The Harsh Truth About Online Courses (And What Works Now)

How do you build a course that actually gets people results? My guest today, Erin Green, is a learning product strategist who spent 15 years inside agencies building programs for IKEA, Google, and Amazon.

We're creating these things because we truly believe that what we know has the ability to transform someone's life. So if we're going to live up to that promise, we need to design something that sets them up for that.

Erin's Hook to Habit method centers on behavior, practice, and timely feedback.

The framework that I created kind of walks you through that step by step. So let's start with hook, and a good hook always results in an emotional experience where they feel heard. Then you go into Start. We want to create easy wins. Then you Build. This is where you're really building skills. Number 4 is Flow. You are getting into skill mastery.

Number 5?

Create a Habit. Being able to integrate a skill and have it to become a habit is the most important part of this.

How do you use AI to help parents in this experience?

If you're going to use AI, which you absolutely should, that you're making sure it knows only to pull from you. My favorite hack that I always tell people is once you've done that, you just start building.

I love that. You've got so much good stuff in here. Erin, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me, Nathan Barry.

Okay, so something that comes up all the time in course design is, is this course actually good? So many of us have expertise in a particular area and then we have access to cameras and all of that. And so we're like, great, I will get in front of the camera, I will teach the thing, and then I will sell it to an audience. And many of those courses aren't good. Good in the sense that they don't create the outcomes that we want. So I want to get into your background and all that, but first let's stay on this problem of how do you see it, the problem in the industry and what would actually make effective courses?

So the challenge with the way that courses have been created for years and knowledge has been created for years, um, is that we think about what we want to teach someone. What do I have in my head that I want to now transfer to your head? And we don't think necessarily about what is the behavior that I want you to change. So if I run into you a month from now, um, here in downtown Boise and I'm asking how you're doing, like if you've taken my course that you've actually transformed your life or you've actually started applying that skill. So that's kind of the first thing that goes wrong, is that we think more about what we're interested in teaching, what we're passionate about, which doesn't solve the pain point that our end user has. So what can happen is you get into this cool thought process and you're super stoked about this topic that you love, and you create a course on it, and then it flops, right? Even if it's the most beautiful thing in the world, it flops because it didn't address a pain point. You didn't properly diagnose the problem that people were having that they need someone to solve. So that can be a basic reason why things flop.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think talking about that, the habit you want them to form and the behavior, mm-hmm. You know, that change specifically, cuz we all set out because we, we wanna have an impact, right? Creators are, are making this content because of the impact that it has on people and we're making courses both as a good way to make money and to run a business, but especially in order to have impact. 'Cause it's like, look, this changed my life, let me help you change yours. And so we're just missing this fundamental step in the process of like, is it actually designed to create the outcome that you want?

Yeah, definitely. And the challenge is that there's no method out there that's gonna teach you how to do that. There's, you know, tons of courses on how to create a course, And they're really more about how to create something in a tool, how to write slick marketing copy, which is great. We, you know, we need to be able to sell this amazing thing that, you know, is going to transform lives. But it's rare that when we're thinking about a course that we actually first say, what, how do I want people to behave differently? And when we can start with that question, then we can reverse engineer what the course is actually going to be, what that learning journey is going to be. And because we've began with the end in mind, we're able to design design the course in a way that actually gets that result for someone.

That makes sense.

Yeah, and it's, you know, if we're creating these things because we truly believe that what we know has the ability to transform someone's life and make their life better. So if we're going to live up to that promise to ourselves and also, you know, to our customers, we need to design something that sets them up for that. Because we all have enough knowledge, but what we don't have are enough skills. And so that's where thinking about behavior change first and then kind of reverse designing the learning experience, um, can really come into play.

I love that. So what we're going to do today is you're going to teach your method on Hook to Habit. We'll get up on the board and diagram that and really show step by step, all right, here's how you create, you know, a course or really any training that creates that behavior change. But before we do that, I'm sure people are wondering like, okay, who are you? What's your, what's your background? So you've been doing this for a long time and you've been doing this for some very large organizations. So So talk about what brought you to this world of, you know, content creation and, you know, making courses for behavior change.

Yeah. So I studied education in undergrad and I've always been a rule breaker. I'm someone who's like, the shortest distance between point A and point B, it's a straight line, you know? And so business was a better setting for me than education in that sense. And so I knew all along I don't want to teach. Um, but I do love education and I want to go into— so I went into adult education and I spent 15 years, um, working at various creative agencies, but particularly around course development. And so I got to partner with organizations like IKEA and Google and Amazon and so many of those just fun global brands that we get to interact with on any given day. And what I did was help them understand like, What is it that you want people to do differently on the job? When you say you want leaders to have more empathy, what does that look like? What's the observable skill there? And then my job was to design, you know, what that solution was gonna be, sell them that they needed to write a big check to my company. And did that for 15 years and absolutely loved it. And, you know, came to a point where I said, all right, if I'm, making the biggest impact that I can in the world, if I'm really using my superpower of helping take ideas and thought leadership and transform it into a way that you can deliver at scale, then I need to be creating that, um, for myself with people who I believe have the messages and the, and the expertise that really the world could be a better place if we all had more access to. And I like doing that within business because I think business is the fastest way to create transformation. Yes. I mean, look at what's happening all around us with AI, and it's transforming everything, but it all came from a spark, you know, within business. So for me to be most disruptive and helping, you know, raise the skills of the people in the world that are making change, it's through the creation of these digital learning experiences that are going to really help them upskill and implement.

Oh, I love that. So Now what you're doing is both creating content on this, but then you're doing a lot of done-for-you work where you're coming in with these creators and, and doing a massive project. Like, what does it cost to work with you for one of these? You know, if I said, hey, I want you to redesign my entire course.

Yeah.

Or create this course, you know, with me and show me how to do it following this method.

Yeah. So my clients typically spend about $50,000 working with me to create the course for them. It's the whole service. So they get to show up and be the thought expert and dump their ideas.

Yeah.

And we do all of the design and construction and implementation for them.

That's great. So what we're going to do now is give the overall framework and walkthrough. So the people who can't spend $50,000 or aren't ready to do that yet, they can learn a bunch. So let's jump on to the board and dive into the methodology. If you were to introduce Hooked to Habit, I was going to say I know nothing about it, right? I know a little bit about it because we've been talking before we recorded, but what's like, give me the overview of it and then we'll dive into where you'd start.

Yeah. So the whole point of Hooked to Habit is design a course that actually changes behavior.

Okay.

Which is much easier said than done. And so the framework that I created kind of walks you through that step by step so that it becomes, um, more actionable, more useful. Okay.

That sounds good. So where do you wanna start in this?

Yeah. So let's start with hook.

Okay.

Hook is the very first step and it's exactly what you think it should be. Whether you're writing an ad or writing marketing copy or trying to catch the attention of someone, you need a strong hook.

Mm-hmm.

And that's because your people who are buying your course and taking your course, you're not competing against other course creators for their attention. You're competing against Netflix and Instagram, the best in the world, and TikTok. Right, right.

I mean, that's such an interesting point cuz you're saying, okay, if I'm creating a course on, I don't know what it would be. Let's say that it's like planning your year.

Yeah.

And thinking about, oh, here's someone else who has one and mine's positioned this way versus theirs is that way. And you're like, we're the competition. It's like, no, not really. Probably 95% of your people don't know that the other person exists.

Exactly.

And vice versa. And so, yeah, and even making the step and say like, okay, well my competition then is Masterclass.

No, not really. Your competition is your kids, you know, like vying for your attention and your business. And it's, it's YouTube and Netflix and Prime and and all that. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So we wanna give 'em a strong hook. And what we do here is, you know, you pull these strategies right out of behavioral economics, marketing, advertising. Like this is not rocket science, right? So it's things like social proof.

Okay.

Curiosity gaps, all those things that are gonna make someone go, huh. And a good hook always, results in an emotional experience where they feel heard. So it's like, finally, you know, Nathan's created this plan your year, you know, course, and he gets me, right? And so just hook, think about when you watch a movie and you stop watching it, or when you watch it and you keep watching it, okay? Then you go into start.

Okay.

And start is the phase where we want to create easy wins for people. So that's where momentum starts building because it's all well and good if you hook someone, mm-hmm, but if you don't give them easy wins and it's like, now this becomes hard, my brain has to work to complete this experience, even if it's just like navigating the tech, right? So when you think about a course, it's not just the content, it's that whole experience that someone has interacting with your product. Just like you would in any customer journey. So with start, we want easy wins. These are things like short assignments that they can complete or like, you know, 3 things you can do right after this video to go and implement. Easy wins and they start building momentum. You're just getting them excited. You start warming them up.

So on that, like, is there an example of some easy wins that you've implemented for a client or when you've gone into a course you've been like, ah, yes, they nailed this?

Yeah, yeah. So an easy win would be like that first part of the course, maybe it's a short video, maybe it's like, it's almost like a little microbite, and then you can do things like, I always love a progress bar, you know? So when you let somebody start building that progress bar and they can see the visual proof that they've completed something, even though they haven't really had to work that hard for it, it's motivating for us, right? So it's things like that, visual indicators, you're making progress faster than you think that you might, and then that the content is easy to wrap your head around. It's not a lot of work. So if you're designing a course on fitness, for example, some of those easy wins might just be go walk for 10 minutes. Great, you did that, here's your badge.

Right.

You know, so it feels good, it's easy to win, and it gets people like, primed for the harder work.

That makes sense. I'm thinking about my Creator Flywheels course, and when I launched it, I've done several iterations of it to try to test and learn and develop the material. And the last one I did was sort of the full launch, and I realized I think I made this mistake, or I made a big mistake in this category where I was really— there's a lot of theory to flywheels, and so I was like trying to teach all of that and make sure you fully understand it. And then let's implement it, mm-hmm, you know, bespoke to your business.

Right.

Mm-hmm. Because we're doing this cohort-based coaching approach. And now when I've reworked the program based on what I learned, it's really focusing on these easy wins and we're just gonna, everyone's gonna learn the same simple flywheel.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna make sure that you get that win.

Yeah.

And it'll probably take us the first week.

Yeah.

Like it's not gonna take very long at all.

Right.

And everyone will have that win and they'll be like, oh, now I see it in action. We'll build on it. Yeah.

And part of that is because when you're introducing a new concept, it, you know, we have to have— for our brains to remember something, there has to be an existing network connection for it to tap into. So when you're introducing something that is completely new, you need like an easy primer, and then you can start layering on complexity. But you're talking about the earlier versions of your course, and that's completely normal because as an expert, you love what you're talking about. You just want to talk about flywheels all day long, right? And exactly. And so you actually think about people need to know a lot more than they need to. And so when we give a lot of theory and background, our short-term memory really can't hold a whole lot, especially when we have like 5 minutes to focus before we're interrupted again, right? And so what those easy wins do is it kind of allows you to give the foundation that's necessary, but only what's necessary. Okay. For them to start building momentum because if you're, you're thinking about your flywheels course and you have this ongoing cohort experience, you're going to be layering on theory and content as you go.

Yep, that makes sense. Okay, what's number 3?

Yeah, so then you go into build, and this is where you're really building skills. So in the example of the flywheel course, this is where people are going to be building their first flywheel and implementing it. Okay, so you're actually practicing the skills for the first time, you're getting feedback. So what's really important here in build is that feedback loop, okay? So my, my favorite story to tell with this one is the best job I ever had was teaching little kids swim lessons. And what's interesting about anytime you're teaching a child a new sport, whether it's swim or volleyball or whatever it is, is you're in there with them coaching every little move and giving them feedback. So what's really cool about a cohort experience is they're learning what you're telling them, they're practicing the skill, and then you're giving them feedback immediately in the moment. And that's what allows us to really start to integrate that skill and the performance of that skill into our lives. But to get good fast, you need those feedback loops.

Okay.

Yeah.

What else is really important at the build step?

Giving them the, setting it up in a way that they can continue to have wins. So the minute that you put someone into a learning experience and they start to have a fear of failure or a fear of this feels hard, like we're just naturally, you know, path of least resistance, you know, beings, right? And so we want to create a lot of easy wins. You know, you're starting to make them harder as you go down into Build, but just a lot of practice and a lot of reassurance and kind of ego stroking, and this is where you're gonna get all your badges for completing the assignments and things like that. Because when we feel good, we wanna keep doing something. When we feel like something is hard and we're failing, but we don't have the emotional support or the community support around it, we're gonna wanna go do what we used to do. So at least that worked.

Yes.

Sort of.

Yeah, and so I could see in the start phase, you know, obviously we're getting those easy wins. We talked about that. And then it's like, okay, now that's done. Now we can just go into build and dive into all this. And you're like, yes. And let's layer in some more clear wins so they feel like not only on a progress bar is it moving along, but they're actually stacking these wins and it's like, oh, this is working for me.

Exactly. And so like an example in a cohort-based experience is you could have a whole channel within the platform that you're using that's just people posting their wins. Oh, yes. And maybe that happens throughout the week. And then one day a week in the cohort, you read the top 5 wins, or there's a prize or something like that. But it becomes about, I'm, I'm winning, I'm getting to experience the wins of others, and we're sharing in that kind of growth.

I put a star next to it 'cause I don't do that right now and—

Holy shit, and it's easy. Right. It doesn't cost any money, like straight. Yeah.

Sounds good, all right, what's number 4?

Number 4 is flow.

Okay.

And this is where you are getting into skill mastery. So if you think about a 6-week Flywheels course, you know, week 1, you're kind of in hook and start, weeks 2, 3, 4, you're really in build. But by the time they get to week 6, they should be in flow. They become kind of, they've mastered the skill at this point, or at least as much as one can ever master a skill in 6 weeks. But it's coming naturally. I don't have to like overthink or overplan when I'm starting to maybe think about my next flywheel. Really mastery there. And we do a lot of nudging and reinforcement in this stage as well because it's one thing to, I think we've all probably like started a fitness program, you know, like go to CrossFit for a few months and we could become in the flow of that. But if we don't make it a habit, then that's where things start to fall off. So with flow, building that mastery, you're nudging and reinforcing and you're setting that person up to Create a habit is the fifth step.

Yep, that makes sense. Okay, so number 5, create a habit.

Create a habit. So this is where you start designing your environment to support you in continuing to perform this skill. Because when you're in a course, whether it's a several-week cohort or it's just, you know, something that somebody takes on their own, if we're not actually changing our behavior in the day-to-day, we've all wasted our time and money. So being able to integrate a skill and have it to become a habit is the most important part of this because otherwise, again, we've just wasted time and money. And so habit cues, for example, I think the easiest one is put your tennis shoes out by your, you know, by your bed. So when you get up in the morning, you put your sneakers on, you know, it's like less resistance. That's the habit cue. Stacking, those types of things. And so from a learning design standpoint, you're thinking about when you're creating your course, like, what is the performance of flywheels going to look like in the day-to-day when someone has left this program? And what are the habits that they're going to need to have in place in order to, for it to be natural and for there not to be any resistance to them implementing what they're learning in the course?

That makes sense.

And this gets missed a lot. Because we are really, one is there are very few learning experiences that we have that are designed for that. So when we think about, you know, how we've learned how to learn, it's, you know, maybe you get in here, right? So it's not like it's natural for all of us to think about that, but it's also really hard to get that right.

So outside of health and fitness where people may have talked a lot about habit design and all of that, and if we step into the world of business or marketing or any of these other things, What's a course that's really nailed this habit step and like designing your environment, all of that?

Yeah, so I've had the opportunity to work with, um, a fantastic applied behavioral economist. And what was cool is when we were designing a course, we were thinking about behavioral economics. Yeah. And so habit was a huge part of that. And so, um, an example of what she did, this particular course was about how do you apply behavioral economics to your life as a leader?

Okay.

Okay. So it's like, these are theories that maybe we've applied to how you price your product or how you market your product. But then as a leader, how do you apply these same concepts in order to have your employees just have a better experience with you as a leader? And so a great example of a designing environment around that is So for example, if you think about the physical space in a room, if you're a leader and you're trying to encourage more interaction within, um, your team when you're leading a meeting, you're gonna design that physical space for interaction. You're going to think about, um, your body language. You're gonna think about whether or not you're shutting people down or you're inviting questions. So you might have, um, when you're in build and flow, you might be building a new template for agendas for meetings, right? Like thinking through that. And so once you start to have those tools that you use in practice, then it becomes a lot easier to build a habit. So maybe now if my habit is that I wanna have better structured meetings, I might put on my calendar a 15-minute prep session the day before so that I can plan out the agenda and make sure, and that just becomes a habit because it's always scheduled on my calendar.

Well, that makes me think of in the Flywheels course, I talk about this a lot, how important it is to measure a flywheel, but, and there's a whole module on that and lots of things, and the calendar reminder is so important.

Yeah.

But I really need, you know, early on to get to that calendar reminder so that, you know, if they have a weekly flywheel every Friday for 15 minutes, there's a block to measure that because that's going to keep coming back to it, especially because in so many of these courses or material that you're teaching, it's really hard to get quick wins. And it, you know, so much in life compounds over time. And so with flywheels, people are often doing it maybe for the first couple of weeks harder. It's more difficult to do it in the flywheel way than to do it in a hand pump style. And so like, I need you to do it for long enough and you're like, oh, now I see why this is easier your way.

Well, and the quick wins, they don't have to be about I'm seeing a result in my business from the flywheel. The quick win is this course is useful to me and I can see that immediately. And the win that I'm going in and doing an audit of my tools, for example, that it's going to help me get better technology to support my flywheel. So it's really, it's really not about business results at this point. It's about priming them and getting their belief that they're gonna get something out of this experience because otherwise they don't get, you know, down here.

Right.

And then my favorite hack for, uh, the calendar thing that I always tell people who are creating cohorts is you've just told them to block off 4 hours a week, you know, or every Monday at 9:00 AM for the class, however that is, that it becomes their time that they do that, right? That work. And so you can be really intentional about how you structure that and how you, the tools that you give them to form that habit. So it already fits into a flow that you've helped them create. They're in the nature of it. They know they do this task on, you know, Tuesday mornings at 8, already been blocked off for 6 weeks. Like they're in the flow of that. And so when we think about habits, it really is like what's already happening in their life that's a habit. And James Clear talks about habit stacking and we know But that's a natural way. So if you've already kind of disrupted their experience, um, their schedule, if you will, you know, then yeah, plugging it into your calendar at that point, you know, is an example. Yeah.

I'm gonna put an, a star next to calendar because it's another area that I can see that I need to improve the course because I definitely have people scheduling in time to measure the flywheel.

Uh-huh.

But early on in the, the new cohort version, I could have people schedule in the time they're gonna watch the additional lessons or that they're going to implement it. And so just that, you know, in one of these early calls you'd be like, hey, now over, uh, I need to schedule 2 hours each week for the next 6 weeks of when you're going to do your homework and implement this.

Otherwise they're gonna drop off, right? Like, so you're in that, you're creating accountability for them, but you're also setting them up for success and telling them like how to plan so that they can get the most out of it. Because if they don't do their homework, then they're not going to be as ready the next week. Now they're behind, now they feel like they're failing, right? Like, so you, you really have to set them up for success because again, Netflix is competing for their, their attention, you know? And so if they start to feel behind, like they're swallowing a little bit of water, they're not quite, you know, treading the way that they want to be, um, then that can be a lot of, you know, barrier. And then they're not gonna get the ROI that you've promised them with your hook and your amazing marketing material. And so then you start to get into an experience where people feel like they haven't been successful because the course wasn't good. And maybe that is true, we don't know, right? You never know. But in all likelihood, it's because the experience of it that they had going through that journey didn't work with their day-to-day life. You know, it's really hard to sit down and watch an hour-long video. Like, who has time, right? But if we have 3-minute, 5-minute ones, then I can pick them up and put them down. If you have the video version and the audio version and I've got a 2-hour drive, I can just sit and listen to the entire audio for that week.

Right. All right, so this is the learner's experience, what they're going through when they actually take your course. But most of our listeners are the course creators, right? Right. So there's a lot that we wanna get into. Like, uh, I, I think a fun thing to dive into in a little bit would be the AI side of it, of like, how do you use AI to help enhance this experience? But if we were to zoom out and say, okay, as a course creator, what do you do? How do you create this? What, what are the steps?

Yeah.

Does that sound good to go into?

Absolutely. The first thing I would say is it's gonna be okay. It can be a huge learning curve just to learn the tech. You know, thankfully creators, they're comfortable on video, they know how to write. Um, but, but, uh, creating a course is a very different form of content delivery. Um, so yeah, the first thing I always say is like, it's going to be okay. There's a method. Take it step by step. Um, but the first thing that we always do is we want to validate the idea because, you know, as we've talked about, you can love a topic, but if it doesn't actually solve a pain point that your audience has, You might love what comes out at the end, but no one's going to buy it. It's going to flop. So when you think about validating, it's like the idea itself, the topic. Okay. We also want to look at, you know, what's happening in the market, just like you would do market research for any product that you're launching. That includes understanding who the competitors are, who the substitutes are. Sometimes the competitor is Netflix. And so, you know, like attention as well. Um, and then is there a spot of pain point that nobody's, um, servicing yet? And so this is like, of course, one of the most common questions that I get asked when I start meeting people that are considering take, uh, creating a course is how do I know if it's a good idea? How do I know if someone's gonna buy it? And it's pretty simple. Okay. First of all, never trust family and friends. Yes. Ever. They love you too much.

The people you trust most in your life are the least trustworthy or reliable for this problem.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, run your ideas by somebody who you're like, I'm not quite sure that they like me. You know, like, great. They're very honest. Those would be your ideal.

The bully from high school, maybe ask them.

Yeah, exactly. My 7-year-old will be very honest with me about whether something's a good idea. So validate, but also in terms of like, think about if you have this course idea like flywheels, right? Or wealth building or a fitness topic, whatever that is, if you're active on social media, which most creators are, start creating content around that. Start talking about it on your podcast and notice, are people engaging with this more so than normal? Did they feel interested in it? Or when I post this content, do I get 10%, 15%, 20% less engagement? Okay. Also, if you wanna, if you think you're gonna create a course on content you've already talked about, which is common and makes it efficient for sure, if you already have a bunch of content on it, is go back and look at the engagement of those. The other thing is look at the feedback that people have given you in the work that you've done for them. If you're consulting with them where, you know, customers are saying things like, that was so helpful, you made me feel so much better, I knew what to do. And those are signals, right? Then you go and you create a very inexpensive or even, you know, free form of, of content that they can interact with. So maybe it's like a playbook or a PDF or an email course or something like that. And look at, are people engaging? Are they completing it? So those are ways that you can test in addition to a bunch of market research, because you don't want to spend all this time creating, you know, whether you're going to spend, you know, $50,000, um, with a partner like Audacious Labs, or you're going to spend $50,000 of your worth of your own time. You want to make sure you've got something good.

Yeah. You know, I was thinking that things that have helped me.

Yeah.

One is presell.

Yes.

That has made a huge difference because people will say like, oh, that's amazing. I love that. I love that you're building that. I would totally participate in that. You're like, cool, it's $1,000. They're like, right, but I'm busy this month until the end of time.

Right.

You know, any of those things. Yeah. It's if you ask them to actually buy it, that makes a big difference. The other thing is you're not, I feel like you're not just validating, will people buy this? Is this interesting? But I think you're also validating, like, do I have something compelling to teach here?

Yeah.

So using the Flywheels course as an example, I had that early content where I talked about flywheels in some workshops. I feel like in-person workshops at a conference to a room of like 25 people. Yeah. Is a great size. 'Cause you can actually see like, oh, they're, they're, they're nodding along.

Yeah.

They're taking notes. Okay. I guess this is good.

John is falling asleep in the back, so maybe not the best.

It's always John. Um, uh, but then, you know, so if you do that in the workshop.

Yeah.

And then to presell, so actually I'm gonna write down, uh, this is gonna get messier up here.

Perfect.

That's how we know we're really into it.

Exactly.

So the workshop is great for validating, then preselling something with the Flywheel course. I presold basically a digital version of the workshop. I think it was $1,000 or $1,500. We did it cohort style.

Yeah.

But I taught the entire thing live. There was no videos, none of that, because I didn't even fully know what would resonate and how that would work.

Yeah.

And so teaching it live saved me all of the time.

Yes.

Of creating all of these videos and all of that and either learning people don't care, which would have been a huge waste of time and a big bummer, or learning that I was teaching it fundamentally wrong.

Yeah.

I need to go re-record all that. So I did, I taught it all live.

Yeah.

Then the next cohort I recorded, I created curriculum, but recorded a lightweight version of it. Just me, webcam, basic lighting.

Yeah.

Did all of that. And then it wasn't until the third cohort that I came back and was like, all right, we've tweaked the material a lot.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to sit down in the studio and record a version.

Yeah.

That like really looks polished.

Yeah, I love that because I think that, you know, so many creators have beautiful brands that they've made for themselves. And so you don't want to put something out there that's not great or that doesn't reflect your brand. And so, um, it can be easy to get into this mindset that I have to build out this whole thing and it has to be perfect. And I think that is like, let's destroy and uncreate that concept in our minds. And think about minimum lovable. Okay. So in your first version of the Flywheels course, you were doing it live. You were kind of planning it as you go, but you were saying, look, I'm gonna create something that I'm okay putting my name on. Yeah. It's minimum lovable for me. Um, and chances are what's minimum lovable for you will be fantastic.

And they were thrilled cuz they got a bunch of my time.

Exactly.

And I was thrilled because I invested that time after I was pre— I had pre-sold it. And not in preparation to then see, oh, can—

no one's gonna— yeah, actually buy. Yeah. John's still gonna fall asleep. Right. So I think what's interesting about pre-selling is, you know, people are afraid of this. Um, but you know, the worst thing that can happen is you give people money back.

Mm-hmm.

That's okay. Right. You know, like, and odds are if it's really not gonna sell, you're gonna know that very early on. You're not gonna have a lot of money to give back. But I do think people get a little nervous about that. But I'll tell you what, there's not anything more motivating than knowing that you have people's money and they're waiting.

Yes.

It's like, oh, I better, I better do that today. I better do that today.

I love that. Okay, so what's after validate?

Okay, so you have this idea, you've done all this research and you've had conversations with real humans that this is a good idea. Then you go into basically designing the, the learning experience. So if you think of learning, think of it as a journey, kind of similar to, you know, a customer journey, like how are they going to come in, right? And how are they going to get out of my experience? Okay. And so what you want out is a behavior change.

Okay.

And so in your case, what is the behavior change that you want to see people or the behaviors that you want to see people performing in their lives after they've taken this course?

Yeah, I want them to have turned the problems they encounter in their life and business into repeatable flywheels.

Okay. And what does that look like in their business? What would you observe?

You would notice like stress decrease.

Okay.

And time invested decrease. And then you, you know, whatever results they're after, increasing.

So, so money's going up in this case. Yeah.

Yep.

Okay. So you want people to experience less stress, have more time back, and have more income in their business. Yeah. Perfect. So if you start out and you think that your, ooh, your output is, I want people to know how to use the flywheel, which is often how we think about teaching somebody something, right? The journey that you design is very different than I want people to have less stress because they have a repeatable process.

Yeah.

That saves them time while increasing their money. That's a complete, you're teaching something different here, right? So we start with the, with the change, right? That you, that you wanna create. And so then we would say, okay, great. So this is the outcome that we're creating people, that we're selling them that they're gonna get. So let's make sure they get it. What do they need to know and be able to do in order to get to this? So start with skills. Like, what are the skills that a creator needs to have repeatable flywheels just rolling and being amazing in their business?

Yeah, I think the first thing is you have to be able to identify, you know, what, what could be turned into a flywheel.

Okay.

Right. So yeah, identification is, is key.

Okay.

And then I think that the, the next thing from there is Yeah, you have to be able to rework the existing, you have to understand how to rework the existing process into the flywheel.

But you need how to measure if it's working and then how to modify, right?

Yep.

How to adapt. Okay, what else?

How to adapt, I'm trying to think what would go after that because adapt design, that would be the—

Well, I mean, I think there's an element of implementation, right? Like how do I, what are the systems that I have to use? Exactly, do I need, What are the resources, whether they're people or AI robots or platforms? Like, there's an element of implementation here.

Yeah, I like that.

That's going to have a variety of skills, you know, underneath it. So let's, let's go with this 3.

Yep. And one more that I would say that I think is really important is staying consistent, right? Like, because you're never going to have any results unless you can stay consistent long-term.

Yeah, absolutely. How long does someone need to be consistent before you feel like they're really going to see results?

I would say 4 rotations of the flywheel.

Okay.

So if it's a weekly flywheel, that's going to come within a month. If it's a monthly flywheel, then, you know, we're looking at a quarter.

Yeah, so they need to understand that.

So it might be, so setting expectations is going to be really important to that.

Yeah, okay.

There will be signs earlier, right?

Right.

But when empirically the data shows, oh, this was a good idea.

Yeah.

I would say about 4 rotations.

Yeah, and even if it's just a flywheel that only takes a week, like that's still, that's delayed gratification.

Right.

And we are all in our worlds where everything is gratifying quickly.

This Instagram video is not entertaining me in the first 4 seconds, so next.

So next, exactly. And all of the technology we interact with, You know, it's like, it just, I laughed so hard the day that I was dragging and dropping something on my Amazon app into the shopping cart and there was like fireworks coming out and I was like, you just made me feel even better about, you know.

Spending money with you.

Exactly, like behavioral science at its finest. And so I think your point around like the expectations and making sure that people understand and have the mindset that it's, you're in it, you know, for the long run. Okay, so, We have these skills, all right? And then what do people need to know in order to be able to get these skills?

Very practical things or like they have to know the outcomes possible? Like give me an example.

So I would start with like, what is a flywheel?

Yep.

Okay. Okay. And once I know that, what do you teach them? This is what a flywheel is.

Yeah. So explain the concepts. I show it what it is in real life. So, like, you know, the physical version where I first encountered a flywheel and then how it equates to the digital side. I teach the 3 laws of a flywheel, what defines a flywheel. So, that's like flow, ease, and growth.

Okay. Which is interesting because flow, ease, and growth is not very—

They're very specifically tied to the outcomes. And that's a good call out there. Right? Because that's a comparison that I keep trying to make back and forth is that, hey, actually, yeah, the reason that we like this tool for creating these outcomes is like the fundamental laws that define it.

Yeah.

Tie into.

Yeah. So where it gets really fun is when you start to go meta and it's like, what's the flywheel experience of this course learning journey? How do I build this compounding experience? But That's just because I'm a learning nerd. So now we'll go back to this.

Okay.

So yeah, so what is a flywheel? How do I measure it? What do I need to like— what tools do I need to use to measure it? What are the metrics that I'm looking for? Like, all of that is knowledge-based. You either need to tell them or they need to read it in a book. They need to hear you say it. It is foundational. And this is often where learning stops. Because if we think about the traditional methods where we've learned in school, university, advanced training, it is about someone standing up and giving a lecture.

Yeah.

You know, how many, I don't know about you, but I definitely didn't build a flywheel in my marketing classes in undergrad, you know?

Definitely not.

And so what we're doing here is we're just working backwards. And so once we've identified, you know, we need to know what a flywheel is, we need to know what it looks like in practice, we need good examples and bad. I think sometimes the bad is like so important. Learning from failure, learning from somebody else's failure is super helpful. Our brains are encoded to learn through stories. So when we're doing case studies and we're kind of decoding what has happened, it's a really powerful learning mechanism for our brain.

I'm going to put a star next to that one because I don't think I have any bad examples.

Oh, you need bad examples? Bad examples. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even better if it can be your bad example, um, because you didn't get to where you were without learning, right?

And yeah, and it humanizes and so many more things.

Totally. And your, your people taking this course, their first examples are going to be bad, right? So this is where you say like, you're not alone, this is what I did, these are my results, this is what I did next, these are my results. Because part of why they're pain is to overcome and like leapfrog the learning curve that they're gonna have because you've already been there, right? So Nathan's gonna gimme the secrets. So by telling those stories, you're help— you're one, you're reassuring them. Mm-hmm. Um, you're giving them confidence. So what's interesting is that the way that science works and our brains work is confidence actually precedes competence. You would expect it to be backwards and you would expect it to be backwards. And all the time people say it's, it's backwards. And that's how we think, like we're gonna practice, we're gonna practice. We're going to practice and then I'll be confident and then I'll be confident. And in some ways that's, you know, like there's an element of that that's very lived. But if you believe that you can be successful at something, you're going to get competent so much faster than if you come in with the mindset of this is going to be hard. And so the nice thing about giving them bad examples is, you know, really great from a learning standpoint because it's like the case study approach. This is why HBR is so successful with their content because it's like business case study after business case study. Um, it makes them feel, it creates psychological safety for them because the minute someone thinks that they're not going to be successful, like, there's a thousand other things that they can do with their time.

Right.

You know, and so it just makes it so much more approachable.

I'm going to write that down, uh, because I think it's a really important point and I want to dive in on that. So you're saying confidence precedes competence. Competence.

Yeah.

And so in our course design, we need to be thinking about how do we create confidence as much as possible, as early as possible, from as many angles as possible. And so one way to do that is sharing stories and examples and all of that.

Yeah.

What other ways do you go about creating confidence?

Yeah, so if you go back here, this hook and this start and these easy wins, those are gonna be creating confidence.

Right.

Okay. So it's not just your story, but you could ask them, um, what is this stra— marketing strategy that really worked for you and you were successful at? Share that. So you're priming them to talk about how they're already successful, right? Doing pieces that are related to this. So it becomes very natural, like they start to self-identify as someone who's really good at marketing or really good at building their business, right? So you're playing this like little, you know, lovely brain trick on them cuz then they start to say, yeah, I can do that too cuz I've already, already done this very hard thing.

Well, to go back to our meeting on the street, Yeah. You know, a month or a few months into the course, you know, the outcomes I'm trying to create, one of them is stress going down.

Uh-huh.

And so even if all we did was increase their confidence based on their existing skills, and then they're like, oh, I could do this.

Yeah.

And so then they tackle something that then probably decreases their stress. It's like you could only increase their confidence and achieve one of our three outcomes.

100%. Yeah, 100%. And a great example of this is like, strength training. And a lot of times, like, my mom is getting up there in years, we won't name it, 'cause I'm sure she's gonna listen to this. And I was like, mom, you gotta do strength training, you really need resistance training, you know? And she was like, couldn't get past this confidence piece. So she was never gonna get to build muscle until I could convince her, like, you're gonna be fine, mom, I've got a great trainer for you. Like, it's gonna be okay, you're not gonna get hurt, right? And so there's all kinds of things in life that we're afraid of that we don't do because we're not confident that we can be successful. And so you want those people, you know, throughout the experience, but particularly in the beginning, building confidence that they can in fact be very successful, mm-hmm, at implementing what you're teaching them.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah.

Okay, what else in the, in the journey of going where they come in versus where they're going out?

Yeah, yeah. So we've identified the outcomes, we know what skills that they're going to need. Now we know what is it that they need to know in order to be able to perform these skills, okay? We also think about how are they gonna practice, right? Because this is so important. Where we start to really develop a skill and get into flow state and habit is when we are getting a continuous feedback loop. And in order to do that, the fastest way to learn, okay, is that you do it or I do it. I'm in your class, I do it and you gimme feedback, right? And that was so, so powerful about your initial version of the program was that They were getting you and they were getting that live feedback. Also really good for you cuz you're getting, you know, feedback from them. So I always recommend like, what's the low fidelity version of a course that you can, you can create before you, you know, build a whole e-learning or something like that. So we absolutely have to think about practice because when you're looking at the learning journey and the sequence of like, you know, in your case, I think you've talked about it's a cohort, you know, it's, it's a several weeks. So how are we building practice in for each of these skills? So I'm going to teach you a concept, what a flywheel is. I'm going to show you some real-life examples of where it's gone well and where it's gone bad, and then I'm going to have you practice creating your own.

Right.

And we're just going to, we're just going to map it out, you know, the next 2 days, and then everyone's going to share with each other and we're going to give each other feedback. And then we're going to refine it. So that's where that loop comes in. Okay? This allows them to get their flywheels like in a better spot. So then when you actually have them start implementing them later on in the program, they're, they're a better shot at being successful the first time, right? Because we want to create those wins.

Yeah, I'm actually, I'm going to put a star next to this as well.

You can take these with you.

Oh, perfect. Thank you. Watching the video later.

AI, review this transcript in my course materials and tell me how to improve.

So in thinking about practice and identifying where flywheels get stuck or how to improve them, like it's such a fundamental concept because the metaphor that we're going with, right, is this metal wheel that's spinning and it's got friction in there. And so you imagine the wheel comes around, it's so smooth, and it kind of like grinds for a second and keeps going. It loses momentum at that spot every time. And so I have course material and examples of me going through and improving flywheels and showing like, here's a flywheel that in lesson 7 we said was good.

Yeah.

Now let me show you in lesson 8 or 9, like, here's actually where the friction is and then here's how we improve it. But I don't have examples of even like 2 or 3 of like, here's a flywheel, you identify what's wrong with it.

Yeah.

And then letting them practice and be like, oh, I would change these 2 or 3 things.

Yeah.

And then coming back as a group, like, what did you change and why?

Exactly, and talking about it, and that, you know, being able to, in adult learning we call it construct, like get your own light bulb moments is really helpful in having someone like really start to understand and be able to apply. That reflection piece is so important for being able to just really get the outcomes that you're looking for. And then the other thing I would do in here is, you know, give them, you can tell them a story in the beginning in week 1 of this particular flywheel, and then you kind of show the implementation of it. So as you're teaching these different concepts, you can use an example threaded throughout, just like what we're doing in this conversation. We have the same, you know, example, and so it becomes this story that they want to stick with, and they're going to get in there, they're going to see where it's stuck because in reality their flywheel is going to get stuck. It's going to get squeaky at some point. There's going to be a rock, you know, whatever it is, it's coming for them. Ideally, they're implementing flywheels during the cohort where they're going to feel those sticky moments in real time and be able to work through them with you. But depending on the length of the program and how long it takes for them to get to those sticky places, sometimes that's trickier to do like in, in a learning experience. But yeah, you definitely want them to see a full life cycle of things going well and examples when it's gone poorly. And then how do you, when it's stuck, like what do you do? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we have that. There's a whole lesson on it, but there's not the practical, the homework of like, yeah, build the confidence that when your flywheel gets stuck, you know how to get it unstuck because Yeah. I like teed up harder and harder. Exactly. Like started with an easy example and you're like, oh, well it's clearly this. Exactly. And later on you gotta think about it more. And then further on it's like, this is actually hard, but you solve that.

Yeah.

Either on your own or with help. And then you're like, I'm so confident I could—

I could totally do it.

I could solve any problem on the fly.

Yeah.

Which is what I'm trying to build.

Yeah. And it's always like reassuring when you're learning a new skill, if you can see a great example of somebody else like really crashing and burning. Because then you're like, that's the worst it can be, right? You know, like, and this person recovered and they made the tweaks to their flywheel and like, look at them now. And so yeah, that, that's a really powerful piece. I'm excited to hear you building that in.

Yeah, sounds good. All right, where would you go from here?

Okay, so we've got our outcomes, the skills, what they need to know, how we're gonna have them practice it. And then you start to go back to where most learning design starts, which is what is the sequence of which we need to teach them? And I always think about this in terms of Legos, and Legos are— think of each concept that you need to teach. What is a flywheel? Here are some real-life examples. These are the 3 laws. Think of those as their own Legos. It's great because you're making smaller pieces that are easily consumable for the learner because you're not giving them 90 minutes of lecture, you're giving them, you know, 10 minutes on this, 5 minutes on this. You can, um, so you're just breaking it down to like its most core basic components. The other reason that you want to do that from a creator business standpoint is now you have these individual lingos. And so if in 6 months you want to create another course that has maybe 20% of the content is actually very similar to what's in this course, You've built it as a Lego. You can just take that piece and put it into your new constructed thing. If you want to make a lead magnet course that you get the first, you know, module free or something like it gives you so much content to repurpose that when we think of it as, as Legos, it makes it easier.

And that makes me think something that I have not been good at in the past And that I've gotten better at is defining things in concrete ways. So, and then having a diagram or laws or something to do with it. So I talked about flywheels for years before I actually broke it down and said, oh wait, what? And defined these are the three laws of flywheels. And now I say it definitively and people are like, well, Nathan's three laws of flywheels are. Or I think of Dan Martell has a system that he calls the 1-3-1 rule. And so when someone on his team comes to him with a problem and says, hey, what should I do? He just says, have you, like, what's your 1-3-1? And he, it's just, you need to come with one clearly stated problem, three, like, options that you've discussed for how you're going to implement it, and then one recommendation that you think we should do.

Right?

And so he took something that's, like, very broad and he condensed it down and he named it. And so as you're talking about these Lego blocks, Like, how do we, how do we get creators to name and package their core ideas?

Their method.

Yeah. So much better.

Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's part of their brand. Like I'm hooked to habit, you know, and building that right now. And so I think that's really important. And, you know, metaphors are really powerful ways to tell a story or help people understand a concept. And I think the key thing here is as a creator, you're always going to want to tell Way more.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I'm sure there's a lot that you could say about flywheels that is not in, gonna be in this course. And so you think about it like, what is the most basic building block? And then how do I develop a mnemonic around that or a 4-step process or an easy rule? Um, and when I was working, having my, my love affair doing all this research around how do we design courses that change behavior? Is, you know, talking with, with friends, brainstorming with AI, like, how do I say this in a way that's easy to understand? And that can be really hard for creators and experts because we're used to getting to have a lot of time to clarify something. Maybe on our podcast we're talking about it, or we've got two chapters in the book that we get to dedicate to it. But it really is about what's the smallest component And then how do I want to talk about this in a way that is super simple? But that means you have to simplify what you've spent years yourself trying to understand. So you gotta let go a lot of stuff.

Yeah, that makes sense. And what I'm realizing as you're saying that is that's actually something that AI is very good at doing.

Mm-hmm.

And so like creating the mnemonics or any of those things, you know, if you were like, hey, write this with perfect alliteration, it's like, okay.

Yeah.

You know, you would be like in the dictionary for, be like, okay, trying to figure this out. Yeah. And it'd just be like, boom, done. You're like, well, that You know, 2 and 3 aren't very good. Make those better. It's like, okay, here's 7 options that you could fill in.

Exactly.

And so doing things like uploading a podcast transcript or recording a Loom where you're talking through it and you're iterating on that.

Yeah.

And even sketching it out and then going back and forth with ChatGPT or Claude and saying, all right, now make this like packageable. Yeah. Um, it's quite good at that.

One of my clients is a, a couple psychologist. And he has really big ADHD. And I tell him, I'm like, Doug, put on your headset, go for a walk in the woods and just talk. Just tell me, you know, like I'm not going to sit down and interview you. Like, you just go brain dump. I will put that transcript right into AI. It's going to organize it in a natural flow because the ADHD brain is not linear thinking, right? And so, yeah, AI is such a huge tool with that. And then the other thing that came to mind as you were talking about this this early upfront part is just like we're validating this product idea. You need to have learner personas just like you have marketing personas or buyer personas. And sometimes when you're selling a learning product, your buyer persona and your end user persona are actually different. So if we go back to the example of the behavioral economist and she was doing keynotes and traveling a lot, doing a lot of consulting workshop types of things, The person who's buying her off-the-shelf courses now that they're going to deliver to the employees is someone in talent development, right? Right. But that's different than the in-person that you're actually trying to teach. So if you design and sell to this person, you might not be— if you design for this person, you do sales for this person. Yeah. You might not ever get it sold because that's not what the buyer cares about. But if you design for what the buyer cares about, you're not going to have people completing your course. So it is really important to think about from a B2B standpoint who is buying, or if you have a product where, you know, maybe it's a product for men, but the women are the ones typically buying that in the family, then you think about both of those things, right? From a product development standpoint. So you have your learner personas, and it's the exact same persona work you would do to develop marketing personas. Empathy work. What are their pains? What are their jobs? Um, where do they get their content? How do they like to learn? All of those things. And, um, that kind of tells us who we have coming in. And then we know, okay, how does this person like to learn? How much time do they have on a given day? What are the business tasks that they're involved in? What gets in the way of their ability to be able to implement these things? And that all comes in and starts to inform the journey as well. So I think that learner personas one is something that often gets missed because our brains want— just assume that everybody's like us, right? It's a human tendency, or that they like to learn the way that we like to learn. And that can definitely not be the case. So understanding who those are. One of my clients, she said, okay, first I want to go B2B with this product. But then I want to go B2C shortly thereafter, which is smart. And she's a huge podcaster, so it's like you've got B2C in the bag, right? And so, but revenue at the time was, you know, coming from the businesses, the enterprises that she was consulting with. And so when you're designing a product, if you think that's going to go that way, you just design it with that in mind and you actually can deliver the exact same product. The only thing that's different is the marketing around that, maybe the landing page, maybe some of vendor training that you do, but the content can be, you can design it with that efficiency in mind.

So I think one of the most intimidating things as a content creator is how do I take everything that's in my head or even the old way that I made a course and put it into this brand new format?

Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing is the brain dump. And thankfully in the age of AI, we can brain dump things that are completely disorganized and it will help us. Of that. So different ways you can do that. One is if you have podcast recordings, dump your podcasts into as source material. If you have books, if you have transcripts, blog posts, articles, LinkedIn posts or content that you've made, all of that is good source content. If you have, like in my case, I have consulting calls with clients and I have the recording of those. And so I'm working on a tool right now to like AI myself out of doing this market research piece so that people can do it, um, much more quickly and affordably themselves. So what I've done is I've dumped all of these conversations where I've been talking with clients about what's your idea and the questions that I ask, and all that comes, you know, into AI now, and then it can sort through it, through it for me. Um, and it can be quick and dirty. It can be, you have, um, you're going for a walk and you're just talking to yourself in your headset.

Something that I do is my favorite tool on my Mac is called Whisper Flow. Yeah. And it's a text-to-speech. Just hold down the function key.

Another Whisper Flow. Yeah.

Oh, it's so good. Um, but their iPhone app has a notes feature. Mm-hmm. And so I get in my car and I just hit record.

Yeah.

And then I just talk. It, it text transcribes that. It's easy to pull out on the Mac app or yeah, all of that later. And so I have lots of ideas that are in there, you know? And so I'm, I'm doing the brain dump.

Yeah.

All the time.

Yeah. And what's so beautiful about all the tools that we have now, me coming obsessed with like AI agenting my entire life. Like, okay. I, when I think about the AI agents to make my business more efficient, I'm like, what are the AI agents that like train my children better? You know, like how can I AI agent the, the hard parts of parenting? But yeah, you know, it's, it's so, when you're dumping content, if you have tools like Whisperflow in place or the notes on your iPhone, is you can connect those in a way and automate those in a way that makes it easier for you to gather it and work through it. But basically you just brain dump it and say, you know, I would just talk to AI or talk to ChatGPT and say, this is all my content. Here are my learner personas. This is what I want them to be able to do. Giving you all this content, what's the optimal way to structure this learning experience? And then start iterating from there. Now the thing is that AI, because of, you know, how LLMs work, they don't think about behavior change, right? So they're going to think about a more traditional form of course design. So you need to ask it questions like, I want this behavior change. What do people need to know and be able to do in order to get that? Map my content that I've just dumped in here to that, um, outcome.

The prompting really matters.

The prompting really matters. Um, because it's just like any form of AI. Um, if you aren't prompting it properly, crop in, crop out.

Yeah. Yeah. There's so many times where I give it something and I'm like, okay, and this is total garbage.

Total garbage.

Let me think back to what do I actually want? Am I in the right tool for it? What context did I give it? What's the prompt?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And giving it some boundaries. Like, I think with experts, you want to be really careful that as a creator, if you're going to use AI, which you absolutely should, that you're making sure it knows only to pull from you because otherwise it's going to go out. You know, I think about this psychologist that I work with and we're working on a digital mind for him as part of his like product stack, which is so cool. But you have to train it. Like, do not go and access some random relationship coach on Instagram. Like, for him, it's like only science-based, you know, methods of psychology and behavior change. So you do wanna put some boundaries around it because it is going to really try and help you, but it's a little bit like when your 5-year-old makes you coffee in the morning. Like, they genuinely are trying to help you, but they don't quite have all of the, you know, boundaries in place. That's like, I need more than just coffee grains and water.

I'm going to put prompt down on that. Okay, so after the brain dump and the prompting and all of that, what else? As we talk about like the scripting process and all of that.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, you know, so you've done your brain dump, you've prompted it to kind of say, what are my Legos? And then you just start going through them sequentially. Um, when I think about scripting, if you've trained, um, or spoken on the content before, like in a webinar, it's that's a great way to get your scripting from. And like, if it's the same, which is a great way to validate your idea, right?

That would be like going back to whatever workshop for me.

Exactly, exactly. Um, and just pulling that in and say, okay, give me a script, these are the things I want to change about it, um, and have it go ahead and pop that out. I think the, the big thing is that— and I have— creators are good at this, they know how to, you know, have a conversation— is make sure that when you're creating your materials that you're writing the way you speak. And so the scripting will come into that as well. And when you think about scripting, it's not just videos. It could be activities that you're asking them to do or assignments. Think of it as like I'm storyboarding out this entire learning experience. And then what I do when I create is I get these pieces in place and then I go, okay, tell me how I align this with Hooked to Habit. So I go back to my own model a lot to make sure that I have the behavioral science plugged into the learning science, um, to make it something that is gonna be effective at the end of the day. And that I've done smart things like woven in curiosity gaps or open loops theory, um, all kinds of these different amazing, um, strategies for behavior change. Prompting around that is really important too. So brain dump, script, then you go into development.

Okay.

This is when you start playing with your platform. Everyone always asks me, how do I know what platform to choose? And I, I have a lot of content on that that's available. The thing with this is it's, it's just about what kind of car do you choose, right? It's understanding, you know, they're all going to get you from A to B.

It's just what experience you're having on the car.

What experience you're going to have and what experience are you creating for the people in the car? You know, if you have little ones, you might want TVs in the back of those, you know, if you're driving all the way to, you know, 6-hour drives. If it's just you and you're running into Trader Joe's, you know, you probably just need like a simple little car, electric, no big deal, right? So it's the same thing here. It just comes down to, you know, what is it that you need in order to create the experience that you want to create and monetize it in the way that you want to monetize it? And then just, You know, sorting through the different options and picking the one that's gonna be the best fit. There's no right or wrong one.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Yeah. Once you've done that, you just start building.

Okay.

And I think one of the challenges is that people pick a platform before they even know what they're teaching. And now you're stuck into the structure that this platform has. And platforms are great because they make it easy for people like you and me to make a course and sell a course, but they typically are not set up to have that learner, set that learner up for behavior change. So that's really important to kind of map out the behavior change before you pick the platform so that you can get the platform that's going to give you the best shot at some of the types of experiences you want to create for people. Like if you're going to have a cohort, you want to look at those platforms that are going to have a lot of good conversation pieces. That those are structured in the way that you want. Yeah, every, everyone is different, so understanding that is really key.

One of my favorite courses and workshops and all that is from the folks at Ultra Speaking. And so Tristan, Michael, and the crew over there, they were all in on how do we create behavior change, how do we give people practice and real-life examples and all of that. And they ended up making their own platform because they're like—

They did.

We're just, we're gonna have people play games. Like that is going to be the system around this.

Yeah.

And they could have very easily said, okay, we're going to use Mighty or Thinkific or, you know, another platform and then had to craft their entire curriculum around that rather than starting with the behavior change into the methodology curriculum and then saying, exactly, can I do this within, you know, one of these platforms?

Yeah. I think that. With all of the opportunities we have with vibe coding now, and it's like, it's tempting. It's never easy. I would build something basic first, but I hope that platforms, you know, a year from now, we're going to start seeing things that really are designed for, um, not just ease of creation, but ease of behavior change and implementation. But I can totally see why they did that. And I love that they did that because they were refusing to compromise their audience's outcome.

Right. You know, one thing, as someone who spends probably too much time vibe coding and working on all these random things, and I love it, my favorite, uh, quick aside, our dishwasher broke, which is really unfortunate. We bought a new one, they came and installed it, and they're like, hey, this is a dud. So for like the last week and a half, we've been no dishwasher, 3 kids, and just like, that's a lot of dishes. Produced an amazing amount of dishes. So this weekend I almost entirely did dishes, but what makes dishes way better is that I got out my laptop and I would vibe code. So I'd put in a prompt, wash dishes, then go ding, and I'm like, okay, perfect. Oh, and then that, and I really enjoyed the process of washing dishes with that change. But what it made me, the actual thing that I was thinking about is it's so many people say I didn't find the platform that I wanted and so I built my own, which I think generally is a terrible idea. But I think that vibe coding would be a great way to make an individual tightly scoped thing for practice for one part of—

Exactly.

The methodology.

Exactly.

Right? I could make a something on helping you troubleshoot flywheels.

Yeah.

That's like a little game on that and small and standalone and it's linked to from Mighty.

Yeah.

Um, and that would be a good idea.

Yeah. That's exactly what I'm doing with my market validator app is, um, that exact same thing. So I've dumped my knowledge into it. Um, and it's doing all the things that I would do. So in a course like this, If you had, um, an app, you would say, okay, you've gone through this even better if they're creating flywheels in the class that they're using the app or that feedback app in there. Um, but if you think about a coach, for example, say a coach, um, is their specialty is teaching executives communication, like virtual communication skills. So maybe someone just got promoted, now they have to, they're the CEO, now they have to lead like big company-wide virtual meetings and they, they're just, that's like not their strength, right? And so if I'm a coach, I might be working with this person one-on-one, but if I had an agent where we say, okay, we're in a coaching session, Nathan, I want you to work on these two things this week. So obviously you're in meetings all the time, most of them are recorded. If you could just upload them into this app and it says, okay, today you did this, this, and this, The, the AI agent knows the skills that you're working on that the coach has told you about. It's giving you feedback in the moment in between those sessions, right? So if you apply that concept here is giving them the tool to practice with, maybe they can practice a little themselves and get feedback before they share it with the group. Okay, so that increases the feedback loops, but it also builds that confidence as well. Yeah. So I think this is where AI becomes completely transformative is that now, you know, ideally you'd be sitting, you know, next to me while I'm making my flywheel and seeing the results. But the next best thing is that you've put all of your knowledge into something that I can then upload a work product, you know, into, get feedback. I can say, hey, I implemented this flywheel, it has— it's getting stuck in these certain places. What could it potentially be? I put all of this into here and it gives me, you know, feedback and guidance. Um, so I think that's, that's super great and, and really helpful once you get into kind of habit and ongoing practice of a skill.

Okay. So under build, we've talked about how you actually go about creating it and then platforms, what's important there. What else falls into that category?

So one of the key things with build is build a very small piece, like 5 minutes of your first Lego, and test it. Get feedback from your target audience. Again, no family and friends. You're going to get feedback from, build a small piece, see how it works, see if it's giving the outcome that you want, refine it, and then go and build out the full thing. So I think that's a really important thing because with any product, you don't want to end up with a final piece. And it's like why you taste the soup as you're cooking it. It needs more salt, it needs more of this. That's why you hand the spoon to your, your spouse or your kid. Like, what does it need? It's the exact same thing here. So you're tasting, you're refining as you go, and then hopefully after not too long, because you've kept it small for this first one, you'll have a course and it'll be ready to launch.

I love that. And so are you keeping it small in that you're only creating a few lessons or a few modules, or you're staying shallow? Like, how, how do you keep it small?

That's a good point. Yeah. Okay, so is it, is it small in terms of duration, or is it small in terms of depth of content. Yeah. I think that that really depends on the content and the outcomes that you're shooting for, because if you're shooting for deep outcomes, you're going to have to give them depth throughout, which means the small piece is going to need to be deep. If we're looking more at like an outcome of awareness, then your content can be higher level in the test. But if you don't test the real stuff, you're not getting a real, real feedback. You know, you're not— if you, if you're going to design this and you're just going to show people the videos of this is what a flywheel is and I'm going to show, you know, go on to the platform, watch this video, tell me what you think. They're going to give you feedback and that's going to be useful for that video. But what you actually want to do is put them through a small piece of the whole experience. Because the things, things are easy up here. This is where things start to get trickier. And so they might say, yeah, that part was easy, but I got really stuck in this particular form of practice. And so, um, if you're teaching something deep, go deep in the, um, build of that first piece, but keep the amount of content that you're teaching them as short as possible. Um, and then if you are, if it's just kind of broader, more awareness, Um, I would say write a book or give a podcast or something like that.

Yep. That makes sense. The thing I'm realizing that you could test a lot of is the easy wins.

Yes.

Right? Because, you know, did this feel like a win? Do you understand this?

Yes.

And, and you could progressively add to that. There's something in user experience as well. When we're designing software, you often don't test with very many people. Like you might think that, oh, if I test this interface with I test it with 3 people, that's a certain level of good. And if I test it with 20 people, I'm going to learn so much more. And often that's not the case.

Right.

Because really you learn the same thing a whole bunch of times.

Exactly.

And so if you were to test with a few people, like, all right, we've got this first module, and did I get you easy wins? And they're like, wow, this is amazing. This one thing of the 3, like, I implement that, I love it.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, cool.

Well, and if you're testing your easy wins and they're not easy wins, like, that's very good data to have. Yeah.

Yes, that makes sense. Okay, so you've got so much good stuff in here. I'm imagining someone going through this and being like, you know, like me and making, you know, their own stars of like, okay, here's what I'm gonna fix, here's what I'm gonna change.

Yeah.

Or the callout, right? So that's for someone who has a course already.

Yeah.

And is doing, you know, version 2.0 or 3.0. Exactly. But really someone making it from scratch. Is there one part of this that you're like, hey, you're making a course from scratch, like I just really want you to not miss? This part of it.

It's beginning with the outcome of behavior. How is someone functioning differently? Yeah. What do you notice differently about their business, about their, you know, their mood, their stress, whatever those things are related to your topic, and then you work backwards.

Right.

I would say that's the most important. And then the second thing I would say is take a breath because it can be a lot. It's a huge undertaking. Like writing a book, it's, you know, it takes a lot of time and yeah, take a breath, don't get your own cognitive overload. But yeah, start with the end in mind and build from there.

I love that. And 'cause that's really what differentiates the whole thing. That's the outcome that you're trying to create. And the problem that we run into with courses is that we've got lots of content and they don't actually create results.

Exactly.

So you start with the end in mind, really emphasize that. That's like what I'm thinking about is writing that out in more detail, printing it off, putting it next to my monitor and something, right? What is the end in mind? And that just being the recentering, you know, as you go.

Exactly. Just like you do for your business goals. Like, I want to hit this, you know, follower count. I want to make this amount of income from keynotes, whatever those things are. And they're right in front of you every day and you have to stare at them. Like, same thing is it creates accountability for what you're creating and selling.

That's amazing. Well, Erin, you've taught a lot in just over an hour. If people wanna learn more about you and work with you or follow more of your material, where should they go?

Absolutely. Find me on LinkedIn, um, E.R. Green with Audacious Labs, Erin Green, or you can find me online at audaciouslabs.io and happy to have conversations about this. I can nerd out all day on course design, so.

Sounds good. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks, Nathan.

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely check out episode 87 with Jay Klaus, where we dig into why online courses are under pressure. And how creators can adapt in the age of AI. We get into pricing, memberships, and what trust looks like when attention isn't enough. Be sure to like this video and subscribe for more, and I'll see you next week.