Episode 400: The Online Course Crash of 2025 – Why Frameworks, Not Courses, Win Now

Tara Bryan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Scalable Expert Podcast, Episode 400, The Course Crash of 2025 – Why Information Alone No Longer Sells. Your course didn’t fail because the content was bad. It failed because the model is broken. In 2025, information is everywhere. AI can generate lessons faster than you can record them. But transformation? That still requires humans. The online course boom is crashing, not because people have stopped learning, but because they’re demanding more than content. They want you, not your Google drive. The future belongs to experts who package their process into a proprietary framework and deliver it as an experience where clients feel seen, guided, and supported. That’s how you stand out. That’s how you scale.

All right, so let’s dive in and talk about how this transformation has happened and what’s going on right now in the industry. So often I have people come to me and they’re like, oh, I’ve been trying to [00:01:00] sell my course, and it’s different like things aren’t selling or you look out at some of the people maybe you’ve been following who are big names out in the industry, and they’re not selling the same way. They have transformed their course experience, their packaged course into something that has a more human element to it. So how do you do that without maxing out your time, right? The fact that courses, traditional courses and evergreen, information products aren’t selling is not because what you have to offer isn’t valuable. They’re not selling because a lot of times they’ve been built just based on, you know, I’m just gonna give you all of my knowledge, put it in your head, and then you go figure out what to do with it. And we need to look at that model a little bit differently. So we’re gonna talk about that, talk about how you turn that into your proprietary framework, teach [00:02:00] that as an experience, which is a little bit different, while not like throwing it all out, right?

So a lot of times what I’m seeing people do right now is they’re throwing out their online course, they’re throwing out everything they’ve created and moving to live events or moving to a one-on-one, back to a one-on-one model. And my friends that is not actually going to get you anywhere, it’s actually gonna set you back. So before you just throw it all out because it’s not selling the same way it used to, let’s talk about how to reposition what you have so that you can deliver on that transformation. You can deliver on the results that people are asking for, that you are uniquely qualified to give them.

So again, as I talked about, early on, it was that you could just take all of your information, an experience of your expertise, package it into some videos in a course platform and then sell it [00:03:00] and give people a result. Some people get results, some don’t, right? So I dunno about you, but I have some courses that are on my shelf that I will never pick up again that people had sold to me as, here’s the answer to the question that you’re looking for. And so that was the early model, right? That was what was selling because people just didn’t know any different. And now with AI, with the fact that there’s so many courses out there that are not necessarily good, right? We have to look at solving the problem a little bit differently.

So when we look at what we want to do as business owners, we want to create and package our expertise into something that can sell at scale, so something that we can sell and deliver on without it maxing out all of our time. So you [00:04:00] may have come from a services environment where you have created custom work, you’re doing one-on-one, and you’ve moved to a one to many model where you’re doing coaching and group work, and so now you wanna package what you’re doing, your group model into something that’s leveraging your time. Still totally doable, right? Still is directionally the way that you wanna go. If you have in the past have sold a course and it’s not selling in the same way, what I would recommend that you do is look at how you’ve put the course together, right? Like, are you building it based on a framework? Switch that around a little bit, drive towards that transformation and not just delivering information. But you may need to wrap that course into a greater experience that still allows you to leverage your time, but also delivers an amazing experience and a consistent experience for your [00:05:00] customers. So I’m gonna look and break down both of those models because I think that absolutely, there’s a market opportunity for both, it’s looking at how do you reposition your course in a new way.

So in 2025, because we have access to more and more information and resources that distill information for us, right? So we’ve kind of gone from having so much information with Google and everything else that we just don’t even know how to filter it to now AI has given us a way to filter that information into something that is meaningful based on questions we’re asking or based on how we want to kind of assemble the information, which I would say is the coolest thing about AI, right, is you can take a ton of information and distill it down into something that’s meaningful. You can argue whether or not it’s accurate or not, that’s not the question. It’s we’ve got tons of information. Now we can distill it into something that’s [00:06:00] meaningful.

And so the next piece of that is, okay, so great, we’ve distilled it down. Now how do we apply it to what we’re working on? How do we make it go from information to application and that is still where having a course or a program or some sort of experience for customers is helpful, right? Because they’re still looking for, how do I apply this in my world? How do I take this and make it come to life? How do I have somebody guide me and help me to actually implement these things into my work, into my practice, into whatever it is that they’re trying to learn.

And so it used to be that we could just take the information that we had as experts and put it out there and give it to people. Then it was like, okay, I got too much information. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t need more information from somebody else, right? You can do that in a book. You can do that in a different way. [00:07:00] So then we went to, okay, great, we take our ability to take that information and distill it into something meaningful and then deliver it to people. Now, AI has taken that role, and so we don’t need to do that anymore. So now it’s taking that distilled information and helping people apply it into their world. So that is the process, the evolution, of what’s happening in 2025 is happening very quickly, but that is what’s going on.

So when you look at your course, you look at your program, you look at whatever it is that you’re delivering, the question becomes how do you deliver an experience that helps somebody take all of the information and personally add it to their world, whatever that looks like, so that they can apply it and implement it into their practice. And that is the game. That is, if you can do that, then that allows you to get somebody that transformation and help them get to the finish line [00:08:00] that they’re trying to get to. They will pay you for that all day long. Right? And that still leverages your time, that still leverages your attention and it provides an amazing experience for that customer because they’re actually taking the model and applying it into their world, which means they’re gonna get some sort of transformation or result in their business, which then allows them to continue to grow.

So the question is your course delivering that today? Are you able to not only just deliver information if your course is based on information, my friends, I’m sorry, you’ve gotta start over. Now is the time to transform your course into a path, a roadmap to take them from where they are today to where they want to go, to that transformation. And you are creating the fastest path for them to get there, right? Like that is that sort of how that [00:09:00] information is distilled into something that’s meaningful is you’re creating an action plan for them based on your experience, based on your expertise. So you are saying, listen, don’t do all the things. Just do these steps in this order, and you’ll go from here to here. That is you creating and identifying your proprietary framework, your signature framework that allows you to take your expertise and package it into something that provides someone a transformation, provides them an experience to go through where they’re just following the step-by-step path, right? They’re following that roadmap. They’re going from this destination to this destination. That is the sort of the next baby step in an evolution of creating courses and programs, is creating that proprietary framework, giving them that consistent roadmap and providing that to all of your customers regardless of how you’re delivering it. That is the piece that AI cannot do, and that is the piece [00:10:00] that really allows you to stand on your authority to say, hey, listen, I’ve gotten other people this result. I’ve gotten this result myself. Now I can get it for you because I’m eliminating all of the distraction and the crazy and the obstacles and hurdles along the path, right? That’s your job as somebody who’s delivering an experience. So that’s the second thing.

And then the third is how do you wrap that into being able to really get targeted with each one of your clients to really help them overcome their own hurdles, their own mindset traps, their own obstacles that they’re running into. Because if you have everything else defined and you are running based on what your framework is, then when you get to show up with your clients you are laser focused on how to help them because you’re just running through your model and then you can get really specific [00:11:00] into their specific way that they need to implement that into their business. So you are not maxing out your calendar ’cause you’re not doing all of the things. You’re not making up custom answers for every single person that’s coming into your world. You are literally just helping them overcome their own obstacles as they’re going through your framework. That is the third step, and that is when you see your business completely transform because that allows you to create a scalable experience. It’s consistent, it’s scalable, you can deliver that to as many people as you want to in an infinite number of ways, hence the Infinite Scale Method, and really get personalized in terms of what somebody specifically needs. Because I promise you, if you have your proprietary framework and you’re like, here are the steps, go through these seven steps, or these nine steps, or whatever they are, and if you go through these steps, you’re gonna get to this outcome, right? Like that’s your job is to get them to the fastest path to that [00:12:00] outcome. Every single person should start here and end here. Start here and end here. Start here and end here. It should be so straightforward and so boring to you because everyone is starting here and ending here.

Where it gets personalized and unique and custom is how people are navigating through. You may have five people and they’re all coming from a different starting point, but the steps that they need to take are the same. Each of them are gonna have a unique way that they’re implementing this within their business. That is how you show up and help them overcome the obstacles and hurdles. Honestly, that is the most fun that you are gonna have is to help people kind of work through all of their mess that they’re going through in the middle of the experience. It’s not in creating a custom path for this person and a custom path for that person and a custom path for that person, right? That’s exhausting. That’s gonna exhaust [00:13:00] you. Being able to show up and uniquely help somebody overcome an obstacle or hurdle that they’re working through, within your framework, is where the magic happens for you and for your customers.

So that’s the evolution of courses and programs and scalable delivery systems in 2025. And so if you are looking at your product suite, your offers that you have, and you’re like, how do I transform this and maximize my time, that my friends is the way to create a scalable system that helps you become the authority in your space and helps you consistently help more and more people in your business.

Imagine if you could take the kind of where you’re maxed out right now. Maybe you’re maxed out at 20 clients and you take that and you add 200 or 2000 or more. How do you do that? [00:14:00] Right? Answer that question for yourself. If I have to serve 2000 people today, how would I do that? What would that look like? That’s the question to ask yourself as you’re evolving your proprietary framework or your expertise as you go from just packaging information into a course that you can put into some sort of course platform like Kajabi or whatever else, to creating an experience that really is consistently getting your clients’ results. That’s the evolution. That’s what’s happening in 2025. That is how, my friends, you actually use AI to enhance your business, to enhance the customer’s experience, and allows you to show up at a completely different level and honestly have more fun in your work.

So there you go. That is the episode for today about what is actually happening today in the online business world. Because, if you have seen other [00:15:00] people, industry leaders or other people who are in your niche start to talk about how they’re completely changing their business model, this is where they’re going to. So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and just get rid of everything that you’ve done in the past. Look at how you can connect it to your proprietary framework and to that transformation and results that you’re getting for each one of your customers.

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