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✋🏽 Course Creators Weekly #56 🗓 July 19th, 2021 - How to stand the f*** out

Louis Grenier talks with Joe Glover about radical differentiation, Rob Hardy shares a 5-step process for finding your niche, and I call BS on course completion rates!

How to stand the f*** out How to stand the f*** out
📹 Video + ✏️ Article 🎁 Positioning

How to stand the f*** out

Louis Grenier meets with Joe Glover to share his story and tell us how we can radically stand out in a saturated market. This is an amazing talk that's worth listening to whether you're building your personal brand as a creator or positioning your SaaS product.

1. Get rid of your self-limiting beliefs

  • 🙋🏾
    Standing out is risky—of course, but you must take risks, or you may never get noticed
  • ↙️
    Going against the grain is scary, but you don't stand out by accepting the status quo
  • 🤷🏼
    Failing to focus on ONE thing because you're afraid of missing out, leads to mediocrity

2. Pick a direction

  • 1️⃣
    Define your ONE purpose—without this, you'll end up saying 'yes' to everything
  • 📰
    Write your own obituary in 12 words or less, as a business or as an individual
  • 🤙🏻
    Ask people who know you, to tell you what they think your unique ability is

3. Obsess over your customers

  • 🧠
    Understand the psychology of human behaviour and how we make decisions
  • 🗣️
    Talk to at least 3 customers—act like a journalist, not a sales person
  • 🎤
    Apply "Jobs to Be Done" to understand their story—ask great questions
  • 🗺️
    Go to the edge of the map—look for extreme desires, pains, triggers, disliked clichés

4. Identify the status quo

  • ⚓
    Identify and lean against the status quo—use it to position and differentiate yourself
  • ⛩
    Think and look beyond direct competitors for the status quo
  • 👎🏽
    Don't hate the players, hate the game—don't make enemies

5. Engineer your uniqueness

  • 💎
    Plot everything you do that bring value to people
  • ❌
    Remove anything that's against your purpose, or
  • 💛
    …not the thing your customers love (use what customers have told you), or
  • 😬
    …are considered clichés, or
  • 😫
    …doesn't solve your customer's biggest pain
  • ➕
    Add what serves your purpose, that customers love, or solves the biggest pain
  • ⚖️
    Remove more than you add—it's more impactful

6. Show it to the world

  • 💬
    Be radically clear: use your customer's own words
  • 🎁
    Be radically generous—share everything you know, for free
  • 😎
    Be radically confident—challenge the status quo with authority

Joe Glover has also written an accompanying blog post with his own summary. Check it out to learn more! 👇🏻

🔗 Louis Grenier + Joe Glover via themarketingmeetup.com

P.S. Louis shares plenty of examples throughout, especially starting at 34:50 with a case study of his own podcast, Everyone Hates Marketers. They also start a Q&A at 44:31 that's worth listening to if you're curious to learn more.

A process for finding your niche A process for finding your niche
✏️ Article 🙌 Building an Audience

A process for finding your niche

Rob Hardy shares a 5-step process for finding your niche.

  • 🔍
    Audit yourself—brainstorm niche ideas that fit in with your identity and passions
  • 💡
    Form a hypothesis—pick an idea that pulls you the most emotionally, to start validating
  • 🗂
    Research—build out a database (Market Map) of the major players in the niche
  • 🤿
    Dive deeper—once you've validated a niche, immerse yourself in it to ensure it fits you
  • ✋🏽
    Commit—make the commitment to show up and serve your people generously

Check out Rob's article to go much more in depth. Seriously, there's a lot in there! 👇🏻

🔗 Rob Hardy via ungated.media
Course completion rates are bullsh*t Course completion rates are bullsh*t
⚛️ Atomic Essay 🎉 Student Success

Course completion rates are bullsh*t

We seem obsessed with completion rates of online courses, and I don't like it.

  • 🤷🏻‍♂️
    What does "completion" even mean? Attend every session? Do every assignment?
  • 😵
    Completion rates distract us from what truly matters: transformation of individuals
  • 📋
    Survey your students at regular intervals over weeks, months, or even years
  • 🏅
    Challenge yourself to collect as many success stories as you can—that's your success
🔗 Merott via twitter.com

P.S. If you enjoyed this short essay, I'd appreciate a ❤️ or a retweet! 😉

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Hey, I'm Merott 👋🏻

I'm an indie maker and freelance web developer from London.

I'm building my own business, because I'm terrible at following other people, and because I want my work to matter. I hope it will, to you and to your students.

Making progress, slowly and steadily, I'm also documenting and tweeting my journey every Monday @merott .

Thanks for visiting!

Merott