If at first you don’t succeed…
This is about why my first attempt at creating an online course failed and what I learned from the experience.
In the previous post, I wrote about what “edgy” means and how for me it all comes down to being open and authentic. And to talk about the mistakes we make. That’s where I’d like to pick up.
In these past few months as a baby entrepreneur, I’ve had to learn how crucial it is to dare to try new things knowing that not everything you try will work out (VERY difficult for me as a recovering perfectionist).
If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember that I launched my first attempt at an online course a couple of months ago: “Use your Words” was a Facebook group where I posted video lessons on mastering advanced vocabulary. Anyone could join for free and from the feedback of the community, I was planning to build a course on Teachable.
The problem? It didn’t work.
Here’s the lowdown:
People have to invest something to take a thing seriously. If the course is free and you can just watch the videos whenever you like, you value it less than something that’s in your calendar and that you paid money for.
Facebook is a TERRIBLE platform to try to ‘teach’ on. It’s built to distract you. There are notifications and ads and messages and a million things more urgent than listening to me talking about vocabulary.
I got the topic wrong. Vocabulary is only part of the story.
Let me expand on that last part.
When I first began to plan my online course, I thought I should take an aspect of what I work on with my 1:1 clients and make that into a stand-alone course. But I was ignoring what I knew to be true about language learning, which is that if you don’t tackle the ‘mindset stuff’ along with the ‘language stuff’, it’s not going to work. You may improve, yes, but you will not get to a point where you feel confident and natural in the language.
I realised then that my online course needed to be a different thing entirely. It needed to be a group coaching programme that has at its heart what EDGY stands for: Take control of your learning and be confident about your abilities so that you can be yourself in English.
It was difficult to let go of my first idea. To archive the 12 video lessons I had already painstakingly produced, to bury “Use your Words” and to detach myself from the massive investment of time I had poured into it. But it was just a classic Sunk Cost Fallacy. I had already invested the time and I wasn’t going to get it back by holding on to the idea!
After I had let go of the ‘failed experiment’ and sat down to map out the new programme, everything got so much easier – I’m so excited now about the curriculum! I’ll be running it as a beta-testin January first so I can fine-tune it before the first big, public launch. I’ll be looking for a very small number of people to test the programme with me soon so please let me know if you think you’d be interested and I’ll let you know more.
Hope this ‘failure’ story was interesting to some of you. As always, I’m putting some useful vocabulary below.
All the best,
Sarah
EDGY vocabulary from this blog post:
Pssst: Click on a word to get to a dictionary website to learn more!
to pick up where you left off = to continue the story at the point where you stopped last time
entrepreneur = a person who starts their own business. Click the link for the pronunciation of this monster of a word.
crucial = very important
dare = to have the courage to do something difficult
something works out = it has a good outcome
recovering = get well again after an illness or an addiction
attempt = try
the lowdown = the most important facts about something
painstakingly = with great care and effort
pour = to transfer a liquid into a container, for example to pour a cup of tea; here: to put a lot (of effort) into something
map something out = to outline something, make a plan
beta-test = a test of the quasi-finished product where customers are asked to give feedback before the product is released to the market
