college is not a good predictor of any kind of success by however we measure that. We have to move past this knowledge, understanding and application. And unfortunately, a lot of our academic program doesn’t require that. We just show knowledge and that’s it. Knowledge doesn’t do anything for you unless you move all the way through that.

Jeff: So what would you say for you—and I know everybody has different personality styles and preferences, but for you, what makes an online course interesting and interesting enough for you to purchase the content, purchase the course?

Dan: There’s certain unique, specific areas of application. There’s one that I just went back and reviewed this week. It’s Brendan Burchard’s course on his Partnership Summit. And he talks about how he gets sponsors for his events. So the participants, whoever they are, are really just the icing on the cake. Most people approach that totally different. They want to structure it so their big revenue comes from charging people who walk in the door. Brendan says “Hey, I don’t care about that because my money comes from sponsorship.” That’s an important area of information for me. So I have that available for me to go back and review it.

I just purchase Ray Edwards’ course on copywriting. That’s not something that’s been a real big focus for me. I just kind of do what I’m pretty comfortable with, but I know that I could do it much better. These days, sales letters are very important. I don’t want to get caught up in hype and manipulating people at all. I want it to be clear, specific so that people do say “That’s something I want to participate in.” So I just purchased a course on that. So the courses I purchase are very specific to the kind of business that I’m in. I could be pulled into other areas of just general interest. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of time to do that, so the time that I do invest, of course, are things that do relate to the business I already have.

Jeff: Talk a little bit about your Udemy course. I know you’re big into masterminds, you enjoy being in them. We’re in one together, which has been a great experience. Talk about that course. Even how you created it, and the process of being on Udemy.

Dan: One of the things that I’ve been asked many, many times is about a mastermind group. Part of that—well, a lot of that is because I’ve always been involved in mastermind groups. Greg Mason, [inaudible 39:15], Benjamin Franklin. People like CS Lewis had inklings, studied those for years, and years and then Napoleon Hill of Think and Grow Rich talked about the mastermind concept. I’ve always sought out and been a part of mastermind groups. Dave Ramsey and I started a mastermind group about eighteen years ago. And he and I mention it periodically and I’ve had a whole lot of people say “Can I get in there?” Well, no you can’t, because you can’t have an open ended mastermind. That defies the definition of a mastermind. But my encouragement always was “Why don’t you just start your own?” and then people literally would say “How do I do that?”

So I wrote a little ebook, about sixty pages long, How to Create Your Own Mastermind. Titled it initially 1+1=3, because there’s that kind of synergistic power in connecting with like minds. Well that little ebook, it sold for seventeen dollars, really went nuts. We sold thousands of that. And I thought, “You know what? That has that much unique value. I bet I could up the ante a little bit.” We pulled that back in, it’s no longer available as a seventeen dollar ebook. I spent one afternoon doing videos. We took the text, the PDF that I already had, enhanced it a little bit with a combination of eight short videos—the total of the videos is a little less than sixty minutes—eight short videos and a PDF. We created an online course that’s no available on Udemy for forty-eight dollars. And that continues to sell day after day after day.

It’s something that was an experiment for me. I had somebody encourage me to do it. We’re using their infrastructure, doesn’t require bandwidth on our servers or anything. It’s very easy to plug it in. a very great economic revenue sharing model with Udemy. So I love them and I’ll certainly be doing more for them with those kind of things.

Jeff: What are some tips for somebody that wants to create an online course? You’ve created a lot of digital training products, a lot of courses, you’ve written a lot of books and blogs and—but what are some easy steps or tips for somebody who wants to create their first online course?

Dan: Fortunately, there’s some really good tutorials, whether it’s Udemy or Linda or whatever it is out there, wherever you’re gonna put it. They all have really good tutorials on helping you to understand how to engage with people. The videos have to be engaging, they have to be energetic, upbeat. There’s some things we see out there where it’s somebody—and I was linked to an online course recently with the company that wants my content in their panel of offer. They’d like me to do a course. It was the most boring thing I’ve done.

It was—they had a single video camera and there was a professor at the front of the room he talks. For thirty-five minutes. There were no graphics, no charts, no bullet points, no fallouts—nothing. It was just a camera on him talking the whole time. You gotta be kidding me. They thing this is online training? That doesn’t engage people.

You know much better than I, in this world of video, how you have to make it interesting you don’t have to over produce. My things are pretty simple. It’s just videos that are kind of informal as I am. It may be just me walking around the property here, sitting in my chair in my office. So they aren’t over produced, necessarily, but they’re warm and engaging and real. You have to connect with people. You have to be enthusiastic. Those are the kind of things people are gonna respond to. It can’t just be raw content.

We’re in the process of just releasing another book. But we’re working with a publisher because our desire is that when somebody picks that up, there’s an aesthetic feel to it. We want the cover to be embossed. We want the pages to be wider than a normal book so it’d lay flat open, we want it to be ivory paper with brown ink on the—so it has an artistic feel. We very much have a clear sense of what we want this book to feel like. It’s not just a matter of sharing content with words on a page.

So the same thing is true with online courses. If you’re just sharing content—you know, just put a PDF out there—that’s not enough. With an online course, you oughta be engaging with humor, entertainment, things that keep people’s interest if you’re going to be successful at it.

Jeff: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I see so many courses, even online tutorials on YouTube, that are just so boring to watch. And so, you know, it’s really important for the person, for the trainer, for the person it’s teaching the material that they first of all have a plan, they’re short and succinct, and that they’re interesting. So that could be using humor, that could be using your personality, and you know what, it could be as simple as smiling when you’re on camera, behind the microphone, or creating your produce. And so I’m really glad that you brought that up. The training material doesn’t have to be boring, it shouldn’t be boring, because then the user, the student probably won’t listen, watch, or remember the content.

We as students or we as consumers, we all want engaging material. We want to be challenged, we want to think things through. We don’t want it to be boring. But yet, when we do our own courses, a lot of times, we’re boring. We don’t smile, we’re not engaging, we don’t show support materials. There’s a lot of things we can do as the instructor to help that material not be boring or to be more engaging. And so, to the listener, don’t forget that you’re not just delivering content. In a way, you’re selling yourself because you are the industry leader, you want to make sure you—of course you want to come off as credible, but you want to come across as something you enjoy. You enjoy teaching this, you enjoy this content, and you’re not afraid to have a little fun or be a little light hearted. You don’t always have to be so serious.

That’s one of the things that I do with my company. So whenever we’re consulting or working with a client, especially in the corporate world—because sometimes the corporate world can be a little stuffy or they feel that they have to be too professional. And a lot of times, I say “You know what, just relax. Have a smile on your face. Tell some fun or humorous stories, and let’s try to make this enjoyable.” It doesn’t have to be so serious because, again, the student probably won’t remember it if it is too serious.

Last question here, Dan, where do you think online courses and online training is going in the future? What are some things that you’ve seen or what excites you about online training?

Dan: It’s so accessible. It’s just an exciting time. It used to be that where you live had a lot to do with what you were going to do. Then as we went a little farther in history, it was “Do you have enough money access to go to a university where they have all those books [inaudible 46:38] that don’t have access to [inaudible 46:40]?” Today it’s different. You can be in the ghetto, in Nairobi, Kenya—and those people have cellphones, trust me. With a cellphone, you have access to all the information in the world. With that it opens—it levels the playing field. So it doesn’t matter what your socioeconomic status is. People are [inaudible 47:04-:07] in the entire universe.

With that, I think it’s pretty exciting. Because that means that you’re really unlimited. If you get clear on what it is you want to accomplish, there’s so many things out there that [inaudible 47:20-:22] as well, there’s not much excuse. Now, we’re gonna have people that are content with mediocrity. Oh my gosh, there’s people that are just locked into the sameness, that there’s a real attraction to the status quo. They don’t want to rock the boat, they don’t want to change, but they focus on things over which they have very little or no control, so they’re gonna be whining and complaining about the Supreme Court decision about this, that, and the other thing, politically and the wrong people in the Whitehouse, and their life never really accomplishes anything.

Proactive people—and Steven Covey talked about it—proactive people focus on what it is they have control over. You could take immediate control over your health, the welfare of your children, your career, what you read, what you listen to, what affects you, what your opportunities are—those are things you can take immediate control over. No matter who you are or where you are on the face of the earth, to me that’s extremely exciting. It levels the playing field. No longer just the ones who have a great advantage who get to move up, not at all. You can start with nothing today and six months from now be a player [inaudible 48:33].

Jeff: Yeah, that’s so good. And that’s one of the things that excites me as well, is just that levels the playing field, accessible to everybody, and—even that it’s time shifted. We no longer have to file into the classroom and take attendance and everybody’s in one room. No, it’s when it’s convenient for us, wherever it is across the world.

Dan: That’s right.

Jeff: Well, Dan, I appreciate it so much. I appreciate your wisdom, your insights, and your creativity on creative work that you love, but also these digital courses and digital products that you’ve created. So thanks for being on the show and giving us your insights.

Dan: Oh, my pleasure, Jeff. As you can tell, I love talking about this. Delighted at what you’re doing and that you head this area. It’s been a blast, so it’s been a pleasure being with you.

Jeff: Well, there you go. I had a blast talking with Dan. We talked before and after the show, obviously during the show, and it was great. I’ll definitely have to have him back because he has a wealth of information and what able to give a lot of good tips and insights on his own courses as well as what he looks for in other courses.

One of the main things I pulled out what, you know, he said to keep one core message the same, but have different applications that have change. So maybe you have a theme that you teach. You could create courses, of course, a podcast around the same topic, books, ebooks, blogs. I mean, there’s so many different ways—YouTube videos—so many different ways that you can teach a similar message in different terms. And that actually helps with your marketing. And so, think beyond your course, what are some ways you can get the word out about your online course? Maybe it’s being on other podcasts, maybe it’s starting your own podcast, or some of the other things we talked about in the episode.

So that was one thing that I really learned, one of the many things, but I hope you learned a lot and as much as I did.

So if you have no heard Dan’s podcast, definitely check it out. Go to his company or his website, 48days.com—the number 4-8—dot-com. You can get his podcast there. You could also search iTunes and Stitcher for Dan Miller or the 48 Days to the Work You Love podcast. It is fantastic.

And also, don’t forget that free audio, that bonus audio, where Dan talks about his marketing strategies to sell courses, materials, products, digital course, etcetera. It’s really cool. He offers some really good insights, and you can get that at onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller. And that’s just the show notes page where I give some information there for you to download it for free.

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe and rate and review the podcast. Again, that really helps get this show and this podcast to have more visibility. And you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/reviews. It will actually take you right to the iTunes page where you can rate and review and subscribe there. Or if you use Stitcher, definitely do the same on Stitcher. Just onlinecoursecoach.com/stitcher to go right to that account.

So thanks again for listening to the show. This was a great one. I just loved having Dan on, I respect him so much. He’s a good friend and I know he would give a lot of great content. So let me know what you’re thinking. How did this help you? Shoot me an email, a Tweet, or just go to the website onlinecoursecoach.com and send me a message on how you will use some of the tactics and strategies that Dan Miller talked about.

So until then, keep learning, keep growing, and keep teaching more people through your courses.

Jul 29, 2015

image of Joshua Millage of WordPress plugin Lifter LMS It's not easy to try to revolutionize eLearning and online training, but that's just what Joshua Millage of Lifter LMS is trying to do. Joshua and I have a lot in common, which we talk about in the podcast. He has a passion to help teach more effectively, which is refreshing, since many people in the online course creation industry seem to be only trying to make money. But, if we truly seek to teach effectively, then our courses will be more effective and in turn we'll make more money. It goes back to the Zig Ziglar quote, "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want." [Tweet "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar"] There are a LOT of Learning Management System (LMS) options out there but just only a few options that integrate with WordPress. The Lifter LMS plugin for WordPress is one of the few that works easily to set up and create your first course and they are constantly adding more features. I learned about this LMS plugin for WordPress and paid for it, even while it was still in development...that's how much I believe in it. And while talking with Joshua on the podcast, I know that this WordPress LMS plugin will do great things for those that are wanting to create online courses, eLearning material or training content. It has robust features, yet is easy to manage, even for someone with limited website creation experience.

Notes from the podcast:

  • His parents are teachers (just like mine)
  • His Dad's favorite quote is great
  • He sees a problem with online courses and the teachers who create them
  • He has a good understanding of the WordPress LMS industry and has good things to say about his competitors
  • Why he came up with Lifter LMS
  • Why Lifter LMS is better
  • What industries can Lifter be used in
  • Joshua's tips for making elearning course
  • Where are they going with Lifter LMS in the future
  • "Pull the trigger, ride the bullet"

Find Joshua Here: LifterLMS.com

 

Jul 21, 2015

image of Jules Watkins on creating online courses Jules Watkins (of InfoVideoHero, iPhoneVideoHero, ScreenflowVideoHero and more!) went from producing and directing MTV shows like The Biggest Loser and Pimp My Ride. And while he got to travel all over the world and meet interesting people, he didn't like his lack of control over his own schedule and income. In this podcast episode, we talk about the struggle of his "normal job" working in the television industry and how we uses his innovative and entertaining strategies to teach people how to make online courses. I like that he strives to make his online courses unique, engaging and humorous. We've all seen courses that are too dry and boring to continue, but Jules' courses are just the opposite. Jules started by creating courses around topics that he was already knowledgeable about. He then got feedback from his audience and create additional courses, which is where InfoVideoHero came from. One of the things that separates this course from others that teach you how to create an online course is that it has a live teaching component to it. You get personal access to him and his wealth of knowledge.

Jules Watkins', the Info Video Hero, Bio

Jules Watkins is a former MTV and BBC TV Producer and Director who has directed global hit shows such as The Biggest Loser and Pimp My Ride. After quitting TV four years ago, Jules has worked 100% online as an Infopreneur, coaching business owners, experts and Marketers how to leverage the power of Online Video Marketing and to how to monetise their knowledge by creating their own online courses using Video.

 Questions from the interview

  1. Tell me a little bit of your background and how you discovered creating training products.
  2. Why did you move out of the TV production work?
  3. How have you been able to transfer your tv background into your courses and training material?
  4. Why are creating online courses a good idea?
  5. Tell me about the courses you’ve created?
  6. What are some marketing techniques you've used successfully?
  7. How can someone beat a competitor's course about the same topic?
  8. Since people are bombarded with emails trying to offer a course or product to buy, how do you stand out or build trust that you have a quality course for them?
  9. How does someone grow their audience?
  10. What are your views of joint ventures?
  11. Why did you create Info Video Hero?

Find Jules' Course Here: OnlineCourseCoach.com/infovideohero

Jul 16, 2015

image of Marc Grabanski of FrontEndMasters.com Most people that are creating online courses these days follow a similar format. They create video, audio and text based content and sell it. However, Marc Grabanski of FrontEndMasters.com is doing something unique...and a little crazy. In this episode Marc talks about where he got started and how he's able to create video courses from workshops that are done live with audience members in the studio as well as having people online watching the live stream. This is no easy task and Marc shares his struggles and successes in this process. My company has extensive video experience so I was naturally interested in how he pulls of recording the teacher as well as their computer which shows slides and real-time examples of the code they are creating. Marc's setup is pretty impressive and while it's been a process to get to the point he's at, it was inspiring to hear that he didn't give up.

Notes from the interview

  • His background is in services, open source, user interface development
  • He spoke at a lot of conferences
  • He uses his blog to teach
  • Marc got started running conferences at Google headquarters and other places
  • After that he started doing workshops so they were smaller and more intimate and the students could learn better
  • The workshops were recorded screencasts with just himself in the room but he want an audience
  • After a while, people wanted to watch live online with live-streaming
  • Marc record the teacher with a video camera as well as their slides and computer screen
  • He plans for things to go wrong and has backups in place

Find Marc Here: FrontEndMasters.com

 

Jul 9, 2015

In July, 2015, Moodle launched Moodle Cloud, which allows you to deploy a Moodle LMS for free without installation or hosting fees. This is great news for people that want to dive into eLearning but don't have a large budget or student base. It lets you dip your toes into creating online courses without a large time or money investment.

Reasons why Moodle created Moodle Cloud:

  • Not everyone is tech savvy and wants and easy way to create an LMS
  • While many pieces of Moodle are easy, installing software on a server, managing it, upgrades and maintenance aren't for everyone
  • This is geared towards small schools, companies or entrepreneurs that have small courses with a small audience with no budget
  • They update the software for you to the latest version which allows all the safety security patches, features and flexibility available
  • It’s responsive out of the box
  • It includes a free version of BigBlueButton their solution for full online conferencing, including video, audio, whiteboards and desktop sharing.

What Moodle Cloud Includes:

  • 50 users maximum
  • 200Mb disk space
  • But, you can host your large files with Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud or others
  • You can host your videos with Youtube and it will automatically embed
  • Core themes and plugins only
  • One site per phone number
  • In MoodleCloud the free BigBlueButton sessions are limited to 6 people, with no recordings, but we hope you’ll find this perfect for small classes and even study groups. You can add a conferencing session to your course just like any other class activity.
  • There are ads in the footer

Sign up for Moodle Cloud

moodle.com/cloud

Jun 22, 2015

Don McAllister - A pioneer in teaching Apple Users I've been following Don McAllister for many years. He's been on several of my favorite podcasts and he's been a pioneer in the Apple community with his online tutorial (aka, Screencasts). He was one of the first people that I learned was doing online training through his screencasts. In the interview Don shares how hard it was to get started "back in the day" and how easy it is today to get up and running.

 Download The Bonus Audio: "Don McAllister's Top Productivity Tools" Click Here to Download

Podcast Notes:

  • Don found something he was interested in and started
  • He found a need and filled it
  • He needs to be disciplined in his business to create balance
  • He is good at learning the software’s key benefits and dispels them into videos that teach a beginner through pro
  • It’s hard to get your voice heard for beginners. The key is to build an audience

 

Download The Bonus Audio: "Don McAllister's Top Productivity Tools" Click Here to Download

Find Don Here: ScreenCastsOnline.com

Have a question for the podcast?

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Transcription:

Jeff Long: It's my goal in these interviews to bring you different people doing different things. We may talk to somebody in the university level that's doing e-learning in some capacity. We may talk to somebody that's doing some innovative online courses for artists. Then we have somebody like Don that's doing some really cool screencast type videos as well as he's taking this a step beyond that. We'll talk about his online university, his online magazine. So there's ways to once you create that content to use it in different places or to serve people in different ways beyond just maybe an online course or a screencast. Keep coming back. I want to make sure that you don't think that we're only going to be targeting a certain type of online course, but we're going to learn from the gamut because I think there are ways we can learn from every different type of person that's doing online courses and e-learning and screencasting. That's why I wanted to bring Don on the show here today. I know you'll learn a lot from him and I can't wait to hear what you learned from this interview. I want to alert you to something that I'll give you more information at the end of this podcast. But just a little teaser here. I asked Don something that I think you'll find really interesting. He has a big business. He does a lot of things, a lot of moving parts. I asked him what are some of the productivity tools that you use to run your business. I know you'll love his answers and you'll love his apps and his suggestions and actually put that in an extended audio version that you can download for free on the site. Go to onlinecoursecoach.com/Don to download that for free, and you can learn what productivity tools Don uses and I know you're going to find a lot of value in that. Go to the website, check it out. Again, I talk about it later in the podcast towards the end, but I wanted to make sure you got that information so you can get that bonus free audio. I could talk on and on about this interview, but let's just get into this interview with Don McAllister. All right, I'm here with Don McAllister of Screen Casts Online. Don, thanks so much for being on the show here. Don McAllister: Oh thanks for the invite Jeff. No really, I appreciate it. Jeff Long: Like I said off air I've been listening to you for many years, and I know that you actually got started around 2005, 2006 doing these online tutorials, screencasts. You were one of the first ones. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to the point of starting there in 2005. Don McAllister: Yeah, sure. Well to most people surprise it was actually 2005 that I first discovered the Mac, because before then I was actually a PC guy. I was working in corporate IT for many years and I'd lost my mojo. I used to really enjoy playing with computers. I've never really been exposed to Apple Macs before because in the UK where I'm based to be honest the penetration around that time and earlier was very limited. It was literally just high end design studios which have access to Apple gear. In the olden days I was a Windows guy, but I just lost interest in Windows. Then I stumbled across Steve Job's keynote. It must have been Macworld keynote in 2005. It was during that keynote I mean I had no idea what Apple was all about, no idea about what software they ran. In that particular keynote they covered iPhoto, iPhoto books, they covered some of the software. Then at the end of the keynote they actually introduced the Mac mini. As I went through the hour long presentation I was getting more and more interested in the things they're talking about. Then the Mac mini was launched and it seemed very affordable. I already had my keyboard, I had my monitor, so it seemed a fairly low risk investment to give it a try. It took a couple of months before they came to the UK. But when actually got the Mac mini I was hooked within a couple of days, actually started using the Apple. In the course of a couple of weeks I became an evangelist and I thought it was really, really good. It brought back the enjoyment of playing with computers and exploring and learning new stuff with computers. The genesis of how I started to do the Screen Casts was basically I wanted to show some of my relatives who also were thinking about getting the Mac, and one of them actually did. I wanted to show her how to do some of the basics. I created a few mini videos for them. That was the start. Round about 2005 as well podcasts had really just come onto the scene. I was quite interested in podcasts. I would start to follow a couple of podcasts and I quite fancied the idea of doing a podcast. My initial thought was to do like a Mac newbie type podcast, but when push came to shove I sat down, I got the domain name sorted out, I understood how RSS worked and everything, but when it came to press the button and start recording I just had nothing to ... It was weird. That was just going to be like an audio podcast. I shelved that. Then the realization that, "Well, hang on," once I've done those couple of videos I could actually ... It's digital media. I could distribute these videos as a podcast. That was the start of it really. I started just to push out a couple of screencasts as a weekly podcast and it snowballed from there. Jeff Long: Man, that's great. It reminds me how I got started with some teaching online stuff. Very similar to you I saw a need and there weren't really any training videos on this topic. I'm like, "Man, if I'm struggling with this I'm sure people who don't have as much experience or knowledge are just floundering without it." I think that's great. It's that finding a need. Don McAllister: Yeah, and also the technology. I mean I always enjoyed the technology. I've done a little bit of video production just on a hobby basis. But this was something new. This was doing the screen captures and using the iMovie at the time I think it was before I upgraded to Final Cut Pro and just learning how to put it together. Of course it's a whole ... Doing the screencast is something quite different because you're describing what you're seeing on screen, you are actually demonstrating stuff and talking at the same time. It can take a little bit of an act to get into it, but I really enjoyed it. The problem was in the early days. It took up so much time like a whole weekend to produce like a 15 minute 20 minute screencast because people sometimes don't appreciate just how much work goes into actually generating one of these online video tutorials. Jeff Long: Sure. Yeah, I know. I can attest to that. I think you brought up another good point of you wanted to start something, whether it's audio podcast, video podcast. You bought the domain name, you sat down to record that audio podcast. It sounds like you just, the excitement wasn't there, the passion, something wasn't there. Explain that. Why did you go away from that? It just feels like you weren't hitting the nail in the head? Don McAllister: Yeah, I think I just wasn't ... I'd focus too much on the technology and the backroom stuff without giving a lot of consideration as to what the content would be. When it came down to actually giving the content it wasn't quite there, so I had to in effect go back to the drawing board but I'd lost enthusiasm by that point. Jeff Long: I've done the exact same thing. To the listener, focus on the one thing you absolutely have to do. If you're like most of us, we have all these ideas and we want to start them all and we see people like Don who've had some great success, but if you're not passionate about it, or good at it, or interested in it it doesn't much how much money you eventually make. You're going to be miserable. Don McAllister: Oh yeah, yeah. No, it's got to ... It is, and especially in the early days a labor of love, because that initially it was a free podcast. All these hours I was putting in I was quite happy to just give away the content, and knowing that people were enjoying it and people were benefiting from it because I was getting feedback from people saying, "Hey, this is great," et cetera, et cetera. Jeff Long: So where are you right now? I know you create. Is it two episodes a week or is it more? Don McAllister: Yeah, no it's two episodes a week. I do. I started about probably 18 months, two years ago. I split it from just a single show each week to a separate Mac and iOS show. Although I say separate they are very much as time goes on becoming more and more intertwined. But I do 30, normally around about 30 minute Mac show and 15, 20 minutes iOS show each week. That goes out same time, normally on a Friday. Very occasionally I push it back to the Saturday but I try to keep it as regular as possible on the same day same time release. Jeff Long: Now since you create regular content each week, how do you brainstorm for topics? How do you find what's a legitimate video you want to do versus when you just through away or put on the shelf? Don McAllister: Yeah, the problem I have is that to do like half an hour's worth of content it needs to be something that you can delve into at a certain level. It has to be something that I'm particularly enamored with or something I enjoy using, and also something that I think by sharing it other people will get benefit from it. Now sometimes it's a struggle, sometimes I've got more stuff coming at me than I want to do with, so it's very fluctuary. I mean the last couple of months I'm pretty much restricted to doing the new versions of the operating system. We've had OS 10 Yosemite came out so that's a big piece of work. IOS 8 has come out as well. So probably the last two months have been really focused on those two updates. But then there's plenty, there's plenty of new Mac apps coming out. There's different types of topics as well that people like me to cover. I do take requests and suggestions from the audience as well. They get some input. But I don't plan too far ahead. It's very much two or three weeks maximum, unless I'm actually got an extended period of travel or something when I have to prepare lots of stuff in advance. But I try and keep it fairly contemporary, fairly up-to-date so that I can be very flexible so that if something comes out that I think is worthy of an immediate attention I can do that this week or next week. Jeff Long: What are some lessons you've learned along the way. I know that's such a broad topic or a broad question because so many directions you can go, but what are some key lessons you've learned about yourself, the process, or even your audience throughout these years? Don McAllister: I think one of the big things people always ask, because I work for myself, I work from home, I have my own setup, is to be disciplined really. Because I still although you could quite easily be very flexible about the hours that you work, I tend to have a very strict regime of a proper workday, a proper workspace. I do break that real occasionally by taking my laptop and watching the TV instead of working and stuff like that. I'm sure everyone does that. But just set up a regular regime and get into the work mindset. But it's very flexible because I am working from home and I do control my own destiny. I have more flexibility than I would have in a normal nine to five job. But again, you can't let that go too far. You have to discipline yourself to make sure, especially when you work into such a strict schedule of regular content each week, you have to be fairly disciplined and hit certain milestones throughout the week to make sure that the end product is available at the end of the week to the paying audience. Jeff Long: That I can definitely understand. I have some people I know that did come from the corporate environment and they're used to bosses and managers and people telling them what to do. Then they come into their own, they're their own boss or their clients are their own boss and it's hard for them. Discipline is a big deal. I'm glad you brought that up. Now I've heard some things about your screencast. Well let me back up. ScreenCasts Online is your main website. That's where you've been doing these screencasts for years and years and that's where you do these two shows. But now you have ScreenCasts Academy. What is it and why did you create ScreenCasts Academy? Don McAllister: Right. Well it's really a bit of an experiment. The issue that I have is that I'm producing all this regular content and the people who do sign up as members really enjoy it. But a membership type system or weekly content isn't for everybody. Some people just depend on [inaudible 00:12:55] which is fine. Some people religiously watch each show each week when it comes out. But some people aren't really although they may be interested in their Mac or their iPad or their iPhone they're not really that interested that they actually want to see 45 minutes worth of training material each week. The academy was really setup to see whether or not there would be some opportunities to repackage some of the training that I've already done in discreet modules, so that I mean the one that's currently on there is for the iWork suite of applications. It's a single purchase. You just buy that particular course and then you get access to that course and then there's no ongoing commitment. You've got access to that course for as long as you want. Then overtime I'm hoping to bring in some more courses like OS 10 Yosemite and the iOS 8 stuff that I've just completed, bring them into the ScreenCasts Online Academy as a separate purchasable product. It's really to target those people that don't want the ongoing commitment of a membership but would still like to have the occasional chunk of training for specific topics. Jeff Long: That's great. I love that you're trying new things, trying different things and listening to your audience because that's who you're serving as well. Don McAllister: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeff Long: You want to make them happy. Don McAllister: Yeah. The problem being though that it's a very small production. Although I do have people helping me on the post production side now, it's still, it's very much I do the bulk of the work, so it's quite difficult to keep the weekly stuff going and to experiment with other things. But it's been fun. I've been using WordPress to set up the site and a few plug ins and using Vimeo to distribute some of this, the videos. Again, I like that sort of thing. I like to try new things and to keep abreast of what's going on. Jeff Long: Don, would you consider yourself an educator, a technologist, or something completely different? Don McAllister: That's a good question actually. I don't know really. I suppose a bit of everything. I don't think I could pigeonhole myself into one particular area. But, yeah, probably more. I don't know. I do keep abreast of what's going on. I mean I do as well as the training stuff I do, guest post on various podcasts, what I pontificate or do a bit of punditry. I quite enjoy that now and again. It's a bit of everything, but the ScreenCasts Online is my main focus. I suppose really if you have to pin me down with something I suppose it would be an educator. Jeff Long: That's interesting. Maybe an "technologycator". Don McAllister: Yeah. Jeff Long: Whatever the combination of technology and educator. The reason I ask that question is because that was one of the things I was drawn to, one of the reasons I wanted to bring you in is because I do look at you as an educator. As I told you before we recorded I've been listening to you for years. I love all the Mac based podcast you've been on and it's fantastic. But like you said, the core part of who you are and who your business is is this education screencast which is great. Don McAllister: I always get some good comments from people. It always fascinates me that there is no typical audience member. I have people who are elderly, I have people who are brand new to the Mac, I have real Mac heads who've been Mac users for many more years than I have been. Yet, each one seems to be able to take what they need from the screencast. It might be someone's been using an application that I'm covering. They might have been using it for three or four years. Yet, they will still take the time to sit down and watch the screencast and they will feedback that, "Hey, I use the application all the time, but I found at least three four different things that you brought up that I hadn't appreciated," which is great. That's the sort of thing I'm trying to do. I'm trying to ... Because they're only short. They're only short screencasts. They're not like lynda.com or something where you have like six hour tutorials on the pro apps. These are half hour tightly produced really. I don't really waffle too much. At least I don't think so. I do sit down and work out the structure of what I want to cover. It might run on for two or three episodes if it's particularly complex application, but I just want to pull out the nuggets of interest that people might have to give them a base level of knowledge and also a level of confidence so they can go ahead and explore the application further. But invariably these little snippets or these little gold nuggets pop out and people latch onto them and appreciate that. Jeff Long: I think that's definitely a skill to quickly consume how a product or a software works and then dispel it into language that people can understand and get value from. Don McAllister: Yeah. Very much so because that's one of ... People often ask, "You know what, how do you know all this software to the level that you seem to know it?" The truth is I don't really until I actually sit down and start working at how I'm actually going to cover that week's topic. At which point I probably go into it in more depth than someone would normally do. But that's the benefit. I do some of the heavy lifting and then people that watch the screencast can get the benefits of that. But I am able to go in and within half a day pull apart an app and understand how it works and then formulate in my head how I would put some of these topics across to people. Jeff Long: What advice would you give to somebody who just wants to maybe start out creating a course or ... ? Not that they want to copy you, but you're doing a good job. You're one of the industry leaders. There is such a growing market. What advice would you say to somebody that's thinking about this, or maybe they already have a course and they want to up their game? Don McAllister: It's really difficult. I mean when I started the landscape was quite different now in that there weren't that many sources of tutorials that you could get on the internet. Whereas now you've only got to go to YouTube and you'll see tons and tons and tons of stuff. There's lots of vendors now who have set up shop and selling courses at such and such. I think the difficult thing for people now is to get their voice heard, is to really just make themselves visible to people. I don't particularly know what the answer is, but I think that's the major problem for people these days. Obviously you've got your social media and stuff like that, but it's really hard to get the word out basically. Jeff Long: It kind of boils down to what Michael Hyatt talks about in his book "Platform". The tagline of his book is how to get noticed in a noisy world. It is about building your platform, whether it's through social media or blogging or whatever that system is that's the key. Whenever I talk to beginners that are wanting to create courses and teach people and help people, that's one of the key things we talk about, is the marketing and what's your platform. Because it's easy to look at you and be like, "Wow, Don's doing a fantastic job. I want to be just like him." Well you know how much hard work ... Don McAllister: Oh yeah. It's taken eight years to build it up to where it is. In the early days I couldn't survive with just the membership system. I had to do other things as well. That's probably another thing that I learned early on is trying to do multiple things at the same time. I did some sponsorship arrangements with vendors of popular applications. Now people didn't know me but they knew the app and then I did the tutorial for that app, and it was on their website and people started to get to know me that way. I do not so much for my show but I might actually do a commission screencast for a software vendor, and again, they would put that on their site and that would bring people back to me. It's a bit of a long haul to be honest. I mean certainly don't expect overnight success on this sort of thing. You need to, and again, I think if you're looking at selling your content online you need to have or you need to demonstrate integrity and reliability and consistency. You always got to produce good stuff, but it's always got to be there where people expect it. It is a hard slog but overtime if your stuff is good enough you get there. Jeff Long: It's like everything else in life that you do, the things that are worthwhile take time and you got to build, take some momentum. Was just talking with somebody today and we are saying that those overnight successes we love to idolize, well they're rarely overnight successes. They just like decided to look at you and be like, "Oh, that Don McAllister, he's an overnight success." You would look at him and say, "No, absolutely not. It's been a long, long road." Don McAllister: Yeah. It's hard work as well. I mean I used to work in corporate IT. I did my dues, I worked hard there. But when I left the work level shut up. But it's a different sort of work. It's more enjoyable. You're doing it for yourself, you're doing work that you enjoy so it doesn't really feel like work. In fact in some instances you have to back off a bit because you're probably working too much. Jeff Long: I can relate to that exactly. I love what I do. It's the best. In fact it's funny. I was going through Twitter on Friday afternoon. You see people oh can't wait, TGIF, can't wait until the weekend. I'm like, "Oh man, the weekend's coming." Like, "I've so many more things I want to do." Obviously I love my family, my kids, but I love what I do. It's a blessing. It's a true blessing. Where do you see online courses going in the future? Are we at the beginning, the middle? Are we oversaturated, undersaturated? Or how do you see this landscape of online training and online courses? Don McAllister: Yeah, that's another good one. I wouldn't say we're reaching saturation but there is so much stuff out there. It takes a lot to get picked up on I think. I think one of the reasons why I think I've been so successful or been able to prolong what I've been doing is building up an audience who like the stuff that I do and like the way that I do it. So I think a lot of for a want of a better term personal branding or people with a certain way of teaching I think there's plenty of scope for more and more of those people to be in the marketplace and to find their niche and provide content for their niche. That's certainly not saturated. I think there's lots and lots of potential. The different subject areas as well. I mean my particular subject area it's always surprised me that in the eight years, I thought initially well I'd start doing this and then there'd be half a dozen other people doing the same thing and it would be a battle. Not really happened to be honest. I mean there's the big boys, there's Lynda as I mentioned before and a couple of other larger organizations, but there's no real other single shop guys doing a similar thing or that I I'm aware of anyone. I'm sure there are, but it's not in my space anyway. People have tried but they've fallen by the wayside. Jeff Long: You mentioned a couple of minutes ago that you structured some interesting deals with different vendors where you would create a screencast and they would sponsor it. Have you found that a lot of companies are receptive to that? Because I like structuring business deals creatively, and that's a creative idea. Was it hard to pitch that? Or was it a no-brainer for them? Don McAllister: It was, it was pretty much a no-brainer because of the benefits they got out of it, because in the early days, I mean to be honest I don't do it that often now, it's very rare because I've built the membership to a level whereby the membership sustains the business, so I don't have to do sponsorships or stuff like that or commission screencasts. I can focus on my main day job now. But what I found was that the hard pitch was that initially nobody knew who I was so that was quite difficult. But by doing a training video they could sponsor a training video. It'd be half an hour worth of content. They could use it on their website. That's what their top five support issues that they have. I'd work those into the screencast so that they could point people to the screencast to sort a majority of these support issues out. They could use it for marketing if they wanted to, they could use it for customers training. It's so many benefits to them that I think in most cases it really was a no-brainer for them. Jeff Long: We do a similar thing with some of our corporate clients where in essence they're hiring us as a creative agency or a media marketing company, because yeah, the benefits are there. By creating these video tutorials it is a no-brainer. But is just interesting to know who gets it. I'm sure a few of them maybe don't, who knows. But those aren't the ones you want to work with anyway. But yes. Don McAllister: That's right. The big problem initially that I found, and I still haven't gotten the answer to, is pricing as well, how to price your services or how to price your content. Very very difficult because obviously you don't want to undersell it. But again, if you get the pricing wrong it puts a lot of people off, especially with the app economy now with apps pushing prices of apps down, things like that. It gets very complex really. In the early days it was horrendous. I just didn't have a clue how to pitch it properly. Jeff Long: Don where can people find out more about you online or your websites or on social media? Don McAllister: Well the best place to go the main site is screencastsonline.com. That's where the main membership site is. There are links from there to the ScreenCasts Online Academy. If you want to go directly there that's screencastsonlineacademy.com. I also have a monthly magazine as well. I repurpose the monthly tutorials in the form of an iPad and iPhone magazine. That's at ScreenCasts Online Monthly Mag. That's in the newsstand. If you want to find me on Twitter it's @DonMcAllister. That's probably about it. Really I am only Twitter for like virtual water cooler during the day. Jeff Long: Well Don, thanks so much for being on the show here. I could've gone on a lot longer but I want to respect your time and get you out of here. But thank you so much for being on the show. Don McAllister: I enjoyed it. Thanks for the invite. Jeff Long: There you go. I knew you would love that interview. Man, I had a great time talking with him. I know that if you've got half as much out of it as I did you're going to walk away from this podcast really excited. I also have something really cool for you just as a gift, as a thank you. If you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/Don you'll be taken to the podcast page for this episode and you can download a free extended audio part where I ask Don what his favorite productivity tools are, because Don does a lot of things with his screencast and magazine and online university and all of these things. What are some tools that keep him going, that keep him productive, that keep him streamline, especially with the team that he has. He goes into depth with those tools. Go to onlinecoursecoach.com/Don to get that free audio.

Jun 22, 2015

image of podcast topic - Why you should create online courses Will you be part of the learning revolution? It's been happening for several years and will only increase! There is a growing need for creating online courses. These could range from software tutorials, corporate training, language courses or a myriad of other topics.  In this podcast, I talk about reasons of why you should be creating online courses, training materials, eLearning websites and other content to help teach and train your target audience.

For additional content and to read a related blog post, see, Why you need to be creating online courses.

Advantages of Online Courses

Transcript from the Podcast:

I want to talk about why should you be creating or even considering creating an online course. You might hear from the gurus, and I put that in quote, that everyone should consider or everyone should be making an online course. While I don't necessarily think that, I have a future episode coming out called "Why You Shouldn't Be Creating Online Courses," but why should you consider it. One thing is 45% of students are taking online courses and will become expectant of online learning. As you think about the future, students will become increasingly expectant of, hey, do you have an online course or can I take this online, or even how can I take this on my phone. Just the fact that that's becoming the norm is something you should think about. Whether you own or work at a large company, whether you're a solo entrepreneur, be thinking of how can you systematize your knowledge into a course. How can you teach something and build a course? How can you show somebody and build a course? You get the idea. That is one of the main reasons why you should consider making your own online course. What all is involved in an online training course? There's a lot of different ways you can go about it. We'll be talking about this in future weeks. What are the components to making an online course? Here are some of the options of things you can do. You can make it as easy as creating a password protected website where you release monthly content and you charge for it. That could be all that you do. People are making a good living at doing just that. If you have a business with maybe employees, it makes sense you could even teach your customers how to use your product. We've done that before. You can demonstrate a skill that you take for granted. This is one of the key things. We all take for granted the knowledge that we have. I think sometimes, man, everybody knows how to do amazing video production, or everyone knows how to build a website or create a learning management system or learning styles and how to teach. Not everybody does. That's one of the reasons for this podcast. I want to encourage you, what are some of the things that you have a skill in, that you have expertise, that you have knowledge, that you have training, that you have anything, and how could you put that in an online course? It could be as simple as how to do your email more effectively, or have to be more effective, or how to use a certain piece of software, or fix your car. I could use that one. There are a lot of different courses you could create just based on your own background, education, and expertise. Like I said, you could show how to use a piece of software. You could do a screencast of a website and walk through that. I've done that many times both for paid courses that I've released as well as just my own clients. You can create a membership system to allow different access levels of content you give people over time. You can even drip it over time. Maybe person A comes into your site and buys your course and they can access one module per week over the course of eight weeks. Then when person B comes in in two weeks, they go through that same step. They go through the first module; it takes them a week. Then once that week is elapsed they can go onto the second module. You can drip it over time. We'll go into that in depth here in an upcoming episode. Another thing you could do to create online courses is create a podcast where you tell people how to do something and create a website where you teach them in detail. That sound familiar? That's what I'm doing here. Yeah, it's for free, but that's one of the things you can do is have a podcast and release content. You could blog. Then once you get an audience, they might ask you are there specific things you can help them with. That is another way of building online courses, is finding a need and trying to fill people's needs. Because, I've found that nobody likes to sell. I don't like to sell. It's not something that most people think is fun, even honorable. But when you think about it, you shouldn't be selling. I think you should be solving people's needs. They will give you their money gladly. Be thinking of that, how you could create a course, what problems you can solve, what solutions you can give. That might tell you what kind of course you can make. Another reason why you should think about creating online courses is because they're flexible. By putting your training materials online you make it easy for students, for customer, employees, and clients to access your courses on their time. I've talked with a lot of companies over the years and this has kind of blown their mind. They think, oh man, we got to bring a trainer in, maybe friendly him in from across the country, or somebody internally. We've got to sit everybody down in our conference room. We've got to train them all. Then think, man, if everybody's in the training room, who's doing work on the floor, or who's on the sales floor, or the production floor, or whatever. If you put this online you can have a password protected learning center or you can put it internally in your portal. Then students can access it over time. Students can learn when they want to. Maybe they're just available in the morning, or during work hours, or late at night. You're not going to be wanting to teach people at midnight but they can login and access that content whenever they want. Students can learn where they want to. This is a cool thing, and this is one of the things when I do some coaching and consulting with companies or entrepreneurs, is you can really expand your reach. Right now I'm working with a medical training company. They were based locally but they want to expand nationwide. We're able to put their courses that are in-person courses, we're able to put those online, creating this massive e-learning system. They can sell that online. We've talked with other training companies that are the same way. They have boring PowerPoint slides and boring training, and we're able to help them put it online, use video, use a lot of multimedia. That way, students can learn wherever they want to. By having your training online you open the door to teaching and serving more people. You can get more students and you can make money wherever you are and wherever they are. That opens the door to selling your course not just nationwide here in the United States, but worldwide. We'll talk about that in a future episode and what that means. That is truly exploding. I just saw a stat the other day that said for the first time YouTube views are I think more on mobile devices than on computers. You also, if you look at the stats on worldwide usage of YouTube, I believe worldwide accounts for more video views on YouTube than just the United States. If you're worldwide you're probably like duh, there's more people worldwide. Well, sometimes in the United States people think that we're the center of the universe. I've traveled overseas many times. I've been to five continents. I've been to all 50 states here. You know what? We're not the center of the universe. I'll be the first one to admit that. The world is a great place, and if you can open up your training to the world, you can help more people and you can earn more money. Thirdly, online learning is flexible, and students can learn how they want to. Some people have unique learning styles and they can't just listen in the classroom. They can't sit still or they can't effectively learn in a controlled classroom environment. By having the training online the student can learn at their own pace. They can go back and review the material as many times as they wish so they're not locked into the pace of what the teacher is going through. They can even submit questions depending on how your e-learning portal is built. They can submit questions to the teacher. There are some different ways you can do even live chats or forums or different things like that. I really think that online learning is flexible because a student can learn when they want, where they want, and how they want. I think those three things are key ingredients of why this online learning space is just exploding. I also want you to think mobile. We talked about that a little bit. 13% of students report taking class notes on their smartphone and 33% report using tablets for work, for research, for taking notes. We really need to take mobile seriously. If you've been into any classroom, whether it's high school, college, etc., you'll see that students have their laptops open, their phones, their tablets. Some are writing, sure, but this mobile thing is taking over, so don't underestimate that. We'll be talking in future episodes on mobile-based learning. How do you do that, what are some of the best strategies for that, and how do you optimize your website or your e-learning portal for that type of strategy. Here are some considerations as you create your online training. If mobile is a big deal, which it should be a consideration, don't have small text, because it's so hard to read on a mobile device. If it's small on your computer screen, it's going to be tiny and maybe unreadable on a mobile device. If you have videos in your course, make sure the videos are easy to see on a small screen. If you have text on the video, make sure that's easy to see. It's easy to fall into the trap of just putting small fonts and really thin fonts on your videos or on your e-learning courses. If you're designing this with a mobile-first mentality you need to be thinking through these thoughts. Some other things with thinking mobile-first is you need to construct your courses so they're easy to take in bite-size chunks. I'll be talking with Kevin Gerrior in a future episode. He is a master at thinking mobile training. Some people call it m-learning, m-training, mobile training. Whatever terminology you want to assign to it, you need to be thinking as far as the learning environment, the learning experience for your student, and how that will happen online. Construct your courses so they're easy to take in bite-size chunks. Make sure your website, if that's where the e-learning course is, is responsive, which means your site automatically adapts to mobile, phones, tablets, or computer screens. I keep saying we'll be talking about this in future episode because this is one of the early episodes and we have a lot to cover. We'll be talking about responsive websites, what they mean, why they're important, and even how to utilize them in your online training. Lastly, with this whole mobile thought, don't underestimate the importance and growth of the mobile and tablet market. It's really booming. It's really exploding, so don't sweep that under the rug. Another reason why you should be creating online courses is if you have experience, if you have knowledge, it's a great way to teach the next generation. You might think, man, I've been doing this for decades. What if you could teach somebody in college or somebody just starting their career? Imagine the hassles you could save them, headaches you could save. They could go further and faster with the knowledge you give them. You can probably charge a premium for that. That's the great thing. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm not just an educator. Yes, I love education, I love technology, I love video and web and e-learning, but I'm also an entrepreneur. I like feeding my family. I like that whole aspect. I like the creativity of being an entrepreneur and how to craft an expertise and a story together in an online course. Be thinking of that. In future episodes we'll talk about that, but be thinking what do you have that's valuable, what experience you have, what knowledge do you have, and how could that translate into an online course. What thoughts do you have? What questions do you have? What are you struggling with and what do you want to learn? Because I have a whole list of topics we'll be covering, guests we'll be bringing on the show. But what burning topics do you have? What are you struggling with and how can we progress, how can we learn, how can we grow together in this journey? Shoot me an email at jeff@onlinecoursecoach.com and let me know how I can help. Let me know what problems you're having. Even let me know what you think of the show, how we can make it better as we move forward. Thanks for listening to the Online Course Coach Podcast.

Jun 22, 2015

Podcast-Episode-Artwork-000 Welcome to The Online Course Coach Podcast. In this initial podcast, I want to give some background on who I am, why the podcast exists and where we're going. I believe that technology and the web have opened doors for us to teach and train like never before.

What is The Online Course Coach Podcast?

This podcast will be a resource for people to learn more about why they should consider creating online courses, eLearning portals and even membership sites. I'll be interviewing people that are doing innovative things in this space. My goal is that we can learn from other industry leaders to see why they create their course, some tips and tricks they've learned as well as what issues they've had to overcome. I'll also share my tips on creating a successful online course.

Who is Jeff Long?

  • He's the host of this podcast
  • A proud father and husband
  • Son of parents that have been lifelong teachers
  • A teacher at heart who loves entrepreneurship, media and using technology to improve learning
  • Has been to 50 States and 4 continents (look out Australia and Antarctica...I'm coming for you!

Podcast Transcription:

In this podcast, I'll be talking about what this podcast is all about and what's in it for you.

Intro Voiceover: Welcome to the Online Course Coach Podcast, brought to you by Truefocusmedia.com. Whether you're beginner or expert, this is the podcast for the latest in online course creation tips, news, interviews and ideas. Here's your coach, Jeff Long.

Welcome to the show. My name is Jeff Long, and I'm so excited to be starting this podcast. In this first episode, I want to talk a little bit about what this podcast is about, what's the purpose, why am I starting it, and really what do you gain from it, because that's what I want to do. I want to give you great content, I want to help you along your journey as you're learning about creating your may be your first online course or may be making your existing online courses better, or if you're in a company, how to utilize online courses, eLearning portals or anything like that. That's really the purpose of this podcast.

Here are couple things we'll be talking about in the future and upcoming podcast is, we'll be doing interviews, and this is really why one of the reasons why I'm excited about this podcast. Because I'm an inquisitive person, I also like to be motivated and I like to learn from other people, and I'm assuming you do as well. I'll be finding just top people, kind of at the top of their game doing innovative things with eLearning, online training, online course creation, etc., and this will range from people doing this online only to large companies doing this, to blended learning, even some universities.

I have 50 or 60 people already in the queue that I'm going to be bringing to you, but if you have people that you have found, that you know, or that you see online or in person, send them my way. Let me know how they can provide value through this podcast, because I'm looking to have conversations with industry leaders just to see what they're doing and how they're doing it and to pass that along with you.

I'll be talking about some hot topics, what's going on in the industry, because the whole industry whether you call it online course creation or eLearning or online training or whatever, it's a pretty robust sector and it's only growing bigger. As I'm recording these podcasts and getting all the prep work together, I'm just seeing this whole, I don't know, a sphere exploding. We're going to have to find may be a common term because there are so many different terms, whether it's eLearning, online courses, you have LMSs, you have CMSs, you have all these different things, a SCORM. We'll be talking about all of this and how it applies to online courses.

I'll also be giving you some tips, some tricks, and some things that I've found in my own business. As I work with clients and projects and online courses, I have learned a lot and I'll be passing those on to you.

Then, lastly I might even get into some tutorials, giving you some step-by-step walkthroughs of how to take your online courses to the next level. Every podcast will be slightly different. Some might be mainly interview driven, some might be just myself talking about different hot topics or tips or giving you tutorials. That's a little bit of what to expect from the direction of the podcast.

Let me talk about myself for a little bit if I may, just to give my background so you know who I am, where I'm coming from, and my experience. My parents are both lifelong teachers and educators. They worked in the ... They've both been teachers, educators their entire life, and it's been some I've respected my whole life, but I can remember growing up.

When I was kid in a school, I'll be honest, I didn't really like being in school. I'll be sitting there, learning, or more often than not, goofing around thinking, man, my parents, they must be a little crazy because they're teachers, so they're in school while school is in session and then they come home and they're grading papers. They're thinking about classes and they're prepping for classes and they're always thinking about teaching. They never get a break.

Unfortunately, teachers aren't the best paid profession here in the United States, and I think that should change but that's just a reality. As I'm growing up, I'm thinking why would anyone be a teacher. You know like that seems kind of like a bum deal, but the older I got I found myself just naturally teaching and training and that led into my career. It started in college. I took a lot of classes on teaching, on public speaking, on building curriculum, and so that background has helped me tremendously. I'll share that more in the future, but that's kind of my education.

Once I graduated and got my degree, I actually had a job where I did some corporate training with one of the big-box stores, one of the big-box home improvement stores, so you're probably thinking, there's probably two, may be three nationwide big-box stores like that. I was able to go nationwide, also into Canada. I think I did a lot of the Canadian stores, I got to go to Hawaii, Alaska, and everywhere in the US. It was a blast.

I did corporate training. I taught everybody from the store owner or the store manager, all the way on down to the janitor. Everybody in the store I did training. I did some computer setup and some consulting, and it was amazing. I did that for several years, I loved it.

I love to travel. I love people. I love being in new places. Some people get sick of the airports and the travel, that wasn't me. I loved it, and it was fantastic. That prepared me for corporate training and just what's all involved.

Then, around that time is when I started a video production, web design and eLearning company. The backbone of that was video production. That was kind of our core service that we provided, so that was all the way back in 2003, and yeah we've worked with customers and clients including Zig Ziglar and Dan Miller and just some national companies as well as some small local companies on how to create online courses as well as courses that are internally based.

I've had a blast. I've worked nationwide, I've got into travel through that. In fact, as I record this, next week I'll be in Florida doing some video work, and I've gotten to go to Nashville quite a few times, do some video work with some awesome people, as well as some other states that I'll talk about later. That's a little bit about my background, is I love teaching and training, but I didn't think I wanted to be in a school, but yet I found myself teaching, training for our clients, and I created quite a few online courses throughout those years, even before lot of people were doing this.

Now, yeah, there's a lot of people doing this, and I want to be the hub. I want to be the resource to help you get your online courses either up or improve, and I was doing that years ago even before lot of people were doing that. We've done a lot of various eLearning projects for clients. I've created multiple online courses over the years, and so that's a little bit about me.

Now, as far as the guests, I talked about this a little bit at the beginning. I want to bring on a lot of guests, and like I said I have 50-60 plus people kind of in the queue that I want to talk to, and the reason for that is I want those to be more conversational rather than just me kind of being an instructor and leading that in instruction time. I want to talk about stories from various industries, so we'll be talking to people that are doing this for colleges and universities.

We'll be talking to people that are small business owners and entrepreneurs that had an idea, they had an expertise, they put in online course together, and they're helping a lot of people and making a decent income as well. That excites me. In fact, I'm really excited to be doing this episode. I just got off the phone with one of our corporate clients, and we're talking about how do we streamline their online training. They already have a system in place, but the system they have is clunky, it is not efficient, and so we might try to revamp their whole system, do it locally first, take it nationwide, and that really excites me because I'm a trainer at heart and I want to help people. I love helping, serving, and assisting, and that helps me do that.

A couple things I need from you. Give me your feedback. What questions do you have about this whole online learning space, these online courses, these eLearning things, that you might have heard about, learning management systems? What questions do you have and how can I help you?

Shoot me an email, jeff@truefocusmedia.com and let me know how I can help you. I'll have a different email set up here in the future, and that's where you can email me what questions you have. What are you struggling with and what are you looking to get out of this podcast?

It's my goal to have these podcast come out on a weekly basis and so that'll be my goal, but also let me know, hey, would you like more or less. Would you like every two weeks a new podcast? I'd love to hear your thoughts because I want this to be for you. Sure, I can talk all day long about this. I'm excited about it. I'm passionate about it, but what do you want to learn from this episode?

I really struggled with the name for this podcast, because I wanted it to be about this whole eLearning, online course creation thing, and then what am I? Am I a coach, a consultant, or what is this podcast? I came up with the Online Course Coach Podcast. It is my goal to help you, to coach you, to help you improve your courses and to take them to the next level.

Shoot me an email, let me know what questions you have, how I can help you, and what struggles you have. We'll go through this together on the Online Course Coach Podcast.

Jun 17, 2015

image of Cory HuffCory is serving and teaching what many would call the most challenging group of customers...artists. In this interview Cory talks about how he got started and finding out to best serve his audience. What happens when the market you want to serve and teach seems like a group that “can’t afford” you? In this podcast episode Cory Huff of The Abundant Artist shares his journey. Since he narrowed down his target market, he was able to craft training courses that helped artists, rather than focus on a wider market, and this has led to his success. Cory worked at an Internet marketing company and that helped give him the knowledge and experience of how to properly market online. He stumbled into working with artists as he blogged and answered questions that they submitted when they signed up for his email list.

Download The Bonus Audio: “Cory Huff’s Advice On How To Take Your Course To The Next Level”

Click Here to Download

Gory gave a great piece of advice: Ask your email subscribers what they are struggling with and you’ll get insights into how to better serve them and possibly create online courses based on their needs. Another reason for his success is that he interviews other artists on his podcast. This helps him connect with successful artists, pick their brain and get insights into how to better help and serve the artist community. Cory talks about how the stigma of how all artists are “staring artists”, but it’s actually not the case. While some are just getting started and are struggling, there are many artists that are very successful. This is much like any entrepreneur in that some struggle while others thrive. The key for any artist is to learn the business, marketing and sales side of their industry. He even talks about a customer of his that is deaf and took his course. She learned that she didn’t have to rely on transitional forms of selling but could market and promote online. She figured out that online marketing works for his life, selling ebooks which led to art sales and having success. This has led to her successfully growing her business. Selling art is an entrepreneurial endeavor just like starting a business While it took some time, Cory learned that having courses that are 10-15 minutes and have an assignment at the end that the student can take action. Having short segments keep the students engaged and give them a sense of accomplishment when they go through several at one sitting. And giving them homework allows the student to actually practice what they have learned. It’s easy to want a fast result and think that watching video based training alone will result in mastering the material. But, it’s key to give your students something to practice. This is why teachers for centuries have given homework to their students. It’s not just to give us busy work (although sometimes it feels like that’s what they’re doing) but to help reinforce the course content.

Here are a few of the questions that Cory Huff answered:

  • What is your background?
  • What is your view of Internet Marketing as an industry?
  • How did you get started working with artists?
  • Why is it hard for artists to sell online?
  • How do you teach artists to dispel the starving artist myth?
  • What are some struggles you see with taking the class vs engaging in the material and truly learning from it
  • What system are you using to sell and distribute your courses?
  • What are some marketing strategies that you've had to find other artists that's worked well?
  • Where can people find you and connect with you?
  • Bonus Audio - What are your strategies for ultimate success with your sales and effectiveness of your courses?

A synopsis of some of the topics Cory covered:

  • Worked at internet marketing company
  • Stumbled into working with artists by blogging
  • He interviewed other successful people in the industry and posted them on his blog
  • Artists that love art but don’t have a business background or they aren’t extroverted
  • He helped Angela Lion. She is deaf and took his course. She figured out that online marketing works for his life, selling ebooks which led to art sales and having success
  • Selling art is an entrepreneurial endeavor just like starting a business
  • Has 10-15 minutes of instruction with action at the end to help them solidify the content

Action Steps: Leave your feedback in the comments on what action steps you will be taking…and then go do it!

  • If you are starting out, what are some ways that you can start to build a following? You may want to look into blogging, podcasting, creating videos or some other way to create content and build an audience.
  • Put something in your email confirmation, auto responder or send out a quick email asking your audience what they are struggling with.
  • How can you incorporate homework, practice material into your courses? (hint, after reading this…go take action and implement it into your courses!)

Download The Bonus Audio: “Cory Huff’s Advice On How To Take Your Course To The Next Level”

Click Here to Download

Find Cory Here: theabundantartist.com

 

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