3 Steps To Simplify Online Course Creation

One of the biggest challenges that I have found people experience, and I even dealt with this for a long time, is simplifying the overall course creation process. People think that you need to have some huge production crew, or you need to have some crazy fancy camera and all these fancy softwares and all this stuff and the technology and everything that goes into it. It just boggles people's minds. They get overwhelmed, they feel stuck, they end up overthinking. A lot of people just want to create a course, but they're overwhelmed. And if they just knew really simply like what goes into course creation, then they they would actually take action and make it happen. So today I wanted to make a piece of content that you can consume that is actually going to help you simplify the whole online course creation process because it is a pretty simple process. The only thing is that there's an art to it and it just takes practice of doing it. But the more that you do this, the better you're going to get at creating courses and selling them so that you can turn a profit and make a bigger impact. Let's dive in. Now if you are overwhelmed with course creation and the whole process, how to put all the pieces together, how to build a lead magnet, how to create course idea or your business idea, even how to get traffic, how to automate the whole entire process. I cover all that in my 5-step guide, How to Sell What You Know on Autopilot in 5 Simple Steps. This is an action-packed, no-fluff guide. It's about 8 pages long, probably take you about 10 minutes to go through. But the biggest thing is that you just implement the things that you learn from this guide. It's gonna help you find your profitable business or course idea, how to get traffic, how to find the right kind of audience from all that research that you do. And the biggest thing is that I literally show you how to automate that entire process. To get your guide, just go to profityourknowledge.com/guide, or there is a link in the description as well. So the first step to simplify the online course creation process is to find a problem. A lot of people just create online courses in a vacuum. They just kind of like say, I think that the market wants this, I think that people want this, I feel like this would work, and then they're just kind of guessing and throwing things out. Me, I like to take a more strategic approach because if I'm going to put all the work into building an online course, I want it to actually sell. Because it does take work and for a lot of people it's a very daunting task to create content, to write the content and to sell their course. Finding a problem is probably the biggest challenge that people have because they don't really know what to do. But the easiest way to find problems that people have is to think about your ideal audience. And we need to find where those people are at. And the best way to do that is to go on social media. Facebook groups are a great place to connect with people that are like-minded. There's a group for everything out there, and it's a great place for you to connect with people online. So join some of these groups and connect with people where your target audience would potentially be hanging out. And if you don't know your target audiences, just think about who can you help. If you're a fitness instructor, you want to help people that want to get in better shape. So where can you go to connect with people that want to get in better shape? What kind of groups would those people likely hang out in? Maybe it's golfers, because if they got in better shape, then their golfing game would increase. So people who have athletic hobbies would be a great place to go look. Once you get into these groups, have conversations with people. Do some posts to say, hey, I'm new to the group, I just want to connect with some people in the golfing group. And then those people are going to raise their hand and say, yeah, that sounds awesome, let's connect. Another great way to connect with people is just thinking about family and friends and tell them, hey, I'm thinking about creating a course, an online course that teaches people how to do XYZ, and I just want some feedback to see if you actually find that valuable or what you're actually struggling with when it comes to insert your course topic idea. What we want to do is get crystal clear on our perfect client's thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that they are experiencing when it comes to your course idea. And you may need to jump around from a couple different course ideas, but just do some brainstorming. Think about what you'd like to create a course around, and then go out and connect with these people. Now, when you get this feedback from people, write down everything that they say. Write down exactly the words that they are saying when they are expressing pains, frustrations, dreams, goals, desires that they have. When you get the exact words that people are saying and expressing about their pains and frustrations, dreams and desires, that is how you can get the kind of messaging that will sell your course. They're going to feel like you're reading their mind because if one person is thinking a certain way or a couple people are thinking that way, chances are many people are thinking in the same way. Now when you get in these conversations and someone is willing to actually open up to you, share with you some feedback about your course, and allow you to ask them questions. We only want to know 3 things. First off, where is this person at? Second, where do they want to be? And third, what is stopping them from getting there? And in each one of these sections, we want to pay attention to the external pains and frustrations, dreams and desires this person's feeling, along with the internal. For example, the external would be, I'm overweight, I'm out of shape, I don't feel good, I have no energy, etc. The internal is what this person thinks about themselves under the surface. So it's that they're not really saying to other people, but because you're giving them a place to open up, they're more likely to actually share that with you. Example of this would be, I'm worthless, I'm useless, I feel like a failure. And it sounds kind of dark, but these are the things that people think about themselves deep down. And the more that we can extract that information, the more powerful our sales copy is going to be, the better of a course and product that we can create for these people to actually help them. And we want to do this for where they are, where they want to be, and think about all the possible objections that this person could be struggling with that's preventing them from bridging the gap of where they are to where they want to be. Give about a week to this process of having conversations, writing down where they're at, where they want to be, and what's stopping them, and you will have a huge list of information that you can pull from. After you've gotten all that information, now we want to create a solution, which is your course. Now, as you sift through this information, you want to find some trends, and in those trends you can find course ideas. An online course is a streamlined system that people can follow that step-by-step. It's everything that they need conveniently placed in order for them to follow. So by doing this research, you are going to find trends, and people are saying the same exact thing that keeps coming up. That's the course idea that you want to go for. Do whatever it takes to find the answers that these people need, from past knowledge that you have and experience, from books that you're reading, from articles that you find, or watching videos on YouTube. Do the heavy lifting of research for this person because your course is going to shortcut that entire learning curve that you put in for them. Put all that information, put all the best information you find together and organize into a step-by-step system that's gonna help this person move from where they're struggling at from all that research you did to where they want to be, and it's going to crush all the objections that they have. Once you've found that idea from all that research that you did and the specific pain that people are struggling with, the dream that they want, the outcome that they really want, you've organized all the information into a step-by-step system Now we want to actually create and film the course. Now you don't need to be on camera for the entire duration of your course. I know not everybody is comfortable with being on camera. So what you can do is simply just create slide decks in a presentation builder like Keynote, for example. You can also use Google Slides if you don't have a Mac. Once you have your slides built out, now we just need to record your presentation by using some sort of recording software like a built-in software on your computer. I know Mac has one like QuickTime Player Or you can also use Loom to record, or even inside of Apple Keynote if you have a Mac. You can use presentation mode and record your presentation directly inside of Keynote and export it into a video file. After all your lessons are created, now we want to host our course and put it together so that it's nice and organized and we can actually deliver it to people after we receive their payment. You can use a tool like Kajabi, Teachable, or Thinkific, which I recommend because they're very user-friendly, or you can even use SamCart as well. But if you're crunched in terms of financials, you could you can even get away with using YouTube. Create a playlist that organizes your lessons into a step-by-step format and just make sure that the playlist or videos are on unlisted. That way nobody is going to see these videos on your public YouTube channel unless they have the links to the videos, which is how you would deliver this course. Not my favorite solution, but it does get you by if you are really that tight on money. So once you've done your research, you've talked with people, you've created a solution in the form of an online course, now we want to present the solution or our course to people that are struggling with all the things that we found out from all that research. The best way to do this is by creating a landing page through something like LeadPages or ClickFunnels, or you could even use Kajabi if you already have something like that. But basically what we want to do is have a page where people can land on that has a video expressing your personality, explaining your product, and it clearly explains their pains and frustrations that they have, and then presents your solution, which is your course. This is your sales page, and there is an art to creating creating sales pages. And creating a sales page is actually way easier than you may think after you've done all the research like I mentioned in the beginning of this lesson. But the biggest components that you really need to add in this order is first a great killer headline or hook. The first sentence that people see when they land on your sales page needs to speak directly to their number one pain that they are facing right now or desire that they want to achieve. And it needs to at the same time crush any big objections or the major objection that they could be facing and feeling. But that's why we did all that research in the beginning. Next is problem solution. We want to address the problem that this person is facing, the number one problem that your course solves, and then the solution is actually presenting your course. So we want to transition from the problem, speak to their pains, into a solution. Then we want to present the product and be benefit-driven, not feature-focused. The features are the deliverables that your course is giving this person, like 21 lessons or 7 7 lessons. The benefits are why the features matter. So we want to focus more on the benefits than the features. Step 4, we want to add a guarantee. Our goal is to reverse the risk from the person who's considering buying this course to us. It's really on us to actually present them with a great solution. But because you did your research, you did the work up front, now you can actually give them a great course that is going to sell and it's actually going to help them. Give them about 30 or 60 days to try out the course, and that's plenty of time for them to see if it really is a good fit But if you've done good research, it should be a good fit for them. And then if they're not happy at all, you can always just give them a refund. If they ask for one, you have to do it. Otherwise, that will ruin your reputation. Step 5 is to future pace. This person really has two options. They can either buy or they can leave. So you just want to paint the picture of what this person's life is going to be like if they buy your course or if they don't buy your course. But if you've done great customer research, you found their external and internal pains and their goals and their dreams and the objections that they have that's stopping them from getting there. And you've done the research and created a product that answers all of those things, then people would be dumb not to buy. The better that you understand your customers from all that research that we do, the better your course is going to sell and the better type of products you can actually make that will really help people. Is it a lot of work? Yeah, but it's totally worth it in the end because when you create a course, you're creating a long-term asset that's going to benefit you, your business, and other people without having to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to invest in a one-on-one session with you or program or something like that. But what makes online courses better than coaching one-on-one or group coaching is that you can automate the entire process to make sales for you day in and day out. But if you're like me and you don't want to spend tons of money on advertisements, then you really need to learn an effective content marketing strategy, which is exactly what I teach you in that last lesson on my content marketing strategy. So find a problem by doing good research and having conversations, writing down everything that this person's feeling. Create a killer product that solves that problem for those people, and then create a page where you can deliver that product. If you have any more questions, let me know down in the comments, and don't forget to download your 5-step guide. I'll see you in the next one.