58: If You’re Thinking of Creating a Course, Here’s Something Better

It seems like almost every podcaster that I come in contact with…when we talk about monetizing it specifically through their own products and services, I start to get a glazed over look because they have no idea what to start with. 

So, today I’m going to show you how the level of support you can provide your people to get results for them is going to be a whole lot better if you do something, besides just creating a course for them. 

It seems like the first thing whenever I talk to people about actually creating their own products and services, is that people go right to courses and they are like, “well, I was thinking about creating a course for this, that and the other, I was thinking about creating a course for this, I could do another course for that. And I could do all these courses”.

The problem with a course…it’s not that the information is the problem – you need the information. 

But many times the problem with a course is that people are so used to taking courses, getting free courses, buying courses, whatever it is, and they cannot get through them. 

Literally, the completion rate for most courses across the board is well under 10%. And the problem with that if you are someone who, as a podcaster are value based and value driven, because you’re also impact motivated, right? 

You want to motivate the most people in your niche to take action and do what needs to be done to change their lives and get the results they want. 

Then what will happen is, if you only have 10% of the people that are taking your course, how are you even going to be able to judge the results that they’re getting?

I mean, it’s really hard for you as a course seller, and a course creator, to get testimonials of the incredible changes that people have had in their lives, if only 10% of your people finish your course. 

Courses are great courses provide great information, they provide great frameworks. But they also have a huge drawback. And this drawback is the fact that people don’t make it through, and if they don’t make it through the course, they don’t complete the course, that is not going to change their lives, it’s not going to have the desired effect that you want it to have. 

So if your people aren’t meeting their goals, and getting their desired outcomes, you’re not either, right? Because you’re not changing the lives you set out to take right now in the online space in the digital space, where we all operate as podcasters. 

Because we are online, most of us don’t have a brick and mortar podcast where people show up and we record it live. 

So we’re using the online space, which means everything that we do can be digital, what happens is, we have reached a place where we are saturated with courses, we’re saturated with information.

Most of it is great information. But we either don’t have the motivation, the accountability, the attention span, whatever it is needed to finish the course and actually implement the things that the course taught us. 

That’s the downfall of most courses. I can go through course after course, after course, after course, and if I never get a chance to implement it, my gosh, it’s a waste of my time, it’s a waste of my money, it’s a waste of every bit of effort I put into that course. 

One of the things that I want to impress upon you today is that a lot of people are drawn to courses, because those are the kinds of things where you can create a course, and you can put it out to the world, you can even set up a sales funnel and drive traffic to a course. 

Then you can go to bed at night and you can wake up in the morning and have four Stripe notifications that you sold for courses overnight. 

That means you’ve reached the holy grail of passive income, right, you’re selling things in your sleep. Who wouldn’t love to do that?

So as creators, and as experts in our own niches, a course is very attractive to us.

So much so that we have saturated the marketplace, with course after course, after course, after course. 

You can’t find a niche that doesn’t have a course.

So with courses, while it has an attraction for us as a podcaster, because you can sort of create it once and sell it 100 times. 

Where we are in this marketing space is that courses alone are not enough to change lives and get the impact and the results you want. 

What we’re finding and what we’re seeing as being most successful is essentially building communities and programs around getting people the desired outcome that they want. 

So what happens is when you build a program, there are multiple components and whenever you’re looking at building a program or what you can call it a Community, whatever you want to call it. 

When you’re building one of these things, part of what you’re doing as a creator, is you’re evaluating what are the biggest problems that your ideal customer for that community program is.

And what can I do to put in place, maybe things like accountability, or mentoring or other things that can give that ideal customer the highest chance of achieving that desired outcome? 

And so you evaluate all these things, and then you look at it and say, what can I create, that will move them from not having this desired outcome to having this desired outcome. 

Most of the time, it is by looking at all of the problems and all of the hurdles and all of the obstacles that your ideal person is encountering that or stopping them dead in their tracks from getting to that desired outcome. 

That becomes your list of opportunities. 

And your list of opportunities, essentially, the problems that that person has become the framework for you building this program, to help them solve their problems. 

You also are going to need to build accountability into your program. 

In my experience, I pay a lot of money for two huge masterminds right now. And literally like $3,000 a month off right off the top goes into paying for these different masterminds. 

But when we have a Wednesday at noon, meeting that I’m going to every single week, suddenly, Tuesday becomes my most productive day of the week, because I have to give an account of myself and my progress on Wednesday at noon. 

And I don’t know about you, but I’m really not into public humiliation. So I want to come across with the goods for those meetings. The same thing when I have an implementation call with my mastermind. 

And I know on Friday, they’re going to be asking at 10am in the morning, like where are you on this and let’s help you get this whatever it is implemented. If I haven’t done the work ahead of time they’re going to know and part of the reason I pay so much money is so that I have a high cost and a high probability of following through.

I need to have something on the line that I will lose. 

So programs are going to trump courses, right now they are going to be more powerful than courses. But here’s the other part. Programs are also something because they have more than just information built into them. 

And because they have more than just the tactics and the tools built into them, they have all of the things that help you with the implementation, they have all of the things that help you with a motivation, they have all of the things that help you with the accountability, because they have all those things built in. 

Most people today would rather pay $3,000 for a program, that will get them where they want to go in a specified amount of time, that’s pretty darn fast, rather than paying $300 for a course, that they may or may not ever finish. 

And even if they do finish, they may or may not ever implement. And realistically, for me, as a creator, and me as someone who wants to help people and wants to impact people, I would rather have my people in my sphere, so that I can keep my hands on them. 

Then I can get my arms around what’s going on with their problems, because that helps me serve the rest of my people even better. 

So I don’t want someone anonymously consuming my course, or my content or whatever, that I can’t know who they are, and that I can’t know what they’re building and that I can’t know what their struggles are. 

Because it’s going to help me help them if I know that. And so the idea of just creating courses and creating courses, and then going out and trying to sell them like that sort of 1992.

When you’re thinking about creating something, you need to think bigger than just a course. 

So I hope this has been helpful for you today. I’ve been having a great time this week, I have been doing a perfect podcast offer challenge. 

I am so excited about the people that have been in that and the clarity they’ve been getting and the breakthroughs they’ve been having and the things that they’re going to be putting out into the world to hopefully help other people in their niches, get the results. 

I’ve got one that’s starting again, another challenge, same thing and to start January 10, we’re going to be doing it and hopefully, having more people get in there and understand the whole value of creating a high ticket offer so that you can serve your clients at a much higher level, get better results and get paid a whole lot better for it and and feel really good about the results you’re getting to.

So if you want to sign up for that challenge, you can go to Teampodcast.com/challenge, and it will be there and you can just sign up.

It starts in January 10. And so it’ll be a way to start your new year off, right, and really get your first quarter set for massive, massive results. 

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You can also find Christy and her team at www.teampodcast.com!

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