Building a Course Portfolio: Core vs. Peripheral Strategy

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. Hello, and welcome to Course Lab, the show that teaches creators like you how to make better online courses. I am Danny Iny, the founder and CEO of Mirasee, and I'm here with my co-host, Abe Crystal, the co-founder of Ruzuku. Hey there, Danny. In each episode of Course Lab, we showcase a course and creator who is doing something really interesting, either with the architecture of their course or the business model behind it, or both. And for this episode, we're going to mix things up a little bit. Instead of bringing in an outside guest, we're actually going to talk about a product that Abe and I put together, together, called Instant Courses. And we're doing this kind of for two reasons. One is that, I mean, you know, this is our show, and if you listen to it and you like us, then you might want to buy our product. And so, you know, we want to make sure you know about it. But also because there's a really interesting use case in terms of where this fits strategically into the course's landscape, right? Usually people are creating online courses that are about their core expertise, their kind of secret sauce intellectual property. And Instant Courses fits a different niche. But to kick us off, Abe, why don't you just tell us, first of all, like 30,000 feet, what is Instant Courses? Yeah, so hopefully the name gives you a little bit of a clue as to what's behind the scenes here. But essentially, Instant Courses are courses that are done for you. They're ready to go out of the box. So an example would be, like, let's say that you're a coach. You often find that you need to help your clients with goal setting because they have trouble setting goals effectively in their work. And you want to have them go through a curriculum about setting and achieving goals. And that's something you know how to do and you coach people on. But you don't necessarily have the time to build that course entirely yourself from scratch. You don't have all that content and materials on goal setting. And you may also not have a lot of experience structuring courses, you know, specifically. You're used to working with people more as a coach or consultant. So the idea of Instant Courses is you can just take that course on goal setting that we've already created for you and drop it into your work instantly, as it were. So rather than having to, anytime you want to add something that complements the coaching or the services you do, you don't necessarily need to build that from scratch. You can just pull from a library of instantly available courses. So that's kind of the big idea. And then we can talk about more of the different contexts in which that would be useful. So I guess Danny and people might also be interested to hear sort of the origin story behind this, right? Like, where do we get the idea for Instant Courses? It may seem a bit counterintuitive even to people listening, especially since you're known for talking about the value of creating your own course, having it under your own brand and so on. So I guess maybe we can share a bit with people, like, where did this idea come from? And how do we get the idea for this as an alternative or complement to that more traditional idea of a self-designed course that you typically talk about? Yeah, so there are a few drivers behind what made us feel like this is an idea that makes sense that there's a place in the market for it. One is the distinction between core versus peripheral courses. There are, in any expertise-driven business, there is a core transformation that you deliver that is generally based on, you know, your expertise you've developed over the course of years and decades, etc. And, you know, that is usually what people are looking to create their online course based on. And it's very impactful when you do that. That's what I spend most of my career helping people to do. But then there are also a lot of other things that you could potentially teach about and other places in the customer lifecycle where an online course can really be helpful to your business. So a course that people opt in for and that is a lead gen activity. A course that helps to nurture the people who are coming into your orbit to get to know you and like you and trust you and be ready to buy. A course that is supplementary to the core transformation you're delivering, helping them with implementation or establishing valuable habits or anything peripheral to that. A course that kind of keeps people warm after having gone through your course before they're ready for whatever comes next. There's an entire life cycle of places where a course can fit in. Now, a course is expensive to put together. Could be in terms of hard costs, could be in terms of soft costs like your time. But there's a lot that goes into putting a course together, as I think, you know, people who listen to this show will be very, very well aware. And that effort is justified. It's completely justified for that core transformation that you're going to offer that will be a major driver of revenue, of profits, of leverage, freeing up your time. Right. Totally worth it. But when it comes to a lot of these peripheral courses, these courses that will show up in other places, sometimes it's hard to make the math work. It's like it would be really valuable to have a course, but it's not worth the trouble to build a course. Or, you know, I'd love to build all these courses, but, you know, I don't want to spend the next year and a half building out all these different courses. It's like I want to get up and running quickly. I want to get there fast. Now, when it comes to that core transformation, you know, you don't have a lot of options because that intellectual property lives in your head. Nobody else can do that for you. At best, you can hire, you know, instructional designers and video producers and all that kind of stuff to interview you and write scripts. And, you know, they can save you some time at great expense, but that only goes so far. But when it comes to these peripheral courses, usually they're not based on, you know, intellectual property that is uniquely yours. They're based on best practices. Right. So in the example that Abe shared around goal setting, you know, let's say that you're a life coach and you have a very unique identify your true purpose and pursue it framework and method. And so that's your core transformation, whether you deliver it as a coach or through a course or whatever. And then you identify that, hey, it would be helpful for people if they were better at setting and sticking to their goals. And you don't have any special expertise in that. You know what the best practices are and you could create a course around those best practices, but it wouldn't be very different from a course that anyone else with analogous expertise would create. And so for those courses that are generally peripheral to the core transformation that are based on best practices, there is no reason why a qualified researcher and instructional designer and writer and all these people, there's no reason why they can't produce a course that is kind of ready to go off the shelf. You just take it, bring it into your business, either hit publish, tweak it, add stuff if you want and use it pre-created much in the same way that, you know, most university professors, they don't write the textbook that they're working from. Right. The intro to psych is intro to psych is intro to psych at every university. And they're all working from more or less the same textbook. So it's very much that idea. Yeah. And at the same time, having professional, you know, course creators working on that course as a dedicated project. They can actually put more time into it and do more thorough job than the typical kind of independent expert could afford to do, you know, on their own because of the time constraints and resource constraints, you know, you just described. Well, and also just the practice and muscle memory for most course creators, the big course they're creating is their first course or maybe their second. Whereas if you bring professional instructional designers, they've created, you know, dozens of courses. And so they they know how to do it faster, easier, better. Maybe you can speak to kind of the process that goes into researching, designing the pedagogy of these courses, the what's included in them in terms of what you can do with them once you bring a course like that into your business. Yeah. So, I mean, the courses, it all kind of starts with the focus. And that comes from thinking about what are the most common needs that we see people having with their clients. Again, this is typically referring to, you know, coaches and consultants. That's how most people we see using instant courses in some way would self-identify, although there are definitely other specialties as well. But typically people are working with clients in some way and their clients have needs, right? So you mentioned the life coach example. If you're a health coach, you have clients who have needs around needing to exercise more, get better sleep. If you're a leadership coach, you have clients who have needs around, you know, building more cohesive teams or, you know, being a more emotionally intelligent leader and connecting better with their team and so on. And so the courses, you know, we've created try to address those core needs in a way that would support the work that the coach or consultant is doing with their clients or potentially that they're going to use in their marketing to bring those clients in. And in general, we try to keep the courses pretty like tightly focused because the intention is not that you're going to have this massive, you know, library of content that a client is going to get lost in. You know, rather typically as a coach, what you want is something, again, very focused that you can say to a client, hey, I need you to go through this. I'm going to hold you accountable as you go through this program, but it's not going to be overly daunting or overwhelming to go through it. We're looking for sort of in between so-called micro learning where you have very, very small pieces. And then on the other side of the continuum, like an extremely in-depth, you know, flagship course that might involve, you know, months of learning with tons of modules in depth content. Instant courses are trying to be sort of in the sweet spot in between those where they can address a lot of different needs. And then they're also designed to be customizable, right? So the idea is that you might not take that course entirely out of the box. You certainly can, but you might take 80% of it and then customize the other 20% a lot, either by removing materials that aren't relevant to you or adding in a lot of your own spin and your own voice to it to make it more your own. So the structure is having a core set of modules, giving people materials, exercises, and discussion questions. So they're, you know, taking action and engaging in each module. And then we're leaving it to the facilitator, the coach, the consultant to guide people through that program, to respond to their comments, to provide accountability and so on. And I think probably what's been most interesting, you know, watching this roll out is seeing that people really do have very different needs and very different ways of working with clients. And they're able to adapt these courses to a lot of different scenarios. So the other piece to this is that, you know, we could have said, hey, let's make the instant courses just like, you know, a downloadable piece of content, like a PLR kind of thing. But instead, we integrated it into the Ruzuku technology. So talk about how that works and the thinking behind that. Yeah, I think this is one of the more interesting pieces, because by placing them directly on the Ruzuku platform, we essentially let you deploy a course at the click of a button. So I wish I could sort of share my screen right now and walk you through it. But to describe it, you know, in audio, imagine that you have a raid in front of you, a listing of dozens of different courses. And you can just scan through that and see like, oh, here's that course on goal setting. Here's a course on effective listening. You know, here's a course on having better sleep habits and so on. And you can just pick the topic that is relevant for you and for your clients. Click a button. And that course is now instantly available on your Ruzuku course dashboard, where you can then offer it for free as a lead magnet to bring new clients. You can set a price and charge people for access to it. Or maybe you just invite specific coaching clients into it, you know, when they join one of your coaching engagements or one of your leadership programs. So it just really simplifies the process of getting this up and running. And it also provides an experience for clients where they're joining a fully fledged online experience. It's a much more engaging, but also easy to access experience for the client who's then going through that program. So, yeah, I mean, Danny, we talked a lot about how this would integrate into sort of the teaching or facilitation or delivery side of the business. So as a coach, I can pull in an instant course to work with my clients. But that's kind of only one piece of the puzzle. There's also like the marketing or business development side, right? Can you speak to that a bit? Like how could people use instant courses to bring in clients to grow their business, not just to serve existing clients? So, you know, we talked earlier a little bit about how there's a whole life cycle. There is lead generation. People have to discover you and raise their hand to come into your universe. There is nurture where they get to know you and come to value your perspective and your expertise in terms of what you have to offer. There's, of course, the core transformation they sign up for. There are ancillary benefits that they could be interested in. They could sign up for another course. And so it can be lead generation. It can be nurture. It could be additional monetization. And there's a lot of flexibility with the instant courses in terms of do you want to make this like a totally, you know, do it on your own kind of course? Or do you want to deliver it live and add some coaching, which means it's a much higher value and you can charge more for it? But really the kind of core idea is that you're using it to round out the portfolio of offerings you have. Yeah. At least I always hear from a lot of people who I think are what they're passionate about is side of helping, of teaching people through a course or working with a client that they're coaching. They love helping people and seeing clients progress. But what they struggle with more is the entry point into that of getting people to hear about them and their work and bringing in those initial leads and clients. And so having, you know, content that can facilitate that is really, really helpful. Yeah. In terms of having it, A, be really high value and B, be aligned with, you know, people who sign up for your free course are much more likely to want to pay for a course because you know they like courses. Whereas people who sign up for your free e-book or report, A, you have to go to the trouble of putting that report together, writing it, producing it, et cetera. But B, people who like to read reports are not necessarily people who like to take courses. And so that alignment is really valuable to have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just to kind of wrap this up, I think there are three kind of lessons or takeaways for people who are listening to this to kind of take away. The first is in designing your offers, right? You can take a page from what we've done with Instant Courses, just like you would listening to any other episode of this show. Or you listen to what a course creator has done. You're like, how does that apply in my situation? Well, the core lesson here is to reduce friction, right? Think about what is the outcome people want and how can you get them there as quickly as possible? And that takes some resourcefulness, takes some creativity. That's essentially what we did. People come to me and Abe all the time to learn how to build and sell courses. Well, how would they want that process shortcut? It's like, well, what if they could press a button and the course was up and ready to go? And we can't do that with any kind of course, but we can do it with many kinds, which is what we do through Instant Courses. Fundamentally, what drives strategy is three things. It's relevant. In other words, do I have something that people want? It's differentiation, right? Is it something different than what they can get anywhere else? And third, is it sustainable? So if you have something that people really want that is different than what they can get elsewhere and your value proposition there is protected, there's a moat around it, right? So in a lot of ways, that translates to just basically saying, what can I do that people want? That's really hard. And putting the time in to figure out how to do that, and usually that involves reducing friction between them and the outcomes they want. There's a lot of opportunity there when you think it through. So that's the first takeaway. 30,000 feet, reduce friction. Second takeaway is when you are thinking about online courses and your business in general, broaden your view from the core transformation you want to offer to the entire life cycle of experience that people will have with you, from discovering you to getting to know you better, the nurture, all that kind of stuff. Yes, there's the core transformation. There's the additional things they're going to need. There is the stuff that comes afterwards in terms of upsells, cross-sells, additional support, additional opportunities. So be mindful of that entire life cycle. And then finally, third, if you want to consider actually signing up for Instant Courses, we are doing a launch right now if you're listening to this episode as it comes out. And the link for that is www.instant.courses. And if it's a good fit, we'd love to have you inside, but no pressure whatsoever. Abe, do you want to read us out? Yep. Thank you for listening to CourseLab. I'm Abe Crystal, co-founder and CEO of Reziku, here with Danny Iny, founder and CEO of Mirasee. CourseLab is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Making It and Just Between Coaches. This episode of CourseLab was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Jeff Goverdson assembled the episode. Danny Iny is our executive producer. Post production by Post Office Sound. If you don't want to miss the excellent episodes coming up on CourseLab, make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you're curious to learn more about the Instant Courses library, you can check it out at instant.courses. That's instant.courses. Are you enjoying our show? Go ahead and leave us a starred review. It really does make a difference. Thank you, and we'll see you next time. Abe, the link for that is instant.courses. I'm not actually sure the www will work. Let's see. Oh, no, it does. It redirects. Nice. I just lost my window. Okay. 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 framing. 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. 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.