🗣️Transcript
Hello and welcome back! I really hope you’re getting into the swing of this module. This latest lesson is called Reducing the Result (with Examples).
And here’s that you’ll learn:
- A simple exercise to help you uncover the essential achievements
- Two examples of “reducing the result”
- The right number achievements to aim for
Let’s start by quickly setting the scene.
This module is all about mapping the territory your students will cover on their journey to the destination, that place in the future where an exciting result or results are waiting for them.
And to do that, we need to reduce that end result to a collection of “essential achievements” that have to happen somewhere on that journey.
Now, you may already be clear on what those achievements should be. Or you may still need to work them out based on your experience and instincts.
Either way, I have an exercise that’ll help bring them into the open.
Imagine that you’re going somewhere in a hurry. Maybe it’s a meeting you need to attend, or a train you need to catch, or you need to be home by a certain time.
And while you’re rushing to wherever you need to be, you bump into your Student Zero – the example customer you defined in the target market module.
And they say: “Hey, I’m so glad I bumped into you. I hear you’re really good at helping people to get X and I really need help with that.” (Where X is the specific result from your course promise.)
You check your watch and see that you have literally 60 seconds to spare.
So you decide the most useful thing you can do is tell them, in broad strokes, how to get that result. You don’t have time for all the lower-level details, but at least you can put them on the right path.
So let’s imagine they say: “I hear you’re really good at helping people land their dream job. How can I do that?”
And if that’s your area of expertise, you might say:
“Here’s what needs to happen if you want to land your dream job. You need to:
- Decide the boxes your dream job needs to tick
- Find out what types of jobs meet those criteria
- Optimise your resume for getting those types of jobs
- Apply for relevant jobs and land some interviews
- Ace the interviews and get one or more job offers”
Now, you might think that these are all fairly obvious steps. But that’s fine.
You actually want this high-level overview of the journey to sound like it’s common sense.
It’s those lower-level details you’ll put in your course that make the result possible. But giving your student zero a helpful summary would at least get them started and save them some time.
By the way, notice how each of those high-level achievements could easily become a course module.
So you could have a module on working out what your dream job looks like. Another on optimising your resume. And so on.
It doesn’t always line up so conveniently, but it’s useful to think in those terms.
And also, you might notice that in this “dream job” example, the achievements have a natural order to them. They’re like logical steps you follow one after the other.
Again, that’s not always the case. Most of the time, but not always.
So let’s see another example.
This time, let’s imagine a different Student Zero who says: “I hear you’re really good at helping people to transform their mental and physical wellbeing. How can I do that?”
And if that’s your area of expertise, you might say:
“Well, here’s what needs to happen if you want to transform your mental and physical wellbeing. You need to:
- Improve your sleep hygiene so that you start each day fully rested
- Adopt the right exercise habits to improve and maintain your physical fitness
- Stay well-hydrated and eat the right foods for optimum nutrition
- Create a daily mindfulness practice to banish any negative self-talk
Hopefully you can see how these individual achievements would dramatically improve your well being.
But you should also notice that there’s not an obvious “1,2,3,4” order for completing them. In fact, it may not even make sense to work on them sequentially. You might do some of them in parallel.
For instance, would you want to wait until you’d totally mastered your sleeping habits before introducing even a basic exercise routine? Probably not.
I won’t dwell on this scenario because it’s not as common. 80% of the time your essential achievements will look a lot like steps that need completing one after the other.
At this stage you might be wondering:
What’s the right number of achievements to include? And we’re really talking about the level of granularity here.
And there’s no magic number, but I will give you a range. But before I do that, keep the following in mind.
Some journeys are naturally longer and more complex than others.
The course type affects the answer – a mini course may only need a single achievement
There’s not a 1:1 correlation between achievements and course modules
With all that being said, three to seven achievements is about right for the average course.
Many more than seven and you’re not staying high-level enough. Or you’re trying to cover more than you reasonably should in a single course.
Okay, that’s it for this lesson. You’ll find some more examples of reducing the result to its essential achievements in the resource section below this video.
Good luck and I’ll see you in the next lesson