The six mistakes I made in building the Atomic Course Blueprint in public

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

I've now built two courses in public. As a result, I've made some mistakes that I'm learning from. Here's each mistake I made and what I learned from it. That way you can save yourself a lot of excess time and energy if you decide to build a program in public.

Mistake 1: My time-saving strategy was flawed

I started building my course during the last Ship 30 for 30 cohort. To save time, I combined daily updates with creating atomic essays. Seemed like a great solution.

But there were two problems.

1) This only gave me material for 7 or 8 updates. After that, there's nothing new to reveal about creating a course.

2) This did NOT save time. In fact, it took many more hours to to write updates this way. I do NOT recommend this approach. It took less time to write atomic essays about other topics than to try to turn the work I did on the course into an atomic essay each day.

Mistake 2: Creating a bonus course

Usually, I create high value bonuses that don't take a ton of time to make. But this time, I really wanted to teach storytelling so I created a storytelling bonus. I'm proud of that bonus but it added at least one extra week to this project. It would have been better to just be content with the other easier-to-create bonuses instead.

Mistake 3: Creating updates without value

From Kevon Cheung, I learned that all updates are NOT equally valuable. Listing what I did that day to move the course forward doesn't help you at all. Instead, I ought to focus on updates in which I can share something that will help you with your goals.

Mistake 4: Spending too much time creating update posts

Each day after working on the course, I needed to take 10-15 minutes to create an update. That time really adds up especially on days in which I only got to spend 20 minutes on creating the course. So I've taken time to create some update formats that provide value and are also quicker to create.

Mistake 5: Updating my progress daily

I've had a chance to observe other people successful in building in public. And what I've seen is they don't update daily. They typically update 2-3 times a week on social media. Then maybe once a week in their newsletter. So I'll experiment with that as well. It will save time plus ensure that the update has value to you.

Mistake 6: Dropping exercise

All the time it took to create the course while Ship 30 was happening took a toll on my health. I didn't make time to exercise. And when that happens my sleep suffers. And that leads to a bad cycle I'm coming out of now. So with all the time I save avoiding the mistakes above, I'll ensure I get a minimum level of exercise.

But despite these mistakes, I’m really proud of the course I made.

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What is The Problem With Creating Courses?

We all know something that’s valuable to others. Yet, when it comes to packaging our knowledge as a course, the very idea can be overwhelming.

Where do I start? How do I make the time? And how do I make the course interesting?

Fortunately, the Atomic Course Blueprint breaks through overwhelm and answers these age-old questions. You learn how to create a small course with big value.

Want to see how The Atomic Course Blueprint can help you sell your knowledge?

See for yourself here.