The Triad Approach — How To Create A Compelling How-to Book Or Course
Just three principles make your how-to information irresistible
Just three principles make your how-to information irresistible
When you create a how-to book or course, it’s easy to get focused on merely providing information. You get concerned about providing enough content so people will value it. But in reality, people don’t really want more information. They want clear results. Answer three questions to make sure your book or course provides the results that people are looking for.
One morning in Port St. Lucie, Florida, a car was driving backward and in circles. The driver’s seat was empty. Nearby, a man was watching looking a bit frantic. Several minutes later police were gathering around.
What was going on?
Earlier, the owner of the car got out and shut the door with his dog, Max, inside. His canine friend then accidentally hit the gear shift causing the car to reverse. The car only stopped after it hit a mailbox. No one was hurt.
When Max hit the gearshift, the vehicle was propelled into action. Such a small movement produced quite a comical incident. When we create books and courses, we often want to propel people into action. We want them to feel driven to take one step after another until they get to the end, satisfied that they’ve learned something useful.
To create an information product that does that, we use the triad approach which consists of three questions.
Who is this for?
What rock is in their path?
What method will I use to get the rock out of their way?
1) Who is this for
When I was a public school teacher, I had to commute. On one cold morning, the usual quiet drive down the freeway felt quite dangerous. There was a thick fog. I could barely see in front of me.
There were times when I saw lights in front of me only seconds before I might run into them. I drove very slowly and carefully and so did other drivers. Somehow I got to work safely that morning but it was a bit nerve-wracking.
When we create an information product, there are times when we are also like a driver in the fog. This is when we don’t know our audience. This can happen because we know our topic well, so we assume we know what others need to know about it.
But without defining a clear audience first, you don’t know which elements your readers need to know and which they don’t, so you can sometimes include too much information in your book or course.
That’s why knowing your audience can save you time and help you create a more focused product
In the early 2000s, I wrote a book to help students write for the SAT Essay. Since I had taught a few hundred students how to write for this essay, I knew what they needed to get better. I’d learned what interested them, what bored them and what their goals were.
Because of this, creating the course was like driving when the sun is shining and the air is clear. When you create a course for people you already serve, you’ll want to reflect on who those people are, what they need and what are effective ways of communicating with them to help you focus.
However, despite my book being a fit for the high school students, it was also picked up by another audience for which it was less ideal — teachers
I got testimonials from teachers, so it did turn out to be useful to them. But it required extra work for them to figure out how to use what I created in their classrooms. So if I wanted to sell to more teachers, I would have written a very different book. It would have contained lesson plans and worksheets so they could more easily teach a curriculum to an entire class.
The ideas would be basically the same but the approach would be different to address their unique needs. Because I knew my audience was high school students, I didn’t need to create these extra elements. I didn’t have to include everything. I only included what the students needed.
This focus on what is essential is why it is so vital that you know for whom you are creating a course, book or article
If you don’t know the group you’ll be creating information for, you’ll want to do some research. You can peruse groups on Facebook in which your audience hangs out. You can read Amazon reviews of books they’ve read in your domain to find out what they like and dislike in a book or course.
However, one of the best forms of research is having a real conversation with at least one person you intend to help. That will give you a much better sense of what is needed. There’s something about talking to a real person that makes creating learning materials much easier.
If you struggle with this step, it’s likely for a common reason: Defining an audience that is far too broad
Even with a large topic like weight loss, if you decide your audience is women or men or teenagers, there is very little to go on as far as focusing your course.
However, if you focus your info product on a narrower subgroup in one of these categories, such as new mothers who want to return to their pre-baby figure, you’ll notice your material far easier to create. This is because it makes it possible to answer the next question.
2) What rock is in their path
Once you know who you will help, you need to find out what’s in their way. What’s stopping them from learning your subject? What’s keeping them from their goal? What’s the fog blocking their vision?
There may be more than one obstacle but you will choose the main one to highlight in your course. For my SAT Essay book, the obstacle was slowness caused by indecision. These students would sit and stare at the prompt for a while before they started, wasting precious minutes they needed to write their essays.
In a course I taught on one-on-one coaching, the obstacle was that people were in their heads too much trying to figure out the right things to say to a client. A program to help people make better presentations that I worked in specifically addressed fear of public speaking.
Each of these courses was more powerful because they addressed specific obstacles. And the chosen obstacle changes the focus of the course as you’ll see in the next step.
3) What method will I use to get the rock out of their way
With each obstacle you uncover, a method is required to overcome it. And this is why defining an obstacle changes your course or book.
For example, two essay writing courses for high school students had different obstacles. One focused on the fear of writing bad essays. Its method was to engage students in tiny exercises that build writing skills and confidence. The other focused on helping students who wrote very slowly. It taught them a 2-minute outlining technique to help them write faster.
Two different cartooning courses also illustrate this principle
One focused on helping people who thought they couldn’t draw create professional cartoons. Its method was small drawing exercises that built skill and confidence. Another addressed the problem of being unable to sell one’s cartoons. It taught how to find the right buyers and make them a mouth-watering proposal.
As you can see, different obstacles change a course so that it requires different techniques and strategies to overcome the obstacle. Once the obstacle is clear, you will almost always find a way to help your audience overcome it and as a result, your students will achieve far greater success than those courses that don’t attack problems head-on.
Summary
The three questions to answer before creating your online or offline course are:
Who is this course for?
What rock is in their path?
What method will I use to get the rock out of their way?
Once you answer these questions, you will often find that you feel a lot more focused as you create your course. You won’t be driving along in circles, you’ll be moving ahead more confidently since you have a much clearer picture of what you and your audience need to do.