What does it take to create a course that delivers on its promise and ensures that students get through all of the material? On the 421st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich, shares her COURSE framework for creating and fixing the programs experts sell in order to get results. There’s a ton of crossover with copywriting sales messages, so grab your headphones and let’s get to it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: Why are so many course creators failing when it comes to selling their courses? Or worse, they do sell their courses or memberships or workshops, but the people who buy them don’t finish them. I’ve certainly bought my share of courses with the full intention that I was going to complete the training and the assignments, and they’re still waiting there months… sometimes years later. What’s up with that?
Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich. Maya is one half of the partership behind the Course Corrector—a program designed to help course creators fix the things that keep course buyers from finishing the work and getting the result they want. The other half of this partnership is Linda Perry who has been on the podcast several times before. On this episode, Maya shared the formula for making sure a course will deliver the promised result and keep students engaged. And smart copywriters will notice some big similarities between what she shared and what we often put into a winning sales message. So stay tuned.
Just a quick plug… this episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground… the only membership for copywriters focused on helping you build your business skills—the skills that help you attract clients, create services they want to buy, price them effectively, and run a business that’s fully booked and profitable. Does it reallly make a difference? Yes it does. Members tell us its the best investment they’ve ever made in themselves. The training resources, templates, critiques and community are game changers. And you can find out more… even try it risk free for thirty days at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu
And now, let’s go to our interview with Maya Stojkovich.
Hey, Maya, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let’s start with how you got to where you are. How did you become a copywriter, a teacher, and now a course corrector?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on. I’m so excited. That is a wonderful question. How I got here, I’d say, is a pretty non-traditional route. Everything about it seemed traditional at first. I went to college. I got an English degree. I actually started off working in politics and that’s what I really thought I wanted to do. And then I ultimately recognized that it wasn’t the life for me. And so I actually ended up coming home and I was trying to reassess and, you know, I got the chance to actually join the Accelerator, and that was the first course I ever took. And I sat there and was like, this is really something. But there was a piece that was missing. I wasn’t fully engaged, but I also like to blame that on being 20 and 21 and not really knowing who I am at that age. And I continued to learn. I took so many courses. That full year, I was just taking course after course. I actually ended up becoming a certified mindset coach. And that really helped shape the rest of my career path. I actually settled down into marketing for a while, and then I up and moved, and I ended up being a paralegal, a teacher, an education programs coordinator. And it seems all over the place, but now sitting where I am as one half of the course corrector, I recognized that my entire path was just setting me up to become this course strategist, to actually dive into the courses that I had taken prior and say, you know, what can I take from this and actually apply it to courses everywhere?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. And obviously, all of the things that you’ve done have, you know, created, gotten you where you are. That’s the way paths work, right?
Maya Stojkovich: Right.
Rob Marsh: All of us. But of all of those positions, did you have a favorite and some big takeaways from being a teacher, mindset coach, paralegal? I don’t know.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, I know, right? So many. I would say that the most impactful was actually the education programs coordinator. I got to learn what it took to craft this beautiful narrative. I taught environmental sciences to third and fifth graders. So it’s a tough audience, but I got to craft this beautiful narrative with these programs about salt marshes, about like forests, about, you know, fiddler crabs. And I had to make it exciting for these kids. I had to get them interested and be like, here’s why you should care. And here’s why this matters. It is applicable to you in your lives as small children. And it was just this beautiful process, and it gave me so much information about teaching in and of itself that I now have the ability to apply it to courses.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. That basically is what you’re doing now. So let’s talk about what you’re doing now. We’ll come back to maybe your experience with some of those courses that you were taking earlier. Tell us about the course corrector and what it is, what you guys do. You’re working with Linda, obviously. I have immense respect for Linda. I think she’s been on the podcast four times maybe over the last seven years, whatever. So absolutely love her to death. But what are you guys doing in the course corrector?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. So the course corrector is, as it sounds, I’m one half of it. I do work with Linda Perry. She is also, fun fact, my mother. Which a lot of people go, what’s it like working with your mom? And I absolutely love it. We have very similar brains, but we work completely differently. And I like to say we go on our separate caves when we work and come back together and always find the same conclusion. But what we really do is we dive into courses. And so what sets us apart is that we don’t actually always work on the course creation process. While we welcome a bunch of course creators and can help them create their courses, I like to say as preventative measure, so they don’t actually bump up into issues in the long run. We work with established course creators who have a course, and their course has gone awry somewhere, and they’re not quite sure why. Maybe they have an idea. They can say, maybe my engagement isn’t great, my completion rates are down, you know, I’ve looked at the numbers, or maybe something isn’t translating. And they have an idea, but it’s that big why that becomes the mystery. And what we do is we actually have a six-point framework. It’s called COURSE, unironically. And we dive into a course and we actually look at it holistically and we pull apart the pieces that aren’t working and actually help create this transformation for course creators that it’s just hard to do by themselves because they know their material, they know their course, they created it. And sometimes you just need that second or third pair of eyes and so we provide that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I love what you guys are doing, especially as an owner of several courses. And I realize how difficult it can be, especially what you have it set up to then take a step back and say, OK, wait, do we have the right promise here, you know, and and doing all of the things. So can we actually step through the course framework and talk about each of the steps that you guys go through?
Maya Stojkovich: Yes, I would absolutely love to. So We start with C, which is clear, identifiable goals. So we’re going to look at your course and we’re going to say, hey, do you have a clear goal? And usually it’s that one goal for the course taker. So you’re delivering something, you’re promising a transformation. What does that look like? I also always love to mention, hey, you are in your course yourself. Please have some goals for yourself for your course. That’s always so important because so many people always get focused on the course taker. And I’m like, put yourself in your course, which that also shows up later. And then we have
Rob Marsh: Oh, wait, let me let me stop you right. Let me so I want to ask about that. Because that’s actually really interesting. I mean, I would normally be thinking, okay, yeah, the big promise, and we’ve got to make sure that we deliver on this transformation. When you say we should have goals for ourselves. What do you mean by that? Are you talking about financial goals, enrollment goals? Or is it more tied to the course content itself?
Maya Stojkovich: I think it can be all, every, both. I really don’t think it’s exclusive. I often find that with overarching course goals, you’re really going to focus on engagement, how many people you want in your course, money, you know, what you’re bringing in. And so that tends to be the focus. But can you focus on what do I want to get out of my course content-wise? Absolutely. That can be a goal.
Rob Marsh: And maybe there’s also some relationships that you’re developing with the students in a course. You know, there may be some things we can build goals around there, too. OK.
Maya Stojkovich: OK, so O. Which is outcomes and pathways for success, which I this is my favorite part of our course framework because I love pathways. I think they’re just the key to success for any course out there. Yeah. So that’s O.
Rob Marsh: So, and so how should we be thinking about pathways? Is it simply, uh, you know, if I’m going to draw this out, I’m thinking, okay, module one leads to module two that, I mean, that seems kind of basic. Is there more to it than that? Uh, as far as like how the ideas string together?
Maya Stojkovich: Absolutely. So I think that so many people look at pathways and they go, okay, I have a, B, C. I know where all these points are. I know what they lead to. And then it’s this great transformation. But really looking at a pathway, it’s not just that you actually have to create a pathway really intentionally because. If you don’t look at every element of the pathway and it’s like A and then you have like point one, point two, everything that goes in and under A to get to B and then to get to C, you have to be very clear and very intentional of the content you’re putting in, how you’re creating this pathway, the story that you’re crafting through your course. Otherwise, people might fall off. People might start going down a different path. I really love the image of when creating a pathway, you are leading your course taker, so you’re the first, you got your little backpack on, your lamp, you’re guiding them through this really dark, scary forest, but you know the way, and they’re trusting you to lead them, and so you don’t want them going down and veering left when they’re supposed to go right. So you want to really be intentional about how do you get from point A to point B to point C to point D to actually deliver that end result. So there’s just a little bit more nuance in there.
Rob Marsh: It feels like partly we’re talking about a framework, but it’s a little bit bigger than just having a framework to step through.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. And this is where course goals become so important because you have to be very clear on those goals to actually create this narrative, that story, this pathway.
Rob Marsh: Okay. You.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, you, which is your unique course proposition. We look at how you are in your course, how you’re showing up, as well as just what makes your course stand out in this very saturated market. You know, everybody has a course. This isn’t new. Everyone knows it. But what makes yours unique and different in this market, in your niche? How do you separate yourself and sell yourself, really? It’s very fun to help course creators figure this out because oftentimes it actually ends up being themselves, which they don’t even know. They’re just kind of compiling this course and they’re like, huh, this is really interesting. Lots of information. I’m like, yeah, but is it unique? And they’re like, well, I don’t know. And I’m like, where are you in your course? And then they go, oh, it’s this really big light bulb moment for them. But it doesn’t always have to be, right? We have a boot camp and it’s our eight-week program. And what we do with ours is it’s not necessarily us that makes it unique, it’s this transformation we’re bringing. So how do you just make your course stand out in this market?
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Andmaybe I’m putting you on the spot here, but you kind of just said like what your unique transformation is as far as what you deliver. Some of the other courses that you’ve gone through, like for instance, I think you’ve worked with Justin Blackman. We’ve talked to Justin a ton on the podcast as well. What would you say is unique about his course?
Maya Stojkovich: Oh, I mean, it’s him. I know, this is what I told you. It ends up usually being people themselves. But it also is what he’s delivering. It’s how he delivers his voice branding voice guides, right? It’s about his delivering because people love learning from Justin, and I get why he is amazing at what he does. But he also delivers something so unique and just twists it a little bit. It doesn’t have to be very dramatic, right? You don’t need to be five million steps ahead of everyone else. You just need to have one little twist that makes you unique, and that’s what he has, and that’s why it makes his courses so exceptional.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Okay, next step is R.
Maya Stojkovich: Realistic milestones and action steps. And so this leads from pathways. You’re really going to need to have those milestones, those action steps. They have to be, you know, relevant, realistic. Applicable. And you want to have them as that support. This is also really going to help. So it’s going to help with E, which is engagement. It’s like a little heads up. But this really helps keep your course takers engaged. And when you actually implement those milestones and those action steps, you’re keeping your course takers on that path. So it’s incredibly important.
Rob Marsh: So let’s give some examples of what milestones could be. So for instance, in our accelerator course, we have blueprints that we step through so that people can complete those. They turn them in. Does that count as a milestone or as action steps or is it beyond that?
Maya Stojkovich: Absolutely. That does count as it. I love to think of, you know, it doesn’t have to be so overthought. It can be homework assignments, which I know, you know, everyone dreads. We’re adults. We don’t go to school anymore. We don’t have homework. But really, it can be homework assignments. It can be something as small as taking a poll or, you know, asking people to communicate in your community that you’ve built. It really is just as small as checking in and making sure they’re still there. Because when you implement these milestones and these action steps, if someone’s not completing them or if someone isn’t engaged, you can tell and then you actually have the ability to course correct.
Rob Marsh: Right. OK, so S is solid content.
Maya Stojkovich: So content, you know, it’s what you compile into your course. It’s everything that you bring. It’s how you make your course happen. It’s the transformation. It’s all your knowledge, right? The issues that we see usually in here is that everyone knows their stuff. Course creators know their stuff. You come with so much expertise and so much knowledge. You’ve done your research. But your course taker isn’t there yet. And so we see a lot of information dumping. We see a lot of, you know, higher level information being thrown in and not actually made into these bite sized pieces. So it’s really just engaging with your content a little bit differently. And it’s taking a holistic look at your content in terms of everything we’ve talked about thus far. You know, you’ve the goal, you have the pathway, you have your unique course proposition. Does your content actually filter through all of these different aspects and deliver in your course.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, cursive knowledge seems to be something that could impact a lot of course creators because we do assume that people are at a level that we’re communicating at. And so this feels like, it isn’t, but it feels like dumbing things down sometimes in a way to be able to engage at a lower level of expertise and delivering that information, which is not easy for anybody.
Maya Stojkovich: No, it’s not. And it’s one of those things of how do you actually take a step back and recognize, okay, this is where my course taker’s at. How do I get them to where I want them to be? How do I get them to that expert level? And so it might seem like dumbing it down, but really, again, it’s just engaging with your content differently and actually engaging with your audience. And that’s why it’s so important to know who your audience is, and also root yourself and goal-wise for your course in your audience as well. Because yes, it is about you, but it is also about delivering something to them. And so you almost have to like remove the ego and remove the self from the content.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, maybe a better way of for me thinking about this is that rather than dumbing it down, you’re basically providing a ladder that starts at the bottom and helps people step up to where you are and ultimately delivers the promise. That’s beautiful. Well, maybe I should be a course corrector. I don’t know. And E you teased is engagement.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah. So you got engagement and ongoing investment. So we look at the engagement throughout the course. Again, this is another big one. Oftentimes in courses, engagement gets lowered and you don’t know why. And so we look at why and we are able to diagnose and figure out why. happens to be all of the issues that we’ve mentioned thus far, so you get to actually look at your course a little bit differently. And then we look at ongoing investment. We want to see if your course takers are buying into you and your services and continuing on, because you almost want to leave them with that little cliffhanger and say, hey, you can learn more. And do they bite? So that’s what we look at.
Rob Marsh: OK, so a lot of our listeners are just copywriters, content writers. Maybe they write for course creators. Maybe they don’t. But it feels to me also that this course framework is, in a way, it’s like a sales framework. It’s a way to get somebody from wherever they are right now to making an investment and then actually purchasing something towards the end. Am I misreading that?
Maya Stojkovich: No, no, you’re not. I mean, it really is. You never want to forget that you’re always selling something. Your course is meant to help provide for you and your business. Your course is meant to be this additive to this funnel, right? Like, I never want to shy away from that because a lot of people see course as this like unique kind of standalone thing, or maybe they think it leads into something else. But this is where you do have to be really clear about it because you are selling something. You do have to almost pitch and sell even while you’re still doing the course. It does actually end up sounding a lot like sales. It definitely relates to what your copywriters are doing. I think it actually makes it a little bit more manageable when you start to think of it that way rather than viewing this course because so many people get overwhelmed in course creation. Then when their course fails, it’s like, they spiral and they don’t know what’s going wrong and they sit there and then they beat themselves up. Or if you’re writing for courses too, it’s how do you prevent that for a course creator. And when you actually just start to look at it as, you know, I’m engaging with people and I’m getting them hooked and I’m bringing them in and then I’m leading them through this funnel that is the course itself, I think it makes it a lot more pleasant to deal with. Yeah, for sure.
Rob Marsh: OK, so that’s the course corrector. We may come back to some of this stuff, but I would love to just get your thoughts about the course industry itself. Because I think a lot of people with courses saw this golden year or two during the pandemic where everybody was learning online, everybody was investing in that. And then the last two years has become significantly more difficult for most, not all. There are still a few people who are really selling well. But a lot of course, owners have really struggled. So what’s going on? What’s causing all that?
Maya Stojkovich: I know. I think this is such a great question. And I love talking about this because, you know, we saw it as like the golden years and also COVID too, right? COVID happened. We were all stuck indoors. Everyone was like, we need community. We need to learn. And then there were courses. And so the online e-learning market boosted up. Here’s the thing with it. It’s still growing. And so I don’t want people to lose hope because it is growing. So by 2030, it’s supposed to be $687 billion more in revenue. And I just think that that’s a really positive statistic. On the other hand, though, you also have another statistic that says about 95% of horses fail. And so I challenge it by looking and saying, you know, I don’t actually think there’s an issue with courses and people buying courses in and of itself. I really think there’s an issue with the quality of courses and also how you set yourself apart and sell in this market that is very saturated. You know, I don’t shy away from that. We don’t shy away from that, the course character at all.
There are a lot of courses. I just think that there are a lot of courses that get thrown together with all these hopes, these dreams of more time, more money, more freedom, give back to me and my business. and then they fall apart, and then shame spirals happen, or you have course takers that end up falling apart and also have shame spirals happening. So it’s just like a lot of collective negative mindset issues that end up coming to play and then really impacting these courses. Again, 95% fail. I think that that is such a glaring statistic that really shows it’s not necessarily the course market that’s an issue, it’s just how we’re interacting with our courses. And that doesn’t make us wrong or bad, it’s just looking at it differently. Because here’s the thing, we’re not all stuck indoors anymore. It’s not COVID. But how do you cultivate community and really boost up your course and tell a story with it and make it impactful so people clamor for it, so they actually want it, right? And, you know, we’re also in a time and an age where people want community more than ever. People want to connect more than ever. And it’s like we’re all somehow isolated. We have social media. We don’t know necessarily how to interact with people anymore. We want that connection, that a face to face connection. And courses actually do provide that. So if you set yourself apart with your course, I really think, you know, it’s why we think of those names, the big names that can still sell. Right.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. I want to ask you about this statistic, this 95% of courses failed. And maybe I have a slightly different take on it, too. But is that a measurement of just completion, or are there other ways of looking at that?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, there are definitely other ways of looking at that. So we like to look at completion rates. I always say that it doesn’t show the full picture, though, because you can have 95% completion rates, and still no one’s actually applying your content You know, Linda and I are actually talking about this on our podcast, too, because we just think it’s such a glaring issue because everyone looks at completion rates and they’re like, well, it’s doing great or it’s doing poor, but it doesn’t actually measure how your course takers are doing. I think it also, you know, you have to look at engagement. Where are they dropping out? How many are dropping out? What does that look like? your content? Is it being applied to your course taker’s lives actually? Are you really delivering that transformation? So there’s a bunch of different ways you have the ability to measure course success, which is also probably why you look at a statistic and it’s so big, it’s like 95%, right? And I also think that likes to point out there’s an issue in every course. And while it might be minor and not causing a big problem, There are issues, and they’re continuously popping up. So how do you correct? How do you deal with it? Because I hear so many people also saying, I had to rerecord 10 hours in my course. And I’m like, then there’s something wrong. It’s not you. And let’s figure it out. Let’s actually dive in and address these issues, because it’s holistic. It’s not just like one glaring issue. It’s not just completion rates.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I look at it too and think, for example, so one of the modules in our accelerator course deals with processes, another one with packages. And I think from time to time, people will actually join our course having different pieces of their business figured out, but maybe they don’t have processes in place. And so when they get to that module, they use it, they fix the problem. And maybe that’s what they were there for. And they don’t really care about the branding module that’s coming later. Maybe they’re OK with what they’re doing. And so I feel like sometimes that number gets in the way. And that comes back to, I think, what you were saying as far as these results and these outcomes. Sometimes we have this huge promise at the beginning of a course. But what people really need is maybe one of those steps along the way that get them to that big promise. I don’t know, maybe I’m thinking about that wrong.
Maya Stojkovich: No, I mean, what I just kind of was thinking about as you said that is, you know, this is all just information. Linda and I always say, what you’re looking at is just data. Like, I think it’s so important to look at it that way, because you can see people drop out right after that one module, people are like, I got what I’m here for, and I’m done and I’m out. you can look at that and be like, oh, that is so disappointing. Why didn’t they stay the whole time they just invested? Like this is, you know, this is great stuff. I know what I’m offering is amazing. And they’re just telling you something. Maybe that means you need to break it apart. Maybe that means you need a whole separate course on just that to engage those buyers differently. It’s really just data, and it’s allowing you to take the temperature of your course so you have the ability to course correct and make those changes where it’s needed. It’s not, you know, I’m bad, I’m terrible, or I have this amazing thing and they don’t want it. What’s wrong with them?” Because there’s so many stories we tell ourselves and can tell ourselves about our courses. I’ve seen it in so many course creators. As a course taker myself who has dropped out of a course before, you sit there and stories, all the stories, but really it’s just data. It’s saying, where am I not meeting certain expectations or where is my course falling apart or what are they telling me so I can just do this a little bit differently. It’s nothing, you know, it’s all fixable, which I think is great.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. So let’s say I’m listening and I’ve been thinking about, you know, I’m a successful copywriter. I’ve been thinking about creating a course for some of the people in my niche. Maybe it’s, you know, how do you write emails for, you know, this industry or something like that. And I want to get started. Do you have advice for somebody beyond that framework, you know, where it’s like, OK, I’m sitting down. I’m going to create my course. What are maybe one or two, maybe three things that I should be doing to make sure that that first launch is going to go OK? And obviously it doesn’t. I’m going to come and join the course creator to figure it all out. But I want to start with a really good foundation.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. I think that one thing to really set yourself up for success is compiling, and this sounds so silly, but compiling everything you want to say. I think, you know, this goes along with the content piece, but it’s more than that. It’s really saying, I have this brilliant idea, now what? And I really think that starts with compiling your knowledge base. I don’t think there’s a better place to start because then you can actually sift out, you know, if it is about writing emails, making better emails, whatever it is. you then actually have a whole process in front of you, and then you can pick and choose what’s the most important. And that’s actually going to set you up for success. And I also think, you know, taking the time to really envision what do you want out of this course? What are your hopes, dreams, aspirations? And I know that that sounds kind of woo woo, but I really think that’s important to actually sit and engage with yourself so you know what might come up for you mindset wise or what might come up for you in terms of you know, getting stuck on something, some hopes, some dreams, and again, not then being able to collect that data. I really think those are two big things. It’s like just compiling your knowledge base and putting it in front of you so you know where you’re going, what you’re doing, and also just, you know, taking a second to say, what do I really want out of this?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s all good advice. You talked a little bit about in the engagement step, you know, things that we need to be doing to add community. There are a ton of courses out there that it’s just you log in, you see the video, you maybe get a transcript. That’s it. That’s it. There’s like no engagement with the course owner or whatever. So can we talk about some of this stuff? How do we add this in?
Maya Stojkovich: I love this. I know you just got me so excited. Yeah, you’re a little excited right now. I love this aspect because community is so vital and so important in a course. And even if they’re not engaging with you, how can you just take a second to create a community, even if it’s small? So that looks like having a place for them to comment and interact with each other. And I don’t care if it’s an evergreen course and there’s a small comment section that’s been up for years. People can actually engage and comment on other things that have been left and can see things. And I think that even in and of itself creates just a small element of community. Or for bigger courses, do you have that Slack channel? Do you have that Facebook group? Are people interacting with it? One thing I will always say about community is as the course creator, you have to take the first leap. That is vital. You have to take the first leap because everyone else is coming in thinking, well, I should already know this and why don’t I know this? And I can’t believe I’m having to take a course on this. And oh, you know, and again, all these stories and no one wants to take the first leap. It’s like, you know, if you’re in a crowded room and someone asks for a comment and you’re looking around and you’re like, OK, who’s going to say something first? It has to be you.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. And what does that look like? Is that like, is that me, the course owner? I’m always putting in the first comment saying, Hey, what do you think about this? Or is it even more outreach? Like let’s jump on a video call and you know, just chat for 10 minutes about what your goals are for, you know, for this. Like, I guess there’s a million ways to do this.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, there really are. And you know, there’s not, Best thing about course is it’s not one size fits all, right? And so it’s up to course creator preference. I like to say if you have an evergreen course and it’s not something you’re checking all the time and it’s there and people are engaging and commenting, you can tell course takers to comment. You can say, hey, what’s one thing you learned? What’s one key takeaway? Or in a Slack channel, you know, pose a question about this module that they’re in and get them to think about it a little bit differently. Maybe help them get a little unstuck or just push them. Or, you know, if you do have maybe even a smaller course and have the ability to hop on those one-on-one calls right off the bat, do it because it allows them to start to filter through their thoughts and then actually engage in this process a little bit differently because then they have a stake in the game. You know, you want your course takers to come in and actually invest themselves because, again, then they’re going to continue to invest themselves in everything you have. And so it’s allowing them to come and really give themselves to this course. And that’s why I say, you know, you have to be the first one and it doesn’t have to be this big step, because I think also often course creators can get bogged down by their course. They can get exhausted. They can get burnt out, not just by their course, but also in work itself. And so how do you make it manageable? That’s why it’s also up to the course creator.
Rob Marsh: One of the trends that I’ve seen happening in the course world is this move to, like, smaller workshops, you know, little, you know, $27 masterclasses kind of a thing. Would you also recommend engagement there as well, where the investment isn’t much. So maybe a course creator doesn’t have a lot of time to put into it. Because again, you know, the money difference between a $27 course and $1,000 or $2,000 course is pretty significant. Is that mostly just a place for the comment section? Or would I do something different there?
Maya Stojkovich: I think, I think a comment section works fine for something with, you know, it’s $27 and minimal engagement and I think that’s more so you have to know where that workshop or where it lands in your funnel almost. It’s like, okay, is this going to lead into a course? Because maybe I have to do like a little bit more, but I don’t have to do a ton, right? You can have a comment section or you can have a Q&A portion of it, right? You can have a place where you engage and then tell them what comes next. And that really is just engaging them that bit differently. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, drastic. It doesn’t have to be hopping on a one-on-one call. But it can also be saying, you know, you have my email. If you have a question, please reach out. I’m here. I love to talk. You know, it’s just that little extra step that allows them to feel more comfortable so that then maybe they can come into your course. the $1,000 course and say, all right, I can do this. This is manageable. And I know that they have my back, too, and that they’ll actually deliver.
Rob Marsh: I think what you said about the funnel is really important as well, because if this is the first step in the funnel and this is the first taste that somebody gets with engagement with you, you want to show them what engagement looks like at a higher level as well. So if you simply just ignore somebody with that $27 workshop, but your course has some really great engagement ideas or ways that you do that, it feels like you’re missing showing off what they would get. And so there’s probably some strategy thinking through, like, how much do I really show off so that I can move to the next step?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this is one thing that we do look at. We like to look at, you know, the before and the after, too, when you work with us, because it tells you a lot, you know, Where are you getting your course takers from if you have a funnel and you say okay? I have that $27 workshop and that leads into my course like you can start to think about that workshop a little bit differently and put in that little extra emphasis in there so you can bring them to your course. Because again, a lot of people think, you know, no one’s buying in. Money is this big issue. People just want to connect. And if you give them a reason to buy in, I promise you they will. Like, they really will. And even if it takes just like a little bit more time, They will, but they have to trust you first. It’s human nature, right? Like, they want to know that they’re actually going to get the results that they buy, because how disappointing is it if, you know, they buy and they spend thousands of dollars and they don’t get the results? Like, that hurts for the course taker and the course creator.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. Before we started recording, you said that you had started thinking a lot about storytelling and narrative and its place in courses. Talk a little bit about that, because again, it feels like sometimes the modules are separate from each other and there’s not necessarily a story that connects them. So what’s your thinking there?
Maya Stojkovich: I actually love that we were just talking about workshops in this too because this is – I was watching some workshops as a lifelong learner over here. But that’s where I started thinking about that piece and I was like, huh, like what comes next is their course or what their offer is and I’m not sold by their workshop. Like there isn’t a story to it. And I think it’s so impactful to think about storytelling in terms of what story is your business telling and what story is your course telling, especially your course, to your audience that allows them to buy in beginning, middle, and not drop out, to actually stay the full way. It’s like what I was talking about with, you know, education program coordinator position with the kids is how do you make them care? How do you make them interested? And that really is by storytelling. Because if I sat and I was leading a course, and it’s about, you know, courses like we have, and I’m like, hey, you know, it’s really cool if you like set a goal, and here’s how, and here’s all this information, here’s X, Y, Z, okay, on your way, do it. They’re going to be like, this was so boring.
Or, you know, or if I have one module that’s packed full of stories, and it seems really cool, but then they don’t know how to apply it, I’ve lost them.” It’s not just in one module, because you’re right, there’s module one, module two, module three. You offer all these elements. How do you combine them all together and really craft this beautiful story for the course taker so they know their why, they know their objective, and they know the how? I think those elements really get told through story to actually just engage people a little bit differently. They’ve bought into the information you’re selling. There’s a reason they bought your course. They said, hey, I see what you’re offering has value. I want this end goal transformation. I know I’m going to get it through XYZ information. A lot of people on their websites have, here’s what you’re going to get out of module one, module two. They know what they’re signing up for. But how do you make it interesting?
This is also where unique course proposition comes in. How do you insert yourself? How do you insert case studies, personal examples? personal anecdotes. They work wonderful. And I’m not even just talking about like the successful stories either. Tell your failures. Don’t be afraid to like show yourself and show case studies and in an honest, raw light because everyone’s coming in with their humanness, and they just want to learn and get that transformation, but they need that extra oomph, and I think storytelling is a wonderful way to do that in your course.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. That’s got me thinking about ways that I need to add more stories into a couple of things that I’ve been working on.
Maya Stojkovich: So that’s good. Usually does.
Rob Marsh: Let’s shift a little bit, because you’re a mindset coach. Let’s talk a little bit about the mindset that it takes to be a successful coach, course runner, course owner, because it’s not quite the same as running a copywriting business where you’re working one-on-one with clients. Talk a little bit about that and what it requires.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, working one-on-one with clients, you actually have the ability to engage with them a little bit differently. You go from one-to-one to one-to-many and then you go, whoa, what is coming up for me? I’ve seen it so many times. Really, I’ve landed in the stories we tell ourselves because you have no idea what is going to come up for you in your course until you run your course. I think that is why we personally love working with course creators who have an established course and we love correcting it. so much mindset comes up. And it’s not just for the course creator, it’s also for the course taker. But I’m always just so astounded by the shame spirals that people can go into when even one small thing goes wrong with their course. So say you have lowered, lowered engagement rate in the middle, right? That’s where a lot of drop off tends to happen in the course.
Course creators then look at themselves in such a critical lens and they go, what is wrong with me? What am I not doing? What is wrong? How did how did I let this happen? And then it just spirals and spirals. And then they actually aren’t able to, you know, address the issues from a nice, secure, happy little spot that they were when they were creating their course and building it. So super excited. And then it causes burnout. I mean, I don’t I can’t even tell you how many course creators have come to us and been like, I’m exhausted by my own material. And I’m like, It’s a shame spiral, it’s mindset, I promise.” And it was like, oh, why? Really? Mindset? Are we sure? It’s like, yes, I promise you it’s mindset, but that’s because course creators don’t always come prepped from that one-to-one-to-one-to-many, being like, okay, I know what’s going to come up for me. I know that it’s going to make me feel X, Y, Z, and so here’s what I’m going to implement. But it’s also why I encourage really delving into like mindset when it comes to your course, because then you’re actually able to build in those buffers, because then when you see people drop out, you can actually look and go, OK, I know this doesn’t have anything to do with me. What’s happening for my course taker at this point? Because it actually takes you out of the self then at that point.
Rob Marsh: Feels like there’s almost an opposite opportunity too, although the opposite may not want to actually come to you for help, but somebody who’s such the expert, I know this stuff better than anyone else. I don’t need to change it. This is the way I learned it. Everybody else can learn it the same way, which could lead to failures as well. Again, that person’s probably not saying, well, Maya and Linda can help me fix this because they know everything, but maybe there’s some of that going on too.
Maya Stojkovich: Right. No, definitely. It does come up. I also, you know, course creators, they know their stuff, like, y’all know your stuff. I always said this, like, they come as an expert and they come with this knowledge base, but then that makes it so hard to like work on the issues almost because it’s like, you get stuck.
Rob Marsh: How about money mindset? I think there’s a lot of anxiety around pricing courses. And I’ve even seen, again, because of the change in the market, sometimes people have lowered prices to try to make a course more appealing. Other people actually have raised prices in response. So what do you say about that kind of an issue?
Maya Stojkovich: I mean, oftentimes I see people actually lower their prices. Please don’t do that. I mean, it’s – value your course at what you think to be true. You know how much work you put into your course. You know what people are getting out of your course. Price it and don’t be afraid. I really think that that’s so important because yes, money mindset comes in and I can tell you now. Go look at your self-worth, like how’s that showing up, all that. But really, you know, it’s one of those things where you know what you did. You know how much effort is in your course. Please don’t lower it just because you’re not seeing people come in. Please maybe like just go look at other areas. Like how’s your list doing? That’s always, you know, a question I love to ask because are you drawing in the right people? Because the right people will buy in when they know what you’re selling is important and they know they need it. And so I really, around money mindset, I always ask course graders, please don’t lower the pricing. And also, if you’re hiking up the pricing and it’s not quite right and it’s super high and then you’re getting people buying in, what you’re also then going to see is a lot of dissatisfied customers by the end of it. And that’s just like a little cautionary tale of, hey, if you do raise it too high, here’s a great way to tell is that by the end of it, people are going, hmm, I didn’t quite get what I thought I was going to get and I spent a lot of money.
And then you’re going to get not so great feedback. And the reason that that’s so important is because, you know, word of mouth does exist. These people are in your space. If they’re coming to you, they’re in your space. And, you know, you also don’t want negative feedback on your course. A course is a part of your business. It’s, you know, you put a lot into your course. So I think there’s a Nice mindset when it comes to money because you never want to price it too low, but then you don’t want to price it too high. I think it’s just really being able to critically look at your course and say, okay, how much is what I’m offering worth? Then you can also play around with it. That’s another thing is you don’t have to stay rigid in your mindset around money. You can play around with it. Are more people buying in at this rate? What does it look like at the end? Or are they not and maybe why? And then let’s get some feedback from the people that have been in my course and paid for it. So I just think that that’s also a great way to measure some of that and reduce some of that mindset around money.
Rob Marsh: So most of what we’ve been talking about so far really is applicable to course owners, but all of us are also on the other side as learners from time to time. So I wonder if you’ve got advice for learners who may be in a course that isn’t perfect. So maybe this is you going back to your experience with our course, which I still think is perfect. The engagement issue may have been different. I don’t know. No. Joking a little bit. What advice do you have for that learner who is maybe not quite feeling it? What can they do to ensure that they’re actually getting the value out of a course that, obviously they bought it, they want the transformation, they want the result, but somehow they’re getting stuck?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah. I think that it’s really important to vocalize some of those issues as a course taker who has had mindset issues come up and dropped out and also, you know, strung along through a course by like tooth and nail, you know, just sitting there like, okay, I’m going to get through this. It’s one of those things that when you vocalize, it actually reduces the shame that you’re feeling and kind of the pressure of it all because then you actually have the ability to go to someone who just genuinely wants to help. I mean, this has been a lot about the course creator. But something about course creators is they’re offering this because they really want to help people. Ultimately, they want to impact people. That’s why courses get created in the first place. And so if you’re the course taker and you’re sitting there going, I just spent money and I’m not seeing what I want to be seeing and I’m feeling really upset about this, reach out. Like, ask for the help because, you know, and that’s always the scariest thing to do, right, is actually asking for the help and then having to admit it. But I really think it is the best thing you can do. It’s almost like the antidote is just vocalizing where you’re at because there’s no shame in falling behind in a course. There’s no shame in saying, you know what, I’m not getting what I want out of it. but how can I problem solve? It’s like, again, that shift. It’s just this little mindset shift that comes with just saying, you know what, I actually do need some help, or I need some direction, or maybe this isn’t right for me, but I want to talk with the course creator and actually see what’s going wrong.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, all of, I underscore all of that. I think it’s really important to, you know, raise your hand, get that engagement because you’re right. You know, especially if you’re past that refund stage or whatever, you know, it’s like you still ought to get your money’s worth. And if it takes a little effort, I’ve had people tell me occasionally, well, I’m afraid I don’t want to ask for too much. to which I’ve always responded, you keep asking and I’ll let you know when it’s too much because like you said, I want to make sure that people get the transformation that they’re promised out of any course that they would take from us. So hopefully anybody listening who’s in that kind of a situation will do that and ask for more so that they can actually get that result. So Maya, what’s next for you and Linda? What’s next for this course creator? Where are you guys going from here?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been kind of talking about it through like little little hints through is we have a bootcamp that we’re launching actually. You guys can go to our website at thecoursecorrector.com and we have an eight-week bootcamp that’s super hands-on and we’re really excited about it. It’s going to help course creators actually dive into their courses. It’s really meta because we have a course about correcting courses, but really dive in and actually see what’s going wrong. It’s through our course framework and you then have the ability to actually take apart your course and put it back together. have a fully functional running course that actually gives back to your business, like, you know, those promises that you’re guaranteed. So.
Rob Marsh: OK, so we definitely can check that out at coursecorrector.com. Where else should people go to follow you, Maya?
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. So another spot on our website, you know, we also have a self audit if you’re not quite sure where your course is going awry. But we also are on Instagram and LinkedIn. So I know that all of that’s going to be linked as well. And we have a Facebook. So We’re really accessible, and if you ever want to hop on a call, we’re more than welcome. We love talking courses, clearly.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. Yeah. Well, I may even call you back. We’ll see. Talk about my courses. Yeah. No, I mean, I love, you know, I love Linda again. I know I’m saying this a second time, but I respect everything that she has done. She’s an amazing human being and a great educator. I love what you guys are doing together. So if you’re listening to this and you’ve got a course and it’s not quite right, reach out. because Linda and Maya can definitely help. And thanks, Maya, for spending so much time with us today.
Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me on.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Maya for sharing her process for fixing courses, fixing our mindsets, and finding community in the programs that we either run or we help our clients to sell. If you write for coaches, membership owners, or course creators, what Maya shared should help you as you work with these clients to improve the way that you talk about the results that they deliver. Be sure to connect with Maya on LinkedIn and check out the coursecreator.com where you can get more details about that program, learn the basics when you join their email list and a lot more. Maya and Linda are worth following even if you don’t have a course of your own, so be sure to check them out.
As I said when I introduced Maya, the course framework is similar to the framework that you might use crafting any sales message, starting with the big promise, the clear goals that you have for your readers and going all the way through engagement and keeping your readers interested in all the information that you have to share. So as you think about this, maybe there’s parts of that framework that might help you improve your copywriting and your sales messaging. Think about that. We briefly mentioned that Maya was a student in our own Copywriter Accelerator program when she was just starting out as a copywriter before the course corrector was a thing. If you are interested in checking that program out, you can see the details at thecopywriterclub.com/FastTrack, FastTrack is all one word. A year or so after we created that program, we had a curriculum specialist go through the content, do much the same thing that Maya and Linda do, identifying what was missing and what we needed to add in order to make it better. And the result that you get today includes all of the building blocks for a successful copywriting business. The list of students that went through that program and today have successful, often six-figure businesses might surprise you. It includes copywriters like Chanti Zak, well-known for her quizzes. The voice guy, Justin Blackman, Brittany McBean, who’s written and sold courses of her own on building a six-figure business. Michal Eziek, who’s got one of the best websites I’ve ever seen for a copywriter, has done amazingly in her own business as well, working with tech companies. a variety of other writers that she’s coached to success. Others include Zafira Rajan, Kirsty Fanton, and literally hundreds of others. You can see why they joined and what they learned at thecopyrightedclub.com/fasttrack.
