Boost Your Income and Free Up Your Time with an Online Course – In Just 7 Minutes with Ian Brodie

Check out episode
  • Find out how to go about a course you confidently believe you can make and shaped according to your market’s needs
  • Learn how to create an outcome-based course that helps people solve an immediate problem rather than people just acquiring more skills
  • Discover how to make a course that is much quicker, easier for you to produce, much clearer return on investment of the person buying it and of which the course creators’ brand name doesn’t really matter

Resources/Links:

Summary

Are you getting overwhelmed and confused about what to do first as you go through creating your online course?

Is the course you created not having a market and not hitting the spot with anyone?

Do you want to know how to create a course where someone surely wants it and buys it?

Ian Brodie teaches consultants, coaches, and trainers how to successfully build and market online courses to add to or replace their in-person services.

In this episode, Ian shares how to create a course with a ready market for it so you don’t spend a ton of time, energy, and money running a course that’s actually not going to sell.

Check out these episode highlights:

  • 01:32 – Ian’s ideal client: “It’s someone with expert knowledge who wants to build an online course to either add to or replace the income that they get from face-to-face services.”
  • 01:50 – The problem that Ian helps solve: “It’s simply that I help people cut through the confusion and the overwhelm that they often find if they’re thinking of creating an online course, and help them quickly and easily build a profitable course.”
  • 02:29 – Typical symptoms Ian’s clients face: “They’re struggling to get started. They’re really overwhelmed by all the different technology options. Should I be making videos, green screens, all that kind of stuff, or they can’t settle on a good topic for their course, or they get started, but they really get bogged down in creating tons and tons and tons of content, and they can never get it finished.”
  • 03:26 – Mistakes people commit before they find Ian’s solution: “For small entrepreneurs, small businesses, trying to create courses, it’s the wrong kind of course to produce. And the reason for that is, firstly, people who buy courses to get skills, want as many skills as possible. For whatever they bought, they want more and more and more and more, so you end up on this treadmill of producing more and more and more content to meet their needs.”
  • 07:03 – Ian’s one Valuable Free Action (VFA): “For your pilot; do it live. Do a live Zoom; workshop for a couple of hours. It’s a short course; it’s a longer course to a series of little webinars, saves all the technology hassles, and you get immediate feedback on it. And it just makes you do it.”
  • 07:29 – Ian’s Valuable Free Resource: Check out this and get a FREE copy of Ian’s book ‘The Ultimate Guide to Creating an Online Course’: https://www.coursebuildershub.com/MTI/
  • 07:56 – Q: Is making an online course suitable for everyone because a lot of people talk about it as if it is, but it isn’t really the big difference? A: The big thing to watch out for is a different style of working. A lot of consultants, coaches, trainers get a real boost from working live with clients, from getting feedback, but making a course is much more solitary, much more technology-dependent. You’ve got to know that you’ll like it. And that’s why doing a pilot is great because you’ll find out whether it’s for you.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“I recommend people to create an outcome-based course. That's a course that instead of just giving people lots of skills, it actually lets them achieve a result or solve a problem.” -Ian Brodie Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Welcome everyone to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to you as always from on the white sand next to the big blue ocean of Castaway Beach in Queensland, Australia. Joined today by Ian Brodie, who I believe is on the other side of the top of the world. Ian, good day, Sir, very warm… welcome back, I should say because this is not your first time on the show. But, hi there! Where are you hanging out? Let everyone know. I am hanging

Ian Brodie 0:33
I am hanging out in sunny Handforth. People might know from Handforth, from the famous Handforth parish council, which went viral on the internet for all the disastrous Zoom calls in it. That’s where I live. That’s my parish council.

Tom Poland 0:45
In the smack, in the middle of infamy. Folks, if you don’t know Ian, he teaches consultants, coaches, and trainers, our target market audience, how to successfully build a market for online courses to add or replace their in-person services. Ian, as you know, we’ve both been doing online courses for many years, we’ve both benefited from helping a lot of people through the courses and making a fair bit of money on the way. So, it’s great to have an expert on this because I’m not the expert. I’m the expert on maybe getting him to sign up. But you’re the expert on courses. So, let’s have a look at the title, which is aptly enough, ‘Boost your Income and Free Up Your Time with an Online Course’ is going to share how to do that within seven minutes. Ian, our time starts now. Question number one, who is your ideal client?

Ian Brodie 1:32
It’s someone with expert knowledge who wants to build an online course to either add to or replace the income that they get from face to face services.

Tom Poland 1:41
Perfect, articulate, and succinct, as ever. Question two, what would you… how would you define the problem that you solve? Six and a half minutes left.

Ian Brodie 1:50
Well, it’s simply that I help people cut through the confusion and the overwhelm that they often find if they’re thinking of creating an online course and help them quickly and easily build a profitable course.

Tom Poland 2:00
Where do I start, right? If you haven’t done the sort of thing before, and there is a whole science to it, folks. You can’t just go and whack up some YouTube things. There is literally a whole Science behind online courses. So, Ian, they want scalability, they want leverage, they want to get the gift out to the world and that is what makes the money while they’re doing it. Of course, helps a lot of people. So, what would you say are some of the typical symptoms that people will be experiencing? Kind of give them a heads up that they need to find out more about what you do. Six minutes left.

Ian Brodie 2:29
I think people typically are in one of three situations if they’re struggling with this. One is they’re struggling to get started. So, they’re really overwhelmed by all the different technology options, right? Should I be making videos, green screens, all that kind of stuff, or they can’t settle on a good topic for their course, or they get started, but they really get bogged down in creating tons and tons and tons of content, and they can never get it finished. Or finally, there are people who do get it finished. But then, when they launch it to the world, they find it doesn’t sell because they’ve created a course that actually doesn’t hit the spot for their marketing.

Tom Poland 3:00
Right. So, some big, big symptoms there. So that leads us quite nicely into question four, which is some of the common mistakes people make before they find your specialty. We’ve got five minutes left. You mentioned one of them, which is launching a course without first confirming that people want to buy it. What are some of the common mistakes that clients have told you? Once they work with you successfully, they’ve gone, you know, I made all these mistakes. And what are some of those?

Ian Brodie 3:26
Well, I’m going to make a couple of big ones, really, the first is to make the wrong sort of course. And what I mean by that is, we’re kind of fooled into it in a way because of our whole education system, and then when we do courses, when we enter the world of work, they’re all about acquiring skills. So, you do an MBA, for example, or you do a coaching skills course, or you get a Google AdWords certification, whatever you’re trying to learn. It’s all about getting skills. And that’s great for you in developing your career. But for small entrepreneurs, a small business trying to create courses, it’s the wrong kind of course to produce. And the reason for that is, firstly, people who buy courses to get skills to want as many skills as possible, you know, for whatever they bought, they want more and more and more and more, so you end up on this treadmill of producing more and more and more content to meet their needs. Secondly, if they’re acquiring skills to help them in their career in the future, then it’s really difficult to measure the return on investment on that course rather than if you’re solving an immediate problem. If you can’t measure the ROI, it’s difficult to justify paying a high price for a course. And then finally, if they’re acquiring those skills, and they want to write it on their CV for their career, they will prefer a course delivered by a big company with a big reputation, a Harvard Business School MBA, a coaching skills course from the ICF, Google certified AdWords course. And that’s not great for a small business. Most of us do not have a massive brand in the marketplace. We have great knowledge and great credibility to help, but we don’t have a massive brand. So, instead, I recommend people create an outcome-based course. So, that’s a course that, instead of just giving people lots of skills, it actually lets them achieve a result or solve a problem. Because people who want to get a course to solve a specific problem or get a result, they want to do the minimum possible to get the result they want. So actually, you can do a kind of minimum viable product that just give them the specific skills they need to achieve that result. Much quicker and easier for you to produce, much clearer return on investment. And they don’t care about the brand name, as long as they get the results they’re looking for. That’s the first mistake, doing the wrong sort of course. The second one, and it’s really big, it’s what we mentioned earlier. And it’s building and creating and launching a course, without first establishing whether there’s really a market for it or whether you’re going to hit the spot. And what a lot of people do is they get an idea for a course. And then they start creating all this content and setting up all this technology and membership systems and shopping carts, and all that kind of stuff. And then they launch it, and they find out it wasn’t actually what people wanted. And now you can, of course, do market research and surveys, and interviews and all that kind of stuff. But the only really real way to know whether someone one is going to buy your course is to offer it for sale. So, my advice to people is to do a paid pilot of your course. So, instead of thinking of the idea for the course, then building it, think of the idea, create an outline for the course. You know what’s going to go into it. You’re confident you can build it, and then offer it for sale as a pilot and tell people, thinking of making this course I’m going to do a pilot of it, where I create it as we go along, who wants to work with me to shape it to their needs, and get people to buy it upfront. And if they buy it, there’s a market. And if they don’t buy it, there’s not a market, and you abandon the idea, you go back to the drawing board, you come up with another one, but it means you’re not spending a ton of time and energy and money building a course that’s actually not going to sell.

Tom Poland 6:48
Oh! Lots of wisdom in there, folks, that could save years of heartache for some of you. Question five… where were you 20 years ago? So, we got 80 seconds left. Three questions to go. One valuable free action, like a top tip you could give people.

Ian Brodie 7:03
For your pilot, do it live. Do a live Zoom; workshop for a couple of hours, it’s a short course, it’s a longer course to a series of little webinars, saves all the technology hassles, and you get immediate feedback on it. And it just makes you do it. So do that, do your pilot live.

Tom Poland 7:18
That’s a top tip, and you’re committed, as well. So, it gets done. Question six, a valuable free resource, where can we direct people to; they can opt into what you’re doing and find out more.

Ian Brodie 7:29
The best free resource is my upcoming book, ‘The Ultimate Guide to Creating an Online Course’, and people watching this can get a free copy of that on PDF by going to www.coachbuildershub.com/MTI.

Tom Poland 7:44
Course builders with an S folks hub dot com forward slash MTI standing for marketing the invisible. Thank you very much for that special gift, and we’ve got 25 seconds left. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Ian Brodie 7:56
I guess it’s, is making an online course suitable for everyone because a lot of people talk about it as if it is but it isn’t really the big difference. The big thing to watch out for is a different style of working. A lot of consultants, coaches, trainers get a real boost from working live with clients, from getting feedback, but making a course is much more solitary, much more technology-dependent. You’ve got to know that you’ll like it. And that’s why doing a pilot is great because you’ll find out whether it’s for you.

Tom Poland 8:20
Perfect and ready. Thank you very much for your wisdom and insights.

Ian Brodie 8:23
Cheers.

Tom Poland 07:23
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.

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