In this episode, we will be talking about How to Avoid the Overwhelm of Creating an Online Course. My background and expertise is creating and marketing online courses, but my specialty within that is helping people create effective online course videos. I am also pretty talented at seeing ways to leverage the power of courses and technology to better teach, market, and sell. But that’s a topic for another day. I have been coaching a lot of people and this is one thing that is a big roadblock that people can’t get over. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the details. There’s not just the idea and the outline of what you’re going to teach, but there’s also the technology that you need to learn. There are a lot of technical hurdles and once you’ve created a course, you also need to know how to market it. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we hear about course creators who made it big. A lot of times, these successful course creators might not talk about the teams of people that it took to create and market their course. They might have a team around them - people to brainstorm the idea and an audience to get feedback from. How do you stand a chance against them? You have to understand that at one time, these people weren’t big names at all. Seth Godin talks about not being the Seth Godin he is now. When you see these big course creators, you only see their success. That is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t see what’s underneath - their hard work, struggles, failures, and the teams they have. So, let’s start at the beginning.
A lot of people have big hopes and dreams. They want to sell a lot of courses and make a lot of money, but you have to know what your main goals are. It’s easy to get frustrated when your courses are not selling. But more importantly, you should start thinking how you could serve your students. How can you serve a small number of students? You should keep your goal in mind. Is it only money? Do you want to make an impact or grow an audience? Do you want to serve more people? What is that one thing that you want your course do? I highly recommend Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. In his book, he talks about how you can focus on that one thing.
Your first course does not have to be the final version of the course. A couple of years ago, I used to interview a very famous sculptor and he told me, “When I was starting out, it was just an ugly lump of clay.” It took him about two full days of molding the clay to create the eagle. It didn’t look like an eagle on the first day. As a matter of fact, it looked like an ugly chicken. And he said, “But I kept going. I trusted my creativity and my experience. I trusted that this ugly chicken will turn into a soaring eagle.” Maybe your course right now looks like an ugly chicken and you hate it, but as you work on it and refine it, it will get better. It’s okay if you only sell one course when you release it. Again, think of it as the first round of the first version of the course. It’s okay as long as it does what you needed it to do, which is to teach.
You don’t have to have the course built out before you pre-sell it to these people. I recommend that you charge for it so that when you ask them how you can refine the course, they will give you a good feedback. It will be like creating a custom course just for them and their needs.
Fear will tell you that your course should be perfect before you release it and you will waste time trying perfecting it. You should only spend a minimal amount of hours in refining the version one of the course. (Disclaimer:It’s not about releasing low-quality courses.) It’s about focusing on what would give your course content the most value, not the little things that make it pretty. You have to get over your fear, because it won’t do you any good if you won’t release your course.
When I was in Junior High, I remember coming home from school overwhelmed with my schoolwork. My parents saw it and my dad told me to go out in the yard and bring in a big pile of sticks. So, I went into the backyard and brought the big pile of sticks. He told me to try and break the sticks. I tried with all my might but I couldn’t do it. So my dad told me to break the sticks one at a time and I did as he told me. One after the other, I’d break the sticks and before I knew it, I have already broken all the sticks. As an application, think about that one thing that you need to get done for the day in order to move your course forward. Also, you can write down one thing that no one else can do on your course. Write down the things that you can outsource and think of that as an investment. Think of the things that you can simplify. These are the most important things that your students should know first. Creating a beginner-level course can free some of you who are intimidated by others who know more about the course. All you need is a little bit more knowledge and experience than your students. You can also create a mini course to grow your email list. Take the top three things from your course and create a simple course on those topics. You can offer it on your website or you can approach people from a lead generation list.
If technology is a big hang up for you, think about what you can do yourself and what can you outsource. You can also check out my Tech Guide for Online Course Creators at onlinecoursecoach.com/tech and you can download that to learn more.
Create a course specific to your niche. This will work very well because you are going to serve a specific group of audience. Think about who you can serve. If your audience is on Facebook groups, go in there and offer tips, answer questions, provide useful articles. By offering help, you can build your email list and even your income. Think about people who you can connect with. If you serve them, they might promote you. This may take time, but would you rather serve influencers who have large audiences? Or would you rather try to sell one course at a time and keep struggling?
After you’ve launched your first course to your initial students, you can go to different influencers and build a partnership with them. Reach out to people from similar industries to gain good leverage. In conclusion, don’t look at the huge gurus who have thousand of followers and a huge team around them. Remember that they weren’t that big when they started. So, think of ways that you can focus your course on. Find the things that only you can do and outsource the rest. Just get that course out to the first 10 or 20 people and get their feedback. Think of creative ways that will give the most value to your course content. Again, if you get overwhelmed by the technology side, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/tech and download my top tech tips and resources. Focus on what your goals are. Lastly, realize that your course is going to improve over time. If you have trouble with marketing your course or any of these topics, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com and go to the Videos tab and Podcast tab where there are topics about marketing, creation, or building your learning management system.
Know that you’re in good company, so keep coming back for more podcasts and keep sending in those questions.
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