 Right now I'm in the middle of launching my updated training called authentic course launches, which is about helping students to create and launch their own online course. And I want to just give you an overview of the five key pieces to think about as you start thinking about creating and launching your own online courses. Because I came to this realization that a lot of people think, okay, I'm going to create an online course so the main decision I have to make is which tech platform should I use to deliver my courses. Is it going to be teachable, thinkific, kajabi, member vault, learn dash, mighty networks, or something else, there's lots of them cropping up every year there's at least one or two or five or 10 more course delivery platforms. And let me just give you my experience of this first of all, I have been creating and launching online courses since 2009. Okay, so, and all those years I have launched at least 30 different online courses, I've actually lost count and just to give you a sense of my activity with this, just even from 2017 through the most of 2021, I have launched approximately one course per month. Okay, so seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. So about for about five years, just the last five years, I've been launching about one course per month. Some of them are new topics, some of them are ones I've taught before. So I have a lot of experience in launching online courses and let me tell you, deciding on the course delivery platform is not the major factor for whether or not your course business succeeds. So what are the factors. Let me go ahead and share what I think, what I think they are. Well, I'll just go ahead and go into the five major pieces that I promised you just to save time here. The first major piece to think about is how do your online courses fit in to your overall business model. I'm going to show you something on the screen and those of you who are listening to this later and can't watch the screen don't worry. Click on the link in the podcast episode to be able to be able to see this but it's basically my business model. You know, blog posts that that many of you have seen before but let me go and share it on the screen right now. There it is my simple model for authentic businesses concentric circle. This is what I recommend that you think about before you start, you know launching courses on a regular basis. You understand that your online courses probably shouldn't be the only thing you offer. And the reason is because a lot of you are thinking I got to provide deep transformation. When people take my courses. And I think that's giving yourself way too much pressure. And it's also giving your students too much pressure. You see what I mean because if online courses the only thing you offer. What can you expect to provide deep transformation that kind of stuff deep transformation typically happens with one in one work, because you can customize your advice and your facilitation, and your presence for the person in front of you, depending on what their situation is that's how deep transformation is much more likely to occur. Otherwise it might happen in group programs where you meet with a group could be a small group, or a larger group on a regular basis for months. It's not a whole year. There, some transformations more likely to happen versus your online courses should be really thought of as knowledge delivery in a very structured way, for sure. And there might be some facilitated exercises during that, that experience, and you might facilitate that students get together with each other, but it should not be expected that you provide the kind of deep transformation you shouldn't expect that of yourself, compared to your group programs and to your one on one clients, just like you wouldn't expect someone to buy your book and you say well every reader of my book must be deeply transformed. That's probably providing too much pressure for the reader to some readers right just like online course students, a lot of them just buy the course because they just want to watch it while they're having dinner. You're not expecting them to drop everything they're doing and they must provide the exercise. Otherwise they cannot go to the next module. That's, that's not how online courses are typically expected to be so that's the first point is understand your strategy. Where does your online course fit in the overall business model, and therefore you can price your online course more thoughtfully as a result. Okay, the next major piece to think about is, go ahead and go to my notes here. The next major piece is how do you choose topics, and how do you pre sell the course, because the choosing of your course topics will determine whether or not students will sign up for it. Yeah, it's not. It's not only how beautiful you are. Okay, it's not only how charismatic you are, even some of your best friends might not sign up, are not likely to sign up for your online course, if it's not a topic that they want to engage with. It's not that they don't love you. It's just that the topic isn't something that's interesting to them. You see what I mean so so many people I see this and breaks my heart. It's hard on creating this fabulous online course, in their opinion it's fabulous, and may have worked months on it, maybe even more than a year on it. And then they come to someone like me, a marketing person says George now I've created I've spent a whole year creating online course. Now you got to help me sell it. I'm like, oh my gosh, I wish you came to me a year ago, because you've put the car before the horse before you even create the first module of an online course. You need to have worked with your audience on deciding the topic. It's because I've said this in my other videos, and I'll reiterate this authentic marketing is essentially about the one one major way of thinking about the marketing is that it is always a collaboration with the audience. I always like that quote from Frederick Buchner that you're calling. What is your calling your calling is where your great gifts, you know the talents, your passion, where your gifts meets the world's deep hunger, that intersection between your gifts and the world's deep hunger is your calling. The same thing with your courses, your course success, the success of your courses is that intersection between what you would love to teach and what the world wants to sign up for from you. So how can you create a course without first doing market research and find out what the world wants to buy from you. And you're also, it's kind of like another analogy is like authentic marketing is like building friendships at scale. That's what authentic marketing is building friendships at scale. And friendship, a friendship is basically imagine you want to go to a movie and you say, I don't care what my friends like. I want my friends to go to go to the movie with me, but I don't care what my friends like I'm going to decide on the movie. I'm going to decide on the time in the movie, the genre, the which movie we're going to go to and I'm just going to make my friends go with me. Your friends are going to be like, Yeah, we don't. So a lot of some of them, one of them might say, All right, let's go I can do it at that time I like that top. I like those actors I like that, that genre. But some of your friends like, yeah, I don't like that genre I wish you would have asked us first. So we can decide together what movie we can go to right you want to have fun with your friends. So everything with the online course you want to have fun with your students. You want them to sign up. So you need to decide with your audience. You say I don't have an audience George, your, of course you have an audience, everyone has an audience. You start with your friends, your Facebook friends, your LinkedIn connections, wherever you connect you probably have maybe some past clients, some potential clients people who might become clients. You have a thousand audience, it starts with your friends, people you know your colleagues, etc. You start there, and then you branch out from there, but you decide with your audience, whatever they are in the beginning. What topics you should you give you should write out three topics, and then puts it on Facebook to say which of these three topics should I teach, which of these three topics most interest you. So, so the course decision market research process is an incredibly important process. I'm going to in my, in my training about authentic course launches that is an important module for market research. So anyway, so that's the second major at the first major area was deciding your course, your courses in the context of your business model. The second major area is learning how to do market research and choosing the course topics. And when you when you're doing market research, that's part of the pre selling process. The first launch isn't like I said isn't you create it in your in your in your closet, you work so hard on it and you make everyone buy it doesn't work like that. All along the way you're collaborating with your audience on Hey, is this topic good. Oh hey what about this title. Hey, now that we've chosen the title. What do you think about these five topics that you're covering the course or is there something else you're working with your audience the whole time. So by the time it's ready for them to buy it. They've been working with you the whole time. And that's the pre selling process so that's the second major thing. Okay, the third major thing is that you need to have a marketing checklist. Now that you are ready to sell it I mean now that you've decided on topics title subtopics, and now you've chosen the price, everything that's part of what I train people to choose a price but once you have chosen all that now you're ready to actually say all right I'm so excited. Here's the page where you can sign up for the course, you need a marketing checklist. Where are you going to announce every time you have a course to launch. Where do you announce it. Do you are going to send emails to whom do you have an email list you, how many emails are going to send so that's that whole process of a marketing checklist is very important, because then you reduce the stress of launches over the months and years of you launching. Okay, so I like to launch my courses in a very light and gentle way. You've seen me do it probably if you follow me on social media you see me launch my courses. It's a light and gentle thing I don't give myself a lot of pressure. I don't give you the audience a lot of pressure. It's okay one sign up and it works well well because I keep learning from every launch and students get used to my launches and they sign up on a regular basis. I have plenty of students sign up over time, because I have a rhythm. I have a rhythm that my audience has gotten used to. That's why a course marketing checklist is so important so start one today if you're interested in creating a course start your checklist for how you how you do all this. The first part of the course area is actually creating the course content. So it's, it's, it's having it's learning and improving on how do you actually create the content. How do you go from the topics that you have gotten your audience to vote on to what are the exercises you're going to have them do in your course to what are the major misconceptions you're going to clarify on around this topic. How do you do your homework and give them to are you going to allow them to connect with each other. What's the, you have a course directory so course content is involves all of that. You know, theory exercises homework course directory, perhaps student directory. And then the momentum of how you're going to do all this and how you're going to separate them into various sessions right so creating the course content you should have a checklist for yourself and how you take a topic and turn it into course content so just over time you'll keep getting better as you have a checklist for yourself on that process. And finally, the fifth major area is the tech platform and the registration process. And where what people think, oh, creating online courses all about the platform the technology of it. No, that's just one of five areas, but it is an area it's something you need to think about. So are you going to use scientific or a job or a member vault, or learn dash, these are all well known and very popular platforms in my training on launching courses. I'm not going to teach you any of these platforms because I have my own that I've created that I've patched together over time that I really like. Of course, I'm going to teach you my way of doing it. I use a, I'm not going to teach you think if it or Kajabi or I'm not even I'm not going to teach you how to choose among these platforms because that decision. I will give you a blog post where I did some research on what my audience recommended, and the popular ones were think if it, the job and member vault learn dash was also popular but people are so passionate about the platform they're choosing. So I'm not going to even go in that well I'm going to show you how I do it. I connect YouTube on listed videos with my mailing list software with with PayPal and I stitched them all together using Zapier. I like this method better because it's more flexible, it's automated it's streamlined people can buy the stuff afterwards I don't have to even think about it it's all streamlined. My preference I'm going to show it to you in my training if you decide to join me but anyway, these are the five areas I hope this helps you to get a sense of what's all involved before you start going into creating and launching your online courses but really the last key I'll share with you is, you need a rhythm of doing this. You can't just be expecting that your first launch is going to be the biggest launch is going to be so successful. You are robbing yourself of the learning process that needs to happen with every launch that you do, you need to take notes and figure out. I'm going to do this a little differently next time. And if you have a rhythm. So for example launching a course every three months, or every six months or like me, once a month. I've learned so much over the last five years of launching once a month. Now I can teach this stuff of course that and I even before five years I was launching a lot of at least four times a year before that. So anyway, if you're interested you can take my training on how to create and launch online courses, otherwise, these are the five areas I recommend that you think through for with yourself for yourself and create checklists for. I hope this helps and look forward to your comments and questions below with any questions, I'll be able to answer briefly. If you want to go in depth into all this I have whole training on on this stuff so if you're interested. Alright, anyway, either way I wish you well. I wish you joyful productivity in your process of creating and launching courses. Take care.