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Welcome to the course creator's edge, a podcast for aspiring and seasoned course creators who are dedicated to quality. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the noise, hype, the half truths in the Creator economy, you're not alone. The course creator edge is your go to podcast for cutting through the confusion and building a course creation business rooted in integrity, skill and measurable results, hosted by Michele Sare of course creation lab, this weekly show is all about clear principle centered guidance on what it really takes to design, produce and deliver quality courses that get results without compromising your values or misleading your learners. Rather you just starting out or scaling to your next level, this podcast will sharpen your skills, elevate your impact, and give you that edge that you need to thrive in today's fast changing course, creator economy. Let's dive in. This is strategic Monday, and the topic today is raising the standards in the course creation and delivery of the Creator economy. Hi, I'm
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Dr Michele Sare of the course creation Lab.
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I'm a professional educator,
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author, speaker, and honestly, an all around quality geek. Today's podcast is about what's missing, the need for raising the standards in course creation and delivery
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in the course creator economy.
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Let's start with core point number one, values and how they work in this course creation business. Now, have you ever wondered why so many online courses fail to deliver on their promises? Here's the truth, fewer than 10% of our customers, our learners, actually gain lasting results from courses in today's creator economy,
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hoof that
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means a 90%
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failure rate, and some say it's as high as 99% wooft us. And if you've ever taken a course and thought, Hmm, this didn't really change anything for me, or I'm more confused than when I started, or is this all there is, where's the rest of the course? Well, you're not alone, but stick with me here, because this isn't about discouragement. It's about uncovering why this happens, and more importantly, how we as course creators can do better. Here's where all quality products begin with clear set of values and quality intention. Now, have you ever thought about what you stand for and equally, what do you stand against? With regards to the course creation business, you know, too often, course creation leans on basically a purely capitalistic model. What this means is that profits justify everything the course, which is our product that are produced, the content created, and marketing and sales strategies all revolve around profit. Now let's break down why that matters. This is a business after all, capitalism, by definition, is when private owners control trade and industry for profit. That's all it is. The purpose of a business is to make money, and when profits are the primary goal.
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What? What does that do?
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What does that mean?
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Well, first products get justified by money, not meaning. So our courses get justified by money, not quality, not results. Consequences are ignored. And the real world effects that we can easily see in the sale of many physical products, like child labor, unsafe factories, environmental harm, they get brushed aside or ignored. Now I hear you. You might be thinking, okay, Michele, but that's physical products. What does that have to do with courses? Well, a lot more than you might expect. Now that leads us to core point number two, a primarily capitalistic approach, and how that impacts our courses. So first look around the online course world right now. How do people define success in the course creation segment of the Creator economy? Like you think about that for a minute. Well, here it is. It's followers, likes. Beautiful branding and comments like six figures in six weeks, courses in a weekend, even minimal viable products
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are touted
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as the way to go.
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It is an obsession with marketing and sales. First, education course quality second. So here's the problem. Courses are about learning, not just making money. When course creation is built on the profit first model, outcomes collapse because they're not measured. They're not the most important thing. And guess what? It is not a coincidence that only about one to 10% of people succeed in this business space. Now I'm not going to draw any statistical analysis here, but just think about this for a second. Interestingly, that one to 10% is the same percentage of Americans who become millionaires, the same percentage of course, creators who can claim millionaire dumb now, did you know that only 1% of content creators make six figures annually? So this is kind of a skewed business, and that, by the way, is, according to some research done by Yahoo Finance, what we've got is an unintentional business of exclusion and a club only for a few. Many of the course and programs are priced for the wealthy, even as they decry the price of formal education. The course creation segment system is truly built for the few, and not intentionally. It's just that when marketing and sales became the metrics that we consistently can keep, then the learning and the customer results
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had to get blamed on something else.
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We might have blamed that customer for not wanting it enough, for their mindset, for not having the discipline, for not having the habits. But what if we can change that?
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What if the course creation system could
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be built with greater
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intention and built on quality?
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Would you like to change that?
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You know that gets us to core point number three, a better model, because a for profit business doesn't have to be that way. And course, creation done right can't be business as has been usual. Learning is about transformation. It's about building capacity, not just selling content. It's about building competencies. That's why, at the course creation lab, we have taken on this mission to ground our work in real educational principles, to honor the Sare and responsibility of influencing others and to measure success, not just by sales, but by learner results. And here's a little caveat that's very important that may not have hit your radar. There is this set of concepts called the social determinants of health, two of the leading determinants of how well a person does in their life, and actually even how long a person lives comes out of the Whitehall studies in the UK and the World Health Organization's commission on the social determinants of health. So it's got a lot of evidence behind it, but the two leading determinants of how well we do in this life are education and economy. So it's pretty important that what we do with education is very honorable, because here is the truth, capitalism does drive business, but it cannot drive learning. And the kinds of courses we create to help others as a business owner, in the course creation economy, you have two distinct and very different roles and responsibilities. You've got the financial success that you aspire to, but we've also got to have that course product success that is based on measurable learning, wanting to help and sincerely caring about our customers and their results is where we start, and truly what most of us intend. But as the saying goes, desire isn't enough. We need to put some legs under that table and get real about making it so to have a world class, Premier, premium quality course, we need to able to prove up on our customers learning results as as much or more than popularity, excuse me, popularity and profits alone. So whoa, this may What do you think of this? What. What do you what's the key takeaway here? Where do we begin to improve the results this industry gets that each create for our customers? So is what I'd like to give you as the big takeaway for today. If you're in this space, if you're building courses or even dreaming about it, remember this, capitalism is not enough influencing others, thoughts, actions, beliefs, abilities. This Requires Integrity, or what we've coined here, and what we say at the course creation lab is raise the standard of course creation and delivery in this creator digital economy. Now let me turn it back to you. Have you felt that gap between hype and reality in the course creation online learning business space? What if, together, we started closing that gap? I invite you to join me in this movement, not just to create more courses, but to create courses that change lives, because in the end, that's what our customers, learners deserve, and it doesn't have to be complex. That we can help a person change their life if we know how to teach and train them, how to have a lawn mowing business, it it crosses the spectrum of the topics we can help others with, and that's what this industry desperately needs. I guarantee you that there is no true educator anywhere who will tell you to create a course in a weekend or even a week. I believe you're dedicated to learning how to market and sell, and that you'd have to do so in order to be in this business, why not be as dedicated to learning how to truly help your customers to get the results that you promise that's a lot to consider for today, and I am so grateful that you're here as always. Thank you for joining me on the course creators edge. If today's episode gave you a new insight, a moment of clarity, or just reminded you why you care about quality. Don't forget to grab your try it and apply it. Guide for this week, you'll find practical next steps, reflection, questions and tools to take what you heard and turn it into real progress. Head to the link below to check out the try and apply it guide to this episode,
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and then you'll also find a copy of today's show notes there. Remember, influencing the thinking, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and knowledge and skill of others is a big deal. It's actually a sacred promise. We owe it to our customers to deliver on our course promise. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the course creators edge. Take what you found here today and try it, then apply it. Tune in weekly for straight talk, smart strategy and the support you need to create meaningful, results driven courses. It will be here on Mondays and Thursdays in the creator's edge as we cut through the confusion, and help you build and deliver
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courses that are
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rooted in integrity, skill and measurable results for those you serve. Okay, until next time, keep boldly building quality teaching with heart, raising the
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standards within this course, creation business
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of ours, and creating the kind of learning the world really
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needs, because,
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as J Kron and Kenny at Kajabi
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said, We don't need more slop to your success
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and the customers that you serve.
