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Am I action-faking?

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

AfterWind

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Hello! I am a 20 year old student that thinks is working on a business. I didn't see much use in making a progress thread until I read this thread which made me question my actions and came to the conclusion that I just can't answer this question myself. Am I action-faking?

Alright, current situation: I am in my last year of bachelor's degree in Computer Science at a University in Romania. I worked as an intern for about 8 months (From February through September this year, 5 months part time and another 3 full time). At the beginning this was amazing, but, as I started learning about the fastlane I decided I should start working on something else. I am currently unemployed, living on my own, hard-earned money (from my job and school).

During the summer I tried a few silly things that, after working and investing a little bit on them, decided they're not for me (creating funny videos on a youtube channel and forex trading).

About 4 weeks ago I started working on creating online courses in a niche I know needs it. I've been doing consistent progress on this, but not to a degree that I felt satisfied. (I've been doing very little work each day). My plan is to create a course and post it on an online teaching platform by March 1st next year.

I will be posting weekly updates on this, please tell me your opinion, am I action-faking? What am I doing wrong? And, where can I improve? (Constructive criticism is welcomed)

Since this is a progress thread, I'll be posting my progress for the past 4 weeks on the first post, right here:
  • Week 1) The absolute first thing I have to do, before teaching anything, is learn it myself. That's what I did.
    • Watched about 10 hours worth of video tutorials. Did as much work as I could to learn everything there was to learn in these videos.
    • Setting up some of the software also took a decent amount of time this week.
  • Week 2)
    • Started learning a lot more things that weren't available in many tutorials.
    • Created a list of topics for the first course and lots of notes on how I can improve on what others have done so far
  • Week 3)
    • Continued learning almost every day
    • Tested the recording, and, at the end of the week recorded my first intro lesson.
  • Week 4)
    • Re-re-re-re-recorded the intro as I was encountering many issues and, being my first time doing this, lots of mistakes were made.
    • Started watching a lot of videos about teaching online (this one might just be action-faking, although, I was doing this whenever I felt tired)
    • Started working on actual material (presentations, images, etc.) for the course.
  • Next goals:
    • Create scripts and see if they are useful
    • Record the next lesson

Thank you for reading!
 
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Waspy

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The absolute first thing I have to do, before teaching anything, is learn it myself

You are creating a course based on something you don’t actually know how to do?

Maybe you should collaborate with an expert in the feild? You are only going to be able to teach to the level you are at, which is currently complete novice...
 

AfterWind

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You are creating a course based on something you don’t actually know how to do?

Maybe you should collaborate with an expert in the feild? You are only going to be able to teach to the level you are at, which is currently complete novice...
I do agree. I learned a bit about this subject an year ago but that wasn't nearly enough. This is why I started with learning more about this, to understand the ins and outs of what I am teaching. Initially I dedicated about 2 months for this stage, but, right now, I can confidently say that I understand 95% of what I plan to teach and I can (albeit face-to-face) teach this subject to someone else.
 

AfterWind

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Update 30/10/2017

This is my progress for this week on the online course:
4b687efda9.png

Without taking into account the re-recordings this amounts to about 1.5 hours of content. Using a script didn't help much. This is when I realized how difficult it can be to create an online course (that can help anybody) even tough I've been optimizing my time only for growing the online course (be it recording a course, editing, reviewing, fixing my setup, watching videos for creating courses online or even just reading threads on this forum)

Besides all that, I've also been doing some research on trying to help people directly from the start instead of just creating a course that will take a really long time and hoping that somebody will find it useful. Thank you very much @Andy Black for this advice!

So, yesterday, I started helping people on the internet. The first thing I did was create a couple gigs on Fiverr for people to go to. Next up, started searching for people needing help on Twitter/Facebook/etc. Responded to as many questions as I could that people had posted, one person already started PMing me about giving them lessons on this subject, linked them (and a couple others) to the Fiverr gigs. This is the result:

9d358266c4.png


Alright, people definitely need help. Nobody applied yet, of course, but I think that's a very good response for just one day. I feel like I'm getting somewhere but there's much more work to be done.

Useful tips for everyone:
  • Your time is limited here, try to use every second to get to your destination even if it's in a less efficient way.
  • Diversify your time. It can be very difficult to work on the same thing for too many hours. Just mix and match your work.
  • Some of the most efficient days are the most crowded by other types of work.
  • There's ALWAYS work to be done.
Useful tips for course creators:
  • Try to provide good content, don't try to provide perfect content.
  • Take feedback from others when creating the courses.
  • Don't start with the idea that you need to invest a lot into equipment. Using a mic that is lying around and your laptop's or phone's camera should be good enough. (This will depend, if you need better equipment, you don't need more than 100$ to start with).
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Am I action-faking?

I don't see this as action faking. You are being very busy, especially considering you're also a student.

In the other thread you linked, that person was sleeping until 3pm and calling "I went to Costo" as action. His work for the entire day would amount to about 7 minutes of productivity.
 

AfterWind

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I don't see this as action faking. You are being very busy, especially considering you're also a student.

In the other thread you linked, that person was sleeping until 3pm and calling "I went to Costo" as action. His work for the entire day would amount to about 7 minutes of productivity.
Thank you. This makes it more clear that, the path I'm on, is the right one.

I almost always have the feeling that, I can do much more. Even on a very productive day, I know I can do much more, yet, I didn't. There are these little things like: waking up 20 minutes later than what you expected or taking so long to being able to concentrate on working in the morning before drinking my coffee etc. And when I looked at that thread it reminded me of myself from my highschool years, I was also waking up at ridiculous hours and slacking off a lot more than I'd like to admit.

When I look at others on this forum, I hear about 16 hours of work in a day, and I compare this to how much I am doing and that makes me feel insecure, that I am going down the wrong path. Maybe that's the issue... Should I stop comparing myself to others?

Anyway, thanks again MJ, you, actually saying that, gives me tons of motivation to go on.
 
Last edited:

AfterWind

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Update 06/11/2017

New week, new horizons. This is the progress for the last week:
afdd1f8b04.png

You might notice that all this was done in one day. There are a couple reasons for this. Most of last week was spent just finding groups, finding questions and answering them. Many have messaged me (without me even doing anything) to help them with certain issues. Helping people, I realized some things, firstly, there is a different market here than what I was expecting, a market where people don't want to pay for the offers on Fiverr. I created and analyzed a couple models through which I can help these people but nothing solid yet.

Looking at the market, I also browsed around Fiverr and looked at what others were doing to get buyers. I realized a couple important things that they were doing and I wasn't. One of them is that they were offering a different service, albeit very similar to mine. So, I created one more gig using what I learned others were doing, but definitely that's not enough, as these are the results (third one is the new offer):
f1f32f3b0f.png

I'm very sure there's enough demand and the supply is not great. I will come back to this later.

Secondly, the course that I was working on, initially, is too risky to start with. As it was said above, I don't have that much experience with the subject, I have basically zero experience with teaching and, while helping others, I haven't seen anyone interested with the subject. Something had to be done. So, on Sunday, I decided to create a short course that included what people were interested in, it doesn't take long to create and, even though there were many like this on the market, had one pro feature that I think many will love and is also a better exercise for me.

In one day I created the content from almost half of the course. That was a pleasant surprise. The only difference from the previous week is that I barely planned for it. I just said to myself: "Agh, F*ck it, let's just hit record and see what happens". Maybe I was, after all, action-faking with "planning" too much for the course.

Also, documenting more about the software I use for editing helped me save a lot of time. My initial course is post-poned for the time being.

Useful tips for everyone:
  • Don't plan too much ahead. The more you plan, the more difficult it is to adjust and the more time goes to waste. Maybe limit that to when you can't do much else (for example, when you're attending a boring lecture at uni)
  • Analyze what your opponents are doing (you might be missing something crucial).
Useful tips for course creators:
  • For your first course, consider creating a shorter one. You will get the benefit of very fast feedback and gain experience for other courses faster.
  • Document more on the software you're using, you might be missing a feature that could save you a ton of time.
 
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Last edited:

MiguelHammond10

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I personally think you are not acting faking at all, for your age and being a student you are doing a great job just keep on pushing harder and try to contact people who have more knowledge on that.
 

AfterWind

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Update 13/11/2017

Here's the progress for last week:
e243756809.png

Focusing on taking action leads to big progress even when you feel you've wasted a lot of time.

Last week I finished the first iteration of the course. Recorded all the content needed for a finished course. The problem? It was absolute garbage. Really hard for others to understand, no proper structure, no connections between some of the lectures, it was chaos.

I took advantage of that, watched the finished course and compiled a list of all the wrong things with the course, that list was about 3 pages long. I looked at which lecture needs to be re-recorded and, soon enough, I realized that all of them had to (crushing result). Now I knew exactly what my next step was. I started recording the whole course all over again. A quarter into re-recording and, watching it now, it offers much better value.

Back on Fiverr, the number of views and impressions grows but still no buyers. Not sure what I'm doing wrong there, maybe I'm just not trustworthy enough. Will keep going.

One thing I noticed is that people are very attracted to free stuff, so I thought about how I can use that to become more trustworthy and be able to buy the courses/services without worrying I don't deliver. A few things that came to mind were Facebook pages/groups, Youtube channel and blog posts.

Also, this just arrived:
2ff04d715e.jpg


Useful tips for everyone:
  • People like free stuff
  • Taking action whenever possible leads to progress if when you feel like you've wasted time
Useful tips for course creators:
  • Watching your own courses can help identify some mistakes
 

AfterWind

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Update 20/11/2017

Last week I only recorded about 3 episodes worth 15 minutes of content for the course.

Even though last week was very busy at university, that isn't the main reason I under-produced. Concentrated a TON of time into helping others, already joined about 50 Facebook groups to offer help. I have also created a simple free service on my own website and got a whopping:

4 clients !!!
Now, the income for this is 4 x $0 which is , well... $0! But it doesn't matter, I was able to actually influence and help others using my own website. Very happy with this result so far. (Bounce rate is also ~50%)

First thing to do is create an email list just to remind users that were satisfied with the service about it and, possibly, advertise some more.

Second step is affiliate marketing (probably). I don't want to put random ads on my website as they can be very annoying and might scare some users. But I could very well put some specific ads (from affiliate marketing partners) that relate to their needs.

Since the market requires this service to be (at least partially) free, next step is to work out a model that works. I am thinking about a very cheap subscription-based model where the bottom packet is free and offers some minimal services. REALLY unsure about this, there's much to learn about the market.

Useful tips for everyone:
  • For every 10 pages/groups/websites there's 1 that fits your needs you only have to put in more work to find it.
  • Always adapt, don't do the same thing for months if you've already noticed that the risk is too high. You don't have to change what you do completely, adjust it.
 
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