About Course Creation Crap: Learning Design for Business with Dr. Catrina Mitchum
The course creation industry is drowning in crap, and Dr. Catrina Mitchum has zero patience for it and the knowledge and experience to fix it.
Every other week, she troubleshoots real course creation problems with real business owners who are genuinely stuck, using actual learning science. Because your people deserve better than a folder of videos they'll never finish.
20: BS Breakthrough: The decision your buyers can’t make is probably your first course
You have a course idea and one decision is standing between you and building it. You go back and forth, and then you do nothing. In this BS Breakthrough, Dr. Catrina Mitchum pulls three lessons from her Episode 19 conversation with bookkeeper Preshus Phifer, who was stuck choosing between QuickBooks, Xero, and a spreadsheet before she could start her course. The answer was not to pick one. The answer was to notice that her buyers couldn't pick either, and that the picking was the real problem to solve.
What We Get Into
Why your research can only hand back the options you put into it. Preshus asked her people whether they wanted QuickBooks or a spreadsheet, and the real answer, "I don't know what to look for," only showed up in an open text box. Dr. Catrina walks through how to rewrite a closed-ended question so that answer has somewhere to land.
Why the decision your buyers can't make is the product. The thing her buyers couldn't do on their own turned out to be the most useful place to put her course-building energy, and it turned a giant software course into a short, concrete four-step email course.
The difference between a homework assignment and a course. Handing someone a document with the columns already in it is not the same as handing them a list, and that space to actually do the work is what makes it teaching.
Why the tool you know best isn't automatically the tool that fits your buyer. Especially when you move from one-on-one services to a course for people who can't afford you yet and are already running things scrappy, not crappy.
Your homework. Revisit the last research question you asked your people, then find the decision they keep getting stuck on before they can even hire you. That sticking point might be your first smaller offer.
The tool you reach for by default is the one that feels easy to you. Easy for you and right for them are two completely different things. If you're stuck on a focus area, this episode gives you a way to stop deciding on your buyers' behalf and start building the thing that helps them decide for themselves.
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
15 Oct 2026
19: Start Small: Turning a Big Course Idea Into a Mini Course You Can Build in a Day
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.
What we get into:
Why Dr. Catrina starts with how the course fits in your business. Preshus wants to move from one-on-one to one-to-many, and that answer shapes everything after it, including how done-for-you help can sit inside a DIY course as an option for the moments when a learner gets stuck.
How to decide whether to teach one tool or several. Dr. Catrina asks how much of the process stays the same no matter what technology someone uses. The answer helps Preshus see that she can pick one lane, prove the concept, and build more based on what people ask for.
When a lead-in needs to be a mini course and when a checklist is enough. People rarely know what they need. Helping them figure that out takes questions and thinking time, which is more than a handout can do.
What happens when an expert outlines a "small" course. Dr. Catrina stops Preshus partway through a growing list and explains why knowing every rabbit hole makes it hard to keep things simple for someone at the beginning. Then she sorts the list into four action-oriented emails: evaluate your business needs, ask your peers, compare your options, and test customer service.
Where to offer a paid call inside a free or low-ticket course. Start with a general "stuck? book a call" link everywhere. After five or six people go through, look at where they get stuck and decide whether to fix it in the course or make the call specific to that sticking point.
If you have an idea that keeps getting bigger every time you sit down to plan it, this conversation shows what it looks like to shrink it into something you can finish. The larger course is still on the table for Preshus. It now has a smaller first step in front of it.
About Preshus Phifer
Preshus Phifer is a bookkeeper who helps women-owned businesses with heart keep track of their money.
Website: https://phiferbookkeeping.com/
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
2 Oct 2026
18: BS Breakthrough: How do you turn a book into a course people can act on?
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.
What We Get Into
Why recording the book does not make it a course
How to find the course that is already in your content
Why the content follows the action
Why your follow-up questions are the coaching
Why you open the door before you build the course
Your Homework
Pull the actions out of whatever you are building from, whether that is a book, a workshop, a coaching framework, or a signature talk. Write down every place where someone should go and do something. That list is your course skeleton, and it will show you where the gaps are.
Take two of the most important hard questions you ask clients. For each one, write the follow-up you would ask if the answer came easily and the follow-up you would ask if it did not.
The better your content already is, the more tempting it is to leave it alone and change the format. This episode gives you a way to keep what works about your book or your coaching and still build something people can do, not only watch. If you have not heard the full conversation with Wayne, start with Episode 17.
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
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