Get Radical With Your Business

Ep.77: How to Create Online Courses to Increase Profits (Guest Julie Hood from Course Creators HQ)

December 28, 2021 Heather Zeitzwolfe Season 2 Episode 77
Get Radical With Your Business
Ep.77: How to Create Online Courses to Increase Profits (Guest Julie Hood from Course Creators HQ)
Show Notes Transcript

Do you dream about making money while you sleep? How about while you’re on vacation, sitting on the beach, drinking out of a coconut? In this episode, we explore the exciting revenue stream, which can turn that little dream into a reality! 

Julie Hood, from Course Creators HQ, joins to discuss ways to tap into this passive income generator.  This episode is like a course creating masterclass. We discuss simple, inexpensive ways to get started to boost your confidence and your piggy bank. We cover everything from naming your course, defining the transformation, testing out your ideas, marketing, software, and much more. 

SHOW NOTES:
Contact and Follow Julie Hood (Course Creators HQ): Website - Instagram - Facebook - Clubhouse - Twitter
Course Creators HQ: Podcast - Topic and Title Challenge starting January 24, 2022 -  Where should you host your online course? and Is my course idea any good? -

For more info, see complete show notes:  https://www.getthebalanceright.net/blog/episode77

CONTACT HEATHER:
Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn
Get the Balance Right Coaching: Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Click Here
Heather & Get the Balance Right - Link Tree
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website  - Facebook

Do You Want Hassle Free Payroll?
Gusto is a great solution! Use this link and receive a $100 Visa Gift Card when you sign up.

Start Investing like a Mofo
Sign up with Robinhood; get a free stock to kick off your investment! No cash needed to get started.

Ready to Invest in Digital Currency?
Sign up using this link to earn $10 in BTC, when you fund $100 into your BlockFi Interest Account.

Earn $50 in Crypto when you spend $100
Crypto curious? Use this link to earn a 50% return on your initial investment of $100.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn - Email: heather@GetRadBiz.com
Get Radical With Your Business: Facebook - Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Schedule
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website - Facebook

The Interview:

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Julie Hood. Welcome to Get the Balance Right podcast.”

Julie Hood: “Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited about this today.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “I am a super fan. I saw you at PodFest. I've heard you on other podcasts. I love your podcast. Oh my God. So yeah, this is so you are such a wealth of information when it comes to online courses, And I looked at your LinkedIn and you used to work for PWC. So wait a minute. Are you an accountant that turned into a course creator?”

Julie Hood: “So I have had the most interesting path through my degree is actually computer science, but I loved accounting. And so when I got a job right out of college, they had a special position where they wanted computer people that knew accounting. I started there. I got enough. To get a CPA pass the examined but I hated, I did not like being an auditor was not nearly creative enough. so I left that a long time ago and I'm not a CPA anymore. I'm old. This was way back. Cause the internet was just getting started. So there were so many exciting things to be doing online.

 I jumped in way back in 2001, 2002 so long time ago. And that's where all this comes from. Cause I've been at it a long time. I kind of have seen where things shifted and how they're going. , it's been an interesting career path.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Very cool. Yeah. I'm a very creative person and I've worked in fashion and done graphic design and multimedia. And then I became a CPA. Then people are like, wait, what?” 

Julie Hood: “And you know the question everybody asks you, can you help me with my taxes? And I never did taxes ever. , I couldn't even help you back then much less now.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “That's funny. For those that are out there that have not studied accounting, the path that you can take is usually tax or audit. That's the question that they always put on the table and I, to find auditing just very boring. I think he went into the right career going into course creation.

All right. So we got that out of the. Julie, you know, so much about courses. People need to listen to your podcast. If they have not heard it, tell them the name of the podcast.”

Julie Hood: “Course Creators HQ.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Course Creators HQ! Courses…they seem to be all the rage. Everybody seems to have a course, I work with a lot of coaches, creatives.

They probably have a course inside of them somewhere. Should everybody make a course? What do you think, Julie?”

Julie Hood: “I do think so, just because there's so many different ways you can use it. People think, oh, I'm just going to put it up and sell it. But there's a lot of other pieces of the puzzle that you can throw in. Maybe you want to do it as a bonus. If someone's going to be coaching with you. Or it makes your coaching that much more valuable because you can have all the training piece of it separate, and then they get on the phone and you talk them through solutions.

 That can be another way to use it. It's also really fantastic for anything else you're doing. You throw it in as a bonus. I love to do it that way. And group coaching. Another really good place to have some either courses that you have people work through, any time you throw those bonuses in, you can kick up that value and people like what I get all of those courses for free too.

makes it so much easier to sell when you've got all these extra pieces of the puzzle. Start with one though. I don't want to overwhelm everybody. You just start with one mini course to get going.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “All right. you've just spurred some ideas for me. Cause when I think oh, I have to design a course. I have to have a mini course. It's going to sell for $47, $97, something like that. But you're actually talking about maybe even just using some existing offer that you have and just do the courses and add.

We don't have to feel like we have to be selling these things. Okay. But for those that do want to sell something, the 47 90 $7 offer, is that kind of like that sweet spot where you start with?”

Julie Hood: “I love to have people start there and here's why. Nearly every single expert that I work with, it starts wanting to do a course. They want to give a lot of value and they figure the best way to do that is to just pour out all the knowledge that they have into their first course. And it turns into this monster.

Of course that their students are never going to get through if they even get it finished. So I love it. When I get my students together, I'm like, okay, we're going to start with a mini course. And we're going to get all the way to completion you're going to see all the pieces of the puzzle. We're going to get it selling.

So you have some money coming in the door from this $47 $97 course. And it doesn't have to be hard. One of my clients did this. She had four lessons. It was four short videos. That's all she did. And it's worked like gangbusters for her. Keeping it simple is really hard for people. I will say. It's so much easier to just throw up everything you know, about a topic and it's way more difficult to narrow it down to this one thing that you're going to give.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “I totally understand that because you can overwhelm people, you know, you think you've got to give them everything. So if someone wants to put together a course and keep it simple, should they just have one.

Topic and then maybe one niche within that topic. How do you keep it real simple.”

Julie Hood: “The big question is what is the result or the transformation that I'm going to provide. Something simple, like I'm going to teach you how to use this Excel formula and how you can use Vlookups in Excel and some cool things you can do with it. That's one function in Excel. It's not, I'm going to teach you everything.

I know about Excel. Just doing one simple little thing. Can be helpful for people.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “It's concentrating, not just, oh, I'm going to teach this. It's really concentrating on the transformation. That's the key.” 

Julie Hood: “And you want to pick something that you've either done preferably for other people, but at a minimum for yourself. So something you've gone through and that you can show somebody else how to do. I get this question a lot, so let's go ahead and put this on the table for everybody. Hey, I'm not an expert.

I don't have a PhD. I don't have all these awards. Can I really do a course or not? And yes, you absolutely can. And I will tell you a quick story of what happened to me. When I was in college, I came to my calculus class from a very small town. We didn't have calculus in my high school, so I was brand new to it.

Got put into this honors class of calculus. Scared to death. The professor comes in and he was like 70 years old. And he had been doing calculus for 55 years. And so he was fascinated with all these little intricacies of calculus and all these difficult problems and he'd come in and put them on the board for us and we'd be going through.

And I was sitting there lost. I just need the basics. Can ya just get me started. And he came roaring into class one day and he started yelling at all of us. And he's you guys did so terrible on the test on Saturday because we would take the same test as the regular calculus class. But the regular students were doing way better than we were.

And the reason was that they worked with TAs and graduate students who had remembered what it's like, not to know what you're talking about, what it's like, not to understand calculus. they were better teachers because they were closer to that experience than somebody who'd been at it for 50 years.

And they had a PhD. So when people are like, I'm not an expert! I say, you know, that's probably good. You're probably a better teacher because of that.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “That example is really great because I do remember in school, that sort of thing, where I was helping other students and it's what is the term, like if you have 10% more knowledge than the other person, then you're able to teach them better or something like that.”

Julie Hood: “Exactly. Exactly. You're just far enough ahead that you've got that experience and that knowledge, and you can get that result you know how to get to the answer to the problem, but you're not so far ahead that you can't remember what it was like.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “No excuses now, so people can do this. Okay. They have maybe an idea, a transformation in their head. But how do they know that anybody wants this? How do you test out an idea?”

Julie Hood: “Let me give you a few things to go look at. And then if you want to put this link in the show notes I will share it's a mini course that I have to evaluate your idea and see if it's any good or not. So it's real short. It'll give you some places to look, the first place I want you to go.

Amazon and see if there are books about the topic that you're thinking about, because if somebody written a book about it that at least shows that there's some interest. Then I want you to go out to a Facebook group that talks about your topic and see if there's any questions are people asking about that?

You know, Is it something that they're really interested in? If so there's probably a market. And then the third place to go look is to go out to Google and type in the name of your transformation and course, and see what comes up are people paying for a course or not now don't dig too deep because it'll be overwhelming and you'll be like, oh wait, somebody has already done this.

You're going to do it your way. You could have the same topic because we actually want to know that there are some courses out there that people are selling that they're making money off of. You want there to be courses on already. Because if you have to first educate people on why they need to work with you, that's a whole different level of sales than if they know it. They're looking for you already.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “That's great advice. , if there are already courses out there that are on a similar topic, you know, you take your own spin. But how do you market in a way that would differentiate yourself? I guess you put your own brand on it, but what are some tips around that?”

Julie Hood: “The first thing is your title, a really wants you to come up with a unique title. And part of the reason that this is so important is because that's what grabs people. Attention. In January I'm doing a whole free five day challenge on helping people figure out their specific topic and their title.

so We're going to come up with this really unique title that gets people's attention. And then from there, yeah. In all of your marketing materials, you're going to talk about your experience; when I tell my story about being in calculus class, somebody else can't necessarily use that story. It's not going to come through sincerely from them. It's not their story. It's those unique ways that you have experienced things. The things you've gone through, those are what gets people attention.

And they're like, I've got to work with. I've got to work with him. He's got exactly what I need. That's how you're going to resonate with people. It's great that there are lots of other courses out there. Those instructors will resonate with their students. You'll resonate with the people who are excited about you.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe:  “Okay. So now we've got a title. We've got an idea. Transformation. How do we get started? What's the easiest way? Is it just to have a zoom webinar and you tape it? where can someone just get started without having to buy like Kajabi and all these.”

Julie Hood: “Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that because this is where I'm very big on. I want to get you going quickly, get some revenue coming in, and then if you want to expand out into some of those bigger tools and get more help and do something bigger than do it, but let's get something going first. you're totally right, use zoom. We all know how to record zoom. Now you can get on if you want to do like a PowerPoint. If you're not big on just talking about your topics, sometimes PowerPoints can be a great way to present your materials. I'll give you a quick tip here. Don't read from your PowerPoint. You need to have individual topics, one topic on each slide and you can talk to it. Your people are listening to you as they're going through, but one topic on each slide, we're going to have a PowerPoint. We're going to be on zoom. We're going to record. And then what we're going to do is you'll get the downloaded video. You upload that to Google drive because it's a great place to put your videos and then we're going to create.

An email to send out to people who buy and you'll link directly to that video. So super easy way to get your first course up. People buy it, you send them the email and you can get going. The one drawback on that, and I want to mention is there isn't any control over it. If somebody wanted to send your email out to 500 people, they could, but we're just getting started here.

Let's get it going, get it out. Then you can do something savvier like Kajabi, where you have more control over their account and they get a log in that sort of thing.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Would you advise people they first sell theirs is a lifetime access. Is it a short time access or does that, if it's on Google drive, cause you don't have much control. What are your ideas on.”

Julie Hood: “Yeah, that's a really good question. Cause you sort had to be careful with lifetime access because what, if you decide to do something else and you don't want to have to keep it going. So I like to say either the life of the course, or you can give them a year long access. Your. Making it specific.

 There's any potential end point. One of my clients who did this gave people 90 days access to coaching. And that was what the sales letter said. So that's what people expected, but that she never kicked anyone out. They can just keep coaching with her. That's another way to do it to you.

You make the sales process narrowed in on a certain time, but then, you can. However you want to do it. Long-term so there's lots of options there. As a business owner, you can pick , how you want to handle it.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe:  “For the mini course, are we talking about one hour? Are we talking about a couple of hours? Do they get a workbook, a PDF? What's in this mini course, exactly?”

Julie Hood: “Here's the question everyone needs to ask themselves? What is it? Somebody needs to get the result. So let me give you some examples. One of my clients who did her own mini course, she helped people with meditations. She did an intro, like two minute video, and then she had three or four Meditation videos that she was sharing, and that was it for her many course. She didn't need a workbook. She didn't need more to, we just wanted people to get a chance to hear her and listen to her meditations. And then she has lots of other stuff she does too, but that was her mini course to get going.

So It can be as simple as that, or if you're doing something a little more complex, like the idea training that I give out. I have a workbook with that. It's all branded and it's got links to stuff and it's says Course Creators HQ in it. What I have to do that, no, but I do think it's helpful to people to get to the end result, to have that, to work.

You might need a workbook to get to their result. It really depends on your mini course on what really, what that promise is, what that result that you're going to get. Will it help them to have checklist then maybe you have a video and a checklist and that's all you give. So whatever works best for what you're teaching.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe:  “I know I've heard you talk about having nice bite-size videos, if you're going to do it. If you're doing a mini course, can it be one hour or should we break that down into 10 minute segments? What's your recommendation on that?”

Julie Hood: “I'm going to give this two different ways for you, the ideal, and then what's realistic. So first let's talk about the ideal and that is, I like to have maybe five to 15 minute video lessons. 'cause that's when people watch the video and when they're on something like Kajabi, they can click that button that says complete and they get that endorphin hit.

Like I did it moving onto the next lesson. That's the ideal way to do it. When you keep them shorter like that, it's easier for people to consume your content. Now don't keep them so short that you end up with 35 different videos. So one of my friends did that the other day, she signed up for a class and she was like, Julie, they were all short, like a minute or two but 35 videos.

So that's not the way you want to go either. It's that mid range of five to 10 minute video. I'm going to add one caveat on here is that sometimes say we were doing more of a masterclass together that ends up being 60 minutes long. You might put that all is one lesson.

Ideally you'd break it up, but is it a hundred percent necessary? Probably not cause it's, one thing to do. As a business owner, you just figure out okay, is this going to be okay? Do I need to do it this way? Or do I need to break it up? So sometimes I break them up, sometimes I don't. It depends.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Now There's a lot of different platforms. We mentioned Kajabi. Google drive people can use. I love AppSumo and I just bought guru cam and I was just on a webinar with them and they were showing all the features it's got so many things that you can do for a course and it becomes overwhelming.

So when we're starting out, I would imagine stay away from all the bells and whistles and just make it simple. Have the videos have the handouts, if you need them. Are there any other tools that you would advise that you could add on that people can think about?”

Julie Hood: “Yeah. So there is one thing that I think some of the best courses do and we'll make your course way better than a lot of the other ones that are out there. If you've got a slightly bigger course and you want to have cheat sheets for each lesson. And by that, it's not a transcript. A cheat sheet is more of a summary kind of like cliff notes when we were in school or spark notes that summarizes what the lesson is.

And I'll tell you a story about why I like this so much. When I was taking my first podcasting class, this was way back in 2017 I got started I got all the equipment. I was all excited about it, but I couldn't figure out how the time was going to work. So I didn't start then until 2020.

Well, In 2020, I got into a second podcasting class. And it was fantastic because the instructor had these cheat sheets for each lesson and it summarize the content and told me what my homework was there was a lesson, all about equipment while I already had my microphone and my equipment.

I didn't need to watch that lesson. So I looked through his cheat sheet and I'm like, yeah, I can skip that one. That complete button and keep going, because remember your students want to get to the result as quickly as possible. So make it easy for them. So do a cheat sheet for each of the lessons so that they can just absorb that and go from there.

They don't necessarily have to listen to the whole thing. If they've got some experience already.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “I love that because I've gone through ones before and I'm like, oh God, I already know this information fast forward. And then you might end up fast forwarding over something that you didn't know, just because you thought you knew everything. Now what about taking a course and using it with a coaching program?

You mentioned that earlier, How are some ways that people can utilize that? in your experience, how can you use that?”

Julie Hood: “I love that so much. And I call it a hybrid type model and the reason it's so good is I'll be honest. And you've probably seen this too. The completion rates for courses where people just get the course and they're supposed to go do it really. But when you throw in some group coaching where you're building a community around what you're doing, it works so much better.

So we do this with my 24 hour course creator program. Last June, when I did it with a big group of folks, every week we'd have a group coaching call and it wasn't me teaching. They had the teaching part in the course, it was me answering questions. Asking them about what they were doing, making sure we were addressing some of the things that were coming up.

So that group coaching aspect of it was huge for getting people through the course. It's been so great. Even when we finished. A group of the students got together and now they are the lady and gents of the hood, since I'm Julie Hood the ladies and gents of the hood, and they still get together themselves every week and keep each other accountable moving forward.

So that community piece of it is huge. And you can charge a little more when you're going to do it that way.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “That's a great idea, a hybrid. I love that. When people are putting together this course, and they're going to market it, . We've got a great title, but then we gotta get out and market this thing. So where should people go?

I know people post things on like Udemy. Should we go down that route or should we go to our Facebook pages? Where do we go, Julie, help us out.”

Julie Hood: “Okay, so I'll give you my 2 cents worth. The, Udemy path, I'm not a big fan of, and here's why they get to control the pricing. And generally they control the list of students. And I don't know about you, but my students. I want to keep working with them. And I keep offering them things like we have the course creation product, but then I have a whole marketing program that they can go through with me.

 I want to have my student emails and also control the pricing. those two things are tougher on Udemy and harder to do that's why I don't go there. And they offer a lot of classes. They'll have specials that are like $10. I don't know, I don't want to sell my course for that. So that's that path the big question, and this is what I want to make sure everybody answers.

If this is the only thing you take from this podcast episode, please take this. Ask yourself who it is that I want to work with and who am I advocating for? Who are my people? And you probably won't know it right off the bat. It takes a while. You have to work with some people and see, do I like this group?

And sometimes you will. And sometimes you won't, but after you get going for a while, you figure out who those folks are. That helps you figure out where to go find them. Facebook groups is a really good place to go find them. But once you know that who, or podcast guesting, like me being on your podcast, I bet a lot of your listeners are interested in courses.

It's a good way for me to get in front of those. , those are two good ones, podcast, guesting and Facebook groups. And then there's so many more we could do. All focused around that. Who that, how am I going to get in front of the right people?”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “And in these Facebook groups, are you talking about creating your own group or being in groups where your target audience is and if that's the case, how do you let people know about your course without sounding like you're selling to them?”

Julie Hood: “Yeah, such a good question. So I will say I have not jumped on the Facebook group bandwagon. A lot of people have and a lot of people have done really well with it. So I know it's a path that you can go to if you love Facebook and if you're good with managing it. So I have an episode with Mark Mawhinney of my podcast and he has this huge Facebook group.

And it'd be a great one to listen to. If you're wondering, should I do a Facebook group or not? Cause he got into the details with me of what it takes to run. He's got a group I think, of about eight or 10,000 coaches. And he gave me all the details about how it works and stuff. So if you're thinking about a Facebook group of your own, definitely listen to that episode of the podcast.

But I like to use some of the Facebook groups in a couple different ways. One, they almost always have places to either promote what you've got going on, share your free gifts that you're giving out, or connect with your social media. Like, They'll say, put your Instagram, handle it here, and people will follow each other that way.

 It's an inexpensive way to get your message out. It's slow growth.It's not going to be fast. It's a slow kind of thing, but it is a way to do it inexpensively with Facebook groups. You notice, I talked about having a freebie there. That's one of the things that you want to get right off the bat when you're getting ready to sell.

And it's one of the first things I have. My students do that, or we're working on marketing is you want to have something that you're giving away for free, and it can be as simple as a one page resource guide you're giving it away so that they'll sign up. For your email list.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “What about having a webinar that leads into a course? Is that something that you think works well?”

Julie Hood: “Yes, you can do that to call it a masterclass. People are getting tired of webinars, but call it a masterclass. We're going to teach them something at the beginning, three to five lessons, and then you can offer your course on the backend. That works really well. And then for your really ambitious listeners, I will tell you one of the things that's worked the best for me is the five day challenge because people get to work with you for five days. And the secret is that you pick something early on in your process. So like everyone that needs a course. Early on. They got to figure out their topic and their titles.

So that's why I do the topic and title challenge. Cause it's something early and then it's a real natural progression into, Hey, let's just keep working together. If you've had a good time this week, come sign up for the full program.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “I love that idea.”

Julie Hood: “They work really well and you could do something similar with the masterclass. It's just, they don't get as much face time with you ahead of time. But a masterclass is the same concept. Like they get to work with.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Oh, wow. When someone is designing a course, do you think it's good to use a topic that is more evergreen so they can sell it for a while or something that is like a hot topic? Because I remember when Clubhouse, this was a few months ago when people are finally getting a Clubhouse, so there was a lot of courses that were coming out for Clubhouse. Clubhouse changes. I mean, they're, updating the app. Maybe they get a big hit at once. What are your thoughts? When people start courses evergreen or hot topic?”

Julie Hood: “I would do the mini course around some of these hot topics. And the reason is that the mini courses are quicker to put together and because they are hot topics. You're going to get a lot more interest than something that's evergreen, but keep it mini so that you don't have to put a lot of time and effort in it.

Cause you're right. If you taught people how to use clubhouse at the very beginning, it changed so much. The app changed so much. You would have had to redo the entire thing by now. Do those kinds of mini courses that are easy for those topics and then have more of your evergreen ongoing kind of things.

So that you've got. Revenue generator that can keep going without having to redo it all the time.”

Julie Hood: “Another thing I'll throw out because I didn't, I wanted to know this early on, too, especially with doing internet based training, if you're going to do something that changes a lot is sometimes it can work better to link, to specific help for.

The tool that you're talking about rather than you showing, how, if you link to where the help is, then you don't have to redo the training. You just change. The link has the help files changed. For example, I have this Kajabi course that they give out when people want to sign up then they can get this course about Kajabi.

And a lot of it is where I've found the things in their help files in their training. And I just link to it. So it. Makes life easier because I've already found it and linked to it for them, but I didn't sit down and create a whole elaborate video that then goes out of date and is no good anymore.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Oh, that's yeah, that's brilliant besides Kajabi, what are some other platforms that people could use?There's new stuff coming out all the time.” 

Julie Hood: “Yeah, such a good question. There's a lot to it, but let me give the high points for everybody and then check out my podcast too. Cause I do have another deeper episode where I dig into it, but here's a couple things I want to have you think about the first one is how techie are you?

And by that, Do you like to do websites? Are you somebody that can navigate the internet really well? And you're good with maybe having website hosting and that sort of thing. Some people are like that. Then I send them towards a WordPress hosting for their course where they have the WordPress software and they're basically running it all themselves.

They're in charge of it. But if you're not like that, like most of my students are not super techie like that. Then a better place to go is some of the tools that are out there already for how you can get your course online. So this is something like Kajabi, podia, teachable,Thinkific, all of those kinds of tools already exist.

And what I love about them is you can figure out which one is the best fit for you. Some people who help with courses will say, I only send people to one of the tools and I'm not like that because I know there's different pieces of the puzzles of depending on where people are at. Some of us need those all in one tools, which is like a Kajabi.

So it not only host your course, but it hosts your email newsletter. It hosts your landing pages. It hosts your website. It's all in one tool.

that's really great if that's where you're at, but let's say you already have a website. Maybe you're already signed up for your email newsletter, and now you want to add in a course, you may not want to pay for something like an all-in-one tool.

So then you could do something like a teachable or Thinkific because they are more course hosting. they're going to give you a place to put the course.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Oh, okay. That's good to know. 

 If someone's going to design a course, they don't really feel that comfortable on video. Do they have to be on video when they make a course? Can they just have PowerPoint going?

Can they have their mouse moving? What is your recommendations on that?”

Julie Hood: “Yeah. If you're not big fan of video, here's my suggestion for you. Do those PowerPoint slides and put a really good photo. Of you at the beginning, and maybe here and there. You want to have a photo because people like to see their teachers. They want to know who they're connecting with, but no, you don't have to do video.

It's fine. I'm not a video fan either, so I totally get that. One of the reasons I loved clubhouse is I can just do audio, so if you're not a video fan, you don't have to. The other thing you can do too, is with some of the tools, not with zoom, but some of the other recording tools is you can be super small in the corner.

 Then you're not looking at your face the whole time. You can be small in the corner and have your presentation going or sharing your screen. And that's another way to get around the full screen video concept.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Do you recommend people start with recording in Zoom or what is the platform that people generally use to record themselves?”

Julie Hood: “I love Zoom just because, we've all been on it. It's pretty straightforward to record. The one thing you will want to keep in mind is there's a setting in zoom to decide where the files are going to be saved.... you get a certain amount of space with Zoom, or you can record it on your own hard drive.

So look at that setting because videos are huge files, because there's so much to it. So the files get really big. You feel up your space. You may want to use like your computer hard drive or an external hard drive and have it recording separately. So that's the only kind of caveat to zoom, but that's a really easy way to get started.

Another tool I've used just in case somebody wants to try something else… Loom is a tool. Your videos can only be five minutes long on the free version, but it gives you a place to get started. Let's just get going, jump out there and get something recorded and get it going. And then you can always refine and improve going forward, because I don't know about you, but my courses they're never done.

I'm constantly adding new stuff today. I was looking up something else I'm like, yeah, this has got to go in the course. I need to add this. So you're constantly fixing it.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Do you have a favorite video editing tools?”

Julie Hood: “I use Camtasia. It works on both PCs and Mac, and it's pretty good. Some of my other video editors are big Adobe fan. So they use the Adobe tools for that. There's some other ones I've heard of that I haven't used personally, but I think are pretty good. Like a Movavi is one that's a little less expensive so that, if you're on a budget, That one out or do you have something you like to use? Those are my top ones.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: ”I use Descript for part of the podcast editing. And one of the features on there is you can actually record what you're doing on your screen in descript, and then it will transcribe the whole thing as well. And what's also cool is you can edit the video in the program and look at the transcription and see where you want to edit to.

If you goof up and say ums and ahhs, you can actually edit that out, even in the video. And it looks pretty seamless.”

Julie Hood: “Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. I will have to check that one out. I haven't used that one,  good idea.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Julie, you are just a wealth of knowledge. We'll have links in the show notes to all those episodes that you talked about and. Your challenge and your podcast, but just tell people how they can work with you. What you offer and all the stuff.”

Julie Hood: “There's a couple different ways that I help people. One of them is I do VIP days, people can apply if they really want to get this done. And like, We spend a Saturday and we get a lot of your course put together and figured out that's one way. The other thing that I do is the 24 hour course creator program, which is a way to get your first mini course done in about 24 hours. I have it all laid out so you can spend an hour a day. We do it for about 24 days during the week. And you get that first course finished and some people like, okay, I have the course and I need to get marketing, then definitely get on my list because I put groups together and we work on our marketing together.

So lots of different stuff. The best thing to do is get on my email list because that's where I share everything, all the cool stuff that's going on.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Fabulous, they can be in the hood, the Julie-hood.

Julie, was there anything else that you wanted to add?”

Julie Hood: “The last thing I will share is that please get your course out there. Like the world needs your brilliance and your knowledge. We need to make the world a little bit better and that's how you can do it. So I hope everybody feels comfortable. Like they can jump in and do this. It's not hard.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Julie. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.”

Julie Hood: “Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. We will have to get together again. Cause I know we could talk for hours.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe:  “Fabulous.”