We’ve been on a mission to connect with the global community of course creators.
We’ve spoken with with artists, lawyers, healers, coaches, fitness experts, authors… all creating courses and programs on Ruzuku.
Each conversation has been inspiring, and full of insight.
These calls have fired us up to understand your challenges more deeply, and deliver more value to you.
In addition to our own interviews, we’ve sent out feedback forms in our courses, and analyzed industry surveys of over 1,000 online entrepreneurs and course creators.
We dug into the responses to identify the #1 challenge many course creators face…
The drumroll please…
The biggest challenge that independent course creators struggle with is:
Time.
Finding the time to plan, create, and market an online course.
We saw quotes like these over and over again from people sharing their biggest challenges:
- “Finding the time to get this up and running”
- “Time to make it happen”
- “Time management in writing & marketing the course”
Does this sound familiar for you? Are you also wondering how you can find the time to create your course?
There’s no question that this is a big big challenge.
But there are some practical things you can do to get more out of the limited time you do have.
Some of these we’ve picked up through hard-won experience.
Others we learned from experts in time management, such as Elizabeth Saunders, author of How to Invest Your Time Like Money.
Tip #1: It’s not about “having more time,” it’s about making the best use of the limited time you do have.
Remember that creating a course is… creative! And when you’re engaged in a creativity activity, you need to get into a creative mindset.
It’s almost a meditative state of mind, in which you have higher-level awareness.
To achieve this state, you need to block out longer periods of time and really devote yourself to this work — perhaps once or twice a week.
You should also be as “disconnected” as possible — disable interruptions like email or Facebook, and consider shifting into a different environment such as a coffee shop.
Tip #2: Finding time to create your course starts with making choices.
We want to be very intentional about how we invest our time. The first step is to really stop and reflect on what’s most important to you.
If you’re having trouble finding time to create your online course, a first step would be to review all the activities on which you’re currently spending your time. Then ask how your course truly fits into your set of priorities and projects. If you say your course is a top priority, yet other activities are taking more of your time, then you can start to figure out how to spend less time on the lower-priority activities.
Tip #3: Replace time debt with time investments.
Many solopreneurs are in “time debt,” meaning you have committed (internally or externally) to more meetings and projects than you could possibly handle.
A great first step is to reduce this debt by reducing meetings with clients or partners, or phasing out projects that are “nice to haves” rather than crucial to your business.
Next, you can create “automatic time investments” through consistent scheduling. An automatic time investment could look something like this: “Every Wednesday afternoon from 1pm to 3pm, I’ll focus on my course.” When the time comes, you know that’s what you need to focus on in the moment.
To make the most of this creative time, get really clear on what you’re going to do in a specific block of time. For example, “I will outline the first 3 modules of my course using Workflowy, and then email the outline to my partner to get feedback.”
Now it’s your turn. How can you apply these tips to make time for your course creation efforts?
This is a critical first step to get moving on your course idea if you’ve been feeling stuck.
It will also help you get the most out of any training program you follow to design a successful course.
Now that we’ve tackled the #1 challenge of course creators…
Get ready for our upcoming 30 Day Course Creation Challenge program.
This training and community is completely free to join, and we’ll help you work through the “I never have enough time” challenge by providing short, do-able action steps.
So you can make consistent progress on your course, every day.
Get notified when the program launches by signing up here.
6 Responses
Thanks for a great and valuable post. When wearing dozens of hats, I tend to fall into the pit of multitasking. This habit does not perform well with creative tasks like creating a course. Creative tasks need in my experience total disconnection and a low stress environment. But by far, the best tip you have provided earlier on the topic is: sell the course before it is created. That was (is) pure gold!
Glad it was helpful! We’ll have more to share about pre-selling courses in the future, so stay tuned 🙂
Interesting posting and consistent with current scholarly thinking. As a matter of species survival dating back to our days as prey animals, humans are hardwired for sequential tasking rather than parallel tasking.
That so fits for me, Abe, and your suggestions are great! I think I’ll stop replying to this and put a few minutes into my course. 🙂
On the serious side, there are many facets to my business of which the course is one. Sometimes “time” means attending to current clients, etc. which are must do’s. I plan to go “out of town” for a day to focus on getting my courses in at least offer-able shape. Then I will feel great about attracting people to the website to sign up!
Interestingly enough, one of my enduring academic interests is the cultural phenomenon of the time famine. I will most certainly add your insights to my stash of applied wisdom, with proper attribution of course.
I agree with the correct use of “Time” many ideas get wasted because we are working on them between distractions. I liked the idea of working on it in a different environment. Thanks for the post