Have you ever taken an online course that failed to meet your expectations? Or left you feeling like you didn’t learn anything?

Creating online courses is one of the most joyful and powerful activity that I’ve been part of in my professional life.

But also one of the most frustrating.

There are so many different things that we need to consider when creating an online curriculum and while there are many teaching these skills very few are moving past the first levels of course design.

Which is why I was excited to meet Shannon Boyer. Shannon is an award-winning educator with more than twenty years of experience designing courses and curriculum. She helps online course creators produce stellar content that ensures more students achieve amazing transformations and write raving reviews using her Your Best Course program.

Discover:
1. How to be aware of educational psychology to best facilitate their student’s success
2. The different types of interactions that students have in courses and how to best design their course for maximum impact
3. Questions we should be asking ourselves to master curriculum design
4. The MOST IMPORTANT KPI that you should be measuring to maximize both earnings and course course quality

If you’ve ever considered creating an online course or have already created several, this episode is one of the most valuable conversations that I’ve ever had on this subject. Shannon is an amazing educator that I’m so thrilled to have met.

Links

Connect with Shannon: https://www.shannonlboyer.com/

Register for my Virtual Happy Hour: https://www.adamliette.com/virtual-happy-hour

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

Transcript

Adam Liette
Hey, they're smooth operators. Welcome to this week's episode. How's it going out there? My goodness, I am bouncing on energy tonight. I told you all before how much I love this medium. Because you get to connect with people all around the world, you get to work some crazy hours, which is cool. You know how big of a fan I am of just kind of going for and kind of hustling? Well, we have to figuring it out making it work, because that's what operators do. We lead the way we are the the absolute standard bearers for bear bears for our organizations. Sometimes that means you gotta hustle, but it's all good. And I love every second of it. But we get to dive deep into one of my favorite subjects ever. Because as you may know, like I'm an educator at heart. I've been teaching since I was 11 years old. When I started first teaching guitar lessons, went all the way through school, got an education degree somehow landed in the army. But the fun thing was even in the army, I landed in Special Ops, which Special Operators a large part of what we do is teach. And in this online world that we're in, I've been doing online education forever. Well, not forever, but seven years, which in the online world is forever. So been able to work for several companies got to see what works got to experience all sorts of successes and failures and everything in between. So I get to geek out on online education and how to actually do this magical thing called make your courses work better. Not sell better. That's a whole nother subject over here, guys. But it's not just about selling, it's about getting the transformation that we want our students to achieve, and that we can help them achieve. Which is why I brought in Shannon Boyer. So Shannon, yes, I love this resume. It's you're an award winning educator with more than 20 years of experience, designing courses and curriculum, you help online course creators produce killer content, then choose more students achieve these transformations and write raving reviews. Because it's those transformations. I genuinely believe that you deliver stellar results for your students. More sales are going to follow. So Shannon, thank you so much for joining me on this not quite as late for you. But super late for me evening. How are you doing?

Shannon Boyer
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I also love to talk about this topic. And I'm excited to get started.

Adam Liette
So cool. So you've been get this 20 year career teaching what various levels have you taught it? And what I think the better question is why teaching what target education?

Shannon Boyer
Oh, goodness, it that's a big question. And I can probably talk about that, because my career, you know, has taken lots of twists and turns over the years. So it's quite a long story. When I was a kid, my mom kept saying to me, you should be a teacher, you should be a teacher, you should be a teacher. And I kept saying no way that looks like the most boring job ever. I don't want to be stuck in a classroom teaching the same thing over and over and over again. And so I went to university and I changed my major every two months. And I tried a million different things. I left University and was in a job where I had accidentally almost the opportunity to teach English as a second language as a volunteer. And my boss had given me time off to do it said, you know, how's that job going? And I said, it's awesome, or the job, the volunteer job and I said it was like it's amazing. If I could do this all day, every day, it wouldn't be work. And it was like that moment a light bulb went off in my head and was like, if I went back to school I could do for for work. And so I did. I somehow got on, you know, different path and ended up teaching elementary school in England was my very first teaching job. Came back to Canada. I live in Canada and started teaching adults and I taught a number of different things. But predominantly, I developed a program and taught in a program for 10 years for Newcomb newcomers to Canada but specifically 18 to 25 year old youth who had mostly come from refugee backgrounds had very little exposure to formal and Education in their past. And we're now coming to Canada as teens looking to improve their skills. So, you know, and get into post secondary, it was the most amazing teaching experience, I've had lots of teaching experience. Because when you teach people in college, who have gotten into college for having high academic skills, they already know how to learn. But when you teach people who haven't had the opportunity to learn and get those skills, that elevates your expertise, as a teacher, as an educator, because all of a sudden, you need to dive deep into what it takes to learn and that process of learning. And so that's where it started. And now I've recently pivoted away from I was in administration, I did a whole bunch of things pivoted away from that. And now I have done I don't do now I'm diving into this world of online and helping people who are, you know, have their own courses, add that element of curriculum design, and instructional design into their courses, so that they can help their students achieve those amazing transformations that they're hoping to achieve? So it's very convoluted?

Adam Liette
Well, I think it is for all of us, I mean, this path to digital nomad, if you were or working in this kind of field, the fact that none of us drove a straight line to get here, I think is part of our strength, because life experience contributes. And I love the fact that you've taught all these levels, because Youth and Adult Education night and day difference, now you have to approach it, in many ways. Tell me if you agree, I think it's more difficult to teach adults than it is to teach youth.

Shannon Boyer
Yeah, so when you're teaching like a teacher in K to 12, School students have to be there. They're there, they're under duress, you know, and there's a certain level of motivation, that's there, it's a completely different ballgame with adults, you know, they're not they don't need to be there, they're usually paying to be there, they want to be there. But their, the stakes are high, they are going to expect a lot from you in return. And then their life circumstances as well really play into both good and bad play into the learning experience and their past experiences with education, really have a deep effect on how they learn as as adults as well.

Adam Liette
Yeah, cuz everyone's coming with their own different and unique baggage on how they've either had to learn or didn't learn in the past. I mean, our grandparents would talk about like nuns and at least were in middle of nowhere, Ohio, the nuns would like wrap your knuckles with a ruler if you played a piece on the piano wrong. You know. And so the all these different stories that people are bringing with them to education. Yeah, and

Shannon Boyer
I've had, I've heard somebody say that, like, don't quote me. But they, in their experience, the adults in their class, actually, in some ways reverted back to where the last time that they were in school. So if they had been out of school, for a long period of time, all of a sudden, those triggers were coming back if they had struggled in school, you know, their mindset in their approach to learning was sometimes mirrored that that last time they were in a formal education system situation, even if it's not a formal education system that that they're in now. But just that process of being a student and having to tackle something that might be challenging. Can you know, trigger people sometimes?

Adam Liette
I've never heard that study. But it makes all the sense in the world with the 10s of 1000s of students I've seen go through online courses that I've helped manage. It is the Oh, my goodness, lightbulb moment, they do revert back to that stage. And I've seen like 6570 year olds get like incredibly needy during the learning process. And MIT while you were not like this, when we sold you the course what is going on? So what are some things that what are some things we can do in the digital environment? Where we're not necessarily with them that will help assuage i Wait, are we trying to persuade you we're just trying to like adapt to it.

Shannon Boyer
I think the first thing is to be aware of it, right? Like, you know, some people revert to like a learned helplessness sort of a thing, which is kind of you know, the neediness that you're talking about, right? They want to be handheld through every single part of it. And there's other things, you know, other ways that can show up as well. And I think being aware of that when you're working with your students, and I call students anybody, like let me just clarify terms here. Students is anybody who has purchased a course and it doesn't even have to be purchased, but has enrolled in something where they hope to learn something and have this transformation. And in my definition edge an educator is anyone who is in that role of teaching a skill, a process, whatever it is to, you know, the student. So one of the things so I'm getting off topic, and I will answer your question. But I think it's really important, for course creators to have the mindset of an educator, there's a lot of things that go into that. But that's the first step that's really important to seeing yourself as an educator when you are a chorus provider. So in terms of, you know, how do you deal with those situations, when you have, you know, students who are facing challenges or having difficulty achieving that transformation, because of their previous experiences, or whatever. I think one of the things to be aware of is course creators Miss loads to the quality of the content, which is like my big thing, this is what I help people do is have that high quality content. There's three different kinds of interactions your students can have in an online course. So one of them is student to content interaction, this is the one that we predominantly think of, and most people spend most of their time developing. So that's the videos that students are going to watch the audio, the text, the workbooks, how they're going to interact with the material. That's the first one, the bet the second interaction that students have is with the instructor. In a high quality course, there is no interaction between the students and the instructor in some way, it can take a lot of different forms. But I think that you want to really think about what's the best way to support the students to achieve that transformation in this course, now, the word instructor too, can mean different things. Some people when they look at really scaling and having those huge courses, they're hiring experts, they're hiring a team, and their students are interacting not with an instructor, but the team of instructors or the you know, the team. So that can look lots of different ways. But how are they interacting? Is it live Q and A's? Or is it? are they submitting something and getting feedback on it? Are they you know, is it online email? Is it text? I mean, there's so many different ways, but I think that that component, that human component, is really key. And so taking that into consideration and thinking, what are those kinds of interactions that I might have with students challenging, not downloading, how do I support them? How do I set this up from the get go anticipating that so that it doesn't become onerous on you basically, just thinking about those systems and having those systems in place to mitigate that being really proactive about that, I think, is important. And then the third type of interaction in that students can have in a course is student to student. And so there are lots of opportunities for peer to peer interactions within a course that takes that responsibility takes that heavy burden and ownership off of the person who's leading the course, and allows students to support each other. And there's a lot of strength there. And especially as chap, GBT comes in and people you know, my Instagram is filled with creative course, in five minutes, become a millionaire by next week kind of stuff. And that's just not the way it works in terms for especially for longevity, and, you know, doing it the right way. And so it's these human connections that we build into the corpse, that are really not only important for us, and for our students, and for the transformation that they're going to achieve, but also to stand out in the crowd to be the top in your industry, and to have that longevity moving forward.

Adam Liette
Wait a minute, okay, I was I just got an email today because a very famous course creator that I won't die now. But she's basically saying this is like passive income. And I hear that in my blood, boil hills. Is this not It's not passive income. There's this is, it can be joyful work, for sure. And it is joyful, especially if you're teaching a subject you're passionate about. But it does require that consistency in that working with the students. It's not just filming a video and putting out a video course. Right? It's so much deeper. And I think that brings us into right into curriculum design, because that's a word that once you've been involved with it, at the academic level can be like, What are you talking about? Like, how do you like what advice would you give to someone who's never even thought about curriculum design?

Shannon Boyer
Well, it's interesting your point about the passive income and I'd like to talk about that first, if I may. Because so many people have this idea that they're going to move away from their nine to five job they're going to spend a little bit of time creating this course that they're going to set it and forget it, the money is going to roll in while they're sleeping or on the beach. And you know, this is going to be their ticket to financial freedom, location, freedom, all the freedoms. Starting a course, is not the best way to achieve those goals, in my opinion, because you're right, there is nothing passive about education. Not only are you involved with the course and the students in the way that we've just spoken about, but of course, it's something that has a lifecycle and needs to be continually updated on the regular. And that's one of the things that I predominantly do is work with people who already have those six figure courses, they've already achieved success, but they're at the point. Now, usually, it's like, if it's a big huge signature course that somebody is running like once or twice a year, it's usually around the two to three year mark, that somebody hits that point where they've made all of these small changes to the course. And now they need to do a complete redo. And so that's generally where they hire me to come in to review the course to add that additional layer to elevate their content and our curriculum to the point where they're, they're really, you know, standing out being top notch. But it's that it's little things you change, your audience changes, technology changes, your industry changes, your hairstyle and your clothes change. I mean, like we've all you know, in school, watch those videos with the people from the 70s I'm dating myself here, but you know, who and as soon as you turn it on as a kid, you're going I should I listen to this. This isn't this is outdated. So you know, it's, it's those those things, it's not just create it, set it and forget it, it's an active thing. But when you're doing it, at the top level, when you're doing it in a way that makes a ton of money, takes a ton of work. And those people at the top of the industry, they have hired curriculum experts, they have hired infrastructure, adult instructional designers, and experts in adult education, they have them on their team. So what sometimes is being presented and what's happening behind the scenes can be two totally different things. I got off track and

Adam Liette
first off, I'm proud to say that this haircut has not changed in decades.

Shannon Boyer
It's a very strategic move you've got there.

Adam Liette
Well, you know, I tell you what, sometimes life hands you the lucky glass of lemonade, where I started going bald, like right around the time Bruce Willis shaved his head and disturbed came out. And Fast and Furious was big. And so like bald was cool.

Shannon Boyer
Yeah. head in the black T shirts, so you can put anything anytime you're good to go.

Adam Liette
And now I'm mad because my kids are in high school and like long hair is cool now. And when I was in high school and had long hair, it wasn't cool. So I'm like, synovitis I missed that boat. But that's okay. Um, yeah, we were like, there's one particular course, a course it teaches you to create courses that I've taken. And literally like, it's like, okay, and now outline your course. And that was the module. And I'm like, that doesn't feel right. Because it's more to it than that. So I really want to dive in, like, into that curriculum design curriculum. Outline your course in a better way.

Shannon Boyer
Yeah, exactly. And that's, that's the second group of people who I work with is the ones who have taken that. And now they know how to market they know how to launch, they know how to grow their audience. But all of a sudden, they're sitting down and going, Okay, now I have to design my course. And they're like, frozen, right? And so the number one thing to do is to ask yourself, what is the transformation that your student you hope your student to achieve? So you want to start at the end? And so the goal is, what are the students going to be able to do by the end of this course. Now, the problem with the post it note method, and you just brainstorm all of the things on post it notes and you stick them onto the wall? Is that that's focusing on? What are you going to teach? And what you should be focusing on is, what are the students going to learn? What are they going to be able to do by the end of this course? And that's what you start with. And then you want to look at what are they coming in with? What are the prerequisites because oftentimes people think I'm just going to take anybody, I'm going to take anybody into this course and make as much money as I can and that's the goal right to get spending 1000s And hundreds and people into this course if they can. But that's not setting people up for success that's not setting you up for success as a course creator, that setting people up and you up for us specifically, but the was created for a lot of frustration. So you want to have like, what are the prerequisites? What are people coming into this course for? And then you want to work backwards, right? So if this is the goal, this is what they're going to be able to do by the end of this course. What do they need to be able to do? What skills, knowledge and attitudes do they need to have in order to be able to do that big outcome by the end of the course? And then how will you know, if they have achieved those things? How will they know if they've achieved those things? Another word for that is assessment and people that scares people, because people again, it's like those triggers, right? If you want to test. So if I'm doing tests in my course, you don't have to do tests in your course, there are a lot of informal ways for you and your students to be able to evaluate whether or not they've achieved those things, if they've mastered those things, if they're able to move on. And again, that's part of what I do. Because if you're not a teacher, those are some pretty advanced skills to be able to bring into your course. So I've worked with seasoned teachers who struggle with curriculum design, who won't even touch course design. And I don't want to say that to scare anybody off or to overwhelm anybody, because I think this is totally doable. I just want people to understand that it's an elevated skill. So when you take courses like the one that you are talking about, that's like an entry level course, that's gonna give you some of the basic frameworks and foundations because you do need to not, you do know how to market you need to know how to market how to watch, I don't do those things, I don't teach those things. You need to know those things. But then you need to take it to the second level, and really dive into the content and the curriculum of your course. So that you can make sure it's all about making sure your students achieve that transformation. Because hopefully, that's the reason why we're offering the course, is because we want to serve others and help them achieve great things. But also, if people aren't achieving that transformation, they're not referring your course to other people, they're not acting as affiliates for you, you're not getting that word of mouth sale, and they're not buying other things from you. Right, like, if somebody has gone through your course, and achieved great things, they're gonna want to work with you more, they're gonna be looking for like, more interaction with you. And those are the people who are going to start to do like the higher ticket purchases, looking at your other courses, they already know like, and trust you. Those are hot leads that you want to capitalize on. So if you never get them to that point, then they're not interacting with your business in that way.

Adam Liette
It's really interesting. One thing you said there was the course I was referencing, you're like, well, that's entry level. And I juxtapose that back to something you said a couple minutes earlier about how having prerequisites. And I'm forming this mental model in my head of the idea that like having stages and having tiers of expertise within your course framework, it might be multiple courses is that's not only good for the student is great for your business, let's just be frank. But that's good for the students. And I think in this noisy world, of course, course course you see him all over the place. Sometimes that clarity of exactly what you're going to learn exactly what the outcome is, the upfront knowledge that this is phase one. And we're going to meet you at phase one. And it's okay being at phase one is actually really good for the student as well, because they're going to be able to come in to something have a beat for six weeks long, and actually achieve results in that time period, which will give them momentum to keep moving forward.

Shannon Boyer
Absolutely. And here's the other important point, when you've organized your course. And you've written out very clear learning outcomes for the lesson, or the course, the modules, the lessons about what exactly students are going to be able to do in each of those components. The next step is to communicate that and share that with the students. And that's a piece that's missing for so many educators and in so many courses. They know how everything is connected together. They know what the the students are supposed to get out of it. And they assume many of us assume I did at the beginning as well, that that's going to be apparent that the students are just going to see how the dots are connected. But when a student goes into a course, I always say within the first 90 seconds, they should be able to visually survey your online course and have a very complete picture of what it's about. What they're going to learn and how things are connected. And then you want to share that course map with them. You want to do that from the very beginning. This is what you're going to learn. This is how all of the components, you know, are connected and work together and build on each other. Because if you don't, as the students moving through the course, in the back of their mind, they're going to be doing that anyway, they're going to be subconsciously spending a lot of mental energy asking themselves, like, how does this connect? And he was just talking about that. And now, now he's talking about this. And is this is this? Are these connected? Is this am I supposed, like, that's happening in the background and taking mental energy away from the learning process? If you haven't made that explicit?

Adam Liette
That's like, it's like a welcome video on steroids. Well, they're like, it's a welcome video. Welcome. And now, I'm going to show you how to have success, like you're just planning it out right for them. Here's your roadmap, here's exactly what to expect. Here's, are you giving them timelines at that point? Are we like, let it letting it be? So it's always making me nervous with online courses from the sales side? Because people are like, do I have access after four weeks, or, Oh, I can't do this on four weeks, like, like that cut?

Shannon Boyer
I think it's really important, I think it's really important to be transparent, as transparent as possible. I think it's important even to say, like you if it's a set course, right? If it is, like some courses are done that way, it's a cohort model, it's an eight week course or a six week course, you know, I think it's important to say, you should expect to spend about five hours a week going through this course or this takes, you know, people on average, this length of time, it doesn't have to be in weeks, it could be in hours, and however you spend those hours, if it's all in one week, or over the course of 100 weeks, that's up to you. But I think it is important to set those kinds of expectations. So people know, you know, what they're what they're getting out of it. But one of the things that I recommend and and help people create is the foundations module. So when you're doing a course, that is a little bit longer, the first module should not be the first module of the course, should not be the first lesson of the course, the first module should be a foundations module. And it does teach you all of those things. It gives people a tour of the learning, learning platform learning management system, it teaches them how to get around how to use it, it shows them what the course is going to be about what are the expectations, what can they expect from you, or the expectations of them as a student, I mean, there's so many different things that can go into a really good foundational module. And what I also recommend, too, is if you're running a course, where there's like a shorter timeframe between when the person signs up for the course, and when they actually take the course, like less than a month, they should have access to that foundational module. As soon as they sign up for the course. Because you're capitalizing on their motivation. They're so excited to get started. I mean, you had people sign up for courses, never actually opened them, they forget about them in the meantime. But you give them this foundation module, and all of a sudden, they're immediately invested in the course they're excited, they know what they're going to learn, they're much more likely to start that first module than if they don't have that foundational module. The other thing is, if you put the foundation module out at the same time, as your first, like on the day of the course begins at the same time as module one. Many, many people will ignore that foundational module and just start with module one. And you know, you've put so much time and energy and so much important information in that foundational module. And it's not getting seen, and you're assuming that it's been seen. And that's sometimes when people you know, is the course creator, you get a lot of annoying emails, asking you questions about things that you've already put in the course. Or in the foundation on. I've never

Adam Liette
had that. Yeah, yeah, I have not managed a customer service does for an online course, ever happens.

Shannon Boyer
I love those questions, though. You know what, because they point directly to areas where you can improve your course, they are so valuable to you in terms of like spotlighting where there are weaknesses that can be addressed.

Adam Liette
And that's interesting, because when we're at the point of scale, so when I was running that desk, as the Director of Operations, our course creators weren't in there. And then they relied on my metrics and my feedback from what we're hearing from the students in order to then correct what they're doing on their side. So as you scale having those openly Have conversations and dialogue. And knowing that feedback is feedback, and we should be listening to it and kept cataloging it, or at least getting some rough numbers of what kind of questions we're getting from those students in the initial, their initial foray into the course.

Shannon Boyer
Yeah, cataloging it and then capitalizing on it. Because, yeah, when you're getting the same question over and over and over again, that's a key indicator that there's something that needs to be addressed. Not just because lots of people are having an issue with it, but look at how much time and energy and like human power is going into dealing with that when if you solved it at the course level, you know, it free up so much time and energy for your your team?

Adam Liette
And the answer, I think, is not put it in FAQ. Answers going on?

Shannon Boyer
Yes. Yes, exactly. I love feedback. Whenever I work with my clients, that's the first thing that I talked to them about is what's the best way to get feedback from their existing customers and students. Because, you know, sometimes we can be wrong. We assume we know what they're thinking or what they're looking for, or what they want. And sometimes the answers or the information that you get from them can be quite surprising. It's important to do it in the right way. Because you don't want to be constantly like, you know, vacillating and making these drastic changes in response to certain, you know, one comment here or something that's completely off course for like your image, mission, vision and values and like all of those things. So there's a right way to do it. But I think that it's it's critical to informing, especially updates and future iterations of the course.

Adam Liette
One thing I always teach my my operators is, like, I run my business off KPIs. I teach KPIs all over the map, you have KPIs, you have accountability, you have targets, your team can win and KPIs. It's funny, I'm thinking of this in two ways. Now that I started my sentence, I was only thinking of it one way, like 35 seconds ago. So I love podcasting. I'm thinking of two possible KPIs. Now, like the students having their KPIs, knowing that they're succeeding, but also this magical KPI of course completion. And I think it's worth just stating 100% Course Completion is not realistic. That being said, what is a number that we should be aiming for, for actual course completion that is realistic?

Shannon Boyer
So I love the question, because one of the things I talk about is like, what is the number one metric as a course creator that you should be focusing on in your course. And oftentimes, again, in those Instagram ads, you hear people talking about like the five figure launch, or the six figure launch the five, figure weekend, all of these things that might reflect on the quality of the course, but it's reflecting more on the marketing that you've done. The number one metric that I want to look at always is course completion, because that is going to be the strongest indicator in terms of the quality of the course and how many students are achieving the transformation. So here's the surprising news. Although there are people out there who are achieving at present course completion, which is very ambitious, very good. The average that I've found in my unofficial research, but that I found is 10 to 15%. And some people reporting as low as 7%. Now that's across a wide variety of courses, you know, but there are, I mean, I'm sure your listeners have signed up, probably signed up for a course that they never even opened or took. So the

Adam Liette
host of this show, horses that he never even opened up,

Shannon Boyer
and the guest as well. So, there's, to me, there's a lot of money being left on the table. For those reasons that we spoke of before you want your students completing the course. You want them continuing to buy from you, you want them to continue to you know, make referrals, act as affiliates, all of those kinds of things. But having high quality curriculum, high quality content that leads to course completion and leads to transformation is also going to make your life so much better. You're going to enjoy are teaching that course and offering that course so much more when you have that high quality content, because you will get fewer of those annoying emails, you will get fewer complaints. If you do do question and answers or you know, live q&a is they will be such a better quality, they will be at such a higher level, because you won't have people coming into them and asking you tech questions or asking you questions about the organization and your course, the discussions are going to be elevated and it's going to be so much more enjoyable for you, as the facilitator of that course or your team, you know, depending on like what kind of scale you're working at. And that means a better experience for your students. And that's ultimately you know, what we're trying to achieve?

Adam Liette
Absolutely. And for whatever it's worth having managed, a lot of these, I've noticed two things as far as course completion rates. The one is, the more expensive the courses, the higher my completion rates every single time without a doubt. But also, there's a dramatically different completion rate between nurtured Email List Driven core sales versus PPC. And it's not even close, it's night and day difference. That tripwire offer that we're able to do on like a $47 mini course or something like that, you might sell a lot of them, you got to be some kind of superstar to get more than like five to 10% completion rate. And if I could ever crack the nut on how to get super completion rates on that have a lot more money. I think there's an expectation of that, I think we have to all forgive ourselves a little bit. This, our audiences are very different depending on where they come into our work.

Shannon Boyer
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's why I always talk about like, being just, we're just, you have to be upfront, you have to be transparent with the people who are coming into your course I don't agree with just, maybe this is a value statement. And maybe I'm gonna lose a bunch of your audience here. But this is to me, where it comes into the mindset of an educator, I believe, as an educator, somebody's offering a course taking money, promising a transformation, you have a responsibility to your students. That's a shared responsibility, though they have a responsibility as well, their responsibility is to come to the course to put in the time to put in the effort to do what you ask them to do. But your responsibility as the educator is to provide them with a well structured course, with high quality content that is broken down into bite size, manageable chunks, so that they can achieve that dramatic transformation if they put in that time and effort. And so that's why I think it's transparent about being important to be transparent about what are the prerequisites? What do you need to have coming into this to be successful? And, you know, what is the time commitment? Because if you've got somebody who's super busy, and you've sold them on this course, that's going to give them a you know, incredible transformation in seven days, when in fact, the amount of work that goes into achieving that transformation is exponentially higher than that you're setting themselves and yourself up for failure from the very beginning. So I think it's really important. Yes, we want to get as many people into the course as possible. Yes, we want to scale that course, as much as possible and as quickly as possible. But for long term success, and you know, the longevity of that customer journey of the customer going through your business, you will have more success if you are a little bit more conscientious about those things.

Adam Liette
salutely. And I want to take a moment to ask a question for those that might be considers if you've never designed a course, if you have this in your heart, and you do want to help people in this way. First off, oh, sorry, not a video episode. I'm giving a thumbs up. So that's fantastic that you want to give it that at that level. And that's awesome. And I support you. If someone were in that position, and they said I think I should do this, but I don't have I just I've never done this before. Like what would what advice would you give someone who's dipping their toes into this for the first time?

Shannon Boyer
Yeah, it's a really good question. It's a really good question. Because the last thing I want to do is have people walk away from this episode and go oh my goodness, there's so much to this. This is way beyond me or I need to invest you know a ton of money into higher hearing somebody, that's not my goal, that is not the message that I want people to walk away from, I do think that this is is doable. I also don't think, don't think I strongly believe you cannot be perfect. If you're, you know, don't wait to be perfect. No one is perfect. Teaching is a practice, I would compare it to yoga, I am not perfect. If I were to put out quote a course today, it would not be perfect. So you have to start somewhere, no matter what you do in life, the first time you do it, it's not going to be stellar. So I think that you just get started, that is the number one piece of advice that I can give to anybody who's thinking about this. Just get started with, you know, those steps that we talked about at the beginning. Talk to your customers go through those important questions. You know, if it's your very first course, what are you expert at? What are you passionate about? What does your audience want from you? What are they coming from to you for? What are their pain points? And then what are they willing to pay for? Identify your topic, dive in? Do a needs analysis with them, talk to them, figure out what it is they really want? And then and then just get get started? And looking at that? What do you want them to achieve? What are the steps that are necessary to get there? And then how will they know? And how will you know if they've achieved those steps? But what about you? What would be your first face? For somebody who wanted to start a quiz?

Adam Liette
I hadn't expected yet the counter, but I had an answer in my mind already. So I could see that you did? We're on the same page. The first one I would say is teach what's closest to you. Yeah, and what I mean, and that not only the subject, but the expertise level. Yeah. So if you are an I got a lot of marketers on my list, and I love you guys, you know that I'm a marketer, too. If you're an expert marketer, go one step to the left of where you are, teach them how to get to where you are. If you're already an expert marketer, and you're trying to go back to basics, you already forget that, there's no way you can teach that anymore, because that was a whole lifetime ago. So you're gonna have to work backwards. If you want to expand your product line, learn more about what your students are learning, and then use that to design the next year over and then the next year over. And you might end up with a full suite by the end of it. But teach what you're close to.

Shannon Boyer
Mm hmm. That's a really good point. That's an excellent point. I think that that's, that's bang on too. And that's where you're going to get the best be able to identify the best outcomes in terms of what do you want the students to achieve? And what are those steps? When you go too far back, you skip steps. And I think that's what you're talking about being too far away from it. You'll say, you know, in order to achieve this number 20, you have to do 16, eight, and two. But when you you're gonna miss all of those steps and your students, I'd be a bit but what about this? And I don't know how to do that, and how does it connect? But yeah, when you closer to it, you will remember every single one of those steps that it takes.

Adam Liette
And it's only one student that it's going to make you realize this, because I got hired to do marketing coaching for someone. And so like, okay, that's fine. And the first call, I just started talking, and they and they were just like, completely glossed over. And all I did was said, I said like lead magnet and follow a sequence. And they were like, What are you talking about? I don't know. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, where are we? Okay, Square One was not a fun call for me. Yeah. And luckily for me, I got contracted for eight of them. The calls, I had to do like that. Because I am so far away from that now. And if I wanted to teach marketing, I really don't. But if I wanted to, I'd have to work backwards from where I am now.

Shannon Boyer
Well, and that situation, that's such a great learning experience those situations, because that's part of being an educator, too, is being able to be flexible in those moments and not just to keep plowing ahead. But to notice when you've lost people and be able to fill in the gaps and backtrack and

Adam Liette
wait. Don't just go off your script. worked long and hard on the script or Yeah. So much fun. I, as you can tell I'm an absolute geek about this subject, I think. Well, we know from the metrics that online education is only growing and I think it's only going to continue to grow. The incidence of the last three years have only accelerated To change and look at how education is being done. And I don't think we're even close to being done with this change agent and how everything's gonna be different. I mean, I have, I have a 15 year old, a 13 year old, 11 year old, an eight year old. I do not expect even their post high school days to be anything like mine. And it ain't been that long. That Oh, no. It's, it's all different now. And I think for anyone that wants to get really serious about this and wants to make this something that there, they become an expert in their own field. It's nothing but opportunity. It's just a matter of like doing your own due diligence to seek out experts get as you're building like you're not like Shannon said, like, you're not going to be able to go hire that curriculum designer on day one. As curriculum designers, they're worth it. So they, they charge accordingly. And they should, because they're good at what they do. But I don't think I've ever reached a stage in business where it's like, actually, the higher up I get in business, the more help I actually need.

Shannon Boyer
Mm hmm. And realize what you don't know.

Adam Liette
Oh, my gosh, yeah. You get all cocky. When you first start, you're like, I got this stuff. And then a couple Hard Knocks later, like, Oh, my, maybe I don't. So. Yeah, it's good to have our own continued growth, just like we're seeing from our students. So be the example to, you're constantly seeking out information.

Shannon Boyer
Absolutely. Being a lifelong learner is a part of this. And it's a part of being able to go with the changes and stay at the top of your industry and stay that person continued to be that person who others want to go to, for information and for surfaces.

Adam Liette
Shannon, if someone wants to at least dip their toes into what you do and get an idea of what this whole thing is about? How can they get started with

Shannon Boyer
working with you? Yeah, thank you for asking. So there's a couple of ways to easily get in touch with me, of course, Instagram. So it's Shannon l voyeur. The L is very important. There are other Shannon boys out there. If you Google me and see a mug shot that is not me. So Shannon l boy by website is the same WWW dot Shannon l boyer.com. On my website, you'll see a section of services that I offer. And there's also a freebie section where you can download the seven things, your course must include to max student referrals. There's an opportunity there to do a free discovery call with me and even a coupon code varies. I'm a highfalutin, crazy color curriculum expert has a coupon code. But yeah, I love you know, getting in touch with new people and talking about their business and where they want it to grow and how we might work together. It's not an icky sales call. It's really just a conversation to see is there opportunity there for a match.

Adam Liette
You don't seem like the icky salesperson type. I can't say that. I appreciate that. And man, when I heard the seven things your course must do. I'm going into project management mode. And I'm going to put that into every module of my project. As I'm building this to make sure we hit all seven of those each and every time. And my CEO or my partner in crime is gonna hate me for it. But we're gonna make this a good course.

Shannon Boyer
Yeah, yeah, it's a guide and a checklist. So a very useful beginning starting point.

Adam Liette
I love it. Shannon, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you. I get the absolute joy of saying that on a regular basis because this show it podcasting is so much fun because you get to meet so many cool people doing so many cool things. And it's, it's really it's an honor for me to be able to meet you and to know that there are people out there that are helping continue to elevate what we're doing out here in the course crater lane. So we can do best fire students continue to achieve those transformations and absolutely change the paradigm of education and

Shannon Boyer
Absolutely, thank you so much for giving me the platform to start the conversation.