So I’ve been slowly terrorizing myself with the LuLaRoe documentary this week. And it occurs to me that the online course meta-industry (the teaching of how to create and sell online courses) feels…a bit like multilevel marketing sometimes.
The online course creation industry promises “passive” income from your online course while MLMs promise “full time income for part time work.”
Both claim that it’s easy to create or sell a course / start a “business.”
Of the sea of online courses out there, I have to wonder how many are truly profitable. I know from personal experience that the overwhelming majority of MLM retailers aren’t profitable. (And a lot don’t even know it because these companies don’t teach basic business accounting in their “trainings.”)
I see in both situations a heavy emphasis on the wrong metrics:
(Most) MLMs reward salespeople for *purchasing* inventory rather than *selling* to end users.
(Many) course creators use sales as a measure of success, rather than learning outcomes.
There are a lot of “foolproof” formulas for success in both industries. Follow the scripts and blueprints and templates, and you’ll get the results you want!
(This in particular drives me bonkers. If you could teach well from a script or a lesson plan without a deep understanding of your students and your subject, everyone would do it and no one would ever quit!)
As a former teacher of young humans, I honestly find it offensive and insulting when meta-course creators claim you can make a course in 3 days.
Teaching is more than just creating content. It is anticipating the needs of your learner’s and preparing to meet them.
Group programs are more than pontificating to a room of people who paid a lot to be there. It’s even more than scaling your 1:1 process to serve 1:many. If you’re not going to bother building peer to peer interactions, just record yourself talking and sell that instead. (For a much lower price, I might add, because peer to peer learning is where the real magic happens and it’s fucking valuable.)
All. Of. This. Takes. Years. Of. Practice.
It is not something you can learn in 3 days.
Teaching is HARD WORK. You must be prepared to bring out the best in your students, which requires the best from you. Anyone who says otherwise profits from you believing it’s easy.
I have spent my entire professional life thinking about the question, “How can we teach and learn better?”
And honestly, I don’t have a neat, packageable answer for the low, low price for $997.
But I have put together a simple free worksheet that will help you plan better learning experiences. It will take you more than 3 days to get good at it. But this worksheet will help you get started.
To download, use the form below!
