#1 Why course creators get stuck and what to do about it
Often, I see clients who start out on their course creation journey all fired up and excited about creating their course only for them to falter halfway through. It’s happened often enough that I’ve come to think of it as a rite of passage for course creators. In this episode, I’ll discuss why course creators get stuck (Hint: it’s usually mindset issues) and give 4 tips to help stuck course creators get unstuck.
Listen to this episode on spotify
Things You’ll Learn in this Episode of Sidekick to Success:
- The 4 most common reasons why course creators get stuck
- Why passive income isn’t really passive
- Tips on how to overcome the 4 most common blocks course creators experience
It’s a common occurance
Often, I see clients who start out on their course creation journey all fired up and excited about creating their course. Only for them to falter halfway through.
It’s happened often enough that I’ve come to think of it as a rite of passage for course creators.
When I follow up with them, they’re usually apologetic and hard on themselves – feeling like they’ve let me down or let themselves down.
And the truth is there really isn’t anything to apologise for. You see it’s all part of the course creation journey.
So why do course creators get stuck?
Well a lot of course creators get sold on the idea of passive income.
I mean we’ve all heard of passive income and it sounds really attractive doesn’t it? The idea that you create something once and then sit back and watch the money roll in.
But course creation is anything BUT passive.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that course creation is the opposite of passive.
Not only does it take quite a significant amount of work to create a course or group coaching program but it’s also going to bring up ALL your stuff.
You see creating a course (or creating anything actually) is all about putting a part of yourself out into the world for everyone to see. And that’s what brings up a lot of stuff for people.
Things like imposter syndrome,
“Who am I to share this knowledge? I’m no expert”
Or fear of being seen
“Ugh, I look and sound so terrible on video. Do I have to include videos in my course?”
Or another biggie. Fear of failure
“What if I go through all of this effort and everyone hates it?”
Or my own personal favourite, perfectionism
“It’s just not good enough. I can’t expect people to pay for this.”
And that’s where they get stuck. It gets hard, and overwhelming and they start to doubt themselves.
So how do you get unstuck?
Well, over the years I’ve offered various solutions to my clients that helped them get unstuck, so I thought I’d share them with you.
So here are my 4 tips to help you get back on track when you’ve started creating a course and got stuck.
Here’s Tip #1 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
The easiest way to overcome imposter syndrome is to understand that to be an “expert”, you only need to be one step ahead of the people you want to teach. That’s it.
The people who want to learn from you don’t care about your certifications. They care about whether you can help them. And in a lot of instances, having someone just one step ahead is actually better than having an expert.
An expert may be too far ahead and can’t relate to the initial struggles that beginners experience.
So please don’t let imposter syndrome hold you back.
Here’s Tip #2 Overcoming the fear of being seen
Call it fear of being seen, fear of being visible, or fear of showing up it’s all the same thing. Essentially what you’re really afraid of is not being liked. And it usually shows up when people try to record their first course videos.
The problem with THIS fear is that video is one of the best ways to build trust and engage your audience.
We’re all visual beings and being able to see someone’s face while they talk allows us to connect with them more. And building a connection is important when you’re teaching something.
People get to see your expressions and hand gestures and that makes for a much more engaging experience than reading a pdf. And when people are engaged they learn better and ultimately that’s the main goal for any course
Here’s Tip #3 Overcoming fear of failure
My favourite tip for overcoming this one is a worst-case scenario exercise. And it works like this. Sit down with a notepad and pen and ask yourself this question: “What’s the worst thing that can possibly happen if my course fails?
Then write down as many answers as you can.
You’ll probably end up with things like:
“No one will buy it”
Or “People will hate it”
Or “Everyone will ask for a refund”
Or the worst worse-case scenario “I’d get sued”
Then look at your list and consider the REALITY of each statement and what you COULD do if that situation arose or how you could mitigate that situation.
If no one bought it – you could make some changes/improvements and try again.
If people hated it – you could thank them for their feedback and make some changes/improvements and yup you guessed it, try again.
If everyone asks for a refund? You could mitigate this one with some decent terms and conditions upfront.
And if the worst-worse case scenario happened – you could also mitigate this with proper terms and conditions.
So, the cure to fear of failure is to be as prepared as possible to handle that failure.
Here’s Tip #4 Overcoming Perfectionism
Your course doesn’t need to be ‘perfect’ especially the first-time round. It doesn’t need to include all.the.things. You don’t need to invest in the fanciest and most expensive tech.
Because the reality is that you’re going to run through that first course and immediately see how you’re going to add to it, tweak it and improve it. Then your second course will be better. And the next one after that, even better.
It doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to help someone. It’s really that simple.
Episode recap
So those are my 4 tips to help you get unstuck
Tip #1 – You don’t need to be an expert. As long as you can guide someone through some kind of transformation you can create a course.
Tip #2 – Being seen is important for a course creator and as long as you can help someone solve an urgent problem they really don’t care what you look or sound like
Tip #3 – Failure is nothing but a learning experience and you will be ok and bounce back
Tip #4 – It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to help someone.
So please don’t let your mindset stop you from sharing your talents with the world.
Set a deadline to create your course and get it done. It’s all about progress and not perfection. You can’t fix what you don’t launch. So create it, launch it, learn, tweak, and repeat.
If you need help getting unstuck so you can get your course or program done, take a look at my 1:1 monitoring services. Maybe all you need is a partner at your side guiding you through the process to help you realise your vision of a successful course business.