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Idea - E-learning Courses for Getting Hired
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https://usefedora.com/
I've spoken with the guys running this company. It's basically a simple way to create a suite of online e-learning courses with payments and content management all built in. No technical chops needed.
If you look at that User Growth Bootcamp story, those guys built this suite of courses using this Fedora software:
https://learn.growhack.com/
I bet that Atlantic or Scotian (or someone with a similar level of experience) could easily build a brand around training prospective tradesmen and recruiting people to provide content for e-learning courses while then taking a cut of future profits/royalties from course sales.
Let's call this brand
TRADESMAN TRAINING.
Under the umbrella of this brand, there will be a first flagship course for MWD specific to Canada.
BECOME AN OIL SANDS MWD - COURSE CURRICULUM
1. General Introduction to the Oil Sands in Canada
2. General Introduction to the MWD Position
3. Getting Starting
4. Getting Certified
5. Preparing your Resume/CV
6. Interviewing
7. Visa Matters
8. On the Job
9. Promotions and Negotiations
10. Managing Lifestyle and Finances
You create screencast videos with lectures, interviews, and actionable content that will help people take the precise actions they need, step by step, until they get hired.
Moreover, an upsell could be either group webinar trainings or personal one-on-one consultations for more targeted assistance.
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You'll notice that not all of the courses on GrowHack are created by Conrad himself but by other proven growth and marketing experts.
As such, you might have guys who have cut their teeth by being truck drivers, welders, plumbers, or whatever other positions seem to constantly be in demand with skills that can be acquired through training and certification.
So if you have these other experts come and collaborate with you by creating a course within your brand, you can negotiate a position where you get royalties or a piece of the profits from their future course sales because you own the umbrella brand and are marketing it to places where you have gained respect and influence, such as RVF (if you are Scotian/Atlantic/Similar)
These courses are obviously not substitutes for MWD training itself, but it would be a highly organized and cleaner blueprint for going through the process of becoming an MWD eventually.
In general people will pay money if you can organize information and make sure that they are getting accurate and proven stuff.
Thus it would be like either going through 100 pages of oil sands threads on RVF or paying $97 USD for a highly organized and efficient course with direct access to the instructors on the private forums inside of the product.
This is something that is software based that I think people would pay for, given the amount of interest that this forum has produced on the topic of making money in the oil trades.
Once the infrastructure is up and you've proven the demand with a flagship product, you can branch out into other occupations and recruit other content matter experts to create courses with you and then take a percentage of future profits from those course sales, thus scaling beyond the limited knowledge you might have about MWD or some other narrow field.
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In the longer run I think we are going to see more people being "forced" into blue collar work - either in substitution for college or due to not being able to get white collar work after college - and then realizing that the earning potential is at least as good as being a social media ninja at buzzfeed or whatever other stupid positions are out there lately.
That's just domestically too. Then there are the hordes of unemployed Europeans and Australians who are also interested but have no idea where to begin getting hired in Canada. I'm seeing a lot of those types chiming in on the oil sands and trades related threads. I'd bet that they would drop $97-147 to gain access to a course plus weekly webinar QnA sessions.
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Food for thought.
All of this is meaningless until the idea is tested out first.
A good way to do this (if you are Scotian or Atlantic or similar) would be to create a
Launchrock Page under the domain "MWDTraining" or "TradesmanTraining" and then put the link to this signup page in your signature on your RVF profile.
You can specify what the course is and that it's being built and people can sign up for the launch.
Pick a metric - let's say in this case launchrock mailing list signups - and then see how many you can get in a month. If you get 500 signups in a month then that's a pretty strong sign that you have user demand (although it might be better if you set up a way for them to actually pay you in advance at pre-launch lowered price).
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This is how I would do it if I wanted to test demand for and then launch a course in this space.
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