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🏐 Course Creators Weekly #69 🗓 October 18th, 2021 - From Beach Volleyball to Online Courses

Stefy Bolaños writes about volleyball games and learning, Pat Flynn talks about creating an online course from scratch, and Janelle Allen talks about validating your course idea.

Games (or what Beach Volleyball has to teach us about online courses) Games (or what Beach Volleyball has to teach us about online courses)
✏️ Article 🧩 Course Design

Games (or what Beach Volleyball has to teach us about online courses)

In this article, Stefy Bolaños shares 4 key learnings from her Dad's everyone-here-plays-beach-volleyball tradition.

Here are my 4 key takeaways based on those learnings:

  • 🧫
    Create a safe space for students to learn through failure—mastery by trial and error
  • 🧱
    Teach the fundamentals and the first principles—let everything else build on that
  • 🔄
    Give constructive, directed feedback—design a tight feedback loop, even if automated
  • 🤗
    Create a supportive, fun culture, with honesty, vulnerability and trust—show, don't tell

Check out Stefy's article. I'm sure you'll have your own takeaways too! 👇🏻

🔗 Stefy Bolaños — Games
Thanks, Josh! 😊 Thanks, Josh! 😊

Thanks, Josh! 😊

I want to give a huge shout-out and thank you to Josh Spector for featuring CCW in his thread of "The Most Helpful Newsletters For Creators."

Growing a newsletter is not easy. At times it feels like pushing a boulder uphill, but then you get a shout-out like that, and BAM! 💥

Here's Josh's own, awesome newsletter: For The Interested (you're interested! 😉)

🎰 Random Picks from past editions

How to Create an Online Course (Starting from ZERO) How to Create an Online Course (Starting from ZERO)
📹 Video 🥗 Mixed Salad

How to Create an Online Course (Starting from ZERO)

  • 💁🏽‍♀️
    To create a course, you must come from a place of service and helping others
  • 💪
    People don't buy courses—they buy the outcome
  • ❓
    You must know for whom you're creating transformation
  • ⭐️
    You don't need to teach a unique topic, but you need a unique advantage
  • 🕵🏻‍♂️
    Find your niche—even a small one can be profitable with a premium course
  • 🙌
    Do you need your own audience? Not necessarily, but even a small one can help
  • 💬
    Don't have an audience? Go where they hang out, watch and join discussions
  • 🔠
    Learn to speak your target audience's language
  • ✅
    Keep your videos short, and stick with one action item per video
  • 👌
    Keep your course as long as it needs to be to create transformation—no more
  • 👪
    Start with a few people—build confidence, improve your process, get testimonials
  • 🤔
    If you can't find a few people to Beta test with, how will you find more later?
  • 💰
    Remember: "Your earnings are a byproduct of how well you serve your audience"

How to outline a course

  • 1️⃣
    Take a post-it note and write down where people are right now in their journey
  • 2️⃣
    On another post-it note, write down where they want to go (the transformation)
  • 3️⃣
    Brainstorm everything you can teach to help them get there, one idea per note
  • 4️⃣
    Group your post-it notes into logical clusters, then re-order them
  • 5️⃣
    Fill the gaps, remove the duplicates, and there you have your modules
🔗 Pat Flynn via youtube.com
How to Validate Your Online Course Idea with Your Target Audience How to Validate Your Online Course Idea with Your Target Audience
📹 Video ✔️ Idea Validation

How to Validate Your Online Course Idea with Your Target Audience

  • 🦿
    Make sure your course idea has legs before investing time, energy and money into it
  • 💰
    Remember that the only true validation is sales—everything else is pre-validation
  • 📋
    Surveys: ask your audience about their challenges and solutions they've already tried
  • 🗣
    Customer discovery interviews: talk to people—pay attention to the language they use
  • 👁
    e-Stalking: become a part of your target audience's community and listen intently
  • 🤥
    Be wary of people "lying" to please you or avoid discomfort—we're only human
  • 🔀
    Combine these ideas—e.g. interview survey respondents or e-stalk to verify answers
🔗 Janelle Allen via janelleallen.com

P.S. If you're interested in learning more about customer discovery interviews, especially the "lying" part, you should absolutely check out The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

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CCW is no longer published, but you can check out the past editions—see what you can dig up!

Read past editions

Hey, I'm Merott 👋🏻

I'm an indie maker and freelance web developer from London.

I'm building my own business, because I'm terrible at following other people, and because I want my work to matter. I hope it will, to you and to your students.

Making progress, slowly and steadily, I'm also documenting and tweeting my journey every Monday @merott .

Thanks for visiting!

Merott