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Welcome to the course creators edge a podcast to help course creators in this digital creator economy to create higher quality, truly world class courses and get better results for those we serve. Because right now, this industry isn't doing such a great job on that, no matter how hard we try or believe. I think the
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missing pieces are in
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the quality components of education, because when we influence, when we hope to impart what we know or know how to do
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for others, we are
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in the education business, no matter if it's entrepreneurial, no matter if we don't have a background in education, we're here to help others learn how to do something, how to do it better, how to know something and how to know it more deeply. So welcome. This is strategic Monday. Every week we have two podcasts, one on Monday, which is strategic Monday, where we talk about leadership and what it means to address the trends, the issues, the challenges, thinking a little more deeply about what this business space is and what some of our responsibilities are, because it truly is a big
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deal to influence
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others by
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one promising that will help them get a result. But also, more importantly, because we're messing with what they know, know how to do, think, believe, their competencies, and in doing so, we have, I believe, a sacred responsibility
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to do it very,
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very well into the best of our abilities. So today's topic on strategic Monday is about that sacred responsibility. Now I have a background in education, and welcome to today's podcast in education across cultural and national borders, and I've been in some pretty, pretty tough gigs.
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I remember when I first was
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working at education. I was very I was young, I was in my 20s, and there were 2000 Hmong, beautiful, amazing human beings that were relocated to Missoula, Montana. Now they came from years of having been in refugee camps in Thailand. They'd been through horrific I mean, oh, my goodness, these are people I couldn't admire more deeply I respect deeply, and so it was really not much I did, but the privilege of working with them, as in public health. At the time, I was a public health nurse, and because they'd been in refugee camps in close, poor conditions, they'd been through so terrible Oh, honestly, I they're just my heroes, truly amazing human beings. But when you have to deal with things like cholera and different types of dysenteries and and the things, how do you then take these hardships you've been through and suddenly
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you're transported to
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another country, in an environment you don't know, a culture you don't know.
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So one of the biggest parts of my
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job was education
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to help them understand how to assimilate, how to get groceries, how how to use tissues when you blow your nose, because there's no tissues in a lot of countries, so many things, they're very, very, very brilliant. In fact, the interpreter we worked with had been bank, had been a teacher and had a master's degree. Her husband had been a banker. Her parents had been they'd been very successful, but all of that was taken away from them, and here they were in Missoula, Montana, where,
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culturally, we weren't very aware
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group of people, and it was a difficult transition for them. So when you understand how significant something as simple as teaching someone, this is how you blow your nose in Missoula, Montana, and you realize that that is important, and it matters to them, and they're working hard to assimilate and not be
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ridiculed, not
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just just to let their lives finally be a little safe and a little k a little okay after the horrors that they lived so education, no matter how small it may seem to you, can be a very, very big. Deal to another human being. And then I've also had the privilege there was a young man I was, I was in Haiti. I arrived 40 minutes
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before the 2010
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earthquake. And
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through the years that I was involved in courses and teaching and helping two two colleges reopen. There the depth and the importance and the complexity of education was quite a challenge.
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There was all the cultural and
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linguistic challenges.
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But I want to share one, one story. There are many, many amazing stories of really spectacular people, really wonderful people that I met in Haiti. And this young man lived about two hours walk down the mountain from this little school that I was helping get get their curriculum redone, a basic business plan to reopen, etc, and to raise some money to get computers, all that fun stuff. Anyway, this young man would walk
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two hours. He'd be there. He'd get up
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at three in the morning, and he would take care of his grandmother's garden, do some chores with the animals, help his grandmother with whatever chores. Then he would walk the two hours up the hill to this little cinder block building that had one or two computers that mostly overheated, but there was they would work for a while, and he sat there every morning. He was there before I got there. I got there about seven in the morning to do my work, and he got there before me, and he was there teaching himself English. And it was very hard. He didn't have anybody helping him. He was on a program online teaching himself English. He had to figure out the difference between the Haitian Creole that he knew how to speak some of the Spanish he knew how to speak some of the French. He knew how to speak and he had to cobble together his own education to learn how to speak English. Today, that young man has a master's in agriculture and works for a very large agricultural firm in here in the States, and he is in charge of biosecurity for one of the largest animal production companies in the US. Now, just imagine going from by the way, he was literally so skinny. You know, this the joke, if he turned sideways, it was hard to see him. One day, I took him to lunch. The nuns had a little cafe there in this little mountain community. And I, I've seen people eat a lot of food, but I never saw anyone eat like that. And he, he was famished, literally famished. I asked him, well, when was the last time you ate? And he's a very happy, very wonderful, very devout man.
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And he said, Oh, no worries. No worries. I had
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rice water and tea three days ago for breakfast, I'm good. Now imagine the importance of education to someone like that.
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You will never know who your learners
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are in this creator economy where we don't get to know our our adult learners, like we would if we were in front of them in a classroom. You don't know what they're going through. You don't know what their cultural background is. You don't know what their life circumstances are. And that's why today, in the importance of what we do, when we take what we know or know how
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to do, and we want
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to share that with others, and we want to make money doing so that's a very big deal, and to do it well is a sacred promise. It's a responsibility, and I don't see that happening with everyone who is a course creator, whether you have a program, whether you're writing a book you want somebody to buy from you
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whenever you take what you know or know how
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to do, and you
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want others to either learn to know or how to do something or to do it better or know it more deeply. You are in the influence business, but you are in the education business,
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and you can change a person's life
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with the most simple thing that they're going to learn from you. So please understand that we do not have a code of ethics in this course creation segment of the Creator economy. So what I'd like to do today, today's topic
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is all about.
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Principle centered human goodness. Now that is a model that I've created across my work, as I've seen how we can mess things up, how when we influence or go in and be an international aid agency and go into another's country, we could have all the good intentions in the world, but if we're not backing that up with some principles, we can be messing with people's lives, and indeed it can be something very, very simple I shared with you in one of the others strategic art was on masters. Way I talked to you about the three design principles of quality education, which is curriculum course in instructional design, and how that matters so much. But when we
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talk about principle centered human
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goodness, what do I mean? Well, at the at the core, what
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principle centered human goodness is, is what
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I want for myself. I want for everyone, and that comes from the biblical teachings of Jesus that Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There's a wonderful story and a life and a lived example of how this works in industry. If you'd like to look up Golden Rule Jones. He was a immigrant, I believe. He was from Romania, very, very tough times in the late 1800s and he designed and in an invention that did something to help in the oil industry, I believe. And he went on to become very financially successful, but he did other things too. He he started the eight hour work day. He had a men's choir. He started a park. The working conditions were the kind of working conditions he wanted. And so that's the core of what we mean by principle centered human goodness here at the course creation lab.
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So first, if
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you want a quality product, if you want a quality course, program, book, podcast, whatever it may be, so does your customer, you don't want to waste their time.
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So there's principles that
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we learn. And obviously these principles involve integrity, transparency, that honesty, it involves science and and evidence based and knowing who your customer learner is. So there's a lot more to it, but I would like to suggest and at the course creation lab.com, course creation lab, calm, there's a code of ethics there. It's not just about our terms and our conditions, and it's not
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just about don't
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steal from me or this is my intellectual property. That's not really a code of ethics. That's just your operating procedures. And so if you start thinking, would you like to have a code of ethics inside your business that is based
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on principle centered human goodness?
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Because right now,
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it is a very common paradigm, a way of being within. It's even culturally part of how this course creation, segment of the Creator, influencer, content creator, a part of the digital economy, the specific part of course creation, we manipulate people to buy things that maybe aren't true. Prices are inflated. Promises are inflated. We tap into people's vulnerability with the marketing. Marketing has become a pretty sophisticated thing that many, many people know how to do now, and to tell someone you need to buy my course, I have been in courses with people who are sitting literally in a van. This one young man was sitting in a van next to his county courthouse so he could pirate the internet, so he could be in this course, and he had no money to buy food. And here's the person who's making money off the course, the person who's quote, unquote, teaching the course, telling people, oh, well, you need me. And if you, if you, if you really want this, you'll find a way to get the money,
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and you'll it'll
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pay off in all these spades of
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how much money you're going to make, and independence.
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And look, here's these other people that did it that's tapping into people's vulnerability. It's not nice, and please stop doing it. It is not principle centered human goodness. Now, if you really want to help someone to get started, offer the basics that. The the novice pieces offer those for free, help them understand what you've got to offer. And then if you can, if that helps them get a foot up, then do that if you really care about it. I guess you could offer Sliding Fee Scales based on income. That would be a big you'd have to have a pretty good team to handle all of that. People to have to send you your tax their tax returns or something. But it's so don't, not to complicate it. I'm just saying that don't over promise or psychologically manipulate. We know that marketing is psychological manipulation. It's compelling you to do something. It can be kind of subtle, like when I walk in the mall, I'm going, I maybe I'm looking for a blouse,
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and the the stores
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that have the prettiest displays are the first way they're going to hook me, to get me to look at their store window and to come in their door. But they also may
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put a for sale sign out there,
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or they could eat. And those are
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all fine. Those are marketing strategies.
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And those may be things that get me in the door. But then they may do something else, and they may say, are you feeling frumpy today? And that might catch my attention.
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Well. Then they may say,
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we know how to make you feel like a beautiful woman. Well, it could momentarily if I buy $100 blouse from them, but that's really a manipulation that isn't true, because feeling like a beautiful woman is something that's inside each individual woman, not something a store can it. Can change and buying, spending money on something could be something I couldn't afford to do, but because I want to feel like a beautiful woman, I'm going
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to go in and buy $100 blouse. You see,
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I, as a consumer, have to be smart about what's going on there, and that's pretty straightforward when we think of that kind of product, but when we think of a product like a course, I'm promising you that
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you will learn how to do a
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and your life will be better.
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Well, that sounds good because they're
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taking responsibility to learn something.
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But if you are not delivering on that promise, if you created one of those outline courses, if you do not know what the principles of a course are, if you do not know what the principles of a curriculum are, if you do not know what the principles of instructional design, or the difference between teaching, training, coaching, mentoring, advising and consulting, and how those are very distinct disciplines, then you
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are just selling them
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a cheap blouse For too much money, and
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they don't really feel too
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beautiful after they leave because the store, because they've really shouldn't have spent that money. And once they wash that blouse, it gets all wrinkly, and that feeling of pretty is gone in about two seconds. So that that idea that we're teaching, training, coaching, mentoring, offering quality courses. This really matters. And I'd like you to think about, where do you stand with the concept of principle centered human goodness, and again, that that's, that's a model of the course creation lab.com, and I do offer under Resources Code of Ethics that we operate by and take a look at that and see what you think. If we're leading this business forward, leading individual in our business and being part of a solution and quality forward in the course creation segment that I invite you to take a look at that there's also a guide for you. If you look at our podcast page on course, creation lab, calm, you'll see that there's guides available for today and today, there is a try it and apply it guide for you. Blessings to you on your journey. Stay tuned for our strategic Mondays and our master's way Thursdays. We're here to help advance the quality and the principle centered goodness that is the course creation segment of the Creator economy.
