monetize your expertise | run workshops | train the trainer | online course creation | facilitation | mentoring | expert
What You Will Learn:
- Get what you know out of your head and into a sequence someone can follow
- Design a training programme backwards from the result, not from your slides
- Run a room, including the group that arrived unwilling
- Facilitate a session where the group produces the value rather than you
- Choose between a workshop, a course and mentoring for a given client
- Build and run an online course, from platform choice to homework
- Match, start and deliberately end a mentoring relationship
- Measure client satisfaction with the four standard indicators
- Handle a difficult client before the public review appears
- Learn alongside Mike’s 1.6 million students from 185 countries
Beyond the Brain Dump: A Senior Lead’s Take on ‘Teach What You Know’
Look, we’ve all been there. You’ve spent a decade in the trenches, survived countless migrations, and mastered your stack. But the moment you’re asked to onboard a junior or, heaven forbid, run a lunch-and-learn, you realize that knowing the work and teaching the work are two entirely different beasts. I’ve seen brilliant architects crumble when faced with a room of skeptical stakeholders. That’s why I picked up Teach What You Know: Workshops, Courses and Mentoring. I wasn’t looking for a “get rich quick on Udemy” guide; I wanted a framework to scale my own impact. This isn’t just about passive income; it’s about the career growth that comes from becoming the person who can actually articulate complex systems.
What Mike Wheeler gets right here is the “meta” level of education. Most experts suffer from the “curse of knowledge”—we forget what it’s like to not know something. This course forces you to look under the hood of your own expertise and reverse-engineer it. It’s a shift from being the “sage on the stage” to a facilitator of job-ready skills. Whether you’re aiming for certification prep delivery or building internal hands-on labs for your dev team, the methodology here cuts through the noise of traditional corporate training which, let’s be honest, usually puts people to sleep.
Prerequisites for Success
Don’t jump into this if you’re still a greenhorn. To get any value out of this, you need a foundational “something” to teach. This isn’t a course on how to be an expert; it’s a course on how to productize that expertise. You should be at a beginner to advanced level in your specific technical domain. Practically speaking, you’ll need a decent microphone and a distraction-free space if you plan on recording, but the real prerequisite is a willingness to kill your darlings—specifically those 80-slide decks you think are helping (they aren’t).
Developing Your Skills & Tools
The curriculum dives deep into the industry-standard tools and pedagogical frameworks required to move beyond simple screen-sharing. You’ll explore:
- Instructional Design: Building a curriculum backward from the desired outcome rather than forward from a list of features.
- Facilitation Platforms: Choosing between LMS (Learning Management Systems), live workshop tools, and 1-on-1 mentoring frameworks.
- Feedback Loops: Implementing real-world projects that allow you to measure if your students are actually learning or just nodding along.
- Conflict Resolution: Handling the “unwilling” student in a corporate setting without losing your cool or your credibility.
Career Benefits & Job Roles
If you think this is only for “influencers,” you’re missing the point. Mastering these job-ready skills makes you a prime candidate for high-level roles like Developer Advocate, Principal Engineer, or Technical Program Manager. In the current market, the ability to train a team is often more valuable than the ability to write a clean script.
- Internal Leadership: Shorten onboarding times for your department by building structured internal hands-on labs.
- Consulting: Pivot from “doing the work” to “advising the board,” which significantly increases your hourly rate.
- Content Creation: Build a side-engine of revenue by creating certification prep materials for high-demand tech stacks.
The Pros: Why This Works
- Outcome-Based Design: The focus on “backward design” is a game-changer. It stops you from over-explaining the “what” and focuses on the “how,” ensuring your students walk away with job-ready skills.
- The Human Element: Most teaching courses ignore the “difficult student.” Wheeler’s section on managing a room—especially those who don’t want to be there—is worth the price of admission alone.
- Mentoring Frameworks: We often treat mentoring as a casual coffee chat. This course provides a structured mentoring lifecycle (start, match, and deliberate end) that prevents burnout and ensures career growth for both parties.
The Cons: A Reality Check
If I’m being honest, the course is a bit light on the “technical production” side. If you’re looking for a deep dive into high-end video editing or complex lighting setups for a 4K studio, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The focus here is strictly on the pedagogy and facilitation. It assumes you can figure out the “record” button on your own, which might frustrate those who wanted a bit more hand-holding on the hardware side of online course creation.