The new playbook to launching your community-centered course in 30 days

Andy Guttormsen: So we're calling this presentation, both the whole summit, it's called the future of courses on that, right? Because a lot's changed where there's been a lot of shifts. And as we go into 2023, I think we're all in a unique position to take advantage of this big kind of change. We've seen in like how courses are run.

And this first. workshop we're going to do, we're calling it Launching Your Community Power Course, the new playbook for 2023, or to put it simply, how to create an experience that your students will love, based off of what we're seeing from Circle's most successful course creators. Now, a lot of times, like, when I show up to a presentation like this, the first thing I think is, am I in the right place?

Is this going to be worth my time, right? And so just to level set in terms of, whether or not this is right for you. the first thing to note, like if you're thinking about creating your first course, this is going to be perfect for you. If you're thinking about leveling up an existing course, maybe you've created a course in the past.

but you want another stab at it, maybe take a little bit of a different, Oh, is somebody saying they can only see, can you see the presentation? In full screen.

Alexis Teichmiller: I can see it in full screen.

Andy Guttormsen: Oh, okay. we're good.

Alexis Teichmiller: And also just to answer the most popular question. I know that's going to come up.

Yes. There'll be a replay. If you registered for the summit, we will be sending out a replay tomorrow. whether you're a Circle customer or not. We'll be sending out a replay via email. So I just want to let everyone know. I know that a lot of people are joining us quite late where they are in the world.

And so if you can't make it through the whole summit, totally understand. So I saw someone said it was like 1 AM where they are. We will be sending out a replay. All right. Sorry to interrupt.

Go ahead.

Andy Guttormsen: . So are you in the right place? Printing a course, leveling up an existing course. Maybe you already have an existing community or membership site.

And you're thinking like, how can I add courses to the mix? This is going to be perfect for you. Maybe you already have a product, right? So you've software or, maybe you have more of a digital good or a conference or something like that. Maybe you have an audience and you want to use courses to connect more with your audience, teach more, open up a new revenue stream, this'll be perfect for you.

And let me know in the chat, are you considering creating a course? Or if not, what's your hesitation? Is there anything that's holding you back? So I see a lot of yeses here to start. Have one, but need another one. Currently working on my first course. Dominique says have one. It's not selling well.

Catherine says seven courses we'd like to get off. Let's see. Finding an easier way to break down the curriculum. Man, this is amazing Alexis. I know. I'm seeing a lot. . I'm seeing a lot of folks who are either thinking about creating one or they're actually really close. To, creating one or maybe they have before, which is really cool.

Alexis Teichmiller: I agree ah. I'm seeing a lot of wanting to bridge the gap between the community side and the education course side of things, which is

amazing.

Andy Guttormsen: Cool. we're going to overcome a challenge or two together today. That's what these summits are all about. A lot of times early in the journey when people are thinking about creating an online course, they like, we hear things like I want to create a course, I'm just worried about the time it'll take.

to create something that's really valuable that I can be proud of. or I, there's so many courses on my topic and it feels like a really competitive landscape out there. And like, why would they buy my course? Or I don't know how to choose a topic or, I don't know how to create the content and cobble it all together and get the different tools and make them all work.

Or maybe I feel pretty good about that, but I don't know how to actually go out and get my first students. Or what if it doesn't sell? Or what if I create a community and it's a ghost town, right? I totally get that, been there. But our big promise to you today, so next 60 minutes, right? We got a lot to cover in a little bit of time, is that You're going to walk away with a simple playbook that you can use to launch your own community powered course.

And it's something that you can do in the next 30 days, right? You can launch a course in the next 30 days. Now, it doesn't have to be in the next 30 days. We're going to give you a formula for making a lot of progress. So if you're ready now, amazing. If you're ready, Next month or a couple months from now.

Amazing. But what we're going to do is, we're going to tackle this hard in a few different ways. So here's how we're gonna actually accomplish that. Okay. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're talking about the why community power courses much changed in the last year, two years, right? We're gonna look at real examples of winning communities, like winning courses, the ones that are the best in their space.

We'll take a little bit of a peek behind the curtain at some of our favorite Circle communities and courses. So we're also talking about the pricing. Everybody wants to know about pricing revenue goals. How do you deliver an amazing transformation, with your course? How do you really deliver on the promise that you make your students?

How do you choose the course topic? Also, we're going to share nine ideas. that I was going to put up nine, but it's too hard. I don't know. we're going to share nine ideas that you can take, steal them from us. but to make your course more community power, more community centric, more connective so that it stands out.

we're going to talk about our three favorite strategies for getting your first paying students. And then finally, we're also going to give you a sneak peek at our brand new Chart Your Course bootcamp, which by the way, if anybody here is a Circle customer, you're going to get access to a whole bunch of that for free.

It's really cool, really exciting. So if you're ready, rock and roll type right into the chat, and then we're going to dive into this. Let's see. Hey there, Nicole. Angela's ready. Chris is ready. Mary's ready. Brian's ready. Catherine's ready. Awesome. Cool. We love it. Alexis,

let's do it.

Alexis Teichmiller: So we've been, Circles been floating around this term community powered course, and I'm excited that we're going to carve out what is a community powered course.

What does it mean? And before we dig into what it is, I think it's important for us to take a look at the old way. Of doing courses. So the old way is a little static, a little boring can sometimes feel like there's, there's just crickets. You make a sale. Someone goes through. They don't quite finish it.

There's low student retention. as well as they're not really engaging with you. Maybe that's something that you hoped you were hoping to see them transform or take all the content that you've spent a lot of time building and actually get results, but it's really difficult to see that engagement.

They don't maybe feel motivated because there's not engagement with you or with each other as the students and maybe you're spending more time switching between different tech tools than you actually are spending time with your students and it becomes quite exhausting. And there is an element of crossing your fingers and just hoping that your course students are getting the value that you hope they are.

And at the end of the day, it's just not differentiated. There's a lot of course creators in this space, right? It's been, we've been in this space, Andy, for the last, I've been in this space for the last eight years, and you've been in it longer than me. There are a lot of courses. And so how do you differentiate?

If you are resonating with this in the chat, That old way. Does that feel familiar to you? Have you ever been there? And I know that I have. And sometimes that's why creating courses doesn't feel as organic. It doesn't feel as exciting. It maybe lacks a little bit of energy. And so let's shift over into what is the new way look like?

How can we chart? A new path forward. And so this looks like bringing your course to life with immersive experiences like exclusive masterclasses or weekly, Q&A's expert, guests coming in and teaching. Also, it allows you to be a part of the transformation that you're wanting to deliver to students.

You are closer to the students, therefore closer to the results that they're getting. And then it ends up becoming a raving word of mouth. Party because they're so excited that they're getting results and they're talking to each other easier to get testimonials and you feel good about seeing your students actually have real transformation and getting the value from your course and also making it memorable.

There are elements to this community powered course. shift that makes you stand out in the core space as an expert, as an educator, you do things differently because you're focused on making it unique and memorable from day one. And then it becomes this all in one experience in one platform that you don't have to, be like tinkering and putting the puzzle pieces together, with all this different tech.

And we are definitely not coming from a place of no experience. We have over 6, 000 Circle customers at this point where we're pulling a lot of this data and very real use cases from very real entrepreneurs like you. So before we talk about the how, let's dig into why community powered courses.

What are the reasons why we've really been making this shift in the course

industry?

Andy Guttormsen: , so this is my favorite part. it's the why. Why make the shift? And so there's so many reasons. There's so many reasons we could list them on and on but there's four that I really want to touch on.

So the first one is we're all like when we create a course we're coming from a place of wanting to deliver an output for somebody, so you want to deliver transformation and we want to deliver on that promise and so community powered courses are the best way to do it. Like you ever been there where you're trying to like.

sell a course or create a course. You don't really in your gut feel confident about the transformation is going to deliver. when you make it community powered, it's so much easier to deliver on that because you're there. you have to talk with the students are talking with each other. You're in the trenches with them.

You're building with them. And one of my favorite stories is Gwen from Breakthrough Facilitation. So you may notice in the chat today, you're going to see Matilde in the chat. Matilde's our head of community. She's amazing. If you're in the Circle customer community, she's the one who like shepherds the whole community.

Matilde came to me a few months ago and she's I'm going to take this course, it's breakthrough facilitation. It's all about how do I. go and leave these virtual events and things like that. But think about Gwen here, right? So she had, there's 50 people in this course, it's a premium course.

It's four weeks long, new lessons every single week. but it's 1, 500, right? And so when she had 50 people in her course, she had small, highly engaged kind of premium experiences in the weeds, but this is the 75, 000 community. I don't have any numbers. you just do the math, right? And it's a month-long course.

And this is a really common story of what courses actually look like out in the wild. It's premium. There's not thousands of students. There's the right students, the right amount of students. this is Matilda, by the way, right? She was just raving after she went through the course, but what's really cool about community powered courses is that You don't just get to deliver an amazing experience that first time around for your students, but there's so much word of mouth that can happen afterwards that drives the next students.

And it ties actually pretty closely to reason number two, which is all about standing out in your space. If you want to really be different in your space, if you want to do a step or two better than the other folks, right? Because there's always competition. There's other people in the space.

That's great. The world is a big place and there's room for a lot of horses. but When you create a community powered course, you get certain advantages, right? So one of my favorite stories is Dr. Becky Good Inside Alexis.

This is like the best community.

Alexis Teichmiller: I agree. One of, one of my favorite go to examples of a community that's powering other elements of the business too.

Andy Guttormsen: . Dr. Becky is amazing. Dr. Becky has a business called Good Inside, right? They help parents. and so they help you be the parent you want to be. It's great. Great message. But the thing they've done is they have these, gosh, it's like they're like the center of the universe.

I was just randomly at dinner with my sister a month ago. And she's I'm in this amazing class. And it's this woman, Dr. Becky. I'm like, I know who Dr. Becky is. . And, but Dr. Becky launched a book last week, New York Times bestseller, imagine the impact. She has a membership community. She has classes.

And so when you start to create these like really people first experiences where you're in the weeds, helping people, they talk to each other. There's great word of mouth. It opens up new doors. And so that doesn't happen as much when we talk about like static classes and The old way of not bringing your people together.

Number three, you can choose a calmer business model that fits your lifestyle. So I don't know about, I don't know about you, but, sometimes the traditional way of making money from courses, having a course in business. It's really hard. You're starting from scratch all the time. and that can be fine, but it's very much feast or famine.

And what's really great about courses is when you get it right, is you can choose a model that is well suited to the lifestyle that you want to live. I don't mean lifestyle, like Glamorous lifestyle. What I mean is more so like, how do you like to spend your time? Do you like to work really hard for a short period and then take a break?

Do you like to have more predictability? Is that better for you? And you'll see community powered courses. You can have just one course. It's a flagship course. It's open for enrollment a couple of times a year. You do a big launch. or maybe you have a few launches a year, right?

You can have a monthly recurring membership site where you include premium course experiences inside to increase the value of the membership. You can have three courses, complementary courses that you use for some other benefit. Like even at Circle, we've invested probably tens of thousands of dollars into some of our really premium course experiences.

Like we have this chart in our course. a bundle I'll show you about. We don't charge for it. It's free, but it's for our customers. And we do that because it helps in other parts of our business. And so you might not even want to charge for your course. You might also have some other way, some other product or something like that.

and your course can help you there. And so one of my favorite examples is David Perel and Will Mannon from Write of Passage. So the way they work, this Write of Passage course, it's, their students are raving fans, they love. this course. Everybody walks away, they get great results, they talk about it.

But what they do is they do a couple big launches per year. They make a lot of revenue talking seven figure courses here. They do these hard sprints where enrollment is open and they take a break and they recharge and they regroup and they do another one later in the year. Kate from DATAcated, right?

So she has an annual membership. It's 300 a year. But what she does is rather than having like launches and open enrollment. So it's just open all the time. paid one fee. It's 299. And then you get access to all the courses all at the same time, right? And so actually what Kate's doing is she's building this kind of like catalog almost of courses so that her membership actually gets more valuable as time goes on.

And of course the money can be really good, right? This can lead to other opportunities and one flagship course can be your whole business. but my favorite example is Tiago Forte. Again, they earn a lot with their courses, but like they also just deliver these amazing outcomes. And so the two are connected.

Alexis, I like your mug. By the way, that's the Circle community mug there, see that.

Alexis Teichmiller: Thank you. I had to keep, I had to stay on brand Andy.

Andy Guttormsen: All right. Community powered courses they come in all shapes and sizes right we'd have a start date and end date they can be cohort based, you can be project based that can be self paced, you can include them bundled with other things going on.

Type into the chat though, like when you start to think about your course, and in a minute I want to get into choosing your topic, who you serve, all of that, which of these benefits resonate with you most. Just type into the chat real quick. Alexis. Which one of these resonates the most with you?

For me, it's the lifestyle one. It's the sustainability. I think that for so long, a part of the old way comes with hustle culture. It's you've got to just be always launching forever and ever. And what I like about this model is it's so much more sustainable, not just doing it for a couple of years until you burn out, but really having the longevity to your business instead of feeling this like urgency all the time to always be launching.

. Mike says lifestyle. It's sustainable. .

Alexis Teichmiller: a lot of lifestyle money. The transformation piece.

Andy Guttormsen: A lot of lifestyle here. More engaged on the platform. He says, hi guys. very cool. Okay. this is the why it's also the why now, Alexis. Yep. Let's talk about the most important piece.

Alexis Teichmiller: I agree. Why you, there's always that mindset element to, to starting anything, to growing a business. And so I want to outline four core reasons why you have a unique, unfair advantage to make the most out of this shift, because you're on the cutting edge of it right now. We are in the beginning of the shift.

So the first one is that you're here right now, you're live, or maybe you're watching the replay tomorrow, but you're here. You understand the value of community. You're motivated. If you're in the chat right now, just seeing this energy is incredible. You're motivated. There's energy there. There's momentum.

You feel like you're at this point in your life where you're ready. Three is you have access to training and experts who have done this before today on the summit, being able to learn from people who have been doing it. For almost a decade and seeing how they're making this shift and being on the cutting edge of that shift with them.

And then you have access to tools and processes that maybe you didn't have a year or two ago. And that's another big unfair advantage too. And I know this is one of your favorite quotes, Andy, I'll let you take this

Andy Guttormsen: one. . So this is the corniest thing ever, but it's the truth. And we had to put it on here because of that.

one of our, so my co founder, Sid and Rudy, we have this quote is it's a Warren Buffett quote, but it's also a whole bunch of folks,have brought this up before, but really like when you're running your business, you might make two or three really key important decisions per year.

And so last year, for Sid and I, and for Rudy, it was like, what are the big product kind of bets we want to make? And the big bet was that courses. We need to run courses on Circle, but, the future of courses is gonna be community powered courses built around people and connection, right?

And we're coming to this point now,where we made the decision a year ago and we're bringing it to the world now. You can do courses on Circle, you can do community powered courses on Circle. But what I think is so cool here, Alexis, is The wine like things are lining up right so there's the why now there's the shifted community power courses.

and then there's just like you're in a unique position to take advantage of this shift there's like the why you too so it's all kind of lining up really nicely. And so our hope is that this will be one of your big decisions this year is that like you will create a community power course. So Alexis, we're making progress here, right?

So we know the why. We spent a good amount of time there. but the next thing we need to do is we need to figure out like, who do we want to serve? What is our course topic? How do we price it? What are our revenue goals? What's the transformation we're going to provide? How do we make our course more community powered?

Alexis Teichmiller: This is like the how. How do we deliver, on this? And let's dive into, let's dive into kind of the meat. choosing your course topic, I would love for everyone in the chat to say my course topic will be X and insert what you want your topic to be and my course will serve X and that's the audience that will receive that transformation, who your target positioning is for. , stepmoms, online event, hosting, mental health, money management, tech sales, podcast editing. Yes. Wow. So many coding. The diversity of different topics there's so much here to learn from. And I hope that also gives you encouragement, right? We can get in our heads and we can say, Oh, there's already so much out there like this.

And there's so much diversity and all these different topics in the chat. So let's dig into that topic piece that transformational element.

Andy Guttormsen: Alexis real quick though, I just got to share some of these. These are so good. organic gardening, oh that's Megan, overcoming menopause symptoms naturally.

Healing and productive responses, productivity tools for thought, this helping chronic dieters. This is so there's so much, there's so many different angles here.

. We're going to walk through too. When it's beautiful that you have that clarity of who you want to reach and what you want to teach.

And here in a couple of minutes, we'll also walk through the pricing and how that plays into the transformation as well.

Next slide, sir. Okay, so in about five minutes, we're all going to do a fun exercise here around, pricing and all that kind of stuff. but the number one question we get Alexis.

What can I do to reduce risk and choose a topic that'll work for me? So what do you think?

Alexis Teichmiller: I love this piece around transformation. It's actually probably my favorite part of this whole workshop is the most valuable courses focus on delivering a very clear transformation for their members and their students.

You just need to figure out what that transformation is that point A to point B. You might even know the topic and you might know who you want to help, but it's really narrowing in on what the transformation is. And that helps with your messaging. It helps. I think this is a lot of clarity to the pricing as well.

So what is transformation? Let's look at a couple of examples. So we've already used this one, but this is a great, this is a great transformative statement on her homepage. Is for Good Inside become the parent you want to be. it's automatically resonating with me psychologically. it's. It's touching on my core values.

And it's also very clear on a transformation here by. Going through her courses and her classes and being a member. I'm going to be a better parent. I couldn't think of I'm not a parent, but that's a transformation, a fantastic transformation for sure. So being clear on what that is, this is Felippe.

He has a community and course around the Inside The Show, and he puts together immersive unique virtual experiences. And his business really blew up, through COVID everything being online. And this is really clear. So much of business and so much of what we do has shifted online. How do we make being online a unique experience?

And this is really clear. It solves a problem and it makes the transformation element really specific and really straightforward. And then, this is one of my favorites, Selfmade with Brit Morin. This is a 10 week cohort based course,structured like a bootcamp and build the business of your dreams in 10 weeks.

So she's announcing, you're going to build your business of your dreams, not what anyone else wants you to do, but what you want to do. And then she put a time commitment around it in a container of 10 weeks, really clear, transformative statement here.

Andy Guttormsen: Kinsey says I'm in Selfmade. Aeon says Felippe is a genius. I agree. but that's a transformation right there, Alexis, build the business in 10 weeks, right? David. .

Alexis Teichmiller: David Perel, this is his Write of passage group. Accelerate your career by writing online, really clear. If you're wanting to improve your writing skills, especially online, going through his membership course will help you get there.

And so when you decide who your community is. For in the transformation you want to deliver, then thinking, like, how do you actually deliver on that promise, deliver on that transformation? And we'll actually cover this in the next section.

Andy Guttormsen: we get to this point, right? We're talking about the transformation.

But the size of this transformation that you're delivering to your students, this is directly proportional to the price that you're going to command for your course, right? And let's talk about pricing. So the easiest way to start, I would say, is just to play a game together, right? I want you to use your judgment.

I want you to let me know in the chat. This is a monthly membership, the Good Inside parenting membership, right? let me know in the chat, what do you think this costs, right? Every single month. Okay. I'm seeing a lot come in here. $50, $2,000, $30 a month, $99 a month, $60 a month, $500, $20. $197. Awesome. Cool. So Good Inside about $30 a month, right?

And they have classes that are about $50 a month, right? Oh, I actually just gave you the answer. I also wanted to see if you, but imagine this, what would you pay to have your child sleep through the night? Like probably a lot of money.

Alexis Teichmiller: And the cool thing is about her courses or her classes is she sells her class workshops individually, but then you get them for free included in the membership.

So it's like a great way to make one off sales, $50 a workshop course. And then you get all, you get access to all of them inside a $29 membership.

Andy Guttormsen: Blake says 2 million. 2 million. to sleep through the night. But , it's such an amazing value, right? And if you go, so this is, I think, one of the best run examples of a cohort based course, out there, which is the Selfmade community and course, right?

And let me know in the chat, build the business of your dream in 10 weeks. What do you think this course is? Let us know in the chat here. Let's see who can nail it. All right, I'm seeing Albert $897, Darius $4000, Ahmad $999, Amy $147, Ralph $25, Joshua $997, Elon $500. Awesome. Cool. So this course is, I believe it's two thousand dollars. But, think about what you're getting, right? a really amazing transformation. So it's a premium course. Think about David Perel's course. Accelerate your career by writing online. Let me know what you think it is in the chat. You got Zach, $490. Rachel, $497. Derry, $4,000. Lisa, $4 000.

Alexis Teichmiller: I love it. Lisa's this is like online course Price is Right. Yep. So this is, it's actually, a few thousand dollars. Gail, just to answer your question, all the examples that we have shared so far are all hosted currently inside of Circle.

Andy Guttormsen: One of my other favorites here is, Monica Lent. Learn to grow your blog as a developer without an audience. Let me know, what you think this costs, type it in the chat, $299, $200, a couple of frees. Okay, cool. So this is actually a free course, right? And I just bring this up here because, Monica, she actually has the private membership community. She uses her course differently. She isn't charged for it directly. She uses it to funnel folks and introduce her best, Her best students into the community, right?

If they're interested in the course, they might be good fit for the ongoing monthly membership community. So let me know in the chat real quick. I want you to think for a minute, like what is your transformation that you might provide in your course, right? imagine who, who's your audience, what's the transformation that you will provide them and to give you an example of what this could look like.

It could be you're gonna go through my horse, you'll learn how to paint silhouettes to impress your friend, or I'm going to help you rent out your apartment for 10 percent more every month or we're going to run a 5k together. And every day there's going to be an accountability group. At the end we run the 5k, what's the transformation that people go through.

All right, let's see here, you'll reduce your screen time by two plus hours a day. Write your earliest books to expand your ministry. Learn how to talk to people you disagree with. I love that. Using 10 tools over 8 days to challenge your offering. It's nice. Ah, so many good transformations here.

There's a lot of courses. . In this chat. These are like the seeds of a lot of really valuable courses.

I love that, Renee. Think like a leader, so you can lead those around you well. That's great.

Alexis Teichmiller: Cool. This is the pricing piece. Let's dig in.

Andy Guttormsen: Yes. Okay. So this is actually like relatively straightforward.

I don't want to harp too much on this. I want to move through this really quickly, but I just want to drive home a couple of points, right? I like to put things in perspective, in general, and the good way to start is to think about what your goals are right and I'd like to think through it, just to make big problems more actionable and bite size.

So the thing I would do is I think through what are the monthly revenue goals or the annual revenue goals and then how many members or students what I need in order. To be able to deliver on that and meet those goals, right? And we all know this is just math. It's very simple math, but, this is some of the math that we might do, to understand what would our target number of students need to be in order for it to be impactful.

And I just threw out random numbers here, a $300 course with 20 students a month. I threw out an annual goal of $100,000 with a 400 course. How many students would that require every month, right? We start to do the math to get a sense of what's important to us. And for some of you, these numbers are probably way too small for others.

They seem like a gigantic mountain to climb. it's worth putting in perspective to understand how many students you'll need in order for you to hit your goals, right? so you'll want to go through that process, but, The whole order here is really just the same. First, you decide who is your community for, who is the course for, what's the transformation, but then how are you going to deliver that transformation?

And this is where we're really introducing the community piece. Alexis.

Alexis Teichmiller: . This is where we start bridging the gap between, a lot of what we've mentioned so far is part of building a course. It's picking your topic, the pricing, the transformation. This is where it shifts into becoming community powered is delivering on that transformation by adding in the unique differentiating experiences to turn those students into community members where they're actually.

Building community with each other, not just you as the expert. And so let's, there's a couple of differences, there's nine different examples I'm going to walk through, and this is how to make your course more memorable. And even if you already have an existing course, take one or two of these examples away and apply them.

Or if you are already a Circle customer and you're doing some of these, think about how you can add your course into what you're already doing inside your community. And, Write down a lot of your ideas that I love. I love this slide. It brings us back to pen and paper and writing down ideas that they don't have to be perfect.

We're just brain dumping. And so this is what this next section will be. It's just an example of a lot of different ways. You can add that extra value. Here are 9 practical ways for how to deliver that transformation and make your course community powered, but really quick 2 things to remember.

The 1st, 1. Slides. You have two things to keep in mind. you'll notice that these ideas are created around belonging and connection, right? A big piece of what we do as entrepreneurs as creators is we're building belonging. We're building a sense of, I'm raising my hand and saying, I struggle with that too, or I want to learn that too.

And I want to do it amongst people who are walking through the same experience. And the 2nd, 1 is. Keeping in mind that even though we're going to give a lot of examples, pick one or two or three that really work for you. And that feel like they align with your existing business model. So let's dive in.

These are signature gatherings. so number one, weekly live video lessons. With live office hours, so these could be pre recorded lessons that you're putting into your community or into the course platform and you can make them available all at once or you can drip them out. This is a really popular way to, if you.

Want to pre-sell something before you build it, you can sell, you can, build, the narrative around the transformation, you have your students, and then maybe you're building it out and dripping it out one week at a time. And that's a great way to not overwhelm yourself with creating all the course content.

And then the live office hours can be structured more like casual Q&A's. They don't necessarily need to be, I'm going to teach you a lesson. It's more of your students going through the content and then they're coming to you in a more casual setting for the Q&A side. The 2nd signature gathering idea is doing something a bit more project based.

So teaching live lessons each week until the project is completed. This is a different part. This is Dickie Bush from Ship 30 for 30. they have, they're helping increase writers ability to write in 30 days. So they're helping them write a specific piece in 30 days time.

Andy Guttormsen: And so this is when You publish every single day. How cool is that? You have to, ,

Alexis Teichmiller: The accountability element in this project based, example is, quite elite, but The point is it's more cohort based and it's helping, stay in touch with your students based on a specific project results. So the ending, and you can also start stacking more value to upgrade your community powered course too.

Let's say you're already teaching someone how to do something. How can you add in that accountability or. Those project check-ins into your existing course. This is a really popular one: weekly or monthly hot seats. So this is where you can invite all your students to a live call. And then let's say they raise their hand and say, Hey, I want specific coaching or help around this specific issue, and this is a great way to add.

Off the, like on the cuff or off the cuff, not on the cuff, off the cuff, value to them. It also can be a lot more casual and a lot less structured and really just, your communities coming together and sharing, what's working and what's not working based on what you're teaching.

Andy Guttormsen: So in the chat, Giacomo asked, when is the course feature rolling out to everybody? I just have to reiterate. These courses are here on Circle, so they are here if you are on our professional land, you can get online courses, you'll log in, you'll see it inside of the dashboard inside. By the way, I just want to mention also on the hot seats front.

Alexis. If you're like what we're showing here is like you're, you may do pre recorded courses or maybe you already have an existing pre recorded course or something along those lines, you can start to add on some of these levels of connection as you go. The hot seats are awesome. There are entire courses where it's not even a course, it's literally just hot seats people just come and get all the value from the hot seats.

and by the way, Jeff. Rose asks, what was number two, having a project based course where there's a deliverable at the end. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that on the courses piece.

Alexis Teichmiller: I thought we were going to wait till the end, but I'm glad you brought it up. Yes. The courses are available to pro and enterprise.

So I saw someone ask if you're on the, you have to be on Circle version 2. 0. So there should be a banner at the top where you can upgrade to Circle V2. And then courses will be in your dashboard on the left hand side.

Andy Guttormsen: We'll talk more about that later.

Alexis Teichmiller: I just wanted to answer the enterprise question. So the fourth signature gathering idea is giving your students accountability groups. I love this piece. This is where you really start to add a layer. Of the check ins of the community of helping each other achieve a certain goal. This is a great way to have student better student retention as well as outcomes.

And it also has a very high perceived value and not even just perceived value. It is valuable. But if I'm buying a course in a community program that there's going to be an accountability element, that's really highly valuable because it tells me that I'm going to be able to actually achieve the goal.

I've set out number 4, number 5. Is. What is number five? Oh, this is one of my favorite community challenges. This is a great way to let's say you can have a challenge sit next to your course. So you have the course and you're trying to build a bit more engagement around your existing course. How could you have a 7, 14, 30 day challenge that is specific to your course topic, but that gets people actually engaging with the content checking in.

And maybe there's even a challenge. Winner. You can brand it something specific. Maybe it's more one on one time with you. but this kind of helps accomplish that accountability element, but in a container inside of the, a challenge.

Andy Guttormsen: Everybody can do this. Everybody can do this. .

Alexis Teichmiller: This piece is very accessible.

Andy Guttormsen: I'm going to paint like we're, let's say we're artists. We're, we have an art community every single day. Our goal is we're just going to paint something together. Just, we all got to do is paint. And so then we post it up to get a picture of it. And we're good for the day. Or one of my favorites, Patrick, who used to be on the Circle team, has an endurance community.

like what if at the end of our run every day, we take a picture of ourselves. Here are our stats for the day we went out, we ran. I love this. I just think it's so approachable for anybody who's here. , absolutely. And the same vein as the accountability and the challenges number 6 is letting your students get feedback on their projects and work.

And that's something that David does at right of passage is people actually submit their writing for review from him. And that's another, let's say your course is teaching. something along social media, how to grow your Instagram or how to improve your Instagram quality reels. your students could actually be submitting their reels to you for review, and you can give them real time feedback on how to make things better.

So it's not just the course content, but it also has the accountability, and the feedback to help them improve what they're learning from the course. Idea seven. Oh, okay, any of these resonating with you in the chat would love to hear what yes, and Danielle, there will be a recap of this.

We have a slide that has all of them on 1. so you can take a screenshot number 7 is having your successful students be mentors for other students in the course. And so this is where that alumni element comes in. This is something that Tiago Forte does in the building a 2nd brain membership course.

As he has his successful students come back and mentor his new students. And that's another way where it's not all on you, just because you're the creator of the course, the creator of the membership, you can include other people in the process and be mentors to your students. Two more ideas coming up.

Number eight. Is bringing in external experts teach live workshops and host expert Q and a sessions. This is actually something that we are doing with our chart your course bootcamp that we're kicking off in October. we are facilitating a lot of the programming around the, of the content, but then we're bringing in expert speakers like Jordan and Mariah cause.

To teach and bring their expert advice into the bootcamp. And so how can you do the same thing with your course with specific topics, highlighting someone who has expertise in that area and invite them in to, to speak or even do a more casual Q and a setting.

. And by the way, this is another example of something that anybody here can do

Imagine your course, but then imagine you're able to bring in one or two other experts in your space who are really in demand can offer a lot. It just adds the value. and it makes it easier to command a higher price to deliver better student outcomes. You only need one or two for this to go over, really well.

Alexis Teichmiller: , I agree. Not being overwhelmed. You can just pick a few. the ninth and final one is offering direct DM access and always on chat or forums, chat groups with other members. This is a really, this is a screenshot of what it looks like inside of Circle, but then being able to have a private area where they can chat with you.

Or have an accountability group chat that goes on inside of the app, makes it really seamless for them. They're not having to go to different platforms using Voxer or WhatsApp. It can all be in the same area. And that's another. A great way to use the tool to help with the accountability piece. are you seeing how easy it is to mix and match these?

Some of them can layer on top of each other. Some of them can be standalone DM stands for direct message by the way. ,

Andy Guttormsen: so what that means is like opening up your making yourself accessible, right? So you can have like different tiers. Let's say maybe you have like your course, then you have a premium tier where you're like, you know what, if you buy this higher tier, you'll unlock access to like more direct help and support from me, or you can send me a message anytime I'll get back to you within, a day or two or whatever it is.

Alexis Teichmiller: so we love to see it. We love to see it. I got,

Andy Guttormsen: this is excited. Can you restrict access? Yes. , Debbie,

Alexis Teichmiller: you can go live. She asked, can you go live to your students on this platform? Yes, you can go live inside of Circle. You can go live in certain spaces as well as in the entire Circle community.

And yes, there will be a recording available. Okay, so this is a great way to connect with students in a way that's more organic for you. this is not a one size fits all. This is really finding a formula that feels good to you and something that you can continue sustainably doing over time. ,

Andy Guttormsen: cool. We need to know in the chat, which two or three of these. Are you most excited about, which two or three of these would you, you think, I can do that. I could add that to a course or I could build a whole course around that. let us know in the chat. Alexis, what are you seeing?

Accountability groups, loving the community challenges, the mentors, office hours, the alumni mentorship. the project based accountability, the David said, Oh, no, I want to do all of them in a combination.

He says, I'm really already planning to do all of these.

Alexis Teichmiller: Yes. Mentorship. . Project based hours.

Progress tracking. I love it. . So this is just a reminder of that new way that we approached in the beginning of our workshop is the signature gatherings are really pulling. through on the community side, the engagement, the student retention, the accountability, the building bus, building, building something that when you log in, there's energy to, to the course that you're building instead of it feeling like, an empty room with nothing going on.

We want to make it a party. And so a lot of this that we just walked through is really delivers on that new way of moving forward.

Andy Guttormsen: . And by the way, so a couple of folks have asked. Why are we doing this on zoom and not in Circle? yes, you can totally run live experiences and in Circle. but two reasons.

So like on Circle, you generally like folks have to be part of the community in order to be part of the live experiences. And so here we have folks who are joining just for the very first time. And it's outside of the community. the other thing is we may hit over a thousand people today and technically Circle can do more than a thousand people, but.

generally we recommend up to a thousand people. so this is the new way. Now, this is your way. What I want you to do, by the way, is I know we're talking really fast here, so just take a screenshot. Take a screenshot of this slide, and you can come back to it later. But these are everything we just talked about.

Hot seats, accountability groups, expert q and a sessions. Heck, you could run a book club. To connect over something book, as you're going through it, we've seen the challenges you can handpick experts to bring in. But just take a screenshot here. You can come back to it later. So what I want to do now is I want to talk about marketing your course.

And we'll take off the sides for a minute here. And by the way, we're then in a minute, we'll talk about this special bundle that we put together. I also want to talk about some of the upcoming speakers we have, because, we're gonna go deep on some of this stuff. oh, here, I'll leave the screenshot up. Go for it. Okay. ,

Alexis Teichmiller: this is a classic. This is a classic screenshot for sure.

Andy Guttormsen: So let's talk about marketing, your course real quick. So the first thing I just want to call out is we're going to go deep on this, rather than try and cover it in five minutes, we are, having a couple of sessions.

So the next session, our keynote session is with Danielle Leslie. And Danielle is, a force of nature, just amazing. She's done 20 million in core sales and, and she comes on next. She comes on in about 25 minutes, maybe a couple minutes early. She's going to talk about how to create a really compelling offer.

She'll go deeper into pricing. She'll talk about going out and getting students. but then Mariah, is there anybody here who you're like, Eh, I don't know if I want to create my course right away. I actually want to see if there's demand for it first, right? anybody feel like that? Let me know in the chat.

but Mariah, , Mariah is a force. And so Mariah is going to be talking all about how to pre sell your course. So Mariah is, probably for me personally, like I've learned probably more from her than anybody about the course of marketing she teaches. she teaches people how to do this stuff all day, every day, but she has an hour long workshop at 2 PM.

And then, there's also a panel we're doing with. Will Manon will be there as well, right? Or sorry, not Will.

Alexis Teichmiller: Will is a part of the bootcamp, so he is part of the bootcamp. We have a panel of Tiago Forte, Stephanie, Carton, and Sun Yi. So , it's gonna be, we have a, we're gonna go deep in a lot of the marketing pieces of the course, the course side of things.

Andy Guttormsen: . So anyway, what I want to do is I want to give that the space it deserves. We've got three workshops. We're going to go deep on it, coming up, but instead I want to talk about, this special kind of, deal we put together. before we do that though, can, can we talk about you for a minute?

Here. you've joined us today. And what I'd love to know is, what's been your biggest takeaway so far? Let us know in the chat. check what he says. Wait, I missed the last slide.

Like he just says. That Circle can do all this. Yes. And so that is, something that I'd love for you to take away. let's see what else. The nine, Sergio says the nine ideas. Catherine says that we can really do this. Samantha says the abundance, of a tool for creators. Perfect. The pricing differences were helpful.

The nine ideas from Kimberly. Lisa Ross saying mix and match where you're comfortable. I love the thinking. This chat is almost going too fast for me to keep up. What about you, alexis?

Alexis Teichmiller: I love it. I love that it's validation of what I'm doing and tools to build on, Trish says. And yes, there'll be a recording if you're just joining us.

I love that Alan's it clearly Circles the most amazing tool ever. we're biased, but we love hearing that. And, Dallas mentioned, I love the peek behind the curtain of Especially if you have been on the other side, of course, creators in the communities being able to see, what, how it actually runs and how it actually is built, can be really illuminating and that it's not, it's something that you can do for your business as well.