<h2>My Big Why</h2>
My big reason why, is so that I can spend time with my family, I can take them on holiday and give my wife the time off she won’t currently take (as she wants me to achieve my goals) – I want to get to a stage where I can provide her  the time to invest, as all of my time will be free’d up due to the courses I’ve created.

I also want to inspire and show musicians and guitarists who aren’t as confident, who are worried that they’re not good enough that not only they’re good enough, but give them the tools that means they can get out of a tight spot in their learning to find all the answers they need using science and information that they wouldn’t believe would work.

I want to show that talent is something that is there and available for everyone, it’s not something that is only given to “few” it’s something that can and is built over time, and that with subtle changes to what they do, it can be done!

To bring clarity to a saturated market of “guitar teachers” who have the skills but don’t know how to show it – to not just help beginners but also people who have been working for YEARS at their craft that their skills are amazing and to hopefully reduce the feeling that they are:

never good enough

To not only teach/preach the mindset, but also the real life exercises and skills that actually make a difference to their playing.

I thought i’d do a proper update as well here – apologies if I’m posting to much!

So I’ll admit I’ve been slacking (more like to worried to try…)

I wanted to really kickstart my course. I told my dad last week about my course, and he asked me this week how the progress was going. I was almost ashamed that I said it wasn’t….

It’s half term now in the UK, and so that means my lovely two monsters are off of school, which we’re all relieved with.

I thought, to add a little bit back to every I’d share what I’ve been doing to keep me accountable to everything within the eCourse adventure.

I binge-watched a LOT of the live calls recently, and they were just so fascinating, although some are older, it was still serious gold. I took so many notes with the call with Ted Hardgrave:

and that’s just for starters, I also discovered Moneylab.co (which I think was from another call here…) and then I rediscovered Asana, and the course on Asana for Bloggers that Matt created was amazing, he really does take a similar outlook to marketing as we do, and does things just that little bit different, which I loved!

So with that, I went a little Asana crazy and setup Asana for both the two blogs I’m working on (one of which will eventually be where I host my eCourses) and then thought, hey…I need to get myself going with the eCourse Adventure…so let’s create one and use the map steps as part of my tasks and here it is:

This has really helped push me a little harder to finish something rather than just keep putting it off, as I can set a deadline and it appears on my Today list, and I need that list clear…I am funny like that.

Also, installed FocusMe to help me to take breaks, and keep me focused when I need it! As I truly wouldn’t otherwise! It’s such a good tool, and also really does make me stop:

It’s evil, yet effective! 🙂

Also, taking a moment of reflection to really say how much I love this place! @bradleytmorris and everyone else makes it so easy to work towards goals, with replying even when everything is quiet in the area! It’s refreshing to visit a community that just doesn’t go quiet and everyone is so supportive, and it feel real, it doesn’t feel forced, no one appears to have an alternative agenda it’s all about helping others to create the Greatest eCourse EVER! 🙂

Anyway, back to Mapora Meadows for me…

Journey Mapping

Bradley Morris wrote:

Man, you are making some serious traction here Jonathan. I love your reasons for being here and where you’re going with the guitar course. To break it down more simply for your first FREE course. What is an entry point. What is ONE simple skill that you could teach a beginnger that would help them improve their playing 3-10x? 

There are so many, I just gotta focus that down as much as possible! 🙂

Bradley Morris wrote:

What hack or tip could you teach that would start them on their learning journey? Where do you start newbies coming to you for lessons? I’m sure you have a lot of magic and secret sauce recipes that you’re doing with clients that you aren’t even aware of. Really start thinking about all of hte little ways that you help people go “AH-HA I get it, I can do it!”

Going on from what I said, I was giving some thought yesterday and this morning, and I know that when my students start, they really struggle with changing between open chords. They can play their simple open chords, but when they try to change between them, they struggle and find it incredibly hard to actually do so. Although there are some small snippets and resources on HOW to change between chords in songs, it’s a very simple:

Play slowly

This in itself, isn’t incorrect, but it’s not just play slowly, its much more complex than that, you can’t just “play really slowly” and it’ll fix itself, whilst playing slowly you’ve got to become almost “hyper aware” of where your fingers are moving and WHY they’re moving, and HOW it works.

So I wonder whether a youtube video or course on that might be useful. 🙂

A lot of the feedback I’ve been getting and seeing over the internet, is how much fluff is on youtube lessons, where there is a lot of talking and not very much playing, with my walk in the park/free experience I’ve got to consider whether it’ll be better to do one longer video, or break it up. As the most efficient way to learn is to break things up. Quite possibly overthinking a lot of it, but any advice on making your course (free or otherwise) creative but not making it too much? How do you create a balance with creating a creative story, and not overstuffing it? Or would this kinda be covered by ensuring you script things? 🙂

Bradley Morris wrote:

Another idea. I love the idea of breaking songs down the way you described. You could essentially have EACH SONG be its’ own mini course. They could be ranked on level of difficutly. You could break the steps down into mini steps and kind of have a promise along the lines of “Learn X song in 3-weeks with just 15-minutes per day” or something. These are super tangible guarantees that people would be like, “YEAH, I Want that!”

Now that is a really cool idea, and that might be a really nice way of developing my free work into a shorter course, once I’ve got the hang of the skills I’m going to need! 🙂 that’s such a good idea…and is what people want, so damn much! I can already figure out a few songs that would work quite well for this… as well as how to setup an idea behind the email marketing as well, as daily practice is something that’s imperative with learning a song efficiently. So… that idea could be created via a short email style course. That way they’d get a daily email with a practice tip and reminder…hmmm.

My brain is going crazy right now with ideas! 🙂

xbobby wrote:

Maybe they come to a music school where there is a different room where they can learn different things. Start with one room, one thing, and focus only one that room, so it does not feel too big, at the beginning. Just focus on one task at the time in the beginning. Do expect that it should be perfect, think about to learn what you need to be good to make eCourses. That is a better goal to have.

I really like the idea of a “Music School” – that would be kinda fun! 🙂 and I can already think of the first room, it would based around a practice triangle which is loosely based on Gibbs Reflective Cycle.

This is just exciting. Pure and simple exciting.:) Thanks to both of your for your amazing ideas, and insights! 🙂