If you decide you're going to build a course without doing the foundational work, chances are pretty good you're going to end up doing a lot of work you don't need to. You’ll be committing business cardinal sin number 1: wasting time and energy.
Every time I talk to folks about, time and energy is the number one concern they have about building courses for their online business.
Signs it Might Be Time to Create an Online Course
If you find yourself repeating things to your clients over and over, or they need you after the service is done, those are clear client pain points that suggest something more group based would be helpful.
That could be supporting the one on one, or extending it into a group thing after the service. So a course or a membership. Or if you're an expert in something and people keep asking you how to do the thing you do, that's also worth investigating.
Signs You're Not Quite Ready to Create an Online Course (Yet)
It's not a good fit if just one person asks you. Because there's a lot more validation work you need to do in order to not waste that time and energy or money. And it does take time and energy, no matter how many AIs you throw at it. But don't sit on it too long.
We can move too quickly and not have the foundational pieces, but we can also overthink so long that nothing actually gets built. So the worry and fear about wasting time and energy on something that's not going to give you a payoff, whatever that payoff looks like, ends up keeping a lot of business owners stuck and not actually taking action.
That can be just as costly as moving too soon. It really is a balance of doing the foundational work but also not getting stuck in your head.
What it Actually Means to be "Ready to Build" an Online Course
In terms of deciding whether or not you're actually ready to build a course, we're going to talk about what that actually means.
It means you have an idea you would love to teach. It has to be something you enjoy talking about, something you enjoy helping people with and answering questions on.
Because if it's not, you're going to hate it.
And if you hate it, you're not going to want to sell it. You're not going to be able to do whatever the support work is to sustain it for your clients.
It also has to be something people want to buy from you. And finding that happy place in between, where the Venn diagram overlaps, that's where we get good course ideas.
If you have an idea in that happy place in between, you might be ready to build.
Ready to build also means you have a course plan, not just a course outline. I like to call them course maps.
But really the difference is that in a course plan, you know:
what they're going to do,
how they're going to do it,
why they're going to do it, and
what's going to get them to that goal, to that change they are coming to you for.
Know Your Learners Before You Plan to Teach Anything
In order to know what people want from you, you have to do some market research.
But as I've mentioned before, I don't like to call it market research. I like to approach it from the perspective of understanding who they are as a learner.
Because knowing who they are as a learner and what they're trying to get out of a course can help us both build and market. Whereas a lot of marketing focused questions just want to know how they buy. Learner focused questions want to understand not just how they learn, but also what they need about this particular topic you're building your course around.
So ready to build means you know you have learners that are potential buyers, and you know what they actually need and want so you can craft something for them.
Ask Me How I Know
My very first course that I tried to sell outside of higher education didn’t sell a single seat. When I got out, I had someone say to me, “you should create a course on creating video.”
It's something I had taught when I was in higher education. It's something I was comfortable doing. So I was like, “no problem.”
I made a course map, because that's what I call course plans. And I did the freebie things, and I did the marketing, and I did not sell a single spot in that course.
Disappointing? Yes. Devastating? No.
Because I had not recorded a single video. I had not written up all of the activities. I just had the course map. And so I hadn't wasted a bunch of time and energy.
So now I have steps that I used in market research for the membership, for my course platform I’m building, AND they’re the same steps I recommend to clients.
The Gut Check Question I Ask Everyone Planning to Teach in Their Business
So I often get asked, what is the top gut check question for whether it's a good time or you're ready to build a course. And I respond with a question.
My question is: what is the outcome, what is the goal they're trying to reach? What is the change they're trying to get? How are you going to get them there?
Ok, so that’s three questions, but they work as a fantastic filter.
Then, I skip the what and go straight to the how. Because the how is everything. And depending on what I get as an answer to that question, I can usually tell, yes you're ready, or no, there's a few things you need to consider before moving ahead.
I’ve got a quiz to help you decide if it’s the right move as well. Have more questions? Grab a strategy session.