The Curse of Courses in 2024

If you are like most internet entrepreneurs or coaches, you have been approaching courses as scalable money-making assets. The promise was that you could create assets that will continue to pay you while you sit back. It also promised that you would easily fulfil as many customers as your marketing can generate.

This has started to change, and that change will accelerate from here.

The Changes

You may have already started to pivot. You may have seen this but not yet recognised what is happening.

People like Alex Hormozi, Max Perzon, and Tom Youngs are leading the charge in using courses differently. If you continue using courses like you have in the past, they will continue to work, but you will face diminishing returns until they are no longer profitable.

The speed of this change will depend on your industry. Some will degrade slowly, but many will degrade much more rapidly.

I will explain what I believe is happening in this article and why. I will then explain what the new evolution of courses means and how you can ride this wave and profit from the change.

And I don’t have a dog in this fight. I have nothing to sell you. I am not an affiliate for any programs or course-creating software.

I do have a reason for writing this, though. I am looking for my people. Some will read this and resonate, and many will not. I want to connect with people I can collaborate with on future projects.

So, what is the problem with courses as they stand right now?

We are all increasingly under time pressure. There is so much to do, new tools, and more to master and move on. -Too much! It is not feasible to create a new business and do everything yourself. Even those promoting the solopreneur route will hire others, as team members or agencies to do specific functions for them.

What has this got to do with courses?

In the past, you could spend your time searching out courses, following along, taking what was applicable, and ditching the rest.

By their nature, courses need to be generic to meet the wider audience they are aimed at. We already know this because the more specialised the course is, the more valuable it is to those people because it saves them all this time sorting the information.

I believe this is why there is such an increase in the world of coaching. (I will use the term coach throughout this article, but this incorporates a range of collaborative partner/client relationships. Including Hormozi’s Acquisition.com model)

The role of an effective coach is to tailor their experience to the specific needs of their coaching client, saving a huge amount of time and generating results far quicker than even the most expensive course.? -Hold that thought.

Why is this change speeding up?

The advent of ubiquitous AI will accelerate this evolution of courses significantly. People are already using AI to create courses, and the marketing for those courses. These courses are not high quality and are, almost by definition, generic as they are based on the internet's collective wisdom.

This flood, of course content will depress prices. Your courses will not sell like they used to.

Even if your course is better than an AI-generated course, nobody will know that until they get inside. From the outside, your course and an AI-generated course look the same, and it will come down to the marketing.

As a result, many will become disillusioned and skip courses altogether.

So what is the evolution of course that you mentioned?

As I mentioned, the shortcut to results is to get an effective coach.

Because this really is a shortcut and can be directly linked to results, the value of these coaches is high and will increase. While courses were a necessary scalability tool in the past, the higher prices that can be charged for coaching means you can now have a valuable business with fewer clients paying higher fees.

The key here is finding an effective coach. This means someone who knows what they are talking about, has a deep knowledge of the specialist subject and is also on a similar wavelength to you.

Your coach must be someone who you can connect with. The coaching process is two-way, with the results as an outcome of collaboration rather than a transactional process.

If there is no mutual respect, then a coaching relationship will not work.

Finding the right person to work with is critical to getting your desired results. And what better way to see if they know what they are talking about and whether you are likely to get along than to go through some of their content?

…their course.

People like Hormozi, Perzon, Youngs, Choi and others are doing this by giving their course content away for free.

They are proving their value and presenting themselves as they are.

They know a few people will resonate with their personalities, but most will not. That is fine because what they are looking for are people that they can work with on a closer level to generate results.

And those results are far more valuable than a mere course can deliver, so the rewards are also far greater.

What can you do?

I believe now is the opportunity for you to use courses as your main marketing tool to prove your value, present your unvarnished personality to the world, and find the people you can collaborate with to create real value.

This window will not remain open indefinitely.

As the flood of content grows deeper, giving away even the best courses will become increasingly difficult. AI will evolve to deliver tailored course content to customers, further distancing people from courses as we know them.

You may think that creating tailored AI courses is the way to go. And you may be right. But I don’t think so.

Your unique personality will be far more valuable than an ‘AI content butler’. If you resonate with your people and collaborate with them, you will find far more loyalty than an AI will get. That value will keep your business relevant and strong in a fast-moving, rapidly-evolving world.

So I said at the beginning that I had nothing for sale. I don’t.

But I did say I was looking for my people.

People I can collaborate with to create massive value. If you have made it this far, you may be my people. Or maybe not.

Regardless, I hope that you have taken some value from this article. If you are my people, please connect with me on LinkedIn, consider subscribing to my newsletter, and reach out to see what we can create together.