3 Steps to Create Your *Million Dollar* Online Course Idea!

Recently, it feels like everyone and their dog wants to create an online course. Now I’ve sold $14 million worth of online courses over the last 5 years. And I know that it can feel paralyzing to come up with a concept for your online course. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. The three steps to really identify what is your business idea? How can you create an online course business? Now, if you also want to talk to a real human being about doing this, there’s a link below this video to apply to work with me and my team so we can help you develop your online course idea. But right now let’s get into those three steps and get your course out there.

The three steps are unique positioning, research, and then validate to make sure that actually people are going to want to buy what you have to sell in your online course. So I used to be a journalist and when it comes to unique positioning, it truly has to, and I mentioned this in last week’s video, it has to come from within you. The biggest mistake you can make when you’re creating an online course is just basing it off of market research, and what’s out there externally and what you’ve seen work for other people. So being a journalist, I talked to a lot of people and a lot of people who didn’t want to talk to me or didn’t feel like they had anything to say, but you always can find a story within each person. If you have a story, you have a niche. So these questions really help you get to the root of what your own hero story is, which really is the basis for your entire online course and every piece of marketing material, copy, funnel, et cetera, that you might want to build.

So what’s a problem or an obstacle that you faced and overcome? What’s a pivotal moment in your life? When you think back on all of the big things that have happened to you, what was a really pivotal moment for you that taught you a lot? Career expertise or experience? This one’s a really easy one. What are you good at? What have you been doing in your career that you could then transition into a profitable online program? Skill that you’ve mastered? What do people ask you for help with? This is a huge blind spot for a lot of people. For me, I took for granted what my genius zone was until I really started to do the work and realized that everyone in my life was asking me to help them make videos. And that I often got praised and complimented for how well I explained things. So here I am. And then the last one is, what could you talk about for the rest of your life?

When I was a journalist, I would always ask people what lights you up? When they felt like they had nothing to say, and that gets the ball rolling on what is it that you love to talk about? When you’re at a dinner party, what is your favorite topic of conversation? And that says a lot about what you can create your online course on. It’s something that you get into flow with. It’s something that you endlessly research. It’s something that you have a lot of curiosity around. So those are the questions.

Then from there, the biggest thing is of course, and online program isn’t just about teaching tactics. You’re online right now. There’s a lot of free information on the internet about everything. So why do people pay? I’ve mentioned this before, but people pay for transformation, not information. So the easiest way to do this is when you think about all these questions and you go through these, and you journal on them, which I do recommend doing. You then want to turn it into a transformation statement. So you go with – I went from [fill in this blank]. So I went from [____ to ____], to ____, so that I could [____].

It has to start with you because generally what you’ve been through is a mirror for what you’re ultimately going to teach other people and the clients that are going to show up for you because they’re going to relate to your experience. So I went from, for example, burnt out entrepreneur trading my time for money to scaling my expertise through online courses so that I could elevate my income, impact and authority on autopilot. That’s a transformation statement.

I wanted to share a few more from real human beings who created real online courses using this as the beginning of creating their concept. So the first is this, “I help couples go from overwhelmed by the process of adopting their first child to feeling at ease in the journey so that they can welcome their baby into a loving family home.” And the course is priced at 697.

Liz Sharma’s is, “I help expats get confident in conversational and European Portuguese, so they can feel confident, comfortable, and safe on their travel.” Her price point of her course is 997, and she just crossed 6 figures with her course in less than 10 months.

And then this one, “I help athletes go from being stuck after their athletic career to finding passion and purpose so that they can achieve fulfillment beyond the game.” And this course is priced at $1,700.

So, one transformation and one singular person that you’re trying to help. That’s what leads to a scalable online program. If you try to teach everything to everyone, you stay in the cycle of having to customize what you’re doing to each individual person. So having a very clear and concise transformation, and a very clear idea of who your ideal client is and where they are on their journey, when they need your help makes your program a lot easier to run. And it makes it much easier to market because you do know who is a fit, and you also know who’s not a fit, which is equally as important.

On that note, last week, I shared that there was a Forbes feature that came out where it talks about mistakes that I’ve made, that led to building this multi-million dollar online course business. And I think that’s really important to understand you don’t have to be perfect or be the epitome of the hero outcome to be a really great teacher at what you do. You just need to have lived the transformation and have mostly completed the transformation, but you don’t have to be perfect. The more you are a tactician, the more you’re in it, the better the teacher you are, because experience really is the best teacher. Now I do have a really exciting update I want to share with you at the end of this to show just how powerful this all is when you put it all together. So I can’t wait to share that with you, but right now let’s get into research.

This part is so important because one of the biggest misconceptions about launching an online course is that you have to have an audience. You don’t, you actually are very capable of building an audience from zero. And this is something that I work hand in hand with our clients on doing, because your audience is out there. Just posting on social media and expecting people to come to you though is not the right way to go about it. So you want to go to Google, Amazon, Facebook groups, Instagram, and YouTube, to find your ideal clients and not wait for them to find you. For example, if I looked up the topic, marriage advice for men, I can guarantee you, I’m going to find a ton of ideas to put inside of my course and to create the transformation I want to create. I’m also going to find a ton of real human beings that are giving feedback on books, influencers, and media that are out there on that topic that will give me great intel into who my ideal client really is, and really find the best way for you to position your unique offer.

So when I go to Google and I look up marriage advice for men, I’m getting both content and curriculum ideas for my online program. And I’m figuring out who my ideal client is. So first thing that comes up is seven genius marriage tips from a divorce lawyer, and this is really great information for what people actually need and the kind of help that they’re looking for and ideas to put into your course. So I would go through the first page and basically come up with a list of top websites, top content and articles that are really helpful for you in building a curriculum and start to follow these resources across social media platforms, because it’s going to help you tap into that community.

And again, this is not me saying copy what they’re doing, but the proof is out there. You are not meant to have the most unique course in the world that nobody else has ever created. It’s actually great if there is proof of profit already on the marketplace, based on books, courses, workshops, conferences, coaches. That being on the market shows you that there’s an audience of people who are actually ready to buy from you.

So the next thing is going to Amazon. So this is one of my favorite things to do when I’m doing market research. So I go to specific books on the topics that I’m thinking of creating a course on. And if I go to this one, attached and I go to the reviews page, I want to see the top reviews, and I want to see what really made a difference in getting results for the reader, because that again is going to help me figure out what to include. So I would highlight this. Tendencies of different attachment types. And then self-assessment was a really big key here. And then I would also go all the way down to the really bad reviews on this. I.E, this is a recent one, “Expected more explanation of how people come to have their style attachment in the first place. Understanding background would have made this much more enlightening for me.”

That’s perfect because you can go, okay. Maybe that’s something that I actually have unique genius on, and I can include that into my program and my transformation. At this point, you’re gathering all the ideas you can to create a very successful formula to take your client from zero to hero.

And then the next thing is on Facebook, this proof to you just how many people there are in any kind of niche. So if you look up Facebook groups for marriage advice for men, there’s thousands upon upon thousands of people and groups that are specifically talking about this. There are 99,000 people in one of these groups. And if you tap into that, get into that group and start really identifying what these people are talking about, what they need help with, that allows you to know your client inside and out and do the research you need to create the best program.

Same thing on YouTube. Start watching the top five ranking videos for your topic, figure out what are people looking for? Go into the comment section. See what’s being responded to, what’s not being responded to, good comments and bad comments.

And then on Instagram, this is a great way to build your network. So if I look up marriage advice, there’s 261,000 posts on this. I’m going to go through and I’m going to follow anybody who’s relevant to my ideal client and needs the help that I’m going to be providing so I can build my community that way. I’m going to send out voice notes to them. And I’m also going to engage with anybody who’s commenting on these posts and is also somebody who could potentially use my help, because that allows you to build your audience from absolute scratch.

So now you’ve done the market research and you know that there’s an audience out there for you. And in addition to that, you’re truly starting to understand who these people are that actually need your help and what kind of value they’re looking for from you. Now here’s the deal. That’s one thing. But the other piece of this that truly is my secret sauce and the key to validating, whatever it is that you’re going to create before you create it. So you don’t put a course into the world and then nobody wants to buy it is to actually speak to these people.

So once you start to identify people who need your help through all of those resources, you actually want to reach out to them, have conversations with them, ask them what do they truly need? What is it that they’re looking for? What are they most struggling with? What’s the value they’re looking for? And most importantly, what is it costing them to not have the solution that they need? So in the case of marriage advice for men, you could imagine how much that costs. It’s costing you mental stress, your relationships, potentially your family, your home, divorce lawyers. That’s a really high cost. Whereas if they can invest into a program that actually works for them, it’s saving them all of that. So think about it in terms of what are all the things that people have tried to find the solution prior to actually working with you? And that helps indicate why you can charge a price point that truly reflects the worth of the program. And not just based off information and charging for information, because there’s enough free information on the internet for people.

Now, in addition to that, like I said, people don’t buy the thing. They buy the outcome of the thing, and the feeling that the thing gives them. For example, avocado. Some people might look at this and be like, whatever. I buy one of those once a week. Other people look at an avocado and they think that’s a luxury item I can get at the grocery store. One of those people, might remember was Geoffrey, who I talked to, not that long ago. And at that point, which was just a year ago, he could barely afford an avocado.

We would go to the grocery store. We would look at an avocado and we say, one day we’ll buy the avocado. Yeah, it was pretty bleak.

Now this really brings us all full circle because Geoffrey’s hero’s story revolved around always struggling in relationships and wanting to figure out to truly create a healthy relationship. And that’s what he’s built his entire program around. And he is saving marriages. He’s creating incredible results for his clients. And now Geoffrey can afford all the avocados he needs. He just recently shared this update with me and he said, “I remember this time last year, I was lying down on the floor in my home office, staring at a whiteboard with my goal earnings on it. The number was 173,000 per year that I wanted to make. That’s it, that’s all I wanted to make. $173,000 per year. This year after only 4 months, we’re hitting $350,000 in cash collected, which means we’re trending above a $1 million mark for his online course this year.” And this is proof of everything that I just shared with you.

Geoffrey’s not using paid ads. He started with zero audience. He started with zero course a year ago, and he’s now on track to do a million dollars in revenue with his program because he truly took the time to understand what his unique positioning was, the research in the marketplace of what currently was out there and how he could differentiate and add to it, and validated it by interviewing and speaking to real people about what they actually need. So we pull it all together, really magical things can happen. Now I’m going to go deeper on this later, but I wanted to show you something else before we get into it in next week’s video. You might think that Geoffrey has this huge audience. He doesn’t. Geoffrey has an audience of 13,000 subscribers and started from 0 a year ago. And yet, like I said, on track to do a million dollars in revenue.

So you don’t need a big audience. You need a targeted audience to really succeed with an online course. And I’m going to dive deep into that in the next video.

And if you want to talk to a real human being about how to do this, click here apply to work myself and my team.

Thanks so much for watching!