Speaker 1 0:00
Michele, Hi, welcome to strategic Monday. This is a weekly space for course, creators, educators and independent experts who care about doing this work well, not just doing it fast. I'm your host. Dr Michele Sare, educator, strategist and occasional rabble rouser. Here we talk about quality, professionalism and what it actually takes to lead change in the course creation segment of the digital creator economy. No hype, no shortcuts, just clear thinking and principled strategy. Let's begin. Okay, today we're talking about the idea of quality and how this industry has been changing because the shine and newness of the crater economy during and after the pandemic surge has lost some of its gloss. Customers are more savvy. They're now pretty quick to understand the flood of marketing strategies and they can better recognize inflated promises. The business space is saturated, meaning supply can outweigh demand, which we all know drives prices down across this business base, customers are losing faith, because the results customers are getting are generally quite poor. AI is being used without reason and without restraint, and ironically, it can also provide the information that your customers want sought in a course that wasn't built on principles of education, it was on that faster, easier type of course, and if you're a course creator, all of this affects how you design price lead or make decisions about your business's future. Now I've been doing this for a long time. Education is a human business when done well, can deliver on its promise. Now AI is a magnificent tool, but people learn from people. This business space has dabbled in education principles, quality is the path forward, the path where we talk about quality, professionalism and leading change in the course creation segment of the digital economy. This is a show to help elevate quality. Is the way forward. It's a thinking show, and it is long overdue. So why me? Why now? Why this? Well, let me start with a bit of context. I've been a professional educator for over 25 years, working across 10 states and globally in places like Indonesia, Mongolia and Haiti. I've created curriculum for colleges and hospitals. Helped reopen two colleges after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I've authored four books. I've contributed chapters to a leading textbook. I've served on lots of curriculum committees and designed and delivered hundreds of courses to 1000s of learners. I've also worked in corporate learning and development. I served as a National Quality Assurance reviewer. I taught adult education, and I've spent years as a corporate trainer. Education isn't something I dabble in. It isn't something I always got right, but it's something I've dedicated many of my life, years of life too. So when I entered this digital creator economy as a course creator, I honestly thought the transition would be pretty smooth. It wasn't. So what shifts Am I seeing? Why, if I have some of this discouraging frustration, do I care about strategic planning and a way forward now. Well, Kenny and Jay Kron, the returned co CEOs of Kajabi, released a manifesto for their members on October 14 in 2025 this is, in part, what they have to say about quality in the Creator economy. We're not here to compete with the noise. We're here to rise above it. We will be the home for real, human experts, the place where credibility still matters. So that need for strategic directions and qualities seems to have at least one influential advocate and Brendan bouchard's ongoing claims of professionalism in this economy and his dedication to high performance, these make me excited about their directions, and I decided that this is the time to get this discussion out there and for strategists to be strategizing, if only. For your solopreneur, course creation business, in fact, this is what I've built my business on for the last three years. Has been quality education, quality courses, which means knowing how to teach, how to train, how to coach, how to mentor, how to advise, knowing the difference between the three pillars of course creation, which are the three design pillars of course, Curriculum and Instructional Design and knowing, above all, how to work with adult learners. So it's pretty cool. I thought it's time to just dive right in here, because you see the reality of the Creator economy? Well, when I encountered, when I first entered this course, creator digital creator economy, that it was a space full of labels, but short on clarity, and you might recognize some of these experts, influencers, coaches, knowledge brokers, genius, own terms used interchangeably, often without definition. It took a long time to understand how this ecosystem actually worked and where someone committed to evidence based, well designed education was supposed to belong in many ways, I did not feel that it mattered to anybody, but this is a space where anyone can say anything, and claims of fast success, effortless income and instant authority are common and rarely interrogated. And yet I do. I get the pull the promise of freedom of financial, independence of influence, of no longer trading time for money. That promise gets us all. But you know what? It also creates real harm when quality is treated as optional, and perhaps worse yet, when quality is claimed based on sales but not results, and what of claims of quality that have no evidence behind them? It's simply a word used for branding. Now, one of the reasons we're here, where we're at at this juncture, is that the pandemic effect and what I call the pendulum problem. You see before 2020 this was already an unregulated space, no shared standards, no ethical norms, no reliable data to track, and then the pandemic hit. Estimate suggests up to 165 million new creators entered this business space today, roughly 80% of creators worldwide then are new, depending on the data source. We're talking anywhere from 200 to 300 million creators are working globally what once was a messy outfit became even more chaotic. The pendulum swung hard toward excess, quick wins, Fast Money, short cuts, inflated promises, and that pendulum is still swinging. It hasn't found its center, at least not yet. So why does strategy matter? Well, years ago, when I was a teaching professor, I became deeply frustrated by how often nurses and public health professionals were excluded from decision making tables, not because they lacked insight, but because they hadn't been equipped with strategic planning and change management skills, a colleague and I co authored one of the only textbooks on strategic planning in healthcare, specifically to help close that gap, because when the wrong people make decisions, or worse yet, no one makes a decision. Systems suffer. Outcomes suffer. But you know, the worst part people suffer. We're seeing that same pattern play out now in the Creator economy. You know, ill informed change is still change, and it's often the most damaging kind.
Speaker 1 9:24
So why strategic Monday exists? Well, it exists to slow things down to ask, Why does quality matter? And what actually does it mean? What does professionalism require? What responsibility comes with teaching at scale like we can do in this creator economy. If we are going to claim excellence and things like premium offers excellence world class education, then we need to be willing to build the structures that make those claims true. That. The work, that's the conversation, and that's why we're here. So are we as course creators in this wildly unregulated business space, ready for putting some legs under that table that claim excellence, premium or world class courses designed and delivered by experts? Well, I hope so. And I think many have already been thinking about this, I'd like to offer this one substantial insight, the business. Of course, creation in the Creator economy has had a wild and expansive growth, and a lot of people were able to capitalize on that high demand for courses through those covid years and that changing work environment. For the most part, it was an era of course creation, dominated by quick fixes and inflated promises. The course creation business, business is not done or irreparably broken or obsolete, it's just evolving. It's time to take our course creation segment of this creator economy into a more mature future. I hope you'll join me as we discuss strategic directions for a business that holds the potential for so many to do well while doing good. So what does this mean for you as a course creator? If these changes are true, then how might you see your role and your business in a new light? By better understanding the business space that we've chosen to be a part of, it truly helps us to let go of confusion or blame or feeling helpless. You don't need to be drawn into every marketing strategy or brand framework making predictions of the next era. Of course creation being doomed. I am confident that they have it wrong. I do hope the simplest, poor quality course designs of the past. You know those quick fixes course in a weekend. Just let AI create it. I hope those will become a thing of the past. We will never not need quality courses that help us learn new skills or learn how to perform skills better, and we will always need new and deeper knowledge. One fun little thought about this. Did you know that our founding fathers wrote about the power of an education because they knew that democracy cannot succeed in the absence of a quality education. One quote, just by example from one of our founding fathers, is from James Madison, who stated, knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. If you and I are keepers of knowledge, then we must arm ourselves with the power which that knowledge holds. So before we go, I'd like you to take a moment to ask yourself, What would change in my work if quality were a commitment, not a claim? Strategic Thinking doesn't require more noise, it requires more intention. Be sure to join me next week when we'll discuss the distinctions between influencers, course, creators and content creators. It's one of the things that's really muddied our water. It will be fun and insightful, and I think, help to clarify some things that have been too fuzzy for too long. Thank you for spending this time with me. I'm Dr Michele Sare, and this is strategic Monday until next time keep building work that you can stand behind.
