#210: How Do I Know…If It’s the Right Time for a Course?

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to help you move forward with your course creation, your live cohort. Whatever online program you’re cooking up right now. I want you taking action, putting it out there, generating revenue, going beyond the one to ones maybe, and putting your experience out there in a different way.

And hopefully you’ve been listening over the last few weeks. We’ve been talking a ton about stories and the power of implementing them into your business. Connecting with students and clients in a completely new and unique way. And today I thought we’d pivot to a brand new series I’m calling The Biggest Questions you likely have about course creation, where you do a series.

And I’ve been talking to some business owners lately who want to dip their toe into the course creation pool or lake and are a little bit fearful or don’t have all the answers. So if you are new to the podcast or maybe you’ve been thinking about doing a course for a while, maybe you’re a long time listener, but just haven’t gone there yet, This series is for you.

So a lot of different questions have come up. I thought, Let’s do a series with the top four or five. The biggest questions I get and you can process these answers and then maybe it might just might bring up other questions. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram and let me know what other questions come up for you.

I’d love to answer those for you. If something is holding you back in terms of your course creation. Let’s talk it through. And by the way, if you just don’t want to do it alone and you want some hand-holding, think about our done for You program, where we walk through not only how to create your course, we handhold you through the entire process, but how to market the course as well, how to get out.

Your first cohort and really go for it and make the leap. Go to a course creation bootcamp slash course and you can learn more about our services. So the first question for our Build of course series are the biggest questions I get in terms of course creation is is this the right time? Such a great question, right? Because any time we’re going to make a big decision in terms of our resources and our energy, we want to know if it’s the right time.

And right now, it’s kind of an interesting time in the U.S.. There’s been ups and downs in the economy. A lot of political changes have been happening, process changes. So you might be asking, Gina, I’m not sure if this is the right time. How do I know everything might feel a little uncertain right now. And sometimes people want to buckle down in terms of when it’s not certain and they want to play it safe.

But if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably don’t play it safe. You probably go for just a little bit in life and in business. You’ve built up your business by taking risks, not by playing it safe, by going for it. So when you ask if it’s the right time, when we’re talking about it today, I want you to think about your specific circumstances because the environment will never be right.

Let’s be honest. There’s going to be something going on in the world. And my friend and mentor, Bo ’Eason , says we have to be strategic, we ignorant about some things. And he got it from Dr. Ben Hardy, by the way. So I want to give him credit. This idea of being shitty, prickly, ignorant and really focus on what’s happening in our businesses and in our lives so you can make a critical decision, an informed decision that really works for you.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And this episode, by the way, was inspired by one of my clients who I saw a year after year in a workshop that I teach about lead generation and a little bit, of course, creation as well. So I saw him in there maybe four or five years in a row, and he’s doing the work in the room, He’s doing the exercises.

He wants to grow his business. He wants to get that lead gen maybe put out that course. And he just decided to move forward and build a course. And guys, I’ve seen him light up every week with each milestone. First it was with the Post-Exercise process completely lit up, so excited. Then we got into scripting and it was this opportunity to take years and decades of knowledge and get it down into a script that other folks could learn from as he was doing each script.

At first it felt like work, but then it felt kind of like joy as he was working through it and realizing that his decades of expertise, we’re going to go out to the world. So that would light him up. Now he’s seeing his social profiles are being updated because we’ve done that as part of his done for you.

He’s getting his weightless page up. We’re going to do a direct mail campaign for him. So all of these pieces, boom, boom, boom, one milestone after the other. By the way, that’s part of the magic of done for you, that we are doing it behind the scenes for you. And every week, every month, there are these deliverables that make your course feel even more real.

Like this is something that you’re putting out to market, you’re seeing real progress. You’re seeing your online course and your expertise come alive in a new way. That’s the excitement of doing an online course. And when you wait and you ask, is this really the right time, then you’re putting off that excitement, that joy and those awesome milestones.

So this episode is inspired by my client not being afraid to put himself out there doing the work for so many years and finally bringing it together so, so many other folks can enjoy his expertise. Okay. So our question today is, how do you know if it’s the right time to put out an online course? I want to talk about three criteria to know if it’s the right time.

 

And again, I’m not looking at the stock market. I’m not looking at the political climate. I’m looking at what’s right for you. And these factors that are important for you. So to me, I think a few factors have to be in place to have a successful online course. So first, I want you to have results in place. So I want you to be able to point to results with clients, students, workshop participants.

 

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I don’t care who it is. It could be you and a small group of people that you’ve worked for. I want you to have established results that led to a transformation. Well, and who doesn’t have results? Somebody who is thinking about an idea that they want to test something and they’re saying, you know what? I think I have a better approach to X.

I think I could get results for that, but I need to test it out. Cool. Love it. If you need to test it out. Go for it. Come back to me. I want you to validate what you’re thinking, your approach, so you can have results before you build a course. So come back to me. Keep listening to this podcast when you have some of these established results.

I know this from experience. I tried working with two done for you clients. This was the same year, this was years ago, and they both had excellent business ideas. One of them wanted to get more into the sports training field, and it was a pair of our business owners, burgeoning business owners. They had a name, they had a logo.

They had a great business plan, but they hadn’t gotten results yet. They hadn’t really gone out to market in a bigger way. And we started to build their course and I had to say, you know what, guys? You need to go into business first and get results and figure out what you stand for, the transformations you’re providing, your core messaging, etc..

Once you’ve established those results in those transformations, you can come back and we can do a course. So for those of you doing one to ones and people are coming back to you, you got results. You could be having Saturday workshops or speaking at your local art center, whatever. It looks like people are coming up to you and saying, Hey, thank you.

I transformed because of you. I got a result. It’s okay. So it doesn’t have to be something official. It can be very organic in terms of seeing results and doesn’t even have to mean testimonials and official things. Okay, guys. It’s people saying, thank you. I got a result. I got transformation. Thanks to you. That’s the first element. That’s the first criteria.

Now, the second criteria is you need a system to get to the results. Okay. So you’ve got people results. We’ve established that as part of criteria one. Was it willy nilly? I doubt it. You very likely had some kind of framework or structure to get them to the result. You had a unique system. So because when you meet with somebody one on one, you go through this five step process or you have that Saturday workshop that I mentioned, you’re working with a group of 30 entrepreneurs and you know what your system is.

Every time you’re going to walk through this seven part framework, just like you want to have the results, you want to know or have a rough idea that you have a repeatable system, you might not have that dialed in completely. And then you can work with someone like me to figure out, okay, what is that complete system? But I can guarantee if you’re getting someone results, you have some kind of system for teaching and you just might not realize it.

Take note of the patterns that come up again. What are you saying again and again when somebody asks you questions, right? So I’m talking about my core course questions that come up. I’m sure you have core questions that come up as an expert. Well, write those down just like we have our story book, like we talked about in the last episode.

We’re writing down all the stories we’re writing about. We’re writing down our questions that come up with the patterns that you see again and again. You could have a framework. It could be a circle, it could be a series of circles. Whatever it is, it’s something that you get results with. All right. So we’ve got our results. We’ve got our system, a repeatable system that we can do again and again, wash and repeat.

And the third piece that I like to ask for before we dive into course creation is the push. Now, I used to call this the demand, like you’re seeing some kind of demand for a course, but now I’m seeing more of a push that people want your expertise in a different way and they want you to deliver it and they’re asking for it.

So it’s a push. So going back to that workshop you’re doing on Saturdays, maybe people are coming up to you and saying, Hey, when are you going to certify me in this? I’ve been coming to your Saturday class for years now. I want to go out and teach other people. When are you going to train me? What do you do?

Train the trainer or certify me? That’s a push. Your ears should perk up when someone asks you or someone’s texting you and saying, Hey, I just shared your formula for creating great sales pages to my friend. And she used it and asked for more. So when are you going to package that up into a course? When are you going to put that out there in a bigger way?

That’s exactly what happened with Conversion Copywriting Playbook with my great friend Meghan O’Leary. Every year I would ping her, Hey, I’ve got so many writers I need to be trained. When are you to do this with me? I’ve got businesses that need help with their campaigns. When are we going to do this? So that was the push. And finally, I gave her a big enough push this year that we did it.

And now I can train any new writer. Anyone we hire goes through that course. Now we can teach companies and their employees about how to become conversion copywriters. So where’s that little push coming for for you? So who’s in your ear? And it begin with a whisper. By the way, it could be a quiet nudge that then snowballs into a push.

That’s kind of what happened with O’Leary and I. It was a whisper a couple of years ago, and then it snowballed, so I had to give her a big push. That’s typically what happens. It starts small and then it gets bigger and then you can really say, Hey, I had a demand for this. So ideally, those are your three criteria.

And if you have those, you’re dialed in for a course. Now, I got to ask you if you’ve got those three dialed in. What else might be holding you back? Some fears, some lingering questions. We’re going to answer those in this series. I know the questions that come up. How do you know if you’re going to sell? Well, what about the price point?

What about the platform, Gina? We’re going to address those in this series. And please reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram if you have other questions that you’d like me to address in this series, or just send me a DM. Now, what are the consequences when you keep pushing back, when you say this isn’t the right time?

 

Well, one, a lot of times early to market. I’ve talked about this before where that course creators come up to me and say, Well, I reach out to you. Two years ago decided not to move forward with my course. Now my main competition went to market and I feel like I’m behind. That happens. You feel like you got beat to your own market, your own niche.

Robin For Tell I love to talk about She Does overcoming love addiction early course creator on the scene she was years ahead of her time on love addiction and she knew she didn’t have to be perfect. She just had to get out to market. So don’t delay. Don’t let someone else beat you to your own niche. The second consequence, when you say it’s not the right time is people just keep buying.

But not your stuff. Regardless of the environment we’re in, people are in pain and they have desires and they’re buying things. They’re driven by emotion, but they’re just buying from other people. They’re not buying from you. When you delay and you’re the expert out there, you’ve been listening to me and maybe you’re thinking you saw a course and you’re like, That expert’s half the expert.

I am half the course creator. I can be. Well, what are you waiting for? That And here’s another, a third and last consideration. You don’t need a big list to get started to make it the right time, because I get a lot of that, too. Well, Gina, I just want to get my marketing in place. I just want to improve my website.

I just want to do this and that, like every little marketing piece has to be in place. Trust me, the client that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we’re putting together those pieces as we build out his course. Things can happen together. Then you don’t have to wait. You definitely don’t have to have a huge audience in place to cultivate your live cohort.

You put your course out there and it grows and you see the momentum. All right. Again, if you have fears, if you’re thinking, I don’t know, Gina still might not feel the right time for me. Reach out on LinkedIn or Instagram, ask me questions again. We’re going to address some fears as we go along in our biggest questions we get asked series.

And if you want that hand-holding and you want me by your side to help you create and market your course, go to a course creation bootcamp slash course. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one episode of the incubator. Until next week, Go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.