Are you considering an online course? In this episode, host Julie Hood explains where to start. You'll get her 5 secrets for turning your knowledge into an amazing course!
Links mentioned in this episode:
Is my idea any good?
Grab the FREE training at https://www.CourseCreatorsHQ.com/idea
Where should I host my course?
Watch the training at https://www.CourseCreatorsHQ.com/host
24 Hour Course Creator
Find out more at https://www.24HourCourseCreator.com
Books mentioned:
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
As we jump in today, let's talk about where should you start with your first or next online course with my top five secrets for a really amazing course. Welcome to the course creators HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood. Hey, Hey, hello there. This is Julie and
I'm so excited you are here for episode one of the course creators HQ podcast, where we believe you can change the world with your courses, And we want to make it simpler and easier for you. So today let's chat all about where do you start? Let's talk about the landscape for online courses and my top five secrets for turning your idea into a course that transforms the lives of your students.
Let's start today with a quote from the author CS Lewis. And he said, the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. So let that sink in for just a moment, as a course, creator, you are irrigating deserts for your audience. And I really do want you to think about that because you want them to be almost as desperate as someone in a desert who needs water,
because that will help make your course the perfect solution for them. So your students are lacking something essential in their lives and think of yourself as bringing them the water in the desert. And that's the lifeline you're going to be. There's something they're missing. Maybe it's in their business or in their family, in their health. And as you, the course creator are there to solve and transform and help them.
So today I want to share my five secrets for turning your knowledge into a really amazing online course. And secret number one is to solve a problem or provide an answer. And this is the promise of your course, the transformation that you're going to provide to your students. So I want you to be very, very specific with the solution that you are providing.
I want you to have some results in your back pocket. So you've either done this for yourself. You've done this for a client. You've done this for friends. You have some results that you can pull out and talk about that you've used and, and performed in the past. And then the last thing is I want you to keep it manageable. So many new course creators want to share everything they know with their audiences to help them be a better expert or to come across as more knowledgeable.
But you do not have to share everything. You know, we want to keep your topic as manageable as possible. And we'll talk about this a little bit more as we go forward. So that's secret. Number one, figure out what the transformation and the promises that you're going to provide with your course secret. Number two is I want you to create your own framework for how you solve the problem for your audience.
My framework is the 24 hour course creator program. And what we do is we've set out hour by hour, exactly what you can do to create your first course. And the student then sits down at their computer. They spend an hour, they do the assignment, and the next time they sit down, they get hour number two hour, number three.
It's very, very specific. And it's the highlight of the program is that framework that I've put together because there's lots and lots of people who can help you create a course. But that is the unique framework that we've put together for the 24 hour course creator program. And let me give you a couple more examples to the seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey,
he wrote that book and his framework is that those seven habits will make you much more productive and much more efficient and improve your life. Another example is Michael Gerber and the E-Myth his book and his training is all about why small businesses fail and the entrepreneurial myth. And he walks through a framework of how to get yourself out of the E-Myth if you're part of it.
So I want you to do something similar. You're going to take the process that you do and put it into a framework that can help your students understand where they are on the path. It will help guide them from where they are today, to where they're going to be at the end. And when you break it down into six modules or seven sessions or seven habits,
or hour by hour or day by day, all of those frameworks make your course that much better for your students. So secret number three is to keep it as short as you can and as long as necessary. And this one is really important because yes, you need to teach your students everything they need to know to go from where they are today, to where you want to get them,
but you don't necessarily have to tell them everything that you know, and I'll give you a concrete example here that will make this help make this more concrete in your mind. I took a podcasting course and the instructor could have spent an hour long lesson telling us all about the different microphones and how they worked, and whether you would want one over another and the pros and cons of all the different ones.
And it would have been very helpful information, but it wasn't necessary information because really all we needed to know is what is the best microphone for us. He gave us a list. He said, I want you to get this microphone, this filter the swing arm for your mic. And then here are the links to Amazon. Go buy it. I want you to have it within a couple of days.
And that was such a soothing kind of course lesson, because I didn't have to make a bunch of decisions. I didn't have to go through and watch an hour long lesson and try to figure out which microphone was best for me. I just followed his instructions. And it's the microphone that I'm using for this podcast today. So keep that in mind, as you're putting your course together,
you do not have to share everything that you know about a topic you only need to share. What's absolutely necessary to get your students from where they are to the next step. And then secret number four, online courses means you're going to have some technology. I don't want you to be scared of it. I don't want you to worry about it. We can get through it.
There are some fantastic tools out there that will make life so much easier for doing the technology of your course. But I do want you to acknowledge that yes, there is going to be some technology involved, and I'm going to handle that hurdle. Now, for some of you who are not technology savvy, that may mean getting some support and some team members behind you to help with the technology side of things.
For those of you who are maybe a bit savvier, there's some really fantastic tools. It's not that hard to pull this information together. If you've got a little bit of experience with technology. So either way that is going to be part of your online course and the thing to keep in mind, I found this statistic e-learning so online learning increases retention rates by 25 to 60%.
So if you think about it, your students who are taking an online course from you are getting so much more than they would at a live workshop or at a live meeting because they can stop the course. They can rewind. You can provide downloads and worksheets and workbooks. And all of that information is going to increase the retention rate of the information that they're getting from you.
So that's secret number four, secret number five is that you need to figure out where your students are hanging out online and join the groups and participate in conversations and see what kinds of questions that they're asking. So this could be things like Facebook groups. It could be LinkedIn groups, it could be message boards for your topic area. All of those are really fantastic places to find your students and see what they are asking.
And I use this a lot to help me figure out what kinds of topics my students are looking to learn about. And I have a freebie that came from that in case you'd like to get ahold of it. The one of the big questions that comes up a lot is where should I be hosting my course? So if you want to go to coursecreatorshq.com/host that's coursecreatorshq.com/host, I've got a free training for you all about the different types of places, where you can host your course. And that came from watching that question come up a lot. So I hope you can join that training. And that will ease your mind a bit about the online side of things. So I want you to do the same thing for your students,
go out and find them in Facebook, figure out where they are and find the questions that they are answering, because that will make your course so much better. So let's recap real quick, the five secrets, the first one was to solve a problem or provide an answer for your students. This is the promise that you are giving them that you will take them on a journey from where they are today to the end of your course.
Secret number two is to create your own unique framework that you can provide that will walk them through the steps. Secret. Number three is to keep your course as short as you can as a, and as long as necessary. So as much as they need to get to the end, but no longer keep it as short as you can. Secret. Number four online courses do mean technology,
but we can tackle it. We can get through it. It doesn't have to side bar you or be difficult. And secret number five is to figure out where your students are hanging out online and connect with them. Find out the questions that they're asking, and use that to make your course even better. So I have a quick win for you today.
If you've got an idea and you're trying to figure out is my course idea, any good or not, I've got a $37 training that you can get ahold of for free. It'll help you decide if it's a good idea or not. And it's just a short evaluation and you can go grab that. At coursecreatorshq.com/idea that's coursecreatorshq.com/idea.
And then I have one last request. I would really, really appreciate it. If you are intrigued by the concept of an online course, if you could hit that subscribe button, and if you learned something useful today, please leave us a five star review. It really, really helps at the beginning of a new podcast to have some new subscribers and to have a lot of reviews.
So I'd be incredibly grateful and I'm also giving away prizes this week to a couple of the reviewers. So if you'd like to participate in that, send it to podcasts@coursecreatorshq.com and let us know that you've left a review so that you can join the contest. So thanks so much for listening and subscribing. This is Julie Hood, and I can't wait to with you in episode number two,
when we talk about the question That I see most often asked in Facebook groups about online courses, catch you then.