Courses are getting harder to sell, not because people do not want to learn, but because they want results faster than ever. I talk about recent conversations with clients, why even leaders like Amy Porterfield are shifting away from traditional courses, and how the market now expects fast track systems, short actionable lessons, and coaching experiences that prioritize time to value. I also share how we are redesigning onboarding, personalizing member journeys, and rethinking the word course entirely. If your course sales have slowed or your completion rates are stalling, this episode will help you rethink your positioning.

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I want to talk about courses and how they're not selling like they used to and conversations I'm having with every single client about their courses, about how to position them, about how to design a member journey that actually gets people results and isn't just a library of 1 million videos that nobody has time to watch.

So I was talking to my friend Cheyenne who recently went to a storybrain conference in Nashville and, and Amy Porterfield was speaking there and she shared that she is no longer selling courses.

Amy Porterfield is no longer selling courses.

She's focused on her coaching and her mastermind, which I think is really interesting.

Now do we think that Amy Porterfield is going to stop educating people and supporting them on reaching some sort of goal?

No.

Like she's able to do that with her coaching membership or her mastermind experience.

There's probably a lot of educational elements in there, but there's also this like group cohort experience which makes sense.

But I don't want to throw out courses really.

Like that's not what I'm trying to do here in this voice.

Note to you, what I want to talk about is the positioning of courses.

So here's another example.

So we're actually doing a positioning research project right now because one of our clients, it has a services business and they have a done with you program.

The program itself has a course component because it has all the education they need to be successful and then it has a coaching element.

But when she talks to clients that she's pitching this to, she's like, hey, you're a great fit for this.

She's getting a lot of I don't actually want your course feedback.

And so people see her done with you program as a course and that's a problem.

And we need to change the positioning because nobody wants a course anymore.

Caitlin Burgoyne sent this amazing email this week.

Her subject line was like courses are trash or something like that.

And she has this system that she's selling, she's calling it a system.

And her whole email was just like bashing courses and then saying how she's anti course and then saying let me sell you this thing and it is not a course, it's a system.

And she, this is how she described the difference.

She said a system is a repeatable step by step process crafted to expedite outcomes.

A course is usually a letdown packed with mind numbing theory, 47 hours of pre recorded video lessons and, and little to no actionable steps.

And I mean honestly, like I read this email And I was like, wow, she's so right.

We should be positioning everything as a system.

I don't know if that's accurate, but I do think it's really interesting because I looked at her offer and I'm like, what is she actually including here?

And the reason people sell courses is because they want some sort of like on demand, you know, offer that people can buy anytime and do anytime.

Right?

And that's exactly what this is.

This is what's included in her quote unquote system.

19 bite sized lessons and tutorials, 10 minute lessons, jam packed with insights and step by step tutorials.

No fluff, I promise.

So it still has lessons, it still has videos.

There's actually 19 of them, but they're really specific and they're small and they're bite sized.

Eight actionable exercises completed, Complete timed exercises and get clarity on what works with buyers.

Result in days, not eight weeks from now.

So again, she's just like hating on the course model.

Like you don't have to wait eight weeks to get results, you're going to get results immediately.

And then the third thing is 8 AI powered bots.

GPT is trained by top marketers and copywriters to help you brainstorm, analyze by our research and write new copy using proven frameworks.

So she's giving them all of the tools to accomplish their goal as quickly as possible.

Because what we need to optimize for right now is time.

AI is giving us a lot of time back, right?

In theory, if we know how to use it, if we know how to prompt it.

And so if we're getting a lot of time back, our attention spans are already.

I don't know, what is it like the time of a gnat or something like that, Like a few seconds.

And so it's just going to keep shrinking because now we expect results immediately.

And when people need help with their business or help with whatever painful problem you solve, they want that problem solved as fast as humanly possible.

I was recently working with one of my clients on an onboarding design.

So when people build communities with us, we have, we do a workshop on their onboarding and then we design them a bespoke onboarding experience.

So think of onboarding as a lot longer than a welcome email.

It's a full on experience to totally integrate them into whatever you're selling into your program membership and to give them the momentum they need and to give them some quick wins, right?

So this could be 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and you could really design a very long member Journey and call it onboarding.

So we're working on his onboarding and I say we basically designed two routes that the people that come in are going to take.

Take this, like, very short assessment that is going to put them on a track.

And because personalization is also super important, so we're personalizing their efforts and there's kind of like two things they should, they should do, but we want them to start with one and then move to the other.

So if so I tell him, like, okay, what we're going to do is have, have them like start with these courses.

And he's like, oh my gosh, like, I don't have time to develop a course.

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Okay, not really a course.

Like we're going to set it up like a course.

As in people go through the videos one by one.

But really this is quick videos and action items, like something they could sit down and accomplish in an hour going through the whole thing, right?

Like this is quick outcomes, super quick wins.

That is the new version of a course.

Okay?

It's not long videos.

It's not 45 terrible hours of trying to understand something and looking at like a crappy PDF workbook to try to bridge some sort of like, outcome out of this.

Right?

It's giving people exactly what they need to accomplish their goal as fast as possible.

So I guess you can call this like a prediction episode if you want, but really what I'm getting at here is that we need to move away from lengthy courses that are on demand, that take a long time to see results.

People are not going to move through them.

We already know that the industry average is a 12% completion rate.

That is not good enough and it's not quality.

And that's why it's so hard to sell a course, because so many people have been burned by terrible courses.

Instead, what we need to do is if we're going to have on demand offers, like really optimize for time to value.

That's what's important here.

And give them the tools.

The modern tools, like the AI tools actually made an episode on ways program creators are using AI in their programs.

Go back and listen to that one.

It has a bunch of ideas.

But we should be using modern tools to help them get there.

And we should also be building experiences like this into our member journeys and our programs and our memberships.

Now programs and memberships are different because we're positioning that more as a coaching experience, a done with you experience.

But we should really be mindful of how we're using the word course and positioning things as courses, or just giving the impression that something is a course.

Instead, we really want to shape things and position them as systems, experiences, coaching, container support.

These are the words that are working better than courses right now.

And we're going to continue doing the research we're doing and keep building these types of products.

And so I'll keep sharing what we're learning.

But if you have a long course and if your course is not performing well, if peop, if it's not selling, if people aren't actually finishing it, it might be time to give it an update.

So if you want to reach out, if you want help with all of this, definitely send me a message.

You can book a call with me.

I'll put that link in the description, show notes, and we'd love to help you.

We would audit your offers and see how we can make them better.

If you have a positioning problem, we can do some research and we can get down to the bottom of it.

So to hear what you thought of this one today, reach out, let me know, share it with a friend and make sure you're followed and subscribed and I'll chat with you next.