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.