If you’re thinking about creating an online course and teach about your area of expertise, you’ll probably get to a point where you start doubting. About yourself. About your skills and know-how. And you start wondering whether you should be teaching at all. Why should anyone listen to you anyway? You’re not an expert, right? When can you consider yourself an expert? Let me be clear here: Never. Real experts are in a neverending learning mode. So, unless you’re teaching something usually static – like History -, being a lifetime learner is actually one of the key characteristics of an expert.
3 reasons why you shouldn’t wait to consider yourself an expert
♥ According to the Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, an expert is someone who has made all the mistakes that can be made as early as possible. And he was a physicist, so he knew what he was talking about: Trial and error. If you don’t try, you’ll never fail. But you won’t either know if you were right.
♥ Most adults who want to change careers aren’t looking for teachers who only talk about hard cold facts. That’s something you can read in books or search online. Instead, who they look for is someone who’s already got the experience they’re aiming to achieve. Who can deliver her know-how from a personal and practical point of view. Who has already failed – and succeeded.
♥ What’s an expert? Can you name anyone who knows EVERYTHING about something? Well, there surely are a couple in the world. But just a couple. What we know as experts are those who are much further than we are in any given field. I mean, I can’t be the only one who’s joined several courses given by other fellow bloggers, right? Are they experts? Surely not. But they’ve had the guts to try something, they’ve had good results, and now they’re teaching others who’d want to learn.
Have you already written that course – or book – in your mind – but don’t really dare to get it done? Do me a favor, and let others benefit from your knowledge and experience. Keep learning & start teaching. You owe it to all those good teachers you’ve had in your life 😉
Alicia
Are you born to freelance?
Work from home successfully
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Great point. This is one of the things that stop me. Doubts come and I ask myself: what authority do I have to teach anything to anyone? But as you say, you don’t need authority, you need guts 😉
Exactly!! Just set a date and go for it! 🙂
Hi Alicia,
Thanks for your information, all of them are interesting.
Today I read: 3 reasons why you shouldn’t wait to consider yourself an expert. I loved it!
Hi María,
Thank you so much for your feedback! Sometimes, it’s just fear stopping us 😉