Suffering through the same old problems in your business?Going round in circles with your attempts to create an online course?
Maybe you remember the film Groundhog Day where the bloke got stuck re-living the same day over and over again? It got me thinking about how we can have that feeling in our own business. And how online course creation can feel like that too.
I shared my thoughts in this video, and below, I will summarise for those of you who prefer to read! There is some practical help available on this too - details at the end
Let's look at the business problems first.
Have you hit an income ceiling - you just don't have the capacity to earn any more money in your business?
Perhaps you are fully booked, and literally can't create any more art, or products, or take any more appointments, or take on any more client work?
If your business model is based around trading time for money in some format, then when you have used up all your time, then that's it. You have used up your opportunities for earning more money. If you keep working like this, then nothing will change and you will stay at the same income level. I'm sure you've heard the saying, "if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got"? So you are stuck in your own business version of Groundhog Day, living the same problem over and over.
How can you escape this situation? Invest your time and effort and create an online course. You will create an important strategic business asset, and achieve true business leverage. Create once, sell it many times.
Yes it will take more time than you think you have, but it is truly worth it when you are done and the first sales pop into your bank account. Then it frees up your time from all that time for money work, and you can use it in more enjoyable ways.
Delivering through Zoom?
And even if you offer lessons teaching your craft, your expertise, then you maybe moved to delivering them through Zoom, and tell yourself that now you are using online courses. In all honestly, what you have done is simply move location from your local venue to Zoom. You are still stuck in your version of Groundhog Day aren't you, 'cos you are still repeating yourself over and over every time you teach that same thing again.
Make the time to transform that online live real-time delivery into an 'on-demand' model (a pre-recorded online course) and once again you achieve business leverage, free up your time and escape the repetition of your Groundhog Day.
Ok, Maybe you have already decided you want to create an online course. YAY!
BUT... you have been saying that for quite some time and still haven't yet 'got round to it!'.
Course creation Groundhog Day for you my friend! Some people I know have been talking about, or trying to create their online course for literally YEARS! Honestly.
So that's the next problem. You want to create a course but tell yourself the following 3 'stories'...
1. You don't know what to do
2. You don't know how to get started.
3. You don't have any time!
3
And so, you are spinning your wheels wasting time & effort and not making any progress. Getting frustrated and even demoralised. Why does it feel so damn hard?
Is there a magic wand solution, Sue?
Sadly not. But, I can share with you that the secret key is to carve out the time in your schedule to work on your online course.
And that of course means you have some tough decisions to make to decide what to say NO to, what to remove from your life so you can make the time for your online course project.
Not Easy! But essential to escape this vicious circle of despair and stress you are in, and make time to get on with what you keep telling yourself is important.
Now let's look at what you need that time for!
You don't know what you don't know, and you've no idea what the steps really are, or how long they might take.
What do you need to allocate time for when thinking about creating an online course?
1. You have lots of learning to do, and yes that includes some 'techy stuff'.
2. Research and thinking time
3. Practice time, such as improving your filming & editing skills (especially if your course is for a craft or practical skill)
4. Actually creating your course - filming, editing, slides, documents, workbooks, etc
5. Setting up and loading it up into somewhere where people can buy it & watch it - preferably a course hosting platform such as Teachable.
6. Course launch plan & preparation
7. Marketing for launch & ongoing marketing to keep sales coming in
And through all this, audience building. Success with online course sales is truly a 'numbers game.'
Without making the crucial changes to free up some time, you will be stuck in 'wannabee' mode and your course will remain stuck in your head. But worse than that?
"Will they learn from you? Or someone else?"
Your competitors may launch their course while you are faffing about procrastinating and making excuses and your potential customers will go and buy from them instead. DOH!
So you free up some time... but how much do you need?
Create a plan we say, but how the hell can you create a plan when you don't have a clue what to do, where to start, and how long things might take?
This is when I realised there is a fundamental issue with existing online course creation advice. I haven't seen anywhere, anyone talking about the practical aspects of online course project planning.
Through my long professional career I planned and worked on complex IT projects in a car factory and for global banking systems. We used a methodology to help us work out what to do in which order, and iterated as we worked, as we discovered more information and got clearer on what needed doing, and how long it might take. It became second nature to plan like this.
I realised that not many of my arty friends, or small business owners had ever been involved in planning like that, so truly struggled to even start planning something they didn't know what they were dealing with.
As I was getting ready to go on a bike ride the other weekend, pumping up my tyres I realised that without air in our bike tyres, we couldn't set off on our cycling adventure. And without air in our course creation plans, we can't set off on our course creation adventure either!
And so "PUMP UP YOUR PLAN" was born!
A monthly practical workshop where I give you my detailed online course project plan which contains ALL THE STEPS and ALL THE THINGS you need to work through to create an online course.
I also give you my time estimates of how long each thing might take, so you can at least have a go at slotting some tasks into your calendar. You will get a much clearer idea of how long it might take you to create and launch your course, as well as learning all the stuff you need to learn too. That always gets forgotten about!
All wrapped up in a trusty Trello board, and my advice and support whilst we work through the steps together.
Does this sound like what you really need to get out of Course Creation Groundhog day and get moving with your online course?
More details in my next post. I'll add in the links etc to another post, and to the sales page so you can check out the details, when I have created that stuff
In the meantime, if you want to jump on my waitlist, then please simply Contact Me, or message me in Social Media wherever we are connected.