Should you use courses to build your business?
Visibility. Expert Positioning. Credibility. Passive Income. What's not to love?
Introduction
Early in my business, I purchased a program from Danielle Lewis called Course From Scratch. I loved the rationale for using courses to build my business and fell for the fancy marketing hook, line, and sinker.
The truth is, I appreciate the framework that is part of that program. It’s the formula and promise I take issue with.
I have since found out that Course From Scratch isn’t the only formulaic course creation program that attracts entrepreneurs and creators at all parts of their business-building journey.
It’s easy to make an argument for using courses to grow your business, establish yourself as an expert, create credibility, and generate passive income.
But there is no one-size-fits-all and these prescriptive formulas are at best limiting and at worst damaging to a young business.
This is my motivation for creating this blog post. If you use (or are thinking of using) courses to market your burgeoning, heart-centered business, I want you to have the full picture of the easiest way to get there. I want you to know all your options and strategies so you can leverage all the tools that exist online instead of going down a formula that leaves you frustrated and sad.
I never completed the Course From Scratch stuff, although not for lack of trying. The formula didn’t work for me. Although the idea of creating a financial goal and setting an arbitrary launch date and working backward to fill the seats is a nice idea that might work for a mature company, I simply didn’t have the audience. And from what I can see from perusing the results others are having in the community, I’m not the only one.
These formulas break down early in business when you don’t have an audience, especially in this case when they are demanding you do phone calls, you are going to be haranguing your friends, family, and social media following, and it’s going to feel a lot like you joined an MLM instead of building your own market-led business.
Here’s what I do love about Course From Scratch materials:
The idea of “culture-add” instead of culture-fit. I am a huge believer that your business and brand are as unique as you are if you are creating a heart-centered pursuit. That means that you don’t fit into the existing culture, but instead add something spicy, saucy, new, and beautiful. I love that CFS starts with embracing every aspect of your story.
The encouragement to start before you’re ready. CFS encourages you to pre-sell your course to find out what folks need and will pay for before you build the whole thing based on your head movies. The idea of a dynamic, co-creative process really speaks to me.
The concept of a Minimum Viable Course. Although this idea is not new to Danielle Lewis, it is something I am embracing more and more as a carryover from my experience in software with agile methodology, developing the leanest initial product end-to-end and then iterating based on feedback.
Here’s what I don’t love:
The promise is unrealistic. Early brands cannot fill their own launches in most cases. This sets people up for failure.
Too formulaic. The issue isn’t only that there is a formula, but the ask is all or nothing. There isn’t room for testing for alignment, you are told to do it exactly as suggested. The idea is that if it’s not working for you, you’re not doing it right.
The requirement to do 1:1 phone sales calls is too much for most people’s nervous systems early on. We should be providing options that are flexible for folks instead of asking them to go too far or too fast.
Even if a formula does “work“ (i.e. make money), following someone else’s strategy doesn’t teach you how to take an idea (like growing your audience through courses) and test for alignment using tiny experiments in your business.
If I had taken the work I did for CFS and put the course material into Udemy or Skillshare or the like, I could have utilized a built-in audience to start growing my expertise, credibility, and influence. I would have started immediately testing my ideas on the market, and started earning an income at the same time.
Instead, I was beating my head against the wall to find my own audience. I strongly believe that is not an ideal place to be putting a lot of energy in early on in your business. Your visibility strategy should be finding where your people are and setting up shop there. I heard someone say that using someone else’s built-in audience is the difference between setting up a booth at someone else’s concert vs. creating your own event and trying to fill all the seats. Why are we telling brand new business owners to fill their own stadiums?
Should you use courses as part of your online business strategy? The answer is maybe. If you have time and bandwidth, it’s certainly worth exploring. However, there is no one right way, so you will have to test for alignment often in the process.
The goal of this article is:
Encourage you to consider the exciting potential upside to using courses to build visibility, credibility, direction, and positioning using courses, as well as building a passive revenue stream to create a sustainable business.
Consider options of where and how to place your courses based on the maturity of your business and your current needs.
Explore whether course creation is a desirable business strategy for you (it might not be).
Why use courses?
Expertise and Expert Positioning
If you want to learn something very well, teach it. We have probably all heard that at some point, but it really is true. Building a course on something helps you clarify in your own mind how much you actually know about a topic. It also supports you in continuing to learn about that topic and expanding your knowledge. In other words, you will become more of an expert on this topic.
Secondly, you will be seen as an expert on this topic. This means you can and should use the course as expert positioning when you pitch media content (another critical piece of visibility strategy I will be discussing a lot in other posts).
Your expertise and knowledge base will also be enhanced by engaging with students. They will ask questions from angles you hadn’t thought of. You will become more and more prepared for prime time by refining your knowledge and answering questions.
Credibility
Do you ever see sections like this on people’s websites and wonder how they reach so many people?
The way people most often get these kinds of credibility numbers is not through trying to fill their own stadium early on, but instead to hop on someone else’s curated audience. You can do this by partnering with powerful people, getting seen in venues that have an audience (hello, earned media), and, in this case, posting your courses on somewhere like Udemy that already has a built-in audience of 49 million potential learners.
These are today’s stats from Udemy, and it’s only one platform that’s available. If you take my Magic Courses course (see more details below), we will discuss the pros and cons of various content delivery strategies, and whether or not to start free on Udemy or go directly to paid (It’s a one-way path. You can go from free to paid, but not vice-versa. If you choose paid, you agree not to give away the course elsewhere, so it’s an important decision.)
Here is an example of someone who is using Udemy to get credibility for their life coach certification teachings. I have no idea if this is a good course or not, this is not an endorsement, just an example.
You can see that they have over 16k students enrolled in their course and have over 13k ratings.
By the way, since this is something that comes up often, your course does not have to fit squarely into your dream audience for your business to use the credibility. Remember, you are your unique brand. If you happen to know a lot about a few things that are disparate, that just makes your brand multidimensional and unique.
So, if you are a sound therapist that does macrame, use both or either to create a course. No limits, no holds barred.
Testimonials
You don’t have to spend 100 hours with someone to have a valid, beautiful testimonial to share on your website. Look at all those reviews in the course I shared above. Screenshots of those or copied and pasted sections are totally valid to use on your website and sales pages.
Visibility
Although Udemy does have limitations about using backlinks, they do allow you to put your branding on things, and you can always mention how you work with folks during your videos. It is not a platform for obvious pitching, but you can develop brand recognition and, if someone is interested, they know how to find you on other platforms including your website, and social platforms. If you have a podcast, feel free to give stories about it in your lessons.
You are also allowed to send up to two promotional emails a month. Although you can cross-promote other courses on Udemy that you teach (or recommend), again there can’t be backlinks to your services. You can, however, talk about what you’ve been up to, which has a lot of power. Don’t underestimate what can happen if you add a ton of value to a Udemy course. People will find you online if they want more of you.
Other platforms like Skillshare allow you to include your website in your profile. There are a number of other course-sharing platforms available, each with its own unique nuances, capabilities, and limitations. I go into those deeper in the Magic Courses course. I simply use Udemy here because it’s the biggest audience, but the right platform is another thing that is highly individualized.
Potential clients
Again, this isn’t an immediate funnel, but if people like what you are doing and believe you could add value, they will find you online and seek out your offerings.
Income
Please hear me when I say this is not an immediate revenue strategy. I talk about short, medium, and long-term buckets in my previous post Monetize Your Unique Magic. Udemy doesn’t even start paying folks for a couple of months. They also run specials almost all the time where they deeply discount courses.
You can opt-out of being included in Udemy’s sales, but then they will not market to their audience on your behalf. This completely invalidates the idea of using their built-in audience. I would suggest you don’t use Udemy in that case, unless it’s just more convenient to have someone else host it for you, because you will still need to fill up your own venue, so you might as well have the benefits of self-hosting.
Would you rather have a smaller percentage of a big number or 100 % of a very small number? That’s the question we often ask when we are looking to reduce our prices to build an audience.
If people buy your course through Udemy, your piece of the pie will be a lot smaller. You will also be given a “coupon code“ that you can share with your existing audience. That coupon code just means you did the marketing so you get a bigger chunk of the profits.
Some people start off their courses as free for various reasons.
To get a bigger audience at first and bump up those credibility numbers.
Assuming that if someone gets a course for free that they will expect less and get better reviews.
To “look bigger“ by scooping up the people looking for free courses.
I don’t necessarily recommend that strategy except in very specific cases. Udemy looks for engagement when pushing a course up the marketing platform. Free users are often not going to be engaged. People often don’t see value in something they didn’t pay for. I hear from many creators that free courses are often rated very harshly. Remember, on the internet, everyone’s a critic and often, if you give them something, they may respond with an entitled attitude about receiving that thing and having it be amazing.
And, if you are chasing vanity metrics for your credibility, the audience who is taking your course for free is probably just as productive as buying Instagram followers (not very). It is extremely unlikely they will be values-aligned and in your dream market. However, each situation is different, and there may be some very valid reasons for starting out your course for free on Udemy or a similar platform.
Most of the platforms allow you to retain ownership when licensing your content, so you can put it in multiple places as well as self-hosting.
I love course creation as an income stream (or really several income streams) because you put in the work upfront and then just maintain it. Your wallet can fill in your sleep. Even if you are not always online, your brand and reputation are working for you.
Remember to factor in the time it takes to engage with your students, though. The best instructors in these platforms answer questions actively and support the students in an ongoing manner.
Automatic Content Creation
Creating a course will help you formulate your thoughts and ideas into concepts. This will help you create content for other platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, blogs, Twitter, or wherever you want to be seen.
You can use video content from your courses on YouTube. Repeating concepts and ideas is recommended, as well as cross-pollinating across platforms. Research shows that people need to hear things more than once to truly retain them. Also, different vehicles work for different folks.
Creating course content can (and should) spill over into your other content creation strategies.
A Playground to Test Out Your Ideas
A big challenge when starting a business is that you have no audience to test out your market. Course creation allows you to test out your ideas and see if they resonate with people, and you can tweak and pivot your messaging as needed to do user testing.
Valid Reasons Not To Create Online Courses
I want to include this section because many of these conversations make it seem like courses are the only viable strategy to getting all of the benefits above. Whether you are a solopreneur or have a large team already, your business goals are unique to you. You are allowed to work within the constraints of time, budget, and energy. An online course strategy may not be aligned now or ever.
Here are some reasons not to use online courses in your growth strategy:
You don’t feel like it. Your nervous systems and your passions should be your guiding force. If everything inside you is either ambivalent or resistant to using online courses, look for other options.
You already have visibility and an income strategy that is working for you. You don’t have to divide your attention. I encourage you to have an open mind but don’t feel obligated.
You don’t have time. This will divide your attention from the things you care about. Again, you are allowed to be only one person or a team that is otherwise occupied.
I would encourage you, however, to be open to creating courses if your reservations have to do with it being too hard, expensive, or an internal belief about your skills and qualifications. I will guarantee you that you are making course creation more difficult than it has to be in your mind. We have an annoying habit of putting up unnecessary obstacles that limit our options.
Please ask the inner critic to step aside for a moment if you think the other benefits might have value in your long-term business strategy.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Maybe you already have a hundred online courses but would like to explore the ideas I have talked about to make sure you are leveraging them correctly. Maybe you are just getting started on your first one. Or perhaps you are somewhere in the middle. Either way, I have created an accessible path to teaching you what I know in a framework that allows you to adapt it and adjust to your unique business and brand.
You will find no formulas here. Instead, I provide an outline with lots of breathing room, and an options buffet to fill it in. This is the difference between receiving a you-get-what-you-get-and-you-don’t-throw-a-fit meal or a buffet where you can choose whatever you want.
Magic Courses is the first piece of our Monetize Your Unique Magic program. Why am I starting with this piece? Because I believe using a course creation strategy can be a very viable piece for almost every business.
Learn more and come to our Magic Courses Retreat
What:
This is a two-day virtual retreat that will become a standalone course. Retreat participants will leave with an outline of their potential first course and a deeper understanding of their brand, target market, and some course-related tiny experiments they can start testing out immediately.
Day 1 {April 23rd, 2022 10 AM - 1 PM Pacific Time}:
Creative exploration of the Monetize Your Unique Magic framework as it applies to you and your brand.
You will explore who you are, what you do, what you value, and who you serve.
We will access creativity and play to help you think outside the box and broaden your horizons.
You will leave Day 1 with a canvas that you can use every time you start planning an aligned offering, regardless of whether it is a course.
You will also have a list of potential “tiny course experiments“ that you can play with as you move forward in your business.
Day 2 {April 24th, 2022 10 AM - 1 PM Pacific Time}:
This is where we zoom in on course creation.
Now that we’ve clearly defined at least one person you will serve, you will vividly imagine the transformation you desire them to experience.
Next, we will break that transformation down into steps, and break those steps down into lessons. We will start with the leanest model of your course possible.
Lastly, we will talk about tech. I will explain the different nuances and costs of using various platforms and technologies. I will simplify acronyms like LMS and SCORM and distill releasing a course down to the leanest pieces, so you can move at the speed of your budget.
You will leave Day 2 with a course outline and a whole lot of direction.
Day 3 {Date TBD - Behind the Scenes Day}:
This is where we pull back the curtain and show you how we turn retreat content into a standalone online course.
There will also be time for Q & A and hot-seat coaching, so bring all your questions.
Who:
This is open to all creators who have or are considering a heart-centered business. If courses may be part of your long-term strategy but you don’t know all the options, please consider joining us.
When:
The Magic Courses Retreat will be held on April 23rd and April 24th, 2022 from 10 AM-1PM Pacific Time.
An additional call for retreat attendees will be scheduled in May (TBD) when the course is ready to go live. That call will allow you to see how the sausage is made. We will show you how we took the retreat recordings and created an evergreen online course, including the tech we used and the details of how long each piece took. This call will also include Q&A time to answer any questions that have arisen since the retreat.
Where:
Virtually on Zoom.
Cost:
The Magic Courses Retreat is $200.
This includes:
All three retreat live calls
Call replays
Worksheets
Supporting materials including any behind-the-scenes screen share videos
A portal for you to ask questions that come up even after the retreat has ended
Access to the Magic Courses standalone course when it is released on May 29th, 2022