🗣️ Transcript
Hey there. It’s Glen again. I’ve got a new lesson for you and this one’s called: Why Your “Mission” Matters.
And we’re going to see how aligning your “wants” with a specific course-powered mission is the secret to success.
So here’s what you’ll learn:
- What Tom Cruise can teach you about course creation
- Why not every mission is a good fit for an online course
- How to know what completing your mission requires
So let’s dive in!
We just discussed how you shouldn’t stumble into course creation expecting to get all the possible benefits, instead you should have a clear idea of what specifically you want.
Well, here’s the next piece of the puzzle. You also need to make sure that what you want can realistically be achieved by building a course.
So it’ll be helpful to understand the types of “wants” that a course can help with. And we’re going to do that with the help of Tom Cruise.
Yes, I did just say Tom Cruise.
I’m a big film fan and even if you’re not, you must be familiar with the Mission: Impossible franchise.
In each story Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise, leads a team of hand-picked agents to complete some seemingly “impossible” mission for the US government. It’s usually something like finding a dangerous biological weapon, or tracking down and neutralising a power-crazed bad guy. Or both.
So when the government has a dangerous and difficult mission to complete, they recruit the IMF – the Impossible Mission Force – to do it for them.
And I want you to think of your future course and everything around it as being a bit like an IMF team. It’s a collection of assets and resources you’ll “recruit” to help you achieve a specific mission.
Now, only certain types of missions are a good fit for Tom Cruise and his IMF team.
If you learn a crazed billionaire is about to release a deadly virus, give him a call.
If you’re struggling to learn Italian in time for your holiday in Tuscany, that’s not really the type of problem they tackle. Although it might be fun to watch them try!
Likewise, there are some missions a course can help you achieve and others that aren’t such a good fit.
We’re going to meet some course-friendly missions in the next lesson, but first I want you to understand the value of channelling your efforts into a specific mission instead of just building a course, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.
Now, one of the most memorable parts of the Mission Impossible formula is the bit where Ethan Hunt learns about his latest mission.
There’s always a recording that says: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is…” followed by a description of the mission. And then of course, in dramatic fashion, the recording self-destructs.
So, if we’re to believe the phrasing of the message, Ethan Hunt actually gets to decide whether he accepts the mission.
Of course, he always does. No-one’s going to pay to see a film called Mission Impossible: Polite Refusal.
But to accept the mission I guess he’s got to feel confident he can pull it off. And in this film franchise that means assembling the right team.
So maybe the mission requires an agent who’s a good pickpocket. Or one who’s an electronics genius. Or one who speaks a certain foreign language.
Regardless of the specifics, if Ethan can’t assemble the right team, he’ll have to call off the mission.
And it’s just the same for you and your course. You can choose a mission that delivers what you want, but to move ahead with confidence you’ll need to understand what that mission requires.
One element of that is choosing the right type of course to build. But as you learned in the previous lesson, what you want from your course affects all of those other elements of the ecosystem too.
So choosing a particular mission means making a certain type of promise, building a certain type of programme, and so on.
And to fully accept your mission you’ll need to understand what else, over and above your course, you’ll need to put in place.
So how do you know what those other elements should be?
Well, to help you with that I’ve created a collection of mission templates that break down the main elements of each mission so you know how things usually work.
For each mission, they’ll tell you the best type of promise to make, the best type of programme to build (including course type), the best pipeline, the best promotion.
They’ll also tell you the best style of launch to use, i.e., evergreen or open/close.
I’ll even share a simple scenario of that particular mission in action.
A quick disclaimer though. These templates aren’t intended to be a full strategy playbook for achieving each course-power mission, but they will help you understand what following each of those paths will require.
You don’t need to think about the details right now. But it is useful to understand what the bigger picture could look like once your course is built.
And if there’s some element of a particular mission that doesn’t feel like a good fit for you, you can look into adapting the approach or going back to choose another mission.
That’s all for this lesson. We’ve set the scene with the help of Mr Tom Cruise. In the next lesson you’ll meet some of the possible (not impossible!) missions you can choose. See you there!