I outlined this episode a few months ago and there has never been an better time for me to talk about this.

Today we’re talking about creating an online course or membership and why it could worth considering.

If you want to reach more people with what you share and teach, if you want to create a one to many model, if you want to improve your ability to increase your revenue then creating an online course, workshop or membership is one of the obvious way to do that.

Now even though I’m going to talk about some the key things to look at if you want to create an online course – I'm not going to say it’s an easy option. It’s a scalable option though.

We’re doing things a little different today.

1. So I’m going to first share why I think online is so awesome!
2. Them I’m going to share a case study with you of one of my clients who went online and what her experience was so you’ll hear that in a minute.
3. I’m then going to go through some things to think about when getting online
4. I’ve then also got a free checklist for you if you really do want to work through getting your content online
5. Plus you can get access to the platform I use for 30 days free as well.

So this is going to be a comprehensive episode, so stick around and hopefully you can take me for a walk and get some fresh air and exercise in whilst we’re chatting. Sound good? Awesome

So why create an online course?

As I’m recording this, online is really the only business that we can do in lock down but whether you’re in lock down or not I think online is critical to scaling your business.

1. If you’re currently working one on one with clients and you’re finding it hard to make more money because you just can’t book people in or maybe you’re just ready to reach more people with what you have then an online course could be perfect.
2. For me I really enjoyed the group coaching environment because it has the community element, the overheads are lower than constantly having physical events and it means that I’ve got more time to teach and spend with my BBA students so I feel like they are getting more of me.
3. If I’m honest, I wasn’t loving the one on one coach as much. I found the group environment push my clients more because they are in a group dynamic and also when you see other people doing big things you want to do that you’re self so the group dynamic really plays to what I teach and talk about – but saying that I do still do Personal Brand, visibility and speaker coaching one on one and I love that so I think it’s finding what you can scale and what you want to keep doing one on one and be flexible.
4. It means I can go global which is a big goal for me this year. It doesn’t where in the world people are they can work with me which is so exciting. There are no boundaries to who I can work with.

Now it’s not all raining money and amazingness. There are some things that you have to work out before you go live and with good, comes bad or things that you may not be so keen on, but saying that, I also think that it’s about planning and having the right mindset – as with most things in business.

The things you some people don’t love to do when it comes to a course.

So if you’re looking at doing a course here are some things I’ve learnt along the way:

1) Have a clear outcome

You need to know what the main outcome is for those who are going to take the course.

If you don’t know what the opportunity is for people then they won’t buy. If you can’t explain it in a sentence then it’ll be hard to market. So think simply about what you want people to get out the time in your course.  For me I have the function and emotion focus.

1. Create the structure, systems and strategies to scale
2. Build a bold brand that you love & works for you

So what the functional outcome of your course and what’s the emotional opportunity

The other thing is that you don’t have to teach everything you know meaning that this course doesn’t need to be your 20 odd years of experience in 6 modules. Just think about the key thing you want to teach and then start to outline that.

I could teach speaking, video, content and more but BBA is focused on Brand building and whilst these topics can help, I don’t go into them because otherwise it would be too much information and overwhelming.

2) Give people a map to success

Sometimes we can firehose people with a huge amount of content that leaves them trying to figure out what to do next. So your content needs to be created in what I think should be bite sized chunks that they can digest and take action on.

In BBA, I think – what is the one thing that they can take away and do right now with this one lesson. How can you talk about the issues they may be facing, what the opportunity is and what they need to do?

Create clear topics, lessons and outcomes. I think this is where some people can get stuck so the easiest way that I think you can do this is look at how to take your client from A to B. Where are they starting and what are the 3-4-5-6 steps they need to take to learn what you’re teaching.

Now I have mini courses and I have BBA which is my bigger signature course. As I said, if I taught everything I knew then it would be too much, so keep it simple but go deep.

So for example my Content Strategy sorted online course is smaller. It could be done in an hour or two and helps people to understand how to structure their content marketing. I originally ran it as a workshop so I had all the content – which is another thing. You may already have a lot of the content you want to share, so don’t reinvent the wheel

3) Pricing your course

How long is a piece of string.

A lot of the big US course sell for around $2k US which is about $3k Aussie. There are also Aussies who sell in US dollars – so it’s really up to you.

BBA is A$1997 which a lot of my students have said is cheap for what we do in the course but for me it’s a way to work with more people. I may review that price again in the future but for now it works.

Whereas my smaller course like content strategy sorted are only $147 then I have other course like Video marketing made easy that is a bit bigger that I update that is $367 – so you need to think about how big is the course, what value do you put it on and what would you be happy with.

I did have a friend say that she wanted to charge $3k for a course she was doing and asked what I thought – now because I’m super conscious of my own money mindset I told her not to ask me because I have price anchoring at $2k but that doesn’t mean that she can’t charge more.

That’s just what I’m used to and so that feels comfortable for me. And that is another reason you should ask people how much you should charge. I do think you have to know your audience but you have to be comfortable with what you charge or you won’t be excited and confident to sell it.

So beware of polling your course price and just remember where it starts is not where it ends. You can always change an up your pricing as and when you want to.

BBA started at $997 and it’s had 2 big updates plus now I have live mentors and more coaching than when I started and so the price has increased as those things have been added.

https://taragentile.com/worth/

4) Marketing your course.

Before we dive into this there are a few other podcast episodes that you definitely need to listen to:

• PODCAST EPISODE #90 – CREATING A KILLER LAUNCH PLAN WITH LEANNE WOFF
• PODCAST EPISODE #91 – THE ANATOMY OF A HIGH CONVERTING SALES PAGE WITH GIGI DAVARASHVILI
• PODCAST EPISODE #84 – BREAKING ALL THE RULES TO FIND SUCCESS

So this is the big one. I think a lot of people think – well if I build it then ‘they will come’ but unfortunately if you don’t plan your launch and marketing out then it can be crickets and I just want to share something with you. I’ve had 6 figure launches and months and I’ve had launches

Links:

• 10 steps to monetise your online content quickly – check list (DOWNLOAD NOW)
• Kajabi 28 day free trial
• Chrissie Davies – Chaos to Calm