Should You Be A Qualified Authority To Teach An Online Course?

A few years ago, a group of my friends and I all decided to treat ourselves to a special experience to lift our moods after what had been a tough few weeks.

We all chipped in and privately hired a boat to take us out on a sunset cruise around our local shoreline (Broome, Western Australia).

On that boat something incredible happened….

Out of nowhere, two beautiful Humpback whales appeared from out of the deep and circled playfully around our boat.

It was unbelievable.

Here’s a video I live-streamed of this magnificent experience:

We were utterly blown away and were captivated by their magnificence.

There we were just moments before, completely oblivious to the magic that remained hidden out of sight under the surface. 

We had no idea that they existed and weren’t even looking for them until they came out and showed themselves.  

When they did, they wowed us, we wanted them to stay and show us more.

Being in business is very similar to this.

I see so many experts and entrepreneurs hide away, out of sight, afraid to come out and show the world that they exist and share their magnificence with the world.

They worry that they are not good enough, not famous enough, not qualified enough, not followed enough or experienced enough to bust through the surface and make a splash in their industry.

Whilst hiding away under the surface might be comfortable, it’s certainly not going to help anyone – especially you and your business.  

When you go out there and show yourself, show people what you’ve got – you will wow them and they will be left wanting more.

If you don’t, they will be oblivious that you even exist at all.

In this article I share a few tips around taking a deep breath, coming to the surface and making a splash in your industry, even if you are worried that you aren’t quite ready yet…..

I’ve been helping experts and entrepreneurs to stand out as a leader in their industries by creating their own online courses for well over a decade now. 

A very common worry I see course creators having is:

• I’m not an authority in my topic yet – what if nobody will listen to me?
• Should I become an industry authority before I launch my course?
• I’m not qualified in my course topic – should I get qualified before I launch my course?

You don’t have to be qualified to have something valuable to share with another human being.

You don’t have to be famous to have something valuable to share with another human being.

You just have to have something of value to give, completely as you are.

That’s it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many entrepreneurs I speak to who are dreaming of making a positive difference to the world, but never seem to get off of the starting line in making it happen.  They just stay there, silently bobbing under the surface, too afraid to rise up and show themselves to the world.

When I ask them why they haven’t done anything substantial to get their message out there yet, I very often get the same list of replies:

• “Well, I still have a lot of research to do”,
• “There are so many people out there already doing it that I haven’t quite come with anything special or different enough to stand out yet”
• “I need to get more followers first”
• “I need to do more practice first”
• “I need to wait until I’m seen as an expert before I go out there and start acting like one”…

These are the exact same things I used to tell myself, and as a result, I wasted YEARS of helping others and living the life of my dreams.

Why You Need To Stop Waiting

1. You don’t need to research more NEW stuff.  You just need to start sharing what you already know.
2. Your competition are not you and they cannot be in front of everyone at the exact same time.  They’ve got their boat to swim around, you will have your boat to swim around too.
3. Sharing your expertise IS what gets you your followers.  Sharing what you know, getting your courses created and out to the world is precisely what starts to build your influence for you.
4. You’ve been ‘practising’ your whole entire life.  However ever old you are right now, that is how many years you have been practising for.  You share what you know.  You can ONLY get better at it by doing it.  So start doing it!
5. You don’t become a recognised expert by hiding away and staying out of sight.  You also don’t become an expert by somebody coming along and bopping you on the head with a magic wand.  You become a recognised expert simply by showing up consistently and sharing what you know

Interestingly, it’s always the most intelligent people that doubt themselves the most.  

For their intelligence, knowledge and insight has allowed them the wisdom that there is actually SO much more that they don’t yet know.  

And so they focus on the limitations of their knowledge instead of their already existing abundance of it.

You can do this.

So many highly experienced, talented, skilled and knowledgeable professionals and entrepreneurs never get themselves ‘out there’ or helping the world, because of the feeling of ‘fraud’ that they carry around with them.

((I have a little training video on overcoming imposter syndrome here:  https://sarahcordiner.com/11-ways-beat-self-doubt-imposter-syndrome-creating-online-courses/))

You don’t need to be big and famous to make a big difference.

You don’t need to be a PhD Professor to help people.

You just have to have a little bit of courage to swim up to surface and start showing off what you’ve got.

If you find yourself holding back…

via GIPHY

1. If you hide away, they don’t know that you exist

If your target market cannot see you or hear you, then you quite simply don’t exist.  

They can’t and won’t come looking for you if you don’t splash about, swim around them and show them that you are there.  

You HAVE to go out there to get an audience in the first place.  

2. Remember that you DO have a message

You already know SO much and this knowledge you have is invaluable to others; it has the power to transform lives, businesses and industries – as well as your own business and bottom line; if only you’d just unleash it!!

3. Educating your market makes bank

Be aware that downloading your knowledge from your brain, and sharing with others is THE highest converting method of building a strong and viable business.

I call this ‘edupreneurship’; educating, in a commercially profitable manner.  

It’s business, where everyone’s a winner.

4. Now is the time

Make the most of what you do have NOW

You can share what else you learn later on.

Don’t think you have to wait until you have the perfect recipe, or have attained ALL of the knowledge on planet earth in your topic.  

First of all, not only is that entirely impossible, you couldn’t share it all in one blog post, workshop or tutorial video anyway.  

Just go with what you’ve already got, as it’s more than some people have.

5. Your life lesson are their life lessons

Ask yourself whether you got to where you are in your life today, having not learnt ANYTHING? Of course you have.  

Start by listing 100 things that you think other people should know.  

Whatever comes to your head.  

It could be something you discovered yourself in practice; something you read about or saw on TV; it could be something you heard someone else talk about – anything; personal and/or professional.

6. Break it down

Humpback whales are enormous.  But they eat teeny tiny little plankton.

Create plankton pieces of content.  That makes it nice and esay for you and not so overwhelming.

Plankton makes whales.  Lots micro-pieces of content created over time, eventually creates a huge ecosystem of searchable IP that will show off your magnificence to the world.

Break your knowledge down into micro topics and share it in multiple forms (blogs, videos, articles, audios, webinars etc) piece by piece. 

7. Value is not proportionate to fame

Know that you don’t have to be a globally proclaimed celebrity authority expert in something to have value, information and worthiness to give, share and help others with. 

You simply have to share information about what you DO know how to do, to someone who doesn’t yet know how to do that.

With 7.2 billion people in the world, your chances of finding a few are pretty high.

**Note – to maintain your credibility however, do not promise to give what you cannot deliver; do not say that you are qualified in that topic if you are not; do not mislead people about your experience in any way – be honest with your audience.

8. Mistakes are great content

Regularly remind yourself that you’ve learnt a lot in your life. Probably most through your mishaps and the times that things have gone wrong.  

There are a ton of people out there that are yet to make those mistakes, or trip on those mishaps and are yet to learn the things you have learned, whether you learned them formally or through experience.  

You are doing a selfish disservice to those people if you don’t share your lessons with others.

9. Make it your mission 

Attain a sense of responsibility that it’s your job and your purpose in the world, to help people learn about your topic of expertise; and to help them use that knowledge to make their lives better.

Conclusion

Be the edupreneur – make positive change – profitably!

Educating and informing others in your industry topic automatically positions you as the good guy, the helper, the GURU in what you do.

Disseminating helpful information makes people love you, like you, want more from you, become grateful to you – AND want to pay you for more.

Everyone has something to teach.  

Everyone has some kind of expertise within them that other people want and need.

But to make a difference, we HAVE to breach out from under the surface, show ourselves, make a splash and start sharing what we know today.

Good luck!

Don’t forget to join my Edupreneur Academy if you want to take your industry authority to the next level: https://sarahcordiner.com/edupreneur-academy/

……………………..

PS – I can help you and hold your hand as you rise to the top in your industry with your very own online course.

Come and join my next “Concept To Course: 30 Day Course Creation Group Coaching Program” to create and launch your course in just 30 days.