Online Courses

What if it’s not good enough?

Posted byIan Brodie on March 23rd, 2022.

Perhaps the biggest concern holding people back from doing a live or “almost live” pilot – or otherwise getting a basic version of their course out fast – is a nagging fear that it won’t be good enough for their audience.

Personally, I’ve read so much about “best practices” for online courses that I end up with a wholly unrealistic view of what I should be aiming for with the first version of a course.

So yes, it’s great to have a more engaging presence with really high quality in-person video. Yes, it’s great to have all sorts of exercises and activities to split up the content. And yes, you want the purchase process and using your online system to be as simple as possible.

But these and all the other best practices are aspirations to build towards. They’ll give your course an edge in the marketplace. They’ll lead to better reviews and testimonials. But they’re certainly not “must haves” for the first version of your course.

That’s easier said than done though when the little voice in the back of your head tells you your slides aren’t good enough, your checkout could be smoother and you need to add more examples.

Keep listening to that little voice and you’ll never get your course out the door.

One thing I’ve found that helps is to recognise that your potential customers aren’t just one homogenous blob who all need and want exactly the same things. They’re a mix of human beings with different preferences.

Some indeed will want all the bells and whistles. But plenty won’t.

The initial version of your course shouldn’t be built with the most exacting customer in mind. The one who wants every little question answered up front and the course to look beautiful.

Instead, focus on early adopter types. The people who want the unique content you’re sharing to give them an edge and get them results fast.

The ones who don’t mind if the slides aren’t perfect or if they have to message you to ask questions for a couple of bits of content you didn’t fully cover. The ones who don’t need hand holding every step of the way but who will take what you give them and get on with it.

That’s one of the reasons I suggested you create outcome or results oriented courses.

If people are buying courses for professional development they’ll want as much information as possible. If people are buying courses for entertainment they’ll want high production values.

But if people are buying courses to help them get a result they tend to be OK getting just the basics they need to get the result they want. In fact they’re usually delighted if they can get those results with the minimum of effort and learning needed. It’s a means to an end for them.

So if you’re like me and you sometimes worry about whether what you’re creating will be good enough, take a step back.

Ask yourself “will this be good enough for early adopters who just want to get results fast?”

That’s what you should be aiming for with your first release of a course. You can add all the fancy stuff that appeals to other buyers later.

Online Courses

The easiest and hardest way to pilot an online course

Posted byIan Brodie on March 18th, 2022.

The easiest way to pilot a course is to do it live. The hardest way to pilot a course is to do it live.

Easiest partly because expectations of production quality (e.g. the slides) are lower. Partly because you don't have to figure out everything to cover in advance: you can just do Q&A at the end to plug any gaps.

And partly because doing your pilot live is a “forcing function”. You have to set a date in the diary publicly and commit to it. With pre-recorded video it's just a little too easy to keep working on the slides and the videos in the background promising yourself you'll release them soon but never actually doing it.

But of course, live is scary.

What if the tech fails? What if you “dry up” or fluff your lines? What if you can't answer all the questions?

Valid concerns. But manageable.

If you're like most everyone in the world you've lived on Zoom for the last couple of years.

You should be able to get the tech to work. And if it fails, people will understand.

You should be able to present for an hour or two just fine. But if you do forget something you can always send out what you missed later.

And if your course is on a subject you know well (obviously it should be) then you should be able to answer any reasonable questions. And if you can't you can just get back to people later after doing a bit of homework.

Live workshops are the way I would pilot any program these days. Or if the program is too big to be done in a couple of hours live, I'd pilot one part of it that can make an immediate impact and at the end offer the full program.

That's not to say I haven't messed up the occasional live session myself. Usually I try to cram too much in and overrun. 

But setting a date and promoting and selling the session really makes things happen much faster than it would have otherwise.

And ultimately I find it leads to better quality too as you have feedback from the live session(s) before you finally cast your course into electronic stone.

So if you're looking to get going with a pilot I'd recommend a short (1-2hrs) live workshop as your first option.

Online Courses

Are these two fears holding you back from launching your course?

Posted byIan Brodie on March 16th, 2022.

I've been pushing the benefits of using some type of pilot or minimal viable product or pre-selling approach to launching your course.

It brings a lot in terms of speed, feedback and momentum. Not to mention getting some cash in quickly.

But I absolutely realise that it can be a scary prospect. Every time I do a pilot two big fears loom in my mind. Maybe they're holding you back too?

The first big worry is “what if this doesn't sell and I look like an idiot?”

The second is “what if this does sell and I look like an idiot?”. In other words “what if people buy and don't like it?”.

Ultimately, the more you do pilots the less you worry. Because when things go wrong you find out it won't kill you. And you're always able to recover.

So if it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell.

Refund the few people who bought. Start again.

You don't need many sales for a successful pilot. You're just looking for enough people to test your course and give you great testimonials.

But if you can't even get a few from the people you already know it means you're not hitting the right issue that will motivate people to buy.

It will hurt. There's no getting away from that.

It will set you back a few weeks as you look for a new topic to focus on. It will feel like just pushing forward and building your course and offering it for sale afterwards is the “lower risk” route.

But it's not. The progress you make building a course people don't want is false progress.

And having a fully finished and polished course won't make people any more likely to buy it. At least not enough to make a difference.

If it's not going to sell it's much better to find out quickly rather than after you've pumped a ton of time and energy into it. If you do that, not only will you have wasted much more time and effort, but you'll feel more committed to it and you'll end up wasting more time and effort trying to make your lame duck work.

Better a little bit of pain early than a lot later.

And if people buy your pilot but aren't satisfied with what you deliver, you have time to fix it.

Most people don't expect a pilot to be perfect. So if you haven't covered all the angles they're looking for they won't mind if you help them in a live Q&A instead.

They're much more likely to get upset if you position your course as the finished article and there's something missing.

In the very rare, very worst case, refund them and gift them the course anyway as an apology.

Both these fears are really all about worrying what others will think of us. About how our “reputation” will suffer if we offer a course that doesn't get off the ground or that people don't initially like.

But both of these issues are fixable. And, frankly, your clients have enough on their plates they won't even remember you tried to launch a course and it wasn't a big winner.

Of course, me saying all this won't necessarily help you get over a huge fear of what others will think.

But if, like me, yours is a more common or garden fear, hopefully it's given you some reassurance that even in the worst case your world won't end if things go wrong.

But it can take a big upturn for the better in the more likely scenario that things go right.

Online Courses

Start Fast, Start Lean

Posted byIan Brodie on March 11th, 2022.

One of the biggest common themes in the interviews I've done for Course Builders TV is the idea of getting a fast start for your course with a “minimum viable product”.

OK, maybe not that kind of fast start :)

Time after time I've heard from successful course builders how they launched their course by pre-selling it before building it. Or by offering a live online workshop version of it the first time around, rather than recording all the content first.

Some of the advantages of this type of approach are obvious:

• If there's no demand for your course you find out fast before you invest time and money in building it.
• You get real feedback on your course ideas so you can improve them before “casting them in stone” with recorded videos.
• You get money in the door fast, rather than after months of development.
• Your early customers feel like they're part of the development process and can become real evangelists for your course afterwards.

But I also want to talk about one of the less obvious advantages.

Speed motivates.

In particular, seeing results fast motivates.

I know from my work in corporate consulting that on any major change program there would always be periods where it was hard work. Where doubts set in.

Having some “quick wins” already in the bag gave you motivation to push through those tougher times and keep going. They gave you faith you were on the right track.

Recent research into dieting has shown that if you lose weight fast in the first few weeks, you're more likely to stick to your diet long-term than if progress is slow early on.

Again, the early results give you faith that you're on the right track so you keep going when times get tough.

Building courses is just the same.

Sometimes writing slides, creating videos and setting up your online learning system can be a real slog. The same when you're trying to build momentum with your marketing.

Sometimes it can feel you're making no progress at all for days or weeks and it's very tempting to just give up with courses and go back to your “old job”.

But if you've successfully sold and run a great 2-hour webinar workshop where you taught the core of your course material it gives you much more faith you're on the right track.

The same with any type of fast-start approach.

It gives you confidence there really is a market for this. And that people are willing to buy from you. And that you can teach this and get great feedback.

It's usually enough to push you through any doubts or sticking points.

So for all those reasons, I'd definitely recommend some type of pilot or minimal viable product or pre-selling approach.

But I also know from experience that there are a few fears that can hold you back from this kind of fast start. So I'll share some of my experiences overcoming those fears in our next post on online courses.

See you then…

Online Courses

Something completely different…

Posted byIan Brodie on March 4th, 2022.

I interviewed Meghan Telpner for an upcoming Course Builders TV video a couple of days ago.

During the interview, Meghan said something I've heard again and again from my interviewees so I wanted to share it and emphasise it.

“Less is more”.

Or often “more is not more”.

Everyone I've interviewed has talked about providing great value for their course buyers. Of overdelivering.

But they've also stressed that value and overdelivering doesn't just mean piling more and more content into your course.

It's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to add more and more stuff into your course, hoping that will make it better and better.

More content doesn't necessarily lead to better results for your buyers. But it certainly leads to them needing to spend more time on the course.

And if you think about it, time is our scarcest resource.

So by adding more content to your course you're actually making it more “expensive” in terms of the time someone needs to put in to get through it.

They may not see that cost up front. But they'll certainly feel it as they go through the course. And it may well cause them to drop out or fail to get the results they're looking for because it's just too much hard work.

Remember, if people wanted more and more information about a topic they could just hop onto YouTube and get as much as they wanted.

What most people want from a course they buy is different. They want a fast-track to results.

They want you to have done the work of sorting through all the content you could include and narrowing down to only the essentials they need to get the results they're looking for.

The less time they have to spend learning, the higher their ROI. And the faster their payback.

And, of course, more content means more work for you too. There's many a course that has failed to see the light of day because the course creator just kept adding more and more and more…

So I know your natural tendency is to want to give more and more to your buyers.

But think twice before translating that into piling more content into your course.

Is that actually better for them? Are you doing it just to try to boost your confidence?

Or is there something else you can do to help them get better results without having to invest more time?

Thinking that through will make sure your course works better for both them and you.

Online Courses

“That sounds like hard work…”

Posted byIan Brodie on March 2nd, 2022.

I've spent the last few of these posts on marketing online courses talking about how you can get your potential customers ready to buy your course by thinking through what they need to “know and feel” to be ready, and then seeding those factors into your marketing as ways of illustrating the useful tips and ideas you're sharing.

At this point, you might be thinking “blimey, that sounds like hard work”. I know I did when I re-read it :)

And it is to a certain degree.

You have to put some thought into what it is that someone needs to believe (or feel) to be ready to buy your course. And you need to think about interesting ways of weaving those factors into your valuable content that gets the point across in a way that adds to, rather than distracts from the value.

That's definitely much harder than just rattling off a quick email.

But the good news is you don't have to do it for every email you write or piece of content you produce.

Valuable content on its own is good. It certainly does you no harm.

Valuable content that sells is better. But harder work.

So what you can do is find ways of leveraging that hard work.

For example, if you put a lot of thought into the initial email sequence that all your new subscribers get when they first join, it means that everyone from now on will get those emails, not just your current subscribers. And there's nothing stopping you from sending a version of your newly minted startup emails to current subscribers too.

Or if you have a new course you're launching or re-launching, it's time to put your thinking cap on and get the content you send out in advance of the launch to build up demand and readiness to buy for it.

The rest of the time, you can just create valuable content knowing it will build credibility and trust more generally.

And honestly, the more you practice “product placement” type content, the easier it becomes.

Eventually, it becomes second nature. You know by heart the key factors that will get people ready to buy. You have a bank of examples and stories you can reuse. And you'll be able to spot new ones without a lot of thought.

Then you find yourself writing “product placement” type content automatically. It almost becomes harder to write plain old content.