In this insightful episode of the Course Creators Academy podcast, Pualena delves into the dynamic landscape of online course creation, offering valuable trends and strategies for course creators. She emphasizes the pivotal role of personalized learning experiences, encouraging creators to understand and cater to the specific needs of their target audience.
Pualena sheds light on the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in content creation, describing how tools like ChatGPT can be harnessed to generate course outlines and content. She advocates for a nuanced approach, where creators use AI as a foundation but infuse their unique personality and expertise into the material, making it their own.
The episode also tackles the challenge of ensuring quality in a space flooded with service providers, urging creators to showcase their personal value and guide clients in researching the product market thoroughly. Pualena emphasizes the power of repetitive messaging in a saturated market, stressing the importance of consistent and repeating communication to capture and retain audience attention. Looking ahead to 2024, she predicts a trend toward collaborative learning platforms, where creators join forces to develop courses, bringing diverse perspectives to the table. The episode concludes with a heartfelt call for reflection and celebration of personal and professional accomplishments as the year draws to a close.
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Pua Pakele | RBL Media:
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Transcript:
Pualena 00:00
Find your target audience, identify them, and get very clear on who they are, and be relentless with your messaging. Now, I don't mean to spam your feed, that's different. No, you want to keep delivering value. You want to keep being consistent. But you don't want to assume that because you've posted about something once that everybody who needs to see it has seen it and has understood it, and has taken action on it.
Pualena 00:29
Hello, and welcome back to what is now the Course Creators Academy podcast and what will soon be the Rebel Media podcast, or the RBL media podcast. I think I'm going to say rebel. And on our last episode, I was kind of flip-flopping back and forth between, do we call it Rebel Media? Do we call it RBL media? And quite honestly, that is also something that I experience in my business every day, most people are referring to it as RBL media. Sometimes I also refer to it as that if I'm giving out like the URL, or my email address because there are no “ee’s”. So, we will ease into and sort of feel into what this podcast is called verbally. But the, it will be all it will be spelled RBL Media podcast, and I'm really looking forward to asking guests this question. What makes you a rebel in business? And if you're sitting there and you're like, Oh, my God, I want to answer that question, shoot me a message, shoot me an email. And I would love to have you on the podcast because this is all about providing a space for business owners and entrepreneurs who are just thinking outside the box constantly, which I think is most entrepreneurs, and giving them a space and a stage to share their message with the world to just, you know, inspire people. And I love the idea of having you know, people that you may have never heard of. And after being on the podcast after you hear them, you may become their biggest fan. So, why not? Right? So anyway, that is going to be very exciting. But for now, it is mid-November, 2023. Well, when did that happen? How did this year, like just fly by? I was talking to a friend of mine and she has young kids, she has three daughters. And one of her daughters is, I think she just turned 13, or she's turning 13. And she goes, I can't believe I have a teenager like five years ago, which to us as adults, five years ago doesn't actually seem like it's anything. 2018 could have been last year, right? Like, it feels like it's a blink of an eye. But if you have a 13-year-old, five years ago, you had an eight-year-old, and the difference in age, and just the personality and how your child exists in the world when they're eight versus when they're 13 is completely different. So, just I don't know, time. Time is funny. And that brings us to the conversation today. And you know, I think we're talking about trends and what we're seeing and what's working and what's not working in this online course space. And when we talk about online courses, I do think that it often includes a heavy percentage of coaching, consulting, and elearning in general is sort of an extension of the coaching industry. So, I think these can be kind of cross-pollinated across the board. But I'd love to just recap like, from what I've learned working with our clients, and trends that we've seen, what, you know, what can we expect? What should we be focusing on? What can we be working on, as we think about moving into the new year into 2024? So, what sort of comes to mind when we think about how this industry has evolved? And what trends we're looking at, there is a heavy emphasis on personalized learning experiences. And if you're thinking about this from an online course perspective, you know, it's not necessarily building a specific course for a specific person, but it is building a specific course for a specific target audience, a specific type of person, right? Your audience is typically one person, one consumer of this content. And they are typically you know, they have certain traits, they have certain qualifications that makes them your ideal buyer, your ideal target audience. And the way that you know, coaches, consultants e-learning, and e-course creators are developing personalized content is through their experience, right? We talked about this last week, or in our last episode, ask questions, pull your audience, do user interviews, and understand what those pain points are for your people. We do this so much as entrepreneurs, especially as solo entrepreneurs, you know, maybe have a business coach. I hope that you do, who you speak with regularly, you can ask them questions, you can bounce ideas off of them. Ideally, you have some kind of community where you're able to share and ask ideas. But many of us, even if we have these things, maybe our business coaches are focused on helping you hit a specific set of goals, or, you know, they're helping you with your finances, or whatever that looks like, we often aren't able to get good, reliable feedback and data on the things that we're creating. I take that back, we are able to, but we often don't. Because it takes talking to people. Sometimes it's like, single entrepreneurs who work from home and you know, their little home office in their cave, we are kind of introverted, and we don't want to talk to people or you know, it can be scary. I don't want to ask somebody what their thoughts are because what if they don't like it? Or what if they have a suggestion that I'm not able to follow through with? Making, like, yes, I acknowledge those fears, acknowledge those perceived roadblocks, and find a way to slowly but surely work through those. And the best way to do that is to take action and talk to people anyway, right? We want to ask people, what are they struggling with? what are their pain points? How did they feel? What were they going through before they took our course, that's great for your sales page, right? Use list pain points that are in the language of your clients and consumers. Again, using the fitness model, the fitness example, Hey, I have high-intensity interval classes, my classes are 30 minutes, and you come in, you do you know, a series of four intervals, and then you leave and then it's gonna increase your metabolic rate at rest and blah, blah, blah. And everyone's like, I don't know what that means. Nor do I care. I just want to lose weight. What are you struggling with? Low Energy, I feel slow, I feel tired. I feel lethargic. I don't like the way that I look like these are pain points that people are, real people are struggling with. We want to use their language, right? How do we get their language, we talk to them, we ask them questions. And then we create content around what it is that they need. So, when I say personalized learning experiences, you're creating this user experience around a specific type of person, a specific challenge, a specific result that this group of people who share this, you know, one experience or trait or desire. That's who we're talking to. Okay? So, you can think about it as one person, if you want to. This results in higher satisfaction and higher engagement levels amongst your learners. If I feel like you are talking to me, if I'm taking a course, I'm taking your high-intensity interval training course that you've called, feel great in 30 days, I don't know, terrible title. But that's speaking to the result that I'm looking for. Right? I want to feel good. I want to make sure that I'm taking my health into my own hands. And I would like guidance through that. I can't afford personal training, but I can afford to purchase this 30-day course, right? We want people to feel like we understand their problems and their challenges, what they're going through, and their desired results, so deeply, that it feels like they're talking to me. Right? So, these personalized learning experiences are helping me to stay motivated, to feel heard, to feel understood, and to stay engaged. This all still works. Okay. So, if you're thinking of creating a new course, or redesigning your course next year, those are some things to consider.
Pualena 9:52
Now, I don't think that we can talk about course creation trends without mentioning AI. This year AI has blown up, AI is not like terribly new, but I think ChatGPT and a couple of other early adopters to this technology that, you know, had the resources and the capability to get them into the hands of the general public. For an affordable amount. I mean, ChatGPT is free, you can also pay for it. But that, to me is like that put AI on the map because then every single human potentially was able to understand the power of AI. And the thing is learning every day. Yes, creepy. Yes. How do I feel about AI? I'm not sure. However, it's cool. If it ends up taking over the world, and, you know, taking on its own intelligence, becoming smarter than us and then destroying us. Yeah, I think that's a real possibility. And I think it’s a little concerning, but from a content creation perspective, it's very useful. And I think that you know, you can open ChatGPT. And there, there are two kinds of course creators who use AI and I'm just gonna use ChatGPT because it's something that I use often, I also use other types of AI, and the same rules, I think will apply. So, if I am creating a new course, one kind of person goes into ChatGPT and says, write me an online course outline for a 30-day course for high-intensity interval workouts. Actually, I'm just gonna do this right now. Write me a 30-day online course outline. You should spell correctly too, for a high-intensity interval training course. With a new workout and new every week, every day. And a new theme or focus every week. It's all in the prompt. So, right now, ChatGPT is generating a response, and it is wild. Wow. So, it broke it down by week. Wait till you see this. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, it's calling it the 30-day high-intensity interval training, parenthesis HIT online course outline, week one foundation and form, day one welcome and introduction, three bullet points overview of the course, introduction to the HIT concept, and setting personal fitness goals. Day two basics of HIT, explanation of high-intensity intervals and rest periods, importance of proper warmup and cooldown. Day three, bodyweight basics day for active recovery. Day five, equipment introduction basics, nutrition for HIT. Day seven, weekly reflection. Week two, cardiovascular endurance. Day eight cardio basics interval. So and all of these have at least two to three bullet points underneath. And this is it's decent, it really is. In, like, cool, like this is, kay so, right, there's two kinds of people, one, somebody who is going to take this and they're just going to build with it. This is the outline. It did all the work for me; I'm creating this course. Boom, put it out there, create market, create market. Yeah, this is great if you want to get things out fast. Okay, the other person who uses ChatGPT to create your course outline, you are using it as a starting point. But you realize that people are buying into you as a personal brand, you as your personality, your ability to inspire them to motivate them, your knowledge, your experience. So, you're going to take this as a starting point. And you are going to weave your personality, your knowledge, your experience into this and you are going to change things. Okay? Yes, great idea. The weekly outlines pretty good. Maybe day to day you have a different approach to HIT training. Maybe you want to break this up differently. Based on your experience I actually don't want to introduce equipment on day, whatever five, right? So, I think that is the way to go when it comes to AI. Use it. It's a phenomenal tool. It exists to support us. It doesn't exist to replace us. Okay? I talk to a lot of copywriters and some of them have come on this podcast and I always ask, do you think AI is going to replace you and your job? Everybody says no, at this point in the game, copywriters are pretty confident that they can write better than a machine. Now, it depends, right? If you want to just pump content out and like, yeah, ChatGPT can write an entire copy, an entire landing page copy. And you can put it out in the world and it might work. But at this point, I also think that most people can tell when something's been generated by AI. A lot of the AI-generated images, headshots, right, people are doing that they're like, their profile pictures are AI, really, really good, like, really scary how close it is to a photo. More often than not, I can still tell that it's AI. And it might take really small adjustments. And maybe there are some programs out there that can create something so good that I won't be able to notice. And I think the time is coming quickly. And I guess, I don't know when we're able to sort of integrate reality and AI so well, that you can't differentiate them anymore, I think that's going to be a really interesting turning point for humanity. Until we get there, I recommend using AI as a, yeah, a support tool, and not a way for you to sort of get out of doing the work. Because energy is still very tangible. Wow. Is it? It's actually not it is like the least tangible thing. What am I trying to say? I think people feel energy, they will feel your energy, they will feel ChatGPT’s energy, they will feel my energy, right? Everything's different and your people are following you. They are opted into your email list. They are waiting for your content because they like you. They trust you. They appreciate your perspective. Okay, so just something to think about when we've talked about AI. All right, and like to be fair AI is more than just writing copy, wordsmithing, making images, like AI can there's like AI podcast editors, so I have a human team. Astronomic Audio is my podcast editor, Alex, and his team, huge shout out because they are absolutely phenomenal. And, I mean, they might use AI to support the work that they do. But they are a team of humans who are completing the projects and doing the editing work. There are plenty of platforms out there that probably cost less than what I'm paying, and I don't want to use them because I trust that the quality assurance and the energy and sort of the perception of the humans who are editing the podcast that's meaningful to me at this at this point in the game, but there are you know, AI podcast editing tools that will automatically pull ums and likes and blank spaces and pauses out and you know, make your your life and your job a lot easier if you're especially if you're self-editing or editing your own podcast. But again, I just, if you can have a human and their energy and sort of their special touch, I just at this point, I don't see AI fully replacing that yet. So, thank you Astronomic Audio.
Pualena 18:42
Okay, moving on. Ah, looking at my notes. Okay, I let's talk about like, so those were kind of the big end-of-the-year trends to me, right, like keep it personalized. AI is in everybody's face, it's the elephant in the room. It's like people are, it exists, it's here to stay. So, let's talk about how we're going to use it. And, on that note, right, like everybody can potentially access AI. Everybody can potentially, you know, sign up for an e-learning platform and create a course. And this has been true, you know, in the coaching space, right? Even before all of this, anybody can be a coach. And there's like a, it's a Wild Wild West, anybody can create a product, right? Like that's the beauty of living in this sort of space of freedom. And yet, there is a significant issue around the lack of standardization of quality. I see this all the time in the web design world. Anybody can be a web designer, and the challenging thing is, as you know, especially the target audience of entrepreneurs, startups, business owners, people who are, you know, we value where we spend our money. We want to make good financial decisions. And sometimes we have to make sacrifices either in quality, how do I say this? Okay, so like, if you hire a web designer to build you a website for $500, you most likely are going to get a $500 website, that is going to be very different from a website that costs you $5,000. Perhaps all you want is a good start and you can go in and make the adjustments you need to make, more often than not, you will be left with a big heavy bag of frustrations. And it's a shame also that like, you know, it doesn't take much to learn how to use a drag-and-drop template, and then kind of label yourself as a web designer, put yourself out on these freelancing websites, get a handful of clients that you can sort of like, serve, to like, give them the bare minimum of what they've asked for, they won't be super satisfied, but there'll be like oh well technically you delivered. Right? And that's because it's very challenging to figure out how do we standardize quality in this space? How do you standardize quality in coaching and consulting? Which is why having these, you know, landing pages and websites and certifications, and highlighting those, highlighting what you know, highlighting testimonials and how you help people solve problems, and how you deliver your results. All of that is really important and as consumers, we have to be vigilant and do our due diligence. And, you know, I always tell my clients, before they hire me, feel free, go look at my portfolio. Click on those websites, they're real people, they're real businesses, and ask them what was it like to work with me. What was their experience? If they had a bad experience, and they tell you, they had a bad experience, I welcome it. Feedback is data. I'm sad. Like, I don't want anybody to have a bad experience. But the other thing is, like, if they say, Oh, Pua is, you know, she's really friendly, we did a weekly call every week, I was very involved in the collaborative process of building together. And that person's like, oh, well, I'm just looking for somebody to send all my information to, they're gonna put a website together for me, and then they're gonna give it back. That's not how I deliver websites. Like we have a very, like unique and customized experience. Learning about the business owner is an important part of that process for us. So, that's great, because then we realize they're not the right fit. That is absolutely perfect. I love that. I yeah. So this, I don't know, I think it's just something to be aware of if you are a consumer, and if you are a course creator, coach, consultant, service provider, how can you build that standard for yourself, and showcase it to your potential clients? How do you invite them to do their due diligence? How do you show them what you're capable of, and help them to figure out if they're the right fit? Right? So, that one is more of just something for you to think about. We can definitely dive deeper into that and talk about some strategies. But I think it's worth mentioning because it is an issue. And if you're listening to this, you probably have a very legitimate concept for your business, you provide high-quality services, you have ideas for great, you know, products and courses that you want to put out there. And people need to know you're the real deal. And once people get burned enough, also, they're going to have this sort of wall up when it comes to investing in, especially coaching. They're so like, if especially web design, right? Most people I talk to have been burned by a web designer, they've paid 1000s of dollars, it wasn't what they expected, they got locked out of their website, their web designer disappeared, you know, and being on the other side, there's like, it's just so crucial to find the right fit. Find a service provider, a coach, a designer, who you resonate with, who you appreciate their aesthetic, who you feel that you can have open communication with, who you just feel like is a good person and means well, yeah.
Pualena 24:43
All right. Let's look at the next one. Okay, so on that note, because there are so many people out there providing all these services and you are essentially, I'm going to use the word competing, against countless other people in your industry doing almost the same thing, right? And this can be challenging from a messaging perspective, from a positioning perspective, how do you differentiate yourself? How do you reach your target audience that may already be inundated by other people targeting them for the same services? How do we, you know, increase how you show up on search, all of these things need to be considered. And on the other side, we have consumers, we have your target audience, and all of these people sitting in this pool, they're on Facebook, and they're getting all these ads thrown at their face. They also have just like major overwhelm, like just overwhelm of choice, right? I need to hire a business coach. Okay. Well, I'm gonna Google Business Coaches in Honolulu, holy moly. And that's not even considering the business coaches that are all over the rest of the world, who work remotely, who would be willing to work with my timezone. How on earth am I going to choose? This is where we just have to get creative and relentless with our messaging. If you think about how you consume social media, I can be on Instagram for 10 minutes, and not even remember what I looked at four seconds ago, literally. I could do it right now to prove it to you. So, if I am in your target audience, and I start to receive posts from you, the algorithm starts to show me your content, because of some hashtags that you used and something that I searched. And slowly, but surely, I'm seeing more, and more, and more, and maybe the sixth, or the seventh time I see a post from you, I'm like, oh, business coach, scroll on, oh, this is coaching my area scroll, oh, business coach for web designers. I feel like I saw something about this a couple of weeks ago, right? And so the messaging has to be repeated. Oh, you have a download a free download for this. I'll tell you right now, this gets me all the time, free web design proposal templates. I probably have 50 of them. I love to look at web design proposals. Do I use them all? No. How many have I used? Two maybe, and I didn't actually end up using them at all, like, they just gave me ideas. But because I am the perfect target audience for people who are coaching web designers, or they have a platform to organize web design tasks or invoices, you know, whatever that is, find your target audience, identify them, get very clear on who they are, and be relentless with your messaging. Now, I don't mean to spam your feed, that's different. No, you want to keep delivering value, you want to keep being consistent. But you don't want to assume that because you've posted about something once that everybody that needs to see it has seen it and has understood it and has taken action on it. You'd be surprised how many people I talk to and they're like, Well, I have this, this free webinar and I posted about it on my Instagram, but nobody signed up. I was like, Honey, I bet you if 10 people saw that, zero people actually saw it. And then next week, when you post it again, 20 people see it and one person might stop scrolling. It's not that your post is bad. It's not that your caption is bad. It's not that you don't have great copy or images. It's not that you're providing a bad service. It's that people are so distracted, and they are so passive. We know this by now. But I think it doesn't hurt to say it again, just in case you're sort of beating yourself up over, maybe you had like a launch that didn't pan out the way that you thought it would and your marketing channels are limited to whatever you have free access to, which is often social media email list. Those things are great. They're very powerful. You just have to be relentless with your messaging. Do not underestimate the power of repetition. Okay?
Pualena 29:17
Okay, let's take a look ahead a little bit. And, like, what's in store for this space, in 2024? I'm not a fortune teller. I am not a seer. I don't have any insight information for many platforms. So, this is speculation. This is just, you know, based on the past year, the past four years, what I've seen the direction that I think we're probably going in is, I would say collaborative learning platforms. You know, being able to and we already see some of this right? And I think it goes beyond the kind of affiliate partnerships, which is something that has been really popular in the last few years. But I think more like true collaboration, right, I'm going to develop a course, with another coach. I’m going to sort of integrate the people who have successfully achieved this transformation and they will then become part of the curriculum for this next version of my course. I'm going to have, you know, this person who graduated from my course six months ago, come in and teach a couple of modules, or maybe they are opening their own business and we want to have like a 50/50, split and co-create this together. Lots of options for that and I'm seeing a lot more of that style of content creation and just like raw collaboration. I think it's beautiful. I think it's powerful. You get to utilize each other's networks, and contacts, and followers. It's really cool. And like, above all, it seems super fun. Right? There's one thing, maybe you have fun recording your own course, alone in a room with a tripod, and a mic and a camera and a computer, and then you edit it and then you know, for some people, that's fun. I actually think it's like, it's kind of fun. How much more fun would it be to do it with someone else? Right? So, I sat and I pondered this for a bit. And that was really the trend that I could come up with that I feel like is exciting. It's like, find collaboration partners, I think it's just if that's the direction that we're going, then I'm stoked for next year. And yes, keep track of AI and all that it can do and all that is available to you with that like that's not going anywhere. And yet human-to-human connection and interaction, I think will continue to prevail. So, that's the good news. I hope I'm right. Yeah, I think you know, as we wrap up the year and sort of reflect on the learnings from the year and the strides that you've made, and the challenges that you've, you've overcome, and may still be working through and really celebrate. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. And if you need to just sit and reflect, you know, I'm not, I'm personally quite– reframe. I have a lot of room for, not room for improvement. What do people say? Whatever, you know what I mean, there's a lot of room for improvement for me to celebrate more. Celebrate the small wins, the big wins. And what ends up happening is when we don't celebrate, when we don't acknowledge the things that we've accomplished or the steps that we've made towards a specific goal or achieving something or getting better at a skill set, we forget that we did it at all, right? And so just, you know, take some time to really think about the things that you've accomplished and the ways that you've impacted people and the relationships that you've made, and the personal growth that you've experienced. Now is the time, I know we're gonna start to get into like, you know, New Year's resolutions and blah, blah, blah. End of the year, it's just a natural time for us to start reflecting. And I really encourage you to just be intentional about that, and carve out some time to do it, it is so worth it. It's so meaningful and it can really provide you a beautiful way to wrap up the end of the year and move forward with just a good energy around, feeling proud about what you've accomplished, and who you've become over the last 10 to 12 months. It's really cool and really beautiful to share this space with you. So, thank you for being here. I appreciate you. And I cannot wait to quote-unquote, see you in the next episode. Talk to you soon.