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Episode 223 - How to Find an Audience for Your Online Course
520 Plays8 months ago
This week I’m joined by Chad Campbell of Teach Well Online. Chad and his wife Becca Campbell are good friends and frequent guests on our podcast. You might know them from their success of Little Z Sleep, The Course Company or The Sleep Sorority.
In this episode we dive into finding an audience for your online course, choosing a topic and how to begin structuring your content in a way that makes sense for the learner.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check ’em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/how-to-find-audience-online-course-btb-223/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
The Essence of Teaching
00:00:00
Speaker
I actually like to say it a little bit differently. I think whatever it is that you're teaching, it needs to be ingrained in you. It needs to be seeped into you, right? So that it comes out. So it's got to be part of you. And so that's a little bit different than being an expert and you need to be successful at it.
00:00:16
Speaker
Because one of the things that we say again, like people aren't paying for information, they're paying for imitation. They're paying to be like you. And so if that's what online teaching is, which it is in large part, and if that's what people are paying for, you don't have to be professor. You don't have to be subject matter expert. You don't have to be the industry leading subject knowledge expert, right? You can just be you.
Introduction to Podcast Hosts and Guests
00:00:40
Speaker
You're listening to The Brands That Book Show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies to build engaging brands and craft high-converting websites. We're your hosts, Davey and Krista, co-founders of a brand and website design agency specializing in visual brand design and show it websites. You're listening to The Brands That Book Show.
00:01:03
Speaker
This week, I'm joined by Chad Campbell of Teachball Online. Chad and his wife, Becca Campbell, are good friends and frequent guests on our podcast. You might know them from their success of Little Z Sleep, The Course Company, or The Sleep Sorority. Chad and Becca have recently started a new venture helping others find success online with courses.
00:01:21
Speaker
In this episode, we dive into finding an audience for your online course, choosing a topic, and how to begin structuring your content in a way that makes sense for the learner.
Course Creation Insights from Chad and Becca
00:01:30
Speaker
And if you're interested in working directly with Chad and Becca to create and sell an online course, they're taking a group through their online course creation process this month. We'll include a link in the show nights.
00:01:41
Speaker
Chad and I also spill the beans on something he's been helping me create specifically for designers. This product is a first for us and it's something I'm really excited to put out in the world. I'm going to share more details about it soon. But for now, on to the episode.
00:01:55
Speaker
All right, Chad, I am excited to have you back on the podcast, I think for the second time. Is that correct? Yeah, it is, it is. And I think, I can't remember how many times Becca has been on, but she's been on a number of times. And Becca Campbell is your wife. Together, the two of you have run a lot of successful businesses over the years. So if anyone is familiar with Little Z Sleep, that this is Chad of Chad and Becca of Little Z Sleep. You have coached others in online courses and then sleep sorority. Did I miss anything?
00:02:25
Speaker
I know. I feel like every time Becca starts a new business, she's got to reach out and get on the podcast. But yeah, I know that was it. Little Z's, the Sleep Sorority. For a brief time, we had the course company, but now that is Teach Well Online. So here it is. Yeah. And I am really excited about Teach Well Online. I have been a client of yours and I've been super impressed with this new offering that you guys have. And I'm really excited that you have it out in the world now.
00:02:51
Speaker
So do you want to tell us a little bit more about Teach Well Online and what led you guys to start this new venture? Absolutely.
The Mission of Teach Well Online
00:02:58
Speaker
So yeah, I'm missing my better half today, but Becca and I, we have three education degrees from Louisiana State University, a combined nine years of public school teaching experience. We branched out on our own with little Z's and have since sold over 25,000 courses, made a couple million dollars doing it.
00:03:14
Speaker
And about a year and a half ago, we started filming and producing courses for other people because we had a lot of people come to us and they wanted really great looking courses. And so we pulled out all the stops and we created a set design, we had multiple cameras going, we filmed, produced, edited, gave them a course and it was awesome. But in the journey of doing that, one of the things that we realized and a lot of people around us kind of affirmed to us is that, you know, you can have a great, beautiful looking course, but
00:03:43
Speaker
If it's not selling, you have to start asking why, and what we realized is it's teaching, right? You can have a beautiful course, but if you don't know how to teach well, there's the problem. So that's where Teach Well Online was born, where we harnessed all of our experience and what we really know how to do to help people teach well online.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that there is such a need in that
The Importance of Quality Teaching
00:04:03
Speaker
space. I have taken courses that looked really great, like you said, but the teaching just doesn't make sense or maybe the person could use some coaching help, like with speaking. And so it's hard to actually listen and get through that course and get the information out of it because it's just not presenting in a great way. I think we've all sat in lectures, like college lectures where you just wanna take a nap because this person is really smart and they know all the,
00:04:30
Speaker
all the things but they just can't hold your attention.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, and we believe, this is kind of our slogan of Teach Well Online, but when we sat down and we started kind of thinking through what do we wanna do? How do we wanna offer this? We came to this core belief that we believe everyone can teach well online if they know how. And so that's our mission is to help people do it because it's one thing to teach in front of people in a classroom. Not everybody can do that well. That's a skill. I mean, if you think about many people's fear of public speaking, right? But anyone can teach well online
00:05:01
Speaker
if they have the tools and the skill set to do that. And so that's what we're equipping people to do. Yeah, that's really encouraging because I think that the online course space has been around for at least over a decade at this
Market Saturation and Opportunities
00:05:12
Speaker
point. And I think it's continuing to grow. And I think there was a point where people said online courses are oversaturated and they're going to die. We haven't hit that yet. I don't foresee that happening in the future.
00:05:23
Speaker
If anything, I think that as the online space grows, more and more people are going to be releasing online courses. And so I think that what you guys are offering is so needed. Yeah, we're excited to do it. As someone is looking to get started in a course, how do they even begin to figure out what to create? Because I know that that can be a big challenge.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, so my first advice is to look in a mirror, really. Look in a mirror. You have either a skill or a service or maybe a story that you want to share with others. So maybe you want to teach somebody how to do something. That's a skill. Maybe you want to teach somebody a service to solve a problem. Or maybe you just want to teach somebody from your wealth of experience or lived experience in life, right? So you either have a skill or service or a story. So look in the mirror and think,
00:06:15
Speaker
What do I have to offer? That's a great starting point. And what would you say if somebody is like, well, I'm a photographer and I want to teach someone how to do photos, but there are a million other courses out there of people teaching photography. Do you think that that should stop them or do you have any advice for that? Absolutely not. No, no, no. That should not stop them. You do have to ask a couple of questions. First of all, you have to ask, what are people going to pay for?
00:06:39
Speaker
Because the only reason, well, I say this, one of the main reasons that you teach online is to earn money. But that comes to kind of the core belief that I have that people aren't paying for information, they're paying for imitation. So people aren't going to pay money online to learn something. I mean, we have Google, we now have AI and chat GBT, there's all kinds of competition out there. But what people are going to pay for
00:07:04
Speaker
is to know what you know in order to do what you do to be successful like you and so people if you have a say a photography business you have clients you have people that love what you do they will pay money to do it like you and that's why the online course industry is a billion-dollar industry and counting and that's why online courses aren't going anywhere anytime soon because it's literally holding up a mirror to yourself and saying hey look what I can do let me show you how to do it too.
00:07:30
Speaker
I think that as a creator, it's so hard to wrap your head around that because it kind of feels like, well, why would anybody want to be like me? Because you know your weaknesses. And so it's hard to imagine that somebody's going to want to pay to do exactly what you do. Do you have any encouragement for someone who maybe like me has been in that spot?
00:07:50
Speaker
It's tough. And we are our own worst critics,
Finding Your Course Topic
00:07:53
Speaker
right? Like when I say look in a mirror, like that's the one thing none of us like to actually do is to go look in a mirror. In situations like that, if you have trouble convincing yourself that like you have worth and that people really want to imitate what you're doing, it's best to surround yourself and get around people that can affirm that in you. That's kind of like if you zoom out like on a super macro level, like you have an idea in your head,
00:08:15
Speaker
one of the best things just in life in general is to go reach out to other people and be like, hey, do you think this is a good idea? Yeah, definitely. So when somebody kind of knows what they want to talk about, what they want to teach about, how do they start finding the right people to teach to?
00:08:31
Speaker
So you have to ask some questions. We actually have a framework, a completely free framework that we have spent years of experience working on. It's called the Course Clarity Framework. And what that does, you can't really separate the what do I teach, which is content from the who do I teach. We actually believe that you have to ask those questions together in tandem in order to get the right answer. Because if you're only going to focus on what to teach,
00:08:56
Speaker
then you're going to miss teaching the right people and you're not going to make money. And if you only focus on who to teach, you're not really listening to what they are going to actually pay for and you're not going to make money. So you have to ask this together. So our course clarity framework, and I'll go ahead and tell you some of the three core questions that we ask. The first question you're going to ask is,
00:09:14
Speaker
Besides, what is my skill or my service or my story that I want to offer? What are people going to be impatient for? That's the first question to ask. What would they be impatient? What do they have to have now? When you think about online, we want everything instantly.
00:09:30
Speaker
online. So you think about if you go on to Amazon and buy something like we want it at our door in a couple hours, at best it'll be there in two days, but we want it now. If we have slow internet speed and it drags, we get so mad and we're throwing the wifi out the door and we're like, come on, like we are a culture now. We will spend money on a credit card because we don't have the money, but we've got to have it now. Well, that same principle applies online. You have to ask the question, what are people impatient for?
00:09:57
Speaker
what do they have to have now because ultimately that's going to lead to what they're going to pay for. Right. And when you say that, do you mean in terms of knowledge? What do they want to learn now? Or what is the end goal that they want? Is it more income or their child sleeping through the night? Could you be a little more specific about what they should be defining?
The Art of Teaching Transformations
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, so this is the idea of a topic versus transformation, right? And so we don't want to teach a topic. We want to teach a transformation. It goes into our marketing promise. We want to teach something that will transform somebody. We call it in education speak, we call it outcomes, and an outcome is what we want someone to become.
00:10:37
Speaker
So when you look in a mirror at yourself and what it is that you have, what you do, what you have to offer, how do we replicate that in someone else? When they look in a mirror, are they going to see a reflection of you in that mirror? And so that's kind of what is turning the tables on the education industry. When you really look at what is it that people pay for and what kind of content do we put online, it is actually not knowledge information heavy, it's more imitation in who you are.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah, like somebody takes a art course to learn how to paint like a specific person. Like I have done that before. And I feel like there's a lot of learning too in imitation and in fine art specifically, one of the ways that you learn to paint better or to do your art better is to actually imitate like famous artworks. And so are you saying it's similar to, like that is similar to how you should be thinking of teaching?
00:11:32
Speaker
Absolutely. So when you think about an artist, a lot of times we know that we can't just sit there and copy them, right? We can't just take what they do and copy it. But what we're trying to do is to get in their head. We believe that there's something, the way that they're wired, the way that their creative being is, we want to try to get inside their head and think the way they do.
00:11:53
Speaker
And so that's a great example of like, I would sit down and listen to somebody just teaching about their approach to creating a work of art, just to see if there's anything I can glean from that to replicate that my own work. It's more about the process of doing than it is the actual end result. Okay, that's really helpful.
00:12:11
Speaker
As far as like choosing a topic, would you say that it's better to be more broad or would you say that it's better to niche down to like a very specific thing? It kind of sounds like maybe you're saying niche down based on what you just answered.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, so again, what I like to do is I don't like to think about topic as much as I do transformation. And that in turn starts to answer the question. And so you always want to ask the question when you're writing an online course, when you're creating a learning journey, who is it that I want my person to become when they're done?
00:12:42
Speaker
What is the one action? What is the one skill? What is the one outcome that we want that course to approach? And so we never go into a course thinking about what is all of the stuff that someone needs to know. We always go into writing a course on what do we want our person to be able to do in the end? And so when you think about that transformation, you're going to see that it actually narrows down a lot. It's a little bit different when we think about marketing. Like when we think about marketing, we think about we want to narrow things down to a specific niche and really, really maximize that.
00:13:12
Speaker
But with teaching, what we want to do is we want to focus on a single outcome and that outcome is actually going to dictate who it is that we're going to target.
00:13:21
Speaker
We can use an example here because you guys have been helping me with this. We started teasing yesterday through our email list that we are releasing a course for designers, teaching them how to create and sell show at templates. And so you've been working with us on that process. I think I sent you like a very big mass of ideas and you very artfully took my ideas and put them into a beautiful course outline, like very detailed.
00:13:47
Speaker
I feel like you could probably design show it templates based off of everything that you just put together. And so like that is obviously very niche. And so I'm guessing that in naming it create and sell show it templates that is helping with the outcome. Correct.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah. So show it is the key word right there. So if you say creating website templates, that is a huge broad focus, right? And so if I want to get into, you know, website template shop and I want to sell website templates, that would be attracted to me creating website templates, but creating show it website templates.
00:14:20
Speaker
I love show it show it's like one of the best website creator platforms out there, especially if I'm a photographer, like there's nothing that compares to it. I am all about that, right? And now you just set yourself apart from any competition that you have, you have clearly communicated who it is that you're trying to sell to. So you've niched it down. Based on the outcome, you're going to help them create website templates in show it to sell. Yeah, I love that.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I'm I'm excited and I'm thankful for you. Well, I think it was easy because you had such great content to work with. Like, oh, my gosh, like you talk about holding up a mirror, right? You have so much experience, professional experience doing it. It was so easy to take your stuff. I say it's easy for me, right? It's so easy to take great quality teaching stuff and be able to actually work with it. So I'm excited for the course to come out.
00:15:04
Speaker
Oh, thank you. I am too. I mean, like piggybacking off of one of the things you just said, do you feel like somebody needs to be an expert to be able to teach something? So that's a good question. I'm going to say no. I actually like to say it a little bit differently. I think whatever it is that you're teaching, it needs to be ingrained in you.
00:15:22
Speaker
it needs to be seeped into you, right? So that it comes out. So it's got to be part of you. And so that's a little bit different than being an expert. And you need to be successful at it. Because one of the things that we say again, like people aren't paying for information, they're paying for imitation, they're paying to be like you. And so if that's what online teaching is, which it is in large part, and if that's what people are paying for, you don't have to be professor, you don't have to be subject matter expert.
00:15:49
Speaker
You don't have to be the industry leading subject knowledge expert, right? You can just be you. And if you have people that want to do what you do, you become the brand that you want to sell and people will do that. And so it does help to be successful at it because honestly, like you can talk the talk, but if you're not walking it, like
00:16:08
Speaker
People are gonna be a disconnect but you don't have to know everything and i will say real quick that's where a lot of people run into trouble when they're writing their online course because if they're not a teacher if they have no teaching experience they're really great at their craft they're really great at their skill or service.
00:16:24
Speaker
but they're not great at teaching, but we all come from prior experience in a classroom, right? Whether we grew up in a public school system or an alternative school system or a home school, like we all know what education is. So sometimes the light switch flips and we're like, okay, I'm going to teach an online course. Let me think like a teacher. Let me think about all the things that someone needs to know. And it's this difference between
00:16:47
Speaker
It's two F's here. We like to say you want to approach it by teaching a formula and not a fire hose. If you literally just try to dump all of this knowledge at people, everything that you know, and then some, if you get on chat GBT and try to think like, what am I missing that I need to add in here?
00:17:03
Speaker
It's a fire hose of information and people are most successful when you create a formula that replicates your success and showing others how to do that. And see, there's no expert involved with that. You have lived experience that you can share instead of this head knowledge expertise. Yeah.
The Challenges of Course Writing
00:17:22
Speaker
Would you say that somebody needs to have a platform in order to launch a course and sell that course?
00:17:28
Speaker
It helps. Yeah, it absolutely does. It's critical, right? So the thing about online is that it's a classroom for everybody. In fact, we say that teaching online requires a different kind of teaching because the internet is a different kind of classroom. That's kind of one of our core principles that we've talked about in our podcast. And the reality is like anybody can come into your classroom, but you got to have people come into your classroom, you got to be known and
00:17:51
Speaker
especially cutting through the noise online, right? You do have to have influence. In fact, that's one of the questions that we dig into in our course clarity framework is we actually help someone try to identify like, what is your content? And then what would people actually pay for for your content, we actually get into that income potential part two of like,
00:18:09
Speaker
And what would it be worth? Because you have to ask that question. It's heartbreaking to see sometimes that people spend not just money, but just so much time. Because as you know, it takes a lot of time to actually write a course. That it's heartbreaking to see somebody put all of this time and effort into something that they're not skilled at doing. And then all of a sudden they realize people aren't going to pay for it. I don't have an influence. And it's all for naught, right? And so, yeah. Yeah. What would you say that one of the greatest challenges is for creating an online course?
00:18:38
Speaker
writing it. Yes. I mean, I would say that that for me was the hardest part. It is. It's that curse of the blank page, right? Any kind of creative, whether you're a songwriter, whether you're an artist with a blank canvas or writer, it's you have these ideas and this inspiration, but then when it's time to actually get what's inside of you and actually put it
00:18:59
Speaker
on a page or get it out of you. Getting it out of you is the hardest part. You might be an expert coffee maker and you want to do an online course on how to make the best coffee. You know how to make coffee through and through, but to sit down and actually start to write it out step by step is really, really hard. A great example of that. We have kids. We have young kids. If anybody listening to this has kids, you know that
00:19:22
Speaker
you can take these concepts and these skills that you do from a day to day basis that you don't even think about but then when your kids start asking you questions about like why does the engine motor make that sound why do you have to stay on the left side of the road or the right you know they start asking these questions you're like i've never had to explain this before how do i do that and it's that whole
00:19:42
Speaker
writing process, which is why I'll go ahead and say like, we are just now launching this month in April, our course writers coaching, because we want to help you write your course. And we know how to do it. And so we actually have a three week online group coaching intensive where we will walk you through identifying your core teaching topic, I
00:20:03
Speaker
identifying your people and then how to outline your course, break it down into lessons, title everything. Our goal is so that you come in and three weeks later you have a production sheet ready to go so that you can sit down and record slides for your online course. You can sit down in front of a camera and actually teach your online course. And it's already great for you, but it's educationally designed. It leads the learners through a successful journey and guarantees that people will pay for it. But writing by far is the hardest thing.
00:20:32
Speaker
And that's what I teach in my course, not the writing part, but the blank slate when you're starting a template and your canvas is blank and it's kind of like, where do I begin? And my designers on my team have asked me before, like, how do I go from nothing to having something?
00:20:47
Speaker
Oh my gosh. And it's been a process. I really appreciate though how you helped me figure out my process and like break that down because I've never had it in a concrete way. I've always been like very much the artist who is like, well, I just like throw things together. But that's actually not true. I had a process and I just didn't realize I had a process. And so you were able to help me make that process concrete. And so I'm grateful for you.
00:21:12
Speaker
Well, yeah, no, and one of the things that I loved about what you did is that you because you're very successful at what you do, you've run very successful businesses, but you are the first to throw up your hand and say, somebody help me with this because this is not my strength. Just I need I need someone to put different eyes on this fresh eyes on it to help me. And it's, that's why like, if you look at
00:21:30
Speaker
coaching and mastermind, business coaches, life coaches. Sometimes in life, we just need somebody from the outside to look into our stuff or to play with our ideas because we've been so saturated on them for so long that we can't think about them any other way. Yeah. So I like to, Becca laughs at me when I say this a lot of times, but I say the best thing that you can do to help get your course written is to hire me because I'm
00:21:53
Speaker
outside looking in, I can just, you go take your ideas and take a break and we can work on it and from an educational outside perspective. But that leads to a great point. One of the things that we teach in our course writer's workshop is kind of getting into these writing mindsets. I know mindset is a pretty strong word, but like, because writer's block, creative block, it is a big deal.
00:22:14
Speaker
and you have to get in the right frame of mind to do that and one of those things that we do is we teach people to write like a mentor and not like a teacher right and that's one of the things to do but also the other thing is you want to make sure that you write for a little bit and then take some time off.
00:22:30
Speaker
and then write for a little bit and then take some time off. In fact, there has been science research that has shown that that is one of the best ways that people learn, which is why they changed the entire public school education system decades ago. They were like, you know what, instead of teaching a full day of math, let's teach a little bit of math every single day. In fact, let's teach math one day, take a day off, and then come back. There's a science to it.
00:22:52
Speaker
I didn't realize that they used to have like a whole day of math. That's crazy. Well, yeah, I mean, there have been people that have been studying education for a long, long time to try to figure out what are the best ways to do that. Do we do a saturation heavy? But what I was getting at with that is that we want to write in a way that
00:23:10
Speaker
is similar to the way somebody approaches our course. So somebody comes into our course with fresh eyes, they've never seen this stuff before. So when we're writing it, we wanna write and then put it away for a little bit and then come back with some fresh eyes. We're actually coming back into the writing process with a very similar view that our learners are gonna be coming into it. And so I teach people, don't ever plan a writing day, plan a writing phase or writing period of time, right? Give yourself that grace, but it's essential because you have to write it in a way
00:23:38
Speaker
to bring people in and out with fresh eyes. Okay. That's really helpful.
The Value of Cohort Learning
00:23:43
Speaker
I also really love that you're taking people through the cohort together because I'm like kind of what you said with masterminds, like you get feedback from each other and I'm sure that's going to be really helpful for people.
00:23:53
Speaker
Oh, hugely. I can't wait. Like we're launching. It's the very first one is in April. We have been spending a long, long time. We've worked one on one with people much like we did with you, but this is the first time that we're actually bringing people in to a process, to a formula where it's literally crystal clear. Actually, I taught a class on this last week for a mastermind and they were all blown away. They're just like, I've never heard this stuff before.
00:24:17
Speaker
So again, I got this, this affirmation, but literally at the end of that class, a lot of them had already put online courses out that had failed. And so they immediately were able to start retooling it and tweaking it. And if you know how to teach online, and I believe anybody can, you will sell more courses. Yeah, that's encouraging to hear. It is. Yeah. So if somebody wants to join the cohort or learn more about you, where can they do that?
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, teachwellonline.com is the place to go. If you're looking at the course writers coaching that is available now, you can actually go to teachwellonline.com slash writers because we want to help you write your course and that's the first step to do it. And we'll make sure that we include some links in the show notes to your free framework and then as well as to the group cohort. Yeah, that'd be great. Well, thanks for joining me, Chad. It's been a great conversation.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah.