STP 79
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[00:00:09] James Marland: Hello, and welcome to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission driven leaders to launch life changing online courses.
[00:00:22] James Marland: Today, we're going to be talking about launching a pilot course. What is a pilot course? Why do you need it? And how do you run one? But first, I want to let you know that I am deep into developing my next course, which is on how to help people overcome some of the technology challenges. With creating an online course.
[00:00:47] James Marland: This is things like lighting, videos, the programs, recording, editing, and publishing your online course on a, on a LMS or learning management system or software. So I'm doing that and I'm interviewing people right now. It's actually taking up quite a lot of my time, which is why the podcast is late.
[00:01:13] James Marland: However, these conversations are very valuable to me, and I enjoy listening to people share their stories, one, of the course that they're trying to make, and the good that they're trying to do in the world, and two, uh, the technology challenges and some of the problems that people come up against. And this, this part of creating a course, the interview part is vital for creating the right type of course.
[00:01:42] James Marland: One of the mistakes people make, and one of the mistakes I have made, is either making something too broad or too specific. So if the course is too broad, nobody's going to connect with it. They're like, how can they, how can they actually achieve what they're talking about? And if it's too specific, there's not a great audience for it.
[00:02:03] James Marland: So doing the research with real people who you're trying to solve a real problem, Or one of the problems you have the experience to solve is a vital part of doing an online course. So if you are thinking about doing an online course or you've started and then you got, you got stuck or you stopped because of a technology issue in the making of the course, I really want to talk to you.
[00:02:28] James Marland: So just go to courses. coursecreationstudio. com and you'll, there's, there's links on the homepage, but also a pop up on the homepage, uh, where you can schedule a short 15 minute meeting with me just to talk about some of your issues. This is not a sales meeting. It's an information meeting. You're actually helping me by just not complaining, but.
[00:02:53] James Marland: Uh, sharing your frustrations with me, uh, these are very valuable. So if you want to help me out, if you've struggled with some technical issues, please visit course that course creation studio. com and click one of the interview links. There's also a bunch of resources on the page, the blog page and, um, all the podcasts.
[00:03:18] James Marland: So we're going to get into our course or our course. We're going to get into our topic today. And the topic is launching your course, launching your pilot course, a smart way to success. So what is a pilot course? A pilot course is just a test drive of your course. It's your first interaction with the content with students.
[00:03:47] James Marland: You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to have all the content written. In fact, Part of running a pilot course is just having a week or two ahead of the students and you teach that and then get their feedback so that you can make the next course better. Imagine if you were going on a journey, so you're, you want to take.
[00:04:11] James Marland: a journey, uh, you know, a thousand miles across the country to your favorite destination. And you're going to, um, rent a car or buy a car. And you've never been in this car before. And you don't know where all the, the buttons are. You don't know all the features. You don't even know where the gas can is, um, where you put all the gas, or maybe it's electric.
[00:04:36] James Marland: You don't So you get in the car and you start out slow. You look where everything is. You test things out. You test the brakes. You test the gas. You are wondering what, what are you doing, uh, with the, the, the, the headlights and the blinkers and all that. You kind of test things out. And then once you get going for a while, let's say you, um, you pull into a rest stop and you get back in.
[00:05:06] James Marland: Well, your second trip with this car is much easier. It's much smoother. The acceleration is smoother. The braking is smoother. Yeah. Everything, it just is better once you have a little bit of experience. And in the same way that sort of like what a pilot course is, you are testing out your course to see how it functions and how it works.
[00:05:27] James Marland: You're getting feedback, real time feedback from people. on what they like about the course and what you could do better. You're co creating your pilot course with other people. So, the next point we're going to talk about is why do I need a pilot course? Why can't you just launch the whole thing without doing a test course, without doing a pilot course? I think this goes back to the fear of launching the whole thing. I know for myself, one of the things that's kept me from launching courses or doing things is the fear of being perfect, the fear of making mistakes, and it really holds you back, and you don't launch, like, if you do not put out a, your first course, if you try to get it perfect, It just gets longer and longer and other priorities pile on top of launching the course and all of a sudden you put in all this work and you have pages and pages of notes and lots of powerpoints or presentations or slides or you've made things on canva or if you recorded things and not liked it and then you don't know how to edit and then you put it down and then you never get back to it.
[00:06:52] James Marland: So one of the values of running a pilot course is just getting it out there, and people understand if you tell them that this is the first time you've run it or you're running a test, they understand it's not going to be perfect, and they're okay with that. They're okay with co creating, especially if you tell them I desperately need your feedback as we're doing this.
[00:07:16] James Marland: If you have the right people, you're solving the right problem and you're getting them the benefit, they don't care. They don't care if, if it's a little herky jerky. Is that a word? They don't care if it's a little, it's not as smooth as it could be because you're getting them the benefit. You're the expert and you're helping them.
[00:07:36] James Marland: And generally with pilot courses, you give them a lot of And you're responding to emails and you're getting their feedback. And there's some sort of, um, individualized component to the pilot course where you can, uh, answer their questions in your, in your hybrid sessions. Uh, some way to give them. A better experience and they understand and they appreciate the effort and the, the attention you give to their problems.
[00:08:12] James Marland: So one of the, one of the big benefits of running a pilot course is you just get it out there. You get it done. Another benefit of the pilot course is you. You don't have to have it all done before you launch. If you talk to some people and let them know you're solving a problem, and it's the right problem that they're solving, they will join your course before you even, um, before you even create it.
[00:08:44] James Marland: If you're solving the right problem, people will join your course before you actually make it. And so that lets you know that your idea is value, valuable. It lets you know that people want to buy it. It lets you know that you can actually sell that sort of course. The putting that in reverse, if you create it before you sell it, if you create it before you even know that you're solving the right problem, then you could be putting in a lot of work before you actually sell it.
[00:09:14] James Marland: Uh, get any return and in some instances, even if you, you're like 80 percent right, but you have 20, your messaging is wrong or you don't understand the problem quite exactly. You're going to miss your target audience. So the pilot course helps you hit your target audience and get things correct and help you sell your course before you even create one piece of content.
[00:09:45] James Marland: Another benefit is the feedback and doing it. You're, you have to teach your worst course. Before you teach your best course so and that that goes for everything, you know Your worst painting is probably your first painting. Your first book is probably your worst book Your first web page is probably your worst web page I know a lot of those things are true for me like my first social media post trying to do graphics and video Was probably my worst so you got to get some of that experience under your belt You know, you're an you are an expert on your topic.
[00:10:26] James Marland: You know what you're doing, but you need some feedback when you're teaching your course. What do what did people find valuable? What needs more explaining? And the more you run your course, the better you're going to get at teaching the course and giving people the value that they are looking for. So run your course, do a pilot.
[00:10:50] James Marland: Get, get five or 10 people together and run the course and get some feedback on that feedback. Somebody said feedback is the breakfast of champions. So get that feedback.
[00:11:04] James Marland: I know with, uh, with, with my course, one of, one of the feedback is it was, um, it was too long in one of my pilot courses. Like I was trying to run a three month course with three months of intense content. And so it wasn't specific as it needed to be. So that helps me develop my next course instead of a course on creating, um, an online course for.
[00:11:34] James Marland: From conception to delivery, and I'm going to be creating a course. My next course is going to be on the making of it. Like, if I can interact with people who already have a great idea and a proven concept, and they have some courage to get started, then I can help them make it. Like, I can get their videos online.
[00:11:58] James Marland: I can help them either learn or do a tutorial. A online course program that will sell it for them. Like I know how to do those things. So, but without running my first course, I might not have known that that's one of the more intense pain points of the, the people who are ready to make a course. Now there's other pain points along the way, you know, the, uh, being, um, afraid to launch is a different pain point than, than marketing.
[00:12:31] James Marland: You know, who's going to sell it with, and it's a different pain point. Then I don't know what camera to use. So I'm going to be focusing on the technical side. Some of the things I'm, I'm comfortable with doing all of it, but I'm more comfortable doing the, uh, the making it side. So how can I help people get their content out?
[00:12:52] James Marland: But I wouldn't get that feedback if I wasn't either in interviewing people, listening to people, and also trying to do a, a pilot course. And you're going to learn that in your pilot course, you could find in your pilot course, one key problem that, that, um, that you know how to solve. That could change how you deliver the rest of the course, but you're not going to find that until you launch your pilot course.
[00:13:30] James Marland: So we know we've covered. What is a pilot course? And why do I need a pilot course? The last is how do you run a pilot course? And I've been talking about this through the pilot course, but the first step for running a pilot course is having the right topic and talking to people about solving their problem, just like I want to do, you know, in the top of the show, I asked other people with technical problems, please let me know, because this is going to help me limit.
[00:14:01] James Marland: There's, there's probably 10, 000 technical problems. But if I hear the same 20 problems over and over again, I can hone my, my answers to solve those 10 problems. And then I will, I can offer that to people who said they have those 10 problems. And if those 10 people have the same problems, if that's a repeating pattern after interviewing you know, 15, 20 people, then I am more confident that, that, that sample of that pattern repeats over and over again.
[00:14:36] James Marland: And if I've done some research and I like, and I see, oh, there's like 10 other courses on technical problems, or there's, there's lots of research, uh, or there's lots of courses on, um, on, uh, lighting and. and editing and some of those other things, then that's going to help me understand that I'm on the right path.
[00:15:00] James Marland: And so then I can offer that to people who said they have that problem. Would you like to join my pilot course? So once you get some yeses to the pilot course, you set a launch date. When you set a launch date, you prepare the, the outline of the course and what you're going to offer and a week or two of material.
[00:15:24] James Marland: You don't, if you're offering a sixth week, six weeks course, prepare one or two weeks ahead. You run the course, you ask them, At the beginning of the course, what are people's needs? You ask them at the end of the course, you get some good feedback. Hey, what was most helpful? And you take notes for yourself for the next time you run it.
[00:15:45] James Marland: And then you, you say, what do you need more explanation on? And then you use that. What do you need more explanation on to help you make your next week of content? And also you follow the outline, so you can update the outline for that next week of content. And one of the big things about deadlines, you know, that you're going to, if you know, you're going to be teaching every week.
[00:16:08] James Marland: One of the big things on deadlines is you're going to get it done. You have two benefits. One, you're already an expert at the topic. You're, you're teaching on something that you're, you're good at, and you know about, you probably have too much information in your head about this topic. So getting the feedback about what people need to know and how you can help them informs you on how to create the next week's worth of content, and you're going to get it done.
[00:16:34] James Marland: That's the thing about deadlines. People, people get things done when there's a deadline. If you know you have a week to get the content done, maybe, maybe you're, you're finishing your last slide an hour before the course, but by gosh, gosh, gosh. Golly, you are going to get that done because you, um, you have a deadline.
[00:16:58] James Marland: So then you teach the course, you run the course and you ask the same amount of feedback and, uh, it's, you follow that process until you're done. And at the end of the course, you evaluate, you ask, you know, them the same questions, you get some feedback, maybe you get a testimonial or two, and then you, launch the course again with the updated course and maybe you offer it to the same list again of people who you did interviews for or you ask people to share the course with other people in their circles because they are going to be your best source.
[00:17:40] James Marland: The people who've taken the course and got the benefit are going to be a great source of referrals. And it's a simple process of getting started. One of the best things about the pilot course is you, you get started. Mark Twain said, the secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
[00:18:08] James Marland: And so once we set this in motion, once we've established a problem and we know we can solve it for people and we teach it a few times, it gets easier and better. And it builds confidence. When you help people and they get the results and they are appreciative of your course, you build confidence and it's going to change the way you market.
[00:18:30] James Marland: It's going to change the way you teach that confidence is going to grow and build, but you got to, you got to get that course out. You got to get that first pilot course out. So that's, uh, what a pilot course is. There's lots of material online, um, YouTube and other things about what pilot courses are. So.
[00:18:55] James Marland: I would encourage you to, if that is interesting to you, to, um, you know, contact me, you know, ask me, what is, how do you run a pilot course or just look up a couple of videos on some of the stages of doing a pilot course, Graham Cochran in his, um, I think it's called the Graham Cochran show. Uh, he has a YouTube video.
[00:19:17] James Marland: In a book on on some of these elements, and that's where a lot of this inspiration comes from. Also, the heart centered marketing with Joey Ragona, one of my mentors recommends running a pilot course or a hybrid course and doing doing the work together. And actually, Joey's like, all your courses are pilot courses.
[00:19:39] James Marland: All your courses are. Experiments and, uh, that kind of takes some of the pressure off with wanting to be perfect.
[00:19:51] James Marland: Uh, thanks for listening to the show. I encourage you to get started planning your pilot course. Know that a pilot course takes some of the pressure off and you're able to run a course without knowing you're, you're getting the benefit. And also knowing that you don't have to be perfect and you're going to get a lot of experience, a lot of feedback, and just, it's going to help you teach your best course.
[00:20:22] James Marland: So get, get started, get going. Um, I want to thank you for listening. If you could take a minute or two to go to iTunes or wherever you're listening to this and rate and review the show, that would be amazing for me. It helps me find people. If you are working with other people and they're like, I want to launch a course, send them my way.
[00:20:44] James Marland: I need, I would really appreciate if, um, I got to talk to some people and learn their problems about what they need help with. It's probably 10, 000 things. So I'm trying to find the pattern of what I can help people the best with. And I can't do that without your help. I can't, I can't to narrow down my topic to something that helps a lot of people without talking to the people that need the help.
[00:21:11] James Marland: So if that sounds like you and you're like, yeah, I do have technical problems. I, I understand what he's talking about, about the fear of getting started. Even though I have all this information, uh, go to the podcast webpage, courses, course. coursecreationstudio. com and click one of the links to set up a meeting with me.
[00:21:33] James Marland: I'd really appreciate it.
[00:21:36] James Marland: Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you put your mission in motion.
