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Welcome to Coffee Powered Systems, equipping women with actionable steps to overcome, overwhelm and streamline business and life. So grab your favorite drink and come hang out with me. I'm your host, Miranda Merten. Welcome back to Coffee Powered Systems. I'm your host, Miranda, and I want you to go ahead and grab your favorite drink and chat with me as we talk about online courses. I've got a glass of wine tonight as I hang out with you all.

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And I want to talk about online courses because it is the beginning of a new year, as we all know. And as an entrepreneur, I know that you have a few courses likely way more than just a few sitting somewhere in your cloud drive or your membership site waiting for you to either start them or complete them. If you have been in business for any amount of time, this is going to be true. So I would like for you to think back on how many courses over the last, let's say, three years that you've purchased, that you haven't finished or maybe even you haven't started yet.

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I've got courses that I haven't started yet. I have seen courses. And I'm like, I think I'll be able to use that one day. And it's such a great price. I'm going to go ahead and buy it. And then it sits there and I never use it. So this is what we're going to talk about and see if we can get through some of these online courses that we've purchased over the years. If you're anything like me, I know that you have this need and this want to continue learning, but that is where we fall into that trap.

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We fall into the trap of learning, learning, learning all the time. We think that it has to be perfect and we can never get enough learning before we can get started. And it's great to keep learning and building our knowledge base. But guess what? You don't need any more information. You need a transformation. Take that in. And repeat after me. I don't need any more information, I need a transformation now, I guarantee that out of all the courses that you have, there's probably a few of them sitting in there.

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That is an online course and it's gold. It's what you've been waiting for, but you haven't taken the time to use it or you forgot it was there and you spent somewhere between three hundred to two thousand dollars to learn from these people that you respect and admire, but you just let it sit either. The course ended up being so long because some of these courses go for months. They have, you know, upwards of 12 modules and all this information and you get overwhelmed.

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I get it. Or you just get too busy and you think I'm going to purchase a Pinterest course and you get bogged down and you decide to put Pinterest on the back burner. It happens. It happens to a lot of us. And then you turn around and then go back to Google picking and hunting through all the free stuff and piecing things together through Google. And that typically doesn't work because you're learning different strategies from different people. And the evolution is not going to be as good as just using one course from one location.

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So if you've made a resolution this year to really take advantage of all the courses that you have stockpiled, I'm going to tell you six ways to be really intentional about finishing them so that you can actually learn something and take action and have that transformation. Now, the upside is that it's going to propel you forward. Once you get on a track of taking action, the endorphins are going to kick in. You're going to really love it. You're going to start doing more.

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Now, the downside is that you might end up buying more courses because you finished it. You're excited. You want to move on to the next step. That's understandable. I totally get it. But that's a decision I can't help you with. If you end up buying more courses after this, that's on you. So what I'm going to talk about is six ways that you can guarantee that you're going to finish some of these courses or at least a couple of them.

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OK, so I want you to set a goal of how many courses. First, you're going to have to know the courses you have. So the first thing you're going to do, number one, is inventory taken, inventory of the courses that you have. I bet you'll be surprised at the amount you have. You probably don't realize it. What I do when I purchase a course, I download it and I save it to a specific jump drive.

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And so I have all my courses in there so I can quickly go in. I can plug that, drive into my computer and see exactly what course I want and pull it up. So if you have something like that where they're all in one place, or maybe you have it sitting in a cloud drive like Google or Dropbox, go ahead in there. Or if you're still part of a membership where they have those courses sitting or they have the module sitting, then you have probably I hope you have a list of all your websites that you are subscribed to so you can easily count those up and figure it out.

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Now, if you've got just two courses or whether you've got 15 courses, I want you to count those up, take inventory, take note of what they are, what they're teaching you and how many you have, because you're going to have different a different range of courses from learning different types of social media to maybe copywriting or content creation. Figure out what you've got and get that written down or notated somewhere. The second step is going to be to theme your months.

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So if you've got a ton of courses, you may want to break it down and just say, I'm just going to do three courses over the course of the next year, especially if there are larger courses. You don't want to get too overwhelmed and get this grandiose theme of I'm going to do one courses a month. That's a lot of work and you probably don't need that much information all at one time anyway. So you can theme your months. You're going to have to take a stock of where you are in business if you're just starting out and you want to get really good at content creation or learning how to write, copy or maybe building your newsletter.

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Those are the ones that you're going to start with, start where you're at, and then figure out where you're going to go. So maybe create a small or simple funnel of what do you need at the top of your funnel? Maybe you need to start with an opt in offer. Maybe you just want to grow your email list or your social media following, find those smaller courses that start you at the beginning.

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And that's where you're going to start. If you've got a Facebook ad course, you're obviously not going to start with that one if you don't already have an offer. So that's what theming your months are going to be and you want to see it through the funnel. So in January and February, you want to focus on audience building and content creation, then you're going to find those courses in your arsenal and then go from there. If you're a little bit further on and you are looking to maybe jazz up your copy and you have a copywriting course or a sales page course, that's where you're going to start.

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So really take inventory of those. If you're really further along in business and you're trying to amp up your numbers and really buckle down on some things, that's when you're going to get into Facebook ads. Or maybe you've got a course from Amy Porterfield or you've got B school for Marie. For Leo. I have B school that I took a few years ago, so I still have access to it. And every year she sends out the email for alumni that we can join the current class.

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So things like that, if you know there's a session coming up, if you're an alumni of Stu McLarens membership class, then go ahead and make note of that and say this usually happens in July. So that's going to be my focus to brush up on that course. And maybe you can jump into the live group because getting the accountability and doing it with people is really going to help you. You know, stay accountable, stay active and keep moving forward.

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The third thing you can do is to outsource. So if you've got a ton of things and you have a team or maybe you've got some people that you can outsource to, then outsource the courses that you've purchased but don't have time to implement for yourself. So, for example, if you purchased a course on Instagram and you have a social media manager, go ahead and let your social media manager take that Instagram course and then she can kind of pick out the important parts that you probably should know and relay that information to you.

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But since she's the one that's going to be doing the work anyways, it probably makes more sense to have her go ahead and take that course in your place and kind of get a handle on it. Now, you can do the top level things and ask her if there's a really good tidbit in there that you should know, then for sure you want to get that information. But it's going to be beneficial to just pass some things along to your team.

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If you have a copywriter, pass the sales page course to her, there's no need for you to go ahead and go through that whole thing yourself. And then you're going to have to go ahead and teach it to her or explain it to her yourself anyway. So skip the middleman, which in this case would be yourself and outsource it. Number four, prioritize if you do decide to do the courses yourself. So you've only got a few courses or you don't have a team yet and you're really interested in the subject and you want to do it yourself, then you want to make a point to prioritize time for it.

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So choose the same time every day or every few days that you can sit down and go through the courses. And this can be during your founder time, as Jenny Blake calls it, which is your kind of like your CEO time where you work on your business and not in your business. You're not doing client work at that time. You're really building your business and doing the things that will help build your business during that time. So as long as you set a time for it on your calendar, make a space for it.

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So, you know, it's coming up. So you get into the mindset or maybe you prefer doing it on the weekends where you're less likely to get distracted or slack messages, things like that. Just make a time for it, though. That's the important thing. Prioritize it, put it on the calendar. Let it be known in your mind that it's coming up and that make it a set time that you do it. You want to go through especially those larger courses.

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You want to go through the modules in order and at a good pace. You don't want to fly through them. So you want to give yourself enough time to go through the introductions, actually do the work. If they ask you to fill out worksheets and workbooks, you want to complete those and don't rush through it. Otherwise, you're not going to get any benefit out of just speeding through the course. So it does have worksheets and workbooks, make sure you're doing that work as well.

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A lot of times we glance through things and, you know, I've seen the create your customer avatar thing a million times and for a long time I didn't do it. I'm like, OK, well, I know my cousin Avatar, but I actually did it for one of the courses and it really was helpful. So some of these things that you think, Oh, I know what my my motto is, I know what my theme is. I don't really need to sit down and write this out.

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It helps to write it down. So go ahead and make time, prioritize it, make the time to actually sit down and do the work. Number five is use different mediums in different ways. A lot of courses will have different ways that you can do the work. So like I said, there's going to be workbooks or video or audio. If the course has an audio or video portion, you can do that while you exercise. You know, if it's an audio, put it in your headphones and go for a run or if it's a video, maybe you have an exercise bike at home.

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You can sit there with your laptop in front of you or put it on the TV screen. If you have something that can be meant to the screen and just watch it while you exercise and then you can work on the workbooks during that sit down, found their time. Just know that you don't have to always be sitting at your desk and in work mode to consume material. And I think that's where a lot of people get hung up because you get busy and you lose time thinking I don't have the time to sit down and do this while I get out of that mindset and just find different ways to take in the material.

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And the last thing I want to tell you is do it with a friend. Number six is do it with a friend. If you need an accountability partner, then you want to get someone to do it with you. That's usually why challenges work so well. You're doing it with a group of people. That's usually why courses like B School invite alumni to come back into the life session because you get excited to be going along at the same time with other people.

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So if you have a friend in business that's, you know, maybe in the same stage or maybe you have a mastermind that you're a part of and say to your mastermind or pick a pick a buddy in your master mind and tell them what you're doing and what course you're working on and maybe they can do it with you. So those are my six tips that you can do in order to help you get through your online courses. I call it a graveyard because they're all sitting there doing nothing and we don't want them sitting there.

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There's a lot of great information in there. So you spent the money. Don't say that. You've already spent it and it's gone. Say that you spent the money to get that information. So use the information and take the time to go through it so really quickly. No one is taking inventory. Number two is theme your month and your time. Number three is outsource it. Number four, prioritize it. Number five, use different mediums in different ways.

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And number six, do it with a friend. So your action step for this week is just the smallest step for this week is the first step. Take an inventory of your courses. How many do you have? What are the topics? Are any of those going to be good for you in what you're planning on working on this year in twenty twenty one for your business? If so, you want to pull those courses out specifically if you have been trying to really crack down on a certain social media platform and bingo, you've got a course in there on it.

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That's the course you're going to need to focus on either first or at least somewhere down the line this year. All right, so that's what I've got for you today. I want you to tag me on Instagram at Miranda Merten if you get started with this. And I will see you next time.

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Thanks for listening to Coffee Powered Systems. You can find links to everything mentioned in the episode down in the show. Notes are on the website at mirandamerten.com. If you enjoyed this episode and would love to continue mastering your workflows and processes, subscribe on your favorite podcast player and join me here next time.