Essential Ingredient #2

Hey everybody, it's Tara, Bryan, and you are listening to the course building secrets podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business. If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the course building secrets podcast. Alright, and today, today's episode, we are going to cover the second essential ingredient that you need in your online courses. So if you haven't listened to the first one, go ahead and go back in episode and grab the first essential ingredient, which was have a specific goal centered around a problem that leads to a transformation. So three essential things that you need there, a goal, a problem and a transformation. And if you haven't done that in your online course, that is the very first place to start. So go back to that last episode and check it out. And once you've done that, now we can move to the second essential ingredient, which is feedback. So are you providing feedback to your learners in your online course, feedback is one of the most essential ways that you can keep people engaged and really help lead them down that path to success. And again, the important part of this is, it's not enough just to put something out there. And that's full of information and hope that it gives you some revenue in your business. Right? If you truly are creating an online course business or using an online course to grow your business, you, you have to be really intentional about helping people get results. Because here's the deal. We talked about this in the last one, right, there's a problem that that person is having, there's there's a reason why they're not already at that goal. And so our job is to help them get to that get to that goal and give them the fastest path to that goal. And feedback is one of the easiest, but most powerful ways that we can help enhance their experience and really helped them actually get results. So I want you to consider,

just like we talked about in the first episode with the classroom is, you know what happened, what would happen if you would go in and to a class, you know, again, in high school, or college or whatever. And the teacher just gave you a list of topics. And they just talked to the entire semester, there were no quizzes, there were no exams, there was just no way to know whether or not you actually were doing well in the, in the class or not, like when that frustrate you. If you, you know, spent all this time, and you know, going to class and doing the homework and doing all the things and you didn't know if you are on the right track, you didn't know if you were learning what you were supposed to be learning if you were, you know, doing well or, you know, whatever, right. And so that is one of the most essential things that we can do is provide feedback, which is really just support and recognition along the path doesn't have to be particularly formal, it can be, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. But it's it requires you to really think about where are the places throughout the course that you can recognize and, you know, give feedback to your people in the form of, you know, either encouragement or assessment or practice. And we have a whole another ingredient episode on practice. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time there. But really, the result of the practice is where you would you would give feedback, right? So if you think about it as the most essential form like if you were to give a quiz or some type of assessment, right, like so you're, you're picking a point in time, usually after a lesson or module. And you say, Okay, so let's, let's just reflect how did you do? How, you know? How much are you able to, you know, apply, or use, and take the steps to do that, right. So when we're thinking about an online course versus education, we're really the reason that we're building an online course is to help people get a result. So everything that we do is leading them to that result. And so really, at its most essential form, like you want them to take action, based on what you have taught in that lesson, or that module. So have them take action, perhaps it's something that you want them to do. And like an assignment or, you know, something specific, right, like they have to go out and do something, then if they either tell you, yep, I did that, or they they submit an activity or you have a conversation, whatever it is, however you want to give them, you know, find out what that how well they did on whatever it is you want them to do, then the combination of that is that you're giving them some sort of feedback, right? You're saying Good job, you're saying, Yep, that's great, or here work on these things? Or, hey, you know what, I noticed that you didn't do this activity, why don't you go back and do it. All of those different things are feedback. Now, when you think about a course, and you think about putting it online, there are lots and lots of ways to automate the feedback that you want to give them. And really, it's just being paying attention to where they are, if you've noticed that somebody has completed a module. Or again, if you automate that, then once they complete it, then you're saying, Hey, good job, you've completed this module, or this is a critical piece of the puzzle, great, you know, good job, or Now to do this or unlock something new or something happen, there's

a million different ways to give feedback. But it's really that just recognizing that they've done the thing that you want them to do, be it watching the video or doing a worksheet or actually applying what you're teaching to an actual thing. So a couple of really tactical examples, when you reach a milestone in a course platform that that I associated with. So you get so you get $1,000 in sales, you get $5,000 in sales, or 1000 $100,000. In sales, you get recognized by having you know, a an email that says, hey, great job, you reach this milestone, and then they send a physical box in the mail with some with a pin and a T shirt and different things like that. That's, you know, a form of feedback, because they're recognizing the progress that they want them to take. The other example is that if you assign them something to do, be it an assignment, some sort of simulated practice, or anything else that you want them to do, then when they actually do that, you send them an email, or you send them a video, or they get something in the mail, right? There's lots of different ways to do it. But it's really essentially thinking about taking out the path that you just created in the first episode. And that each specific milestone, what is it that you want to give them feedback on? Right? And most of the time, this falls under sort of what are the essential things that they need in order to keep moving forward? That's typically where you start in feedback, right? So if we go back to the example of losing 10 pounds through strength training, maybe you give them feedback on when they submit that they've lost their first pound. Or maybe it's when they have completed their first exercise, or their fifth exercise or whatever, right? Or maybe it's when they can lift certain pound amount, right? So they can lift their first 10 pounds, or they can lift their, you know, lift 50 pounds, whatever it is, right? You're you're sort of just spending the time to give them that recognition and acknowledgement along the path based on what you think, makes the most sense as they're going. So it doesn't mean like you have to give them a quiz. After every module, it doesn't mean that you have to, you know, give them a million emails based on every little tiny thing that they do. but it's being really intentional about how you can, you know, kind of give them that feedback loop, right? This is this is, you know, working well, you're doing a great job.

Here's some things to think about. And, and really participating with them and giving them that encouragement and feedback along the path. Now, like I've mentioned, this is where a lot of times people start to waver because they say, Well, this is why I have to do this live. This is why I, you know, I can't create an online course is because I have to give them feedback, I have to know where they are and how they're doing. And that's true. And that may be really important for you. But that's where when you can be intentional about it and planful, about the feedback that you want to give and when you want to give it, then you can actually automate it, you can spend the time to figure out what makes the most sense, from their perspective. And when you do that, then it becomes something that's super valuable for them. Regardless of if you show up, personally or not, right, and there are times when you can show up, I know that I have a client who does a big graduation, at the end, when people reach the transformation, they reach the goal that they have for them. I have another client who likes to offer a coaching call when people get to a particular place in the course. And so all of those things are not only incentives for people to keep going, but but they're specific and strategic places where you're helping people jump over any, any sort of ambiguity or, or hurdles that they're going to have along the path. And so really think through that and how you can give feedback. How do you want to give feedback doesn't have to be expensive. It can just be something that you know acknowledges where they are and that they've taken action. Alright, that is the essential ingredient, the second essential ingredient. In the next episode, we are going to talk about the third essential ingredient which is practice. All right.