3 lessons from Seth Godin to guide your first online course

Here at Candle Digital HQ, Seth Godin is a hero to us. It’s difficult to pin down his specific area of expertise, as his words of wisdom can apply to many areas of business (and life in general).

He has perfected the knack of getting straight to the point and saying exactly what he thinks – in fact we’re sure he would fit right in with us here in Yorkshire!

So what lessons can he teach us that apply to your first online course?

Ensure the learner achieves their desired outcome

It should go without saying, but this is often forgotten. Your customers have signed up to do your course for a specific reason and your course should, no must, do that.

So how do you do this? Well first, define clear course outcomes that will explicit describe what your customer will know, or be able to do upon completion. Then design, write and develop your course to achieve these goals. But don’t stop there –  find a way to assess the impact your course has had on your students to confirm it does what it should  (and use these stories as testimonials for any prospects).

Seth often talks about the importance of keeping promises, with a very stark warning on the consequences if you fail to do so!

Make your course worth talking about

In his book ‘Purple Cow‘, Seth talks about creating something new, unique and remarkable to stand out from the crowd. Naturally this is hard to do, but he recommends thinking about the current leader in your market to help with this. If you could change just one thing about their product in order to make it more remarkable, what would that be? If you did the opposite, what impact would this have?

When to get started

There’s always plenty of reasons never to get your first online course underway (as Seth highlights here). And if you don’t want to get started, you’ll always find a reason not to. But as Seth puts it “…the best time to start was last year. The second best time to start is right now”.

We help businesses and thought leaders deliver engaging and profitable online courses. If you think we can help, simply get in touch.

Andy Jack

Andy loves helping subject experts, authors, speakers, coaches and key persons of influence to monetise their expertise with online learning. When not on his laptop, he'll usually be found up a mountain!