EP 174 - Creating Quality Courses With Jasmine Jonte

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing the incredible Jasmine Jonte for the Her Empire Builder and it was a course-creator’s dream come true!

Jasmine is a unicorn in our online course world - an experienced, highly skilled program ghostwriter and course creator who is dedicated to bringing other people’s products to life, despite having created and run her own courses. Put simply, she is a done-for-you seeker’s dream.

I know you’ll enjoy some of the ‘wow’ moments that Jasmine had to share from her unique industry perspective.
 

How The Experts Get A Course From An Idea To Reality
 

Extrapolating your expertise and knowledge can be a tough enough job in those planning phases, so it’s hard to imagine the process of doing that for someone else! Add to that the challenge of working across a variety of industries, and I was dying to know exactly how Jasmine is able to systemize the process for her clients.

She shared 3 core questions that she considers when starting the architecture of a course:

• What is the promise?
• What is the transformation?
• Who is it for?

From this point, Jasmine can start to map out the outline of a great course: “We start there, and then we go into the outline of the modules and lessons, which are the stepping stones on the path to transformation. In my terms, a module is about an hour of content, and these are comprised of lessons that range from five to 15 minutes”

Ultimately, whether you are creating your own course, or employing a ghostwriter to create it for you, it all comes down to the blueprint of the course.You need to build your product out section by section, lesson by lesson, and worksheet by worksheet so that it makes sense for your customers’ journey, and takes them from where they are NOW to where they want to be.
 

The Elements Of An Excellent Online Course

Jasmine knows that one of the best ways to ensure your course reaches its potential is to spend time reverse-engineering it. Instead of dumping all of your expertise and knowledge on your customers, it’s important to structure your course and all of the components in a way that can guarantee meaningful results. 


“All of your knowledge doesn't actually get your customers the results. It needs to be the right knowledge, backed by action steps so that people know what to do with it, because nobody’s going to get results based on watching a video. They're going to get results by taking action in response to watching that video.”

When creating or updating your course components, I encourage you to take a moment to think:

• Are there clear action steps, and are they easy to do? 
• Have you provided a spreadsheet, a workbook, or a template to support immediate action?

Course Trends You Need To Take Notice Of

From on a sales and marketing perspective, Jasmine believes we should all be taking notice of “the micros”.

“I'm seeing micro-niches work really well, as well as micro-transformation. Rather than offering everything, just teach them one thing. For example, instead of providing training on all things marketing, run a course or a session just on how to rock your YouTube organic strategy.”

Jasmine is also seeing online communities start to shift.

“Everyone was on Facebook groups for a long time, and only now are they starting to go to different platforms because now, more than ever, people do value that community element of a program. They see it not only as an opportunity to get questions answered, but they see it as an opportunity to connect. People are valuing and trusting virtual communities as an opportunity to do business together more now more than ever.”

Keeping this in mind, take some time to make sure that your community is intentional and set up the right way that is aligned with your course, membership or product. If you are considering changing the community aspect of your offering, it’s important to make this change as clear and simple as possible, and remind your people more than you think you need to remind them! Show the benefits, and make sure that the community and support doesn’t fizzle when you make the change.
 

The Common Mistakes That Course Creators Make

If you have a visceral reaction to the idea of seeking and receiving feedback, you may not want to read on. BUT as uncomfortable as it may make us feel to open ourselves up to criticism from our community, it is absolutely essential to your growth and keeping the quality of your product as high as possible. Feedback is fuel for excellence.

“A big mistake course creators are making is not asking for feedback consistently. And there's a lot we can do. A really effective way we can ask for feedback is by including quizzes and asking questions that check for understanding. Not only does it build your customer’s confidence, it lets you know what they're not getting, and that's really powerful.”

When asking for feedback from your customers and community, think about addressing all elements of your product, including:

• Community
• Content
• Pacing
• Structure
• Support
• Resources.

Every time you update your course, your goal should be to make it better, and the best way to ensure you reach that goal is by seeking feedback.
 

What Course-Completion Rates Really Mean

Finally, Jasmine and I dug into the importance of course-completion rates and I was pretty surprised by her opinion on this! Statistics show that only 3% of people that start a course completed it, so surely course creators like ourselves should be working around-the-clock to increase this, right?

Not according to Jasmine:

“I firmly stand against course completion rates. I think it is a number that people use to get you to buy their platform when it's not truly indicative of if your students are getting the results. Instead, we’ve got to ask ourselves: ‘What's the true KPI we want to be tracking now?’

And if you’re wondering what those KPIs are, it is simply: repurchases and referrals.

Jasmine is on a mission to support heart-centered visionaries by keeping them in their zones of genius. Find out more right here, or follow @jasminejonte on Instagram for more expert insights into creating quality courses.