Andy Freist 8 years, 3 months ago-
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My business is Signal Fire Coaching, so I am heading up to Launch Summit to light a signal fire on this mountain.
I have found a climbing buddy. Thanks to Cristin for climbing her mountain in tandem with me.
I settled into Basecamp and reviewed my Intentions at Reflection Pond.
Checking in for the briefest of checkins at Mapora Meadows this week before taking the rest of the week off before setting off for the next stage of the trek.
So far, all of the work other than finding a buddy and checking in with the community of adventurers here has been a question of taking things I have already been working on or thinking about and integrating them into the Great eCourse Adventure. I know that there is new material and new work waiting for me around a corner. I just don’t know which corner yet.
I am excited to set forth and find the edges where I must grow beyond my current limits to succeed and glad to have companions for the places where I know the terrain will be rough and my progress slow.
I can see the smoke signals from here Kate. We’re excited to lead you beyond those edges and find the nuggets of wisdom and creativity that will make for eCourse Creation gold on your journey. I’m sure you’ll find a whole ton of clarity with the Mapora Meadows lessons and tons more when we get to Architekt Forest in January!
Happiest new years celebrations to you!
I keep running into teachers who seem to think that they need to present themselves with barker-like enthusiasm and the shouting, hyperbolic presentation makes it harder to pick out any useful content in the material.
Keeping this note as a reminder to trust my competence and not justify myself with hype – rather, prove the value of what I have to offer by presenting it directly and without subterfuge. The Barker persona is not playful – it is manipulative and annoying and sends people away.
Playful means holding things lightly, allowing silliness and humour to be present throughout, allowing people to show up as people not roles and personas, and engaging their full capacity as creative and resourceful.
Genuine enthusiasm is contagious. When the material is good, it doesn’t need to be oversold.
I have skill sets from my coaching training and my InterPlay leadership that I can lean into when fear pushes me to overdo things.
I have experiences in my body that I can remember to remind myself of the power I have to transform people’s lives when I show up fully without trying to influence them beyond presenting information they may not have and then asking powerful questions about how that information intersects with their current experience and knowledge base. It may be harder to connect with people in an automated course setting, but it is not impossible and it should be my goal.
So excited to be into Architekt Forest.
I came into this course with the intention to build a course so I can let go of teaching the material and I am aware of really good reasons for doing it. And, my growing sense that I have already moved past the point at which I am passionate about the project is interesting to observe. In order to connect with the course emotionally, I will need to find a deeper why and reconnect with my longings for the future students of the course to have the skills that I will be teaching them.
When I shift my focus from the students I have taught in the past and to the people who are active in my present life who could use these skills in service of their dreams, I reignite my desire to share this knowledge with them. These people are people who I am supporting in other ways now, but who I would want to take on as private students of this material if I still wanted to deliver the material in that time intensive way. When I think of the course as a way of making the material available to them without sacrificing my careers goals, I become excited about the course in a new way.
And the idea that I will be learning how to build an eCourse that I can use late to teach the material I am currently excited about to people who can’t afford private coaching or aren’t ready to invest in the profound transformation that individual coaching can evoke is also thrilling.
I love hearing your excitement @kate_arms, your eCourses are going to be such a gift to those who want to work with you but can’t afford the private work. You’ll be surprised (and thrilled) at how many discover you online via your eCourse and choose to upgrade to your private work as well 🙂
Welcome to Architekt Forest!!!
The questions on WHO this course is for were extremely revealing. I worked through similar questions when I started offering the one on one training/coaching package that this eCourse is based on, but there is a new clarity to the answers now. Interestingly, the new answers are bringing the course more into alignment with the overall set of products and services that I offer and is making me think about offering the package as a live package again from this new perspective. I will need to sit with that and see what comes up. Maybe a day-long, group workshop instead of personal training so that I get the deep person-to-person contact that I love without having to dedicate so many hours to just this product.
The questions about what Transformation the course will create were also very revealing. I feel like marketing copy wrote itself as I answered them.
haha I love the clarity that’s coming through for you @kate_arms
I’m sure as you go through the next exercises, even more will be revealed!
Keep meditating, journaling and pondering.
Finished Up Architekt Forest with a real sense that I know where this course is going and starting to have some ideas about look and feel.
The big challenge with this material for me is creating the activities that will bring students the experiential learning that I gave my 1-1 clients through exercises I lead them through and witnessed them doing. Trying to decide how much I want the course to rely on people buddying up in pairs (like we did here) and how much I want to structure group interaction opportunities that cover the same material.
I am definitely contemplating the ways this might be part of a package that I can offer at several levels, a basic course with group interaction and buddies they find within the group; the course with a live group learning component; and the course with a personal coaching component. Or maybe the course is the foundation and then I offer group follow-up opportunities. Lots to ponder, but none of this is front and centre at the moment.
Loving the clarity and the potential of offering different levels. My suggestion based on pervious experiences of offering levels. Do your best to stick TWO options. Basic + Premium.
Too many choices often means confusion and then no choice is made.
Curious if you could write down a list of POSSIBLE exerices. Just have a creative mind dump (LOL that sounds funny) and throw down every possible experience you could facilitate. Here or on paper.
Another thing i like to do when trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together is go for a really long hike up in the mountains or in the forest with my journal and just talk out loud to myself. Try it 🙂
The third thing I’d recommend thinking about is: What would you have wanted for support if you were coming to you for this eCourse?
High five. You’re doing great and more clarity to come!
Thanks for the questions and thoughts, @bradleytmorris.
Some journaling and improvisational creativity is in order.
Finishing up Creatora Heights. Getting tag lines is always a piece of building a product/service that I hate, so I am hoping for some feedback round the campfire.
I have been struggling with the thematic elements of the course I am building because I always bring creativity to my work AND my ideal clients respond to the fact that my presentation is fundamentally professional (I am a former lawyer afterall). The straight-forward presentation from a corporate professional with blue hair is sufficiently wild for my ideal clients. I have to ease them gently into creativity. So, the theme needs to be subtle – water in the form of blues, greens, and swooshes that look kind of like waves. Demons/monsters that get vanquished need to be addressed in clearly metaphorical ways with an underpinning of scientific skepticism.
Getting really clear on who I want to reach with this is helping me see how this will fit into the body of work I offer. Â This course is for people who want a less structured and rigid way of engaging in business and this could be the first step towards them becoming Recovering Serious People – who are the clients I love to coach most in my 1-1 and group practice.
Brilliant Kate! You definitely know who you are and what you’re people need.
I completely agree, sharing your theme in language, metaphors and subtle colours will be perfect. I think you can also bring the theme to life via the Handouts you provide your tribe.
As for taglines, that’s one of my favourites.
Do you have 10 completely different ones you’ve thought up? If so, share away and we’ll have some fun!
Happy September @kate_arms! Wondering how the year is going and if your’e ready to make your way back to the campfire. We’d love to help you get back into it and launch your course. How can @andyfreist and I help. Excited to get a smoke signal from you, hearing how things are going.
Been on hiatus trying to figure out if/how the ecourse fits into my coaching business as it is evolving and starting to explore on camera options.
Still not sure where things are going.
Hi Kate! great to hear from you. Glad to hear your coaching biz is growing and evolving.
If you wanna talk out loud here to try and work things out in your mind about how it could all work, then by all means. Would love to help.
Another option would be getting on one of our Q & A calls and coming on camera with Andy and I. We could hash it out then and brainstorm the possibilities.
I know my courses were a huge asset to my coaching business. ALL my clients had to go through my meditation courses if I was to work with them. The meditation courses also had tons of journaling exercises, visioning process and strategy sessions that I created.
So they’d do the course and then we’d do the deep dive coaching sessions on top of it.
It was invaluable and freed up tons of my time, while bringing a lot more value to my coaching business.
If you have any questions about this, let me know.
Hope it’s been a great year for you thus far.
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