In this episode, host Julie Hood helps you decide out of all the course ideas and topics you have… which one should you choose?
In this episode, host Julie Hood helps you decide out of all the course ideas and topics you have… which one should you choose?
LINKS MENTIONED
Jump into the FREE 5 day challenge at TopicAndTitleChallenge.com to find your rockstar course idea and name your course!
Mark your calendars to join us for the next 24 Hour Course Creator Daily session starting on June 14th with group coaching to help you get your first (or your next!) course finished in just 24 hours. Find out more here.
Erica Ross-Krieger, Mental Fitness & Mindset Coach for Entrepreneurs – Join her for The Entrepreneur’s Café podcast here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
7 Questions to Ask Yourself When Picking the Perfect Topic
1. Do you have experience solving this problem?
2. Do you know how to reach this audience?
3. Are you passionate about this audience?
4. Where does this fall on the Customer Journey? Nuanced and advanced way to look at it.
5. How difficult will this be to create? What is your “Fastest Path to Cash”?
6. Can you start with a mini-course?
7. Where can people enter your “arena”? Listen in to the end to hear Erica's concept and how to apply it to your ideas.
COME VISIT!
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Connect with me on Clubhouse for FREE masterclasses at @JulieHood.
CourseCreatorsHQ.club – to join the waitlist for my upcoming Clubhouse course
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Hey there today. Let's talk about one of the questions that I get asked the most often, and that is how do I decide which topic to pick for my online course, I have a bunch of ideas and I don't know which one to create. So where should I start? Let's jump in today and I'll give you some money advice. 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 this week is so exciting here. At coursecreatorshq.com because we are doing our five Day challenge to pick your topic and your title for a rockstar course. And I'm having so much fun. We've got tons and tons of folks who have jumped in to the challenge.
And if you're listening to this on June the eighth of 2021, feel free to come jump in. You can still catch up. We've only had one day of a training so far, so you can still jump in and potentially win a free version of my 24 hour course creator daily program. One person who's participating in the challenge is going to win and we're starting that next week.
So I'd love to have you be the one that could potentially be winning the course. So what we've been doing today on the first day, I'm recording this on Monday to go out tomorrow on Tuesday so that you're, you're probably listening on Tuesday on Monday, we've been talking about the who and who it is that you're going to help, who you're going to advocate for who your audience is that you're wanting to reach.
And then tomorrow we're going to start talking about the problems that they have, and this is related to you and figuring out which topic you're going to do for your online course. So I wanted to give you a few suggestions that could be helpful. And the first one is I want you to grab a notebook or create some kind of note in your phone or on your computer,
where you start tracking all your ideas for courses or for specific audiences that you're working with. And the reason is, once you start thinking about this, your brain and your imagination and your subconscious start kicking up all kinds of ideas and information for you. And we don't want to lose any of those. We're going to pick one for you to work with,
but I don't want you to lose them. I want you to keep them for the future because they could either be future courses, future mini courses, future angles, and audiences that you're going to work with. So just keep track of them and write them down so that you don't lose them because it's really good inspiration. Okay? So you've got all these ideas and I will tell you every single course,
creator that I work with wants to put together this huge, tremendous signature course that has everything they know about the topic, because is a new creator. It feels like you're giving more value to your audience. When you can say, this is everything I know I'm giving it all to you, but what happens then is that your students, not only do they start feeling overwhelmed because you have given them so much to have to get through the chances of you sometimes even finishing such a big course like that,
it's, it's overwhelming. So here's the advice that I like to give my students. And that is, I want you to fit, pick something that you can start with an almost considered a mini course in your mind, you know, where is it that we can start? What idea would be helpful? And how should I pick a smaller version of all these things that are bouncing around in my head?
How can I pick a smaller version of that so that I can get something created, get it out there, get some money coming in so I can hire some help with my course business. How can I do that? So here's a few questions to ask yourself as you're going through all these ideas that you're thinking about and trying to decide, you know,
which one should I do? The first question is, do you have some experience solving this problem? So you've done it for yourself. You've done it for your friends or your family. You've done it for clients. Just some way that you've solved this problem for someone in the past. And if not, then this idea might go further down on the list.
If you have some experience, then it can go higher. And as we're going through, you know, maybe the first thing that you will do is try out with some friends to see if your framework, if your ideas, if your solution works, if there's something you're really passionate about helping, and you haven't done anything with it before. So that's the first one.
Do you have experience? If you don't, we might need to get you some second question. Do you know how to reach this audience? Now, this is somewhat of a complex question. It's not something I expect you to know right off the top of your head, but there's some key things that you will know if you've been following this audience or,
or thinking about this audience in the past, you may be in some Facebook groups where they hang out, you may be listening to some podcasts groups where they hang out, you know, who some of the gurus are. You're on the email lists of all of these different gurus who also help a similar audience. Those are all ways that you're getting to know what this audience talks about,
thinks about where they hang out. So we want to have some kind of idea of where the audience is and what, what you could potentially do to reach them, even if it's just being a guest on a podcast, because you know, that podcast has the audience that you're trying to reach. Okay. Question number three. Are you really passionate about helping this audience?
So for example, back in the day, I used to work with accountants and CPAs, and I thought at one point I was like, oh, maybe I should help them with their online marketing. You know, I know that industry and I could, I could probably you know, help them. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I left that industry for a reason,
it was incredibly boring and very, they don't do a lot of really fun marketing. They have to be kind of dry. And so I knew that I wasn't going to be passionate about that audience. Yes, I had experience in it, but it wasn't something that I got excited about in the morning to jump out of bed and go help accountants market themselves.
So I let that idea go and moved on, and I'm much, much happier helping course creators and experts get their messages out to the world. Okay. Question number four, where does your idea fall on the customer journey? So this is the, if you think about how it is that your potential students, the path that they're on and where your concept or your idea is falling on that journey.
So it's kind of a very nuanced and more of an advanced way to look at what you're doing, but, you know, is your idea for beginners? Is it for someone who's sort of along the path further down? Is it more towards the end? So sometimes I like to have my course creators starting with an earlier idea in the process. And here's why after they take that first course with you,
then you can have a follow on course and another follow on course, and another follow on course to keep expanding your course business and working with the same people, because they already know you, and then they get to do more with you. So that's kind of an advanced way of looking at your ideas to see where they're falling on the journey that your customer is having,
but it really does help in the longterm thinking about, okay, what's going to be next. What am I going to do for the next course? And to expand question number five, how difficult will this course be to create? And you may not really know the answer to this question, because sometimes we can't know until we get into it, but if you've got some materials maybe that you've already put together,
maybe you did a presentation about this in the past, or you've thought through kind of a framework of how you would solve the problem for this specific idea. That's, what's called the fastest path to cash because you already have some of it put together or some thoughts or some presentation materials, that sort of thing. And those ideas go higher on the list because you've already got those materials pulled together.
And you've got that information question. Number six is, can you start with a mini course? And here's why I want you to think about this. So one of the best ways to potentially market your course is that you've got a small intro version of it that people can either take for free, or they take it for low cost and they get a chance to get started with you.
And it gets them headed down the path to the full completion of whatever the result is that you're providing for your students. So let me give you an example. I think this would help. So I have my 24 hour course creator program where I help people put their courses together over 24 hours. Well, the first thing that they need is a topic and a title.
So that's why we've got this challenge. Mini course that we're doing this week is that's one of the very early steps in the process that I want to help people with that, get to see what it's like to work with me, coach with me, and then full disclosure, anyone who likes it, I'm hoping we'll continue on into the full course next week.
So if you can think about your process in a similar way, is there a mini course version of this that you could start with, you know, a first step kind of version so that it needs to be a result? So for example, all of my people in the challenge, our goal is by the end, they do have their topic and their title figured out.
So they have a result when they go through the challenge with me, even if they don't continue, they did get that result from the challenge. So you can see how your, your mini course has to have a result that could be a step or a part of the full course. So hopefully that gives you an idea, you know, how could I potentially use a mini course as part of my big topic idea,
and then sort of related to this as question number seven and it's where can people enter your arena? So let me explain this concept. It comes from my amazing mindset and financial coach that I work with, my good friend, Erica Ross Krieger. She helps people with their mindset and their financial money mindset kind of things. And so be sure to catch her podcast,
it's called the Entrepreneur's Cafe and I'll link to it in the show notes so that you can listen. She has a lot of really fantastic ideas to help you around getting your head in the right place. And one of the things that she talks about is that you have this arena, which has all of the different ways and different that you can teach and share with someone.
And your goal is to figure out how people are going to join and come into your arena. So you may have one or two specific ways that they get to know you and they come in and then they can do all kinds of stuff with you, but it's that initial, you know, what is it they're going to get from me to get started?
So for example, one of the ways that people get into her arena is listening to her podcast. That's one of the pieces. Another thing she has is a toolkit that she shares on her website that people can sign up for and jump in to get into her arena. So as you're going through your ideas, some of these could turn into doorways into your arena,
where they get a chance to experience working with you, or you give them some really good resource information, and then they want to find out more. So that's where as we're going through all these ideas that we have, that are just fantastic, really amazing ways that you can help people. There might be some smaller ones that can then turn into ways that people get into your arena and get to experience you.
And that could happen in a bunch of different formats. You know, maybe it's a mini course. Maybe it's just a one page resource guide with a bunch of the access to tools that you think are perfect to help your audience. Maybe it's a podcast where you're sharing stuff regularly. You know, there's lots of ways to do it, but as we're going through our idea lists,
we can think about how that could fit into the big puzzle of your entire business that you're putting together for your online business. So I hope these seven ideas have, and questions have given you a few things to think about this week, as you're trying to narrow down some of the really fantastic and amazing ideas and ways that you can help people with your courses and with the training that you're doing.
And so last call, if you want to jump in to the topic, entitled challenge, head out to the link in the show notes, or go to topicandtitlechallenge.com. And I really want to thank you so much for listening, for subscribing, for reviewing our podcast. It means the world to me, we are about to hit episode number 50,
and I can't believe it. We're going to have a year's worth of podcast episodes, and I would not have continued without you. And the way that you are all so incredibly supportive of me and of this podcast. So thank you so much, wishing you a fantastic and amazing week. And I will talk to you on the next episode. Take care.