In this episode, host Julie Hood talks about a few of the problems she’s seen with courses – and how you can avoid them! With a little preparation, you can make sure your course works for your students and gets them to your promised result by the time they finish.
In this episode, host Julie Hood talks about a few of the problems she’s seen with courses – and how you can avoid them! With a little preparation, you can make sure your course works for your students and gets them to your promised result by the time they finish.
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Book – Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt
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Today's episode is inspired by a quote from a book I'm reading right now, it's called in your best year ever. And host and author of the book Michael Hyatt says that doubt is a goal toxin. So think about that for a minute. Doubt is a goal toxin. So where do you have doubt in your course business or for your courses? And let's talk about it today.
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. So glad you're here for episode 17, seven essentials for a course that works. And today I want to talk about a few of the problems that I've seen with courses that I've been taking, and to make sure that you avoid them.
Because with just a little bit of preparation, you can make sure that your course works for your students, gets them to the promised result when they finish your course and implementing these tactics will also help you remove any doubt that might be floating around in your mind, either about your course or your course business. Okay. So the seven essentials for a course that works.
The first one I wanted to talk about is that as the instructor, you need to know what it is that your students don't know. And so spending some time thinking about what they don't know yet, because they're new because of the stage they're in because of where they're at, what is it that they don't know? And you may need to do some research on this.
Facebook groups are a really good place to see where people are asking questions or another actual, one of my favorite places to learn this is when you're working with clients, because then you've experienced what it takes to get started and what it takes for someone to go through your framework and go through your process and where the holes are. So make sure that you're spending some time thinking about what it is that your students don't know.
That's number one. Number two is being able to put things in a logical order. So I was taking a course last week and I was watching the very first video in the course. And the instructor said, so this week we've been doing all of this different work to help you learn how to do this. We did this, we did this and we did this and I was watching.
And I was so confused because this was the very first video of her course. And obviously she must have recorded it maybe as part of a challenge or as part of some other training that she was doing. And she put it as the first video in the course. But as a student, I just left feeling so confused. I didn't know what she was talking about from all the other steps of the process.
And so make sure that you're putting the steps into a very logical order for your students. And I've found people are either really good at this or really bad at it. So if you've, if you're able and have some experience, maybe with thinking through a process from start to finish, then you're probably in good shape. If you have more trouble with this,
get some help, get one of your super organized friends to help you put things into a logical order. It's not an obvious skill. I realized not everyone knows how to do this. So don't feel bad if it's not something that you naturally can, can do get, get someone to work with you to help you kind of place things in the right order in making sure that they build upon each other as part of your course.
So that's number two, putting things in a logical order in your course, number three is sort of a bonus one. And this is to create cheat sheets or almost cliff notes for your course. And I took a podcasting course from Doug Sandler, and I just loved how he did this. So each lesson of his course had a one to two page PDF and it was not a transcript.
That's the first thing I want to mention is that it is, this is not a transcript that you're creating. This is more of a cliff notes version of the lesson. So I'm sure you remember, we all loved being able to use cliff notes to summarize a book and get the gist of what the book was about. And so what I really liked about this is I did have some experience already,
so I could look at his cliff notes and know, is this a lesson that I need to watch or not? Because if it was something I had already learned previously that I didn't have to take the time to actually watch that lesson. So the cliff notes gave me a summary, fairly detailed, but you know, it fit on a page or two and the lessons were less than 10 minutes in video length.
And then it also gave me the homework and the assignment from that lesson. So try to implement that with your courses. Each lesson should have its own PDF, cliff notes, version attached to that lesson. And then number four is sort of related to this and that's using really good audio and keeping your audio short. So when you're asking folks to listen to you for a long,
you want to make sure that you've got good audio for them and it isn't distracting, or there isn't a lot of noise in the background and then keeping the audio's short. So I like to recommend under 10 minutes, five to six minutes, if you can, for a lesson, because we've all sat down to a course and it's got an hour and a half video that we're supposed to watch.
And I just kind of inwardly groan thinking, oh, I really don't have time to watch an hour and a half video. So as the instructor, I want you to be concise and specific for your students. So they don't have to watch 90 minutes, give them 5, 6, 10 minute videos for the lessons to take them and move them forward. You'll have a much better completion rate of your course with shorter videos.
Number five is knowing actually where to find your audience. And this is a big one. I will tell you for being able to sell your course. And a lot of folks may start out. And the hard part they think is trying to come up with their course and get it created. But I feel like the more difficult challenge is getting in front of your potential students.
So before you create your course, at least spend a few minutes thinking about who is the perfect person for this course and where are they at in their journey. Spend some time thinking about the path that your students are taking and what is going to be the trigger or the pain point. That's going to jump out at them. The thing that's going to make them say,
oh, wait, I need to go get some help with this. I need to go find an answer so that they are ready to jump into your course. What is that problem? And where are these people hanging out together? You know, where are they online? Are there Facebook groups? Are there podcasts episodes that you could possibly be a guest on a podcast or you could offer to do a Facebook live in the Facebook group with the host where they could possibly get commissions,
if people sign up for your course, all of those kinds of techniques of trying to find your students are really, really important on the back end of having success with your course. So number five is knowing where to find your audience. And then number six is providing a really specific transformation. And I will tell you that this is really hard, especially depending on your topic.
You know, some topics are easier than others. My 24 hour course creator program is very specific. You spend an hour a day for 24 days, or you spend 24 hours. And by the end, you'll have your course finished. That's a very specific transformation or that I'm providing for my students. But other folks who are just getting started are still trying to figure out what it is they're teaching and what it is they're training and figuring out the result that your students are going to have at the end is vital.
It's essential, not only for you to create a really good course, but it's important for your marketing. So get some help with this. If you need to, it's not always obvious when we're down in the weeds with our topic, you really want to make sure that you're taking the opportunity to think about what is that result? What is that transformation?
What am I going to provide for my students? And then run it past some people, maybe you're in a mastermind, maybe you're in a group where you can get some more feedback and not just people that are friends of yours, but find some folks that are your actual potential students and see what they have to say. Not only about the topic, but whether it's something they would pay for.
So knowing that transformation and how important it is for your student, what it is and how you're going to take them from where they are to where they want to be. That whole transformation result piece is essential to a really good course. And then number seven is working on the course hosting and tracking where your students are in the course. So this one is not at the top of the list,
but I do think it can be really helpful to understanding the successfulness of your course. And when you are using some of the course hosts like Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, they are really good about tracking the status of a student. So if I log into a course, I watched this video, I mark it as complete. I watched the next video.
I marked that one complete, and it will then tell me, you know, you're 10% of the way through your course. And that kind of tracking is a whole nother level of following your students. It can tell you where they're getting stuck, where they're stopping, where they're dropping off, and it helps your students too, because the system is tracking where they should go next,
the next time they log in. So it's kind of a minor detail, but I think it can be really important to the long-term success of your course and understanding how well your course is performing for your students. So I hope these were helpful for you today. I'll run through them real quickly, and I'd like to suggest that you pick one of them to try to get implemented or to improve this week.
So the seven essentials for a course that works number one is knowing what it is that your students don't know and understanding what they want to learn from you. Number two is to put things in a logical order, making sure the sequence of the steps that you're sharing with them makes sense. Number three is creating cliff notes or cheat sheets that describe what a lesson is about and give a summary of the homework for your students.
Number four is to make sure your audio is really, really good and easy to listen to. And that you're keeping the lessons short five to six to 10 minute long lessons. Number five is knowing where to find your audience. And that's a pretty big one, but start thinking about that one right off the bat. Number six is having a very specific transformation and result that you're giving to your students so that they know at the end of their time,
in your course, they know exactly what the result is of what they will get. And then number seven is using your course hosting to help you track how well your students are completing your course and whether they're finishing the lessons or not. So I hope this was helpful for you today. I also wanted to provide you a quick win for listening to the end of the podcast.
I have a $37 training called Is My Course Idea Any Good to help you decide whether or not your idea is any good. It's a quick way to evaluate your concept. And I wanted to give it away to you for free. Just go to course creators, hq.com/idea that's course creators, hq.com/idea. And you can opt in to get ahold of that training.
And then I have one last request. As we jump into the end of the year, a lot of times people will start posting their top lists of an asking questions about what are your top podcasts. And I'd really, really appreciate it. If in any of the Facebook groups that you were in, if you could possibly mention the course creators HQ podcast and what you get from it,
I generally, you know, you can't promote yourself usually in, in a lot of the Facebook groups. So anytime you can do that, I would be incredibly grateful. Make sure you send me a message at Julie Hood at course, creators hq.com when you do that. So I can follow up with you and thank you. So I appreciate you so much.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Have a fantastic week. And I can't wait to connect with you next week. When we are going to talk about how to create an email list that lets you send them offers and what the things that you need to do right off the bat so that they will be open to hearing from you and clicking your offers and clicking to hear about your courses.
So join me next week for that episode. Thanks so much for listening and have a fantastic week.