Okay, so welcome to the Online Course Taker’s Mantra.
And this is something that I developed back in 2015, as a way of keeping myself focused, on what I needed to think about the most when I was creating my online course. And it goes like this: give me the information I want, over as little time as possible, in a way that’s easily accessible, at an appropriate price for the value delivered.
And this is something that I imagine online course takers to be saying, thinking as they’re taking an online course, or at least considering taking an online course. So let’s go through it line by line. First up, give me the information I want. And what’s this all about? Well, as a subject matter expert, there’s a very good chance that you will suffer from something called the Curse of Knowledge.
And this is to say that you know so much about your subject matter now, it’s actually very difficult for you to put yourself in the position of somebody who knows very little about your subject matter, you kind of have forgotten what you didn’t know at the beginning.
So you might not very easily be able to understand the sorts of questions that they might ask you, or the sorts of things that they need to know in the first place. Now, don’t worry, there is absolutely a way of working all of this out and finding it all out. But, we also need to remember, as subject matter experts, that there can be a difference sometimes between what somebody who doesn’t know very much about our subject wants to know, versus what you know, as the expert, they need to know.
And the temptation can be, well, I’ll deliver what they need, because I know that’s what they need. But if you do that, and you ignore what they think they want, then the chances are, you’re going to create something that might be very useful for people, but they’ll never find out because they don’t know that they need it.
So what I want you to do is make sure that you keep the want front and center. And by that I mean understanding what it is your target audience is specifically looking for in the arena of your subject matter. And then making sure that you provide that.
You can absolutely provide what they need as well. But you need to make sure that you’re providing what they want in the first place. Otherwise, there’s a very good chance they’re not actually going to want to buy your course.
Next up is over as little time as possible. And I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t want to be sitting in front of my computer for any longer than I absolutely have to, in order to get the piece of information, the piece of knowledge, the skill that I want to have. So what this means from our point of view is that we need to make sure we’re not including too much superfluous information in our online courses compared to what it is our target audience is actually looking for.
So over as little time as possible, for sure you can deliver a transformation in as little as five minutes sometimes depending on what your subject matter is, and what somebody’s looking for. You absolutely, positively do not need to produce an online course, that is any longer than an hour, hour and a half tops for somebody to be able to learn something really quite significant.
Okay, so it never ceases to amaze me when I see people boasting about their 5, 10, 15, even 20 hour courses. Nothing sounds worse to me, than being told that I have to sit in front of my computer for at least 20 hours in order to learn something.
You might also be wondering about attention spans, because there’s quite a lot sort of spouted on the internet about how attention spans have reduced over the last few years. And actually, that’s not backed up by any scientific evidence.
It’s one of these urban myths that comes about because, well, frankly, it feels true, right? We have all had the experience of getting really bored while we’re waiting for an internet page to load or we’re looking at a YouTube video and the ad comes up and that’s only five to 15 seconds and we’re really bored about that.
So it is plausible, to think that attention spans might have reduced, even though it’s not actually true, it is something that we can use as a way to help ourselves understand let’s not be dragging this out for any longer than we absolutely have to.
And I will say that oftentimes when you have an online course that has got just that little bit too much information in it, or goes on for just a little bit too long, it’s usually the creator who’s at fault rather than the content, the content might be great. But if the creator is including it, because they feel like they need to cram it in there, as opposed to thinking about exactly what it is their online course taker wants, then it’s the creators fault, not the content.
What your online course learners are looking for is both speed and ease They want to get the information that they want over as little time as possible, as quickly as possible, in a way that is as easy as possible.
Those are the ultimate things for anybody taking an online course they want it quickly and they want it easily. Doesn’t matter what the subject is. If you try and cram too much information into your online course, one of the things you are absolutely doing is you’re cutting off your future opportunities. And I will go through a whole lesson on how you can divide up the information that you possibly could include in your online course, and how you can separate it out into information that might be best placed in a follow up online course, or a completely different online course.

This is one of those things where you need to take a leaf out of the marketer’s book, which is the knowledge that once you have sold something to someone once, it’s much easier to sell them a second thing, and that’s where this excess of information might be best placed. Yeah, I don’t think I need to add anything to that do I?
If you do it over as little time as possible, but the less information you include, will mean you get it done quicker. In a way that’s easily accessible really means that you don’t want your online course learners to be having to jump through too many hoops, either before they’ve even got to your material or whilst they are taking your material.
I’ve seen a few online courses where people have to fill in a pre-course questionnaire or they have to set up an account and then set up another account and then set up this and their profile and blah, blah, blah. And actually, all they want to do is click to pay and then get into the information as quickly as possible.
And certainly while the online course is ongoing, you want to make your information available to people as quickly as possible so that they can dive on in and get into it. Because hopefully, they’re quite excited about taking it, so why you’d want to stop them from getting in and getting on it I don’t know.
You also don’t want to give people what I call ready, fade. Ready fade. You also don’t want to give people what I call ready made refund excuses. And don’t get me wrong, refunds happen for all sorts of reasons.
But if you give people too many hoops to jump through, then they are much more likely to be asking for a refund. I also want to talk about something called learner-led control. And this is the idea that your online learners have absolute control over when they pick you up and when they put you down, how long they watch you for, at what speed they watch you for and whether or not they do any of the exercises that you ask them to do.
You have no control over this. There is one possible caveat to that. But actually, what I would advise you to do certainly for your first few online courses is to, once somebody’s bought it, make all the information available to them straightaway.
Because this means that they can dive on in and get on with what they want to get on with and not feel like you’re holding something back from them. Sometimes for trainers who are used to standing in a classroom, this can be quite a difficult concept to get your head around because you’re used to being in charge of when people pick you up and put you down, when they go for a break when they do the work that you’re asking them to do, when they come back from their break.
Although lots of trainers will acknowledge that sometimes that can be a little bit like herding cats. However, with an online course it is absolutely out of your hands. So the quicker you can relinquish that feeling that you need that control the better. Okay, finally, at an appropriate price for the value delivered. And I’m gonna put money on the fact that there will be quite a few people that will get into this online course and go straight to the lesson on pricing. I’ve said the same in the book that a lot of people will almost certainly look at the chapter titles and go straight to Chapter 13 because that’s where the pricing information is.
It’s something that causes a lot of consternation for people. And believe me, it did me in the beginning until I realized a few fundamental things.
First up is that the length of your course has nothing to do with value, and therefore nothing to do with the price of your course, I’ve already mentioned that a transformation can take place in as little as five minutes and that’s absolutely true again, depending on your subject matter. But the length of your course doesn’t necessarily mean that the longer it is, the higher the price of it. In fact, I would say that most online courses that deliver really good results are not that long at all.
So you know, don’t think that just because something is an hour long, you can’t charge a decent amount of money for it. If you’re delivering the transformation, i.e. the value, then you absolutely can and we’ll work out all of that as we go in the course.
Remember that appropriate, so an appropriate price, is totally subjective. So you might have some people in your target audience for whom the price of your online course is very cheap. And for other people, they might feel that it’s very expensive.
You are never ever, ever going to be able to come up with a price that suits everybody. So don’t worry about trying, okay? What you’re looking at is what’s an appropriate price for the value that you’re delivering. And we’ll go through all of that when we get there.
Trust me when I say you will absolutely worry more than your takers about the price of your course. So relax about it for now.
We will get to it when we get to that particular lesson and I will take you through everything you need to know to understand how to appropriately price your online course.
Okay, that’s it for the what and why, for this particular lesson, if you are staying on for the how, I’ll see you in the next video. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next lesson.

Hey there, and welcome to this How To video on the Online Course Taker’s Mantra.

So I’ve already been through with you the what and the why of the Mantra. So really the most important thing now is for you to embed that Mantra into your thinking. And the best way of doing that is for you to actually write the Mantra out.

And if at all possible, I would like you to write that out by hand, if you can, as opposed to actually putting it on a Word document or another kind of computer document and just printing it out. It’s much, much better for you to actually write it out, because that way that will embed the learning much more deeply for you. It’s scientifically proven and everything.

So that’s your first action is to write out the Mantra. But that’s not quite the whole story. It’s certainly something that will do a lot of good. But what I want you to do next is to actually look at what you’ve written on that piece of paper. And I want you to embellish it, I want you to make it really bright, really colorful, add pictures, add stickers, add all sorts of different colors in there, whatever you need to do to make it stand out.

And the reason that I want you to make it stand out is that I want you to then take that Mantra, that written out Mantra, and I want you to stick it somewhere where you are going to be able to see it for the time that you are creating your online course.

So that might be on the wall above your computer, it might be next to your desk, just somewhere where it’s going to catch your eye most often and you will be able to glance at it and really remember not only the process of writing it out, but also the process of making it colorful, and also looking at the words and what they mean for you.

So as you’re writing it out, and as you’re making it colorful, really think about what those words mean inside the Mantra. And then once you’ve done all of that stick it up somewhere visible that you can see it easily. Alright, that’s it for the Online Course Taker’s Mantra. See you in the next video.