Course Lab – Episode 107
Transform Course Success Without Launches (Ross O’Lochlainn)
Abe Crystal: I think what’s also missing in people’s mental model of developing courses is mapping out what the participants in the program are going to need to do and the time and energy that’s really going to take.
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 is doing something really interesting, either with the architecture of their course, the business model behind it, or both.
Today we welcome Ross O’Lochlainn to the show. Ross is the founder and CEO of Conversion Engineering and author of Open Every Day. His specialty is helping established experts and coaches grow their businesses without relying on constant, manipulative launch campaigns. He’s best known for developing the proprietary Open Everyday system which enables experts and coaches to sell without using the launch model. Hey Ross, welcome.
Ross O’Lochlainn: Hey Ari. Lovely intro. Makes me sound important.
Ari: So the question that I always ask to kind of kick things off is could you give us a 30,000-foot view of kind of you and your business and how you came to the world of online courses?
Ross: Yeah. So 30,000 view would be of a former engineer turned marketing consultant, conversions, copyright, wedding kind of guy that fell in love with that space, went deep down the rabbit hole. And when you do that, you kind of end up in the online world of education and coaches and coaching and whatnot. It’s one of those areas that I think appealed to me and I found that world extremely fascinating, but then ended up doing a lot of launches for a lot of folks and ended up burning out on that because it’s a very high intensity space.
Ari: Yes, it is.
Ross: It can be a very effective, but it is a high risk, high reward strategy and it does come with some downsides, like you’re looking at some way of doing things and you’re like this. I just like, no, I’m sick of this. And that was just me with the launch model. I was kind of saw a lot of the downsides and was kind of at a point where I was working for a couple of companies and some of them big launches did not pay off and I wanted to do a, a different way of doing things because I just wasn’t happy with my own life at that point and the amount of effort that had to go into the job.
So found another way. And now we kind of help folks. They’re more practitioners like you get into the course game, the coaching game, and oftentimes people are like, well, you need to scale and you need to get a management team and all this stuff that happens. And a lot of my folks are just not interested in that. They just want to have really good products that they offer people and they help people get a job done so they can continue doing the work with the clients and they don’t want to have to be running this insane, like, promote a million partners throughout my year with my campaign calendar so I can sell for like 10 days out of the year cycle that a lot of people end up falling into with the launch game.
And that’s what we kind of help people do. We help them kind of run their online education business is a little different from kind of a setup perspective. How do you structure how you interact with your clients so that you can work with them all year round and you’re not stuck on this like 6-to-12-week cohort where you’re just like serving everyone. And then how do you set up consistent enrollment so that you have folks coming in regularly into a program that you work with people all year round? So it’s very much a kind of a stabilization and consistency model that we run instead of the big high intensity spike of the launch market.
Ari: Okay, awesome. And so share a bit more about how that works for you with online courses. So, I mean, you’re doing all that stuff for yourself as well.
Ross: Yeah.
Ari: And so how do online courses fit into that?
Ross: Online courses, I think these terms get thrown around. Like, what is an online course but a set of recorded videos and some worksheets structured in a certain way that you promise will show you how to be able to do something or acquire a skill. Right? And I think that’s really useful. But I would say courses are the library of things that you can use to efficiently transfer the skill from one person to another. And then a program is a series of courses that you can or take people through across time so that they can achieve a very valuable larger outcome over the course of, you know, a year, two, three. And so I use courses in my program so that I can help my clients in a very leveraged and efficient way when necessary. But it’s not like one big course that I take everyone through, if that makes sense.
Ari: So, I mean, if I’m understanding correctly, I’m just reflecting back to make sure I did. So you have your program with, you know, this is the outcome that you’re promising for the program.
Ross: Correct.
Ari: And then what do they need to get there depends on the person. And you have multiple different courses that you can give them, that they can go through based on their specific needs and what they need to learn in the moment.
Ross: Exactly. Like I would say that really how myself and my clients are most effective is when you’re offering like, you know, what is the minimum viable outcome of your course? Right? Like no one really wants your course, no one wants the videos, no one wants the worksheets. They don’t want to spend any of the time going through it. What they want is the outcome on the other side of that. So for myself and my clients, we tend to promise that outcome and then deliver it in a done with you fashion, where you’re there and you’re assisting and you’re coaching and you’re consulting.
And then courses are used as a very leveraged way where you can say, oh wow, you really need to work on this thing right now. That’s actually something a lot of my clients need to work on. So handily enough, I’ve created this online course, why don’t you focus on this for the next six to eight weeks and that will help you get the outcome. And then the student gets a really well worked education unit where you’ve spent the time to unpack it and help them get a really good outcome. And then you are not on the hook for having to deliver that one to one with absolutely everyone. Right?
And I find then that’s super effective because the time you spend with the student, with the client, is then on enhancing, improving, interpreting and strategizing what has happened as they’ve executed, rather than on just teaching them what they need to do to get the ball rolling.
Ari: Right. And I mean, I’m assuming you didn’t start your program having this giant library of courses. I’m assuming you started building them along the way. So could you talk a little bit about that process? What is the point at which you’re like, okay, I’ve taught these enough times to enough people where like, okay, A, I know what needs to go into it to actually create the transformation, but B, it’s time for me to actually create a course?
Ross: Yeah. So I refer to this as kind of the client studio model, where you get your clients, you assemble them into a studio around you. You don’t need any content to get started. But if you’re working with your clients, you probably are solving a bunch of problems for them that you know how to solve, or sometimes you’re solving problems that you don’t know how to solve yet. And you need to figure out how to solve it. But most of the time if you’re working with clients, there’s a pretty predictable pattern of what they need help with. There’s like the big problems, right?
Like for me, email marketing is one. Like if I’m helping people with digital marketing, there’s like a ton of different individual problems even within email marketing. But I definitely need to have a training on here’s how you should write emails, because everyone always asks me that. And so how I tend to look at it is there’s just going to be some standard stuff that you definitely need to create. But like you really want to just be co creating things with people in real time and just co create the next step that they need, right?
Like I didn’t ever sat down and said, here’s my entire curriculum, I’m going to work through it. It’s like, oh, what is Ari need? Ari needs leads. Hey Ari, do you have a lead magnet? No. Do you know how to create a lead magnet? No. Okay, well let’s do a training for you on how to do a lead magnet and I might even deliver that with you one to one the first-time round. And I’ll throw the camera on while I’m doing that.
And then next week I’m talking to Abe and I’m like, hey Abe, let’s have a conversation. What do you need to work on next? And he’s like, oh, I need leads. I’m like, oh, you also need a lead magnet. Here, check out the recording with Ari, right? Follow the instructions in that. Now if a third person, then needs it now, I’m like, okay, this is clearly a pattern around which probably it would be a smart idea to create a more detailed structured program because I gave Ari the instructions and then he had like 20 questions and then I kind of put those and answered those in a doc and I gave them to Abe along with the recording and he had like 10.
So we’re getting like a little more efficient, but it’s still taking a lot of time for me to like individually answer these questions. So I should probably do a group training. And that’s my cue if the third person is needing help with this thing. I’m like, most likely I should just do a group training on this and then I stick it on the group training calendar for my or schedule for my group and then that’s one of the contenders for what will get a training session in the next six to eight weeks and then we record that and then that lives in the portal and that’s what I prescribe to anyone else that that needs it.
And then you’re just literally building out your program one step at a time, reacting to the demands of your market who are literally telling you through the co creation process, this is what I need next.
Ari: Awesome. And so taking a step back and putting this in a bit of a broader context. You run a consulting coaching business and so yes, you have courses, but they’re really supportive of you’re consulting and coaching clients. Do you also sell courses on their own?
Ross: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like the client studio where I’m working with my clients gives me the raw materials for what I need to create next. Right? And I’m just working with my clients and seeing, oh, this person needs this, this person needs this. So I have a never-ending stream of things to create. And then as I’m creating them, I’ll offer access to my audience. I’ll be like, hey, do you if you want to come to this workshop, I’m running this workshop for my clients. It’s the new training. And some people from my audience will come live to the workshop where we’ll literally co create that training.
I structure my workshops in a very specific way where I can just cut them into lessons right afterwards and then the course for that training gets created from that recording plus any other resources that I want to stick into it. So my courses are only like an hour or two long, maybe four hours max if there’s like a second session that gets added for Q and A or for implementation. And then I will sell access to those to my audience as well at a very low-ticket price. Because for me, I make my money with done with you coaching slash consulting clients. Right. Like the line between coaching and consulting is very blurred at this modern era.
But like I’m using courses not as a money-making strategy, but as a means to find the intent to solve a problem in my audience. So I’ll say, hey, this is an awesome training. You can get it for 100 bucks, check it out. And then for anyone that buys this, I’ll have a conversation with them and see, well, why are you buying that thing? What problem are you trying to solve that you think this course is going to help you? Because I know they’re looking for an outcome and if I feel that outcome is resident and matches the destination, I’m taking people in my program, I’ll invite them in because that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for prospects to consider my main programs.
And so the courses, they’ll make some money. But I’m not selling them at a price to optimize the monetary return I’m getting from the courses. I’m using it as a way to find signals of intent in my audience to sell them the high-end premium thing that I’ve got.
Ari: Very cool. One last question I have from something you were saying is that you design your courses, these sessions, so that it’s very easy for you to cut them up into lessons. So you don’t need to go through this whole process of then re-recording and doing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Ross: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I am a big fan of structure. I think it’s my engineering brain. I think structure is a super useful concept to be considering anytime you’re creating any sort of content, especially like well proven conventions. It’s like writing a song, right? Like when someone sits down to write a song, they’re not like reinventing song structures, they’re picking which of the two or three conventional song structures are going to work here. And then how might I improvise a little bit when the content while I’m creating it like demands that, you know, oh, an extra bridge here or repeating the course a second time here probably would add the emotional impact.
But when you’re starting out, you know, you need an intro, a verse, etc. And it’s the same when you’re creating your courses or your content, right? Like, why is this problem necessary? Right? Why should we consider solving this? Right? What are the principles that you need to consider while executing this thing? I’m going to show you how to do so that you can internalize the lessons and not just mindlessly follow my instructions. Then how do we do it? What are the actual steps that you need to execute and in what order?
And then the now section, which is like, hey, well let’s actually save some time on this training to go and do it so that you can execute it and then you can bring it back and we can talk about, hey look, Ari wrote this and Abe wrote that. Give you some feedback and then teach through your examples to everyone else so that they can learn and see. And so all my trainings will follow that kind of conventional format. And then there’s like clear breaks in my content where, you know, my wife Joy, the first lady here, she knows me inside out at this stage and she’s like, okay, so that’s the Y section done. Cut that, that’s one video.
These are the key principles. We’ll cut those up so they’re individual videos as he unpacks them. And then it just makes a very simple, easy editing process so I don’t have to be going and like rerecording it. And I find, personally speaking, like the live energy of me delivering it in front of an audience and the interactive feedback where I can like correct in real time and unpack things, I just find that makes for a more engaging watch as well. So. Plus, I don’t want to have to go back and rerecord.
Ari: Cool. Thank you. Abe. Any questions or follow ups?
Abe: It’s just, it’s interesting to think about this model from hearing you talk about it. It doesn’t sound like it’s for beginners exactly in the way that we sometimes talk about. Here’s how you would get started with courses. If you are, you know, just beginning, you would like talk to people and then do a pilot and stuff like that. At what point in someone’s sort of kind of life cycle with their customers and their business do you think that this model kind of fits best?
Ross: Yeah, that’s a great question. I will say, like, one of the lessons I really took from my time at Mirasee was back when, you know, Danny was one of the first to talk about piloting and co creation. Right. Those are two such effective ideas that everyone now kind of talks about them. I’ve just compounded and reiterated those principles. Like what I’m actually doing with this stuff is I am just piloting and co creating like absolutely everything that I’m doing. And then I’m more than willing to share the really rough versions of those with my clients because I know that they’re far more interested in is this thing going to work then? Is this a polished learning experience?
And so I have a couple of clients that are starting much earlier in the process and I’m encouraging them, like embrace this thing just because I think it will lead to far better results if you are literally working with people and building your thing out one step at a time rather than thinking, I need to create this course. And like when you’re early in the game, like it is kind of this undertaking, this is my course and it’s kind of a signature piece and it needs to be this like, you know, collection of all the wisdom that you’ve accumulated. And that comes with a lot of problems.
Now you do have a good point that it is most effective when you’re a little more advanced. But I think the principles that I’ve just thought people would be far better off if they got over the specialness of what a course needs to be and thought of it just as recorded instructions that someone can follow, right? To repeat the steps and get an outcome. Now, like how I designed the client studio was to solve the problem of so you have people coming to your course and you sold it for a thousand or two thousand dollars. What next?
Like people often will come into a course and your students will get some sort of outcome. But like if we’re being honest, what percentage of people actually do everything in the course? Like most people don’t. They’ll do something and they’ll get some win and then they feel like they got value from it and then their motivation to keep going kind of dwindles because the excitement and the energy that they got when they were engaging with the marketing and the ideas of fresh perspective, all that tends to dwindle and then they kind of move on. Right?
And I was looking at my clients going like, guys, there’s so much more to do. Right? Like, because my first course was huge. And so I think once someone has kind of got something, I would be bolting on some sort of done with you. Let’s keep going. Where do you want to get to in two years’ time? Right? And like there’s only so much you can do in six to 12 weeks. So I would say a percentage of everyone’s customer base and student base want to continue playing the game and you want to continue serving them.
And I think everyone would be served better if the person running the program or course just stretched their time horizon a little further and started to enroll folks into, well, how do we continue playing the game and winning together? And then how can I give you things in bite sized chunks? Because like most people stuff two years’ worth of execution into a 12-week course. Right? Life would be much easier if I could just keep a percentage of the ones that I earned around and continue to create solutions and solve problems for them. Does that make sense?
Abe: I mean, yeah. Do you see that as different than sort of like a course that progresses into like an ongoing membership or what are some of the distinctions?
Ross: At a very like, fundamental level if you want to boil it down, I think moving it into a membership, like when I hear membership and a lot of our people hit membership, it’s kind of like, great, I sold this thing for $2,000 and it was three months long. I’m going to stick them in $100 a month membership after that. And I am far more interested in charging another $2,000 for the next three months. I want to keep people highly engaged and be charging them a painful amount of money that makes them motivated to get value from it. Right? Like a lot of people kind of.
And I don’t know, I’m not sure if you mean this, Abe. I just, I’m commenting more on when I hear people say membership, right? Like they often think, oh great, I’ll just stick him in this hundred a month thing. And then I like throw them the odd bit of content. But I’m not really going to be engaging with them that much. Right. Like it’s hopefully sort of passive monthly recurring revenue. Whereas I’m more interested in saying, well, no, let’s, let’s keep going. I want you paying enough money that it hurts so that you’re continually motivated to get stuff out of working with me.
And so if someone paid $3,000 for three months, I think it’s kind of incongruent, inconsistent for them to feel like they’re getting the same thing. If you drop the monthly recurring charge down to something that’s like, you know, orders lower. But fundamentally it’s a membership that I run. Right? Like, it’s like people are going to continue working with you and then they will eventually leave at some stage. Like, I don’t define it as a, as a membership. Some people might consider it that. But it is an ongoing, done with you client engagements where, yeah, we’re just continuing to win together. I get a lot out of it because I see, oh wow, Abe, solve those problems and now here’s this problem.
So that’s clearly one of the solutions we need at this part of the journey. And then my role is understanding, well, where do you need to go next and do, we already have that solution or do I need to create it? So it’s more of a kind of a collaborative space where I’m the solution creator and definer rather than a, hey, this is a bunch of trainings and a membership forum, which is what a lot of people think when it comes to membership, if that makes sense.
Abe: I mean, yeah, sometimes we see that it’s hard to like sell a membership upfront, right? As opposed to saying like, hey, join my course or join whatever, like structured experience. And then you hear about the ongoing membership once you’re sort of immersed in that. But it sounds like in your model you’re able to sell what is effectively a membership directly.
Ross: You’re dead right. It’s hard to sell a membership. And I find the reason it’s hard to sell a membership is because most people are trying to sell the membership. Meaning like what is my membership site? Right? And it’s the, in the mind of the business owner, it’s my forum and it’s all the trainings and then you’re having to come up with this value proposition to articulate this overarching collection of things within and that’s just like really hard to do. I find it’s far more effective if you have the conversation with individuals and you say Abe, what’s your one problem?
And then it’s like, it’s lead gen. It’s like, great, let’s build your lead gen funnel. This is the promise I’m making to you for what your lead gen funnel will do in the next three months. We’ll work on that and then we’ll do it in the client studio I’ve got and here’s how it works once we’ve got that done. So I’m identifying what your individual problem is and then I prescribe the solution from inside and I just sell you that and say we will just do this over the next three months and here’s the outcome you can expect from that.
But that’s only one piece that you will need in your year or two long journey. The other big things we’ll do are likely this and that and we’ll figure out what the right thing for you to do after your lead gen execution will be because you and I are going to be meeting regularly and we’ll figure out what your next thing is constantly. And then you get someone in an in a six-week cycle. And so every six to eight weeks I’m meeting with the people in my program and going where’s the bottleneck in your business? And then we’re putting them on a gameplay loop. It’s like, it’s like a video game. It’s like, you know, World of Warcraft.
And so the community, the membership becomes more of a hub where you’re just the games master and we figure out what your six-week quest is and we put you on that loop. And I find that solves the problem of selling the membership because you’re selling one thing. But in the context of here’s how we’re going to play the game over the next year or two and it just makes it much easier because someone can commit for the first three months so you’ve reduced the risk and the commitment phobia that they might have to coming in for a year, they get to try it for one cycle and they either think they’re in the right place and want to keep going or they don’t.
Ari: So just to follow on this, a little question around the logistics. You sell the three-month package and then after that it’s yearly or is it essentially three-month sprints?
Ross: So how I frame it is, hey, Ari. So you’ll join the chamber for coming in. We’ll work on your Legion strategies and we’ll build your lead refinery. The chamber is a yearlong program, but we have a 90 day love it or leave it. Right? So if you want to come in, we’ll get a bunch of work done, we’ll probably get this thing built and probably start your next six-week project as well within those 90 days. If after 90 days you don’t feel like you’re in the right place, we’ll parts as friends. Would have gotten some good work done. But if you do feel like you’re in the right place, then we’ll continue on. Right. You will commit for the rest of the year at that point.
But if after a year you want to keep going, we are more than happy to have you. Like, I have people who are in my studio for three to four years now and we’re taking them on to this level and this level. So like there’s no end to it, but we will ask you to commit for a year so that we can get some good work done. Right. So as long as the person feels like they’re making progress and that they’re in the right place, they’re. They’re happy to stay. Right.
Ari: Right.
Ross: Because like the problem to solve there is how do you make it easy for someone to get started? But then if they feel like they’re in the right place, like don’t artificially end it and make them switch. Because most people don’t want to switch. Like switching and changing programs and finding a new coach is extremely costly. Not just from a money perspective, but in terms of like all the wisdom and client relationship history that’s lost. It’s like people don’t want that. They want to find their person and stick with them from my experience.
Ari: Awesome.
Abe: Anything else you want to mention for people before we wrap up?
Ross: I would just add like people are not buying, you know, the content. Right? They’re buying the outcome and they’re buying working with you. And I think if you, if you realize that and then think of your courses as an efficient way for you to do what you would do one on one with people, I think you’ll go much further. Right. And it’ll be much easier and you’ll create better Products because it’s far more about how do I time efficiently get someone to do the thing rather than thinking. I have to create this heavy lift of knowledge and wisdom content that to be honest, like is, you know, most people are not going to go through. So yeah, ship early, ship often.
Ari: So first, Ross, thank you so much for being here and for having this conversation with us. Where can our audience go to learn more about you and the client studio?
Ross: You can go to conversionengineering.co. Go to the product page. There’s the training there for the Client Studio? It’s like 500 bucks. I’m happy to give you guys. This is unannounced. Happy to give you guys a credit. Someone from your audience can check that out. That’s the best place to get started if you’re interested in learning more about the model. If you want to get an email list, there’s also a book page there for the Open Everyday Book. You can grab that and get on the, on the email list if you want to follow along.
Ari: Awesome. Thank you so, so much for being here.
Ross: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Abe: Ross helps established experts and coaches grow their businesses through two core programs, the Chamber and the Proprietary Open Everyday system. You can learn more about that at OpenEverydaybook.com. That’s OpenEverydayBook.com.
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: So already really interesting conversation with Ross. A little bit different than how people typically think about courses and supporting their clients.
Ari: Yeah. I think for the coaches and consultants out there who have that feeling of they need to have an online course because that’s kind of what they see people doing. I think the way that Ross outlined it is an interesting and valuable approach for them to kind of be aware of and think about.
Abe: I mean, the big thing that jumped out at me that I think would be valuable for people to really reflect on is this idea that a lot of course creators are trying to stuff two years of execution into a 12-week program. I think people should really sit with that and think about to what extent are you doing that in the courses or programs that you currently offer or you’re designing or thinking about. Because I think that is a lot more common and a lot more under recognized, I guess you could say.
Ari: Yeah, agreed. And I think that often people feel like they need to do that because they need to add value. And for some reason, and I can see how this happened, but people equate more content with value when it’s always about the outcomes and what do people actually need for the outcomes and not how much can you stuff in there.
Abe: You know, we’ve talked about it being different in context, but I think what’s also missing in people’s mental model of developing courses is mapping out what the participants in the program want to need to do and the time and energy that’s really going to take. And so that’s where I think people lined up. You could actually create a total program that has a reasonable amount of content and have it be very well designed and yet still fall into that trap of we’re going through this over 12 weeks together and people aren’t going to be able to scratch the surface of what they can apply and do base on what they’re learning here.
That pitfall is less recognized than the pitfall of don’t overload your course with content, even though for sure people are still doing that. But I think at least that problem is becoming gradually more recognized and understood. Whereas I think the problem of how much execution is required is still we’re just beginning to grapple with that.
Ari: And for anyone listening who is not sure whether they fell into that trap, just reflect how much your best students or your average student, how much of what you’ve taught were they actually able to execute in the 12 weeks that they were with you or however long they were with you.
Abe: And are your outcomes potentially way too ambitious? Right? If you’re asking people if what they would have to do to achieve the outcomes, is that going to far exceed the container you’re providing for them? You know, a good exercise is think about if you were going to be working with your clients over two years, you know, what would that look like? Right? How would you support them and what would make it compelling for them to want to work with you for two years?
Ari: And potentially, once you’ve gone through that exercise, actually do that and make that an option. You know, if not two years, one year or whatever, not putting yourself in that, as Ross said, kind of that artificial deadline of the 12 weeks. Yeah, that may or may not be necessary and make sense for what you’re trying to do.
Abe: Yeah. Cool.
Ari: Awesome.
Abe: Ross O’Lochlainn is founder and CEO of Conversion Engineering. He helps establish experts and coaches grow their businesses through to core programs, the Chamber and the Proprietary Open Everyday System. You’ll find the link to his website in the show notes.
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 Making it and Just Between Coaches. 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 the show, go ahead and leave us a starred review. It really does make a difference. Thank you and we’ll see you next time.
All right, Ari, who do we have coming on the show next week?
Ari: Next time we’re going to talk to a professional mermaid. Marielle Chartier Hainault is coming to the show. She’s based here in Montreal and founded the world’s largest mermaid swimming school.
Abe: Wow, I did not know that. That’s pretty amazing.
Ari: Yeah, that’s interesting. And I’m sure that I butchered her name, but we’ll see you next time.