This is going to sound slightly odd.

But I’ve a blunt question..,.

“What do you KNOW how to do?”

By that, I don’t mean what qualifications you’ve earned…

What letters can you put after your name…

Or what impressive job title you’ve had in the past.

It doesn’t even mean that you’re some kind of expert.

This is not about whether you could confidently stride onto a stage in front of hundreds of people and deliver a detailed three-hour lecture on your chosen subject.

I mean simply:

“What can YOU do that someone else would like to be able to do?”

Perhaps you can grow fantastic tomatoes in a small space…

Take beautiful landscape photographs…

Restore and upholster old furniture….

Cook amazing vegan cakes…

Play jazz guitar….

These could be hobbies you’ve started recently, or ones you’ve been pursuing for 20 years – it doesn’t matter!

If nothing springs to mind, then let me ask you this instead…

“What have you done in the past?”

It could be something you learned to do at some point in your life – just once – in order to overcome a problem or reach a goal.

For instance, you cleared a big lump of debt…

Researched your family tree…

Trained an unruly rescue dog….

Reduced your cholesterol naturally..

Got fit enough to run a marathon…

Or maybe there’s something you learned to do in your professional life, like using spreadsheets…

Training staff in health and safety…

Catering for large groups of people…

Organising shifts and rotas…

Running a pub, café or restaurant…

And if none of those are lighting up any thoughts in your head, let me ask one more question.

“What are you experiencing in life right now?”

There could be something you’re in the process of doing right now, like a challenge you’re undergoing, a change in your circumstances or a major life experience.

You might be looking after an ageing parent…

Planning for retirement…

Looking for a new job…

Starting a home business…

Learning how to overcome distraction and procrastination.

Investing in gold, cryptos or the stock market.

If so…

There’s potentially a profitable side business sitting, right now, inside your brain!

All you need is to share something that you already know – or can do – which another person would find very helpful to know.

Something where you could offer your own perspective, experience and guidance.

So that they can reach the same goal quickly and easily, without any of the worries, hassles and pitfalls.

If you offer that to them, there’s a reasonable chance that they will PAY you.

But you won’t need to sit in front of them to do it.

You could put all that guidance online in the form of a digital training course, so that they access the information automatically, day or night.

Meaning that you could earn a passive income, over and over again, from knowledge you already have.

How does that sound to you?

It might seem too good to be true, but thousands of people are already doing this, and it has never been easier to set something like this up.

Once Difficult, Now Easy…

Until fairly recently, turning what you know into a digital course was a daunting undertaking.

You needed to research it… plan it… structure it…

Then you had to write all the content yourself.

Next, you’d have to work out how to make video presentations…

Not to mention worksheets and downloads.

If that wasn’t enough, you’d have to get all that material onto a good-looking website in a way that a customer could easily access.

That would mean building webpages… coming up with a design… setting up a payment system… creating autoresponder welcome emails…

Even when you’ve done that, there was the challenge of finding potential customers and getting them to actually see your course.

Which meant writing, designing and uploading a sales promotion…

Along with ‘sales funnels’ to draw people in from social media, advertising or Google.

Quite the challenge, right!?

Which is why millions of people who know useful things will never consider creating their own course.

And it’s why many who HAVE tried it have given up at some point.

Just too many moving parts, too many tools, and too many challenging processes.

At some point, they hit a snag and then… GAME OVER.

But that’s all changed.

One reason is that there are now platforms specifically designed for ordinary people with no tech or design skills to create, deliver and market a course.

For instance, Kajabi and Podia are ‘all in one’ solutions that allow you to incorporate a course AND the marketing on one platform.

Or Teachable provides the tools you need to create, deliver and sell your online course without building your own webpages.

These platforms come with readymade templates…

And allow you to add audio, video, pdfs and quizzes at the click of a button, using easy drag-and-drop tools.

So they make course creation very simple.

You don’t need to grapple with lots of apps and plugins, or connect different moving parts together.

It’s now instant, and seamless, and ‘done for you’.

But the biggest change by far is the arrival of AI

Tools like Chat GPT, Gemini and Claude remove the need for skills in research, planning, writing and design.

You can give AI the raw, unformed ideas in your head…

Your experiences… your methodology… your insights… your mistakes…

Then ask it to structure it into a logical course.

Within a matter of minutes it can help you:

• plan the modules
• structure individual lessons
• turn rough notes into readable explanations
• suggest exercises
• create worksheets
• draft quizzes
• help create presentations…
• write summaries…
• and even help with the sales and marketing material.

The major online learning platforms are even building AI directly into their course-creation tools.

Teachable, for example, now uses AI to generate curricula, course content and sales-pages, while Kajabi can generate course outlines, modules and lessons.

So now there’s nothing stopping you.

Except, perhaps, for this major objection…

“BUT I’M NOT AN EXPERT!”

Mention the idea of teaching or training and you might imagine you need to be some sort of world authority.

You absolutely don’t.

For example, let’s imagine you decide tomorrow that you want to start playing golf.

Who could help you?

Well, international golfer Rory McIlroy certainly could.

But so could the friendly bloke at your local club who’s been playing for 25 years and knows exactly how to help a nervous 60-year-old beginner get around 18 holes.

In fact, he may be BETTER suited to the job.

Because he remembers the problems beginners have.

He knows the silly mistakes.

He can explain things simply.

And understands what you actually need to know first when you’re at this early stage.

So you don’t need to be the world’s leading expert.

Quite often you simply need someone who has travelled a little further down the road than another person has.

Ask yourself:

• What do people already ask me for help with?
• What can I do easily today that I once struggled to understand?
• What mistakes have I made that I could help someone else avoid?

And you’ll probably come up with at least ONE idea from this that could potentially become a course.

With AI doing the hard parts for you!

Even then, you might have another doubt in your mind…

“BUT EVERYTHING IS ALREADY AVAILABLE FREE!”

On the surface, this sounds reasonable.

After all, why would anybody buy a course about photography when YouTube contains thousands of photography videos?

Why pay to learn Excel when Google can find the answer?

Why buy a gardening programme when there are millions of gardening websites?

Why learn anything from you when ChatGPT will answer almost any question in seconds?

Well, the answer is simple.

People aren’t short of information these days.

The bigger problem is that we’re drowning in the stuff.

For instance, suppose you want to learn to take better photographs with your iPhone.

You could spend the next three months watching random YouTube videos.

One might explain exposure.

Another will talk about composition.

Another might review camera apps.

Another could be a 47 minute lecture about something called RAW format.

You disappear down a rabbit hole…

…and at some point realise you know considerably more about image sensors but your photographs are still rubbish.

Truth is, there is so much information out there, it’s hard to know what to choose, who to trust and how to get guidance from an actual human that’s ‘like them’ and who knows their struggles.

People want someone relatable and genuine to take them through the essential steps without jargon… without bland platitudes…without hidden agendas or bias.

For example, if someone said to that person:

“Give me two hours and I’ll show you the seven things that will make the biggest difference to your photographs.”

Then they’d feel relief – finally, someone who will personally show them what they needed to know!

Even better if you then said:

“I’ll take you through it step by step, in easy-to-follow instructions, from start to finish, so that you can get results immediately”.

This is why, when online course platform Teachable surveyed students recently, 66% of them said that clear milestones and progress tracking were the biggest factors helping them actually finish a course.

So the widespread availability of AI has not killed off digital courses.

Quite the contrary…

The e-learning market has grown by 900% since 2000 and is projected to grow 14% each year.

Leading online course platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and edX have reported an exponential growth in enrolment.

And the MOOC market (Massive Open Online Courses) has a projected annual growth rate of 32% for the next two years.

This is because AI can NEVER replace real human knowledge.

Yes, ChatGPT knows more facts than any of us ever will.

Ask it how to grow tomatoes and it can tell you.

Ask it about photography and it can tell you.

Ask it about Excel and it can probably explain a formula before you’ve finished typing the question.

But there’s something AI doesn’t automatically have.

There’s No Substitute for Real, Lived Experience

AI draws from a general well of knowledge, based on what it has learned online.

It cannot replace your lived experience.

The things you’ve tried…

The things that went wrong….

The shortcuts you discovered…

The traps you fell into…

The times when the official advice didn’t quite work…

The little techniques you’ve developed…

And it cannot replicate your unique identity, which is made up of so many elements…

Your opinions…

Your judgement…

Your strengths and flaws..

Your sense of humour…

Your particular way of explaining something.

This is becoming more important as the internet fills with cheap, generic information.

So this is a great opportunity for you.

Because you could take years of knowledge that is sitting inside your head, and turn into something unique, in-demand and that has a paying audience.

It’s especially true if you’re in your 50s, 60s or beyond.

Because you have something a 22-year-old cannot possess.

You’ve lived a long time, so you’ve made lots of mistakes… and solved lots of problems…

You’re tried new things – failed at some, succeeded at others.

You’ve had relationships, worked with difficult people and perhaps raised a family.

You’ve had jobs and a career…

You’ve made money and lost money.

You’ve endured hardship…

And probably you’ve discovered that quite a lot of what you were confidently told when you were younger turned out to be complete nonsense.

So your experience could save another person months of frustration, dead ends and heart-ache.

It could stop them from making an expensive mistake.

It could help them achieve something that has been frustrating them for years.

And it’s likely that they will be perfectly happy to pay you for that help.

Here’s How to Find that Hidden Course Within You

If you like the idea of turning what you know into a passive income from your own digital course, here’s what I’d like you to do this weekend.

Just take ten minutes with a piece of paper.

Write down:

1. What have I become good at?
2. What do friends, colleagues or family ask me for advice about?
3. What have I learned at some point in my life?
4. What problem have I solved for myself that other people still struggle with?
5. What could I teach a complete beginner to do?

And one final question…

What do I know now that I desperately wish somebody had taught ME 10 or 20 years ago?

When you have your answer (or maybe more than one answer!) don’t worry about creating or planning a course just yet.

Because I’m going to send you a very exciting invitation very soon with more information about a FREE Course Creation Masterclass Heloise and I are putting on next week to help you get started!

If you come up with any potential ideas, do send them over – I’d be fascinated to see what you come up with!