Start Your Online Course in 4 Steps
Episode Summary:
Hello my friends! This is a very exciting episode. Are you thinking about launching a signature course, mastermind, group program or some sort of leveraged service as you scale and grow? If so, this is the episode for you. I love a leveraged program, especially as a busy mama because I want to make the most of my time. I offer or have offered DIY courses, self-study products, I have a mastermind, and I have done group programs. I've done all the things, and I'm here to download some of my best advice to you!
Discussed in this episode:
The four steps of building out a course that you’re confident about
How to stack your offer suite so that your offers aren’t in competition with each other but complement each other
Starting with an outline and an outcome as you begin your course curriculum prep and knowing what to include and what to cut
Creating a reasonable timeline for your course and getting clear on what needs to be included
The importance of taking time when naming your course
The basic elements of building each course from the launch to the actual program itself
The benefits of group work and the results that you and your clients can expect
Episode Resources:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Stitcher
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript.
Anna Rapp (00:00):
Hello my friends. This is a very exciting episode. Are you thinking about launching a signature course or mastermind or group program or some sort of leverage service as you scale and grow? If so, this is the episode for you. Tune in. I'm gonna talk all about launching leverage services. I love a leverage program, especially as a busy mama. I wanna make the most of my time. I offer d I've done DIY courses, I've done, you know, self-study products, I have a mastermind, I have done group programs, I've done all the things, and I'm here to download to you some of my best advice for this. So buckle your seatbelt tune in, <laugh>. I'm super excited to teach on this. You guys know I'm a big fan of first building up your one-on-one service, whether it's a, um, done for you service or a coaching offer. Really solidifying that.
Anna Rapp (00:54):
But I know a lot of you are at that point where you are ready to grow in scale. And so what I have done is I work with the amazing Ruth Ann again to create another Canva template for you. Exactly what I wish I had when I was creating my first online course. Um, because I, I feel like this is really my goal is that this is a course in a box for you. I, it's all the elements that I launched my first programs with a logo, an email header, Google Doc worksheets. I've included everything in this canvas set to help you spend more time on what's already time consuming, which is recording your course content, right? So I'm gonna put details in the show notes if you are interested in grabbing that, um, template set. But this episode I want to be advice on how to create a course or a group program, like where to even start if you're starting from scratch.
Anna Rapp (01:48):
Um, and let's just dive right in. Are you ready, <laugh>? I also would love for you to email me if you are thinking about creating a course or a program or a mastermind in the new year. I would love to hear what it is. I would love to hear what your dream is around it. Cause I almost feel like it's like writing a book where like we have these dreams for programs that we know are made to, to make an impact, you know? Um, okay. I have four points for you to think through as you are starting out, and then I'm gonna go a little deeper into some minutia on some of the things you need to have to get your course off the ground. Are you ready? Are you ready? Okay, So four things to get started. Number one is ideas. Number two is outcome. Number three is outline. Number four is timeline. Okay? If you're a note taker, ideas, outcome, outline, timeline, the first step when you are creating a new program, a new course, a new something is brainstorm all of your ideas on a Google Doc. Maybe you already have your idea, but I think it's important. It takes time. Kind of like again, writing a book to create a course, it takes
Anna Rapp (02:59):
Major time and energy and we wanna make sure we pick the right idea. Not that we're gonna be perfectionistic about it, but like if we're gonna spend a lot of time on this, like let's make sure we pick the one that makes the most sense as far as making money in your business. Remember this course, it's a money making tool, right? That's the point. So we're gonna look at all of your ideas and we're gonna ma look at which makes the most sense as far as monetizing, like, which is in the most demand that people are going to want to buy and purchase. The other important factor is where does this fit in your product suite? Okay? What do I mean by this, right? So ideally when we have different offers in our business, whether self-study or done with you or done for you or one-on-one or group, right?
Anna Rapp (03:43):
Ideally they're not competing with each other, okay? What do I mean by this? Right? Ideally, if you have a six week program, the topic on the six week program is something that your clients can accomplish before they join your six month program. Let me say that again. Ideally the topic of your, so you're not just looking at like, Ooh, what topic do I wanna teach on, right? Does it make sense for where I'm strategically placing this with the other offers in my business? Think about it for a minute, right? You wanna make sure, like even if you were a product business, we wanna make sure our products are distinct and they compliment each other. So when you think about this course, I want you to ask yourself, is it distinct from the other offers that I offer? And does it compliment the other offers I offer or does it compete with it, right?
Anna Rapp (04:34):
I know this is a more advanced concept, but I just wanted to share it because it's what I walk all of my clients through when they think about adding a new offer to their existing business model, right? Okay. So you're gonna bring up all of your ideas and you're gonna just pick one, right? Based on strategically what makes the most sense to sell. Next, I want you to think through what is going to be these two kind of go together, the outcome and the outline. You need to start outlining your course, right? Getting an idea of what are all the things I wanna include in my course and what's the outcome that I want my audience to have when they finish this course? What's the outcome I want my audience to have when they finish this course? What do I want them to feel? Do say be?
Anna Rapp (05:27):
How do I want them to be transformed after this information? The reason this is so important, right? Is so that we make sure that what we're adding in our course, I know you're brilliant, I know you have a lot of thought leadership, but the last thing we wanna do is just put a bunch of random stuff in there and then, you know, the, the point isn't to inform our clients. The point is to transform our clients. And we do that by getting clear on the objective and then making sure that in our outline, all the modules, all the puzzle pieces, help get our clients there. Okay, Story time. Are you ready for this? When I first created my course, Visible Impact, it's on self-study now, um, I did a pretty good job at this, but this was my first course ever, right? Of this type.
Anna Rapp (06:11):
And so I did put in there like the goal was to get women visible online on social media in six weeks. So I would say I did a fairly good job at that, but since this was my first course, I was also fairly insecure. And so I also put a lot of other things in the course that were like nice to have and good things, but didn't necessarily fulfill the objective of helping people get visible in six weeks, right? And what this does, I think we do this when we feel like, oh, we wanna impress our clients or we want our clients to feel like they got a lot out of it, right? But I think it's remembering when we're feeling confident. It's like I tell my clients that are coaches, right? Like if you're a really confident coach, you don't have to have a lot of fancy um, interventions.
Anna Rapp (06:52):
You know, you can just be confident sitting there and listening to your client, right? That's the same thing when you're building a course. Like we need to have the guts to take things out to leave things just like Marion Anne Roach says about writing, being willing to kill our darlings when it comes to editing out our work, right? Um, and so what I did is I went back to visible impact and I actually edited out a lot of the program to refine it down to the most essential steps and let everything else as a bonus, right? And so now you can do the complete visible impact system in like two hours. And I think I realized like, you know, people think like, oh, this per people are gonna pay a lot of money for my course, so I need to like jam it with info.
Anna Rapp (07:34):
But instead, remember they're paying for the transformation and if we can give them that transformation in as little time as possible, that's the win. Especially because our clients are busy humans, right? And so moving forward, creating my other courses, I really integrated that and was so fierce about asking myself from the front end, is this necessary for the objective I'm trying to hit? If not, it's either getting taken out or it's gonna be a bonus, right? But ideally in our core framework, we're only putting in exactly what they need to and not a penny more, right? Um, to get them that transformation. Another thing that's super helpful with this is making sure when you record your course videos, making sure your videos are very short. So let's say you have five modules, right? Within each module maybe you have four little videos, but the cool little thing about that of having four little five minute videos instead of one 20 minute video is it lets you, number one, it makes it more digestible for your audience.
Anna Rapp (08:35):
It also lets you puzzle piece them around if you find out something isn't necessary or something needs to be rerecorded, right? But I have just been more and more fierce about this and I think it's why my clients love my courses and my, you know, content and my mastermind so much is because I really have distilled it down to the most essential things and chopped everything else out, right? Okay. So that's under creating an outcome and an outline. Next thing you need to create is a timeline. A timeline. So what that means is getting clear on this course is gonna be a project to create, right? And so really getting clear on the order with which you are going to create it, right? When are you going to record the videos? When are you going to prep the worksheets, right? Are you going to do this before you sell it or are you going to do it after you sell it?
Anna Rapp (09:28):
I'm a big fan of um, selling it, but doing it while the program is running, I like to be a little bit in advance. And so basically what I did for the last course I created Get and Coach is I finished the first two modules before it went live, but then I created the course in real time with the first cohort. And I actually think that's a huge benefit because then you're number one, I was creating a course on content. I'd already run so many one-on-one clients through. Um, but what I think that does is I think that really helps you make content that's relevant in real time. Um, and so I do not think you have to have your course finished before you, um, sell it and get it out to humans, right? Remembering that like initially the whole point of your course is to run actual humans through it so that you get testimonials and you get feedback to make it better.
Anna Rapp (10:18):
And um, like that's the goal. And so try not to delay too much when it comes to getting it out. Okay? Those are the four steps, ideas, outcome, outline, timeline. Um, and another point in here I really wanna add and make sure you have sufficient time for is making sure you're really taking time on the title and what you're naming your course. Not that it needs to be perfect and not that we can't update it. You guys know I have a course, um, that used to be called Love Your Tribe, and then I learned that tribe is not a word that's very sensitive, um, to people that are, um, of indigenous people groups, Native Americans. And so I changed it to um, Facebook group Philip. And so you can change it, but it's a little bit of drama to change the name of your course.
Anna Rapp (11:04):
Obviously in that case it was worth it because I really, it's so important for me to be sensitive, um, and mindful, but otherwise I think <laugh> it's so useful to, you know, cuz you're having to change all your graphics and your worksheets and your headers and the, the feel and the name of your brand and your program. And so what I recommend is you come up with 20 different name ideas, um, because really the name of your course is a big part of the marketing. So just like I said, take time to decide what course you're gonna do. Take plenty of time to pick your course name. I think that's huge. Okay? Now I'm gonna talk briefly through some of the components that you need to think through creating so that when you create your timeline, and when I say timeline, I'm saying like, um, you know, it's, it's kinda like a behind the scenes project, right?
Anna Rapp (11:51):
And so you have to get clear on when you're actually going to do all of the elements. And so I'm gonna go through some of the elements so that you know what you have to make time for, if that makes sense. Okay? So I'm gonna talk about the launch and then I'm gonna talk about the actual program itself, if that makes sense. Okay, so for the launch, you need to create launch emails, launch social posts. You might have a launch conversion event, like you might do a challenge or a little zoom session. Um, you want to have your either sales page or sales pdf. All of my group programs, I have started, not on my website, but you guys know in the template shop I have an offer PDF where you basically write all the elements of your offer in a PDF and then that's how people can learn about it before they buy.
Anna Rapp (12:38):
I think it's a great idea to do it that way. Um, another launch element that you'll need is a registration email, right? And so I like to send people, um, once they say that they want to join the program, I send them an email with the registration link. So that's something great to prep and then also private invite emails. I think it could not be said enough, especially for your first cohort of people, um, thinking through people you wanna invite to join the program, keeping the super bare bones, okay, for the program itself, you're going to need a welcome email, right? Once they register an email that says, Welcome to the course, I can't wait to have you, I usually put like a two minute video in there that says like, Why did you sign up? Tell me a little bit about you. Welcome to the course.
Anna Rapp (13:23):
I can't wait to have you. Right? And that's something that you wanna have, even if you don't create your whole course, you wanna have your welcome email because that makes it feel super official, right? Um, you also want to have a header. I think having a a simple email header makes it feel cohesive. The whole course experience. Um, you're gonna be creating weekly emails for the whole course. Um, I like to have a support group in between. Now I use Slack for my courses. I love it. And so thinking through what you're gonna do for in between support, you're gonna likely record course videos, course worksheets, um, and then if it's a live course, you'll have a call schedule and recordings. Um, that's the base of it, like that's it. And a course you can add more, but like those are the most important parts that you wanna really add to your time, letting it clear on when you're gonna create these.
Anna Rapp (14:21):
Okay? Um, okay, let me tell you a little bit more about this template set that we've created just for you. Again, I wish as you heard, like it's a lot and so like, I wish I had this, but what, um, we created for you was a course logo, a course workbook. So you can pick a cover that you like and customize it. Google, I'm a huge fan of doing Google Doc worksheets for your course. This is what I use for my mastermind, for all of my courses and programs, and it's why I think my clients get such great results in my courses and programs is because they're not just learning the information, but they're actually integrating it and taking action. And this is why I love, I basically, I've never really seen anyone do this, but I have used Google Docs and made worksheets out of it and like added boxes and made it really clever.
Anna Rapp (15:08):
And so I'm basically sharing all my templates with you so that you can make worksheets for your course, um, based on some of these templates. We also made a custom email header, graphic course video thumbnails, social media, lunch graphics, real story sets. Basically everything that you're going to need on the, um, graphic end of things so that you can focus on the actual creation of your course. You can do, you can record your video, you can write up the content for your worksheet, right? Knowing that you have the structure. And it's gonna look beautiful and professional because I'll tell you what, my, my first course did not look beautiful or professional <laugh>, which is totally fine because I was starting out, but like, I wish I would've had a, a, you know, an affordable template set like this so that like from day one it could look professional because I think like that look and feel of the course is so nice to have, right?
Anna Rapp (16:01):
I'm gonna put information in the, you know, in the links if you are interested in grabbing that template set. Again, it is best for if you are doing a DIY course, a group program or a mastermind where you're teaching someone content, right? I've actually also had my clients, um, do this similar sort of thing for their one-on-one clients. Like I think it can be so beautiful with your one-on-one clients to start creating worksheets for them, videos for them to start to leverage your time. Um, but is mostly for getting ready to launch a new course mastermind or group program. Okay? Um, again, hit reply and let me know to this email, if you have a leveraged offer on your heart or my, for 2023, I would love to cheer you on. I think it's really exciting to get to this point in your business, right?
Anna Rapp (16:50):
Where you're ready to scale and you're ready to make more impact. And so just remind yourself if you have some fear around this, right? Like it's safe for you to grow, It's safe for you to scale, it's safe for you to multiply your audience, magnify your voice. It's safe for you to, you know, play it bigger maybe than you ever have before. It's safe for you to reach more people, right? It's, I know there's a lot of fear around like, Oh, can I get a group of people the same amount of, you know, results, I got my one on one clients, but just trust that it's safe for you to have different levels and different ways and different price points for people to work with you, right? You can trust your audience is empowered humans and they get to pick the offer that best matches them. And I think it's beautiful to be able to have offers, um, that are leveraged, that are groups. Often they can be more affordable, often they can include other humans. There's so many benefits to group work. Um, and so I'm so excited to see what you guys do with this. Okay? Hope you
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Have a beautiful rest of your day, and as always, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Thank you so much for, um, emailing me and connecting with me. It makes me feel like I'm not alone here eating carrots in my office, <laugh>. Um, and just a reminder too, the applications for Sell with Heart Mastermind are open. So if you are interested in my private support when it comes to growing and scaling your business, I am the person to help you do this. I've been doing group work, um, mastermind work coursework for over six years now in my business and I love it. I think it's so powerful. And if you want to grow and scale with heart, with integrity, with intention, make more money in less time, um, without leaving your values, um aside, I would love to help you scale your business. Feel free to email me or I'll put a link in the show notes to, to the application, okay? Have a great rest of your day.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.