🗣️ Transcript
Hello and welcome to the first lesson in this latest module, and it’s called A Weird Fact about What People Want. And we’re starting to look at what your course will deliver for its students.
So here’s what you’ll learn:
- The #1 question in your future students’ minds
- Why you can’t just give people what they want
- The shift that makes your course more appealing
Let’s kick things off, shall we?
We talked in the last module about how it’ll be your job to find enough people to tell about your course, so you can recruit enough students, both for your beta launch and your full launch, to be successful.
And when someone hears about your course for the first time, the number one question in their minds will be this:
“What’s in it for me?”
In other words: “If I give you my time, money and attention, what will I get in return?”
And you’ll need to have a clear and compelling answer to that question if you want your course to sell.
Now, this concept of the thing that people get if they enrol in your course goes by a number of different names depending on who’s talking about it.
Some people call it the transformation. Some call it the outcome. Some call it the end point or “Point B”. Some call it the big win.
But they all mean essentially the same thing – the positive change or changes your course helps its students to achieve.
And here’s how I like to think about it.
I like to think of your course leading students on a journey. It’s a journey that takes them, via certain essential milestones, to a happy place in the future where they’ve achieved some truly meaningful results related to their main goal.
Because I think of it as a journey, I call this end point, the destination.
And it’s your job to design a vivid and desirable destination that your target market desperately wants to visit.
Because if you don’t offer people the right destination, no-one will want to come with you on the journey. Which would suck, right?
Now, at this point you might be thinking: “Yes, that all makes sense. But surely we already know the destination, Glen. It’s that place in the future where the Goal from that target market template we worked so hard on has been achieved. Job done. Move on.”
But actually, it’s a bit more subtle than that. And here’s why…
Most people think about their goals in rather general terms, and when you push them for more details it gets kinda fuzzy.
For instance, let’s take one of the most universal goals in the world – wanting to be happy. Almost everyone wants to be happy but what that looks like is different for different people.
And the truth is that many people don’t have a clear idea what “happy” looks like for them. They just know that they want to be it. Which is a rather vague goal, I think you’ll agree.
Let’s try a more grounded example.
Imagine someone in their mid-twenties who’s still living at home with their parents. They’d love to move out, but they can’t afford to get a place of their own.
They don’t hate their parents or anything like that, they just need a bit of independence.
In their minds, their goal is simply to “move out of their parents’ house”. But in reality there are lots of different ways for them to achieve that goal. Put another way, there are many possible destinations that could satisfy that goal.
For instance, they could find a friendly local house or flat share. Or they could get a job where accommodation comes as part of the package, like working on a cruise ship. Or they could find a job they can do 100% remotely and move to a country where the cost of living is much lower.
Obviously these are very different options and won’t appeal to everyone equally. But they’re all specific destinations that meet the goal of “not living with Mum and Dad”.
And I’m sure our imaginary twenty-something would have no trouble telling us which of those was their preferred solution.
That’s why presenting people with a clear and specific option is almost always better than a vague and generic one, if you want them to make a decision.
In fact, we’ve probably all felt like this at one time or another.
“I don’t know exactly what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it!”
That’s why you need to help them “see” the destination.
So as a course designer and creator, you need to translate their high-level goal to a specific, desirable destination.
And you do that by getting some real clarity about the exciting results waiting for them when they get there.
Keen to find out more? Great! See you in the next lesson.