How a tech expert went from just a goal to a whole a$$ sold course

Brenda is the owner of Informed Tech Solutions, and she helps businesses get their systems and tech working the way they're supposed to. She came to me sitting on ‘create a course’ as a goal and landed on a sold course in less than six months. The biggest win, though, is that after she got folks in there, she realized that the process she’d been through would benefit her own course clients.

When I was first marketing my membership, Brenda sent me a DM:

"I think I need your course builder membership. I have been saying for months I want to build a course, but haven't. I need accountability and spending money on something is good for accountability. Also, I like frameworks and having a clear path of what to do and also having other people to give feedback."

As a former teacher, she recognized what she needed to be successful. It’s what most people need when undertaking something they’ve been avoiding: processes, accountability, and support.

She’d been avoiding it because creating a course is a big undertaking and “what’s the next step” plagues experienced teachers, too. If she didn’t create this course and do it well she ran the risk of missed income but more importantly not serving the folks she wanted to serve.

What She Really Needed

Brenda came in confident in what she needed, and she did need the pathway and the support and the accountability. So this isn’t a case of “but instead” rather a case of “but also.”

But she also needed to see how it could be done to be able to know what her clients needed, too. Many people teach how they’re taught, and Brenda needed to see and experience how these things can be woven together in a way that gets results without burning her out. She needed to see how people would use the course and what they needed in addition to what she thought they needed. 

And she needed to experience being the student to design for the student instead of designing from the expertise.

WHAT THE WORK ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE

Brenda came in prepared. She'd validated her idea, written up her goals, mapped her course. Her teaching background gave her the mechanics of learning: concrete goals, clear outcomes, logical sequencing. She knew how this was supposed to work.

Which is exactly why she couldn't see what wasn't working. Sometimes we end up too close to our work and need an outside perspective. 

Her goals were written for her, not her students. They reflected her vision of what learners would eventually face, but they weren't yet framed around what students would actually be able to do. And buried inside that goal list was a structural problem; she potentially had several mini-courses trying to be one course. The feedback sent her back to work on goals, not to start over entirely, but to get to the core of what the course was actually going to do before moving forward.

She taught high schoolers; she knows that concrete, learner-facing goals are critical. Once she saw the gaps, she fixed them quickly. That's not a failure of expertise; it’s a symptom of knowing your sh*t. 

As Brenda worked through the course piece of the membership, she showed up to accountability regularly. She got work done, asked questions, and made steady progress. 

When she got to the course map, we surfaced a second blind spot. Step 2 of her course was solid (action-based, concrete, students copying, comparing, documenting, building. But Step 1 was passive. Watch this video. Review this chart. She'd built the foundation on consumption instead of application (such a common mistake), and a particularly costly one in a course about tech implementation where students need to be thinking and doing from the very first activity.

The fix wasn't complicated: give students somewhere to put what they were learning. A folder, a notes space, a running document, something that made them process and apply instead of just watch. Small structural change, significant difference in whether students actually arrive at Step 2 ready to build.

She made the changes. She showed up to nearly every accountability call. She asked questions in Slack. She knew that when shifting from high touch or even in person work to asynchronous course design, it’s a steeper learning curve and she asked and implemented feedback consistently. That kind of consistent engagement is rarer than it should be, and it's exactly why she finished in less than 6 months with just support, accountability, and a process laid out.

WHAT SHE BUILT

An activity-based course teaching businesses how to create AI assistants. It’s practical, implementation-focused, and designed for people who actually need to use the thing, not just understand it. She focused on guiding clients through which assistants to use, which tools to choose, and how to actually dig in and experiment so they could make informed decisions. 

Then she sold it. To someone she didn't know.

WHAT SHE LEARNED

After real people were in the course and using it, Brenda immediately recognized what she needed to do:

"I just think a standalone course doesn't work in tech. People need accountability and support. And I'm launching something for that. Which actually, that's why I joined your membership in the first place. I needed the accountability and I wanted the access to support. I would not have done it alone, even though it was a goal."

She lived the problem she was seeing. Now she's designing the solution for her own students because she knows that sometimes just having an expert in the room with you while you’re doing the thing can make all the difference in getting things done and feeling confident about it.

She didn't just learn how to build a course. She learned something about her buyers by being a buyer herself. That's not a coincidence; that's what happens when course design is taught as a process grounded in how people actually learn, not just how to string together video modules.

THE TAKEAWAY

Brenda needed a structure that wouldn't let her off the hook: feedback checkpoints, accountability calls, a place to ask the quick questions and get the gut checks that were stalling her. She needed to feel seen and be called out.

That's what the Course Maker Membership is designed to do. And now she's improving the design for the learning experience her own clients need.

When we followed up on my podcast we talked through what this support for her own course clients would look like, how to make it fit their needs, and how to flip the marketing to lead with the structured accountability and focus on getting tech under control. She’s launching the new membership this month; check it out if technology is the bane of your business.

Ready to stop saying you'll build it and actually do it?

The Course Maker Membership gives you the framework, the feedback, and the accountability to actually finish.