Why Customer Research Beats Assumptions in Course Creation

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. The most important thing any course creator or prospective course creator can do is just to get as close to your customers, your students or future students. As possible. And the reason I say that is because it's creating courses is an arena where it's very easy to start coming up with ideas based on assumptions and kind of what you think sounds interesting or what you kind of hope might work. And that often turns out to be a good bit different than what your client, your ultimate student really wants. Hello, and welcome to Course Lab, the show that teaches creators like you how to make better online courses. I'm Danny Iny, the founder and CEO of Mirasee, and I'm here with my co-host, Abe Crystal, the co-founder of Ruzuku. Hey, Danny. In each episode of Course Lab, we usually showcase a course and creator who is doing something unique with their course. But in this special four-part series that concludes today, we've been doing something different. We've gone beyond the design of courses themselves to dive into the platforms that host them. Because building a course platform isn't just about creating some basic functionalities. It's about having a vision for where the industry is headed and then building the technology to enable that vision. Each of the platform creators in this mini-series has had a different perspective on where the industry is headed and what that means for you, our listener. Our guest today is Course Lab's very own Abe Crystal, here today to talk about Ruzuku, his course-building platform. Welcome, Abe. I'm glad to be invited, I guess. Well, let's start with the backstory. Because you and I, I mean, you know, we do this all the time, obviously, but it's usually about the guests. So I don't know how much our listeners actually know about me or you, case in point. So what's your story? What's your background? How did you come to even be doing all this? Yeah, so my background is actually more academic, coming out of the research side. So I spent a few years getting a PhD and studying a number of areas related to what we talked about on Course Lab. So human-computer interaction, which is how people use technology, online and social learning, and generally how people use technology as part of their education. And that was all gearing up to continue being a researcher and becoming a professor and so on. But the thing about doing research for years is it's very easy to get burned down on it. And that was pretty much how I felt. I was really tired of doing research and writing papers and wanted to be, you know, working on something that people could actually use, right, as opposed to just coming up with ideas that might someday, you know, have some theoretical impact. So, yeah, that's how I got out of the academic world. And then I started doing some consulting, like helping companies build better products and websites. But really, I always had the itch to just build something from the ground up. It just seemed like a really interesting challenge. And I was really inspired by other software companies that were doing that and coming up with new product ideas. The only problem was I didn't actually have an idea for a product that people would want. And that's kind of important to have a business. Didn't stop me, though. Along with some other equally crazy people, we just started playing around with ideas, a lot of which originally were around sort of personal development, goal setting. And we started interviewing people to see if they would be interested in these ideas. Turned out they weren't. None of these ideas had any legs whatsoever. People did not want to use them. But they did lead us to talk to people in adjacent areas. Coaches, speakers, bloggers, people who in these early years were just starting to dip their toes in the water of like, hey, how do I communicate my expertise online? And what we learned was it was really hard to do that. Like, sure, you could, you know, share some basic information on a blog. You could send emails to people. But in terms of really having a more meaningful learning relationship with your clients, there just weren't good ways to do that online. And that's what led us to this space of online support for goal setting, for coaching, for personal development, which eventually evolved into, you know, the world we now think of as online courses. So give us a sense of timeline, because I think we're going still pretty far back. When did you start exploring the ideas that eventually became Ruzuku as it is today? Well, we entered a startup accelerator here in North Carolina all the way back in 2012. So that was really the point at which we started working on it as a, like, serious full-time idea. And so tell us a little bit about the evolution of what did you have coming out of the startup accelerator? What were the early days like? And what did that, what was the path from that to the product that you offer and sell today? And I know that it's undergoing a significant rewrite if you want to talk about that as well. Or, you know, maybe not. You tell me. I don't know if it's, like, ready for prime time. We can give a little tease to our space. Yeah, I mean, our original idea that got us into the startup accelerator was the same idea we offer today, which is tools to make it easy to create structured online courses, host all your content, and engage with your students. And the only problem was that wasn't an idea and a market. That was at all understood at the time. I mean, I'll give kudos to our accelerator, the startup factory, for kind of taking a chance on our idea, even though they didn't necessarily understand the full scope of the market right then either, but they saw the potential. But actually, when we went out and talked to investors like VCs and angel investors at that time, there was just tremendous skepticism. People really didn't see this as a big, important growing area, and they didn't see it as an area where there would be a lot of need for software tools. So in some sense, perhaps we were a little bit too early, because in the years since then, the market for online courses has grown dramatically. And now there are probably hundreds of companies like ours, you know, providing these types of tools for course creators and facilitators. So clearly, there is a huge need there. But I guess it just goes to show that you can be too late with an idea, but you can also be a little bit too early at times. So to your point, you know, the landscape has become a lot more saturated. There are a lot more people pursuing the kind of I want to build an online course opportunity. And there's a lot more technology to enable and support that. So not to turn this into a pitch for Ruzuku or anything, but, you know, in a nutshell, how is Ruzuku different? Yeah, so, you know, I think I agree with the perspective, and you and I have talked about it before that, like, as a market matures, the tools serving that market tend to become kind of more similar, and they hone in upon similar sets of like customer needs, right? So the differences among course building tools are just less stark than they were, you know, three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago, and they'll probably continue to converge. Even more over time. So that being said, there are definitely still differences in philosophy and approach. One of the biggest differences probably with the way we've approached design Ruzuku is we've always really focused on courses that are like instructor led or coach facilitated that are actively taught, and where people are engaging with and supporting their students. Whereas many of the course building tools platforms on the market really started from a philosophy of how do we make it easy for people to deliver evergreen courses, right? So essentially structured content, right? So how do you deliver a course as a series of on-demand videos, right? Or a series of PDFs that people can download and access at any time. So more of a digital product as opposed to an interactive learning experience. And there's, you know, not saying one way or the other is better. They both have their uses, right? There are situations where the end customer, the learner, just wants to get some step-by-step information in a well-designed structured form. And they want it right now. And they want to go through it on their own pace. And they don't need or want any help in going through it. They just want really good quality information. And there's a huge need for, like, specific types of online courses that are just structured information to serve that need. But then there's a growing trend, we think, of people who want to, you know, learn and apply skills in some more complex area. And it's going to be very difficult for them to do effectively solely through an evergreen, you know, self-study type experience. They want either a course with extensive coaching and support, or they want some type of group program or a cohort-based learning experience where, you know, they join 25 other people going through a 90-day program. And so that type of facilitated learning with discussions and interactions among students and the instructor is what we really focus on. And that's what we're trying to address as we, you know, redesign our product as well. So speak to that a little bit more, because, again, sharing a little bit of the behind the scenes, I know that Ruzuku is undergoing a very substantial rebuild and redesign. And whenever you undertake a project of that magnitude, you have to be really thoughtful and strategic in kind of saying, this is where the industry is going. This is what people are going to want and need. These are the things we're going to design into the platform. These are the things that maybe we're going to design out of the platform. So what is the direction that you see the industry moving in that you are being mindful of being able to support and cater to as you look at the evolution of the landscape? Yeah, so it's a great question. And it comes with it an interesting tension, which is, as much as we would like to, we also can't start the design process entirely from a clean sheet of paper. Because part of our goal is also to serve our existing, you know, customer base and the hundreds of thousands of students who have signed up for courses from our existing customer base. So you can't just retire all the functionality they're using. Exactly. So there's an interesting balance between what can we provide to best serve our customers and the way we see courses evolving over the next few years, while seamlessly being compatible and supporting, you know, all the courses and students that we already have. So keeping that, you know, bearing in mind that kind of dynamic, the vision or, you know, what we see developing is this continued growth of courses with deep engagement between learners and their instructor or coach or facilitator. And among people learning together in a group coaching program or cohort based course or some other type of learning community. Again, not to say that those are overtaking or replacing evergreen courses, we think evergreen courses will continue to grow as well. But we think that these facilitated and community driven courses will continue to grow in importance and value. And there's more and more need for better tools to support them. And then secondly, the trend I'm seeing is more and more people coming into wanting to offer online courses from a services based business. So they're offering coaching or consulting. They're providing some type of professional service to businesses. They may do, you know, speaking or provide other types of content or expertise. And they're wanting to move into this world of online courses, but they don't necessarily have a ton of tactical background or a ton of experience with the kind of the class of tools that RizuQ fits into around like content creation management. Whereas, you know, some of the early adopters of course platforms actually were quite comfortable jumping in with new tools because they were already running active blogs, right? They were already doing email marketing. They were already doing lots of things online that were pretty analogous to running online courses. And they were also very used to jumping in and trying out new tools to get things done online. Whereas this kind of second wave or more mainstream adopters of online courses that we're seeing, they're often a bit more hesitant about jumping into new tools. They need a lot of kind of guidelines and rails to follow, you could say, to be effective with the technology. So that's a big focus of our design process as well is doing a lot of testing with people who are newer and less comfortable with course development to try and simplify the process for them. And, you know, providing frameworks like checklists and processes to follow to help them guide them through the process. Cool. So I'm curious about how you're reading some of these trends in terms of, I mean, yes, I'm inclined to agree with you that the interest in and demand for involved, whether it's cohort based or instructor led, but, you know, a learning experience where there is a substantive experience that will actually deliver a transformation. I think there's increasing demand for those experiences and therefore there's increasing demand for course creators who want to create them. That's in some ways a big departure from the early vision that people had of the world of online courses, which was steeped in this mystique of passive income and automation. And you'll build it and set it and forget it. And people can go through it, you know, whenever they want, while you're on a beach in your underwear, that whole imagery. What do you think is driving this shift in a move towards, I mean, yes, there's a place for, you know, that information that people consume whenever they want in the Udemy's and masterclasses and so forth of the world. But what do you feel is driving that trend of increasing demand for something that is actually a lot more work to both create and deliver, but also to consume, to go through? Yeah, I suspect partly it's a shift from like other forms of learning that were already happening, right? It's not that people, you know, suddenly woke up in 2021 or 2022 and decided like, hey, I want to, you know, master skills or transform my life in certain areas. That demand was there in the past, but people were pursuing it through formats like a one-on-one, you know, intensive coaching engagement with a private coach in person or over the telephone. Through formats like retreats and in-person workshops and through formats like traditional education, right? Like taking a class at a community college or, you know, something you've talked a lot about getting like an MBA, for example. And I think what we're seeing is people are shifting their time and attention and their budgets from some of those formats to online experiences that are finally now proving that they can, you know, deliver as good or better results, right? So, you know, it becomes compelling to, you know, instead of traveling somewhere for a three-day intensive workshop, committing, you know, all your time there and then traveling home. If you can get that same result or even a better result by signing up for a cohort-based online program where you're spending a few hours a week on it for 12 weeks and getting the community and support you need to move forward, you know, that's pretty attractive. It's potentially attractive even at the same price point or even a higher price point because you don't have to travel and you don't have the same intensive demand on one block of time. But it's definitely even more attractive if the total price, including travel and everything, is lower. So I think that's just one big driver is the shift in format. There may be others, you know, as well that you've seen. Yeah. So talk about, you know, everyone who listens to this podcast is presumably interested in building and selling their own online courses. Otherwise, they just have this weird fascination with mine and your voice. So they're here to learn about how to build and sell online courses and build that into an impactful piece of their business, if not the whole business. And whenever you're looking to build something, it will be an engine for outcomes for you and for other people. You need to have an eye towards making decisions now that will serve you well in the future rather than decisions that essentially will age poorly and will start weighing on you. So for people who are listening to this, who are kind of setting out to build, market, grow their first or next online course, given your vantage point of the entire industry, of where it's going, of the functionality that you are working at Razuku to better enable, what are some of the decisions they should be mindful of that they should make them in a way that will support them to get better results as time goes by rather than kind of saddling them with an anchor? Decisions in terms of decisions in terms of decisions in terms of their overall business and approach? I mean, potentially both either. Dealer's choice. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think in terms of your overall approach, like the most important thing any course creator or prospective course creator can do is just to get as close to your customers, your students or future students as possible. And the reason I say that is because creating courses is an arena where it's very easy to start coming up with ideas based on assumptions and kind of what you think sounds interesting or what you kind of hope might work. And that often turns out to be a good bit different than what your client, your ultimate student really wants. So I think one of the best things that you can bake in from the very beginning is to make sure that you are connecting directly and really spending meaningful time talking directly to your either current students and clients or future ones if you're just starting and you don't have any yet. Which could mean going out and doing just interviews and collecting information with people. If you don't have students and clients yet, and if you do, it can mean talking to them to better understand their experience and how to improve it. And that goes hand in hand with essentially creating a business that is also oriented around having a clear point of view that attracts the type of audience and people you want to work with. I often see people asking about creating a course and when we drill into sort of how would they connect with potential students or who would they be serving, there's not really a lot there. Whereas people we see having great success with courses, it's often because they are sharing consistently a distinct point of view that attracts the right people to them. So something you can really start doing from day one is just get out there and talk about what you really care about and how you want to help and teach people your perspective on the world. And the more you can do that, the more you'll attract the right people to you and the more you'll be able to talk to those people and then build courses for them. So that's a little kind of philosophical and high level, but I do think that framework is really important to build something that is going to work over time. Awesome. That was solid. Is there anything else that you want us to speak to? I guess a final thing I'll just mention is that we frequently encounter people that seem to have a great anxiety or even fear about technology, that it's going to be incredibly difficult or onerous to learn about and to set up technology for their online course. So something we always just encourage people to do is to consider turning that mindset around and ask what it would look like if technology was your ally and was actually working with you to make your business stronger and better able to serve more people and create a wonderful experience for you and your clients. And if you approach it in that fashion, there's really no limit to what you can do given how much technology has improved over the last few years. So just encourage everyone to, if you're listening to this and still feel hesitant about online course technology, just know that there's so much you can do with it. And there's really thousands of other course creators just like you who have done it as well. Perfect. All right, I'll do the readout. In addition to being the co-host of MiraCFM's podcast, Course Lab, Abe Crystal is the founder and CEO of Ruzuku, an online course building platform and the author of the excellent book, The Business of Courses. Ape and I aren't going to do a debrief and discussion of the points of our conversation together, but I do want to highlight for everyone listening a few important points that Abe shared. Starting with the just growing maturity of the online courses industry as a whole, the way we've moved from very early adopters who are willing to work with kind of janky, half-functioning technology and kind of really go out on a limb, both in terms of the building of the tech and course experience and in terms of the consuming of it, has really given way to much more mainstream people and consumption and adoption in the market. And that has led to a couple of really interesting changes. One is that because you've got a lot more regular mainstream people, courses aren't for information that exists on the fringes of what they might want to do. It's really an online modality for delivery of learning experiences that people would have consumed in other ways in the past. So replacing the colleges and community centers and rec centers and continuing education programs and so forth. And because of that, you've got a lot more people who are both creating and consuming courses needing for the technology to just be dramatically more user-friendly and easy to work with. And that's the direction that the technology is going, whether it's a variety of course platforms on the market or Ruzuku, which has some very cool features coming out that you can keep your eyes peeled for coming soon. Finally, in terms of the very best advice to capitalize on this opportunity and build stuff that will stand the test of time, the most important thing that Abe shared is that you don't want to get too far ahead of yourself or stuck on theory of what you think people want. You really need to focus on building what they actually want, starting with a point of view that your audience can buy into and believe in, leading to the outcomes that they want to achieve, and then finally leading to the features, functionalities, and content of the course that will deliver those things. Thank you for listening to CourseLab. I'm Danny Iny, founder and CEO of Mirasee. Big thanks to Abe Crystal for being our interview subject today. CourseLab is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network. Which also includes just between coaches, making it, and once upon a business. This episode of CourseLab was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Jeff Govertson assembled the episode. Danny Iny, that's me, is our executive producer. And post-production was by Post Office Sound. To make sure you catch every great episode coming up on CourseLab, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you like the show, the best way to help us keep making it is to leave a starred review or share it with a friend. Thank you, and 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. That's a really great way to think about it. Um, 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 foreheads 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.