Bring-it-on
02-17-2010, 11:53 PM
Hi Everyone,
Just finished Tim's book, the first ed as didn't know about the new one :( but can't wait to read the new one.
From age 18 to 32 I was a paralegal while studying and then qualified as a lawyer. Then I saw the light. I just couldn't face the day any more after 10 years in it. Long story which I wont bore you with here but it wasn't the law itself it was the people who work in it. I still love the law and occasionally flirt with the idea of lecturering (those who can't do, teach, as the old saying goes).
My husband and I quit our jobs as lawyer/accountant, put everything in storage, rented out the house and took our kids around the world for a year. 15 countries in total, homeschooling the kids except for a few months when they went to school in England. We did this intentionally so we wouldn't have cushy corporate jobs to come back to and it would force us to do something in business. You should have seen all the friends and family gaping after us when we left as they couldn't believe we'd give up such "good" jobs and drag our kids around the world (they were then aged 9,6 & 4). Of course it was life changing for all of us and I'm proud that we had the guts to do it.
When we returned we bought a bricks and mortar business (in Australia) and transformed it from outdoor furniture and BBQ's to an upscale furniture, homewares & interior design store. It is successful but never going to make us rich. In fact we make less than we would have in our old jobs (hope the family/friends aren't reading this :D) but its been a lot of fun and ups and downs. The other downside is it really saps our time and energy - its like being sucked into a vortex every day. I've been in it for 5 years and getting bored as everything is systemised etc etc. Plus I will kill my husband if I have to work with him much longer :D
After I finished Tim's book I wrote out a list of stuff from my background in an attempt to flesh out some possible muses. For many years now I've toyed with the idea of holding legal seminars (ie arranging 'experts' to provide them to an audience) for lawyers "mandatory continuing legal education" (MCLE) requirements, better known as CLE. After reading Tim's book I started thinking about delivery on-line.
So I got to work on Adwords and this is what I found for local search volume (Australia) for January:
cle 6600
continuing legal education 390
college of law (main competitor) 14000
mcle 720
mcle online 22
online cle 73
The main competitor does some podcasts/online but mainly focuses on face to face seminars (approx 90% face to face). They also do a few big courses that are not CLE based so some of the results they generate in Adwords would be for those not CLE (maybe half but who knows?).
What do you think of these results? And the muse idea? The college of law delivers online content in 24 hours from order whereas I would want to do it immediately after payment. The idea of on-line is centred on the fact that most lawyers would rather not travel 2 hours to go to a seminar all day when they could do it at their desktop or at least some of the 10 hours they need to do each year.
The next question I have is how feasible would it be for me to outsource the course content (podcasts, pdfs, possible visual online seminars), not only getting the Australian law right but for audio.visual I'm thinking the courses would be better received if they weren't in Indian English, if you know what I mean. So maybe better to get the research outsourced and then someone else on Elance or similar to do the voice/presention. As the college of law is really old fashioned and stodgy I'd like my course to have a bit more pizazz... although not quite in the Anthony Robbins sense :)
Naturally I would only do the content after plenty of testing. In a spurt of excitement I secured a domain last night www.cle-online.com.au as the .com was already taken as was cleonline.com.au.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.
Just finished Tim's book, the first ed as didn't know about the new one :( but can't wait to read the new one.
From age 18 to 32 I was a paralegal while studying and then qualified as a lawyer. Then I saw the light. I just couldn't face the day any more after 10 years in it. Long story which I wont bore you with here but it wasn't the law itself it was the people who work in it. I still love the law and occasionally flirt with the idea of lecturering (those who can't do, teach, as the old saying goes).
My husband and I quit our jobs as lawyer/accountant, put everything in storage, rented out the house and took our kids around the world for a year. 15 countries in total, homeschooling the kids except for a few months when they went to school in England. We did this intentionally so we wouldn't have cushy corporate jobs to come back to and it would force us to do something in business. You should have seen all the friends and family gaping after us when we left as they couldn't believe we'd give up such "good" jobs and drag our kids around the world (they were then aged 9,6 & 4). Of course it was life changing for all of us and I'm proud that we had the guts to do it.
When we returned we bought a bricks and mortar business (in Australia) and transformed it from outdoor furniture and BBQ's to an upscale furniture, homewares & interior design store. It is successful but never going to make us rich. In fact we make less than we would have in our old jobs (hope the family/friends aren't reading this :D) but its been a lot of fun and ups and downs. The other downside is it really saps our time and energy - its like being sucked into a vortex every day. I've been in it for 5 years and getting bored as everything is systemised etc etc. Plus I will kill my husband if I have to work with him much longer :D
After I finished Tim's book I wrote out a list of stuff from my background in an attempt to flesh out some possible muses. For many years now I've toyed with the idea of holding legal seminars (ie arranging 'experts' to provide them to an audience) for lawyers "mandatory continuing legal education" (MCLE) requirements, better known as CLE. After reading Tim's book I started thinking about delivery on-line.
So I got to work on Adwords and this is what I found for local search volume (Australia) for January:
cle 6600
continuing legal education 390
college of law (main competitor) 14000
mcle 720
mcle online 22
online cle 73
The main competitor does some podcasts/online but mainly focuses on face to face seminars (approx 90% face to face). They also do a few big courses that are not CLE based so some of the results they generate in Adwords would be for those not CLE (maybe half but who knows?).
What do you think of these results? And the muse idea? The college of law delivers online content in 24 hours from order whereas I would want to do it immediately after payment. The idea of on-line is centred on the fact that most lawyers would rather not travel 2 hours to go to a seminar all day when they could do it at their desktop or at least some of the 10 hours they need to do each year.
The next question I have is how feasible would it be for me to outsource the course content (podcasts, pdfs, possible visual online seminars), not only getting the Australian law right but for audio.visual I'm thinking the courses would be better received if they weren't in Indian English, if you know what I mean. So maybe better to get the research outsourced and then someone else on Elance or similar to do the voice/presention. As the college of law is really old fashioned and stodgy I'd like my course to have a bit more pizazz... although not quite in the Anthony Robbins sense :)
Naturally I would only do the content after plenty of testing. In a spurt of excitement I secured a domain last night www.cle-online.com.au as the .com was already taken as was cleonline.com.au.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.