💸 CCW #72 – Earning $40k Per Month as a Creator

In Jay Clouse's own words, Marie Poulin is badass. I have to agree. She's incredible.

In this episode of the Creative Elements podcast, Marie talks about her early days as a designer, what drives her to share so generously, and how following her curiosity led her to becoming known as the "Notion Queen."

Here are some of my biggest takeaways:

• 
  Show more of who you are and your personal values—people buy from people
• 
  Offer 1:1 consulting + group coaching in the early days—it's how you find initial insights
• 
  Teach systems and workflows, not just the tools
• 
  Follow your interests and curiosity—make sure you're having fun by designing for it
• 
  Treat opportunities as experiments and chapters in you journey—nothing's permanent
• 
  Be consistent in serving your audience (doesn't have to mean publishing on a cadence)
• 
  As you experiment, be willing to let go of what's not working

I highly recommend listening to the full episode to learn about Marie's journey to becoming a full-time course creator!

• 
  Understand Advance organisers, which help us make sense of and organise knowledge
• 
  Use relatable stories, or, if introducing entirely new concepts, explain how they relate
• 
  Start by presenting general ideas, from first principles, and gradually add complexity

4 techniques to activate prior knowledge:

• 
  Ask students to predict what you'll be teaching + justify their thinking
• 
  Ask questions to test your students' intuitive knowledge about unfamiliar concepts
• 
  Ask students to compare the new ideas that you present, with what they already know
• 
  Ask 'why' questions before introducing new material—prime them for new knowledge

Final takeaways:

• 
  Direct your students' attention to the most important ideas they must take away
• 
  Highlight relationships between concepts to help students connect the dots
• 
  Remind students of the existing knowledge they can use to grasp new ideas

Louis Grenier and Hiten Shah talk about choosing the right value proposition:

• 
  Think of value as what the customer is getting, not what you're offering
• 
  Avoid using buzzwords or analogies that may not make sense to everyone
• 
  Test your ideas to make sure people can understand them in 5 second or less
• 
  If you already have customers, use their own words to craft your messaging
• 
  Use a single value prop to bring people in, deliver it, then let them discover the rest