POPULARITY
Shownotes: http://fizzleshow.com/342 What are the necessary steps to take to start selling online courses? Do you need to be at a certain level before you should start thinking about that at all? How do we pitch online courses at the right level and niche to maximize our reach and potential? The world of learning and the promotion of web-based resources and teaching has evolved very quickly over the last few years and as it has grown and changed, new companies have sprung up and filled spaces some of us never even knew existed. With the multitude of options out there, you might be wondering where can you content fit in and if there is even space for you? In this episode, we have a big discussion on this fertile topic, looking at pillar content, accelerator models and the big one: personalization and segmentation! Our panel of guests gives amazing perspectives on referrals, funnels, scaling and outsourcing. Today on the show we are joined by Janelle Allen from Zen Courses, Barrett Brooks of ConvertKit and Brennan Dunn from RightMessage! These three friends of Fizzle all have valuable and contrasting experience in the fields of online learning and we promise they have all the beans to spill! We also talk about using your collected data smartly, when or if to hire a virtual assistant, baselines to reach before creating courses and how far you should niche down. So for all this and a whole lot more, join us on the Fizzle Show today! Today's episode is brought to you by Podia. Podia is a Swiss Army Knife for selling anything you need online. It's an all-in-one digital storefront where you can sell courses, memberships, and digital downloads all in one place. The cool thing about Podia is that they eliminate all the technical headaches. You don't have to install anything, you can host your sales pages there, your files, your checkout process. You can even do your email marketing and your newsletters from Podia! Fizzle Show listeners can get 15% off of Podia FOR LIFE by signing up for a free trial over at http://podia.com/fizzle. Key Points From This Episode: Is it possible to still make a dent in the online teaching world? [0:02:32.4] Helping people with their own success through different formats. [0:06:12.7] Standing out in a crowded market and the accelerator model. [0:09:36.4] The unique opportunity for interactive and sticky courses. [0:13:52.1] The vital importance of referrals and testimonials in marketing and sustainability. [0:15:31.7] Personalization, segmentation, and customization; the future of online courses. [0:17:25.9] Finding common ground and reflecting this to customers through email. [0:23:40.4] Niching down versus personalization; why segmentation comes first. [0:27:12.3] Weighing the creation of new content against refining existent content. [0:33:17.7] Baselines for successful first course sales! [0:39:02.5] The benefits of collecting segment data for focussing your marketing. [0:42:01.4] Scaling up and the differences between small teams and big companies. [0:47:20.3] When to do things yourself and when to outsource certain jobs. [0:52:45.2] Prioritizing work and letting go of tasks that you do not need to do. [0:58:47.9] And much more! Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Fizzle — https://fizzle.co Podia — https://www.podia.com/fizzle Zen Courses — https://www.zencourses.co/about Janelle Allen — https://www.zencourses.co Brennan Dunn — https://brennandunn.com RightMessage — https://rightmessage.com ConvertKit — https://brennandunn.com/ Barrett Brooks — https://barrettbrooks.com/ Inc 5000 — https://www.inc.com/inc5000/index.html Teachable — https://teachable.com Coursera — https://www.coursera.org/ Thinkific — https://www.thinkific.com/ Udemy — https://www.udemy.com Masterclass — https://www.masterclass.com Double Your Freelancing — https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ Bryan Harris — https://videofruit.com Tim Ferris — https://tim.blog Airtable — https://airtable.com Pat Flynn — https://www.smartpassiveincome.com OptinMonster — https://optinmonster.com Corbett Barr — https://corbettbarr.com
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
What’s up, everybody! It is great to be back! For those just tuning in, I’m back from a two-month summer break and I’m excited to be doing the show again. Before we start this episode, I want to thank my listeners. We’re on the 100th episode of Level Up Your Course! Thank you so much for being here and being part of the Zen Courses family. Business is just about solving problems. During my summer hiatus, I realized that I’m in a personal growth period. In this episode, I share the key things I’ve done to embrace this transition and my thoughts on why delegation is a vital part of the growth process. I also dig into how the course stratosphere is changing, too, and give you a sneak peek into next week’s episode. New things are coming up for Zen Courses, so get pumped! Join the Zen Courses family here: https://www.zencourses.co/newsletter Episode Quotes "One of the key things that I did was automating a lot of repetitive tasks that I was doing, and it saved me so much time." "Learning how to delegate is a big part of growth." "There is an alternative to burning out and it is called delegation." "Before you automate or delegate anything you need to be able to map out the process." “I’m back, and I’ve learned a lot! Get ready for the exciting things coming up.” Listen to Learn 00:56 I'm back! It was a great summer break! 02:18 Embracing the growth period - "I hired a business coach and had therapy" 06:42 Why and when to delegate? Importance of delegation/automation in the growth process 10:40 Exciting things coming up for Zen Courses 18:01 What is the state of online courses? 25:52 A peek about the next episode coming up next week 27:27 Happy 100th episode! My thank you message for you
Many business owners build an online course before they really know their target audience and what that audience actually wants. Instead of serving their clients, building their list, and pre-validating their product, entrepreneurs jump ahead of themselves and put a ton of time and effort into building a course that’s not nearly as good as it could be. This week’s guest, Janelle Allen, helps clients avoid this trap and build courses that get serious results. Janelle Allen is the founder of Zen Courses, where she helps business owners make actionable, learner-focused online courses that change lives. After studying Institutional Technology and working as an Instructional Designer for educational and corporate clients, Janelle turned her focus to online business. She brings this unique perspective to course design and building, and builds courses that improve student results, increase revenue, and boost authority. Janelle and I then talk about how her business and some of the entrepreneurial lessons she had to learn after severing a relationship with her biggest corporate client. She talks about the three channels she focused on to get traction with building her audience and why she thinks building a list is something every business owner should do. We also talk about the content hamster wheel that many entrepreneurs can find themselves in and how you can repurpose your content. And Janelle shares some great wisdom on finding your target audience and understanding the different segments within it that you can serve.
Today, I'm chatting with Janelle Allen, the instructional design guru and founder of Zen Courses. Janelle is a learning designer at heart so she knows that the most important part of the online course creation process is the students' transformation. We talk about Janelle's career transformation including how she grew an agency, had employees, had to let them go, and then rebuilt her business into what it is today. Working for yourself is a learning experience in and of itself and it's not always easy or fun, but there are certainly some upsides and personal growth to be had. Our chat today gives us some insight into understanding how online course creation is a lot like life. Don't forget to grab your free Deep Work tips here.
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
What’s up, everybody! We’re changing things up this week with a solo episode. I’m excited to share this with you because I dig into some key things you need to be thinking about. First: the state of online marketing. What’s going on, and how will it affect online courses? I’ll also share a bit about building community and making sales. You’ll hear some of the lessons I’ve learned and the tools I recommend for improving and growing your business. Lastly, you’ll get the scoop about what’s coming up for Zen Courses and the Level Up Your Course Podcast; I’ve got some fun and exciting things planned for this summer! Make sure you are part of my email list to keep you updated. Sign up at https://www.zencourses.co/newsletter. Episode Quotes "Solopreneurs are realizing the importance of learning & engagement and sales & marketing." "Improving learning and focusing on sales & marketing must go together. It is not an either/or game." "A social component needs to be present in online courses." "Having a self-paced course on its own is not enough; there needs to be a community." "When it comes to education, people should be able to have that deep work or engagement that they need to get something done." "It's not enough to just focus on instructional design, marketing is part of it." Listen to Learn 01:09 What can you expect in this episode? 02:45 State of the online market - then and now 05:43 The resurgence of high ticket coaching programs 07:31 Overview of Bloom's 3 Domains of Learning and the importance of having a community 08:58 Why more people are out of Facebook? Where are they going? 13:19 Personalization and using videos in your content 15:21 What's happening with Zen Courses 17:14 Lessons I have learned from Q1 - things to change and improve 23:38 What's coming up for summer 2019 - updates, future interviews Join my email list and get the latest updates about Zen courses. Sign up here: https://get.zencourses.co/newsletter
Intersection Education - Toward Better Teaching and Learning
Janelle Allen, from Zen Courses, speaks about engagement, adult learning, online delivery and creating learning communities.
On this episode, the founder of Zen Courses shares tools and tactics for launching and promoting an online course for yourself or your brand. Get the full show notes here.
052: Create Your Online Course with Janelle Allen of Zen Courses Have you ever thought of turning your expertise into an online course? It can be a great source of income that comes with the satisfaction of inspiring others with content you feel passionate about. Shannon welcomes Janelle Allen, the founder of Zen Courses to help you get started. Janelle shares her knowledge with us covering how to pick a topic, organize and market a course, the different styles of courses, and much more. Armed with her Masters of Science degree in Instructional Technology, Janelle has spent nearly ten years creating courses for a variety of clients, including colleges, universities, corporations and small businesses. Realizing that she wanted to work in a more personal way with others she founded Zen Courses. Through her business, Janelle offers services that include one-on-one consultations and courses. Janelle has a free online email list course just for our Connected Yoga Teacher listeners. 6:20 How Janelle got interested in online learning and went from working for a six-figure company to working for herself 10:10 Janelle's experience with yoga 11:20 How to get started creating an online course: 1) target learner 2) what problems do they have 3) what solutions do you have 15:35 How do yoga teachers pick from possible course topics? How to determine if people will pay for your course. 17:35 How to organize the course? “The one thing” what should people be able to do after completing the course, using “backwards design” 21:45 “Simpler is better” - resisting temptation to put too much content in your course 20:35 Tools Janelle uses to create her courses- outline, content cues, mind maps 23:40 The difference between a live course, self-paced course or blended course (part live and part self-paced) 26:30 Open cart or close cart launches- whether a course is available for a limited time 27:15 How choose between creating live course, self-paced or blended course- often depends on complexity of your courses 28:40 Thinking about your learners- there will be times when parts of the course will be harder, students may stumble and it will be important to be available to your students during these times through video chat, Facebook groups, provide an extra week to do their work, etc. 32:10 Making your course actionable: activities and assignments in your course, develop a community in your course (on social media like a FB group) 34:05 How to get students for your courses 1) market to existing audience through email including survey questions, building a case for the course and how to sign up for your course 2) partner with people that have an audience through a joint webinars 39:30 When you are worried about being “salesy” and how Janelle worked through that and the fear of rejection 41:30 How to reach Janelle if you want to work with her 43:40 What advice would Janelle give to those starting out 46:40 Shannon's closing thoughts Links Zen Courses Website Sign up for Zen Courses Newsletter Free Course from Janelle Allen "Start With Email" The Connected Teacher Facebook Group Follow The Connected Teacher on Youtube Book a Consultation Call with Shannon Define Your Yoga Niche Online Course Yoga for Pelvic Health Teacher Training Mama Nurture Teacher Training (RPYT) Free TCYT 5 Kochas PDF Free TCYT 5-Day Content Creation Challenge Gratitude to our Sponsor Schedulicity
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
Welcome to episode 050 of The Zen Courses Show. I can’t believe it’s been 50 episodes already! In this episode we're going to take a trip down memory lane. You’ll hear the highlights from a year of interviewing online course creators, including my top takeaways and snippets from the most popular shows over the past year. I'll also share what I've been up to with Zen Courses. Ready? References and Episodes Mentioned: Jumpstart Your Course - A live program to help you get started with your online course ZCS 011 - Sarah Selecky of SarahSelecky.com ZCS 047 - Bob Reynolds of BobReynoldsMusic.com ZCS 044 - Caleb Pike of DSLRVideoShooter.com ZCS 043 - Courtney Sanders of ThinkAndGrowChick.com ZCS 003 - Darlene Hildebrandt of DigitalPhotoMentor.com ZCS 007 - Emma Holmes of SchoolofScratch.com ZCS 025 - Brent Weaver of uGurus.com Thanks for Listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving an honest review for The Zen Courses Show on iTunes! Ratings and reviews boost ratings & help new listeners find the show. I read every review and I'd love to read yours. Click here to leave a review. And, finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. If you have an Android phone, you can subscribe on Stitcher. Lastly, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone featured in this episode for sharing their story with us on The Zen Courses Show!
If you've ever thought about having your own online course, then you'll definitely want to listen to this week's interview with Janelle Allen! She's a learning designer with a background in education, and her company Zen Courses helps people create online curricula using a process and system that's structured for success. Janelle starts off talking about how she got into learning design, and we take a look at the current environment of online learning and discuss the pros and cons. Janelle also shares where her passion for education comes from, and she goes a little bit into her passion for deejaying! Janelle can teach you the ABCs and then make you dance on the 1s and 2s! Dope! Get into this week's interview! Janelle Allen on Twitter B L A K B R D Zen Courses Zen Courses on Instagram Help support Revision Path by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon! Pledges start at $1 per month, and you’ll receive special patron-only updates, early access to future episodes, and a lot more! Join today! Come join the Revision Path community on Slack! http://revisionpath.com/slack Check out the Revision Path store and buy a t-shirt or hoodie to help support the show! http://revisionpath.com/store We're on iTunes and Stitcher as well! Visit http://revisionpath.com/iTunes or http://revisionpath.com/stitcher, subscribe, and leave us a 5-star rating and a review! Thanks so much to all of you who have already rated and reviewed us! Revision Path is brought to you by Facebook Design, MailChimp, Hover, and SiteGround. Save 10% off your first purchase at Hover by visiting hover.com/revisionpath! Get 60% off all hosting plans at SiteGround by visiting siteground.com/revisionpath! And visit MailChimp’s new hilarious campaign at mailchimp.com/did-you-mean! Follow Revision Path on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
Welcome to Episode 046 of The Zen Courses Show! My guest for this episode is the wonderful Holly Wren Spaulding poet, teacher, and activist. Holly has been a long time supporter of Zen Courses. I asked her to join us to share her online course journey, especially how she balances creating online programs with making art. Ready? In This Episode, You'll Learn: Why it’s good to disconnect from the online world to create What an immersive course / program looks like Why Holly Wren uses a seasonal structure for her program How she balances teaching online with her need to create art How she transitioned her in-person teaching to an online business Why pricing is something you have to test How she teaches transformation through poetry in an online program References and Tools Mentioned: Poetry Immersion Program Holly's upcoming course, A Body of Work Thanks for Listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving an honest review for The Zen Courses Show on iTunes! Ratings and reviews boost ratings & help new listeners find the show. I read every review and I'd love to read yours. Click here to leave a review. And, finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. If you have an Android phone, you can subscribe on Stitcher. Lastly, I want to say THANK YOU to Holly for sharing her story with us on The Zen Courses Show!
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
Welcome to another episode of The Zen Courses Show! My guest for this episode is Mackenzie Child, designer and creator of Design for Developers. In this interview we talk about his course-building process, how he uses YouTube for marketing and why he uses Coach to deliver his online course. In This Episode, You'll Learn: Who Mackenzie is and why he started teaching design online The big mistake that delayed his course launch (and how he recovered from it) Why he does things before he's any good at them Why Mackenzie uses Coach for his online course; plus, what he likes & where there's room for improvement How to streamline your video production How to use YouTube to build your brand What equipment he recommends for quality videos Sites Mentioned: Mackenzie's course, Design for Developers Mackenzie's YouTube channel Video Equipment Mackenzie Uses: Shure KM32 Focusrite USB interface Canon 80D DSLR camera Blue Yeti Microphone Final Cut Pro *The links above are affiliate links. If you choose to purchase these items, you'll help Zen Courses continue to create awesome content like this podcast. Thanks For Listening! Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it. Also, please leave an honest review for The Zen Courses Show on iTunes! Ratings and reviews help the show's rankings. Plus, they help me improve the show so I can bring you more value. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at hello@zencourses.co. I read every email and I'd love to read yours. And, finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. If you have an Android phone, you can subscribe on Stitcher. Huge thanks to Mackenzie for sharing his story on the The Zen Courses Show!
Art of Value Show - Discover Value | Create Options | Start Pricing
Janelle Allen is a learning designer of online courses at Zen Courses and the host of the Zen Courses Show. In this episode, we discuss how to create significant value for your course. In the first segment, we explore the most important factor, learner success. During the next segment, she explains how to determine what success […] The post Designing Value for Your Online Course with Janelle Allen – 102 appeared first on Art Of Value.
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
It's the last episode of 2015! In this episode, I share the exciting things coming up in 2016 and a look back at some of the personal things that were going on behind the scenes in 2015. Plus, a few surprises, including an ending full of highlights from this year. Enjoy! To stay up to date with the new things coming in 2016, get on The Zen Courses mailing list. You'll also get free updates, plus my email series, 5 Types of Online Courses. Just head over to zencourses.co/newsletter to sign up!
Level Up Your Course Podcast with Janelle Allen: Create Online Courses that Change Lives
In this episode of The Zen Courses Show, I share what the show is about, my background with online courses, and what you can expect to learn about online courses by listening.