Course Creation Crap: Learning Design for Business with Dr. Catrina Mitchum

16: BS Breakthrough: What If Support Is the Thing You're Actually Selling?

Course Creation Crap: Learning Design for Business with Dr. Catrina Mitchum

Show Notes

You sell a course, people buy it, and then it just sits there. Sound familiar? In this BS Breakthrough, Dr. Catrina Mitchum pulls the lessons out of her conversation with Brenda Brusegard of Informed Tech Solutions, whose good, well-built course still wasn't getting finished. The problem wasn't the content. It was everything wrapped around it, and the fix says a lot about why so many self-paced courses aren't getting people results.

What We Work Through

Why "add more content" is almost never the answer when buyers go quiet, and how to figure out whether you have a content problem or an offer problem

What it looks like when support becomes the product: leading with a membership and letting the course ride along inside it, instead of selling a self-paced course and sneaking in the calls

Why some topics, like AI, simply need ongoing support because self-paced learning alone can't keep up with a moving target

The expectation wall: having buyers write down what they expect before they get access, so you can meet the mismatch head on instead of losing people to it

How to make mini lessons about the learner: swapping "talking at them" for assessment questions that get people looking at their own business

Your homework: ask your buyers what they expected and what got in the way, then rewrite your next live teaching segment as an assessment

If your buyers keep telling you, in words or in silence, that they can't get to your course, this episode gives you a way to hear what they're actually saying. Course support isn't a consolation prize for a broken course. Sometimes it is the offer.

Referenced in This Episode

Episode 15 with Brenda Brusegard

Informed Tech Solutions

The AI Lab

If your course exists but something feels off, nobody's finishing or it just isn't landing the way you know it could, grab the free Course Fixer Checklist at www.cmlearningdesign.com/free-stuff and start figuring out what to fix first.

Not sure where you fit? Book a free 15-minute Clarity Call at tidycal.com/cmitchum/15-minute-consult.

Apply to be a guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/RDHPskg81r3GhSd59⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Connect with Catrina:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.cmlearningdesign.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/in/catrina-mitchum-learning-design⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Subscribe to my ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cut the Course Creation Crap Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music credit: Alex Mitchum

Alex, Catrina's youngest brother, was a jazz guitarist and his family established a scholarship in his name at his alma mater. Please consider donating: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.alexmitchum.com/scholarship⁠

More from Course Creation Crap: Learning Design for Business with Dr. Catrina Mitchum

Oct 15, 2026

Preshus Phifer arrived with a plan for a full DIY bookkeeping course, an unresolved question about which software to teach, and a pattern of scrapping good ideas before building them. Dr. Catrina Mitchum works through the problem with her live and lands somewhere smaller and more useful: a four-email mini course that Preshus says she could build in a day.

Oct 2, 2026

If you have a book, a workshop, or a talk you have given 50 times, you have heard the advice to record it, put it behind a login, and call it a course. Wayne Pratt came into Episode 17 with that plan for his book, Freshly Brewed Coaching, along with a hard drive full of other people's courses he never finished because they were dull. Dr. Catrina Mitchum follows up on that conversation with three BS Breakthroughs about what a book and a coaching practice carry that a recording drops: the doing, the follow-up questions, and the people.

Sep 17, 2026

Wayne Pratt has a hard drive full of courses he paid for and never finished, and he refuses to build one like them. In this episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum coaches Wayne through turning his business fable, Freshly Brewed Coaching, into a course that actually gets people from dream to done, without becoming another pile of videos nobody watches.

Aug 20, 2026

You built the course. People bought it. And then nobody did anything with it. That's exactly where Brenda Brusegard found herself, and in this episode, she and Dr. Catrina Mitchum work through what's actually missing and what it looks like to add the support layer that makes a course worth buying in the first place.

Aug 6, 2026

When you move your live coaching or teaching into a self-paced course, the instinct is to take what already works and translate it. Same content, same order, same structure. But what if the thing that makes it work when you're in the room is you? This bite-sized BS Breakthrough pulls from Dr. Catrina Mitchum's recent live course design consultation with ADHD coach Corie Wightlin, and the three design shifts that came out of it apply well beyond ADHD coaching.

See all episodes →