Show Notes
Today we are going to be talking about ego – and this might be a little bit raw, so stick with me with this one. This is your reminder that your course isn’t about you.
I hear warning signs from course creators all the time and its normally statements like ‘I want’ and ‘I think’.
Don’t get me wrong – a course should suit you and your business model. You should start building your course with strategic decisions that suit you because there is no point building a program that doesn’t fit your business model, doesn’t fit the way you want to build your business or doesn’t suit your lifestyle. Once you have made those decisions though, everything going forward should be about the learner.
There are a couple of ‘I want’ statements that are red flags and show that you need to adjust your thinking:
The biggest one I see from course creators is ‘I want this to be perfect’. This is a flag because there is no such thing as perfect because everyone’s viewpoint is different. Every student is going to have a slightly different idea on what is perfect, and it is going to be different from you and what you think. When you say you want your course to be perfect, I hear two things. One – it’s your ego saying that this has to be the best thing in the world. And two – it’s your fear showing up and saying that you’re worried about people saying that it’s not good enough. You need to step away from this thinking and instead focus on ‘This needs to be great for my students’.
Another warning sign I see is when course creators are focused on the branding and design elements of the content, slides, and PDFs without thinking about the learner and what they want/need it to look like. If your student is busy trying to absorb the ‘too much’ on a slide they are not learning the content of the slide. If you have too many words, too many images or too many colours you are taking away from the key message of the slide. What is the ONE intention of that piece of content? What is it supposed to be teaching them?
In a similar way, the same thing happens with platform design and development. It’s statements like ‘I want this button here’ and ‘I want this button to click through to this thing’ that cause concern. I understand that we all have this ideal expectation of what we want our course to look and feel like, but its important to remember that most learning platforms and plug ins are good at what they do. They have put time and money into trying and testing a variety of different methods to see what works best for the user. Remember, it’s about your student getting the best from the platform – can they find the menu, can they see what lessons are coming up? Again, this isn’t about you, this is about what works best for your students.
Action Steps:
For the next couple of weeks when you are working on your program, I want you to look out for when you say ‘I think’ or ‘I want’, because it is probably not about your student, it’s about you. When this starts to happen, it’s important to take a step back and really think about what is going to work best for your student – not what you want and not what you think, but about the best for them.
If you can do that, you are going to create a great course – not perfect, because that doesn’t exist – but it will be great, I promise you that.