One of my favourite Scriptures speaks about how God calls things that are not as though they already are.

Not to liken our creative work to the genesis of the universe, but there’s a principle here that works well when we are developing our training materials.

Begin with the end in mind.

Determine Your Outcome Before You Begin

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This month, we’ve really been talking about sharing your worth with the world, getting your message out there and particularly around the idea of online training or teaching online courses, delivering digital content to an audience in a way that’s helpful and beneficial and builds them up and helps them fulfil what they believe God has placed in their heart. That’s really our job as teachers, trainers, pastors, those who are called to that work of equipping the Saints for their particular works of ministry across so many different spheres of influence.

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That’s what we are called to do. And today, I just want to talk about the whole concept of determining your outcome before you begin. One of my favourite scriptures and I have many, but talks about how God calls things that are not as though they already were. You know, he spoke light into being before light existed. He determine the outcome before he began. And Romans 4 verse 17, reads, God who quick and the dead.

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And calls those things that be not as though they were. So he calls things into existence. He begins with the end in mind. Now, it would be a far stretch for me to and that little courses and various trading products that I create to the cosmic work of Genesis. But but there is a principle here, okay, that I’m going to draw out for you today that I think will help if you are developing your own training materials.

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And that is simply this, begin with the end in mind, not your end, but the end for your student, for the people you are looking to train and help and benefit and lift up. Focus on outcomes, not just incomings. And again, I’m talking from the end user perspective, the incomings would be all of the content that they consume from within your course. Now, that’s all good. But sometimes we can be so focussed as the trainer, as the provider on providing a volume of content that we forget that it’s not actually the incomings that the student is looking for.

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What they are looking for are outcomes. What is the result that your audience can expect because of their investment with you? You know, obviously there is an investment of time to consume the content potentially and investment of their money to purchase the course or resource that you’re offering. But the real currency here, I believe, is the currency of trust. Your customer, your student, your your audience has invested because they trust you to lead them to an expected and desired outcome.

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And I think, you know, without really wanting to sound negative, although I probably am a little jaded by the whole online kind of world in some respects. And I’m sure that many of you who are listening would be able to relate and concur that there is a lot of fanfare out there, you know, and there’s so many inflated promises. You have so many of the courses and sales pages really leave a lot of people marooned on this island of despondency because they begin with this big bang of hope, following after the promises of untold riches from the press of a button.

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And they end with a whimper of disappointment or they begin great but fall off because actually the content has been geared more for just mere consumption as opposed to clear application. I mean, I’ve been there on many occasions. I am totally guilty of that. And I’m certain that maybe you are, too, to varying degrees, you know. So I just really encourage you not to be the person who overpromises and under delivers, but to really lean to the opposite side of that.

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And that doesn’t mean just over deliver in volume what we want to over deliver on our results for our end users, for our students. And so with. In the frame, it gives us all the more reason to clearly define the deliverables from the training products that we create, so many promotions tend to weigh on the financial outcomes and and puff up the dollar pay off. If you buy this, then you will X, Y, said and then they have some kind of disclaimer at the bottom of the page, like making it clear that these results are not typical.

00:05:31.440]
Really, the these results are not typical. Should be the headline. If the sales page were going to be like absolutely honest because the results do not come by accident. You know, if we were to if we were to really put ourselves in a brick and bull, brick and mortar on the ground business and come to that business with the same mindset that oftentimes we or others come to the online space with, we would really think that person needed the head examined.

00:06:11.730]
You know, they’d come and they’d say, well, I want to spend a tiny amount of money. I want to expend minimal effort and virtually no time. And I but I also want a remarkable financial deluge on return as a return for that pitiful investment, you know, and you know, and then it’s really just this cycle of shiny object, shiny object, shiny object, shiny object that actually in the end really depletes the confidence of so many.

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You know, they just they they lose confidence that they can actually make a difference because they try all of these things. And instead of recognising that maybe the the premise on which they entered into a particular course or a particular action. Yeah, they took action. They bought something expecting a result when it doesn’t transpire the way they’d hoped. It’s very easy for us, for others, for the consumer to think that something in them is broken as opposed to the way the content has been delivered or presented in and say that’s not to say miracles don’t happen.

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And I mean, I’m a living testament to like the fact that there can be a stellar return on investment when you kind of find your your niche, when you find your mojo or whatever you want to call it and begin to get traction and begin to gain confidence as you put yourself out into the online world. But there the thing is, it is always going to be a return on investment. You know, and this is the key word here, investment and the investment here is not the money that you spend on a course.

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You know, it’s not a slot machine. Yeah. The investment is what you expend in effort after the purchase and then begin to diligently apply what you learn. The purchase really is just a threshold where the real investment then begins, you know, and as the course creator, you want to do your best to ensure after someone has come into your world, someone has jumped onto your training, your coaching, your mastermind, whatever it may be.

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You want to really look to a speed and smooth the process as much as you are able to actually help them get a result. And like a tangible result from their investment of time and energy and thought and and trust, as I say, you know, and sometimes and I’ve made this mistake on the the provider side of things that really I’ve just piled an Everest high like pile of content thinking that that constituted value or he has fifteen courses and he is fifty five pdf and etc, etc.

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But really, you know, certainly if I’ve learnt anything and this is what I would like to kind of impart on this session, is that it’s not volume is not really the key of value and yeah, not the volume of stuff really. Consider the outcomes that you can cultivate for your students, lay the ground as smoothly as possible for them to quickly move to tangible. Results with new found knowledge and skills look for ways to bakin milestones that allow them to apply those skills even as part of your learning pathway, you know.

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And so what is it you could teach online and what will be the tangible outcomes? Not for you. Yeah, but for your students. That is always going to be the emphasis in my publishing and writing business. I’m always like the key factor. Reader, reader, reader in the online training space. The key factor student, student, student. Yeah, it’s what they want. That is the important thing. And so you don’t have to offer a balloon to bag full of vague promises, fantastical, happy ever afters and a gazillion different items in the in the centre bag for them to get lost in and snowed under, you know, because really a lot of these actually obscure the purpose of your course.

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People just feel overwhelmed, don’t know where to go, do know what to do next and kind of fall off the wagon. So instead, try and make your promises concrete, manageable, quantifiable, and focus on outcome, outcome, outcome. And then when you’re creating your inflow. Yeah. The content that you plan to deliver in and through your course, you know, you’ll be thinking all the time about the student and how you can ensure that they are streamlined, that your content is streamlined and onpoint.

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So each each section, each module, each each part of your training actually leads them one more step to their desired outcome. Yeah. So, I mean, hopefully that was helpful. It was really just sharing some of my thoughts on my experience around the whole online teaching and training arena. But if you are planning to or you are currently creating content that you want to put out to help build, bless and train and teach other people, certainly this is useful to remember.

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Yeah, it may just be a reminder for you, but focus on the outcome, not for you, but for your student. Well, thanks for listening, hopefully. It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.