#185: Overloaded Course? Here’s How to Take Back Control!

Welcome to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia. Here to help you take action and finally put your course or your program out to the world, no matter what stage it’s in so you can build the online based business of your dreams. And as we approach the final phase of the year, I hope you’re feeling refreshed and ready to dive back into business with new energy.

Because in today’s episode, we’re diving into what happens when your course content spirals out of control, when it feels like, well, maybe like it’s running away from you. And I’ve got a funny story to share about a recent Done for you client who has a course that was. Yep, running away from us and we had to wrestle it down and make it work for us and for her audience.

Now I see this problem more than you might think, because as course creators, you’re an expert and you have so much to share. And sometimes it could be a struggle to figure out what to leave in and what to take out. And that’s the value of having someone support you and creating your course that you have that outside opinion.

So I thought I’d share the story of my Done for You client and then offer you some steps. So if your course or your master class outline or whatever kind of content is feeling unruly to you right now, this episode is for you. So we’ll walk through those steps to really triage when a course or program is trying to just run away from you.

Now, before I get into all that, just got back a few weeks ago from our first trip to Yosemite here in California. Guys, I can’t believe I’ve lived in California for almost 20 years now, and I’ve never been to Yosemite as a hiking family. It’s pretty much a crime that we could be arrested for. Well, it was gorgeous, absolutely breathtaking.

Everything that people promised it would be and more. And we wanted to take as much as we could in over two days. We had two days in the park where we drove in. Then one day on Bass Lake, which is nearby, which is pretty cool. And we really want to optimize our time inside of the park. So we immediately go to Bridle Vale, which is this gorgeous waterfall that everyone descends upon as soon as you get into the park.

I never heard of this before, but apparently Yosemite is Disneyland for hikers. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know, we love to hike, so we immediately go to Bridle Vale, check it out. Very pretty. Then we decide to drive further into the park and go off on a Prairie Trail, which is supposed to be somewhat of a quick one mile loop.

And of course, I get us lost and I’m on all trails, which is an amazing app. If you guys are a hiker, you know all about it. Link to it in the show notes. I’m on the paid version, which makes the story even sadder because you can’t miss navigation if you’ve got the paid version of All trails. But somehow I end up going from this small loop to this giant hike.

So like from one mile to four miles, Right? And I’ve promised my kid, I promise Tristan and my friends, kids who are with us that we’re going to do this quick loop. We’re going to eat. We’re going to take a break. We’re going on this beautiful creek. So we end up on this bigger hike. We’re sweating, right? We’re going longer, but we find this bigger waterfall.

It’s lower Yosemite Falls. And it turns out to be great because we didn’t stop. We just kept going and we ended up going for this gorgeous hike around the waterfall and into the woods. We explored all these really cool trees and the kids were running around and they were loving it. So it worked out. Even though I completely miss navigated us and I thought to myself, Now isn’t that kind of like course creation, right?

Or program creation or anything we do as business owners where we’re really trying to buckle down and find our path. You think you’re going down one path and you’re really veering off because there is no navigation, there is no All trails app When it comes to entrepreneurship, we do our best with mentors and coaching, right and tools at our disposal, but there’s no true path to go on for you or for me.

So I thought this was a great metaphor for your business. Are building up your business as an online marketer, but at the end of the day, it works out usually like 9.9 times out of ten. And it worked out in terms of this trail. So if you haven’t been to Yosemite, highly recommend it. If you need any tips, look me up on LinkedIn or Instagram because I feel like a semi-pro now and I can’t wait to go back and try other hikes.

And we also found this really cool kriek, by the way, after a mile hike. Kids will love it. Don’t worry. I won’t try to navigate you or lead you. I’ll just let you know about some cool secret hikes. Okay. But today is not just about hiking. It’s also about taking back control of that content that might have a little bit of control on you.

You are the boss of your content. They’re not the boss of you. So I promised you a story I’ve done for you client. And by the way, love doing done for use. It gives me an opportunity to really dig deep and drill down with an expert on their business, on their marketing outcomes. What kind of course they want to create, who their audiences and really get in there in terms of the best course to deliver and how to deliver it.

So if you’re interested, by the way, in a done for you, we are booking out a few more spots in this season to reach out to me at Hello at course Creation Boutique E-Comm or you can apply directly at course creation boutique ecom slash course all linked to it in the show notes. So in phase one of our done for you process, I go through our post-exercise process of outlining your course.

Then in phase two we go into scripting and I have a really heavy hand in terms of our scripting process because that’s what you’re getting with are done for you, where we look at all your scripts in terms of flow, what stories are you telling, Are you stacking? Are you building on what your student has learned in the previous lesson, etc.?

It is a really fun process. It’s one of my favorite things as part of the Done for You process and also it’s completely custom. So we figure out a way to work with you in terms of your content. In this case, we the content creator, the expert, wanted to email me some content and I said, okay, go for it will organize it, we’ll structure it, will bring it, refresh life.

And in this case, she sent me 30 emails, so I had 30 emails of content. And mind you, I said, Go for it. Right? So we’re going through it, me and my team or categorizing, we’re organizing because that’s part of what we provide. Figure out, okay, what’s what, what flows, Where do we want to go from here? So at the end of the day, as I sift through 30 emails, I’m ending up with about eight modules.

Now, I thought we’re going to have five modules because in phase one, in that posted exercise process, we outlined five modules, right? And here we are with eight because of the depth, the breadth of all the content that’s been sent over. Now I’m feeling overstuffed, right? I feel like I just sat down for Thanksgiving dinner and I push my chair away and you’re going to have to roll me out of this house, right?

That’s how stuffed I’m feeling in terms of this content. It’s a bit chaotic now. I’ve organized it, but it’s overwhelming for anyone taking this course. And this is not what we want, right? This is not what we intended. This is not what we set out to do. And by the way, I love this word intent more and more.

And my favorite question is, what’s your outcome? If you’ve been listening to this podcast, I love asking what’s your outcome? But I think I need a follow up. What’s your intent? So our outcome is to provide a transfer mission for these women, but our intent is to be of service to help people who are ready to lose weight and who are ready to be open to the system.

And the last thing that we want to do is completely overwhelm them and lose them as part of this process. So I immediately went into triage and this is the steps that I took with my client, and I invite you to take them. If you feel like you have a runaway course, that’s kind of like an avalanche coming down on you.

Okay, So step one is to take a step back and do what I just did and say, Whoa, whoa, whoa. What is the intent? What is the outcome? What is this course really about? What is this transformation that I’m really providing? And I might just shellacking someone by giving them this much content. So when we go back to our transformation and our intent, then you’re going to realize this is very likely a lot of content that is going to be too much for your person and as part of step one, it’s just this acknowledgment.

Yes, this is too much. All right. Well, great acknowledgment and understanding is the first step. So with step two, it’s all about how we’re going to manage it. So step two is to break it up in different ways. So there’s a lot of different ways to approach this. By the way, I have a podcast episode about cutting the fat, which are linked to in the show notes.

But my first thought about this specific weight loss course was Let’s create a starter course. Let’s start smaller and build from there. Because we had so much content, we could have built a starter into a signature. So all link to the podcast, by the way, where I talk about why a starter course is so beautiful in terms of vetting your audience and putting yourself out there for the first time.

So again, my first instinct was, okay, let’s take the best of what we have here and cut it down into something like a starter course. So it’s more like 14 videos versus say 50. Now there’s other benefits to doing this. It’s a win for students because they were short a shorter path to results. It’s a win for you as a course creator because there’s less content to create and it’s going to be faster to get your course to market.

Plus, since you already have all this great content, you can save that for a signature course and have a natural step for students who are ready for more support beyond the starter course. Second step, We’re breaking it up. Okay, so in this case we’re thinking starter course potentially to the signature. Now, third, even though we had a starter course here, we still want to cut as part of step three.

We want to cut some of these scripts because even though we’ve got our videos or lessons down, there’s still on the heavy side. Sure enough, when this expert went to record, she ended up cutting how long her videos were. So she had scripts or maybe 12 or 15 minute videos to start and ended up with a length of more like 8 to 10 minute videos because she realized, Wow, this feels like a lot.

It’s one thing to look at a Google doc. I’m looking at a Google doc right now as I talk to you. It’s another thing to hear it out loud and realize, Oh gosh, this is getting heavy. This is feeling like a lot for my person. Kind of hits you sometimes when you’re saying it out loud. So I want you to do a thoughtful cut, a step three of your process.

And by the way, go back to that podcast I mentioned earlier about cutting the fat out of your scripts. That will be a huge resource for you then as part of step four, because maybe you’re thinking, Well, Gina, if I’m cutting, where’s everything going right? Where’s all my awesome content going? Well, let your handouts do the heavy lifting, your PDFs.

I think sometimes we think we have to get it all on video or multimedia, but in fact, handouts can do it. They can get your transformation across for you. I’m talking checklist templates, summary docs, worksheets, guides, swipe files. In fact, I’m a PDF learner. More and more, I’d rather look at a series of PDFs. Like I’m always like, where could I download right?

Like a workbook or a number of PDFs and watch a 30 minute video or a series of videos that had up to 30 minutes. I can quick read those documents faster than I can watch a video and we tend to use videos to teach. I’m not knocking videos here. I still think that you need them as an important component of your course, but handouts can help us actually take action and in the end that’s what we want.

We don’t want students to just watch videos and walk away. We want them to apply what they learn and the handouts are a great way to do this. So I want you to lean on those handouts and those downloads and maybe create a course that’s heavier on PDFs. So if you cut out a piece that you cut out 5 minutes out of a video lesson, does that become a checklist?

Is it a tip sheet? What does it look like? Is it a roadmap? How can I create something simpler to set people through? I’m going through a course right now and it’s awesome information. It’s incredible. And she’s offering the slides. I just wish there were PDFs that walk through the system and walk through the roadmap of the process, and that might be exactly what your people want.

They don’t need long videos. Not necessarily. Don’t underestimate the power of amazing, effective handouts. All right. So once again, if you’re going through a course or your content, it’s becoming unwieldy. Think about these steps. Step one, take a step back, realizing you need to do the trick. You’re not serving your people. Step two How can you break it up?

Maybe it’s not even a starter course. So signature, that’s just one idea here. You could do a low price point course, or you could do like a $27 course to a couple of hundred dollars course. Or you break it up into a number of mini courses that are maybe $97. I one client do that. Have fun with it here.

There’s no rules when you approach this. There’s no rules with course creation, with programs, with offers and invites. I think sometimes we get caught because we see, well, this one person did it this way and we’re like, Well, I guess I have to do it that way because they were successful. While other people have had successes along the ways.

Do what works for you then, as a step three, you’re going to cut. You’re a simplify. Then step four, you’re going to lean on your PDFs or handouts or other ways of learning. Maybe you throw some of their audios in there. There are some demos, some existing pieces, so get creative. There’s no one size fits all when it comes to course creation.

I want you to take back control of that course and get yourself back on a path to creation. And yes, you might veer off here and there, but you’ll find yourself back on path and back on schedule. If you’re interested in Jump for you, hit me up. Go to course creation boutique dot com slash course to apply and I can’t wait to connect with you and I’ll see you in the next episode.

Until then, go create, be you and be brilliant. Go blaze your own trail and get it done.