Running online courses is easy*
*Actually, it's not
Running online courses is hard. Actually, it doesn’t have to be hard. If you bash out content and spam everyone you’ve ever met, it’s easy. Everyone’s doing it in lockdown. And who can blame them?
But if you know us, you probably know by now that we think about every single word we write. We agonise about how what we post comes across and we worry about bothering people. For a while, this held us back. We saw others doing what we perceived as “better” than us. We had a nagging awareness that we should be sending aggressive emails warning people about the dangers of not signing up to our courses and we knew that we’d get more money if we constantly upsold to our existing alumni. We couldn’t do it. It wasn’t us. We’re no saints, we’re just not natural hustlers and something about the whole sales process made us feel icky. So we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were never going to be the sort of people who posed against a white background laughing into a microphone and carried on as we were – working as journalists and delivering courses to a select few (very satisfied, we might add) students.
And then something changed. Those students started to tell us that they valued our small-scale approach. They used words like “friendly” and “authentic”. They could email us without fearing they’d be forced to sign up to something. They could ask a question in our Facebook group without fear of criticism or plagiarism. They sometimes divulged their deepest fears and insecurities to us. They passed this information on to their colleagues. They started coming to us.
There have been days when we’ve looked at what others are doing and felt insecure in our reach. But there hasn’t been a single day when we’ve felt insecure in our sincerity or our ability to deliver top-class training. And if we ever start to doubt it, we only have to remind ourselves that one of our former students who’s on maternity leave has just booked a pitching session with us even though she’s currently not working – just because she enjoys the craic. We’ll take that.
There’s just enough time for you to join her because we’re running our next pitching Zoom session tomorrow night. We’ve been running variations of these for months but this is going to be our best yet. This one’s all-new content so don’t worry if you’ve been to one before – you'll more than get your money’s worth again. To help you spot the silly ideas that could be scuppering your pitches and holding you back, we’ve dug out the most potent pitching myths that we see freelance journalists tripped up by time and again. And we’ve got some worth-their-weight-in-gold tips from commissioning editors on what they do and don’t want to see in pitches right now – they shared these just this week, so it’s as bang-up-to-date as this gets. Not just any old commissioning editors either – we’re talking a national newspaper, a current affairs site and a glossy women’s magazine to name a few.
Our pitching Zoom sessions are usually deliberately small and chatty affairs. But we’ve sold out of tickets for this one twice now, so we’ve decided to stick a few more chairs at the back of the room and pretend we haven’t seen the building’s fire regulations. (We won’t be recording this as we find people feel freer to chip in and ask questions if they’re not worried about where the recording might end up.) Fancy it? Come! Tickets are £10 and you can grab yours here.
If you can’t make that but want to end this year with a bit of Muse Flash magic, we’ve decided to run our two-week mentoring programme, Pitching SOS, on an ad-hoc basis throughout the rest of November and up to 18th December. In other words, you pick the dates and we’ll work around you.
And finally, we’ve stuffed our diary with space for a gazillion Intravenous Adrenaline sessions in December. (Other people call these Power Hours but one of our first students said working with us was like getting an intravenous shot of adrenaline and we’re going with it.) Click here to book yourself one of these coveted slots before we’re only to be found face down in the Quality Street.
Until next time (or tomorrow night!), pitchers…
Hazel & Heidi
A piece of advice we valued: We’ve all read too many ‘snore’ pieces about how to maintain productivity while working from home. But how much thought have you given to the importance of light on this subject? Maintaining a daylight routine is my new jam.
A piece we loved reading: You know when you read an article and think: ‘I thought it was just me!’ Doesn’t happen all that often but this was one of those moments.
A piece we loved writing: You can’t beat a fast-turnaround commission out of the blue. One of those ‘You free for a quick piece today?’ emails from an editor yesterday turned into this piece today for the Telegraph’s Careers and Education section on why we perhaps need to change how we measure success instead of focusing on ‘catching up’ when it comes to learning loss in kids – and also in the goals we’ve had little chance to hit this year.
A podcast we enjoyed: I found Rebuilding Your Career with Tiffany Philippou via our lovely mate Nicola Slawson. Give it a listen, especially if ‘current circumstances’ are causing you to contemplate a bit of a career pivot right now. (Ooh, and check out Write about your life: How to self-publish your stories by Tiffany and Nicola.)
Students we’re especially proud of: All of them, obvs. But we’ve been running pitching mentoring programmes for several students over the last couple of weeks and they’ve worked so hard. It’s not all shiny commissions and success (yet, give it till next month…) but they’ve pulled out the stops with going after their goals for their freelance writing careers. We could not be more proud.