Book review - Sarah Cordiner “Awaken Your Course Creation Mojo: Beat Procrastination and Fire Up Your Course Creation Motivation” (published in 2017)

I just finished reading Sarah’s book, in which she writes about the challenges of the future and already experienced online course creators. She clearly identifies obstacles on the way of the online course creation process, such as low confidence, lack of knowledge, lack of motivation, fear, lack of support, lack of experience, lack of focus, and many other excuses. Throughout the book, Sarah describes her own stories and examples from her experience, which she uses to elaborate on how she handled situations when she “met face to face” with the obstacles and challenges. She admits that there were many times when she doubted herself and her work, but her learners and clients' testimonials provided her incredibly reach wealth of evidence and support to continue her work. She also describes that finding support in her staff and family is of utmost importance for balancing the reality and sometimes overreacted situations.

Sarah devotes a particular chapter to intellectual property rights and stealing ideas, which happens to us, offline and online course creators, trainers and coaches. Even though she is not a legal expert and strongly advises us to consult one if we want to be legally protected, she does provide some handy tips on how to address this issue. For example, putting a time and date always when we publish something online, which then becomes proof that we have published the content first. Another very strategic advice is to make the trainings in “talking head” video format because this will show our face on the screen; and also to add a link to our website on each slide so that those watching the video have the information where to find us. Interestingly, Sarah writes, that the coin can be turned around as well, meaning that, if we do not share our content and knowledge publically, out of the fear that we will be copied, we are actually thieves; we are taking away the knowledge and wisdom from those who desperately need it.

One of the book's messages is that we, as course creators, are responsible for making our work visible and public, helping those in need, and cherishing our knowledge and wisdom to be who we truly are. Because people will buy our courses because of us, of our personality and willingness to help and support them; the quality of the content and the way how it is delivered is still more valued than a pure technical fancy outline and output of the course.

I will end this book review with a citation from Sarah’s book:

“We live in a world of constant change and if what we offer does not change with it, we’ll be hanging out with the Fail-saurus-rex pretty quickly.

Everything is ever-evolving. There is absolutely no such thing as an instantaneous perfect idea or success.

Everything has to be trialled, tested, tweaked, iterated and improved as it passes through the passage of time.”

The above words should be a reminder that if we are waiting for a perfect idea, the perfect course title, perfect camera and video, we are actually procrastinating and not moving forward. We can not expect that our first attempts will be perfect, and we have to find the courage to step into the learning process and allow the transformation to occur.

I highly recommend the book to those who need a well-structured elaboration of the reasons why they should start creating an online course.

The book is rich in content that will help you jump over your procrastination syndrome and provide you with simple yet effective tips and strategies to overcome your over-thinking and over-postponing.

Welcome to the world of learning new skills for a successful online course creation journey!

If you would like to find out more about Sarah’s work, you can visit her website: www.sarahcordiner.com or join her Facebook group “Entrepreneur to Edupreneur – Course Creators”.

Sarah also leads an online course “Concept to Course in 30 days” with group coaching and support in a Facebook group for those who have an intention to learn how the develop and create an online course. If you would like to join, please use this link.

If you would like to discover and learn how to use Active Campaign to master the automation, use this link to discover more. In addition, if Swipe Automations sound even more interesting to you, use this link to learn more.