Why Online Courses Are Failing — And How To Future-Proof Yours

I can't help but suggest starting the journey now to reimagine your course as a series of projects and events and things that people can do together, not just homework and a quiz. Although, don't get me wrong, we totally support homework and quizzes. But it's so much more powerful to think about. How am I bringing people together who are on the same path, who want to navigate the same transition, and then how do I give them quests to go on together? And how do I set that up so that it runs itself? That is the future. Hi, I'm Gina Bianchini, and this is People Magic, where we talk about all the different things that go into building a $1 million community. Let's dive in.

Hi, Gina. My course sales are down, and I know things are changing in the world. I'm worried about the future of content. Do courses still matter in a world of AI? And how should I be thinking about my business from here?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked this question. I am spending more and more time with more and more creators who are asking this exact question. And here's what's going on. So today, instead of going and buying a course, which, you know, the way courses evolved was I make a video, or you write up a bunch of PDFs, you might have like a Zoom or two or some kind of live stream, and you would put it on a website or a course, you know, a course platform, and leave it alone. People could come in, consume your content, watch your videos, take notes. And then what happened? Well, for most courses, people didn't finish them. They'd like, watch. They'd pay for it, watch one thing and then stop watching. So a lot of courses then added a Facebook group or added a Slack team as a way to basically keep people engaged in the course content. That simple, Read my text or watch my video and get my PDFs. So that is really how the course industry online has grown up. It's basically content with a separate group somewhere else. And then the third piece is all of these marketing funnels and tricks and things to get people to buy the content. So you plenty of platforms out there that are all about how do you create things like lead magnets and funnels and squeeze pages and all this stuff. And so if you take a step back, the course industry really became about the promise of creating a business that you could set and forget. It would be quote, unquote, passive income. And the whole idea of it was sell somebody on access to content and hope to get a separate group going that would bring people back into that course and also charge one time for that course. So that's been the baseline of this industry. Now what has happened is that we now have ChatGPT or Claude or Grok or any of these other ones where instead of sitting there and consuming content, consuming videos, I can go and get a quick answer from an app that gives me sort of instant context. So I don't have to buy a bunch of content. I don't have to buy even really beautiful and high quality and well organized content. I instead can access something that is interactive, something that is AI. On one hand, I'm not surprised that your core sales are down. On the other hand, there is so much that you can do and it just requires a bit of reframing and I would say moving to a different model for what you can create and then forget about. There is a movement afoot for a lot of course creators to basically take their course material and turn it into an interactive AI experience. So there's great platforms like Delphi for this. There's even platforms that exist out there like 11 labs, where you can basically create the AI version of yourself. Those are totally legitimate things for people to do. When you got a lot of content and you're like, how do I make it more interesting to get people to interact with and take advantage of all the amazing things that I've created? So it's a great way if your world is content, to think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna make an easier way for somebody to interact with my content. But there is a better, much more resilient, I'd go as far as to say future proofing way of taking your course and turning it into something that is absolutely defensible, absolutely valuable, that preserves your price and even lets you charge a premium. And that is to take your course and reimagine it as a set of things that a group of people are going to do together. So what do I mean by that? It means that for every video that you create, think about creating a challenge. So less homework assignment or quiz, those aren't working that well. Instead, take your same context, make sure that you know it's really valuable and is about a transition in people's lives, because that is what people, people pay attention to. The people who are going through transitions are by far the most motivated people to buy things, to contribute to things, to invite new people to things. That is why tapping into a transition is so powerful for creating these kinds of digital commerce and digital community businesses. Then the Value of what you are building can still be a course, but instead of it being about passively consuming content or your passive income, it is about setting up the framework for people to be able to tackle these transitions, getting these kinds of results and transformation that come from what you've designed for them together in small groups. So to do this, you gotta bring your course and your community together in the same place. And that's obviously unbiased. That's what we offer at Mighty Networks. And it works extremely well. So, for example, you can have your course and your community either as an activity feed or as a chat together in the same space. And because it is in the same space together, it means you can just bundle and package that into one single experience and charge a premium for that. Because you have set up those small groups to be able to go through those challenges together, those group projects together, those small wins that all add up to results in transformation that they can't get on their own. So now what does the value you bring to them entail? Well, it entails connecting them to the most relevant people in small groups, people that they haven't met before, or maybe they're going to do it together with friends, but if they haven't met, people that are on the same path in and of itself is incredibly valuable. So now your value is taking and reimagining your passive income. It is still actually just as passive because once you set up the system and schedule it out and make the connections between people in those small groups, the beautiful thing is they don't need you. They don't need you to get results and transformation. They want and need each other. So the real power in terms of creating a business that's going to be future proof for the next 10 years is helping people get results and transformation not from content, but by the community, the network that you are bringing together. That ability to find people that they could be in a small accountability group with, that they could do group projects with, that they could meet up in person and have a watch party or do a book club or like work on a project together. These are things that are fresh, they are novel, they are interesting, they are valuable because they're also going to help people get results. And here's the beautiful thing. The reason that most people didn't start with community is because it was hard, it was limited by the tools like Facebook groups, where because of the culture of Facebook, everything could get toxic really fast. And you know, the blunt force tools were, oh my gosh, I have to read absolutely every Post and approve it before it can even get out there. And then, you know, people would get mad at each other at like, you know, nine o' clock on a Saturday night. Super annoying. I ran one of those groups and it was officially really annoying. So in this new world of platforms that are much more sophisticated, that are really about how do you build a business that runs itself, where the value is the people who are meeting each other and sharing their stories, their ideas, their experiences, working on projects together, maybe even going into business together, being able to do all of those things with people who are on the same path, that is more valuable to your members or students and ultimately equally valuable to you because you can make more money, you can have those members be bringing in new members. So all of that funnel and all of the squeeze pages and all of the stuff, you're still going to do some of that, but you're not going to do nearly as much of that as you did in a world where you have content in one place that you know, only 5% of your people would even finish the course and your community somewhere else that you didn't have very much control over. And also was pretty rudimentary tools. I'm biased, but I think in a lot of places there are still very rudimentary tools. So that ability to get increasingly automated in setting up how you want to design a course that really functions more like a membership and a community that also gives you recurring revenue. So not only are you going to be able to create more surgical value, if you will, for the people who would be taking your course, because you're going to be able to provide more value by connecting people who are the most relevant, because you have custom fields and you have automations and you have AI things we are building into mighty networks. For example, we call it people magic and it's awesome. So you have all of those things that are going to allow you to set up your course and community together and let it run itself with AI moderation, with automations that mean you don't have to do a bunch of stuff as you go, as you do it manually. And then this ability to design the overall experience, schedule things in advance and literally these communities are, are just running themselves. And how do I know that? Because one of the data sources that we really pay attention to at MIGHTI is the connections between members. So how often are members connecting with each other? How often are they DMing? Are they answering questions? Are they RSVPing for events so we can infer that they are actually meeting up in person in addition to the online events that they're a part of in a community. So all of those things are happening at and they can happen without you. So the new passive income is going to be these kinds of highly sophisticated networks that are really the next generation of community, and you can charge a premium for these. And we're seeing that time and time again, which is why we have more $1 million communities on mighty networks than on any other platform. Because of the things that we've brought together to allow a static course to become this incredibly dynamic network that gets more valuable to every member with each new person who joins and contributes. That is where the world is going. And the reality is that the faster that you make that transition into this new world, where you're thinking about your passive income course as how am I setting this up with the technology that is now available today and only getting more and more sophisticated from here, charging more money for it, doing the things that energize you, and in making those connections between your members, energizing your members to not only consume your content, but apply your ideas in their lives, first of all, you're gonna have more impact. And then the second thing, which is also a really big deal, is that most courses, 99.9% of courses, and the way that the course online course industry kind of grew up was as one time fees. So you bought a course for, you know, high ticket course for $2,997, because the technology is getting more and more sophisticated and people are meeting and building relationships with and it's about how do you generate experiences based on your concepts and allowing and enabling people to implement them in their lives. The beautiful thing is that you can actually charge on a monthly basis. You can create recurring revenue, and this is recurring revenue that is coming in month after month after month with very low churn or cancellations, because people are successfully navigating that transition that they originally bought that course for, because they are finding new and interesting ways to apply your concepts in their lives. And they want to talk to people about it. But more importantly, they want to make friends with people who are on the same path. And very rarely, even in, you know, tough times, do we choose to walk away from our communities, our memberships value producing networks. The ultimate thing any of us can build in these kinds of digital community businesses is identity. So the churn that you will have is significantly lower than if you are continuing to try to just sell content. Content is a commodity. Certainly I like having all of the things that I've talked to and talked about in our People Magic Masterclass, in this podcast, in anything I've written. I love having the ability for somebody to access that in an interactive and an AI enabled way. That's wonderful, but it's still content and it's still a commodity. Whereas when a network of people are building real relationships with each other in the context of applying your concepts to their lives, helping people go through a transition together, that's something that looks and feels a lot like the most valuable businesses that have ever been created and that people create lifelong memberships too. So I can't help but suggest starting the journey now to reimagine your course as a series of projects and events and things that people can do together, not just homework and a quiz. Although don't get me wrong, we totally support homework and quizzes. But it's so much more powerful to think about how am I bringing people together who are on the same path, who want to navigate the same transition and then how do I give them quests to go on together and how do I set that up so that it runs itself? That is the future. That is actually at mighty how we are helping more and more people create $1 million plus communities. But again, we have tens of thousands of folks who are happy making 50, 60 thousand dollars a year and that we celebrate as well. Both of those things are happening because the technology is getting better, more sophisticated, and is there to essentially get to a point where your community can run itself. So hopefully that helps give a little bit more of at least my perspective on where the world is going. It's going there. So with that, I'm Gina Bianchini. Thanks for tuning in. And this is People Magic. Thank you for being a part of People Magic. I could not do this show without you. If you want a deeper dive on any of these topics, how to build a community, run a membership, choose your pricing. I have a nine point part free People Magic masterclass on our website and the link is in the show notes. This is something that I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to share with you, so hopefully you'll find it valuable. And I can't do this show without some burning questions. So everything that I tackle is something someone just like you has offered their idea or offered their question. We take it and turn it into a show. So in the show notes there is the link to leave me a voice memo and I hope you'll take advantage of it.