What starting small looks like

One of my favourite things to do is wandering around the LEGO store with my six-year-old son.

The nearest one is in the next big town along from us on the coast, which is about 40 minutes drive away.

Whenever we’re there (usually to visit a certain dim sum restaurant - we love dim sum!) we’ll drop into the LEGO store.

Here’s how it usually plays out…

My son seeks out the latest Harry Potter set and I try to find the biggest, most expensive set in the shop. (Not to buy it - just to marvel at how much you can spend on LEGO if you want to!)

The winner at the moment is a LEGO Death Star costing nearly £900.

Fortunately, my son hasn’t show much interest in that. He prefers the smaller sets. After all, he’s still building his skills.

But if, in an act of reckless generosity, we bought him the Death Star, I’m certain he’d find it overwhelming and give up long before finishing it.

And similarly, too many first-time course creators set their sights on building the “Death Star version” of their course instead of something smaller and more manageable (like a Snowspeeder!).

So ask yourself, in your area of expertise, what’s the online course equivalent of a more basic LEGO kit?

Here’s one idea…

Pick a small but real problem for your target audience and create a three-lesson mini-course to help people solve it.

The lessons could be short videos (3-5 minutes), but they could equally just be text and images if video’s not your thing.

Structure it like this:

• Lesson 1: Introduce the problem and talk about the pain it causes
• Lesson 2: Give us a fresh perspective on the problem and offer hope that a solution is closer than we think
• Lesson 3: Tell us the specific steps to take to solve the problem and invite us to take the first step right away

Not only will you get some valuable course creation practice, but a mini-course like this is perfect for building your audience - you can offer access in exchange for an email address.

The takeaway?

Starting small is one of the best ways of overcoming inertia and overwhelm.

So what problem will your mini-course solve?

See you soon,

Glen