Ruzuku Blog

Ruzuku powers Mary Bartnikowski’s photography

For over twenty-five years, Mary Bartnikowski has been a professional photographer and traveler. Now, she’s looking for a way to share all of the knowledge she has gained with the world, and she’s chosen ruzuku to do it! In this video, Mary shares how creating her ruzuku course will help her reach more people than traditional means, such as one-on-one lessons.

Ruzuku Powers Mary’s Photography from Ruzuku on Vimeo.

If you’d like to learn more about Mary, visit her website bartnikowski.com and be sure to look for her ruzuku course coming soon!

Scale your coaching into online learning communities using ruzuku

Dr. Lisa Chu, M.D.founder of The Music Within Us, is an experienced performer, educator, and creative entrepreneur. She offers individual life coaching, group classes and workshops, and writes and speaks on a variety of subjects related to life balance, self-care, and wellness. Her story and lessons resonate particularly with caring professionals who have achieved milestones of outer success and status yet still yearn for a sense of inner peace and satisfaction.  Ruzuku has made it easy for Lisa to scale her personal coaching and workshops into online learning communities. Here’s what she says about Ruzuku…

I’m using ruzuku.com to lead online courses focused on personal development and self-care. I’ve organized two courses so far: “Self-Care for the Caring Professional” and “12 Days of Holiday Sanity: How To Stay Sane In The Midst Of Holiday Craziness.”

Creating a media-rich experience for my participants.

Ruzuku has enabled me to create a media-rich e-book and learning community all in one. I have a small group of enrollees whom I know well. I’ve had several in-depth email conversations “offline” that were definitely facilitated by the content and the mode of delivery on ruzuku. Had we been in person, we would not have been able to go so deep. This is what I’m finding in coaching - that often the best conversations are the ones by phone or email, because the social cues of in-person interactions aren’t masking people’s ability to “go there” and share private information.

Flexibility is key for my community.

The other feedback I’ve received is by phone conversation, from someone who isn’t actively posting feedback online. She noticed that the online format and go-at-your-own-pace way of delivering the materials on ruzuku enabled her to repeatedly try to start the course on several different days. It wasn’t until the 3rd or 4th attempt that she really started to “get it” and resonate with the course content. She was simply in a different place mentally/physically and was finally ready to receive the lessons, not just go through the motions.

Ruzuku is better than an ebook or blog! 

I prefer ruzuku’s structure to an e-book or blog because it’s media-rich and is pushed to the reader in small chunks over time.

Don’t forget: the ridiculously cheap preview pricing we’re offering will expire Monday, February 7th.  If ruzuku meets your needs, now is the time to lock in your discount.

Turn your offline workshop or class into an online learning community

Here’s how Ruzuku made it easy for Marlene Hielema, the Image Maven, to do just that for a photography course that she had been teaching for years.

Marlene Hielema is a photographer and educator. She has taught photography in the classroom for about 8 years and shot commercially for about 20. Currently she teaches photography and Photoshop in the continuing education department at SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary. Here’s what she says about Ruzuku:

I’m using Ruzuku to teach basic photography. My first Ruzuku course went on sale October 11th, and sold out in two days. I’m nearly finished with teaching that course and am planning my next. 

Ruzuku has made life a lot easier. 
Ruzuku has made life a lot easier because I don’t have to worry about all the backend set up of an online course. I love technology and I would love to do that part, but in all honesty, programming and those types of things, hurt my head. Plus, that was a huge barrier to me getting something started. Besides, creating content is hard enough — and is where I’d rather be spending my time.

My students only have to know one system.
With Ruzuku, my students can upload their assignment photos directly to the course. Most forums don’t even let you upload photos unless they are hosted somewhere and that’s just too complicated for the people in my course.

When you have a course that is drip fed like Ruzuku, you only have to stay one step ahead of your students 
It’s just like a classroom that way. If you offer downloadable workshops your whole course needs to be finished before you can sell anything. Plus, using Ruzuku, you can change things on the fly: fix typos, add examples, clarify your message, update your material. That’s really handy!

I also like that I can see student progress.
We were in the second week of the course and I had this one student who hadn’t started yet. I was able to send her a quick note. She told me that she was just having a really busy time at work, and that she would be getting into it soon. That kind of interaction is much different than just dropping content on a membership site, or selling e-books. As a teacher you also need to be attentive. Students pay a premium to be in this type of course with this type of connection to the instructor.

Re-using my content is incredibly easy.
I just hit ‘Copy Course’ and I’m ready to run another session of my course.  This lets me reach many students, and earn substantial revenue, while keeping each session relatively small so that my students have a great experience.

Overall I’m very happy with Ruzuku.
Without it I would still be still stuck trying to figure out how to get this all set up. I’m so happy I’ve had this opportunity to work with Rick, Abe and Jackson and their vision for online learning environments, and I look forward to future releases of Ruzuku.

Marlene’s next course starts November 18th and will be limited to 30 spots. Join her mailing list to get an early shot at snagging one of those slots.

Are you interested in turning ideas from your book, e-book, or blog into an online course and learning community?

Souldancer, the writer and speaker behind Pay Me What I’m Worth, facilitatespowerful life-changing retreats on Hawai’i’s Big Island and Maui. SD is alsopublished author, internationally recognized key-note speaker and radio show host. Here’s what he says about Ruzuku:

Ruzuku provides a savvy, eye-catching learning community for offering classes in clear, simple formats.

Having published Pay Me What I’m Worthin 2007, I was looking for a way to repurpose and reinvigorate my content by structuring it around a learning community.

I tried forums as my community tool, but they didn’t generate the kind of learning and community I was looking for. I was really looking for something that would help me manage my community, that didn’t just sit there and wait for people to come to my content. Something that engaged people and helped them learn. Ruzuku is on its way to being that solution.

I’ve found that Ruzuku inspires everyone involved to connect, create and celebrate their progress one day, one step at a time.

With Ruzuku, I’ve been able to walk people through specific lessons from my book, have them post their own insights and ideas as well as prompt them with questions to test their understanding of my core concepts. Ruzuku also sends out reminders and prompts for people to continue interacting with the course as well as with other learners.

I know that Ruzuku is still in its early stages, but I really see the potential here for an amazing, easy-to-use learning community.

SD’s next course starts November 15th. Sign up today.

Want to learn how you can use ruzuku to create your own learning communities?  Join me for an introduction to ruzuku…Sign up here.