Case Study: How I Built 3 High-Performing Online Courses in 12 Months

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Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Hey there 👋,

Welcome to another monthly deep dive for the COT community.

Once a month I answer questions and explore topics for STT Premium subscribers aka The Cult of Thoughts 🏴‍☠️ (not a member? Upgrade here).

These editions are like mini-books and toolkits designed to help you do your best work in your L&D career.

Catch up on recent editions:

• How to be a strategic L&D leader (a step-by-step guide)

• How to build an AI upskilling strategy for your company

• The Step-by-Step ‘How To Build Your Learning Tech Stack’ Blueprint

Today, we’ll explore the framework I’ve used to build 3 high-performing online courses in 12 months

If you’re not a member of the cult, don’t worry. I’ll speak with you in the free edition on Tuesday.

Get your tea 🍵 or beverage of choice ready.

We've got lots to discuss!

THE BIG THOUGHT
How I Built 3 High-Performing Online Courses in 12 Months

This month, I’m giving you a backstage pass to how I’ve built the online courses in my Steal These Thoughts Dojo.

We’ll talk about why, what and how they call came together. My goal is to show how anyone can do this. There is nothing special about me, I don’t have any secret skills or advantages. All you need is a little curiosity, patience and commitment.

I know for some that might be asking a lot.

But, the hard work is what makes it great (and hopefully worthwhile).

Why I began creating courses

I’ve always enjoyed teaching.

It sounds cringey but helping people learn something new and see the enormity of the possible just lights me up. I also love learning new stuff all the time. You could say I’m a professional skills collector.

I enjoy writing (as you know) which feels like an extension of teaching in some way.

But it has it’s limits. Reading how to use x tool in L&D is much harder to write, structure and keep your attention. You lose the connection quicker, I find, anyway. Video works better here, imo.

When I took STT into a full-time solo business in summer of 23, I decided to embrace my curiosity and see if I could build a successful online course.

Now, I’ve been in L&D for a long time but I’m not a pure learning designer.

I’m a tech nerd who knows how to craft words together, and I’m good at learning very fast too. Plus, I’ve been fortunate to be around a lot of world-class designers, so I’ve learnt a thing or two.

I knew this would help me going down this rabbit hole.

So, I had:

• Never created a course (outside of my corpo life)

• I was keen to learn how to build, deploy, market and sell to an audience

• Improve them as a evolving digital experience

Online courses I’ve built to date

As of typing these words, I have 4 courses.

3 paid and 1 free. I only focus my efforts on 2 of these today.

I have:

• The Complete AI For L&D Crash Course

• The Art of Performance Consulting For L&D

• Prompt Writing For Business (experimental)

• How To Build An AI Assistant in 1 Hour (free)

The AI crash course is my first baby, and I spend 2-3hrs a month building new content for it (more on that later). To date, I’ve had 700 students in 12 months enrol in these courses.

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