Course Lab – Episode #98
Building Sustainable Courses (Ali Shapiro)
Abe Crystal: So there has to be a balance between being able to show that people are making some type of concrete progress and feeling better or feeling excited about where they’re going in a reasonable timeframe and balancing that with a longer-term view, which is important for sustainable change.
Ari Iny: Hello and welcome to Course Lab, the show that teaches creators like you how to make better online courses. I’m Ari Iny, the director of growth at Mirasee, and I’m here with my co-host, Abe Crystal, the co-founder of Ruzuku.
Abe: Hey there, Ari.
Ari: Today, we welcome Ali Shapiro to the show. Ali is a holistic nutritionist and integrated health coach. She developed the core of her business truce with food while in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. To do so, she drew from her 17 plus years of working with clients, as well as her own personal healing journey from emotional eating and having cancer as a teenager. She is also the host of Insatiable, which has been named an iTunes new and noteworthy podcast. Thanks for being here, Ali.
Ali Shapiro: Thanks for having me.
Ari: Awesome. So, to kick things off, the question that I like to ask is, could you give us kind of a 30,000-foot view of you and how you came to the world of online courses?
Ali: Yeah, I was kind of an OG, so I could talk about it. When I was about 24 years old, I had a slew of health problems. Irritable bowel syndrome, depression, emotional eating, acne. I was trying all the medications the doctors were giving me. Nothing was working. Long story short, I found a holistic nutrition school, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And there I learned about food as medicine.
And this was the first time I had really thought of, like, wait, food could help me outside of losing weight. Because in our culture, at least of a certain age, you grow up, and the really only thing you learn about food, and this is important to behavioral change is that it’s about weight loss. And so that’s the way that you’re making meaning about everything. And I realized that I could use this to heal myself.
And this was 20 years ago, so it was before functional medicine was language. We all know gut health, blood sugar, none of this was in the collective consciousness at that time. And I was able to reverse my depression, my irritable bowel syndrome, my acne, all the stuff. And I was like, the doctors, like, why am I doing this when my doctors have nothing to offer me? How do I know this? And I felt amazing. I then started my business on the side, and I started seeing, like, does this help other people? Cause basically at the time, what I was doing was helping people get off processed foods. That was all that it was.
But after about the fourth session, we stopped talking about food, and people would get into the emotional stuff, and I didn’t know what was working, what wasn’t working. Why would some people change? Other people wouldn’t. And then in tandem, I would find myself really eating well, except when I was stressed. So in the cancer world, we call it scanxiety season. When you’re going for your scans to find out, do you have secondary cancers? Are you so cancer free? And I would overeat sugar and binge on sugar. And I’m like, I now know that sugar feeds on cancer. Why am I doing this?
And there were other times when I was building my business and all this stuff, and I was like, why can’t I keep this up? Like, I don’t understand. I’m smart, I’m disciplined, I’m hardworking. And I basically took this same systems approach to my health symptoms that I did to my behavioral change. And I said, what if me falling off track actually made sense? What is the deeper root issue? And from there, I really realized, I think, what is the missing link in, especially health changes, especially exercise and diet, which in our industry, if you’re in our industry, you know, it’s an open secret that sustainability is not figured out in our industry.
Talk to any trainer. They will tell you that. Talk to any dietitian. And so I really figured out for food stuff. The root of it is really about attachment and belonging and safety. And so people turn to food when they feel unsafe, specifically isolated, separate from people and the things that they want in life. So that is what I created in grad school, and I’ve been in business now successfully for 17 years in October, full time as a health coach and podcaster and all that stuff. So that’s kind of a 30,000-foot view of how truths with food, which is my flagship program, and my methodology that works on sustainable change, came to be.
Ari: Awesome.So I have a lot of questions around this piece of sustainable change, because I think that’s a, of course, in your industry specifically, but in general, in the world of online courses, that can be a struggle. But before we go there, I do want to just hear a little bit more about your program. So can you tell us a little bit more about Truce with Food?
Ali: Yeah. So Truce with Food actually started as an in-person program, and it was six weeks. And at the time, and this is important, probably for our conversation later on, it was just giving people information. Again, this was 18 years ago. For people listening, you have to understand, newspapers didn’t have health sections. There was no social media. Right. I was teaching people what we call in the change world, technical information like gut health. 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut.
How you eat at one meal sets you up for the next meal. How hungry? Satisfied. That’s blood sugar. Cause at the time, people thought only diabetics needed to worry about blood sugar. So I was giving people just technical, real, concrete information that they had not had access to before. And then what I realized is, in a group setting, there was really power in the group. And people also, again, they would start to make these changes. We would add in foods, give them the information. But the same thing was happening around the fourth session I had with my private clients.
Okay, I know what to do now, but why am I not keeping that up? And so that’s where Truce with Food, the course came out of. And at the time, again, it was early in the online world, I then decided to bring it online as a course. And with my work, what I’m really trying to do, first of all, because change is a longer-term process. I know on your podcast, sometimes you talk about quick wins, and that is so important. And for my clients, the quick win is actually a mindset shift.
It’s a mindset shift that your eating, your crazy eating, your eating that feels out of control, actually makes sense. It’s not a willpower or discipline issue, and you don’t need more information anymore. This is not a more information is going to help you type of challenge. It’s what’s called an adaptive challenge in the change world. And so I added in this component about the psychology. And so we really start with the psychology of it and getting people to realize, oh, we’re not going to count calories, oh, you’re not going to give me more information. Instead, I have to understand what arises in me to feel unsafe and turn to food.
And so the course, I hope I’m answering your question, but it addresses the physical, okay, essentially, you need to know what foods work best for you, and the discernment tool for that is blood sugar and gut health. And then we also need to understand, why are you actually falling off track, and why does that make sense? And how can we shift how you’re relating to yourself when that happens? And so that’s what the course is built around.
Ari: So I guess what I’d be curious about is, for the course creators who are listening to this, the practical pieces around supporting mindset shift, supporting kind of helping people understand the foundational pieces that they need to change in order to be successful in whatever the transformation is that they’re trying to create for the people that they’re working with.
Ali: Yeah, well, I think the first thing is taking a philosophical step back and realizing that there’s a difference between what’s called technical and adaptive change. Dr. Ronald Heifetz, who is at the Kennedy School of Leadership at Harvard, says, the biggest mistake we made is we put adaptive challenges into technical solutions. So what most people are doing when they’re trying to help people change is they’re giving them more information, right? More information to learn. Then if you can google something like, how do I fix my leaky faucet? How do I run a 5k? All of those things you can Google and you can outline the steps to help you change your behavior.
But most challenging, chain problems, whether it’s health and wellness, whatever change you’re looking for is really what’s called an adaptive challenge. And in that process, the known solution isn’t known yet. So as course creators, you can imagine it’s like, what do you mean it’s not known? I have to guide people. But what we’re really looking to do is change how people show up, because what is a good behavior will depend on the context.
So, for example, in my field, intuitive eating might say, make everything legal. Every food that you eat, it’s okay to do that. The behavior change is not to restrict. Right? However, sometimes, if people are metabolically unhealthy, if they’re blood sugar sensitive, if they’re eating that cake for reasons other than they really want it, that same behavioral change, to just eat the cake, is not really going to serve them.
So in adaptive change, you’re actually helping people change how they show up. You’re teaching them how to tune into themselves and become their own leader, and what the actual behavior needs to be in a situation rather than focusing on, okay, here’s what you’re going to do every morning. Because especially when it comes to body stuff, when it comes to people who are caregivers, your life changes all the time, right?
So trying to stick to a protocol or trying to focus on what is good or bad actually doesn’t work. So the tactics are, how do you teach people to go with flexibility? How do you teach them to focus on momentum, not perfection of following your five-step plan?
Ari: The thing that comes up for me is for a lot of course creators, they’re experts in whatever technical thing they’re experts in, what is a good way for them to identify what is an adaptive challenge versus a technical challenge so that they’re able to support people in the best way possible.
Ali: Yeah, well, like I said, basically, if someone could Google how to do what you’re teaching, that’s a technical issue. The issue is I just need more information. The course creator is the expert. I learned from that. There’s a lot of courses that you need to learn. If you’re trying to learn qigong. Most people don’t know how to do qigong, so I’m not saying one’s better than the other. It’s just the right fit.
Ari: Sure.
Ali: Yeah, yeah. But if you are working with people who are like, you know, I’ve hired five other people and now I’m coming to this course, how is this going to change me? You’re probably looking at adaptive change. So some of the qualities of that are, the problems are easy to deny or resist. Okay, so in my field, people are like, oh, maybe I just need a better nutrition plan. Maybe I need a different way to work out versus, wait, what’s really going underneath when you don’t want to take great care of yourself?
The solutions can’t be taught You need to experiment and live into the answers which will be ever evolving. And so those are some of the qualities of adaptive change. And the best type of relationship there is not that the course creator or the expert is the expert, but more, you’re a mentor and you’re helping people uncover these things themselves. Again, to bring it back to a very practical example, most people at this point with this information explosion do not need to know more about nutrition. What they need to do is expand how they understand why they’re eating and that kind of stuff. So you’re really helping people in adaptive challenge expand their lens, deal with more complexity, and that’s often how you know what an adaptive challenge is.
Ari: Awesome. Very helpful.
Abe: I think it’d be good to continue unpacking this because this is an important area for people, because fundamentally, a lot of course designs struggle to get results because they don’t scaffold behavior change effectively. So I think what might be helpful for people thinking about how to apply this to their own courses is we could continue looking at examples or situations in context. So you mentioned, for example, something like qigong, or maybe you want to learn to build your own website or learn search engine optimization. There’s many different technical skills you could learn.
And I guess what’s occurring to me is any tactical skill also has a implementation and behavior change challenge, either simply because it’s going to require some time to learn it and you have to keep sticking with that process or because you have to go through application to do it, right? So let’s say we teach you the methods of qigong or we teach you the methods of search engine optimization. Either way, you then have to change your behavior, right? You have to either start practicing Qigong regularly or you need to start investing time in creating new content or optimizing the existing content on your site for search engines.
So I guess what I’m trying to get is what should people design their own course be thinking about in terms of how they plan their course and how they plan to support their students through this framework of tactical skills and adaptive change?
Ali: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think when I talk about how are people going to have to show up differently. What I’m talking about is in the coaching world and behavior change, know your why. Know your why, right? We hear that all the time. What if someone’s whys motivational interviewing rests on that? Get people’s values get the clear and there’s a why not? And there’s competing commitments that we all have. So someone wants to carve out time for SEO, right? And then their daycare gets closed.
And adults learn and change very differently. My master’s degree is actually in how adults change and adults change very differently. Although having a toddler, I’m not sure if it’s all that different now. I think we might all be toddlers inside, but adults, they have different identities that they’re trying to uphold, right? So I want to do SEO, but I want to be a good parent. I want to have time to go grocery shopping, but I got to work because it’s my busy season and paying my bills is more important right now. This is the bird in the hand.
So ultimately an adaptive framework is you’re looking at the stories underneath the why not? Why does it make sense that you can’t change and puts the protective resistance to change? And it’s an adaptive challenge because you have to look at, really, in this case, how am I defining a good or bad parent? How am I defining a good or bad worker? And what you have to do is get people to unpack that and realize that they have very rigid ideas, right, of understanding what is good and bad, and they have to learn how to be more flexible in terms of how they’re defining those identities that they really like about themselves and they want to uphold.
Abe: The framework is definitely helpful. So maybe we could make that sort of applicable for people. So if someone came to you and they were like, yeah, you know, I really didn’t been wanting to start my course. You know, I love what you’ve done with your course, but I just don’t know where to start. Right. Because I help people, whatever, right. Like, pick your skill that you join the SEO, the learning to do watercolor painting, whatever. I know how to do that and I know how to explain to people, but I don’t understand how to design my course to deal with this challenge of adaptive change. How would you guide a colleague or a friend to do that?
Ali: Yeah, I mean, it’s not a one, two, three step. It’s an iterative process. Right. But probably the first thing I would say is like, and I train people in my truth coaching certification who are doing other types of stubborn change. So say, if someone’s coming for a time challenge, right? I would say, okay, the real transformation that you can offer clients and they’ll become raving fans about your course is you have to include a life component because you’re kind of trying to get people to see the water they’re swimming in, right? It’s like a perception problem that you’re challenging them.
But I would plan for the objections. I would plan for the obstacles rather than expecting that people are going to have all the perfect conditions to learn water coloring, learn qigong, learn how to get on LinkedIn, expect that people are going to have time constraints, expect that they’re going to have protective resistance to putting themselves out there. And over time, as the course creator, I think it’s your role to start saying, what are the big triggers that make people fall off track with this process? So, for example, in my course, Why Am I Eating This Now, which is like, if Truce with Food is the deeper work, Why Am I Eating This Now is like, let’s put out these fires so that we can get to the deeper work.
In the first module, we identify the four triggers that make them want to fall off track with food, and that will also make them want to fall off with this course. And it’s like, are you feeling tired? Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling inadequate? Are you feeling lonely? So if you can identify the triggers, then you can help people start to say, why does this make sense? Oh, well, I eat when I’m tired because I’m working so hard. This is the only reward I get all day. Okay, so now I, and because I’ve done this for a while, I know the issue is, okay, that’s your working identity that we have to work. It’s not the food is the solution, not the problem.
So I think planning for people to know where they fall off, knowing that that’s going to happen, and the real transformation happens when you realize that the falling off is actually the work. Don’t throw more tools at it. Don’t throw more hacks. Really look at the identity piece of why it makes sense that people are falling off track. And then how do you help them maneuver whatever that trigger is?
Abe: It sounds like what you’re saying is it’s not a linear framework that you can apply to any course. It’s more of a mindset or a philosophy that you’re approaching; here’s how I’m going to try to help my clients, my students, my coaches be successful. And we know that they’re likely to have some of these types of common challenges. And then you’re looking to identify ways to support them through those common challenges.
Ali: Yeah. And this is another tactic that might help, like in my Truce with Food course and my Why Am I Eating This Now course, before we even start, we do what I call as a second win exercise. A lot of what we know about goals is just, it doesn’t work for the world that we’re in that is always changing and everything. So the goals that we set and Truce with Food are, how do I show up goals there? I want to be someone who doesn’t use food as a reward. I want to be someone who finds rewarding ways to take care of myself. It’s not like, oh, I want to lose ten pounds. It’s not those technical end goals.
And so we do the second win exercise to say, okay, visualization is great. I know the outcome you want, but what is going to get in your way? And we do that before the course even stops. What happens when your kid gets sick? What happens when work, you’re going overtime, right? What do you tend to do when that happens? And how can we support you when that happens? So that’s like a tactic that people can use of, like, again, getting people already to think about, I’m not going to do this perfectly. This is real life.
And some people are like, oh, if I put this on my calendar, then people can’t schedule me. People will start to come up with their own solutions, but it’ll be different for everyone because everyone’s going to have different triggers and their own unique life experiences, which is what makes it adaptive change is you’re really meeting the person where they are, not with, like, the perfect plan that you have for them.
Ari: Yeah, this has been fascinating and super powerful because I feel like this is a place where course creators often get stuck and, like, it is a barrier for themselves. Cause they don’t know how they will deal with the challenges that people come up with. And it sounds like essentially what you were saying is that they need to be adaptive in the same way and just deal with it as it comes up. And that is okay. But this is a learning process for everyone involved.
Ali: Yeah. And I mean, another tactic, which, I mean, as we’re talking about this, that I have found to keep people in the game is when you bring up that, hey, you’re going to fall off. Right? Especially around food and body, there’s so much shame because what they’re used to doing is they come to someone and they’re like, I didn’t do the meal plan you gave me. Right. They either don’t show up and they ghost. And what’s happening with people who are learning, probably qigong, learning, nutrition, whatever. There’s this, like, I don’t want to disappoint the course creator. I don’t want to look bad.
And nobody can really learn when they’re in guilt or shame. And so by bringing forward, being like, you’re not going to do this perfectly. There’s no grade here. They’re bringing all the baggage of former teachers, authorities to you. Right. So when you say, hey, it makes sense that you fall off track. Hey, we’re going to plan for that. It’s like, oh, my God, I have room to experiment. I’m starting to repair this, like, you’re the authority that’s going to fail me, and that’s just not a great place to learn. So you’re even establishing the relationship.
But also the other component, because I have, like, a 90% completion rate in truths with food. Yeah, it’s unheard of. But part of that is also the community. And so there’s a difference between a group and a community. And I think groups are kind of like, oh, we’re kind of altogether. But when you create this safe space where people can share where they’re struggling, that life isn’t perfect, that they’re on this learning curve, and you create a sense of what’s called psychological safety because adults need that, and you set the tone that you’re not going to go from like a to z, what all of a sudden starts to happen is the group start sharing how they’re struggling.
And that connection keeps people in the game because they’re not in guilt or shame. They’re like, oh, you’re struggling, too. Oh, my God. You know, My Truce with Food group last month, like, four people were like, oh, my God, I’m eating sugar again, which is totally to be expected. And I’m like, yeah, this makes sense, you know? And then four people were melting down. But then one person’s like, well, this is complex, and I’m learning new stuff, and I’m not here to learn all the same old shit I learn in other programs. But what kept them in the game was three other people were struggling, and so they were able to air it out more, and then I could help them rather than them being buried in shame.
This is the muddle of change. You know how, like, in a novel, you have the beginning and end and you don’t really remember the middle? That’s what happens in change. We just, like, muddle through it. We’re like, this is messy. And so by building it in the expectation that you’re not going to get it right and that you’re going to need a second wind, it just, that it repairs the relationship with just. They may not have a bad relationship with the course creator, but they’re bringing a lot of old authoritative baggage to your course.
Ari: To education in general.
Ali: Yes. Yeah. I mean, so many of my clients, their eating started when they were struggling in school, and the teacher was like, I don’t have the resources. Go out in the hall. You’re being disruptive. That was kind of the benign neglect approach to education. And so people bring that to your course, and it’s not about you, but it ends up affecting their performance within the course.
Ari: And so coming into it, just aware of that and planning for it in the way that you can plan, which is things are going to come up, and that’s okay.
Ali: Yeah, yeah. And, like, you know, again, some people is putting their calendar on. It’s like, hey, do you need to talk to your partner about, I’m sorry that I’m going to be taking some time away for this, but let’s get clear that I’m doing this and this is the expectation. How can we split responsibilities? Like, some of this stuff is really easy just to account for. It’s just people have to think through it, and then they can get to the more challenging stuff.
Ari: Very, very cool. This has been super, super helpful.
Ali: Oh, I know it can be abstract, but it’s like, once, because adaptive change does take, like, one to two years, it’s a developmental process. You’re getting people to be more flexible in their thinking. In nutrition, everyone ties everything back to weight loss and then that shame stops them from changing their behavior. And so we need to take at least a year to get them out of tying everything back to, well, this doesn’t count, right? Like, well, I’m not going to walk because it doesn’t count.
What they’re really saying is this isn’t going to create weight loss for me, but it’s like, okay, but that’s shame-based motivation, how can you connect walking to, I think, more clearly, I’m more patient with my kid. And so adaptive challenges, that’s really what you’re doing. And it takes a little bit longer of a time. So it’s hard to sometimes say, like, what are the top three things to do because you really are shifting people’s identity. So I hope I provided some tactics.
Ari: Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you saying that in that, yes, this is going to be something that people need to work at with their students for a long time and with themselves for a long time. But these are the tactics to get you started. So I think it has been extremely helpful.
Ali: And can I say one more thing, too?
Ari: Please.
Ali: Because in my Truce Coaching Certification, people go through the process themselves so that they become aware of what’s happening. And as course creators, we need to understand how we get triggered when clients are struggling. Right? Some of my coaches are like, oh, I want to throw more information. I want to give more tools. I feel like people need to get their value. And so we also have to understand our, in the Truce Coaching Certification, we call it the survival self. When clients are falling off, they’re in their survival self-mode. They’re just trying to get by. They’re trying to do what they need to do to be worthy.
But we as teachers and course creators need to be like, what’s coming up for me? Why do I think I have to over deliver stuff my course now? Like, people are paying you for an outcome. So it’s another really thing to think about as a course creator, what comes up for me when people are struggling, because like I said in my Truce with Food group, if I would have switched gears, and now I’ve been doing this for 14 years. So I, you know, this group, I know I don’t need to switch gears, but if I was in newer course creator, I might be like, oh my God, something’s wrong with the content versus like, no, they need to struggle a little. They need to sit in this. So as a course creator, it’s important to have that self-awareness as well.
Ari: That’s really helpful.
Abe: Any other final thoughts or lessons learned that you would want to share with people?
Ali: Yeah. Right now, in course creation, there is like a trend for self-study and everything, but I think if you’re working on deeper transformation, having a life component, it just is so important for people and the group learns so much from each other. So that would just be my last, like, tip to people is really use other people to enrich the course and it’s more fun for you as a creator, too, and better for business.
Abe: Absolutely.
Ari: Awesome. So last question I’ll ask is, where can our audience go to learn more about you and your work?
Ali: Yeah. So I have a podcast, Insatiable, and then alishapiro.com. And every month, I do host a free gathering so people can kind of see how this adaptive coaching works. And it’s free. It’s the first Tuesday of every month. They can go to alishapiro.com/gathering to attend one and see what this looks like in action.
Ari: Awesome. Thank you so, so much.
Ali: Thank you for having me.
Danny: Now stick around for my favorite part of the show where Abe and Ari will pull out the best takeaways for you to apply to your course.
Abe: All right, Ari, this is a complex topic to debrief, but we’ll do our best.
Ari: Yeah, there is a lot of value in this episode. A lot of stuff that is, on the one hand, very practical, on the other hand, hard to implement and hard probably to do. So the first thing that just jumped out to me is kind of the idea around kind of understanding the difference between an adaptive challenge and a technical challenge. In that at the very end there, Ali was talking about how course creators often have the impulse to just throw more stuff into the course and more teaching when, depending on what the challenge is that people are actually facing, that may or may not be the right thing to do. And so being aware of those two potential areas of challenge, I think can be extremely helpful.
Abe: Yeah, I mean, the fundamental concept here, which has come up in other contexts, but I think it’s most salient in health-related teaching and coaching, is that what we’re really trying to help people with in a lot of cases is not understanding some information or even mastering a technique, which is where a lot of courses focus. But it’s about changing behavior in a sustainable way over time, which is, it’s exciting because it opens the possibility of making a bigger difference for people, but it’s also very challenging.
And behavior change is something that has been studied for a long time, and it’s an area where there aren’t really like easy answers. If there was a way to just snap our fingers and program people like computers to do something different, like we would already be doing it. But probably for that as well as for git.
Ari: Yes, absolutely.
Abe: But, you know, I think what, hopefully what Ali’s, some of what she described opens up some creative possibilities for people here. And so I think it’s helpful for people to reflect on this concept of adaptive change and that change is not something that happens overnight. Right? She described it as often being a one-to-two-year process in the context that she works in around eating and health. And so that alone is a really interesting lens to look at your course through. How would it look if you were thinking about the outcomes a year from now, two years from now, or even in backwards integrated design, which is a method that we reference sometimes in that methodology, they talk about looking out five years and what would your dream student be accomplishing or be feeling five years from now after they took your course?
So thinking about behavior change from this longer-term perspective can be helpful because it helps you recognize that, no, your course is probably not going to radically change your participants behavior tomorrow or next week. Youve got to take a different lens than that. And then once you’ve got that frame, then you can start experimenting with things that will help within that context.
Ari: Yeah, I’m thinking about how that will fundamentally change course design for a lot of people, length of the program, what they promise to accomplish in the program, and how they continue on with people.
Abe: It presents a number of challenges as well. Right? It presents challenges around delivery and how you support people over a longer period of time. It’s difficult to maintain engagement over longer periods of time. And it presents challenges around the business model and how you would offer or charge for a course. And a lot of what makes courses appealing from a marketing perspective is the ability to promise meaningful results fast. Right?
You know, just like a weight loss drug. Right? That’s what people want. That’s the button that you want to push in your marketing. So there has to be a balance between being able to show that people are making some type of concrete progress and feeling better or feeling excited about where they’re going in a reasonable timeframe and balancing that with a longer-term view, which is important for sustainable change.
Ari: Yeah. And this is one of those things where if you’re considering this properly, this can make a huge difference just in the way that people see you and your business and whether they become the kinds of people that refer you a lot out. I mean, if you’re thinking about this and in a way that you’re not promising these huge changes quickly because you have an understanding of how long this will actually take, you’re able to build a better relationship with the people who are coming to you, as opposed to having people be disillusioned after working with you, which I think is what happens often with course creators that aren’t able to create the change that they’re promising, or the change happens and then reverts back.
Abe: Yeah. And I think there could be confusion around this because there is a segment of the course industry, for lack of a better word, that is very focused on what are very specific, short term, pain point type solutions that you can solve sort of right away with a course that’s going to drill into this very specific need or pain point, and you’re just going to just hammer all of your marketing around that. And there can be a rule for that, for people that have a very specific, concrete need that is solvable by a particular sort of technique or framework, a tactical challenge.
And so someone who’s really used to thinking about courses in that paradigm may find what Ali’s talking about a bit bewildering at first, but I think it also helps to think about it in the way that she talked about root causes. Right? So if you think about her world of healthy eating and weight loss and sustainable health, that’s an area where there’s a great temptation to look for quick fixes. And the common narrative is people look for quick fixes and then they get a brief result and then they relapse. Right? This is the common story about fad diets, for example.
And the way to get out of that cycle is to think about what are the underlying root causes that lead to that behavior, and how can we address the root causes. And so I think that same framework of root cause thinking that could be taken and applied to other areas, including areas that have maybe focused too much on specific tactical skills and use that to design courses that would lead to more sustainable change.
Ari: And I think that’s where a course creator can really differentiate themselves from everyone else in the field by going that level deeper. And that would allow them to potentially charge more and create more value.
Abe: Yeah. Anything else that jumped out you?
Ari: Not really. I mean, there are a lot of interesting little technical pieces, the importance of community and all those kinds of things that we’ve covered multiple times on different episodes. So if you’re listening to this, go ahead and listen to the other episodes on Course Lab to learn about those pieces as well.
Abe: Or just listen to Ali again and take notes because she shared a lot of great ideas.
Ari: Yep, absolutely.
Abe: Ali Shapiro teaches people how to want to want to eat healthy in a sustainable way. Learn more at alishapiro.com. That’s A-L-I Shapiro dot com.
Thank you for listening to Course Lab. I’m Abe Crystal, co-founder and CEO of Ruzuku, here with my co-host Ari Iny. Course Lab is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Once Upon a Business and Making It. This episode of Course Lab was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Post production was by Marvin del Rosario. Danny Iny is our executive producer.
If you don’t want to miss the excellent episodes coming up on Course Lab, follow us on YouTube or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And if you’re enjoying our show, please go ahead and leave us a starred review. It really does make a difference. Thank you and well see you next time.
All right, Ari, who have we got coming up for the next episode?
Ari: Next time we have Joe Lépine. He has a training course for translators that was successful right out of the gate.
Abe: That sounds really interesting.
Ari: Yep. I’m sure we will learn a lot from him.