Course Lab: Lessons from Successful Online Course Creators

Get in the groove with course creator Tad Hargrave’s unconventional marketing strategies and course structures. From pay-what-you-can workshops to clean-your-room homework, Tad’s non-traditional approach proves you don’t have to sell your soul for success.

Show Notes

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Tad Hargrave is the founder of Marketing for Hippies, a company that teaches ethical marketing strategies to business owners. Traditional marketing techniques can feel outright icky to some business owners, so how can you get course recognition without feeling smarmy?

     In this episode of Course Lab, Danny, Abe and Tad cover a ton of ideas to get your creative juices flowing with alternative ways to structure and market your course. Tune in and mellow out as these experts discuss relevant and useful strategies that you can implement to create good vibes all around.

In this episode we discuss:
  • Why business owners with “hippie” values reject traditional marketing - and what to do if that describes you.
  • How seemingly unrelated course assignments can help clients within the course content.
  • Ways to filter out potential clients who may not be a good fit.
  • How to structure group work to reiterate and solidify content.
  • How to use the “hot seat” approach to benefit everyone in the group.
  • Creating structures for peer support within your course. 
  • Practical ways to ensure guaranteed relevance of content for different groups. 
  • Why credentialism is often overrated. 
  • Danny and Abe’s debrief.

“So now that’s what I teach - how to market your business in a way that not only works and is effective but also feels genuinely good to everybody involved.”


– Tad Hargrave


Guest Bio:
Tad Hargrave is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing (and then learned to be a hippy again).

     He spent his late teens being schooled in a mixed bag of approaches to sales and marketing – some manipulative and some not. When that career ended, he spent a decade unlearning and unpacking what he’d been through.

     How had he been swept up in it? Why didn’t those approaches work as well as advertised? Were there ways of marketing that both worked better and felt better to all involved? It took him time but he began to find a better way to market.

     By 2006, he had become one of the first, full-time ‘conscious business’ marketing coaches (for hippies) and created a business where he could share the understanding he had come to: Marketing could feel good. You didn’t have to choose between marketing that worked (but
felt awful) or marketing that felt good (but got you no clients).

     Since 2001, he has been touring his marketing workshops around Canada, the United States, Europe, and online, bringing refreshing and unorthodox ideas to conscious entrepreneurs and green businesses that help them grow their organizations and businesses (without selling their souls). Instead of charging outrageous amounts, he started doing most of his events on a pay what you can basis. He is the author of sixteen books and workbooks on marketing.


Resources or websites mentioned in this episode:
Mirasee
Tad’s website
Tad’s YouTube


Credits:
Guest: Tad Hargrave
Hosts: Danny Iny & Abe Crystal
Producer: Cynthia Lamb
Executive producer: Danny Iny
Assembled by: Geoff Govertsen
Audio Post Supervisor: Evan Miles, Christopher Martin
Audio Post Production: Post Office Sound
Music soundscape: Chad Michael Snavely


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Music and SFX credits: 

• Track Title: Bossa BB
Artist Name(s): Marie
Writer Name: Chelsea McGough
Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

• Track Title: Grace
Artist Name(s): Shimmer
Writer Name: Matthew Wigton
Publisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONS

• Track Title: Carousel Lights
Artist Name(s): Chelsea McGough
Writer Name: Chelsea McGough
Writer Name: Matthew Wigton
Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION
Publisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONS

• Track Title: Coo Coos
Artist Name(s): Dresden, The Flamingo
Writer Name: Matthew Wigton
Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION


Episode transcript:Hip Course Vibes (Tad Hargrave)  coming soon

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Creators and Guests

Host
Abe Crystal
Host
Danny Iny
Producer
Cynthia Lamb
Guest
Tad Hargrave

What is Course Lab: Lessons from Successful Online Course Creators?

Want to create a hugely successful online course, one that has a major impact on the lives of your students? If you want to learn how to create online courses from the best, you turn to Mirasee; and if you want to host that course, you can’t go wrong using the powerful platform, Ruzuku.

Ruzuku co-founder Abe Crystal and Mirasee founder and CEO Danny Iny know what it takes to stand out and be successful in the online courses industry. And now they’re teaming up to share this intel with you in their new Course Lab podcast.

In every episode, Course Lab showcases an entrepreneur/course creator who is nailing it with their online course -- and not because they’re teaching people how to make more money. In fact, most of these creators occupy unusual or overlooked niches, like music, writing for video games, overcoming inherent bias, and finding your life purpose.

Turns out, the key to their success all comes down to their online course design. In this podcast, Danny and Abe reveal the most important design tactics that are making all the difference for these online course creators -- and how you can implement them in your own online course. So if you want to create a successful online course that changes the lives of your students, this is your big chance to learn how it’s done from the best in the industry!