The Rise of Micro-Courses: A Revolution in Education

Full video transcript

All right welcome everybody here to part two of our implementation Workshop series coming off of the scale with AI Summit joined today by Kelly Tenny who will be hosting this interactive Workshop over the next few hours on micro courses and going from a concept of a micro course and Kelly will share all the different applications that she sees people using micro courses for and turning those into actually creating the micro course so Kelly excited for today’s Workshop we have some folks tuning in with us live here and of course those watching the recording here. What are micro courses and what are we going to be doing here today? Amazing, hello, welcome everybody, I’m excited to be here because I think a micro course is literally a game-changing strategy for anybody’s business.

We’re in a world right now where everybody’s talking about online courses and everybody’s recognizing the importance of having an online course, but coming from a background in education, one of the things that we know is that our brain actually gets overwhelmed when we get too much content all at once. I call it content paralysis, and so a micro course is really like a revolutionary way to be able to deliver content to our audiences in a way that does not produce that content overwhelm. So these are short, bite-sized courses. I like to compare it to a book versus a chapter: a full online course might be your book version, a micro course is the chapter of the book, and we can be really strategic around where we can deliver these short, specific niche courses inside of the business to really elevate your customer journey and to automate people towards investing with you and to purchasing. So I’m excited to be sharing all about it today, and my intention by the end of our workshop is that everybody will have an outline for a micro course that they can use inside of their business.

Excellent, and for those of you watching live as well as in the replay, we love to hear where you’re at right now in creating your own micro courses, and Kelly I know you’ve got a whole flow for how you’re going to run things today, hand the wheel over to you, but yeah I’d love to hear where everyone’s at in the journey of learning to produce micro courses because you were the very first one that opened even the idea up to me about where these would fit into our business, and we ended up creating our micro course for auto scripting almost over two years ago after that initial summit, based on what you taught, which was a great way to put it into practice, and I’m excited to see what we get into today.

Yeah, amazing, thank you Darby, and as Darby said, I’d love to see where everybody is at just within their own online course journey. Do you have an online course? Have you thought about an online course? Have you thought about something that’s shorter? Have you heard about the micro course? So where is everybody at and we’ll go from there. I want to make sure that you guys feel warm and welcome to participate so that I can do some laser coaching and really help you along the way, those of you that are on live, and let’s see what we can create in the next couple of hours. I’d love to know, are we talking full courses, like online courses, or have you tackled the micro course, or is this a new concept to you? Okay, creating a full course, awesome, we’ll look at that.

For anybody who has a full course or who has thought of an idea for a full course, you’re moving in the right direction, right, so what that tells me is that you already have some concepts or some topics that you’ve been thinking of that you’d like to write a course around, and I think the concept of the micro course is something that’s a lot more user-friendly also. It can be really overwhelming, right, like the thought of building out a full course that’s going to be six or seven weeks and really developing that content is something that I see with my own clients. They get overwhelmed with it. It’s a really overwhelming thought to build out a full course, and sometimes just breaking it down and coming up with this concept of a micro course, what is one subtopic that we can create a micro course around, can actually help move you in the right direction and keep you in action, and also be a lot more strategic and flexible inside of your business.

This is a great time, right, we’re coming up at the end of 2024, I know this is a time at the end of the year where a lot of us are looking back on what we’ve achieved in our business in the past year, we’re looking ahead, what are the things that we want to accomplish in 2025, what are our goals, what’s been working, what hasn’t been working, and this could be a really great new strategy that you guys can use in the new year. We’ll talk about the various places, like case studies, where micro courses can be used, and it could be a great starter for all of you for the new year.

I want to start by sharing a little bit about the customer journey, because I always talk about the customer journey, since one of the biggest mistakes that I see when people want to create a course is that typically people have a concept of what the course is that they want to teach. As experts, there’s things that we have knowledge in that we know that we want to get out there to our audience, and I have a background in education, I actually have a master’s in education and curriculum design. One of the biggest gaps that I love to bring over from the educational space is recognizing that it’s really important to have that overall strategy. If you think about math for example, we can’t teach division before we teach addition, right, but I have a lot of entrepreneurs and experts, just like all of you, who come to me and say I love teaching about division, I’m an expert in division, I want to create a course on division, but we always have to ask ourselves, has your audience even been trained in addition first? Because if they haven’t, they might be jumping into your courses without that foundational knowledge that they need.

This is a huge game changer, because traditionally the online course space hasn’t always had the best reputation. I can certainly testify that I have purchased online courses that I never completed, or I got through them and I just never implemented, and I know for everyone on here, we are all in the business of helping our clients see success. None of us want to take the time to build a full online course only to hear that the people who purchased never finished it or actually never implemented what it is that we taught them. That’s why I talk about the customer journey a lot, and I want you to think about what your current customer journey is and where you potentially have holes in that journey, because the whole concept and strategy behind a micro course is that it can be really versatile for any part in your customer journey, and because they’re short and easier to create, we actually have some flexibility on how we use them.

Let me share my screen. Here we have the concept of the customer journey, and traditionally when we hear about funnels, we think about a very large opening at the top that’s going to bring a bunch of our potential clients in, and then that funnel gets narrower and narrower as we move them through, essentially filtering the clients that maybe are not our ideal clients, leaving us with the small amount of people who are our ideal clients so that they purchase. A traditional funnel is wide at the top and meant to filter and streamline something into something very narrow, and traditionally it has a hole at the end, which would mean that once they make the purchase, they fall through the funnel, and that’s where our funnel ends. But I really like to think about funnels and marketing as a flywheel, because I don’t want my clients to fall out of my funnel once they purchase from me. I don’t want them to leave and go someplace else in somebody else’s funnel; I want them to stay in my business ecosystem.

So many of us are really clear on the three traditional parts of the customer journey: one, how do we create awareness about who we are and what we do; two, how do we get them to consider working with us; and three, making that purchase, handing us their credit card and making that investment in our product or service. In traditional marketing this is often where the funnel ends, but in a flywheel we want them to make that purchase and then continue to invest with us, which means we need something on the other end of that purchase that allows them to stay in our ecosystem. If they stay in my ecosystem and I can develop customer and product loyalty, what I’ve also created are my best marketers, my biggest cheerleaders. The business I have when it comes to online courses is probably 90% referral-based; I get a lot of people who follow me on social media and say I never see you promote one-on-one, and it’s because my one-on-one client roster is 90% full without me ever having to actively sell, because I keep my clients inside my ecosystem and I have that loyalty. There’s always a next step that I can support them with, which keeps me top of mind, so that when they hear somebody else wants to create an online course, they automatically share my name.

That’s the brilliance behind the flywheel concept: if we can keep our customers loyal and in our ecosystem, they become our biggest referrers. If you follow anybody like Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels, he talks about the same thing, completing the customer journey so that clients become your biggest advocates and consistently refer people to you. So when you think about an online course versus a micro course, a micro course can be a lot more flexible in where you can use it inside the customer journey. If you have, for example, a five-step system that you’ve thought about creating a course around, think about what that five-step system would look like as five different micro courses versus one complete online course. That’s where we can shift our perspective, because this micro course concept can help fill the gaps inside our customer journey. If we’re missing something in the consideration phase, it’s a really large jump for people to go from becoming aware of us straight into purchase, and I call this the Swiss cheese effect: a lot of people have holes in their customer journey where they’re actually losing potential clients and leaving money on the table because they don’t have a product or offer in place at that point in the journey.

I want you to take a couple of minutes and think about your current customer journey, and specifically the different assets that you have in your business and where those assets belong in this flywheel. A lot of people do really good things when it comes to awareness, that’s our whole visibility component, where we start to build that know-and-trust factor. Awareness is all about the “know” component: do people know who we are, do they know what we do. Traditionally this is where we have free lead magnets, downloads, social media posts, or opt-ins for an email list through free workshops or master classes. I also want to challenge you to recognize that a micro course can be really beneficial in the awareness phase. For example, I have a free micro course on the five steps of a micro course; it’s a free lead magnet that helps build awareness for anybody who doesn’t know what a micro course even is. It’s five videos, maybe eight to ten minutes each, so people can go through it in 45 to 50 minutes. It could have been a download or an ebook instead, but quite frankly it’s a lot quicker for me to record five videos than to sit down and create a polished ebook or lead magnet, so if you’re strong on video and comfortable in front of the camera, know that a micro course could be something you create at this awareness level.

Now, consideration is the next level, where your clients start thinking, okay, now I know what a micro course is and how it could benefit me, is this something I might want to create inside of my business? This is where we move them to the next step. I think this is a big misstep I see in a lot of businesses: people do a lot with free lead magnets and opt-ins, and then they try to move straight into “buy my workshop, buy my product, buy my service,” but they don’t really help close the gap between “is this something for you” and the purchase decision. Again, this is where a micro course could fit in; for example, “five steps to creating a micro course” could be an awareness piece, while “five signs a micro course is perfect for your business” or “three ways a micro course will accelerate client purchases” addresses that consideration phase and speaks to a real pain point, like how do I automate my customer journey and move people closer to purchasing. I like to think of the what as the awareness piece and the how as the consideration piece; the how is really where the paid content should live, whether that’s in a micro course, a full online course, or working directly with you.

We talked about know and trust: the “know” happens in awareness, and the trust piece really builds in consideration, as people consume more content from you and start to recognize you have something that can solve their problem. Then we move to the purchase, and I like to backtrack from the purchase, asking clients what is the overall goal of your course. I don’t believe, and this is probably busting some myths other course experts talk about, that an online course should be the last step where you just feed people in and make money while you sleep. If you think about the idea of the flywheel, we never want an online course to be the last step; we always want something next, whether that’s one-on-one consulting, a mastermind, a longer program, or another online course. When we treat an online course as the last stop, we’re cutting out the retention and advocacy piece. So once they purchase, and there’s probably a number of things people can purchase in your business, we need to think about what comes next, how do you continue to nurture them so that you retain them and so that they become your greatest advocates.

An example for me is a 90-day program called the EMS Success Program, which covers education, marketing, and sales, the three pieces everybody has in their business. Once people finish that program, there are a number of things they can do next: one-on-one consulting, a done-with-you program, a course on marketing and selling their course, or another micro course on building out an academy or umbrella curriculum. There’s always something more for them; it doesn’t always have to be a higher-ticket offer, it can be a lower offer or something as simple as a Facebook group of past clients that you continue to nurture, because if you retain them and stay top of mind, they will become your biggest advocates. There are actually five steps in the customer journey, and you can put a micro course in any of these steps, which is why I want to support you in assessing whether you have holes in your customer journey so we can close them up and accelerate that journey, with a micro course being a fantastic option.

Before we move on, I’m going to share my micro course custom GPT with all of you so we can start to dive in. I want you to think about your customer journey and come up with one topic that you could create a micro course around, asking yourself questions like what do my clients need to know. I get a lot of people who ask what I’d suggest they create a micro course around, and I tell them to think about all the questions they get before people purchase. When you’re sharing your coaching, consulting, or program, those questions people ask you are very powerful hints for what you might want to create a micro course around. I get asked constantly, “what is a micro course?” so obviously having a micro course on micro courses is beneficial; it saves me a lot of time on the back end when I’m on calls with people. Another great topic is “how does a micro course work in my business, where does it fit,” to send to people before we get on a call, because that also saves time.

When we look at sales velocity, there are a couple of factors: how many calls we’re getting on, and how quickly we’re getting through those calls. Sales is a numbers game, so the more sales conversations we have, the more chances we have to increase revenue. Micro courses are great at accelerating sales velocity because they can shorten sales time; if people already know what a micro course is and where it fits in their business, that saves time on the call, letting you have more conversations. Using a micro course to increase sales velocity and save time on pre-purchase explanation can be really valuable, and it helps potential clients feel like you’ve already invested in them, that you’ve pre-educated them before they’re even a paying customer.

From here I want everybody to start brainstorming where a micro course might fit into their business. I’m going to share my custom GPT, called Micro Course Maven, which has knowledge of the customer journey flywheel I shared, as well as an educational, curriculum-design-based approach to micro course design that I use with my own clients. I’m going to demonstrate live using one participant’s business (chronic pain recovery coaching) as an example: I share what she does and ask what could be created for the awareness phase, addressing the mindset shift of “what if it didn’t have to be this way.” The custom GPT comes up with a potential title, target audience, and positioning that would move someone from awareness to consideration, building the know-and-trust factor and introducing an approach to chronic pain recovery while leaving them wanting to learn more. It suggests the course help people understand the connection between the nervous system and chronic pain, and give them a simple technique for a quick win, since micro courses are especially good at delivering that quick win that full online courses, with their content overwhelm, often fail to deliver.

The GPT then builds out possible modules, activities, and the overall outcome someone would achieve, plus quick-win techniques like breathing, body scanning, or grounding tools, and next steps such as inviting them to book a call, attend a workshop, or get a free consultation. You can fine-tune the output by telling it exactly where you want to lead people, whether that’s a paid workshop, a membership, or booking a call, and it can also suggest interaction ideas, delivery platform considerations, promotion ideas, and how to track feedback. I shared the GPT link in the chat so anyone can dive in and start brainstorming where a micro course could fit for them; the more specific information you give it about your business and your goals, the more tailored the output will be.

Other participants shared what they currently sell, including AI-powered workshop-to-course funnels and an AI business professional certification program, and the group worked through where micro courses could slot into those funnels too, both as free entry points and as paid deep-dives within an existing membership. This connects to the pricing question: a lot of times when we create a course we think in terms of a $500 to $2,000 price range for a full course, and once you shrink it down to something like ten 10-minute videos, you probably can’t charge that much for one micro course alone. But once you have a library of many micro courses, people will pay for that vault; a single micro course on one tool might be $97, but stringing several together with a weekly Q&A can get you back up to that thousand-dollar range. Many creators build memberships around this, dropping one micro course a month with a Q&A and support system built in, which works especially well in a world where fewer people want to sit through long-form content.

From here we move from brainstorming to actually building the content. At this stage I move out of the custom GPT and into a fresh ChatGPT or Claude chat so it doesn’t get confused by the other brainstormed ideas. I take the chosen idea and prompt the new chat to act as a curriculum designer, blending in my own expertise, background, and any bio, signature system, or supporting documents I have, so the AI pulls from my authentic content rather than generic advice. This is where I believe we can use AI authentically and ethically: I’m not in the business of telling people to have AI write their course, I’m in the business of using AI to accelerate course creation while tapping into the creator’s own specific wisdom and experience.

Working through the chronic-pain example live, the chat builds out course objectives, a hook, and three modules (why chronic pain disrupts sleep, evening routines for restful nights, and a guided relaxation for better sleep), plus an introduction before module one and a conclusion after the final module. The introduction should cover who you are, your story, your experience, and what the learner is about to get; the conclusion should lead into next steps, like booking a call or a free consultation. If you’re not sure what to say in the intro or conclusion, ChatGPT can help draft ideas or a script for those specific pieces. Once you have a full module outline, you can decide how much content you need before recording; some people can go straight from the outline to a 10-to-15-minute video, others may want the outline expanded further, which AI can also help with.

One clear recommendation from the workshop: do not have ChatGPT script your entire video word-for-word, because that moves you away from authentic, ethical content. Instead, take the outline, put it into bullet points, keep it up on your screen or in your notes, and speak from those bullets in your own voice, the way Kelly demonstrates live by “riffing” from an AI-generated outline for the sleep module. This keeps the content strategically informed by AI while staying authentic in your own words.

Once a module outline is expanded enough to record from, the next step is filming and then bringing the video into Descript for editing. Descript can clean up sound, remove filler words and retakes using its “Underlord” AI feature, recenter you in frame, create clips for social promotion, generate highlight reels, and produce show notes and a full transcript. That transcript is the key to the next step: it can be copied back into ChatGPT and used to generate slide content for a PowerPoint, though PowerPoints aren’t always necessary for a micro-course; the recommendation is to keep it short and lean on the format only when a visual (like an anatomy image) genuinely adds value, saving longer slide decks for full workshops and master classes.

If a PowerPoint or worksheet is wanted, especially for a paid micro-course rather than a free lead magnet, the most authentic approach is to take your own recorded transcript (not an AI-generated outline) and ask ChatGPT to format it into slide content in markdown, then paste that directly into Gamma to generate a full presentation. Gamma lets you choose image sources (stock photos, web images, or AI models like Flux or Ideogram), image style, aspect ratio per slide layout, and how many cards to generate, and you can edit, add notes, swap images, and adjust focus points once the deck is built. Gamma can also generate a full presentation directly from a prompt if you want to see what it produces, but staying in the workflow of pulling from your own transcript keeps the content in your own voice. The finished deck can be presented directly from Gamma, shared via link, or downloaded as a PowerPoint file.

On course platforms, participants asked whether a dedicated platform is required; the answer is no. Tools like Teachable and Thinkific are user-friendly for most creators who aren’t building a massive academy, but you can also deliver a micro-course through an existing community platform like Circle or Mighty Networks, a private YouTube playlist that people access after opting in, or even a simple five-day email drip campaign where you capture emails as a lead magnet and deliver one video a day.

The final piece of the workflow is using the same chat, and the same course content, to generate marketing and sales material. If you have supporting documents about your ideal client and their pain points, you can feed that in and ask the AI to write email sequences, social media posts, and Instagram reel ideas based on the course content, keeping brand voice and mission in mind. This addresses another common sticking point Kelly sees: creators finish filming a course and then get stuck on marketing it. Because the AI already has the course content and information about your ideal client, it can also help prepare talking points for a sales call.

The overall workflow is a repeatable model: use the custom GPT to brainstorm ideas against your customer journey, pick the idea that resonates, build the content outline in a fresh chat until you have enough to record from, film in roughly 10-to-15-minute modules to avoid losing viewer attention, clean up and edit in Descript, optionally generate a PowerPoint in Gamma from your own transcript, and then use the same content to generate worksheets, journaling prompts, email campaigns, and social posts. Kelly closes by inviting participants to keep experimenting with the custom GPT for additional micro-course ideas and reminding viewers that the only remaining step, once the outline exists, is to hit record.