Turning Passion into Engaging Micro-Courses

Have you ever felt a burning desire to shift gears and pursue a path you're truly passionate about? Matthew Biggar, my mentor and friend, has done just that, transforming from an electrician into an innovative entrepreneur. This episode peels back the layers of his fascinating journey, revealing the pivotal moments that led to the creation of his uniquely engaging microcourses, designed to tackle the notorious issue of low completion rates in online education. With a blend of passion and gamification inspired by his gaming background, Matthew's story isn't just about changing careers; it's about redefining the way we approach learning and teaching in the digital age.

Don't miss this discussion where we unravel the secrets to building sustainable revenue and robust business ecosystems, free from the exhausting treadmill of endless marketing. We share our own experiences and the crucial steps toward launching products that resonate, highlighting the shift from a typical value ladder to a more holistic approach. Whether you’re ready to launch your own course or seeking to refine your business model, this episode is packed with actionable insights. 

Together with Matthew, we explore the importance of community, the power of real-life experience in course creation, and the excitement of contributing to a world where education is as captivating as it is enriching. 

Join us for an episode that goes beyond the ordinary, inspiring you to pursue your own zone of genius and turn it into success.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to the Self-Aware, self-pronuer Podcast. Hey, friends, let me just tell you I am excited about today's episode because I have invited the first guest of the year 2024, who is my friend, a coach and a mentor to me, and I feel so grateful to do this with him. His name is Matthew Begar. Welcome, matt, how are you doing?

Speaker 2: 0:44

Thank, you, matt, excellent.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Awesome. So I know, matt, you and I share this kind of passion where we talk about finding the thread of people's zone of genius. There's a lot of overlaps in what we do, but my context is more in the brand and business realm, whereas you are more in the context, of course, creation, which I know. I can't wait to talk more about that, but tell my audience a little bit about you.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Let's hear from you, of course, I would say why are we here at this moment, in this crossroads? It's because I reset my business seven times. So why did I do that? I had an experience as an electrician back when I was employed. This is one of my first careers in my 20s where I was actually taking it seriously and I was excited about it. But it ended up being this kind of a toxic work environment because it was kind of I don't know the mentors that I had to look up to sort of treated like apprentices. They weren't worth anything and so basically you got treat like garbage as a first year apprentice, second year, if you allowed that to happen, which I did and it was very unfulfilling work for me.

Speaker 2: 2:06

I was in a dark place then and that's when I decided like there's got to be something more and I ended up going to the bookstore to find I was trying to fix a financial problem and I picked up a rubber kiyosaki book and it opened the door to this world of like becoming self employed, building a business for yourself. I kept that experience from being an electrician with me the whole time because it became a non-negotiable. I'm like well, if I'm going to start this path. I'm going to build a business for myself. What is it that I really want to do? Why does that even matter? And how do I do something that brings me joy and fulfillment in the work? Because if I have that kind of energy, then I'll be more passionate about how I serve and support other people.

Speaker 1: 2:56

That's really interesting how the path of unfulfillment has led to that, because we both work with clients. That has that kind of itch where it's like you necessarily don't know what it is that makes you fulfilled, but you definitely do know what makes you unfulfilled, and I think that's the hardest part in terms of figuring out where that zone of genius lies, right, because we have all these competencies. Like you said, you were an electrician. You probably did 10 other jobs. That has all these threads. So what I'm curious about is that how did you land on this new specialize in helping people unlock a meaningful core topic they love and then build a growth engine off of it with engaging microcourses? That in itself is such an interesting segment because I think of the world of course creation is not only noisy but it's overwhelming. I remember when I was taking courses in the first couple of years of my running a business, it was like that urge of wanting to know more and feeling like that's never enough. I'm curious where does microcourses have its place in the course creation world?

Speaker 2: 4:25

Yeah, first of all, it's like the culmination of my life experience. It's the reason why it matters to me. I think we have a lot of opportunity to raise the bar in terms of how we transfer knowledge with each other, and it's happening right now. We're seeing this in the industry, right, all it took was one like catalyst, but well, two, right, let's not go into 2020, but I mean, that's definitely something that pushed this direction, for where I see society is generally headed is more into online education, which is one hundred percent the noise, right.

Speaker 2: 5:03

The reason why I don't just say microcourses, I say engaging microcourses, is because I believe in this necessity to come at the subject matter that you want to teach from a place of passion for what you're talking about, because that type of teaching is energetically different. I always like to share my experience with grade 11 math and Mr Regal, who would plug a calculator into a projector. I'm dating myself a little bit here, but he would project this calculator. It was a Texas Instruments TI-83 and he just literally like walk us through the scientific functions. It got to a point where I was so bored.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Were you sleeping? Yes.

Speaker 2: 5:50

I put my head down on my desk and I went to sleep and he never said anything to me about making it out of there. I'm sure we've all can relate to this experience of having a teacher who just isn't really into what they're teaching and they don't have that passion and their energy for what they're trying to transfer to people. They're literally just phoning it in, and I don't believe that that is the right way to create course products, especially in a noisy world where more and more people are coming online and creating courses and creating content.

Speaker 1: 6:22

So what makes it an engaging micro course?

Speaker 2: 6:26

That's a good question. The first thing is obviously the energy and passion for your subject matter, so the way you transfer your knowledge will come across differently there. The other pieces, the other components of what makes it engaging, are opportunities for us to go after a big problem in the industry, which is completion rates. So the first way we can do that is through gamification. This is actually easier to do. It seems complicated. I've been a gamer my entire life. I had an Atari, a Game Boy, I had a Commodore 64. And if you know what that means, then it tells you how old you are. But it was basically a keyboard.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Wait, do you know what it is, Did you not? I don't know any of those games. Okay, I do know Mario Brothers. I grew up with playing Tetris, Nintendo Mario. Okay, that's really interesting.

Speaker 2: 7:22

We can borrow elements from that. Right, If you think of what makes a video game fun, there's a level of challenge involved. Yes, there is an achievement. There's also a celebration. Right, you get to the end of the level and Mario Brothers? What do you have to do? You climb up the staircase, you jump off onto the flag and you've achieved something before you move on to the next level.

Speaker 2: 7:50

So we can adapt these ideas for course products by being intentional with the achievements that we're clarifying. These are the steps that you have to take in order to achieve something specific. So by focusing on achievement inside of a course product, you're introducing an element of gamification that makes it more engaging. There's lots more we can do with points and other things like that. So that's element number one in terms of making it more engaging.

Speaker 2: 8:21

The second piece is connected learning experiences. This is lacking for most course creators and it depends on what kind of business you're building, so it doesn't work necessarily for everyone. But if you're in the coaching or consulting space, then a connected learning experience basically is a group cohort. If you have a course product that coincides with your business, everything's lined up. You've got the passion, you've got the energy, you've got the gamification elements Well, the next step for you is to think about how can you bring a group of people together to create a connected learning experience that that is going to make. The first of all, completion rates can go from an industry standard of an abysmal like six to eight percent. This is what I've done for research. This stuff is really hard to quantify, but I'm sure everyone can relate to this, like I bought a course and I never completed it. And a connected learning experience can take those types of experience products up to completion rates above 80 percent.

Speaker 2: 9:33

Give me an example of that, though. So a connected learning experience is you have a group cohort, there's a limited amount of time for it and there's a coaching component to it, where there's calls, people come together and there is modules inside of your course that coincide with that group coaching program, and then there's some kind of a communication medium. Some people use Facebook groups. It's not my favorite platform. I won't go there. But having a community based experience where people can come together and support each other, that's what a connected learning experience is. That's going to help you with your completion rates and make it more engaging.

Speaker 1: 10:17

That's amazing. I go back to thinking things that I've learned over the years. How did I best learn it? And it's always been a combination of not just taking courses but a combination where I had access to the instructor teaching the material and I had that one-on-one interaction where I am able to express my ideas and thoughts that I've learned through taking the course and that has retained so much better. And me just sitting there taking a self-paced course. But that's just me. Everybody learns differently.

Speaker 2: 11:06

These were. I would thrive in learning, though, were always these group activities where people are coming together to learn together. We can get energy from each other. We can bounce ideas, like we are right now off of each other. Co-creation it's only possible with other humans.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Yeah, what do you have to say to where people go to Teachable, where they have course creation guidance right, they even have a course on course creation. I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on when anyone can put up a course on Gumroad or any of these platforms.

Speaker 2: 11:43

Regarding platforms, let's dig into this first Skillshare, Teachable, marketplace-based learning experiences. In my opinion, it's an okay place to start off if you want to test and see what it's like to create a course product. But the ultimate form of sustainable revenue which is the problem that I want to help business owners solve is owning your platform, Having course products on your own website somewhere, instead of a marketplace. In my opinion, the best way to go is to create your course product and figure out all of the stuff that you have to do. The hard things, the challenging things how do you market this? How do you test it? How do you validate it? How do you research it? How do you get people to sign up before you actually build it?

Speaker 2: 12:37

These are the challenging things that most people will avoid doing by putting up courses on marketplaces. It's commodity content. It's the equivalent of just making YouTube videos. I would actually recommend people consider building their course products on their own website, somewhere that they own themselves, and pair that with a group coaching program. If that's something that you're doing to get people interacting, because you don't have to make a perfect course the first time around.

Speaker 2: 13:13

That's the thing I think a lot of people get trapped in the weeds of polishing and perfecting that course product and the ultimate way to create it is alongside other people who said, hey, I'm interested in this thing, yes, I want to learn more about this and do a pilot program, Test it, validate it and build it and improve it over time, instead of just making something, hoping to put it up on a shelf and leaving it there aspiring for passive income. Right, Because that's a model that is slowly becoming more and more challenging. For one, you're not going to get referrals and recommendations in your business if we create course products that no one finishes. The ultimate form of an engaging micro course is one that it's connected. People come in that give you feedback on the product, you improve it, you reiterate it and you basically get them to the finish line so that you can get the case study, the testimonial, and build up the social proof around the product and continue improving it over time.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Wait a minute. So are you saying that I can't just put up a course in Gumroad or Teachable and call it a passive income and just be on the beach?

Speaker 2: 14:37

I think you definitely can do that, but it probably won't work, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 14:43

Not in the long term. Yeah, okay. So one of the things that it came to my mind as you were talking about model right. That makes me think about having a front-end offer that ties with your back-end offer. There's so many ways to do this right. You can always do a smaller product and then put you in this email list and you get a bunch of drip series emails saying your upselling value letter, whatever. Yeah, the term's not coming to my mind right now, but you get the idea. So is this micro-course slightly different? In a sense, where I know one of the things that you and I share is that the thread that runs through all your experiences, your skills and interests and how do you combine them. That speaks to not only your passion but your area of expertise. I think that's one of the hardest thing to do, matt.

Speaker 2: 15:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:53

What would you say to that?

Speaker 2: 15:55

So, yes, it is difficult. Let's be realistic about it. If it was easy, everyone would be living the you know, the most purposeful and fulfilling. They would never. We would never have any jobs where people are not fulfilled in their work. Unfortunately, a lot of people will start a business without doing the deep work into figuring out what it is that they want to do. Right? This is what I mentioned at the start of the episode seven branding and business resets that I've done since 2017. So, realistically, yes, it can be challenging. The first thing I would say is it's better to do it with alongside someone else, right? Having connection, support, having conversations with people.

Speaker 2: 16:36

The other ingredient that's missing for a lot of people in terms of creating a course product that can be successful is connecting it with audience motivations, and it's easier now than it ever has been in order to do the research that you need to do in order to at least get a glimpse that you're on the right track with what you're creating. So whether there are problems and challenges and you have experience in the solution very likely is signs that there is audience motivation out there, and there's a lot of things that we can do to test and prove that the course you're going to create connects with people and they understand what you're talking about and that they want that solution that you're offering.

Speaker 1: 17:23

One of the things that I used to struggle with was not necessarily I don't understand or know the audience motivations right, because you're right, you have the ability to find out and learn and understand those insights more than ever. But what happens is that sometimes, when we're trying to find out what is really the core problem that we solve for businesses, what is the one core challenge and that is one of the hard things. To sum up, because that is your USP that becomes your unique sauce or a differentiator right that brings in everything that you've done and throughout the years. It's kind of like this mixture of the present, past and future that is all combined to create that potency. So the question for you is do you see that come up in your work where the challenge is not really clear yet? We don't have the clarity yet, but it's been refined maybe over time or something.

Speaker 2: 18:32

Yeah, for sure I love this question. So we're talking about business resets, and the reason why I kept doing that was because I didn't have this piece figured out. And what happened was I basically got to a point where I was burnt out on what I was trying to create. How did YouTube channel? I was making weekly videos following the guru's advice, weekly cadence. You got to show up as much like all of that stuff I was making low quality content simply to.

Speaker 2: 19:04

I was phoning it in in order to get to that place of consistency. I knew something was off, and that's the first sign there are levels of problems and challenges that we're solving. It's not just really one. So, especially when it comes to course products. Okay, so the challenge that I'm most passionate about and this is that future component is sustainable revenue. Now, that takes time to figure out. It takes time, effort and energy to transform your business in a way where it can eliminate some of the ebbs and flows of marketing and fulfillment. This is what happens with a lot of business owners. It's what happened for me. I get the enrollment and then I would drop the ball in the marketing and then I'd be like, oh crap, I'm down here again and I got to go back into marketing.

Speaker 2: 20:01

It was like this cycle right, and so that's where I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 2: 20:06

So the big challenge I want to go after is the sustainable revenue. This is what I want to serve and support other people with. Now there is probably dozens of problems underneath that challenge that need to be solved, and a micro course is like one of these first things that we can create in order to move in the right direction. But there's also challenges underneath that right. So there's just so many. But the thing that I'm most passionate about is helping people create sustainable revenue, because one of our values is self-employed. Most people will resonate with. This is the reason why you started a business you wanted to experience more freedom in your life. Right, and sustainable revenue is one of those things. That is, it's freedom giving right. So that's a long way of answering your question. It's not always just one problem how are we packaging the problem and presenting it right? Brand positioning.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Yes.

Speaker 2: 21:10

In a way that people can they understand, it connects with their motivations and it solves a tangible like as tangible as possible, right, because sometimes we're talking about intangible things, especially in the coaching space.

Speaker 1: 21:24

That is, you touched on something so critical and I bet people listening to this will relate to that. So going back to what you said about creating this engine off of this core topic makes sense. So let me ask you this one last million dollar question how do you know that you're ready to create this engaging micro course?

Speaker 2: 21:50

Yeah, that's one of my favorite questions. The truth is that people will have a completely mixed opinion on this topic. From my perspective, I'm going to bring the lens of sustainable revenue to the conversation. The best time for someone to create an engaging micro course which is a part of a business ecosystem, right? So, going back to what we were talking about earlier value ladders, et cetera there's a time and place for automations. Ultimately, the way I see this is, you're not just making one micro course. You should be prepared to think about creating an ecosystem of products that are highly complimentary, which can lead into one to one group or a signature program of some kind. So I mean, I don't like value ladder necessarily. I prefer the ecosystem language, because what we really want to create is this flywheel, which is a growth engine. That's what I mean. You get people into your product. You blow them away with value.

Speaker 1: 22:59

I love that. I love that they come into the ecosystem.

Speaker 2: 23:02

They get this experience it over delivers in value, which increases the likelihood of recommend, and that's where we can get some of the flywheel going, where people are making recommendations. So you need to take an inventory of all of your skills, passions, knowledge and have a look at what you're working with before you can decide if you should make a course or not. Ideally, your course comes from firsthand experience. It's not like you go on YouTube and you watch 10 videos or even 100 videos and then you think you're qualified enough to talk about this topic. You need to test this with real humans, right, and that's why I love working with people who offer services and they've been doing one to one work or even one to many work in a group program so that we can pull some of that experience and bring that into the course product. So that is an essential component of creating an engaging micro course. It has to come from firsthand experience in serving and supporting other people.

Speaker 2: 24:15

If you're just starting off I mean this is just my opinion some people will disagree. You could create a course if you want to. You could solve a problem for yourself first, create a thesis for how that might support other people. But I think that a course product is somewhat of an automation system, right, transferring knowledge without your personal time. And so why not test it, improve it out with real humans before you go and create that course product and spend the time, effort and energy to create it?

Speaker 1: 24:49

I'm glad you said that, because when I started, I remember I would look for popular themes and topics, what's trending right. You can easily find that out. You go to UW or you can look at any type of course topic that's trending. Personal branding is one of the hottest topics. The problem that I see is that it's not a win-win situation. It could be very much like I'm monetizing the audience that is listening to me right now and that's it.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:30

And also what is this course solving specifically right. So micro courses are a little different than a regular course product. They have to be more hyper specific about the achievements, or like the overall, what I call the podium finish moment. It's challenging to figure that out If you don't have first hand experience or passion for what you're talking about. You're probably not going to go deep enough in order to figure that part out. So that's an important realization for people. You'll know that you've got the right kind of course product when you can see, yes, there are signs that this is working in the marketplace. And I'm passionate about this subject matter. I have experience with this and I've also tested and done this with other people, and so that's a great time. That's when you're at the crossroads and you're like, in my opinion, you're ready for an engaging micro course product. Because, as you know from first hand experience, it can be challenging to structure and organize and find the right ingredients, the right lessons, the right achievements for your course product, especially if you're getting into the weeds.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Whoever is listening to this. I want you to hear this Don't do this alone. Just don't do it, Because it's one of those things where you're already struggling enough to figure out what your zone of genius is. Get alone on top of that, trying to figure out that thread for the long haul right. But how do you bring it all this experience cohesive manner in a way that is going to keep having people coming back for more? You can't just rush to it. I learned that the hard way. So thank you for that, Matt.

Speaker 2: 27:27

I definitely agree with you that it is substantially easier to figure this stuff out in co-creation thought partners and everything that you create will be better. I'm a big advocate for community connected learning experiences and that's the biggest thing that I would want the audience to take away is like. Some of the stuff we've been talking about is challenging, so we'll just be realistic about that.

Speaker 2: 27:55

So why not seek out support and guidance, connection and community with other people so that you can figure this stuff out? Because I think a lot of people will want to make the transition from their full-time job into self-employment, because there's an aspect of something that's holding them back, that feels stuck and stagnant. They don't necessarily have the purpose and fulfillment in their work, and I'm seeing this as a common theme across the board in a lot of conversations with people that people want more purpose and meaning in their work, and we deserve it as human beings. So why not strive to do that and do the hard thing, get beneath the surface and work alongside other people who are on the journey with you?

Speaker 1: 28:39

What I've found is that you're absolutely right If you're in that space, if you're in that spot in your life where you're like I'm going to figure this out on my own and I'm just going to do it until I break, until I lose time, revenue, sanity, all those things, and by the time you're just burned out. You're so burned out that Need an energizing vision.

Speaker 1: 29:07

You need an energizing vision. More on that later. Okay, folks, we're going to leave you with that, but before we close out the episode, I want to just ask you one final thing, matt. What are you excited working on these days, and what do you want people to know about?

Speaker 2: 29:25

I want to give the audience one more takeaway. Okay, because what we've been talking about is weaving all of these things into. We're using different labels Zone of genius, a thread, a core topic we essentially mean the same thing it's having something clear, specific and focused, and the benefit of doing this work is that you will have a simpler business model. Simple doesn't mean easy, but simple can relieve some of the pressures of all of the things that you need to learn and do and make the world a little bit less noisy and overwhelming when you figure this out. So it is worth it and I want to encourage people to pursue it, and that's what I'm most excited about moving forward.

Speaker 2: 30:20

I'm building my own course products. I'm going to launch a YouTube channel. I'm going to launch a community. There's a lot to take on there. It wouldn't be possible if I didn't have a core topic for my own business that I was super passionate about. That was connected with an energizing vision for the future, because I do want to disrupt in terms of improving how we transfer knowledge between human beings and helping adults succeed and thrive in what they do, whether they choose to have a job or build a business. That's what I'm most passionate about.

Speaker 1: 30:58

Wow yeah, excellent takeaway. Thank you so much, matt. This has been a fantastic, just a blast recording this episode with you. Make sure you visit my site. All the show notes, the links will be dropped and don't forget to check out Matt on LinkedIn posting awesome content.

Speaker 2: 31:18

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Speaker 1: 31:20

Thank you. Check out free resources and information on each episode where we share show notes, by visiting to my website, wwwhumairaachtercom. Please don't forget to leave a review for this podcast. Your ratings will also help other listeners to spread the word. Until then, please take care, and I will see you next time.