You've got expertise you know could help people, but turning that into a course that actually works, that's where you're stuck. 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. That's what happened to Anna. She paid$2,000 for Digital Course Academy, went through the entire thing, and got so frustrated because it didn't give her what she needed. Out of eight modules, seven were about marketing. One was about building a course. And that one module had almost nothing useful in it. She wasted time and money on a course that didn't move her business forward. She asked for a refund, then she came to me for help. Two months later, she launched her first course at$697. She sold it out and got rave reviews, then launched it again at$997 and sold out for the second time. I've been an educator and course designer for over 17 years, and the difference between Anna's results and her experience with that program comes down to one thing. We focused on building a course that actually transforms people. Let me show you how. Most course creation advice focuses on selling and how to get people to buy your course. And marketing matters. If nobody knows your course exists, it doesn't matter how good it is. But here's what happens when you focus on selling first and building your course second. You launch your course and maybe get some sales. Your students start the course and then silence. They're not giving testimonials and most of them aren't completing your course either. Now you're grinding for every sale because your course isn't doing any of the work for you. But when you build a course that actually transforms people, students get results. They leave testimonials, they tell their friends, they book your high-ticket services. Your course starts growing your business instead of you constantly pushing it. That's what I'm going to show you how to build using my framework, the course creators trail. I call it that because I love trail running and the analogy works pretty well, I think. But first, we need to start somewhere most course creators skip entirely. Imagine you walk into a coffee shop to order a vanilla latte. But before you can say anything, they go, that'll be$6.95. You're sort of shocked, but you've heard such good things about this place, you pay to see what the hype is about. And they just hand you a cup of black coffee and send you on your way. To make matters worse, the lid didn't fit right and now it's leaking all over you while you try to drink the black coffee you didn't even want. It's a pretty miserable experience. That's what happens when you build a course without knowing your student. You're charging them for the same leaky cup of black coffee and hoping somebody wanted it. Let me tell you what happens when you get this right. One of the first courses I built was for people who handmake goods and wanted to sell them. Marketing for makers. When I put it together, I assumed my students knew the basics. Nishing down, identifying your ideal customer, foundational stuff I'd known for so long, I forgot I ever had to learn it. So I skipped over it and went straight to the tactics. Then students started going through my course and asking questions about the basics. I realized they didn't know that stuff at all. They were struggling because I assumed they had knowledge when they didn't. I went back and restructured the whole thing. I had a deep dive on niching down and finding their ideal customers. One of the students in my class, Ryan, was a woodworker. He'd been making a sale here or there. After finishing the course, he started bringing in so much work he went full time with his woodworking business. And he told me, the biggest thing missing in my business was finding my niche. And I didn't even know I needed to do it before your course. And I made the mistake of thinking that he understood. That's the difference knowing your student makes. I almost built a course that skipped the thing they needed most. Well, actually I did, but I was able to course correct and fix it in time. You probably already know who your course is for. You've been working with these people in your business. You've been coaching them or helping similar people. You know their struggles. The question is, have you gotten specific enough about where they're starting and what they actually need from you? Because you need to get this next part right or the entire course will fall apart. So every course takes a student from point A to point B. Point A is where they are now. That's the problem, the frustration. Point B is where they want to be. That's the result, the transformation. Most course creators skip this. They jump straight into what content should I include? without ever getting clear on the transformation. That's how you end up with a course packed with information that doesn't actually change anyone's life. You're just infodumping because you think the more content you have in a course, the more valuable it is. But the amount of content you have in a course is not what makes it valuable. The transformation that you can provide to someone who takes your course, that's what's valuable. Before you create anything, you need to be able to finish this sentence. My student starts at blank and ends at blank. One sentence. If you can't say it simply, you're not ready to build yet. If I were building a course based on my framework, the transformation is my students start with expertise they don't know how to teach and end with a complete course designed to actually transform their students. Point A is having expertise they don't know how to teach. Point B is a transformative course. Now everything I build serves that transformation. If a piece of content doesn't move the student from A toward B, I cut it. But let's say you've got your transformation locked in. The question now is how do you actually get them from A to B? Imagine you're out running in the woods and you come to a stream. No bridge in sight and you need to get across. You could just walk through the water, but now your feet are wet and running with wet feet is miserable. Trust me, I know. You're uncomfortable for the rest of your run and you're more likely to quit early. Then you see a stone in the stream, so you step to it, and you look for the next one, and you step to that stone, and eventually you've crossed the stream without getting your feet wet. That's what the structure of your course is for. If your stones are too far apart, students are gonna fall in the water, put them too close together, and your students are gonna get really impatient. Missing entirely, they're stuck on the wrong side, wondering how to get across. The stepping stones in your course are meant to get your student across the stream without becoming miserable, losing interest, and never finishing your course. So how do you figure out the stepping stones? Well, you start with your transformation, point A to point B. Then ask, what are the major milestones between them? Those milestones become your modules. For my course, I would have six modules that take the student through the transformation. Let me walk you through each module's name and the milestone the modules achieve. Module one, start with who. You understand exactly who your course is for and what they need for you. Module two, define your transformation. By the end, you can state your students' point A to point B journey in one sentence. Module three, build your structure. You have your modules and lessons mapped out with a clear outcome for each. Module four, teaching that sticks. You know how to deliver your content so students actually remember and apply it. Module five, create your content. You have a complete outline and content ready to be recorded and turned into a course. Module six, recording, editing, and building. Your course is recorded, edited, and live on a platform where students can access it. Each module has a specific milestone on the journey. But to keep a student from feeling overwhelmed, we need to move on to the next step. Within each module, what are your stepping stones across the stream? Those become your lessons. And every lesson needs one clear outcome, something the student can do after completing it. And that is one of my lessons inside module three. I call it the outcome test. The specific outcome for the lesson is that my student will be able to build lessons that have a clear outcome. If you're working on building your own course, a short version of the lesson is to ask, after this lesson, my student will be able to blank. If you can't fill in that blank with something specific, the lesson needs work. But content alone isn't going to keep them invested. There is another huge consideration for your lesson's structure. And this is where knowing your student matters. If your student is a busy parent with 20 minutes a day, your stepping stones need to be close together. Short lessons, quick wins. If your student has time and wants to go deep, you can space them out more. One of my clients, Heather, told me I saved her so much time and frustration. She said when she was getting started, she wasted so many days trying to figure everything out on her own. That's what good structure does. Saves people from wandering around trying to find their own path across. But structure alone isn't enough. You can have perfect stepping stones and your students will still struggle if you don't teach in a way that sticks. Information alone doesn't create transformation. You can tell someone what to do all day. If it doesn't land, they won't remember it and they won't do it. This is where most courses fail. The creator dumps information and hopes the student figures it out. So how do you actually make content that sticks? Imagine you're shopping for a pool contractor. You visit one company and their demo area has a stunning pool. It's crystal clear water, they've got amazing water features, a bubbling hot tub, and beautiful outdoor furniture. You're thinking, these people know what they're doing. Now imagine you visit another contractor. Their demo pool is half full of dark green water covered in algae, water features leaking rusty brown water, hot tub with one weak jet barely working, and the furniture is rusted and falling apart. It's like a tetanus infection waiting to happen. How much do you trust that second company to build your pool? Your course is your demo pool. If students go through and don't get results, why would they trust you for anything else? And forget about testimonials. You're gonna remember that last line because it's part of a story and it creates a picture. If I had just said your students need to get results or they won't give you testimonials, it's not as powerful and you're less likely to remember. Be sure to include at least one story or concrete example per major concept. That's what makes content memorable. But even with improved retention from storytelling, it won't solve the next major issue the course creators run into. Remember my handmade goods course? I assumed my students knew about niching because I'd known about it for years, but they didn't. The course didn't work until I went back and spelled it out. Here's what this looks like in a course. You need a lead magnet. Be sure to link to your lead magnet in your email signature on your website and in your social media posts. That will grow your email list. 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, or 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 students actually understand it, and they'll be able to walk away from that lesson with a tangible outcome, having built their own lead magnet. We call this the curse of knowledge. You've been doing what you do for so long, you've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner. The basics are like 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. When in doubt, simplify. Most students won't be offended by the thoroughness. They'll be relieved. Now you've got all your content in order, you've outlined it in a way that will take the student on the transformational journey from A to B without them getting overwhelmed or frustrated. However, getting the next step wrong can tank your course no matter how well you've prepared the content. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who had a really thick accent? You had to focus extremely hard to understand what they were saying. It always feels like a chore just hearing what they say and figuring out what they meant. When you walk away from the conversation, you probably felt tired and didn't remember a lot of what was said because you were using so much mental energy just to understand the speaker. You could run into a form of this with your courses, and I don't mean because you have an accent. If you're recording from a built-in laptop microphone in a crowded coffee shop, that's not gonna work. The audio is going to be hard to hear with all the background noise, and the students are going to be constantly distracted by all the activity of the coffee shop in the background. One thing I know from my 17 years as an educator is that learning is hard. And I don't mean that in a negative way. Our brains use a lot of energy when we're trying to grasp and learn new concepts. And to help students succeed, you need to get rid of all the things that might distract them. That means recording your content in a nice quiet place in your home. Get a decent dynamic USB microphone to plug into your computer. If you're recording yourself presenting, have a good webcam and good lighting. Now you don't need to spend a fortune on this stuff. Just a couple of small LED panel lights and a decent webcam can make a huge difference in the look of your course. I'll link to my recommendations in the description. Find a nice quiet spot with minimal distractions behind you. For me, I'm just using this wall. I put up some lights and a little shelf for a bit of character. That way I don't have to worry about building my recording area every time I want to sit down and record. And it also gives consistency between videos. Then you can get to recording all the content you designed and it will look and sound professional. Except when it doesn't. Because we all make mistakes. We all stumble over words. We all end up using filler words like ah and um, and that's fine. But if your entire video is full of filler words, you start to lose credibility. And that's where the next piece comes in. Edit your videos. Now this doesn't have to be complicated. A program like the script will let you edit your video by creating a transcript. You just go in, find the lines where you tripped up or had to repeat something, and you cut them out. It splices the video for you. It even has a nifty feature that will automatically remove your filler words for you. And as a bonus, it will make your audio sound like studio quality recording. If you're just starting out, this is your first or second launch, it's not worth it to spend a ton of money on expensive course platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, or ThinkIphic. They're great and they have their place, but you're spending money you don't need to. I recommend using Heights platform. I'll link it in the description. It's simple and a fraction of the cost of the big platforms. Also, they don't charge you a percentage of your course revenue. You just pay a flat monthly fee. And once you get it laid out in Heights, you're ready to go. But I know what some of you are thinking. Wait, all this is about building the course, but how do I sell it? How do I market it? Here's the thing, that's a different course. Most course creation programs spend seven out of eight modules on marketing and then just one module on building the course. That's why Anna asked for a refund. That's why so many courses have terrible completion rates. They're teaching you how to sell something you haven't even built properly yet. But I'm teaching you how to build something worth selling. And I'm not saying marketing isn't important. It absolutely is. When your course actually transforms people, marketing gets easier. You have testimonials, you have word of mouth, students come back for more. Build the course first and build it right, then worry about selling it. Now, you can take everything I've shared and build a transformational course yourself, but here's what I've learned after 17 years of teaching. It's hard to see the gaps when you're the expert. Hard to know what's obvious to you but confusing to beginners. Hard to tell if your structure actually flows or if you're assuming knowledge your students don't have. If you want help working through this, I can help. Check my link in the description. 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.