How would you feel if you created an online course, poured your heart and soul into it, were excited about sharing it with the world…

… And no one enrolled in it?

Frustrating to say the least, agree?

And yet, It’s a more common scenario than you might think.

Which is a sad loss.

And no. I’m not talking about a loss of money which it definitely is. And no. I’m not talking about the time that you could have used for something else. I’m referring to something much more important, as valuable as those two things are.

It’s the loss of your motivation, and your willingness to try again.

And I want you to try again, and share your gifts with the world in a course because

I truly believe online courses are one of the best ways to change the world and help others.

So if by any chance, you feel like this, please pay close attention, because you can avoid this problem with just a mindset shift, as I had to do for myself…

The day no one enrolled in my course

Back then in my career reinvention days, right after leaving my role as an architect,  I taught a bunch of Life purpose workshops.

Leading self-discovery workshops was fun and liberating. And a huge shift from the construction work I was leaving behind.

Social media didn’t exist back then, but I had a nice following in my email list, I was publishing a monthly column in a local magazine, and was filling up my courses one after the other.

One day I said to myself: “-Hey. If I can fill up these life purpose courses, which is such a woo woo topic, I can fill up a course about anything I want to teach.”

Lo and behold, I decided to run a different course titled ” Heal your heart with EFT. “

My process was like this: I decided the results I wanted to create with my course, outlined the content for the modules, wrote a few blog posts on the topic, created the script and landing page for a webinar, and finally, sent my newsletter with the invitation to the webinar…

… but no one signed up.

Nothing. Crickets. My audience was not interested in THAT topic, even though I was convinced they would.

The problem is, we tend to fall in love with our ideas…

Beware of our cognitive bias

We usually believe that just because we’ve come up with a great idea, for a course, for a product, or even for a business, others will love it as much as we do.

It happens to all of us. And it’s called “confirmation bias”.

In his book “Thinking, fast and slow”, psychologist Daniel Kahneman said that we “jump into conclusions”  that support our own beliefs without real evidence for them. And this is exactly what we do when we convince ourselves that our audience will love our courses.

Reality proves us differently, though.

In my case, no matter how excited I was about my new course, my audience didn’t want it. They wanted numerology. They wanted life purpose. And they couldn’t care less about my new recently acquired skills of EFT.

It was a huge lesson for me.

And at the same time, I was very fortunate because I never fully created the course…

The course creation tip that will save you tons of time, money, and effort

Very early on my new path as solopreneur, I read this:

“8 out of 10 products fail,” says Eben Pagan in his course How to turn your talents into income. “Finding the right product for the right audience takes time,”-he continues- “and a lot of experimentation.”

So Eben’s idea to “Test. Test. Test. Because everything is a test” got ingrained in me at that early stage.

And it saved me a lot of time, money, effort… and disappointment.

For this new course, I had just created the outline. I had created the webinar. And my mindset was that “this is just a test”.

I could have wasted months and a ton of resources otherwise. And I could have doubted my own ability to create successful courses.

But I didn’t. Because it was just a test.

So, please do yourself a favor. Test your courses in a small, easy-to-launch way.

Save yourself a  ton of time, money, and disappointment by testing your course idea.

The best way to test your course? Run a pilot course. 
No bells, no whistles, just the minimum necessary content to run your course. And the most important element of all: give a ton of support to your students.

Want to know how to run a pilot course? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll write a new article about it.

To your Purpose, prosperity and Inner Peace

Charo