Jumpstart Your Course: How to Go From Idea to Paid Without Creating the Whole Thing First, - Christina Rava

Website: https://www.christinarava.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@christina_rava

00:00 Hi, I'm Christina Rava and welcome to Jumpstart your course this is about a simple three-week plan to validate your course and get paid to build it. So a little background on me i help coaches and course creators grow their income and impact with AI powered tools, scalable offers and high leverage strategies so that's the official bio, But what that actually means is that I help coaches and course creators use AI to improve their efficiency and productivity i also help people with creating and selling one to many offers, like online courses that don't require trading time for money.  

00:38 And also I help you follow proven strategies that help you to see success faster without having to figure things out on your own. And one of my favorite strategies to teach that we're going to be covering today is selling your course before you create it. So why pre selling matters? You this, you know, comes as a surprise to some people, but you don't need to build your course before you can sell it and make money. Pre selling actually has some several advantages.  

01:10 1 is proof that there is demand for your offer so that you don't have to guess whether people you don't have to create it and then guess and hope and cross your fingers that people are going to buy it. It also gives you the cash flow upfront, which is really nice you don't have to wait to get paid. And it also gives you clarity in the sense that, well, first of all, clarity of people are going to buy it, but then also when people do buy it and they're going through it and they can you feedback and ask you questions about it, It gives you a much better idea of what people need and want.  

01:42 So that when you're creating the content, it's not, it's not like in a bubble, you don't, you don't have to guess what content to create people will tell you. And also pre selling helps you avoid overthinking and wasted effort. So a mistake that a lot of course creators make is that they spend months planning out their course, figuring out, you know, what content to include, creating the content, editing the content. And a lot of times that process is like really dragged out. And at the end of the day, you don't even know whether or not you're going to make any sales, you know, to give you a return on that investment of time.  

02:24 And so with pre selling, by validating your idea first, you can just know right away whether there's demand for it, if people like the way you outlined the course and the things that you promised them. And so that helps you avoid the overthinking and the wasted effort. So today we're going to cover the three-step process to launch your course in just three weeks so basically one step per week how to go from idea to income, even if you haven't created anything yet. And then some simple tools and time saving tips to help you take action quickly. So week one, Step 1 is really getting super clear and making sure that you have the right course idea.  

03:07 So these are some suggestions on how to identify a course idea that sells. First is look for overlap between your experience, your expertise, what you know, and what your audience wants, right? Obviously, a good course has to fit both of those it has to be something that you're an authority in that you have a lot to share on that topic but at the same time, it has to be something that there is demand for and interest in you.  

03:38 You don't necessarily have to be the top expert you don't have to have, you know, a decade of experience or certain qualification or certification or anything like that. But it should be something that you can teach confidently. Like what's something that you can just like stand up and talk about without any prep or without any notes like what's a topic that you know very well and that you have personal experience with. So as long as you are are a few steps ahead of the people who you're going to be training in your course, then that's fine so let's say you are a watercolor painter right you don't have to have your art displayed in the met.  

04:22 You can. But if you went from a beginner to like a pretty good watercolor, painter maybe you're selling your paintings on Etsy or something like that and you're creating a course for people who are beginners in watercolor painting like that's fine it's something that you can teach confidently and that you have direct experience in and so you can share that expertise with your students. Don't overthink the format or the details yet you know, so a lot of people jump right into like how long should the videos be or like what should the, I don't know, what should the titles of the modules be like things like that or like how, like how am I going to record the videos? Don't worry about that right now.  

05:07 The number one thing that you can do in this first week to make sure that you have the right course idea in place is to focus on transformation, which means what result are people going to get after they go through your course. So basically that's another way of saying define the outcome what will your students be able to do after taking the course? So the course should have one main clear promise. And that's so much more effective than trying to teach everything. Because if you try to jam a lot of information into the course, it it actually can backfire, right people feel fire hosed with information.  

05:54 They don't know what to do with it, they don't know where to start or like how to implement it. And a lot of times they actually will stop going through the course because they feel overwhelmed. Whereas if you provide like a really simple and straightforward road map that focuses only on the steps that they need to take to achieve 1 result, the course feels much more manageable it's easier to learn because they're just like these bite sized lessons, taking things one step at a time, helping them get the one results it it feels more manageable to your students and so they're a lot more likely to follow what you're teaching and implement it and get the results at the end, which makes for a happy, satisfied customer.  

06:38 So on the next slide, I'm going to share with you some examples of simple out outcome driven transformation statements for courses so that you can go from having a broad idea of your course like I want to teach about fitness, or I want to teach about painting, or I want to teach about parenting that's more topic oriented but if you get more specific with outcome oriented course focus, it's going to be a lot easier both for you to create because you have a very clear idea of what needs to go in it. And it's also going to be easier to sell because people are going to understand the value of taking the course.  

07:17 So I have this little table here with five different categories and an example of a transformation based course topics if you're in health and Wellness, you can create a course that helps busy professionals create a realistic meal prep plan they'll actually stick to so you're not teaching them at like everything you know about nutrition or clean eating or losing weight or, you know, those are really broad topics but if you give them only the information they need to create a meal prep plan that is manageable within their schedule and helps them get back on track with like, let's say, eating healthier foods and less processed foods, that's going to be very valuable to the people who enroll.  

08:02 And they will have a clearer understanding of what to expect from the course and you'll have a clearer understanding of what you need to put in the course. If you are in business and marketing, an example course would be teaching service providers how to book 3 to 5 new clients using a simple referral system. You can see, again, you're not trying to teach service providers everything they need to know about running a business. You're focusing on getting a specific number of clients with a specific system. A personal development example would be guiding women through a 30 day journaling method to reduce stress and increase self trust. Parenting would be helping working parents potty train their toddlers in three days using a step by step mess free method.  

08:48 And for a creative or hobby niche, an example is show beginner photographers how to shoot and edit professional looking portraits with their phone. So again, you can see that these are not just broad topics, these are specific transformation statements. So to do this on your own, think how would you complete this sentence by the end of this course, you'll be able to and if you can finish that sentence with one focused practical outcome, then that is the a good idea for you to move forward with with your course.  

09:23 Ok, so next you want to validate before you build so this is kind of like a little bit of internal exercises and market research to just make sure that your idea is good before you move forward with it. Some suggestions for that one is to just straight up ask your audience so you can DM people, you can send a survey to your email list you can put a poll out on social media and you can say maybe you might have like two or three different ideas and you can say which one of these are you the most interested in or does this sound like a good idea would you prefer to learn something else? You can also comb through testimonials you've received from past clients or reviews either from past clients or from things that you've sold to see what are the common themes.  

10:10 So if people are talking about how you help them get a certain results through your work with them, then that's proof that you have a method, a signature method that can definitely help people get a specific result so something that's coming up a lot in testimonials is a good potential topic for an online course also reflecting on what comes up a lot in terms of what questions people ask you or what people come to you for. So if you're doing discovery calls or if you're answering, answering questions in Facebook groups or if you're just having like conversations with your ideal clients somewhere like let's say in DMS, like what are the common themes of things that people are struggling with and or results that that they are seeking and things that they need help with.  

11:06 So that's also good material for identifying a course topic. You can also use AI to brainstorm and refine your topic based on your expertise and your target audience so you can open up chat GBT like on the free plan and you can explain who you are, what you do, you know the give them, like give it a general description of your ideal clients and you can have it come up with like 10 different topics that you can consider for your course. I also have a free AI assistant so it's built within chat GBT, but I specifically trained it to come up with ideas for course or coaching programs based on your specific business.  

11:48 So there is going to be a link for that somewhere around this video. So you can sign up for it and check it out and then also pre validation ideas what this means is actions that you can take or things that you can do to assess interest in the topic so let's say like going back to this example on health and Wellness, creating a teaching people to create a meal prep plan. You can try doing a short workshop on meal planning to see how many people sign up for it, what questions they ask during the workshop, what feedback and testimonials they give after the workshop and that can give you a better sense of how that topic would do as a full blown course.  

12:31 You can also create a freebie related to the topic so that would be a lead magnet where it's just, you know, the, the lead magnet or the freebie should not cover all the things that the course would cover, but it could cover like maybe a tiny piece of it. And so you can see, are people signing up for that freebie and are they going through it and are they, you know, responding to it favorably? And that would give you a sense of whether that same topic would be good for an online course. And the final idea here is to come up to put up a wait list for your course. So a few weeks or a month in advance, you can create a simple landing page with a form that asks for people's name and the email address and you can say I'm going to be announcing this new program soon on whatever topic it is.  

13:18 Sign up here if you want to be notified when it's open for enrollment. And if you're getting people to sign up for the wait list, that's a pretty good sign. And vice versa, if nobody is signing up for the wait list, then maybe you don't have the right topic. So that first week is really based on planning out your you know, your course idea. Then Week 2 Step 2 is pre selling the course. So why it works is you validate your the demand for the offer before you invest time and potentially money into building it.  

13:57 You get paid upfront to create it. And you are basically by doing this, reducing your risk and gaining motivation because when you get when you get paid up front and you get those sales coming in, that's great motivation to, you know, keep going and and record those videos and create those resources for your students. So pre settling basics, set a start date for your course that's two to four weeks out from right now and keep it simple all you need to do to pre sell is have a clear offer.  

14:30 Meaning you have to have a clear idea in your head of not just your course topic and transformation statement, but specifically what it's going to be, what it's going to cover so what are the different modules or milestones that you're going to be leading people through in the course and then what are the specific lessons or topics that you're going to teach that go under each module or milestone? And then also, what else are you going to include in the course besides for the content? So are you going to have a private community like a Facebook group are you going to have Zoom calls are you going to have some kind of additional resources like a workbook or a checklist or a timeline, a calculator, a template, any kind of resources that go hand in hand with the content, that help people implement what they learn? And then also, is there anything else, like are you going to be offering reviews or feedback or audits to go along with the course so all of those things packaged together make up your offer and then you need a sales page or check out so basically that's a page that has all of the details about the course.  

15:40 So it has, you know, of course, the title, usually a mock up image or visual of like, you know, what people are getting inside the course. It has a who is this for section so that you clearly state who this course is intended for it has obviously information about what the course includes, all of those details about what you get, but also more importantly, what questions is it going to answer, what problems is it going to help people solve, and what results is it going to help people get at the end? Usually a sales page will also have FAQ, testimonials from past clients, satisfaction guarantee and clear calls to action so you need to make it clear how much the the course is and when enrollment opens and when it closes and also why people should Join Now.  

16:34 Then you also need to promote it so get people to look at the sales page by sending emails if you have an email list or posting on social media if you're active there. And what I do to create the emails and the social posts is I just repurpose the content from the sales page so really the only work involved is writing the copy for the sales page because then you can just take like little snippets of that and use it in your email campaign and in your social campaign for the launch.  

17:04 And then it generally helps to have a founding member bonus or special price so what this means is you're offering an incentive for the first group of people to enroll in the course. So let's say you are going to open enrollment for the first time for one week and you can say if you enroll in that first week, that first enrollment period, you'll get 200$ off or you'll get a bonus one to one call with me or you'll get, you know, something else will make maybe some workshop or other thing you've created.  

17:36 So that helps people to it gives people an incentive to get in the door now and not wait to join the course later because that bonus or that discount is only available for that first enrollment period. So a question that a lot of people have is about what tools to use and what tech you need. This can be pretty simple. So for your sales page, you need to first of all write the copy for the sales page and you can do that fairly quickly using AI.  

18:09 So you would tell Claude or chat GBT the details about your program. So everything that you've planned out up to this point, what it's about, who it's for, what it includes, what transformation people will get at the end. And then you can also tell it what sections you want the sales page to cover. And it can write out copy for you. And you don't necessarily have to use that copy like as is you can then refine it to make sure that the details are correct and that it sounds like you and that it's consistent and on brand with your business.  

18:43 But it's a good starting point and it means that you don't have to start from scratch with the copy and then to deliver the the sales page or to make it available to people. You can do something as simple as a Google Doc that you share so that's completely free and easy. You might want to add like a banner at the top or do some, you know, formatting with the font to make it look a little nicer, like, you know, maybe some headlines or bullets or little special characters or something like that but it can be very simple and straightforward in Google Docs or you can use a sales page template so you don't, I don't have to build out a sales page from scratch anywhere.  

19:24 A lot of platforms offer templates that you can customize and use as a starting point. So the platform that I use for my courses is Kajabi i use it for basically every aspect of my course business. And they have templates that you can use for your sales pages so all you have to do, the sales page is basically set up already for you and you just have to plug in your own content, the details about your course and then customize, like colors, fonts images, that kind of thing.  

19:54 Drive Cart is another popular platform for course creators. It also has customizable templates or sales pages. The benefit of Thrive Cart is that they offer a lifetime price, so you pay once and then you don't have an ongoing subscription for it. And then Stan Store is an option that's like no frills, a little bit more basic than Kajabi and Thrive Cart so therefore it is cheaper. It doesn't have the same features and capabilities, but if you're on a budget, it's, you know, something to consider. For emails, you can just use the email service provider that you already have for your business.  

20:33 Same thing for payment collection or checkout pages so if you already already have like Stripe or PayPal that you're using to collect payments for your services or your coaching or whatever you're doing, you can use just that same platform to collect payments for your course. And the most important thing is to just focus on clarity, not Polish, so things don't have to look like 100 % perfect. It's more important that your sales materials just clearly convey what your offer is, who it's for, and what outcome they can get out of it. Week three-step 3 is about now creating and delivering the course after people purchase it.  

21:15 So again, you can do this in a very simple manner you can create a slide deck, nothing fancy, just, you know, a set of slides that maybe have your logo on them and your business branding. And then you can actually deliver the content of your course live one week at a time so you don't have to prepare anything in advance or only a little bit in advance so let's say my I, I sold my course and I told people when I was selling it that it's going to start next week. This week I would make my slide deck for the first, like for the first lesson of the course. And also if I have any other materials that I want to go along with it, like a workbook, I would get that ready this week.  

21:59 And then next week I would host a Zoom meeting or something like that where I present the slides live and I teach it live. The benefit of this is that since you're delivering it live, you can collect feedback and questions as you go along. So you might be teaching this and people are asking you questions that initially you didn't think of covering or including in the course so now you have, you know what should go into next week's lesson, right? Or you can go back and refine your lesson deck from that first week based on the questions and the feedback that people have.  

22:36 And also another benefit is that dripping out the content, meaning releasing it one week at a time, it's just easier for you it's not overwhelming if you just need to create, you know, one lesson slide deck per week. And it's also less overwhelming for your students because they're not being slammed with information. They just have to show up to this call and like watch one lesson at a time and then they have a week to implement it before you teach the next lesson. So it's just a much more manageable process on both ends. And also when you create the presentations or the slides for your course, just keep in mind that more is not better you don't need to create and you should not create a really long slide deck it's better to keep it short and sweet so that it's actionable you don't want people to get bored and tune out and or get overwhelmed with too much information.  

23:29 You want it to be just about right, just enough so that they know so that they can like understand the key points and know what to do with the information to move them farther along in the process to ultimately get the results that they're seeking. So here are some easy ways to create content for your course. 1 is using chat GBT to outline and create the lessons so it can literally give you your talking points that you can put or notes that you can put slide by slide in your, you know, course lesson slide decks.  

24:04 It can also help you create resources like checklists or workbooks that you're going to include alongside the course and also to brainstorm and and create bonuses that you can offer along with the course. Another alternative option is to think about content that you've already created. So if you've been running your business for a while, chances are you know, you've maybe done presentations before or you've created worksheets or you've created even content that you've given to individual clients so think about what you have sitting there on your Google Drive that you can repurpose and make it into course materials so that you don't have to start from scratch.  

24:45 In terms of your slide deck, I personally use Canva templates for my slides so there are a lot of slide deck or presentation templates available for free with Canva that you just have to like plug in your information and your branding and you're all set it can really be done in like an hour or two, or you can use PowerPoint or Google Slides, whatever you're most comfortable with. Like I mentioned, you would host the live training each week with Zoom.  

25:11 Please remember to record it or, you know, set up your account so that it records automatically so that way you can then share the replay for anyone who wants to rewatch it or wasn't available to attend live. Or if you just feel more comfortable pre recording it instead of teaching it live or if you have maybe time zone issues with your students, you can use zoom, loom or Canva to do what I'm doing right now so I'm talking through my slides i'm by myself in my office right now and I created these slides in Canva and I'm using loom, which is a platform that allows me to like, you know, show this little bubble of myself in the corner and then it's recording me as I'm talking through all of my slides.  

25:53 So if if you prefer to do it that way, you can and then you would just deliver the recordings one lesson per week to your students. So editing and delivery, you definitely do not need to get hung up on editing. The most important thing is that people can see you clearly and hear you clearly so your lighting is important and your sound is important. You don't need music, special effects, special transitions, anything like that with your slides it really does not make an impact and it can just slow you down.  

26:23 So all I do is like sometimes if I mess up my words and I need to like re explain something in one of my presentations, I'll just use basic editing to cut out like the 30 seconds where I messed up or in the beginning if I, if there is like a little bit of silence in the beginning before I start the presentation, I'll cut out that silence like things like that but I really keep it basic and I prefer Loom and Descript.  

26:53 Those are user friendly editing tools that have AI features so for example when I use Loom, it has this button you can literally just click with the click of a button. You can have it remove all filler words from your presentation so every time you say and like things like that, it'll just delete them for you you don't have to go through and do anything manually, AI just automatically does it for you. That is a paid subscription, but it doesn't. It's not super, it's not super expensive, and it's very easy to use. Remember that things do not need to be perfect, and you can always refine later, so you can always do some additional editing later or eventually rerecord your content.  

27:37 But right now you're just laying a foundation and your goal is just to get your course created and delivered. So don't worry about perfection. And then you have to deliver the content so you're going to be hosting videos and any additional resources for your course in one central location. So the simplest, most like bootstrapped way to do that would be to host everything in a Google Drive folder that you share with your clients.  

28:05 Or if you're using a course hosting platform like Kajabi or Thrive Cart, you can, you know, and if you use that for your sales page, you can also use it to host your your content. So let's recap so week one, you're picking a validated idea and being clear on the outcome of your course and thinking about what your offer is, what you're going to include and deliver with the course.  

28:33 Week 2 is you're pre selling it so you're basically presenting this offer to your audience without having created it yet. And then week 3 you are delivering you're beginning the process of creating and delivering the content one lesson at a time, gathering feedback and questions from your audience as you go along. And that's an ongoing process you know, it might take you let's say 12 weeks to complete all the content and then after that you can then go back and refine anything that you need to refine, whether that be the course content itself or your messaging and your marketing or your sales materials.  

29:12 And then at that point now you relaunch it again at a higher price. So remember to focus on progress and not perfection. And if you're more of a visual person, this is what the process looks like. Just simple 5 steps. One is offer planning, thinking about your topic, positioning and content. The second step is preparing for your launch with a sales page, sales emails and social media posts if you are active on social then the lazy launch which is simple pre sale emails offering a founding member discount.  

29:48 Then you create and deliver the content one module or even 1 lesson at a time. And then after everything is said and done you can relaunch again this time at the regular price and at that point all of your content will be already created so you can deliver it all immediately to to your clients if you want, or you can still drip it out one week at a time. So I hope you enjoyed this presentation i hope it gives you the confidence to jumpstart your course.  

30:17 And don't forget that I have a free course niche idea generator that you can use to come up with 10 course ideas that are specific to your business.