I launched a course and got exactly one paid student. One. And a few months later, I relaunched that same course and it sold out. 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. Here's the nightmare scenario. You launch your course, you're doing live Zoom calls, and two people show up. You and the only student who bought your course. They know this isn't exactly a packed house. It's awkward for you, it's awkward for them, and now they're wondering if they made a mistake signing up. That's the real problem with low enrollment on a live course. It's not just about the money you didn't make, it's the feeling in the room. So how do you avoid that? One thing you can do is cap your enrollment before you ever launch. Fix it at five or ten seats. You don't advertise the exact number. Just say it's a small group experience. Now you've done two things. First, you've made it easier to fill. Selling five spots is a lot less daunting than selling fifty. Second, you've given yourself honest scarcity to use in your marketing. When you've sold three of five seats, you can legitimately say only two spots left because it's true. Now the key word here is legitimately. Do not start pushing only one seat left if you've got eight spots open. That's the kind of thing that destroys trust and follows you around. But what happens if you cap it at five and you still don't fill it? When sales aren't coming in, there's one move that will feel like a good idea. You've got people who showed interest but didn't buy. They're right there and they almost said yes. So you think, what if I just lowered the price? Give them a limited time offer and a discount to get them off the fence. Well, I tried this. I had 99 people who had expressed interest in the course, but they didn't buy. So I emailed those 99 people with a deep discount, like one-fifth the cost of the course. One person bought at the discount. But here's what I didn't see coming. When you slash your price right after launch, people start wondering, why was it so expensive in the first place if you can offer it now for a fraction of the price? It plants a seed of doubt, and that seed doesn't go away. The next time you launch, people will remember and they will wait for the discount. Or worse, they don't trust your pricing at all and go looking for someone else more trustworthy. So skip the panic discount. There is a better way to fill those seats. So I had one paid student and one discounted student, and I still needed more people in the brain. And I just learned the hard way that slashing prices wasn't the answer. So I tried something different. I sent an email to my list offering a scholarship spot. All they had to do was email me back and tell me why they wanted in and what was holding them back. It was a brilliant plan, and I assumed I'd get a bunch of people who had one in. Problem solved, seats filled. Except only one person responded. Now that person turned out to be one of my best students, engaged, asked great questions, did the work, and I'm so glad she got in. But it wasn't the resounding success I'd hoped for. I still needed more people. So I reached out to some of my clients and asked if they wanted to join. I also asked if they knew anyone who might benefit. Between the scholarship and the personal invites, I ended up with six people in that first cohort. Six students. One paid full price, one paid the discounted rate, the rest got in free. I lost money on this course. So why did I even run it? Because I asked everyone who got in for free for one thing in return, an honest review. And they delivered real testimonials from real people who went through the course and got results. Their words, their experience, their proof that what I was teaching actually worked. But that's not all I walked away with. I also had all the content created, done and recorded for the next time. And because I'd run it live with real students, I had their feedback. I knew what landed, what confused them, where they got stuck. So when I went to relaunch, I wasn't starting from scratch. I was refining something that already existed. The second launch took less time to prepare, the content was better, and I had social proof that I didn't have before. That relaunch sold out. Now go create a course that transforms.