Why Great Courses Never Get Finished (And How AI Can Help)

Have you ever started creating a course, felt excited about it for a few weeks, and then watched it slowly stall out? 

Maybe you've got folders full of outlines, half-finished lessons, sticky notes, and big ideas that never quite made it across the finish line. 

Most courses don't fail because people lack expertise. They fail because course creation is often as much a psychology challenge as it is a business challenge. 

Today's guest is Dr. Stephanie Thrower, a psychologist, business coach, and AI innovator who helps experts create courses and online offers that actually get finished and launched. By blending over 15 years of psychology experience with practical AI strategies, she helps people overcome overwhelm, build momentum, and turn great ideas into real results. 

In this conversation, we're talking about why so many smart, capable people never finish the courses they start, the hidden mindset barriers that get in the way, and how AI can help course creators move from idea to implementation faster than ever before. 

Connect with Dr. Stephanie Thrower

Dr. Stephanie Thrower is a psychologist and business coach helping values-driven experts teach, reach and sell better with AI. Drawing from 15+ years in therapy and a deep background in vocational, identity, and performance psychology, she blends psychology, research, resilience and purpose to support career-changing (and life-changing) growth. Stephanie is also a mom of three, an AI tool creator, and a not-quite-there-yet gardener who loves good food and being outdoors with her crew and listening to deep-dive Bravo podcasts.

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Transcript

Why Courses Stall Out

Carrie Saunders 0:00

Have you ever created a course or a business idea, felt really excited about it for a few weeks or a few months, and then watched it completely stall out? Maybe you have folders full of outlines or ideas, half-finished lessons, sticky notes, big ideas that never quite seem to make it across the finish line. Most course creators don't feel because of lack of expertise. They feel because course creation is often as much of a psychology challenge as it is a business challenge. Today's guest is Dr. Stephanie Thrower, a psychologist, business coach, and AI innovator who helps experts create courses and online offers that actually get finished and launched. By blending over 15 years of psychology experience and practical AI insight strategies, she helps people overcome, overwhelm, build momentum, and turn great ideas into real results. In this conversation, we're talking about why so many smart and capable people never finish the course they start, the hidden mindset barriers that get in the way, and how AI can help course creators and coaches move from idea to implementation faster than before. Let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we have a special guest with us, and her name is Stephanie Thrower. She's a psychologist, a business coach, and an AI innovator who helps experts create courses and online offers that actually get finished and launched by blending over 15 years of psychology experience with practical AI strategies. She helps people overcome overwhelm, build momentum, and turn great ideas into real results. So welcome to the show, Stephanie. So happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Thank you so much. I'm really I'm excited to be here. Yeah, what a great intro.

Motherhood, Burnout, And Building Businesses

Carrie Saunders 2:10

Thank you. So I just gave a little brief intro, as you just mentioned, about you. I'd love to know a little bit more about Stephanie. You can anything professional, personal, whatever you'd like to include that you think would be interesting would be great. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Um yeah, I'm a psychologist. I have a private practice that actually focuses on the intersection of maternal mental health and vocation. And so I talk about things that no one talks about, right? Like moms and work and managing all that stuff. And somehow in the last couple of years, I have started to do some AI coaching and helping therapists or other experts start to develop coursework to diversify their income, diversify their tasks too, because like as you know, doing therapy is incredible. It's life-changing even as a therapist, but it also can lead to burnout really easily over time. And so having some other things to do to bring in income, but also to like spread the word of all the work you've been doing is um, I'm not alone in wanting to do that. And so yeah, I also have three kiddos and have built three businesses, like never expected I would become a business person really ever. Um, but when I had my first daughter, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna start a practice. And that has been a big part of my process of being a mom and being a business, being an entrepreneur. And also again, being like, how did that even come to be? But it it has, right?

Carrie Saunders 3:49

Yeah. Yeah, I I can actually totally relate to that because I started the business, like I think my trailer episode on the podcast is like uh I started this with a nine-month old and a laptop, right? So, like, you know, I built the business alongside having like kids, and that was my oldest. So, and we have three kids as well. And so sometimes I've talked to other people and other women about what it's like to be a mom as well as a business owner. And I think, you know, having that's really important for you to be able to relate to people and to talk to people about that because a lot of people don't, you know, talk about the personal part of being a business owner. And it it's not like there's hard-cut lines. Business bleeds into family, and family bleeds into business.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Absolutely. I remember having my dietitian who I had worked with during my pregnancy, who is just like amazing. She also owned her practice, and she was very much the person that encouraged me to be like, you can do this. You don't have to go have someone else like you don't have to work for someone else, you can start a practice. But later on, she was like, Yeah, even if you're working part-time, but you're also doing child child care part-time, she's like, You still have two full-time things happening. And it's a blessing to be able to control your time in so many ways, but it's also a lot, you know, to be trying to shoot emails off or figure out how you're gonna be organized in your business. It's um it's amazing and also sometimes really demanding.

Carrie Saunders 5:23

It really is. And I feel like there's such that balance. And we were kind of going a little off topic of what we're gonna talk about, but I feel like it's also important for people to understand this and relate to it because it's such a balance to work. I don't want to say the words hard enough, but like that's like the first thing that comes to my mind. You know, get enough of the things done in your business, yet still get enough of the things done as far as being a parent and being there for your child and you know, nurturing them and all those things. Like it can be so like hard to balance that and figure that out.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Well, and also you're super aware that you have a lot more choices, right? Like when you have a W-2, you get to blame so many people for your schedule or for the demands. When you have your own business, you kind of are looking in the mirror a lot of the time when it comes to blame. And like and so I think the pressure can be on. And being a mom, the pressure, like the pressure's on anyways, right? And so thinking about like my youngest is 18 months now, and thinking about okay, like how many days a week did I stay with my other two kids? Is it fair? How like you know, now that I'm dealing with half days on Wednesday, like you're constantly kind of making those decisions um and trying to decide what's good enough. And uh it has different stakes than when you don't have kids, I think.

Carrie Saunders 6:54

Yeah, I agree. And the more kids you have, it's it it just compounds, and it's not a linear compounding either, is it?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

No, no, it's funny. My therapy practice, like most of my kids, most of my clients have um three, some four kids, which is like an interesting um coincidence. Like I'm really, I guess I think a lot about what it's like to have three kids or more. And yeah, you're right. It's it's a lot. Like every child into the family is its new adjustment, but we hit three and my kids started, my youngest started moving, and I was like, I don't think I can do this, right? Like a year and a half after him being born, I was like, Oh my gosh, I think we made a mistake. I can handle all these

The Hidden Psychology Of Not Finishing

SPEAKER_01 7:40

moving parts, you know?

unknown 7:42

Yeah, yeah.

Carrie Saunders 7:42

Well, and I think that leads into our first question pretty well. And you know, you've talked about, you know, working in psychology and being a therapist for over like 15 years. And I feel like, you know, smart people and capable people can what might start a course, they might start a business, they might start a program, they might have all these ideas, but they never finish them. I mean, even we're kind of hinting to it now. There's so much family that can go in behind that to make that not happen. So why do you think most smart, capable people might start some ideas, business ideas, whatever it might be, with a course or program or something, and and not get it finished? What happens?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Well, I think that we a lot of us are still kind of bound to our time, right? Like we're seeing clients for a certain rate, or we have packages that have like a certain number of hours. And so I think that it becomes really hard to invest this extra other energy into something we're not sure is gonna actually succeed. And so it's like that combination of the self-doubt that like, what if this doesn't even do anything? And also being like, this keeps going down on the priority list, right? Like I've got a client crisis, I've got a family crisis, like I'm kind of putting those fires out. And I it's hard to invest that extra energy into a space where there's like a little bit of um like faith in can I do it? Is it gonna be good enough? Like all that, all that jazz. So it's a lot, it's overwhelming.

Carrie Saunders 9:17

Well, and I found at least for me, and I don't know if you can relate to, whenever I first started this business, I was 25 and I was just like, I can do it, right? Like I had absolutely no fear. It was kind of like, you know, the little kid wanting to go ride that bike for the first time, you know, just go, go, go, right. And you just try. And if I fell over, I was like, okay, I'm getting back up, I'm gonna try again. But I feel like now that I'm older and more experienced, whenever I do try to do something new, like build that course or build that new thing for my business, I way overthink it. And I like because I've got the business already established, I'm like, this has gotta be perfect. It's gotta, you know, I've gotta, you know, stay up to my standards I've already built to myself. Whereas when I was first starting out, I was like, oh, well, nobody knows me. So if I mess up, oh well. Did you see some of that too?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Oh yeah, it's perfect. I've been reading a book, like literally, there's a chapter about the value of being an amateur. Like, I think there's like a Charlie Chaplin quote of like, not none of us live long enough to not be amateurs. And I I I think that energy, we forget that we we do have some success or we have these standards for ourselves, for our especially people who I think who are established therapists that I work with or have doctorate degrees and are like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna go try to sell this thing, and I'm gonna be so awkward in selling it that even if it's like the perfect course, people will watch me stumble or be like awkward or creepy, you know, like all the things. And so yeah, I don't think we give ourselves room to grow and make mistakes. And I think the stakes are like it feels harder because sometimes it's in play in sight with marketing where people see, you know, you you're gonna come out initially and you are gonna be awkward because you're not used to being on camera or selling yourself, you know. I still struggle, but the overthinking pieces I think uh about protecting ourselves from failing, right?

Carrie Saunders 11:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 11:30

And then I know that like I some we work with course creators a lot, you know, half of our business is working with course creators and half is working with e-commerce. And I find especially with the course creators and coaches, they just feel like they don't have time to build a course, even though they really want to. And I know from my experience, it's not necessarily the time that's a real problem. Do you do you have like some insight, you know, as a therapist or psychologist, like what could be going on in their brain that might be making them think that they actually really don't have the time when they when they probably actually do?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Totally. That's such a good question. I think that I can even give myself as an example right now. So I've been I've been wanting to build kind of like a community, it's maybe a school community to have for people who have already finished my bigger program or who are not there yet in their marketing to like invest in the larger, okay. I'm gonna build my course, right? And I have overthunk it mostly in trying to pack it full of so much information and so much tools and like also be as creative as possible. And as as my experience of being a student, the more complicated a course that I get into, the worse it is, right? Or the like the more overwhelming it is, the the more less, like the less likely I'm gonna engage and feel like you can jump into it and start to actually go through it. So I think, yeah, I think we're afraid to not give enough and to show that we're truly experts. Um, and so we just keep designing, they say design of the whiteboard, just like keep trying to redraw it or creep, keep like I think I have four lists of what is going to go in this community, like separately written, right? Um, because I just the perfect plan is not there. So I think it's perfectionism often getting in the way of just sitting down and doing the whether it's recording themselves, finalizing the idea, finalizing the decisions on tech. I think that really holds people up, don't you think? Of like, should it be this, like this hosting tool or this? And like I've just told people store it like you're gonna move it, you know, and then then we can decide late, like we just go with something, right?

Carrie Saunders 13:58

Yeah, right. Yeah,

Perfectionism, Overthinking, And The Time Trap

Carrie Saunders 14:00

and I feel like um I know for me, you know, I've had my own white level of go high level now, called course creative suite, but I I just you know what made me actually do it, what made me actually jump into finally finishing it was that Kajabi raised the prices. I was like, I have to do it now because the competitor, if people aren't familiar with Kajabi or Go High Level, one of the competitors decided to raise their prices. I'm like, well, this is the perfect time for me to do it. And I did it, and I did it, I did it simple, I did it messy, and you know, it's a thriving community now, and I absolutely love the people in it. But I I finally just, you know, jumped at the end of last summer because I saw this coming, that you know, the Kajabi price increase. And so I wanted to give people, you know, listening to us permission to do it messy. I mean, I've been doing this business, you know, for almost 25 years now, be 25 years in November, and like I have to give myself permission to do new things messy. And it's really, really hard. I'm a perfectionist, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I try not to be perfect, but it's just in my nature, and I feel like it's in a lot of entrepreneurs' nature to be perfect. We just got to do it messy, wouldn't you agree?

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Totally. Well, you told me about your Lego houses, right? And so yeah, like I clogged you right away, right? They're like they're probably beautiful on the shelf and like so intricate, right? And you just kind of revel in, like, oh, it's done, right? But the minute someone bangs into it, or like, yeah, it's a whole thing.

Carrie Saunders 15:29

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, no, that's actually perfect because there's one Lego house that I have displayed in my living room that I think the kids hit it with like a nerf dart when they were little or something, and there's one missing little stud, and I see it every time I walk by, but that's just you know, my personality. You've got to realize who you are and who's inside you so that you can work with it. But yes, it bugs me every single time I walk by that Lego building.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

And that, yeah, that like from a mindfulness standpoint, like that piece is your teacher, right? Your like teacher of how to deal with imperfection in plain sight, right? Yeah. I mean, I think I I absolutely agree. I think that um, hey, I have lots of questions about your, I love to talk about your white label. But yeah, I think I think that the it's it's really handy to be able to offer that kind of space for people to just know it. And I think go high level can be so complicated, so can Kajabi, right? But having something where people are coming in and using your white label and saying, like, oh, this is I can create courses with this, as opposed to like the mess that is all of these, uh like GoHi level is so awesome, but if it's not kind of controlled in what you're gonna use, right? It can be super overwhelming for someone who just wants to build courses too, right?

Carrie Saunders 16:52

Yes, yeah. And that's what I like to tell our members. I'm like, we need to just pick one thing you're working on now because it can do so many things. We're just gonna pick one thing, we're gonna focus on that, and we'll add on to it later. Um, and I just find that that really helps them get that permission to like, okay, I can do this step by step. I can do this kind of messy. I don't have to have all the pieces in place yet before I do the thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's great advice.

Carrie Saunders 17:21

And then now we we you I know you help with AI, and AI is everywhere. And we had a little pre-conversation quickly about AI before we um jumped on the call. Um, and AI is everywhere, as we all know. Things are so changing, you know, Claude, this, you know, ChatGPT that, and I can't even think of the other names out there, you know, Copilot and Gemini, all the things. Like, where do you see it helping course creators and coaches the most? Because I sometimes find people it hinders them if they're not using it right, but it helps them if they're using it right. So, where do you see it helping them the most? And how can we help direct anybody listening to use it in a way that can help them get the thing done rather than be yet another tech hindrance or another obstacle or overthinker thing for them?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yeah. Well, and then the other category that AI totally brings in is uh kind of generic useless course stuff, right? Right. Because you and I could put a prompt in right now and we would immediately get like almost a whole course belt, like by the end of our conversation. But would it have anything of value to it? It depends on what the topic is and how good the prompt is. But yeah, I think two things I think that uh I mean, there's a lot to using AI well, but when for my students, I think AI really helps with speed and courses can be slow, right? Like I think about um, you know, the size of courses can all vary, but even sometimes when you're doing a small little thing, it's like buttoning up everything that becomes tricky, right? Of being like, okay, the thumbnail, okay, the the and this, the, you know, the videoing that. So it's kind of like a lot of pieces to it, which I do love. And when you finish it, you're like, oh, but like big courses, small courses, they all kind of have those components to it, right? And so I think that if we have some space, if we have AI helping us with speed, that can be really helpful for not kind of trudging along too much, right? The

Do It Messy And Simplify The Tech

SPEAKER_01 19:30

other thing that I think is super, I guess I would say three things. I have my students go through a pretty uh like a long-ish assessment process where I just have a Google Doc where I gather a ton of important information that I think is essential for the course building process, like, you know, who they who are they, what their frameworks are, what their ideal clients are. All that information is starts to shape all the outputs. And so if we don't have the depth of information that's necessary, then whatever comes out from AI can be shallow or not very helpful, or kind of miss who they are and their brilliance, right? So assessment is really like you adding really good stuff to AI really changes things and starting to have good questions back and forth. And then I think the third thing that I like to do is help people build AI tools for their course. So, what does that look like? I mean, it can be literally having people write prompts for their students so that their own students can be using AI in their learning process. It could be my students creating apps or freebies or quizzes that just kind of make things look more elevated, even if it's not like a fancy quiz. Um, but that is a space I really like to nerd out on how can we make learning for our students just more individualized, more accessible, um kind of turn things on their head, more creative sometimes. Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 21:14

So those are the Yeah. When I feel like whenever I've taken like a member, a course or something, the times that I've gotten lots of stuff out of it is when when the person teaching the course has really spent that extra time to, you know, add in personalization or add in like some sort of live component to it. And I know you didn't really talk about the live component to it, but I feel like AI can help you get some ideas on how do we add this live component to it so we actually make it more human. Um what do you think about that? Do you think that that's a good way to use AI? I mean, I know uh I kind of scrolled there for a minute, but uh, in like my white label, of course, Creative Suite, for example, and on my Go High level, um, we'll Have monthly QA's where people can jump on the call, ask questions, I answer them, or I will, you know, sometimes I have to get back to them because Go Hi level is always changing features. Sometimes I don't know the answer right away. But then what I do is I take that transcript, I put it into AI, I've trained it to understand what I want to do with that transcript, and then it'll spit back to me each person's name and their question and then the summary underneath and the timestamp. That way when people go back to watch the replay, they can go find, okay, my question was at 14 minutes in, and they're not spending all their time. So I'm shortcutting their time to learn too. So what do you think about like tactics like that? Do you help people do that in like their courses or in their memberships use AI in that manner so that it can be still more human, but more effective and timely for the user?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Yeah, I mean, these are I think that we're very wary of AI not feeling human, but the intention of a tool can be so human, right? So if I am trying to save my students' time, if I have a little AI chatbot that has that you can ask any question about what's in the course, where it is in the course portal, where where the lecture is, that we talked about this one thing, like that's so empathetic, right? Of being and that's just like an instructional design issue, right? Of me thinking about the priorities of my students. So I think that AI can be used in lots of cool ways to really meet the emotional needs of and I think that's like the AI itself is not human, but it's like the instructor behind it. And like you said, you're saving your students time, they can search their name immediately. They're not, you know, like there's a lot of ways in which it can free us up to be more present, I think, as learners and as teachers. And the other cool thing is you can automate that process. So then you start to get relieved of any burden of like post-call. So you feel free when you show up. You're not like, oh, I gotta do work afterwards. You're like, oh yeah, like I'm here, I'm totally here. And then I'm gonna go deal with the mess that's inside the house, right? Like whatever it is.

Carrie Saunders 24:23

Right. Yeah, yeah. And I love how it can help me. You you really need to hit the nail on the head there. It can help me be really present on that call because I don't worry about you know, noting when somebody asked a question or whether they got the answer or whatnot. I've got it on the transcript and they I've got AI trained to process it for me. Absolutely. It's my my little mini assistant. Um so I think thinking of ways, how can we use AI to help bring the more human to it, really, is what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Yeah, I mean, I think we've expected our brains to work like machines for a very long time. And so if there's ways we can like not get lazy in our thinking, but put aside some of that mental work that's not necessary and actually dive deeper or be more present, that would be ideal. Is that always gonna happen? Probably not, right? Sometimes just like keeps adding demands, you know, to itself.

Carrie Saunders 25:23

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I know that you talk on on you know, doing digging on you, you talk about creating like an offer ecosystem, not just necessarily a course. And and I think that's really intriguing for those listening because some might have a coaching services or they might just have a course. Um, what's the difference between having that offer ecosystem, not just a course, and and why was that, why would that matter? How does that help people?

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Well, I think initially that idea came across because, and it's probably true for me, but people who've been working as therapists for 15

Using AI For Speed And Better Learning

SPEAKER_01 26:00

years or more, way more than me, um, often have like seven courses in their head, right? And I think that um it can feel kind of disparate, like these kind of blobs, right? These topics. And part of my goal in working with people is not only understanding what their framework is, how they understand people, change, and grow, but like where the courses fit within that process. Maybe some of them can kind of be coming together and some of them, but from a and then we add like the business component, right? So the business part is sort of like in this is there a structure where we can give people tastes or appetizers of our work until they feel really ready or excited to work with us, right? And so I think if we understand where it all fits into the system, that um will make us better, probably more confident salespeople, right? So you know, yeah.

Carrie Saunders 27:01

So then if somebody's wanting, you know, I can I can just think, you know, I've got several ideas in my head of offers that we have. How would I go about taking those offers that I already have and maybe some offers I haven't created yet? How would I go about making an offer ecosystem and kind of understanding how they all go together, um, you know, to make those feeders into, you know, your ecosystem and your world so that you get, you know, the clients that are right for you?

SPEAKER_01 27:27

This is a cool question. I think my where my brain is going. So part of my training was in qualitative, like as a qualitative researcher. And so I think in some ways that's why my brain has like um really rolled with AI because it's like qualitative research on steroids, because it just takes words and groups them and analyzes and does it in like a math way, right? But the way that I would probably do that, either if I was having a conversation with someone, I probably would start mapping out their different courses and try to understand is it, is it do we have a consistent niche or ideal person, or is it more like a method that we have through lines? I would want to understand where these courses connect in themes. And I think AI would be helpful in actually helping a little bit of back and forth. So if you had a written description of your offers, I would actually have AI analyze the through lines or the where these offers are similar or different across the way that you help people. And then we might start to puzzle piece them. AI probably won't have the right answer at first, but if you write the prompt in that way, that this is a brainstorming session, I almost want to create a mind map of how these courses relate or don't relate to one another. That's a good start for us to start to like have the back and forth. Of course, a conversation with a human is also helpful.

Carrie Saunders 29:01

Does that sound useful? Yeah, no, that is because I mean, as you were talking, I I feel like a point to bring up that if listeners didn't catch us, is you're basically talking like you're talking to an assistant or to another person, another person to brainstorm. And sometimes people forget that, at least in my experience, when you treat AI like another human, which seems a little weird, but when you're treating it like, you know, that conversationalist, that person you can bounce ideas off of, you end up getting a bit better information back out of it. Because when we talk to a person, many times we're a bit more verbose. We give them all the background information if they didn't have it. You know, we give them like that idea dump and the brain dump. Um, and I feel like AI can take that and condense it and interpret it kind of like you're talking about, you know, what's the through line for all these ideas? Is it, is it the niche? Is it is it the method? Like I hadn't really thought about, you know, our offers might be more about the method than it is who it's for, because we do service, you know, two different kinds of uh online business segments, e-commerce versus, you know, course graders and coaches, they're kind of different flavors of still an online business, but you know, but we still help them. It's all with the method, though, our connections method. Um, so hopefully those listening can see that there's different ways we can connect our offers together. It doesn't have to be the target audience, it could be the method that we're doing instead.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Totally. Yes. And I think that when we are interacting with the large language models like Chat GBT, Claude, Gemini, like you, you know, the list goes on, it goes on every day, increases. Um yeah, practice really does help us under get good data back on how these function. They are, I think we we've been in the mindset we we where we've been very efficient in asking questions to Google, right? Just because we're like trying to get the answer quick. And um the more words, the better. You're right. I have taught my students it's actually really good to say I don't know. And that would feel very strange to type into Google search, right? Um or even in journals, like I ask questions in um in those assessments, people might be at a point in their business where they're not sure exactly what their ideal client would say because they haven't tuned in enough or they haven't like gotten enough research back. And so saying I don't know actually really helps the model understand where you're at and your thinking, which is feels counterintuitive from the way we've grown up, I think, with technology.

Carrie Saunders 31:48

Yeah, and I never thought of telling it that I don't know. So that's like kind of a good point. Like I have never thought of that. And I I do think something else people might not consider doing, and I love your in take on this, is many times I'll ask it, what do you else do you need to know from me before completing this task? And a lot of people don't think about doing that. That's what we would do to uh an employee or a human that, you know, is helping us with a task. We'll ask them, you know, what else do you need to know? Or they'll just naturally ask. But AI doesn't always naturally ask you what other information it might need from you. So I think your point of telling it you don't know the answer. And then, you know, my I'd love to hear, you know, do you use it in the way I say where you ask it if it needs more information? I feel like thinking of those type of things to say to it is a bit more out of the box as far as what you see in the mainstream. And I think it really helps you get a better result.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Absolutely. I think sitting down and like having a sense of why you're using AI is always good. It's a good question to ask yourself. Am I brainstorming? Am I needing to get an outline done? Am I needing to, you know, whatever it is, orienting yourself to your goal is super helpful. Um, but those are great questions to ask of, you know, what other information do you need to know from me, especially if I'm shooting out a quick prompt where I'm giving, I don't have time to give that much context. Um, you know, what might I be missing from the way that I'm approaching this or the way I'm viewing this thing, this subject? Um what I like to ask, what theoretical models or frameworks is this related to? Sometimes that can tie in. Um, you're asking it to like pull in concepts as opposed to just um Reddit opinions, right? Right. And so, like when we start to add depth to the references or authors that we really respect, if we kind of work from like if we in our marketing really like Seth Godin, right? Like we can pull from those references and that gives that orients the machine to understand what to focus on. Cause so often the results are poor because it's referring to such wide depth or wide array of information at once. And when you start to narrow it, it can be really helpful. Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 34:18

That's a perfect point. Because many times what I'll do is I'll use, I'll ask it to um create me, help me word something with the story brand framework in mind by Donald Miller.

Build An Offer Ecosystem That Sells

Carrie Saunders 34:30

So, you know, you you mentioning Seth Godin, which is another great author out there. Um, you know, narrowing it down to, you know, what style, like you said, do you want it to focus on? So that's how I use it, is I'll ask it to do a story brand style wording for whatever I'm asking help with.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's another piece of that AI really helps course creators because like we can create course for days, but it still tends to not be satisfying unless we sell a course, right? And so that's this other level of, oh my gosh, I made the course. I need to actually know how to sell it and market it. And I think AI, I mean, the best marketers out there, even the ones that use AI, have just been marketers for decades, right? And that that's not really replaceable, I think, by AI. And you can see, you can see the difference. But if it helps a novice, amateur marketer get out there, then that's like that's like the courage we need sometimes to just say, like, okay, well, this is good enough copy. I'm gonna go for it for now. And then I then if I post for a month and it's I get at least data to analyze with AI to see what actually worked, what was terrible. Because usually, even with expert marketers, they say that what you think is gonna do really well often isn't the thing that does well, right? Right.

unknown 36:01

Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Saunders 36:02

And expert marketers are gonna do the same thing. They're gonna use their best judgment to uh create a marketing piece, and then they're gonna test it and see what works and what doesn't work, and use that data and refine it. Like it expert marketers don't land it, nail it every single time. Sometimes it's impossible. They may not have enough information or enough data. They're gonna make a good educated direction on it, but it's may not nail it right right away.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

So right. And and what their job is is just to keep posting, right? It's like it's to keep having that content because then they no longer are marketers. They're not doing that. And I think for us in the course space or in other parts of our offers, it's so easy to fall back and kind of be like, well, I made it and but I never talk about it, right? Right.

Carrie Saunders 36:54

Yeah. Well, and that actually kind of leads into my last question really well. I feel like if someone listening wants to finally finish and launch that course that they've been wanting to do in the next 90 days, like what's what's the first thing they should do this week? What can we do to help them take that next step to get towards their goal?

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Well, maybe I'll talk about two people. One person who like, because when you say finally finish, I'm like, I'm thinking about people I've talked to who say they've already spent a couple hours on outlines or they filmed some things or they have scripts, right? But they are it's just dragging on their to-do list forever to like come back to it. So I would go right into Chat GBT or Claude. Hopefully, you have it helps, it's it's better if you have a paid account. And I would create a new folder and which is like over on the side, you go down and you click new folder, put a title of what that course is, and I would upload all your documents into that folder or into the chat. And I would start having conversations with those documents and sit sort of with the models with ChatGPT or Claude and say, okay, this is what I've got so far. I kind of forgot where I left off. Um, this is what I think I have to do. What do you see? Um, what you know, you can do many things from there. You can start developing tools or developing materials, finishing up those items. You can create a spreadsheet, have um AI create a spreadsheet of what's to be done, right? And then you can work together to start to create a plan to set forward. And usually people will find that to be super helpful. For the people who have like not touched it, I actually wouldn't even go into AI at all. I would just go for a walk and I would pull out my phone and have them do a voice memo and just walk for 20 minutes and talk about what their course is about. And then I would take that transcript and then I would put that into AI and have a conversation with it. And, you know, it would be if I gave you a baby, big, long, fancy prompt, it would be like a long conversation where it would take you through, right? But really just having a sense of like, what is this course about? What am I, who are my potentially my ideal clients? What is it going to take to finish? Like, what are all the components that might be involved in this course? And so that kind of starts to get the ball rolling where it's not just in your head. Cause so much of working with AI, but also I think, don't you think so much of building a course is about getting it out of your head? Right.

Carrie Saunders 39:45

Yeah. And sometimes it's just finding that right next step. We can get so stuck on that right next step. And I feel like both tactics you just gave there can really help us find that right next step and and get it out of our head.

unknown 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

And that's like the whole point is like we want to kind of scale our experience, our knowledge, our wisdom. We want to be able to help people, and maybe not a, you know, only one-to-one or like how we and so yeah, that's it's a process to do that. And I think kind of respecting that process as valid and kind of hard sometimes is helpful for us because sometimes we're like, why is it? I don't know, why is it hard? It's like, well, it can be challenging, right?

Carrie Saunders 40:24

Yeah. And we we like we said in the beginning of the episode, we feel like it can be we can feel so alone sometimes doing these things. And you know, we we need that extra voice or person to like you know talk these things out. And sometimes sometimes AI is the right one, sometimes it's a real, real, real person that we need to talk things out through to get to that right next step and to stop overthinking and stop procrastinating. Totally. Yeah. So then I know you have a really cool free quiz for us. You want to tell us about that? And we will make sure to post that link in our show notes.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

You know, I've made so many quizzes, I don't even know when I sent the person I am, but no, I well, this one's for gaining momentum and finishing and selling our course.

Carrie Saunders 41:13

So it kind of goes along with our last one.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Totally. Yeah, I think that uh so this is a super quick, maybe six

The 90-Day Plan And Momentum Quiz

SPEAKER_01 41:20

minute quiz. Some of it are open, and this is an example of something you can create for your course too, which is really cool. I used um base 44 to vibe code, which is just like saying a thing and then an app being created out of code. And um, and so it's a it was like all my idea, created the prompt in AI, and then put that into base 44 and it built an app for me, which is like a quiz six, seven questions. Some of it is open response, which is really cool because it will use your quotes. But the point of the quiz is to kind of diagnose what is getting in your way of finishing your course and launching it. And in that, it kind of helps to give us some key problem solving that we can uh we can approach um once you complete it. Yeah. So, but it doesn't take too long, which is great.

Carrie Saunders 42:17

That sounds really great. It sounds like a really great way to get unstuck. Sometimes we just need a little outside perspective or you know, a result from a quiz to be like, oh yeah, I think I actually already knew that. I just needed it to be told to me again. Because I find that to happen to me a lot. So I just need to be told again the same thing sometimes, you know, or you know, have a fresh perspective on it. Totally. Well, thank you so much, Stephanie, for being on our podcast today. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I think our audience is going to enjoy it and find a great way to either to use AI and to, you know, get the darn thing done and get that, you know, course built and maybe even make an ecosystem out of it where they can serve their clients and their customers so much better and feel more fulfilled themselves. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Wasn't that such a great conversation with Stephanie? One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is that finishing a course isn't usually a technology problem. It's really a lack of knowledge, it's more often a momentum problem. It's perfectionism, overthinking, trying to do too much all at once, or getting stuck wondering if the course is good enough before anyone has ever even seen it. I love Stephanie's perspective on using AI as a support tool rather than a replacement for expertise. The goal isn't to remove the human element, the goal is to remove unnecessary friction so that you can focus on sharing your knowledge and helping people. If you've been sitting on a course idea, a training program, or an offer you wanted to create for months or maybe even years, I've been there before. Hopefully, this conversation gives you a little bit of encouragement to take that next step. And if you'd like help identifying where you can build momentum in your course creation journey, be sure to check out that quiz that Stephanie has for us, and we will have the link to that in our show notes. Thanks for joining us again today, and we will see you next week.