59: Teach What You Love: A Blueprint for Hobby-Based Courses
Ever wondered if your passion project could be more than just a pastime? In our latest podcast episode, I walk you through how you can transform your hobby into a thriving digital course!
Whether you're a DIY wizard, a gardening guru, or a master of any craft, this episode is your roadmap to sharing your expertise with the world—and getting paid for it!
I break down the process into five simple steps, covering everything from identifying your unique skills to crafting a course description that will have students lining up to learn from you.
Here's a sneak peek of what you'll discover:
Why your hobby knowledge is more valuable than you think
How to identify and reach your ideal students
Practical tips for structuring your course content
Choosing the best format to showcase your expertise
The secret to writing course descriptions that sell
Tune in now and take the first step towards becoming an online course creator. Who knows? This could be the beginning of an exciting new chapter in your life!
Key points with timestamps:
00:01:22 - Why creating a course from your hobby is a great idea
00:04:18 - Step 1: Identifying your teachable skills
00:07:15 - Step 2: Defining your target audience
00:10:00 - Step 3: Structuring your course content
00:13:21 - Step 4: Choosing the right format for your course
Mentioned In This Episode
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Turning Your Hobby into a Profitable Online Course: A Step-by-Step Guide
Have you ever considered that your favorite pastime could be more than just a hobby? That the skills you've honed for fun could be valuable knowledge for others? In today's digital age, turning your expertise into an online course isn't just possible—it's a pathway to sharing your passion, establishing authority, and potentially creating a new income stream. Let's dive into how you can transform your hobby into a structured, teachable course that others will be excited to learn from.
Why Create an Online Course from Your Hobby?
Before we delve into the 'how', let's explore the 'why'. Creating an online course based on your hobby offers numerous benefits:
Share Your Passion: Teaching allows you to share what you love with a global audience.
Monetize Your Knowledge: Your expertise has value, and people are willing to pay to learn from someone who has mastered a skill.
Establish Authority: Creating a course positions you as an expert in your field, opening doors to new opportunities.
Personal Growth: The process of creating a course deepens your own understanding of your hobby.
Flexible Income: Online courses can provide a source of income that isn't tied to trading time for money.
Step 1: Identifying Your Teachable Skills
The first step in creating your course is to identify what you can teach. This requires some self-reflection:
Make a comprehensive list of everything you do as part of your hobby, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.
Highlight skills or techniques that are unique to you or that you've perfected over time.
Consider common questions you receive about your hobby from friends or fellow enthusiasts.
Reflect on your journey: What were the most challenging aspects when you were starting out?
Remember, what seems simple to you might be revolutionary to a beginner. Don't underestimate the value of your knowledge and experience.
Step 2: Defining Your Target Audience
To create a course that resonates, you need to understand who you're teaching. Create an audience persona that represents your ideal student:
Consider factors like age, background, motivations, and skill level.
Identify their pain points: What problems or challenges do they face that your course could solve?
Determine the skill level your course will cater to: beginners, intermediate practitioners, or advanced enthusiasts?
Research online forums, Facebook groups, and Q&A sites related to your hobby to understand what questions people are asking and what challenges they're facing.
Step 3: Structuring Your Course Content
Now that you know what you're teaching and who you're teaching it to, it's time to organize your knowledge into a structured course:
Outline your main topics: Break your course down into 5-7 main lessons.
Create a logical flow: Arrange your topics in a sequence that makes sense for a student progressing through the material.
Include hands-on activities or projects for each lesson.
Define learning outcomes: What should students be able to do after completing each lesson?
Consider the promise or transformation your course offers. How will your students' lives be different after taking your course? This will help you focus on the most impactful information.
Step 4: Choosing the Right Format
The way you present your content is crucial to your course's success. Consider:
Your strengths: Are you comfortable on camera? Do you write well?
Your content: Some topics might require video demonstration, while others could be effectively taught through written or audio lessons.
Your audience's preferences: Busy professionals might appreciate audio content they can listen to on the go.
You might choose to use a combination of formats, such as video demonstrations, written guides, and interactive workshops. Don't worry about fancy production techniques—authenticity often matters more than polished production.
Step 5: Crafting a Compelling Course Description
Your course description is your chance to showcase the value of your course and convince people to sign up. Here's how to make it compelling:
Highlight the benefits: Focus on what students will gain, not just what they'll learn.
Use engaging language that resonates with your target audience and reflects your teaching style.
Be specific: Clearly outline what your course covers and what students will achieve.
Address pain points: Show how your course solves problems and fulfills desires your audience has.
Include social proof if you have it (testimonials, success stories, etc.).
Conclusion: Your Hobby, Your New Chapter
Transforming your hobby into a course is more than just a way to make money—it's an opportunity to share your passion, connect with others, and contribute to a community of learners. Your unique knowledge and perspective are valuable, and there are people out there eager to learn from you.
Remember, you don't need to be a world-renowned expert to create a valuable course. Your experience, your journey, and your unique approach to your hobby are all assets that can benefit others. So take that first step, start planning your course, and get ready to share your passion with the world. Who knows? This could be the beginning of an exciting new chapter in your life and career.
Are you ready to turn your hobby into a teachable, sellable online course? The world is waiting for your expertise!
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Transcript:
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:00]:
Hi there. Destini here. And I am super excited about our podcast episode today, where I'm gonna be walking you through and talking about one of my favorite subjects, and that is turning your hobby and your expertise into an online course. But before we start, I really just want to ask you a question. And that is, have you ever considered that your hobby, the thing that you do for fun in your spare time, could be a valuable source of knowledge for others? Whether you are a master gardener, maybe you are a scrapbooking enthusiast, or a wizard at DIY home decor. Your expertise could be the foundation for an engaging and profitable online course. So in this podcast episode, I want to walk you through the process of transforming your hobby into a structured, teachable course that others would be so excited to learn from. Now before I dive into all the steps, I first wanna talk about why creating a course from your hobby is such a great idea.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:01:22]:
And the first thing is it gives you the opportunity to share your passion. So teaching others about your hobby allows you to share what you love with a wider audience. Honestly, anybody throughout the world, and that is just crazy to me. The other thing it allows you to do is to monetize your knowledge. The thing I want you to walk away from here is that your expertise has value, and people are willing to pay you to learn from somebody who has mastered a skill like you have. The other thing it allows you to do is to establish authority. Creating a course positions you as an expert in your field, and absolutely opens up the door to new opportunities. The other thing creating a course does, it allows you personally to have, you know, personal growth.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:02:27]:
I can tell you I have created 100 of courses. I'm actually in the process of creating one right now. It's called certification in a box, and it helps people who want to basically create a certification program for their online course. And I have been in higher education for, you know, 20, 25 years. I have been in higher education, you know, assistant dean, associate vice chancellor of academic affairs. I've done a lot of accreditation programs. And even as I have gone through this process of creating this course, I have absolutely learned things that I did not even know before. So creating a course deepens your own understanding of your hobby and what you're gonna be teaching.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:03:19]:
The other thing that creating a course does for you, it gives you flexible income, meaning online courses can provide a source of what they call passive income. And I don't really not crazy about that term because that kind of, you know, infers that you don't have to do anything for that income, and that is absolutely not the case. You have to create the course. You have to market the course. However, it is different in that you are not, you know, tied to your desk working on a client project. You're not on Zoom calls all day. So once you create it, you can sell it over and over and over again, which absolutely gives you more freedom to pursue other things and other passions that you have. Okay? So now let's get into the nitty gritty of how to package your hobby knowledge into a course that people will love.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:04:18]:
And the first step is identifying your teachable skills. Okay? So this is gonna require a little bit of self reflection and analysis on your part. So what I want you to do, and these are your action items, I want you to make a list. I want you to write down everything you do as part of your hobby. Don't leave anything out no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Just put it all down on paper. And then I want you to identify your unique skills. So you're gonna take a look at your list and highlight any skills or techniques that might be unique to you or that you have perfected over time.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:05:03]:
And then consider common questions that you get from folks. Right? These might be questions that you get from friends or, fellow enthusiasts about your hobby. What are people asking you? And then I want you to reflect on your journey. So what are the most challenging aspects of your hobby when you were just starting out? These could be absolutely valuable teaching points. So think about where you may have gotten stuck, where you could help people kinda basically avoid those challenges, if you would. And I wanna give you a very specific example here. So let's say that your hobby is urban gardening. Your list fine include choosing the right plants for small spaces, creating vertical gardens, composting in an apartment, pest control without chemicals, and maximizing gardening, fruit or yield in container gardens.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:06:08]:
So here's a pro tip, and I don't want you to forget this. Don't underestimate the value of your knowledge. So what might seem simple to you might just be absolutely revolutionary to somebody who's just starting out. So remember that you're not just teaching skills, you're also sharing your perspective and your experience there. So you want people other people to avoid some of those roadblocks that you ran into when you were just starting out. Okay? Now in step 2, you're gonna be defining your target audience. So that is really just figuring out who you want to teach this information to, right, and who's going to buy your online course? So the thing here is you want to create a course that meets their needs and resonates with what they're interested in learning about. So your action item here is you're going to create what we call in marketing an audience persona.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:07:15]:
Some people call them ideal customer avatars, and there's other names out there for them. But, basically, this is a person that represents your ideal student. So there's a lot of things you can consider here, their age, their background, their motivations, their skill level. You're going to identify their pain points. So what problems or challenges do they face that your course could solve? The other thing you can consider here is their skill level. Right? Is your course gonna be for beginners or intermediate or advanced type protectioners? And then you're gonna research online to get this information, especially if you're like, Destiny, I don't really know. How do I find this out? You're gonna look at forms. You're gonna go into Facebook groups.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:08:06]:
You're gonna look at q and a sites related to your hobby. You're gonna go on Reddit. You're gonna look to see what questions people are asking. Okay? I'm gonna give you and, again, I'm gonna give you another very specific example. So continuing with that urban gardening theme, your target audience might include apartment dwellers with limited outdoor space, busy professionals who want low maintenance plants. It could also include eco conscious individuals who are interested in growing their own food, but maybe they only have a very small space to do it in. Or it could just be complete beginners who aren't intimidated by gardening, and maybe they just wanna start with something small, like container gardens or something, you know, on their shelf in their kitchen. So it's okay if you are still trying to figure this out and you might wanna narrow it down later.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:09:05]:
So as you create your course, you're gonna find that you might be particularly passionate about teaching a specific subset of your audience, and that's perfectly fine. Now in step 3, we are going to structure your course content. So now you have a very clear idea of what you're teaching and who you're teaching it to. It's time now to organize your knowledge into a structured step by step course. So the first action item that you're gonna do is you're gonna outline your main topics. So I want you to break your course down into 5 to 7 type lessons, if you would. And then you're gonna create them in a very logical flow. So you're gonna arrange your topics in a sequence that makes sense for your student who's gonna be progressing through this material.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:10:00]:
Now as you go through this, for each of your lessons or your topics, I want you to think about how you can include hands on activities or projects. So just to give you an idea, like, in my course in a box program, I have extra activities in there that, you know, help students learn how to use AI to create their course outline, how to use AI to help them, you know, put together their course lessons and their course lesson slides. So I have all of those kind of hands on activities in that particular course. The other thing I want you to think about is what do your students need to be able to do after completing each lesson. So consider what their what we call in education, their learning outcomes. So let me give you a very specific example here. So going back to our urban gardening course, the structure might look something like this. You can have your first lesson that covers introduction to urban gardening.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:11:13]:
So in this lesson, you can talk about understanding small space challenges, assessing your available space, and setting realistic goals for that space. Okay? So in the next lesson, it could be like choosing the right plants. So you can talk about the best plants for indoor environments, vegetables that thrive in containers, and understanding light requirements. Okay? Moving on to the next lesson, which could cover maximizing small spaces. So in this particular lesson, you can talk about vertical gardening techniques, creating multi tiered plant displays, and utilizing window seals and balconies effectively. So all of that's tied into that small space theme. In the next one, you can talk about container gardening mastery. So selecting the right containers, proper potting techniques, and then watering and drainage in containers.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:12:20]:
So all of that is related to container gardening. And then in the last lesson, you can talk about maintenance and troubleshooting. So, natural pest control methods, pruning and training plants for small spaces, and diagnosing and treating common plant problems. You can see how all that ties in to that maintenance and troubleshooting. Now as you structure your content, I want you to think about the promise transformation that you will have for your course. So how will your students' lives be different after taking your course? So that's gonna help you focus on the most impactful information information as you go through this. Okay? Now in step 4, I want you to think about choosing the right format. So now that you have your content outline, it's time to kind of decide how you're going to present it to your students.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:13:21]:
So there's a lot of different things you can think about here, and here are your action items. The first thing I want you to assess is your strengths. So consider what format really plays to your strengths. Are you very comfortable on camera? Do you write well? Also, consider your content. Some topics are better suited to certain formats. For example, some techniques might require video demonstration. So going back to the example we have with this urban gardening course, you might have to put, you know, record yourself doing some of this to show the students exactly what they need to do with some of their containers that they're gardening in. And I'm not an expert in that area, so I might be butchering that, which I'm sure I am.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:14:13]:
So but you you're just gonna have to think about what do you need to do and how do you need to deliver the content so that your students can actually learn from you. Now, also, think about your audience in what format they would prefer. So busy professionals, a lot of times, they appreciate audio content so they can listen on the go. And quite frankly, that's my preferred method. So I don't really have time to sit there and watch a bunch of videos, but I absolutely love audio content. So here are some things that you can think about. Obviously, video lessons. So this might be you doing them on your screen.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:14:57]:
So a lot of the courses I do, I'm doing a screen share on my computer, or maybe I am creating presentations and doing a screen share with the presentations where I'm doing voiceovers there. But like in the gardening course, most likely that particular expert would have to set up a video camera, or, you know, you can use your phone and just record yourself doing some of those lessons there. Also, written lessons can be very good for in-depth explanations for students who prefer to learn at their own pace. And we talked about audio lessons. They are perfect for, concepts that can be explained verbally or for students who like to learn while multitasking. And that is definitely, definitely me. Now the other thing you can consider is an interactive workshop. So that would be perfect for like a community where you want to interact with them.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:16:00]:
And honestly, a lot of courses do what we call a hybrid approach, so where they're combining a lot of these different type of formats. Now I do I do a lot of audio lessons, video lessons, and written lessons in my courses. So going back to our example there for that urban gardening course, a hybrid approach might work very well for something like that. So they might have some video demonstrations for planting techniques and space optimization. They might have some written guides in there for plant care and troubleshooting. And then, obviously, they could do some type of interactive workshops for q and a sessions and community building. So lots of opportunities there. The only thing that I don't want you to worry about is being pressured to use any fancy production techniques.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:16:51]:
Nobody cares. You don't have to hire a production firm to come in to film you doing anything. Nobody wants anything that fancy quite frankly, and authenticity often matters a lot more than a polished production. So your students are there for knowledge. They're not interested in Hollywood level video quality. Okay? So I just want to throw that out there and get that out of the way. Now in step 5, you are going to create a compelling course description here. So the final step in packaging your passion is crafting a course description that will attract and excite your potential students.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:17:35]:
So this is your opportunity and your chance to showcase the value of your course and convince people to sign up. So your action items here, I want you to highlight the benefits. So focus on what students will gain from the course, not what just they will learn. And I want you to use some engaging language here, and you can use AI to help you put this together. So you're gonna write it in a way that resonates with your target audience and really does reflect your teaching style. The other thing I want you to do is be very, very specific. So clearly outline what your course covers and what your students will achieve, and make sure that you are addressing their pain points. So show that your course solves their problems and fills the desires that your audience have.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:18:24]:
And if you have any social proof, which you might not have in the very initial beginning, but if you do, you're gonna include them in here. Alright. So let me give you a very, very specific example. So we're gonna go back to that urban gardening course that I have. So a possible title for here would be urban oasis, master the art of small space gardening. Okay? And then it starts in, are you yearning for a lush green space, but feel limited by your urban environment? Urban oasis is your key to transforming any small stays space from tiny balconies to window sills into a thriving garden. Wow. That just really kinda hit upon the pain points.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:19:10]:
Right? And then he go on to say in this comprehensive course, you'll learn how to choose the perfect plants for your unique space and lifestyle, maximize every inch with clever container and vertical gardening techniques, I wanna sign up now. And then grow your own fresh organic produce, yes, even in an apartment. And then troubleshoot common urban gardening challenges with eco friendly solutions. Whether you're a complete beginner or have a few sad houseplants you're trying to revive, this course will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to create your urban oasis. Through video demonstrations, detailed guides, and live q and a sessions, you'll join a community of urban gardeners and watch your space transform in just 6 weeks. So there you go. So your pro tip here is to read your course description aloud. Does it flow naturally? Does it get you excited? If it energizes you, it's most likely gonna resonate with your potential students too.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:20:16]:
So here you go. Transforming your hobby into a course is more than just a way to make money. That's a really good benefit from it but it is an opportunity to share your passion, connect with others, and contribute to a community of learners. So we talked about the 5 steps which is identifying your teachable skills, defining your target audience, who you're actually going to be selling to, how to structure your course content, and you can definitely use AI to help you with that. Choosing the right format, a lot of you are gonna do a combination of maybe written, audio, and video. You're gonna create a compelling course title and name and description. And then once you do all of this, you are well on your way to packaging your passion into a course that could impact the lives and possibly even change your own. So I just wanna kinda leave you with this thought that the world definitely needs your unique knowledge and perspective, and I know that you have it out there.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:21:23]:
Your hobby just isn't a pastime. It's a valuable skill set that others are eager to learn. I know there's a ton of hobbies out there that I'm interested in learning more about that than even myself. So I want you to take that first step, start planning your course, and get ready to share your passion with the world. And who knows, your hobby course might just be the beginning of an exciting new chapter in your life and in a new business. I want you to, leave you with this. Happy teaching. Definitely online courses have changed my life, and I continue to, you know, create create them, for my audience as as we need.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:22:05]:
If you had any questions about creating an online course, please reach out to me. You can respond back to any of the emails that I've had. If you're not on the Hobby School newsletter, I will include that link below so you can get in touch with me, and that is definitely the best way to get in touch with me. And I'll also leave the link for my personal brand where I help digital product entrepreneurs create and launch their, basically, their digital product businesses. So bye for now, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.