STP 81 | A Simple Tech Stack for building an Online Course
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[00:00:00] James Marland: Welcome to another episode of the Scaling Therapy Practice with your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission driven leaders and teachers to launch life changing online courses. If you're turning in today, you're probably familiar with the joys and struggles of tech, the tech you need to make your course, launch your course, edit your course, host your course.
[00:00:37] James Marland: Whether you know it or not, you use a whole bunch of tech to do the things you need to do to launch your course. The type of techie you use needs the right type of ingredients, tools, a lot of people call that a tech stack or a stack of the tech you use, the mix of things you use to get your course out into the public.
[00:01:07] James Marland: Well, today we're going to do a deep dive into my tech stack. The essential tools and platforms that I use to. Turn my content into online courses. You're going to learn some valuable tips on what courses, what content to use, or what tools to use, when to use them, and why I use them. And general, my general principle is I use things that are easy to learn, I have lots of tech support from their creators, and they integrate well with the other items in the platform.
[00:01:42] James Marland: So I'm not trying to learn many, many, many different ways of doing things. Just learning one simple way to use my tech to get the best results. So if you've ever wondered what is the tech needed to launch an online course, I got you covered in this episode. Let's get started. Summer is the month for birthdays, and we've had a lot of birthdays in the Marland household. And with birthdays at the Marland household comes cake. We like our cake. We generally make black Joe cake, which is coffee. It's like a chocolate coffee cake with peanut butter icing. It's one of my wife's relatives, favorite recipes.
[00:02:30] James Marland: And since we like coffee, chocolate, and peanut butter in this house, We tend to get a lot of black Joe cake, but when you think about a cake, you're thinking about the icing and the flour and the cocoa and all the ingredients that go into it to get the cake. But what if you didn't have a pan to bake that cake in, would you be able to create that cake?
[00:02:55] James Marland: Or what if you didn't have the spoons or the oven or a timer or all the little things that you need to actually take. Those ingredients and turn it into something that is yummy and delicious. Well, today we're going to be talking about all the things that you need to take your yummy and delicious content and turn it into an online course.
[00:03:19] James Marland: We're going to call this your course tech stack. What is a tech stack? It's all the computers and things and programs that you use to take your content and to turn it into life changing online content. I'm going to go over. There are several things here that I use to create my courses, my online courses, and I'm going to describe the function of what I am doing, and then I'll give you some options for programs, and I'll tell you the one I use and why.
[00:03:57] James Marland: The first item in the tech stack, I think the foundational item influences a lot of your other choices, is where is the course going to be hosted? So you're looking for a hosting platform. This is often called the LMS or Learning Management System. And this is where your course files live. This is what people log into, they register with a username or password, they can see all your courses, your library of courses, and it tracks where they're It provides them the documents, the video, all the content, your updates.
[00:04:33] James Marland: And there are many, many, many of these choices to choose from. In fact, sometimes the choice of choosing a platform is overwhelming. I don't know about you, but I get overwhelmed when there's too many choices. I'm the type of person who I've been to McDonald's a thousand times in my life. If they add something new, I still don't even, I still don't know what I'm going to order.
[00:04:57] James Marland: Just order a cheeseburger, James. Um, it, when there's too many choices, it can bog you down. So, uh, what, what do you want in a hosting platform? You want something that's easy to use something that's user friendly, has good tech support. Uh, if you buy the most expensive or the, the one with all the bells and whistles, but you don't use it, you know, are you.
[00:05:23] James Marland: Are you getting your money's worth? I, I have two favorites, uh, two favorite favorites for my hosting platform. I really enjoy Kajabi and I've used Teachable in the past. Why I use Kajabi is it includes many of the other functions that I'm going to talk about all in one platform. It's not the cheapest platform, but it is one of the most cost effective when you When you add up all the other fees and tasks of all the other programs that you might need, Kajabi comes out neat, very close to cost for all the other things.
[00:06:04] James Marland: The other thing I like about Kajabi is it doesn't charge you a fee for every course you sell. Uh, yes, their upfront costs are a little higher, but you get to keep more of what you earn with your, or more of what you sell from your courses. I'm going to mention Kajabi quite a bit in this presentation because it does a lot and I use it a lot for other things.
[00:06:31] James Marland: The next item on your tech stack is payments or payment processors. There are two big ones in this area and what they do is they allow you to collect credit card payments, collect payments over the internet, they deal with customer disputes, they can allow you to send invoices or reoccurring payments.
[00:06:52] James Marland: Most of the time. Most of the time, the, uh, the platform where you host this will have a preferred integration. The one I have used in the past, uh, with Kajabi, the, the integration was Stripe. Now Kajabi has its own, uh, payment processor called Kajabi payments, which helps with, um, Collecting and taxes and things like that.
[00:07:20] James Marland: So, uh, Kajabi uses Stripe and it also can connect to PayPal and some other things. The other platform that I used was Teachable and I believe Teachable preferred PayPal. Both are well trusted, high secured. Sites. I did not have a problem with either one of them. I do think Stripe, uh, has, it looks prettier.
[00:07:46] James Marland: I don't know how to explain it. Just Stripe is, has some neat little graphics and graphs and charting that I'm sure are in PayPal, but maybe they're hidden behind the scenes. The next item that you're going to want for your online course, the next item in your Stripe. Uh, tech stack is your graphics, uh, how are you going to make your titles, your graphics, your presentations, uh, like even some editing a video, your social media content.
[00:08:16] James Marland: If you want to do that, I use a mix here. I am a big Canva pro fan. I've had a Canva pro account for years and it's something that I almost never Couldn't live without. And what I use that for is my title cards. I use it for my social media graphics. I, I have my podcast. So I update my, my, um, the, the podcast cards and the social media for that.
[00:08:47] James Marland: So, uh, Kim, you cannot go wrong with Canva pro and it's relatively cheap for what you get. I don't, I don't know what it is per year. Maybe it's 120, I think. For a whole year of awesome graphics, video, sound, motion, presentations, documents, it's, it's really got, it's the whole package. The other program that I'm starting to use more because it integrates with Kajabi and it's also included in the Kajabi price is Adobe Express.
[00:09:17] James Marland: Uh, that's included with Adobe Express. With the Kajabi platform and there are some integrations where it says, Hey, do you want to update this graphic and you push a button? It takes you into the Adobe express platform. You push save and bam, it appears in your program. It really, it removes a step. And of course, Adobe is high quality.
[00:09:39] James Marland: I like it for how it deals with text and some graphics and there, um, you get some credits, some AI credits, I believe. So it's, it's pretty awesome, uh, but you're going to need some sort of graphics to, for either your presentations as you teach your course or your graphics that you're going to add to your course hosting, like the webpage that you host.
[00:10:04] James Marland: Speaking of webpages, uh, it's very. Uh, important to have a webpage. I have a webpage that's hosted on Kajabi. I also have a webpage where I started. It's, I haven't removed that page yet. That one is on Squarespace. I love editing in Squarespace more than Kajabi. Um, just, I feel like it's what you see is what you get.
[00:10:27] James Marland: Editor is a little easier to use. Um, I can make, I can move things around. I think the editor in Squarespace also corrects the mobile version a little better or quicker, uh, you can do those things in Kajabi, but it's a, it's more of a. Edit it and then it shows up on the right side of the screen and you can't edit the right side of the screen.
[00:10:51] James Marland: It's not hard. It's just I do prefer the I edit something and it's changed automatically. I don't have to wait for anything, but you do need a web page for selling. And where are people going to go to find your course? Where are they going to get your lead magnet? If you have one, how are you going to give forms for people to sign up?
[00:11:13] James Marland: So definitely a web page is very important. It's important in the tech stack. And once again, it's included in Kajabi. Another thing you're going to need is a email. Like how are you going to connect with people? Who are you going to, how are you going to do your email newsletters or tell people that have signed up for your course that you either have a new one or you're doing a new iteration of it.
[00:11:35] James Marland: Uh, Kajabi has some built in. Email platformed so that's one less program that I have to use the other programs I've used that I've had good success with is MailChimp. I do like MailChimp They're free for a certain bit and the other one that I used that was fairly low cost with a lot of features was a Weber A Weber's a decent email program when you're just getting started.
[00:12:00] James Marland: I haven't used any other ones. I can't really talk about it recording Episode. So how are you going to record your show? I'm a fan of Descript. Descript transcribes as I talk. I'm talking, I'm doing, I'm recording the podcast as I am now. When I'm done, I'll be able to see the words that I'm done and I can edit the words, edit my ums and ahs, edit the pauses.
[00:12:25] James Marland: It's, uh, I can edit it like I do a Word document and then it has some built in music, built in graphics, some AI features to, uh, Summarize. So most of my summaries are built off the backbone of the AI. I'll talk and talk and talk, and I'll say, summarize this for me. And it will summarize it for me. And there's many other things that you can do with Descript.
[00:12:48] James Marland: They keep adding to it all the time. The, the new things is, um, templates for, for social. Posts and move, uh, you can record yourself or add in B roll and have moving images. It's pretty neat. You can see some examples on my YouTube channel. I stopped doing the video for now as, um, the video did take me a little bit longer to produce than just the audio podcast, but you can see some examples, uh, on the YouTube channel, but I do love the script.
[00:13:23] James Marland: Um, the other, the other, uh, Place people record in is zoom. You can record in zoom. Although if you're doing video, the, the video quality, unless you pay a higher price is not that good. The audio is okay. Oh, but Descript also includes a, it's called squad cast where you can record multiple people in different areas of the country.
[00:13:45] James Marland: And it sounds really good. It's. Uh, dual track, multi track recording, and then it just flows right into Descript, and uh, Descript's just getting better all the time, so I'm a big fan of that. Uh, and that's also where I edit, I, you're gonna wanna edit your, your courses, maybe just a little bit. Now you can record in Kajabi, or Kajabi, yeah, um, can you record in Kajabi?
[00:14:08] James Marland: I'm not sure. You can record in Canva. Canva is another place where you can record, but how are you going to edit it? Um, you can upload it into Descript or upload it to some other editor, but Descript is just a really good program that makes you sound, sound better than you, your equipment makes you sound.
[00:14:29] James Marland: For writing, I use two programs. Uh, I use, well, three. I, I type most everything into Google Documents. And then I edit it in Descript and chat GPT. I do have the pro version of chat GPT. It's probably the best 20 a month I spend. I use it a lot. Um, and it, it often when I'm doing podcasts or doing material, but I don't know how to organize it, I will, uh, Talk, I'll use the voice recorder and windows.
[00:15:03] James Marland: That's windows key H and I'll just talk. I'll talk for 15, 20 minutes and I'll say, Hey, organize my thoughts and it will give me an outline. And then I'll read that more organized outline. So definitely, uh, those, Those, uh, if you have a way to put in text, it will help you rewrite and re redo things in such a better and more concise way.
[00:15:31] James Marland: So AI, I'm using chat GPT and D script. For webinars, you, uh, you can use Zoom. I use a program called Sessions and all the programs I have will have links to it, but I use a program called Sessions. Why I use Sessions is because I got a really good deal on it on this tech site called AppSumo. So I have a lifetime deal for sessions where I can host webinars up to 100, maybe 150 people, and it has memory where it records all that.
[00:16:01] James Marland: And there's a landing page for it where you can register people. And then at the end, it tells you who attended and what their email was and how long they were there. So, uh, and, um, 1 of the big things I like about. The sessions program is there is a, a, uh, calendar feature where people can just schedule individual meetings with me.
[00:16:25] James Marland: So that has replaced calendly final thing that I can think of right now is social. And generally I use social. I use Facebook groups. Um, I post a lot into Facebook groups. I try to be a good neighbor. I try to talk to people about building online courses and help people. And then I have a group where people can post their questions for me.
[00:16:49] James Marland: So that's it. That's pretty much my tech stack. Those are the pots, pans, spoons, and oven of course creation so that it can take the yummy content and deliver it to people in a way that they will enjoy it. So what's your tech stack? Do you want to email me? James at CourseCreationStudio. com. James at CourseCreationStudio.
[00:17:10] James Marland: com. Let me know what you use and do you agree with some of the choices. Maybe you have a better hosting platform than Kajabi or Teachable. I'd love to hear what everyone is using. That's it for today. Thanks for listening to the Scaling It Therapy Practice. This is James Marland, hoping you put your mission in motion.
