🧠 skill recordings creator vision

This is a collection of thoughts around the nature of our business from November 2018 and what it might look like going forward. Some of it was implemented, some not! Posting it here for posterity.

We help content creators build a “community brand” around their knowledge, experience, and desire to help other people learn and grow in their careers.

We coach, mentor, and provide material support for the content creators that are the foundation of egghead.

• help content creators build an audience
• support building a personal website
• assist with creation of email list
• provide content strategy assistance eliminating “what am I going to write/screencast about” syndrome
• monthly coaching/strategy sessions

Our goal is to help content creators gain independence, confidence, and a comfortable sustainable living from their hard won skills.

We want to help creators help others.

We want creators to have the freedom to work on what they want, if they want.

We want to see creators fulfilled with their work and excited about the amazing opportunities when they separate HAVING to work from doing good work.

content creator recruiting and onboarding

Over the years we’ve continuously improved our content creator recruiting and on-boarding. It’s become progressively less convoluted, stressful, and confusing.

The current process has some tiny baby automation. We want to still provide a human experience, but instead of focusing on the repetitive manual crap, we want to focus on quality feedback, encouragement, and making sure this is a good fit for everybody.

There will be a bit of friction involved for the new content creator candidate. Before they are invited, we want to see an application, survey, and demo lesson completed within a deadline.

https://whimsical.co/7JHmWKoGmY5ywT95NZac4L

When a content creator is accepted, we will begin working with them on their content strategy and how they will progress though the different levels of content and align their goals for the short and long term.

If a candidate is not accepted, we will provide constructive feedback and give them guidance in how they might improve. They will be invited to re-apply after a period of TBD time.

Plan of Action

When a content creator is accepted the first thing that we will do is use the information that we know about the individual and build a tailored Plan of Action.

The Plan of Action will be presented in a Zoom call.

We want to know their level of commitment and what they want to get out of teaching. We want to give them a tour of process and answer any questions.

We will discuss the deadline for their first lesson and lay out a baseline content strategy for them for two months based on their level of commitment.

We will discuss the habit of content creation to help them stay consistent and meet their goals.

We will discuss their personal website, and how it can be weaved into the overall strategy we are helping them to create.

Our initial application and survey funnel process should arm us with information that we can use for discussion and personalization of their Plan of Action

Coaching Sessions

We are going to always provide support in Slack, but we are also going to provide more direct 1 on 1 human interaction into the on-boarding process.

We will start with weekly scheduled 15-30min coaching sessions.

As the content creator progressions we will work towards monthly 30 minute coaching sessions.

These sessions are to discuss progress, road blocks, goals, and deadlines. We can screen share on technical issues, review what progress has been made, and talk about the “absolute must have” for the next week.

Content Deadlines

One of the biggest complaints we face is content creators not knowing where their content sits and when it will be released.

This is a side effect of zero deadlines.

Deadlines are good. They provide a clear goal post. They make work plan-able. If you don’t have deadlines, things are squishy front to back.

The only thing that creates sustainable motivation is results, and a desire for more results, to bring the thing into being, and to get the rewards of people using it, buying it, making money, etc.

Celebrating Wins

We want to encourage and celebrate content creator wins. At certain milestones we will honor and reward content creators for being a badass.

• screenflow license
• personal coaching
• gear
• sticker packs
• t-shirts
• printed and framed course art
• ???

Community Brand Development

We will help the new content creator build an audience that is filled with folks that they enjoy and full appreciate the culture and message the content creator wants to build.

• build a personal website optimized for brand development
• get an email list started
• create a content strategy for 6-12 months out
• coordinate with development of video content

Content Progression

There will be a defined content progression and a roughly scheduled timeline to get to the final level.

We want to provide a tangible path to success, and support content creators as far as they want to go, with the end goal being autonomy, independence, and an audience of folks that are truly helped by the content that they create.

Level 01 - Lessons, Blog, and Email list

Lessons are the core atom. A lesson is a single concept. It is a nugget of knowledge. It is a video/screencast. It is a blog post. It is an email newsletter. It is concise and delivers value all on it’s own.

Lessons will be delivered according to a defined content schedule.

Level 02 -Playlists

Playlist are a logical combination or group of lessons. They take a group of individual concepts into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The defined content schedule will have milestones for releasing playlists.

Playlists will be used to test and refine content for future courses.

Playlists can also remain playlists forever as desired.

Level 03 - Courses

The course takes the playlist concept to the next level by providing ample supplementary material and preplanning to create a structured, vetted, and incredibly useful experience to the individuals that are consuming the course.

Courses require a commitment to excellence and a willingness to do the hard work, but with plenty of support to get it done so the content creator can focus on creating the badass content.

• have strict timelines/deadlines
• require additional audience research
• proposal requirements will be more strictly enforced and discussed
• pre-release cycle as a playlist to get member feedback via live broadcast sessions (by the content creator or staff)
• design support for examples
• exercises
• “do it yourself” project templates
• video editing service provided

Level 05 - Workshops (wbaas)

Beyond courses we will work with select content creators to launch workshop class content.

A workshop is a collection of courses, so all of the requirements of course production will apply, but at a larger scale.

• require individual contracts and have exclusivity restrictions for a period of time.
• launched on their own domain
• receive extensive design, development, and marketing support. The cost of this support will be shared by egghead and content producer and treated similar to an advance.
• creators will need an existing audience
• egghead will provide audience building support as required and handle setup of email list and content strategy
• will first be presented, module by module, as virtual 4 hour workshops. These will be paid access contribute partially to the production costs of the workshop. Will also be used for promotion/goodies/bonuses
• (optional) in-person workshop “tours”

Level 06 - The Golden Glow

At this point the content creator has a network. A catalog. A graph of content that is providing streams of revenue and are supporting the content creator 100%.

Autonomy and independence have been unlocked.

Life is good. 💖