The Customer Learning Journey: A Strategic Framework for Course Businesses

Hey, before we get to the episode, I just want to let you know about an offer at Mirasee.co slash leak. I'm Andrew Chapman, director of podcasting here at Mirasee FM, and we've got an offer for you there for a free revenue leak checklist. That's right. If you run your own business, you can find out exactly where your business might be losing money and you may not be aware of it. So again, go to Mirasee.co slash leak. That's L-E-A-K. And you can get all the info and that free checklist. Mirasee. If you basically just try to build a course based on some expertise you have or things you've talked about, put it up on your website or send a couple of emails about it and hope that that's going to significantly grow your business. 99% of the time, you're going to be very, very disappointed. And so we really need a fresh approach to how courses fit into your business in order for them to make a real difference. Hello, and welcome to Course Lab, the show that teaches course creators like you how to make better online courses. I'm Danny Iny, the founder and CEO of Mirasee. And in each episode of Course Lab, my co-host Abe Crystal and I showcase a course and course creator who is doing something really interesting with their course. Except for this episode. In this episode, we are taking a break from that and I get to have a sit down with my co-host Abe Crystal, the founder and CEO of Ruzuku, because he is also the author of the brand new book, The Business of Courses. So Abe, welcome to the show and congratulations. Thanks, Danny. Yeah, feels good. I'm excited to dive in. You know, I've been involved behind the scenes, obviously. I've had the pleasure and privilege of reading advanced copies and I wrote the foreword for it. But for those who don't have the benefit of my close involvement with the project, where did this come from? What even prompted you to write a book other than me like repeatedly telling you, I think you should write a book? Yeah, you know, it was in the back of my mind. I had been doing a number of presentations for our community on different topics around integrating courses into your business. And in particular, we did a series called the Course Business Growth Model that people found really helpful. And the response to those presentations suggested that people just really needed this. They needed better ways of thinking about how to actually use courses in their business. Because what we've seen is a lot of people, they get excited by the idea of a course and creating a course, but they haven't really thought through what it's going to do for their business. And they often wound up just kind of spinning off in directions that are not really that productive. So what prompted you to say, okay, you know what, now this is the time? It was partly, I guess, just reaching a point where it made sense, right? I mean, in the past, our focus was always just on, you know, online marketing, right? And building an audience and community through blogging, through doing webinars with partners, you know, through those kind of common techniques of building an audience online. And, you know, those things themselves take a lot of time. And it never felt like a book was a key piece of that strategy. And I wasn't really positioning myself as a thought leader with like a personal brand in the past. It was really more about like Rezekiel, the company and the product, not so much about, you know, me and my name or voice or perspective specifically, even though our customers would know who I was. So the impetus was to try and, I guess, just grow beyond that, the kind of standard sort of software type marketing that we were doing and to try and get more people to see what is hopefully a somewhat unique perspective on courses. And at the same time, you know, get them to associate my name with that type of perspective. So talk more about that perspective, because for a book to be good and do well, and, you know, I've had the pleasure of reading the book. It's great. And I think it's going to do very well. It has to have a point of view. It has to it can't just be like, you know, here's kind of the basic ideas of our industry. You need a new perspective, which I think you really bring to the industry here, informed by, you know, everything that you've done over such a long time. What is that point of view? What is the unique perspective that, you know, is the core idea of the book? I often quote Diego Rodriguez, who is a kind of designer and business strategist at IDEO. And he's, you know, written and spoken frequently about just how critical it is for product design and for businesses in general to have a strong point of view, to not be like wishy-washy in what they believe and the approach that they're taking. So the stand I try to take in this book is that basically just going out and creating a course is not likely to work for a lot of coaches, consultants, speakers, other service providers who want to grow and diversify their business with courses. If you basically just try to build a course based on some expertise you have or things you've talked about, put it up on your website or send a couple of emails about it and hope that that's going to significantly grow your business, 99% of the time you're going to be very, very disappointed. And so we really need a fresh approach to how courses fit into your business in order for them to make a real difference. Now, this is not an argument that applies to everyone because there are people who can't do that with courses. For example, someone who's built a super popular blog that ranks really well in Google and is getting tens of thousands of unique visitors a month just organically, and those people are hungry for a solution that they can provide in a course, that is very different. And that person can pursue a just totally course-driven strategy. But for most people who have a bread and butter service business, they really need to think about courses differently. And that's what the book is about. So how should they be thinking about courses? Right. So what I encourage people to do is to, rather than thinking about the course first, step back and think about your customers first, and specifically the journey by which customers come to work with you, what I creatively call the customer learning journey. So the customer learning journey gives you a tool, a framework to reflect on what's going to be actually helpful and impactful. And I can walk you through that. But essentially, there's five core phases that I detail out in the book. And at a high level, it starts with discovery, right? So before anyone is going to buy anything from you, course, coaching package, physical product, whatever, they have to come to know you and that you exist. They have to find you either by, you know, actually meeting you, right? Like in old school networking, which is tough to do these days, or they have to find you online, right? So one of the powerful things that you can do for discovery is to provide really interesting and educational content that teaches people and helps them come to know your expertise for free and post that in different places online where people can discover it. So you start building a list of potential clients. That then leads into an engagement or nurture process, right? Most people, as nice as it would be if people heard about you through a free webinar or a free mini course, and were instantly ready to buy your $800 flagship course or your $3,000 coaching package. While that does sometimes happen, it's rare. Most people need some time to warm up. They need to get to know you, your expertise. You have to build some rapport with them and build trust. And then you can make paid offers. So it's also important to use your courses strategically in that engagement phase to nurture people from just having that first contact, that point of discovery, to having a more meaningful relationship with you. Then you can move into the third phase, the revenue phase, which is making those more in-depth paid offers, whether that's a flagship course with a lot of structure as well as, you know, support and discussion and accountability. Maybe it's a coaching program. Maybe it's a paid membership or some other offer. You know, I talk about those in depth in the book. But the core revenue offers are, they really flow from the effectiveness of your discovery and engagement phases. You can spend all the time in the world creating an elaborate course and marketing for it. But if you don't have people who are discovering you and then coming to trust you and are looking for an offer from you, that's all going to kind of be a waste. So that's, you know, kind of one of the key takeaways, I hope, for people is the importance of really bolstering the discovery and engagement phases of their business and not just fixating on revenue, even though revenue is the ultimate goal. And then the final piece of the puzzle in the last two phases of the model is the importance of understanding customer lifetime value. So it's really critical to not just think about, okay, what's the next sale? But how are you building a long-term relationship with customers and increasing this key metric of what is the lifetime value of each customer? So I don't want to kind of, you know, spend half an hour doing a deep dive into the book because the book is great and people should just read it. I do want to ask a question about kind of the Cliff Notes overview that you just shared, which was great. You know, I sometimes listen to a podcast and, you know, they have an author on the others. Well, the big ideas in my book are this, this, and this. And in my head, I'm like, okay, got it. I guess I don't need to read the book. So for everyone who's listening, you just gave the big highlights. But what else is in the book that is important for them to get that you didn't just cover? Yeah, no, I felt the same way listening to podcasts as well. Tricky balance because you want it to give value and give people the key ideas as quickly as possible without, you know, making the book pointless. But honestly, I would say that the core value of the book would be the details of how you would implement these different aspects of the model, you know, as well as many concrete examples of what this looks like in practice. We kind of we walk through sort of an example of what this would look like for a realistic, you know, sort of coaching business and give numerous examples of how that plays out in that specific business. So making it really concrete and applicable is the goal of the book. Awesome. So zooming out for a moment, you know, this show Course Lab is about, you know, online courses, obviously. We kind of talk about it from two directions. We talk about the business side of online courses. And we've spoken about that on this conversation a little bit, both in terms of obviously what's in the book and the structures of the customer learning journey, the different steps along the way. But also in terms of, you know, a little bit of how, you know, this book fits into your own marketing and exposure and all that kind of stuff. The other piece that we spend a lot of time on the show talking about is the pedagogy, right? Like how do we or I guess, you know, andragogy if we're talking about adults, but the educational experience that it's designed to lead to transformation. And, you know, as a newly minted author who also happens to have a Ph.D. in human computer interface design and, you know, has spent his career in the business of learning how to facilitate the engineering of transformation. There is a perspective that a lot of authors have, which is, you know, I just wrote this book. It's great. So I think my online course is going to be basically like a video version of that. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, this is tricky, right? Because there can be a lot of good structure and content in a book that is very relevant and useful for an online course. But I would say it's generally a mistake to think that you can just basically produce a course as video and that's going to be super valuable to people for a couple of reasons. I mean, one is like books are written to be read. And just translating that directly into video, it may wind up creating something that essentially is it's too long, right? It's too digressive. And it's also video is not as forgiving a format as text, at least like nonfiction text, right? Like if you're reading, you know, a business book or a personal development book and you're finding parts that aren't that interesting or relevant to you, you can skim over them pretty easily or go to the next chapter without losing the whole flow of the book and keep going with it. It's a lot harder to do that with video. So, I mean, the risks are that you wind up overloading a course, but you also risk just thinking of the course design in a very passive way. You know, whereas a lot of the most effective courses, including people that we've interviewed on Course Lab, are really focused on active facilitation and that interaction between either the primary instructor or a team of coaches or both and the participants. And if you're not designing the course around that idea from the get-go, it's unlikely to use those forms of engagement effectively. And those are what make online courses special, right? If it was just about the information, then you wouldn't need the online course in the first place. You could just have people read the book. Awesome. So, you know, it's funny, we spend a lot of time talking about online courses and both, you know, just in general, because we're friends, but especially on the show. But when we do that, it's usually specifically in the context of the online course and strategy and ideas and innovations of the particular guest. So it was kind of an opportunity for me to, I guess, just ask you for your perspective on the industry more broadly. What do you see as the exciting trends going on right now? What do you see as being kind of on the cusp of, you know, this is what's coming in the next three, six, 12 months? So something that has surprised me a little bit, honestly, is over the past year, I've seen more and more discussion about and traction for cohort-based online courses, which is an idea that, you know, we've been talking about for some time, but never really seemed to break through into having massive momentum. You know, things that were being blogged about and people were talking about on social media, you know, five years ago, were very much more like evergreen video courses that you could sell as like a standalone product, sometimes basically without any instructor or coach interaction at all, you know, sometimes with, you know, a little bit of Q&A support, but fundamentally digital products. But whereas over the past year, we've seen a wave of like prominent thought leaders, as well as new startups, really highlighting the value of intensive group learning. So cohort-based courses where you have active facilitation, you know, by a skilled instructor, but often like teams of coaches or peer facilitators as well that allow this to scale to larger groups of people while still having intensive collaboration and support within the scope of a cohort, whether that's like, you know, a four-week intensive or a six-week long, you know, transformational program. So this is not new, right? Like universities and other learning environments have been running these types of courses for a long time, but it really seems to be picking up steam online. And we may see over the next, you know, two to five years, it's really becoming more of the prevalent mode of how flagship high-value courses are delivered online. Awesome. I don't have any other questions, but, you know, both as your friend and on behalf of the listenership of CourseLab, I want to say congratulations and great job on putting this book together. And to all of the listeners, I've read it. I'm, you know, I spend a lot of time digging into everything that's out there about the business and practice of online courses, and you'll be very well served spending your time reading Abe's book, The Business of Courses. Thanks, Dave. You're very kind. So I guess this is the part where I will read you out. I've got a typo in my script. It says Abby Crystal, but I know your name. Thank you for listening to CourseLab. I'm Danny Iny, founder and CEO at Mirasee, here with my co-host Abe Crystal, co-founder and CEO of Ruzuku. CourseLab is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes Just Between Coaches and Making It. This episode of CourseLab was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Jeff Goverdson assembled the episode. Danny Iny, that's me, is our executive producer. Big thanks to my co-host Abe Crystal for coming on the show and talking about his brand new book, The Business of Courses, available where books are sold or directly on his site at instant.courses.book. To make sure you don't miss the really great episodes coming up on CourseLab, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you like the show, please leave us a starred review. It really does help. Thank you. We'll see you next time. All right. Are you ready? Wait, what's my cue? It's a behind the scenes kind of thing. Hello, and welcome to Just Between Coaches, the podcast that tackles difficult coaching conversations head on. I'm Melinda Cohen and your host for this show. I also know that I'm listening when, again, my mind is relaxed. So I can almost sense that I'm listening on multiple levels. That's a great frame. I mean, that's a really great way to think about it. I think so, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, because I think that something that is very dangerous is for people to think that being a great coach comes from having the credentials. One has nothing to do with the other. So again, part of it is just, you know, either through questions or asking what they've tried, or sometimes it's, you know, the forest for the trees thing. My favorite part of having the hard conversation is, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay. So while I love what's on the other side, I think navigating through that conversation is my favorite part. Yeah. Because we're not there necessarily as coaches to provide solutions. We're there to guide our people towards solutions. And I don't know if it's, you know, societal pressure or peer pressure, but we don't want to look like we don't know what we're doing. I want to help and support coaches so that they can evolve into their greatness. My desire for the show is if I could scoop up all of the coaches and bring them into my living room and bring up the topics that leave crinkles in our forehead so that we can fully understand what it means to show up in our greatness, fully confident so that we can build better businesses, so that we can be better coaches, so that we can make a lasting impact on this world collectively. And we want to rise to that level. That being said, you do want to set yourself up and your clients up for success by making sure that there is clarity around their expectations and your expectations as to how you can help them. People have to know a little bit about what you offer. Otherwise, how do they know that they need what you can help them with in terms of that transformation? And I love having the conversations and navigating the topics that keep us at the forefront in a time with what I call the results revolution. Yeah, well, first of all, I just want to start by saying that this is a really good problem to have, right? So if you have someone who's resisting your price, it means they're really interested in working with you. The thing is, sometimes it becomes negative. It becomes toxic. I've been in the coaching industry for almost 20 years now. And over these years, I have seen everything behind the scenes in our industry. Everything that works, everything that doesn't work. I've seen the evolution of our industry and of what it means to be a coach. I just want to say to all the coaches out there, you know, matching who you are to the kind of coach that you want to be is just a practice. Do you want to add some parting words? No, I think you did great. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for having me. This is Melinda Cohen, and you've been listening to Just Between Coaches. You'll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Yeah, this is absolutely the tone, the feel, the everything. Okay, so I'm going to stop the recording now. Why are you stopping the recording? This is going to be fun. Oh my gosh. That's a wrap. That is going to be an amazing session.