If you're learning how to launch a course from Amy Porterfield, you're in good hands. She's the best at what she does. But there's something that happens after the launch that determines whether your second launch is easier or harder than your first. Welcome to Course Creation for Solopreneurs. I'm Dr. Curtis Satterfield, and I've spent 17 years as an educator and course designer helping thousands of students learn new skills. Now I help solopreneurs like you create courses that actually transform your students and grow your business. Let's get into it. I've been an educator and course designer for 17 years, and I've watched course creators nail their launch and struggle on the second one because of something they overlooked. And I'm going to show you how to make sure your second launch is the easy one. I had a student once who had every reason to fail, and what happened to him taught me exactly what makes the difference. Stephen was stretched thin and barely getting by. When he took my course, he was working full time at Olive Garden. He had a wife and two young kids and was trying to provide for his family. He was exhausted all the time and barely holding it together. I remember looking at his early work and thinking, this guy is smart, but he's just checked out. He was doing the minimum to get by, he was turning things in late, not engaging with the material. And I couldn't blame him. He was working until midnight most nights and trying to be a dad. On top of all that, he was trying to be a student so he could get a better job and have a better life. I remember the exact moment I knew something shifted. Stephen came to me after class one day and started asking questions. Not questions because he was confused about an assignment, genuine curiosity-driven questions. He was thinking critically about the content and how it applied to his future career. That's when I knew the course had reached him. He wasn't trying to get through it anymore, he was engaged and he was starting to see himself differently. And that momentum, it carried forward. He landed an internship the semester before he graduated. And he did so well the company hired him before he had even finished his degree. Now he's a manager at the same company and gets to spend real time with his wife and kids because he's not working crazy restaurant hours anymore. That transformation didn't happen because Steven suddenly found more hours in the day. It happened because the course was designed in a way that made completing it feel possible, even for someone with everything working against it. Now, even though Steven was in a college classroom, the people who you buy your course, they're like Steven. Busy, distracted, and stretched thin. And if your course isn't designed to reach them where they are, the same thing happens. Here's what most course creators miss. When your students finish and transform, they become fans. They leave testimonials, they tell their friends, they basically sell your next launch for you. When they don't finish, you're starting from scratch every time. Amy's launch strategies work, but they work better when you have students doing your marketing for you. Let me show you the system that will grow your business. First, we have the launch. You've built your course, you're ready to sell it. But there's a problem. The most powerful thing in your marketing is social proof. Testimonials and success stories. Proof that your course actually provides transformation. And you don't have any of that yet. So your first launch, you are grinding. You're convincing people to take a chance on something unproven. So what breaks you out of that grind? That's the second stage. Transformation. This is where most course creators go wrong. They think the hard part is over once they make the sale, but the sale is just the beginning. If your course actually delivers the transformation you promised, your students will finish. They will get the results, and they'll be happy. And if it doesn't deliver, they will disappear, and you're stuck grinding again on your next launch. But when transformation happens, something else happens too. And this is the real magic of this entire cycle. Your happy students become your marketing team. They give you testimonials without you begging for them. They tell their friends, they post about the results. This is social proof, and it feeds directly back into your next launch. Your sales page gets stronger, your marketing gets easier, your second launch isn't a grind anymore because your students are selling it for you. And the cycle repeats. More students, more transformations, the more social proof and the easier your launches get. That's how you grow a course business. But here's what you can't forget. This whole cycle depends on one thing, the transformation. If your students don't get results, you don't get testimonials, you don't get social proof, and you're back to grinding every single launch. The course is the engine. If you get that right, everything else gets easier. So how do you design a course that busy, distracted people actually complete? Here's what most course creators get wrong. They design courses around what they want to teach, trying to info dump all their knowledge and expertise. Everything they think students need to know. But effective courses are designed around the transformation students need to make. I'm going to show you three things you can do right now to improve the transformative ability of your course. Imagine you're walking through the woods and you come across a stream. The water's cold. You don't want to get your feet wet because that's going to ruin the rest of your walk. So you look for a way to get across the stream. You spot a stone not too far from the bank and you step to it. Looking a little further into the stream, you see another stone, and you step to that one. Stone by stone, you make it to the other side. And you don't need to cut your exercise short because you are too miserable with wet feet to continue. Two of the biggest reasons students don't finish a course is because they get overwhelmed or don't see progress. Each lesson should be a stepping stone with a specific, tangible outcome. Your student can see exactly where to step next. They can see the progress they need to make without getting overwhelmed. But most courses, they're like telling someone, get across the river and then just dumping them in the water. No stones, no path, just figure it out, and that's when students quit. Every lesson in your course should have one clear outcome your student achieves before they move on. So don't make a lesson called learn about email marketing. Make it about how to write your first welcome sequence. Don't make a lesson that only explains why niching matters. Show them how to find their niche. If I was teaching you to build a house of cards, I'd start with the base layer, how to set it up so it holds up the rest of the stack. Then the second layer, each layer building on the previous until we get to the top. But what if I skip the base entirely and started talking about the top layer? You'd be confused and frustrated because you can't build a house of cards from the top down. That's sequencing. Every lesson builds on the one before it. When you jump around or introduce concepts before students are ready, they don't understand. They get frustrated and they quit. Here's an example of what this looks like, something that I see all the time in courses. You need a lead magnet. Be sure to link your lead magnet and your email signature on your website and in your social media posts. Sounds simple, right? But what if your student doesn't know what a lead magnet is? Now compare that to a lead magnet is a piece of valuable content you give away for free in exchange for someone's email address. It could be a PDF guide, a mini course, a checklist. The most important thing is that it gives value, enough value that someone's willing to give you their email address to get it. And you need a lead magnet to start growing your email list, which is what we'll talk about in the next lesson. But first, let me show you how to build a lead magnet that converts. Same concept, but now your student actually understands it. We call this the curse of knowledge. You've been doing what you do for so long, you forgot what it likes to be a beginner. The basics are second nature to you now. But your students, they're not you. What feels obvious to you is foreign to them. And skipping over it leads to frustrated students who quit and don't finish your course. Thanks for listening. If this episode helped you, take a second to subscribe and leave a review. It's the best way to support the show. Also, be sure to check the show notes for any links and resources mentioned in this episode. Now go create a course that transforms.