In October 2020, my entire family was struck by Covid-19 at the peak of covid first wave in India. While it was a very stressful time, luckily we all started to recover after a couple of weeks. I decided to take a break from my hectic work routine for a further few days, taking it as a sign by God to slow down. That’s when the idea of the Patent Course delivered via email struck me.
Note: If you want to check out the course, here’s the link
Hence the task began to make a concise version of my 6 years of PhD research and academic content. I won’t lie, patents are a complex topic. Add to that the legal mumbo jumbo of lawyers, and it can be scary for beginners. It took me hours and hours of editing to complete writing the course in about 10 days. The course length was about 10,000 words, which is about only as much as a full length research article. Most of the time I spent was on “editing.” Since the course was supposed to be beginner friendly and delivered via email, I had to make sure there were no words or sentences out of place. I reviewed every word and sentence to make them shorter and simpler. After all, this was supposed to be the USP of the course!
Why choose the email format?
I had been thinking of starting my newsletter for quite some time. But I was never confident that I could churn up regular content with consistency. In addition, I had just completed a digital marketing course via email that I found to be especially engaging. Since I was sick, recording videos was out of question. I thought about starting my own blog and put all chapters of the course in the form of blog posts. But that did not give me confidence that people will read the chapters sequentially. All things conspired and I decided to start a newsletter based email course. The course was to be delivered via 14 emails spread across 14 days.
Advantages of email as a course format
After more than 1600 scholars have taken the course, I can say I have learnt a few things from their feedback. The course has got an overwhelming number of 5-star ratings. Students have been replying to my email telling me how they are really waiting for the next course email! Here’s what I think have been the advantages:
- Email is ubiquitous. Everyone has an email app on their phone
- People read emails with greater attention span when compared to other social media apps
- Not giving all the content at once has superpowers! It doesn’t overwhelm the reader and creates anticipation
- There is an inbuilt channel to communicate with the instructor. Just hit reply!
- Reading is far from dead in the apparent video-first world
- The format makes learning into a journey rather than aiming to finish certain things in certain time
If you want to start the 2-Week Patent Course, Register Here
I am sure this is not the last course I will create in the email format. If you want to get in touch with me just drop a DM on my Twitter: @rahulkaap