How to Organize Your Ideas Into an Online Course

At some point, your course ideas have to leave your Notes app — they just do. You’re helping no one by having them stashed away for a rainy day when you could be helping everyone — at least everyone in your audience. 

Still, organizing your ideas into an online course is easier said than done. You have this great idea, but you don’t know what happens next. Where do you start? Is this actually what you want to create a course about? How do you turn your bullet points into curriculum for students?

Luckily, I’m breaking it down to the basics so you can start building your course foundation (and start making passive income like yesterday).

Don’t Start with Design, Focus on Your Curriculum

Before you do anything else, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the best results and transformations from your course, you can’t start with design.

I know design is the ‘fun part,’ but there’s so much you could end up skipping or misrepresenting by diving straight into your slide decks. Instead, start by building out your curriculum and then move on to design.

How to Start Turning Your Ideas Into an Online Course

When you’re ready to turn your idea into an online course, you must first know your desired transformation or result, the main action items or abilities they need, and who they need to become to reach that transformation.

Once you have these three things ready, you can start building out your curriculum (and then move on to your slide decks, designs, and marketing). 

Let’s break it down a bit further:

#1. The Result

AKA where your students should be, or be able to achieve, after completing your course. What is their transformation? Break down what it looks like — consider tangible skills and results, how they should feel, and the task they’ll be able to accomplish.

#2. The Skills

Time to get a little more nitty gritty in the details from your desired results. You need to know what skills your students need to have and some of the actionable steps they can take to get there. 

This is a good start to narrowing down what your students need in your course vs. what’s adding ‘noise’ and distracting from your main point. For example, if you’re teaching about micros and macros, do you need a full breakdown of the Krebs Cycle? Probably not!

#3. Who They Need to Become

This one is a bit tricky (and if you need some help, I recommend joining my free workshop here) because you’re identifying shifts your students need to make to get the desired results and use their new skills. A good example is telling your students they need to get comfortable with showing up — which might not be their favorite thing to do if they’re introverts.

What’s Next? Building Your Online Course and Scaling Your Impact and Income

Now that you have the foundation of your course planned out and it’s starting to feel like something more than just an idea, it’s time to start outlining your curriculum! Your curriculum is the ‘meat’ of your course — everything that takes your student from point A (buying) to point B (completion and transformation).

Your curriculum should be crafted with adult learners in mind and focus on providing a good student experience above all else. Your students can’t experience transformation if they can’t complete your course!

Ready to start building your online course but need a little help? Grab your course creation checklist here.