A young girl is desperate to learn and play chess.
She steals a chess magazine because she can’t afford it. Hunts for chess books in the local library. And practices with the janitor of her orphanage because no one else is there to play.
That’s the story of Elizabeth Harmon in the Netflix show “The Queen’s Gambit.”
It’s easy to forget that just a few short decades ago, information was still scarce.
If you wanted to learn something, you’ve had to get the right books, be admitted to (and be able to afford) the right schools, and seek out the right mentors.
In the 2020s, Elizabeth would easily find everything she wants to know about chess on the internet…for free. She could play a chess software for years without having to find another human player.
We’ve gone from information scarcity to superabundance.
If most information is available for free online, why does the world still need your online course? And how do you reply to the common objection of “Can’t I find this information online for free?”
The answer is that time is now THE scarce resource.
People who seek out online courses don’t have time to sift through hundreds of articles and videos of questionable quality to find the needle-in-a-haystack information that will solve their specific problem.
They want just the right, high-quality information delivered in the shortest amount of time possible and a structure to hold them accountable for taking action and getting results.
Advertising “information” isn’t enough anymore, by a long shot.
Your value proposition has to revolve around…
- delivering just the right information in less time
- your unique experience, methods, and way of teaching
- providing a community of like-minded people to learn from
- concrete results your students can achieve
If I were to get into chess right now, I’d be looking for “The absolute beginners class: Beat your opponents in just 4 weeks with the secret moves of a grandmaster.”
