The year was 2019.
After building a personal brand on WhatsApp for some months.
I decided to launch a course.
It was a simple course on building a personal brand as a creative.
I charged #1000 to give anyone interested access to the WhatsApp group.
Around 27 people paid and I taught them over a three-day period.
After the course was over, I noticed that not everyone followed through.
I launched a second course some weeks later for #1500.
The same thing repeated itself.
I felt that it was mainly because the courses were cheap.
After all, people found it hard to value free or cheap things.
Later that year, I ran another training program, but I decided to do something different.
I decided to take just 12 students and charge higher for the course.
It was a design-related course.
I pegged the price at #25,000 and it sold out within 2 days.
A 13th person came along and begged me to admit him, so I did.
But by the end of the course, only 3 people out of that 13 people took the course very seriously.
At this point, I knew that they were a problem.
I was thinking that twenty-five thousand naira was big enough to keep people focused on my course, but it was obvious that price was not the issue.
Now there were two paths in front of me after this realization.
Follow the conventional path of only ensuring that the course materials were high quality.
Course creators who follow this path don’t really bother if the people who buy their course finish or not.
They just make sure that the course contains what they promise while selling.
Then there was the second path of creating quality courses and keeping people accountable to finish them.
I chose the path of accountability.
This meant I could not use certain course formats.
I had to create a community and also learn challenges around my courses.
But I did not stop there.
I devoted time over the past four years studying online learning and ways to make it effective for my students.
The more I studied and did practicals, the more I understood and this led to the creation of Superday.
The Root Problem
In the race to digitize everything, we brought learning online.
We have been able to create amazing platforms for online learning.
But the problem has never been platforms or even content.
The problem is the lack of significant work to bring the systems that make offline learning work online.
You did not go through primary school to the university because you loved schooling.
That’s why you are secretly happy whenever there was public holidays.
You cherish the days that you don’t have to go to school despite it being important.
So you got through school because there were systems put in place to ensure that.
A lot of people think their problem with online courses is that they cannot afford one.
But at the same time, there are countless free courses on the same subject available online
So why have you not been able to finish those?
The Superday Solution
While doing the research for Superday.
I was able to get key insights on a lot of things that have to do with learning online.
I also had one on one calls with over 300 people.
The key was to get as many details as possible about what people struggled with when it comes to online learning.
I was able to group these challenges into three major categories.
- The Orientation stage (how people view online learning and the skill they want to learn)
- The Learning stage (choosing the right course/Mentor, staying accountable, e.t.c)
- Post- Learning stage ( applying what was learned, getting jobs e.t.c)
We have been able to craft solutions to these problems and also verify that they work on a small scale.
The next goal is scaling these solutions so that they can help more people.
Many people think that a lack of discipline is why they struggle with online courses.
Believe me, it is way more than that.
You are not the only one to blame.
The online learning industry also has a role they need to play.
At Superday, we aim to build online learning systems that truly focus on helping students.
The goal here is to build and also support the building of online programs that don’t just charge students for courses and dump them in WhatsApp groups.
We aim to power programs that would take online learners through all the stages they need to succeed.
This would take a lot of work and also time to perfect, but it is a journey that we are willing to go on.
How to Benefit
There are two platforms that we intend to use to power the Superday Solution.
Superday Studios and the Superday App.
The Studios handles research and development while the App helps with Student Accountability and a whole lot of things.
The Private Beta for the App starts on January 9th with handpicked online learners.
If you would love to get notified when we get to the Public Beta stage subscribe to my Newsletter with the link below.
We would give access to more people by then.
Welcome to the future of online learning.
32 Responses
This is an Insightful read Ajulu!
I look forward to getting notified as an early user for the Public Beta App.
Thank you for what you do Ajulu.
You are welcome Stephen
Very insightful, and I look forward to learning more with and about Superday!
Kudos
You are welcome Glory
This is excellent, bishop. I love the thoughtfulness and intentionality. I look forward to getting notified as an early user for the public beta stage. BOLD MOVES!!!
You will surely get notified. Thanks for the feedback
Very powerful one sir. A very good problem to solve. Very powerful
Thank you Samson.
Steve Jobs has always said, “think different”. I’m super glad to hear that Superday thought differently. Since I ventured into online learning, I’ve never seen a platform like Superday. Super glad to see a platform going through this route.
Thank you for your kind word Ifeanyi.
I really can’t wait…
Accountability of students has been a big issue with online learning, Nice to see thoughtful solution to this. 👍
I already signed up for the newsletter.
You are welcome Odinaka. Ensure that you confirm your mail.
Excellent!! looking forward to the Superday journey!!🙂
You are welcome Excellent
Thank you very much sir for this elaborate sensitization…
Sir I look forward to being notified also
Super interested to see the structures put in place to help keep users accountable, as it has become a difficult thing in this day.
Signed up for the newsletter 🚀.
Great one. You are welcome
This is a solution to help plethora of people including me.
Imagining how i struggle to learn stuffs online and how helpful SUPERDAY can be to me and the great numbers of people aspiring to get educated online put cheers on me.
Thanks for helping us.
You are welcome Sir. it is something that I am happy to build
I am glad this is coming to the table. I still have some courses I am struggling to finish. Can’t wait for this.
Thanks boss
This is great Ajulu!
Walking backwards, I can see how Superday is a product of the solutions you found to the several problems you encountered throughout your entire online journey.
Truly, great products aren’t borne out of great ideas alone. But out of the compounding experiences of great problem solvers.
Superday is Ajulu as a platform. To the moon 🚀.
You are welcome, Micheal. Thank you for this beautiful comment.
Thank you for the idea of Superday
Here we build our intuitive knowledge through learning online
Thank you so much Ajulu
This just changed my mindset now.
You are welcome Chinaza. Glad that it could.
Wow, amazing concept. This is a problem solver
Finally oooo. Thank you Jesus.😄 Thank you sir
A mentor who takes the sheep by the rod.
I celebrate you sir Ajulu.
From my own personal experience and from that of others.
The 3 challenges you stated are very valid.
I’ve seen people commit wholly to academics and struggle with online courses even when they wanted the end result.
I know that there’s a deeper problem in how they perceive what they’re doing and how it add up to their desired results.
I look forward to Super day helping so many people acquire skills and becoming valuable talents.
Looking forward to knowing more about the super day