Course Lab – Episode 119
Stop Overthinking—Start Visioneering Your Course (Barbara Daoust)
Abe Crystal: The idea there is not so much, oh, you’re having this deep dive coaching where you’re spending an hour with someone and unpacking all this stuff. It’s more of a quick check in. If people are getting stuck, this is kind of renewing their energy or maybe there’s just something that they need to figure out, but there’s too much inertia for them to just figure out on their own.
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: In each episode of Course Lab, we showcase a course and creator who’s doing something really interesting, either with the architecture of their course, the business model behind it, or both. Today we welcome Barbara Daoust to the show. She’s a certified Thinking Into Results consultant with the Proctor Gallagher Institute and Certified Certified business consultant through Mindvalley. With over 25 years of experience as a director, acting coach, writer and producer in theater arts, film and television, Barbara blends her creative expertise with her passion for helping people thrive in life and in business. Welcome, Barbara.
Barbara Daoust: Thank you for having me.
Ari: So to kick things off, could you give us a 30,000 foot view of yourself, how you came to the world of online courses?
Barbara: I came to it because I had been in one career. I had been in the entertainment career for a long time. Then I had a big rapid change in my life, which led me to exploring why it was so complicated to change. I faced dramatic, tragic change and it uprooted my life as I knew it. So I went on a journey to find out why change was so complicated. And in that process was really seeking to heal myself. And as I took programs and worked with teachers and mentors, I started to evolve and just loved what I had been taught by these teachers and mentors. And I really had no intention of coaching. It’s just that to certify, I had to work with people and I started to see the results and there was rapid transformation and rapid results.
And as I continued to work one on one, I wanted to do more group coaching. And as I was doing group coaching, I got involved with Bob Proctor and his program Thinking into Results. I was leading a lot of groups at that time and masterminds. I decided to branch out and develop my own programs based on areas where I felt certain concepts were missing from what I had already been teaching. I started to look for ways to design and create my own programs. And that’s when I found Ruzuku.
Ari: Very cool. So tell us a little bit more about the programs that you have now. What are you currently working with people on? What were the elements that you were saying were missing that you wanted to create?
Barbara: So I really felt that using my background in theater and film and TV, I discovered, working with a lot of people, that they weren’t embodying their dreams and goals, causing a lack of action for rapid transformation to occur. To take something and go big with it, the concept is to go after something you don’t know how to do. But what gets in the way are people’s patterns and programs, fears and doubts and worries. And I felt that using acting techniques, visualization, visioneering, writing, scripting, and leading people to become the lead actor in their own story and their own journey was the piece that I felt was missing with a lot of goal setting or goal achievement, because most people on average are going after goals that are 1%, 2%, 3% growth, because it’s based on what they already know how to do or what they think they know how to do.
And I was looking for ways to help people feel their desire growing within them to take bold, massive action. And then I started developing programs around how to visualize, how to use the visioneering process, how to use repetition to reprogram, you know, the subconscious mind to build into the character they see themselves being. So it’s really a concept of coming from the future and building the backward plan, the reverse engineering plan.
Ari: That’s very cool. And this topic is fascinating, really critical for anyone who’s trying to support people in creating transformation. So first, just to orient ourselves a little bit, could you tell us a little bit more about what kinds of transformations you help people go through?
Barbara: Yeah. It all starts with finding that big, hairy, audacious goal that’s really scary and exciting at the same time, and leaping into the concept of who that character is, who that person is. So it’s really around the concept of who are you being? And then strategizing habit formation. What are the habits to let go of? What are the distractions to let go of? What are the lesser goals to let go of? And aiming in the direction, as Napoleon Hill says, that burning desire and eliminating the distraction. So the process is really about making that choice and making a hundred percent committed decision to go for it and start eliminating the fears, doubts, worries, and limiting beliefs.
So there are processes that I lead people through, and we meet weekly, you know, going over the material Material, discussing the material and having incredible insights into who they are being. Right. Because to really lead others as somebody who’s running a business, it’s really about leading yourself and understanding yourself. So it’s a combination of business principles, personal development, and applying universal laws, and spirit because we are a combination of mind, body and spirit. Those are the three parts of our personality which most people don’t understand. They’re either focused on the mind, or they’re focused on the body, or they’re focused on being spiritual.
But to bring all three pieces together is to understand what’s really going on when we’re facing fear, what’s really going on when we have worry and doubt and leading them through what’s called the terror barrier. And understanding, like Nike says, you’ve got to just do it. But when I have them in groups, the important thing is that they support each other to keep going. Because when the paradigms show up, all the patterns and programs and limited beliefs are going to come rushing in and big way. People start to see things happening and see things change. And then the old self and the new self start to battle.
And I help people really cross that barrier so that they understand that it’s their nervous system acclimating to a new version of themselves and to let go of the old story. And so there’s processes that I help people let go of that story and to understand what it takes in habit formation, behavior formation, that you know, your personal reality is your personality. And then from there, scripting their life, movie, understanding the beginning, middle and end and what the end scene is, when they can really picture the end scene and feel the end scene, have the images, have the emotions of the end scene. It’s like an actor building their character for a play or movie where they write the script, they start to imagine and think about costume gestures, language, behaviors, tonality, all of that, and start making choices based on that image and understanding of what it looks like to be at that end scene.
And then people make dramatic change. Like, I worked with a woman who was a cosmetologist but wanted to be an artist. So she built an image of her being at a gallery opening of her artwork. By the end of the Code of Success class, I had everybody acting out their end scene. So they came with a prepared script, the two page script. Everybody in the class acted out the other characters in the scene. Within two months of that class ending, she sold all her cosmetology equipment. And within six months to a year, she was in several galleries.
Ari: That’s amazing.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah, truly amazing.
Ari: So you alluded to parts of the process that you take people through in the Code of Success program. Could you tell us a little bit more about what is the process that people go through? And I’m especially thinking about this from the lens of as a course creator, you need to support people in creating transformation. And so I’m very curious about the path that you take people through to create that transformation. You’ve hinted at a lot of different elements of it. So I’m curious, with these big transformations that you support people in creating for themselves, what is the process you take them through to get there?
Barbara: In the Code to Success, I designed it as a 12 week process. I recently did another program called Create YouR Future Self now which was a six week process. They didn’t go through writing their own script as much as we focused on visioneering. But in the Code to Success, we start out in the 12 week process of identifying their purpose, vision and goals and the difference between the three. Understanding their why and passion and then discussing the importance of goal setting. I couldn’t believe in my life that I just was on the hamster wheel of like, go after the next thing, go after the next thing, go after the next thing. I didn’t have a concept of future visioning and building into the future self.
I didn’t even understand the importance of goals. I had goals, but they were more like deadlines. It was just like, next deadline and then, okay, let’s go for another project. I didn’t have the awareness of building a path and a roadmap. So, you know, we discuss the importance of goal setting and how that brings up the old programs. And then we go into belief busting, taking limited beliefs, identifying some limited beliefs and breaking it down into re-decision process, turning that limiting belief into a new belief. And the importance of repetition, repetition, repetition to just keep on bedding into the subconscious. Because a belief is just a thought we have over and over again until we accept it as the truth. But to be able to identify what the limited belief is, that’s where the power of the big hairy, audacious goal comes in because then those beliefs come to the surface. You can’t really change them until you grow conscious of that belief.
And then I bring them through a process of the importance of visualization. You know, a picture without emotion doesn’t have as much power. I’ve had people put their pictures on the cover of Forbes magazine. Let’s say one young man I worked with wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was 30 and on the cover of Forbes. So we put a picture of him on the cover of Forbes and he looked at it every day, every day, every day. Within a year he wasn’t on the cover of Forbes, he was 23. But within a year he was a millionaire. And it all depends. There are people who have huge, huge, huge goals and people who have simpler goals. It doesn’t matter. It’s gotta be something that is going to pull up the limited self in order to create an identity shift. It’s really all about self image. You’ll never outperform your self image. You’ll never outperform what you already know.
I like to say to people, you probably don’t really know who you are until you discover the parts of yourself you haven’t yet met. In order to do that you have to imagine and pretend. Because imagination is our biggest tool and our logical mind, most people are letting the over analysis, you know, kick in. Instead of really connecting to the imaginative mind, the emotional mind. And then I lead them through a process of getting really messy. I tell people to design your messy. Go for something and design it. If you’re not perfect at it, be okay with that because you have a modicum of control when you’re designing your messy. You have a certain amount of like, well, I designed it that way and if I’m going to make a mistake, I know that’s what I was going for.
I bring them through thoughts become things. It’s understanding the difference between the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the unconscious mind. Breaking that down really leads to such a deeper understanding of self and to be able to be the guardian of your thoughts, what’s happening between your ears, you know, and to truly commit at a level of, you know what that new identity is about. Understand how powerful thoughts are and the way we speak it into existence. Then build them into a new self image.
The self image is our deepest, innermost thoughts. The way we speak to ourselves and how we just keep affirming what isn’t working. I talk a lot about neuroscience. I’ve been studying neuroscience for over nine years now. And I talk a lot about the difference between the mind and the brain. The brain is hardwired for negativity. I think about 85% of it is wired for negativity. So we’re constantly looking for threat, constantly looking for danger to protect ourselves.
So change is, you know, very complicated and we were seeking comfort. But I like to say that the comfort zone is the scary zone. It’s, it’s the limited zone. It’s the place where we just keep on perpetuating what we don’t want. So to be able to create a new focus, a new self image, to focus on what you want, not what you don’t want, we really build that self image. And then I guide them into directing themselves in their future, living from their dream and practicing a script. And then they’ve got a script that they can record. I work with a doctor. And we add brainwave entrainment, which is, you know, basically helping them get into deeper transformational phases using alpha, theta and delta brainwaves. Then they’re off repeating it over and over and over again.
And the result from that is people call me and tell me, oh my gosh, this happened. They don’t even know it’s happening until it happens or until they stop to think, did this happen? And they’re like, well, I need to change my script because it’s happened. Let’s go for something else. One woman who was, she was in her 70s, just said, you know, I know all this stuff. I know how to do all of this. This isn’t anything new for me. She was very resistant and tough, but I held in there and she held in there. By the end, she said that she went to her therapist and the therapist basically said, she’s had a renaissance and there’s no going back.
Ari: First of all, thank you for sharing your process. This has been really fascinating. I have a few more questions. But Abe, if you have a question.
Abe: Well, just if you want to go into a bit more like what have you found to be effective in terms of helping people understanding these ideas, but also applying them in the context of an online medium and teaching online. So for other course creators who are interested in working in similar areas related to, related to mindset, related to psychology, those can be challenging areas in any context, but especially online where you don’t have the richness of in person communication. So just wondering if you have lessons learned to share there.
Barbara: Well, you know, it’s been very helpful having Razuku and the platform. My process is that I design a PowerPoint. And the nice thing about Ruzuku is that you can pull from other classes. My weakness is putting together templates or designing, not necessarily the graphics, but having a process or an exercise that’s already put in place. And I’ve explored some of the other programs and then I’ll pull some of those exercises, like the four quadrants, you know, in goal setting and it’s already designed on the page. And then what I do is I put together a PowerPoint. So the first part of the class is really using PowerPoint to discuss concepts building through pictures.
On the Ruzuku platform, I just have information for them to read and it might be one page per module. So they’re supported with the written material, they’re supported with the PowerPoint. And then the PowerPoint goes on replay so that they can look at it every day. And then there are exercises, and they commit to doing either the exercise daily, but they have to have it prepared. The one thing that I do, I put people into breakout rooms. And I’ve always done this with all my groups because when they’re put into breakout rooms, they feel really responsible for being accountable because they don’t feel good when they’re in a breakout room with someone and they haven’t done their homework. It’s a higher level of accountability that I really stress.
In response to your question, Abe, are you talking about if there’s coaching live or just the online course itself without the coaching?
Abe: Really just trying to get at what have you found most effective in terms of getting people to engage deeply and make actual shifts in their mindset and behavior given the structure of the online medium.
Barbara: I think the most effective has been having these groups and holding them accountable to the work. Also showing up live on Zoom, having that video format, the educational piece, the exercises in the program. What’s great is the reminders, the format that they can go back to watching the replays, asking them to commit to doing it daily, but there’s no control over that. I did use one course without coaching, but the rate of transformation was not as powerful, you know, without the meeting, without the coaching, without the some kind of accountability.
I tried the online coaching using emails, you know, to say, how are you doing? And I see that you’ve completed this much. But when I looked at how many people actually followed through all the way, you know, if three classes in and they’re on their own, they’re not doing the work.
Abe: Yeah, makes sense.
Barbara: Yeah. You know, I’ll purchase an online program and more often than not I’ll complete it. And then even if they offer a coaching component to it, I’m just one of a handful of people that show up. And I find that’s the challenge. Right? It’s that engagement at a level of they’ve got to do the work in order for the transformation to happen. They get to that sticking point where the resistance kicks in. And getting through that hump is where most people give up. They give up on themselves without understanding. It’s the paradigm holding them back.
Ari: And so what have you found most effective to keep people on track through this process? In addition to, I mean, you were saying that when there are meetings, those kind of higher level engagement elements in the program that’s helped. What else? What would you, based on your experience, recommend that, you know, people not skip in their own online courses when relevant?
Barbara: I think that when I do a high ticket program, one area that helps is I do 15 minute laser calls just to make sure that they’re on track or to discuss a personal issue that might be holding them back, but keeping it highly intentional, highly focused, and directly related to the homework given to them that week. It could be an email conversation, but I’m not somebody who enjoys texting or emailing because I find a lot is lost in translation or tonality.
Ari: Okay, so it’s really the calls.
Barbara: That component I add if it’s a high ticket program.
Ari: Awesome. So one more question I had for you is everything that you do is around transformation. It’s about creating transformation for people, every course creator, in essence, that is their goal as well. It could be about teaching their clients to do A, B, C, which is in effect a transformation. So for course creators who may be creating transformation isn’t their strong suit. It’s something that they are new to, what are a couple tips that you would give as a Here are things that you want to keep top of mind. And of course everything that you’ve explained so far is great food for thought for them as well. But what are the two or three things that you would highlight as make sure to keep in mind as you’re building out your program?
Barbara: That’s a great question. I would say keep it simple. At this time, what I’m discovering, because I know in the beginning for myself and I still have this tendency is I just throw in the kitchen sink and it creates a lot of overwhelm. And then also for the creator, for myself, creates expectations. And those expectations may be too high and to remember that people are where they’re at. I’ve been doing this for quite some time. Like I assume all the time that people understand what a paradigm is, or I assume that they understand what self image is, or I assume that they understand the difference between the mind and the brain. I make all these assumptions because it now seems so simple to me.
So to really think back to where you were before you had the transformation and for yourself as a course creator, think about where you started, what caused the change, and why you’re so excited about sharing it. Go back to the key points of where you began and where you first started and breaking it down so that there’s a system to follow and that the system is not too radical in the beginning. When I work with people on a big, hairy, audacious goal, it’s pretty radical, but it’s getting clarity around that as well. There are some people who don’t even know where to begin or what that is. But, you know, like, I worked with a HR manager who her goal was to become an HR director, but by lesson seven, she opened up and said, I really just want to run a vineyard in Tuscany.
We have a lot of what would be called a shadow career, not really following and pursuing the dream, but to do that, it’s to get bold. And so just remember, for some people, it’s baby steps.
Ari: Awesome. Thank you. Abe, any last questions?
Abe: No? Good. Anything else? Barbara, you want to share any final words for people listening?
Barbara: I would say that for the Ruzuku platform, what’s really great that I appreciate and have been excited about is, you know, all the complex systems for setting up a course, from your sales page to your Stripe account, to creating modules, to being able to design and pull from other lessons, all of that is really a great way to start if you’re just starting out as a course creator.
Abe: Cool. Thank you.
Ari: And then my last question for you, Barbara, is where can people go to learn more about you and the programs you deliver?
Barbara: They can go to my website, which is Barbara Daoust d a o u s t dot com and if anybody wants to book a session, they can do that on my site. Also, if they went to the codetosuccess.com There’s a free download to write their own code to success script.
Ari: Barbara, thank you so much for being here with us. It was an awesome conversation.
Barbara: Thank you for having me.
Danny Iny: 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. It’s time for debrief of conversation with Barbara. And as many professional speakers are able to do, she was able to thoroughly and succinctly describe her approach and techniques, which is great for listeners and challenging for people debriefing because she covered it all point by point.
Ari: Absolutely.
Abe: So I don’t have a ton here. I guess one thing I thought was interesting is, you know, we’ve talked many times about the importance of coaching and supporting, you know, participants through a program and how it’s Important to have different forms of support so that people aren’t just entirely on their own. The specific format that Barbara said is effective for her, I think be a takeaway for people. It’s using very quick 15 minute laser coaching sessions. The idea there is not so much, oh, you’re having this deep dive coaching where you’re spending an hour with someone and unpacking all this stuff. It’s more of a quick check in. If people are getting stuck.
This is kind of renewing their energy or maybe there’s just something that they need to figure out, but there’s too much inertia for them to just figure it out on their own. But in that quick call, you know, you find that they just need to talk about it a little bit and then they can get moving again. I think that’s definitely a tool people could add to their toolbox if they’re not doing something like that already.
Ari: Yeah, absolutely. And I would just encourage people, if they are doing that, keep it to 15 minutes. The reason this works is because it is focused, as she said, and so make sure to keep it that way because a lot of coaches have the tendency to want it to be more expensive. So as Abe said, as Barbara said, do not keep it focused.
Abe: Anything else on your list?
Ari: I just wanted to encourage anyone who is working on creating a transformation for the people that they are working with just to listen to Barbara’s process. Even if you don’t use the same process, it is based on her expertise and background and all that. But the process she takes people through is a great foundation for. Okay, creating a transformation, supporting people through a transformation. So just listening to that again if you’re in the midst of that, to get all the great insights that she shared.
Abe: Sounds good. All right, Barbara Doust is a success coach and business growth accelerator. She helps entrepreneurs take bold action on their dreams, accelerate their business growth and achieve rapid results. You can find out more about her and her course at barbadaoust.com. That’s Barbara D A O U S T dot com and you’ll find a link in the show notes.
Thanks again 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 shows such as Making it and Just Between Coaches. If you’d like to hear more from Course Lab, you can follow us on YouTube or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And of course, if you enjoy the show, we always appreciate a starred review. It really does make a difference. Thank you, and we’ll see you next time.
So, Ari, who do we have coming on the show next?
Ari: Next time we have Laura Lomax. She is an intercultural practitioner and instructional designer. She’s focused on developing customized workplace learning solutions to underserved communities, governmental agencies, and places like police departments, jails and prison systems across the US.
Abe: That sounds very different than the typical course we talk about.
Ari: Yeah, absolutely.