Essential Ingredient #3

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. Hello, in today's episode, we're going to continue our series on the five essential ingredients to creating your online course.

And today's episode is essential ingredient number three, which is practice. So in the past two episodes we talked about, number one, what is the goal problem and transformation you are creating for your learner's number two was using feedback to help your learner succeed. And three is practice. Alright, so how do you put your learner's into practice? Again, the default most people have when they're creating an online course is just to give information, package it up in a video and put it out there. Sometimes people use worksheets, which typically people are using as sort of Mad Libs, that's what I was thinking of, where, you know, it's, it's just sort of helping people track along with the video. So maybe key concepts with, you know, fill in the blank, or, you know, different notes or whatever else. So it's really just helping people create notes based on the video to help them stay engaged in I would question and I would challenge you to really think about instead of having worksheets like that have a worksheet or some type of online activity, or better yet an activity that they can do to apply what you're teaching back in their real world. And so when you think about practice, the goal of practicing is to get the reps in, so you can actually do the thing you want to do. And you have to do the thing in order to get the results. So again, if we go back to our example of losing 10 pounds to strength training, you can learn all about strength training, but it's not until you actually pick up some weights that you get in the game. And you can actually get to the goal, which is to lose 10 pounds, but through strength training, right? So how do you create actionable practice for people to help them actually do the thing you want them to do?

How do you create those practice activities. And really, it's if you have, you know, taken step one, where you've put, you know, you've put some steps down that people can take in order to get to the result, then what you're doing is you're going to look at each one of those steps. And each step should have some type of actionable practice, that you can have them do something that they can go back and apply in their world in order to do it. Right. So if your goal is to sell 25 courses, for example, then step one is to sell the first course right? Then how do you practice that? Well, you've got to get on the phone, you've got to have some conversations, or you've got to find traffic and lead them to your to your sales page in order to start getting those sales. And so in just my saying that there are multiple things that you can put somebody into actually doing right, they have to have a sales page, they have to know how to get on the phone, they have to, you know, have have at least an idea of what they're selling, whether it be pre selling, or the actual course itself. Right. And so, in and of itself, there are several activities that you can have them do. And in fact, they could be doing all of those activities if you break it off into smaller steps, which I recommend, right? And so the activity becomes go do the thing I'm teaching you and then come back and do the next step. So at the end of the course, they've actually done all the steps that they need to do in order to get to the outcome. Well Which, if they've done that, then essentially, as you're teaching it, you're saying, You know what, if you've done all the things that I've given you to do, you will reach that transformation. So when you think about practice, it's getting them as close to the real work, their real goal as possible. And a lot of times, this means simulating what they're actually doing, or giving them something that they're doing, and having them do it, and then again, go back to the previous podcast, or we're talking about feedback, then you're giving them feedback based on the actions that they've taken. So if you're looking to put this online, the result of practicing a step could be something, again, that's automated, maybe they submit something to you, maybe they show you, you know, what they've done, be at a graphic or an actual, you know, like a URL, right? Like, if they're building their sales page, they could submit the sales page to you, and you could provide feedback for them. Yeah, if it's, if you want it totally automated, maybe they submit when they have sold one course, or they've sold 25 courses, or whatever, right? So. So you're actually having them go out and practice, people need to be actively doing something, in order to actually get results. But you can't just think about results, you have to actually go out and do them. So the end, again, the best example of this is if you want to lose 10 pounds to strength training, you cannot think about strength training, you have to actually lift up some weights and and do the reps, you have to do the thing. So think about that, as you're building your course. What is What are the reps? What are the weights that people need to lift in order to get through to the other side of solving the problem? And really think through that in terms of your program? How do you want them to practice? How do you want to put them in action. A lot of times when we're building courses, we'll actually do scenarios, which are really just sort of interactive case studies, if you will. So you're taking a specific situation that probably matches one that they're in and through kind of simulating what the problem is how to resolve it, you're actually just helping them do do that and practice in a safe environment, right. So for example, if you're an airline pilot, you don't just go up and say, Well, I'm going to practice flying, by going out and flying a passenger aircraft with 300 people on it, right, you don't learn the concept, and then go and fly.

A commercial airplane just doesn't happen, which is a good thing. And so what what happens is they have a simulated activity, so they go into a simulator. And they're they're taught that concept, they go into a simulator, they practice. And then, you know, after a series of probably many, many practices, they actually go out and and they can fly for real. So when you think about, you know, each step along your path, are there things that need to be simulated before they would go out, you know, kind of into a live environment, if you will, and fly the plane? How can you set up practice scenarios? How can you set up various, maybe, you know, situations that they may find themselves in that they can practice or different things like that. One of the things that we do a lot of is if you have to have difficult conversations, there are ways to practice those difficult conversations before you go out and actually have one that would be an example of something that we would create as a practice activity in an online course, is we would run the learner through various various ways to practice a conversation based on the the model that they've been given. And, you know, however they answer the questions, leads them to, Hey, you did a great job or not so much, right? And then they're able to actually practice that before they go and do that in the wild before they go and do that in in real life. So sometimes it's just a matter of putting them in to situations where they can practice Other way. Other times, it's simulating that practice. And then other times, it's just you want them to go out and do the thing. And that is really the practice. The biggest way to think about this is how can you put them in action? How can you make them an act? Do participant in what you're teaching. Take away, just the passive listening and watching and put them in to action, have them do something. And based on what they've done, maybe they get additional training, maybe they get additional feedback, maybe they get additional practice, maybe there's a next level or next step. All of those things are possible when they actually get out of watching and into doing. So think about how you can make that happen within your courses. Alright, that is essential ingredient number three, and in the next episode, we are going to cover the essential ingredient number four, which is milestones and targets. All right, until next time.