Outlining - Make a promise - and deliver

[00:00 - 00:19] Okay, in this video, I'm going to give you one of the best tips I know for making a course that students enroll in and then are happy with. And that is to make a promise and then deliver on that promise.

[00:20 - 00:29] This is one of those ideas that feels so simple. And I'm about to give you some practical tips on how to implement it in your course and also in your outline and in your pitch.

[00:30 - 00:36] It's actually very fractal. And what I mean by that is that we define sort of this promise for the course.

[00:37 - 00:56] We're going to define a promise for a lesson, for a module, and we're also going to find a promise for the individual lessons. You know, one of the mistakes that people make is thinking that we're only selling the student to enroll in the course, but you're actually selling the student to even keep going in the course.

[00:57 - 01:03] And for the moment, it's this idea that you're sort of telling them about what they're going to learn ahead. So let's dive into what this actually means practically.

[01:04 - 01:15] So we have the new line outline template and some of these ideas are baked in. And I just want to like elaborate on it a little bit to you here.

[01:16 - 01:32] One of the key ideas that we try to have you do in the beginning is, you know, we might think, you might think, oh, I want to do a course on storybook. Or maybe I want to build a course on like connecting to spot, like building a spotifier, or I'm going to do a book on go-lang.

[01:33 - 01:47] You know, in the abstract, these ideas sound like like a good idea like, oh, a book on go. Like, but in fact, actually, it's such a broad topic that you need to really narrow down that process of like, well, what are you actually talking about here?

[01:48 - 02:07] So let's talk about this idea. We've got this idea of like, let's say, a product vision where there's a template here that it seems so simple, so simple, but actually you'll find in practice working through to get this like one sentence that describes your course is actually take some thought.

[02:08 - 02:19] And so the template here that we've got is, you know, try to summarize this in one template. It's for who your target audience is, who, what they're looking for.

[02:20 - 02:32] The course name is a, you know, what it is, and the key benefit is unlike the competitors, it's this, you know, statement of difference. So, okay, how do we think about this?

[02:33 - 02:43] I really think the best way to think about this is to actually just look at some good examples. So here we've got a course from zero to design system.

[02:44 - 03:02] And how they've written this section out is the following, which is, let me find it here. Okay, this is for developer designers who want to start a design system, or they've been told to do so, and they don't know how to start.

[03:03 - 03:14] Zero to design system is a course that guides students through every aspect of building a deployable system with just as much of the why as the how. So that's an interesting philosophical angle here.

[03:15 - 03:28] Unlike more general web development courses, our product focuses specifically on the unique challenges of design systems going well beyond the code itself to enable students to start their own successful systems. I think this is really good.

[03:29 - 03:42] You know, maybe some things that I would try to do is make it even more concrete that says like, unlike more generic web development courses, you know, maybe it's also unlike, you know, the API documentation that doesn't teach you how to do design, something like that. I'm going well beyond the code itself.

[03:43 - 03:56] Again, I hear I would actually even maybe want to like elaborate on that, like organizational principles or like how to work with designers or like, I might try to make this a little bit more concrete, but still it doesn't need to be too wordy. I think this is overall, get it a nine out of 10.

[03:57 - 04:01] Okay, building. Here's another one building a Spotify connected app.

[04:02 - 04:26] This one says, okay, it is for, you know, the formatting is a little different, but it is for an intermediate web developer who maybe has front end experience, but not back of the front end experience, setting up node servers, working with third party APIs, DevOps knowledge for deployment. Okay, here's something that I love about this is she's actually specifying specific things like, can you do this?

[04:27 - 04:31] This is actually plays into the more general issue. This is maybe a side issue of like prerequisites.

[04:32 - 04:41] So prerequisites might say like, Oh, you're a, uh, an intermediate web developer. This is actually like way too ambiguous intermediate web developer in like what exactly?

[04:42 - 04:50] All right. And so this is really good because it's saying, okay, setting up node JS servers, working in third party APIs, DevOps for deployment.

[04:51 - 04:53] These are like specific tasks. Do you know how to do these?

[04:54 - 04:55] Can you do these? Yes or no?

[04:56 - 05:02] Okay. Who want to build and deploy a full stack node and react app with third party API integrations?

[05:03 - 05:09] Again, very concrete, really good. The course is on app from scratch.

[05:10 - 05:21] And by the end of the course, you will have a real world app deployed to the internet. The course will cover everything from explaining API and points to setting up continuous deployment in depth with in depth, clear detailed explanations.

[05:22 - 05:23] Love it. I love it.

[05:24 - 05:31] Unlike YouTube tutorials that only explain one of these concepts and they leave you with half baked GitHub repositories. So good.

[05:32 - 05:54] We will teach you how to build a full stack application with the Spotify API, how to authenticate users, consume and display data received from REST API endpoints and deploy it to the internet. Again, so concrete, really painting a picture of like frustration versus finding these old repos from YouTube videos and it's giving like a very clear picture on what it is.

[05:55 - 06:03] I think this is perfect. Another thing to keep another tangent actually is this idea that part of the pitch is that you will be able to build something and deploy it.

[06:04 - 06:20] I'll talk about this in a different video, but this idea of creating student work. You want to kind of shape your product from the back from like thinking backwards, which is like, when a student is done with this course, I want to be able to show a gallery on the landing page of like, here's the work that these students have created.

[06:21 - 06:26] That's the ultimate proof, right? Like one proof is saying like, oh, I said it was good or another teacher said it was good.

[06:27 - 06:42] Or another, an even stronger proof is a student who specifically saying, you know, I thought the course was good, but the ultimate sort of like social proof is the student output saying like, no, look, here's screenshots. Here's a URL to one of the students after they were done this course.

[06:43 - 06:48] This is what they were able to create. So that doesn't have so much to do with like the brand promise, but I mean, it does.

[06:49 - 06:59] I've been saying like, it does have to do with the brand promise in that I'm saying part of your promise should be like, you, this is what you will create. Then you should shape your course to like have student work as part of it.

[07:00 - 07:01] Okay. Last one.

[07:02 - 07:10] Fullstack goaling outline. Here they say, okay, this is for the intermediate programmer who wants to join the latest in server development.

[07:11 - 07:18] Fullstack goaling is a book that teaches industry best practices for thriving in the market, unlike scattered documentation and blog posts. It's your only toy functionality.

[07:19 - 07:23] Our product makes you ready to develop a modern high performance back end. Okay.

[07:24 - 07:28] I think this one is like, okay. I feel like it's okay for the intermediate programmer.

[07:29 - 07:33] Again, we have this issue in terms of like prereqs. Like this needs to be there.

[07:34 - 07:55] The need here needs to be being like narrowed down where it's like, okay, for programmers who, who like want to build like distributed goaling infrastructure or their boss told them to or something who want to join the latest in server development. Well, you know, it's not actually a real problem that you want to be the latest .

[07:56 - 08:25] It's usually generally that you sort of have like a problem at work or like your boss told you to do something or that like, or you have a specific app like for developers that want to, you know, orchestrate hundreds of nodes in Kubernetes or for developers who want to build high performance, you know, API endpoints in Go or API endpoints that can serve hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users, right? Like being the latest maybe is not that strong.

[08:26 - 08:34] Maybe you might say like, try to make it really concrete about like what you're trying to do. It's a book that teaches industry best practices for thriving in the market.

[08:35 - 09:02] Here I might say, you know, it's a book that teaches, you know, best practices like, and then I give it a specific example like testing, like testing distributed systems or like code organization or like microservice, you know, deployment, like I make it really specific in like real world situations, right? Maybe not like thriving in the market.

[09:03 - 09:05] It feels almost like a marketing word. Okay.

[09:06 - 09:10] Unlike scattered documentation and blog posts, it's your only toy functionality . Love it.

[09:11 - 09:19] Our course, our book makes makes you ready to develop a modern high performance back end. Again, makes you ready feels maybe too ambiguous.

[09:20 - 09:55] I would try to make it more concrete, which is like our document, like our book gives you practical code examples for testing failures and distributed systems, like high performance tests, caching patterns, and like how to deploy it or whatever, like whatever, like whatever, whatever your idea is, try to make it like extremely specific of like, this is the promise. This is the promise of what I'm promising you, you're going to be able to do once it's done.

[09:56 - 09:59] Okay. So that's basically defining the course promise overall.

[10:00 - 10:23] And then one of the things you also notice in the template is we actually have you specify for each module and even for each lesson, like what you will learn in this module. And the idea is that as you break it down, you want to be able to say in this module, we are going to develop a dark mode CSS plugin with react context.

[10:24 - 10:40] And by the end of this chapter, you will have a toggle switch that flips your app from light mode to dark mode or whatever. Like in this chapter, we are going to learn how to manipulate strings in Rust by the end of this chapter, you will know the six different ways, you know, you get the idea.

[10:41 - 10:49] It's like just this constant process of trying to be like, here's what we did already. Here's where we're going.

[10:50 - 10:55] In one sentence, I'm going to tell you exactly what you're about to learn. If you read this chapter, that's what you're going to learn.

[10:56 - 11:26] And even for the lessons too, you know, I wouldn't say that you necessarily have to specify what you will learn for every lesson right now while you're writing the outline. Like maybe it's too early, but you for sure should have like the opening paragraph of every markdown file that you write open with like what you will learn in this like in the last lesson we did this, if you want to say that in this lesson, if you read this, what we're going to do is fill in the bike.

[11:27 - 11:31] Okay. So keep that pattern every time.

[11:32 - 11:37] Develop what you are promising. Make sure that that promise is compelling, right?

[11:38 - 11:40] If you write it down and you're like, oh, that's not actually that interesting. Make it better.

[11:41 - 11:49] Make a better promise. But make that promise to your reader for the course, for the module, for the lesson, and then deliver on that promise.

[11:50 - 11:50] And people will love your course.