So here we are at titles and transformations.
And this is all about understanding how to give your project, your online course, a good title and how to scope out what the level of transformation is that you’re going to be offering your learners.
So it’s the thing that is most specific to your subject and your learners. And remember, previously, I talked about the sort of levels of transformation that you can take people through.
So maybe you’re taking people from a complete beginner to expert, that’s quite a big transformation. Or maybe you’re just taking them the next step on their journey of understanding.
What you really, really need to do is make sure that you pick something they’re looking for. And if you skipped over the last lesson of the previous section, I would strongly advise that you go back and have a little look at that one again, it won’t take very long, I promise. But it’s really important that you pick something that people are actively looking for.
And by that I mean it is something that solves a problem that they’ve currently got or a desire that they currently have. And the reason to do that is that you will never have to work very hard to sell something to somebody who’s actively seeking the solution that you’ve got.
Your title and your promise are kind of the what and the why of your online course. So your title is like a label. It’s a shortcut, it’s the initial filter for people to understand whether or not the online course is something that they are interested in, or not interested in.
It’s also a really good idea to have a title that you can use very easily in conversation. Because you never know, you, when you’re going to be in, say, a networking meeting, or in an online conversation with somebody, or even just passing somebody in the gym or something like that. I’ve certainly had that experience where people have asked questions, and I’ve needed a quick and easy way of explaining what it is that I do, what I’ve got for them.
And so it will be the same for you with your online course. So your title, in addition to be, to being the what of your online course is also there as a really quick and easy label for you to use to help people understand what it is your online course is about.
Your promise, therefore, is a plausible transformation. So it’s a bit like a subtitle, I guess. And the way that you need to think about this is it’s the level of transformation that you are offering somebody that needs to be plausible within the realms of your expertise, your experience, and what they think is possible for them.

That might all sound a little bit complicated. But if you stick to the what and the why, the title is your what, and your promise, your transformation is the why, then I think you’re probably going to be a good way there in having this one sorted out.
If however, you would like a little bit of extra help on this one, stick around for the next video and I will go through the how, to discover what your title and your transformation, your promise for your online learners should be. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next lesson.

Alright, welcome to this the first of the two videos in the How To part of this lesson on titles and transformations or thinking about your title and your promise for your online learners, or your potential online learners.
And the reason that I split it into two is because there are a couple of concepts that I want to introduce you to, before we get into the nitty gritty of really thinking about what our title and our promise, our transformation might be.
First up, I want to talk about a consumer psychology buyer motivation model. It’s one that was introduced to me by a business buddy online business buddy of mine a few years ago and it’s really stuck with me.
There are lots of different models out there, which attempt to explain reasons why we buy, reasons why people buy anything. And if you’ve got one that you’re used to using, then absolutely have at it, don’t worry about it. But this is one that I find particularly useful to help me understand buyer motivations.
And the reason it’s important for you to have a model to work with is because you need to understand the motivations that really fit behind why your potential learners might want to take your online course, above the ordinary stated reason of wanting to learn more about your subject matter.
Okay, so let’s go through that first. And it says that there are seven reasons why we buy anything, absolutely anything. And the first one is so that we can make money. So this is a little treasure chest full of coins here, obviously. And making money is a really strong motivator for people to buy something if they believe it’s going to make them money, then it will be a strong motivator. And kind of counterpoint, the flip side to that is if we think we’re going to be able to save money, so that’s a safe, just in case it wasn’t immediately obvious.
And saving money, making money are two really strong motivators for people to buy things. The next one is because we think it’s going to save us time.
So if we think we can get a shortcut through buying something, then we will absolutely take that or if we think it’s going to save us effort or energy. So again, saving time, saving energy, saving effort are two really strong motivators for people to buy things.
The next is if we think we are going to get a mental health improvement, this is a brain obviously. So if we think we’re going to get a mental health improvement from whatever it is we’re buying.

Counterpoint to that is if we think we might get a physical health improvement, which is very clearly somebody doing that with their arm. So mental health improvement, physical health improvement.
And then the final reason, the final motivator for buying something is if we believe that it is going to deliver for us some kind of status uplift. So some kind of way for us to elevate our social standing, elevate ourselves, in the eyes of our peers, make other people jealous, in other words. So those seven motivators might be present, one or two of them might be present in your online learners’ motivations for buying your online course.
And your job is to think about those and think about which of those might be relevant for your buyers, for your potential online learners. And we’ll go through this in a little bit more detail, don’t worry, in the next How To video in this lesson.
So the second concept that I want to talk about is how we can just make our titles and promise, our title and subtitle, which is really what the promise is, just that little bit more inviting, a little bit more sexy, if you will, for our potential online learners.
And first up, we want to think about just the initial title, our shortcut, our label, if you like for what our course is all about. And you can have what I call the four P’s for this. So the first is Plain. So this is just a plain description of what your course is about.
So if we take our toast making example it could just be toast making course. Okay, the next one is Proposition. So the second P is proposition and that is where your title becomes a proposition. So it is how to do something. So in our toast making case how to make toast. The third is something that might be a little bit more Playful.
So it might be a title that is a bit provocative. So it could be for example, toast making for dummies, a la internet for dummies and and all the other for dummies books that are out there.
And then the fourth one is if it’s a Pitch, so we’re pitching it at a particular level, and it might be intermediate toast making or advanced toast making, if there is such a thing.
Alright, the next thing that we can do with our title is we can give it a qualifying adjective. And this is where we add in a word to elevate the level of what it is we’re offering. So for example, instead of just toast making, it could be excellent toast making, that will be a qualifying adjective. And there are all sorts of ways that you can think about that again, in the next video, we’ll go through that in more detail.
The third is to think about the extensions in particular, the so that and even if extensions, and this is where we’re really starting to think about the promise that you have. So when we talk about ‘so that’ and ‘even if’ we are qualifying our initial title to say, do this thing so that you can achieve something amazing, even if you feel there’s a big barrier in your way, again, next video for a deeper explanation of that one.

And then last but not least, we’ve got what I call R three, which are the three levels of Results. And this is where you are thinking about making the promised results, the outcome much more tangible for people. And you can do that in a way that it gives something that is very specifically tangible.
So for our toast making course it might be win a toaster. Or it could be a flexible result that you are offering. So that might be dependent on whatever level they’re at at the moment. This is where you see things like 2x 5x 10x your results.
So the actual amount is dependent on where you’re at at the moment, but it promises a return, a value of return that is flexible according to where you are. And then the final results-based specificity is where it’s fixed. So for example, make 10,000 just by doing this thing. So that’s where it is a fixed results-based promise.
Alright, so we’ve got the reasons why we buy and then we’ve got the four ways in which we can make our title and promise just that much more exciting for our potential learners.
So in the next video, what we’re going to do is see how all of these things fit together as we flesh out the title and promise for our toast making course. I’ll see you there.

Okay, so here we are in the second How To video of this particular lesson. And you can see that I have rearranged the post it notes, and we’re going to properly flesh out how we use the concepts we introduced in the first How To, to actually flesh out our title and promise for our toast making course. So where we start is with the four Ps of our title, we want to create a working title.

Remember, only fossils are set in stone, so we can always go back and change this later and tweak it if we feel we need to. But let’s just run through the four P’s again.
So we’ve got something that’s quite plain. So for our toast making course, it might literally be toast making course. If we wanted to make it more of a proposition, then we would probably use the words how to, although not exclusively, so for example, this course is Get That Course Online, which is a proposition, but doesn’t contain the words how to, but in this instance, how to make toast would be a proposition, or we’ve got playful, toast making for Dummies, or we’ve got pitch, beginner toast making something like that. In this instance, I think that the How to is a really good fallback.
So How To Make Toast is where we’re going to start from. So our working title is How To Make Toast. And of course, that isn’t that distinguishable from any other course that might be out there about toast making,
How To Make Toast is a fairly easy title to come up with. So the next thing that we need to do in order to elevate it, and to make it stand out perhaps from the competition is the use of qualifying … qualifying adjectives.
So we can use these to How To Make ‘something’ Toast, so qualify, the toast that we’ll be making in some way.
So it could be excellent, it could be amazing, it could be delicious. In this instance, I think that the best qualifi … qualifying adjective, I can’t even say that, qualifying adjective is going to be the word ‘perfect’. So we’re going to add that in. Which means that we’ve got How To Make Perfect Toast as our working title at the moment.
The next step is where we want to think about our buyer motivations. And the easiest way to do this, instead of looking at each of the seven reasons why we buy so make money, save money, save time, save effort, mental health improvement, physical health improvement, or status uplift, the easiest way is to write a statement about what our learners might be thinking about our subject matter.
So the interest, in the interests of, well, time saving, and also handwriting, I have pre-written this particular little piece here. And I’ve imagined that my toast making people are going to want to, or be saying something along the lines of they want to be able to quickly and easily enjoy this simple thing without feeling like an incompetent idiot that produces something even the dog doesn’t want.
So that is a statement that I can imagine that they would sign up to, they would say yes, as a toast maker, this is where I’m at at the moment. So then we go through that statement, and we see if there’s anything in there that will give itself away as being a motivation for wanting to buy a course on how to make perfect toast.
So what we do is we then go through it and say ‘right, be able to aha! Quickly and easily’. So already, we’ve got a couple of words in there, that would imply quickly, time saving, easily, saving effort.
Okay, enjoy this simple thing without feeling like an incompetent idiot that produces something even the dog doesn’t want. That, to me, feels like status. So without feeling like an incompetent idiot, they don’t want to feel like an incompetent idiot they want to feel accomplished would be the opposite to that, which is a status thing. Okay?
There’s nothing in here that I can see about making money or saving money. And equally, there isn’t anything in here necessarily about a physical health improvement, but you might argue that not feeling like an incompetent idiot might also as well as status, make them feel like they’ve got a mental health improvement as well.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s one or all seven, although seven would be unusual. But what you want to do is just identify within a statement like this, what are the key motivators in there that you can pick up?
The more you do this, the more it will become something that feels like second nature to you. But it can be a really easy way of working out motivations is to make up a statement that you can imagine them saying, and then track that back as we’ve just done to one or more of the seven reasons why we buy.
Alright, so that’s that bit. And then after we’ve done that, so we’ve worked out what our motivators are, we want to start looking at the extensions. So we’ve got our working title, How To Make Perfect Toast. So now we’ve got the ‘so that, even if’ extensions, so the idea here is that you write down as many so that’s as you possibly can think of, and as many even ifs as you possibly can think of.
So it could be so that they want to make perfect toast so that you can impress your friends. Or it could be so that you can try different types of bread for toasting purposes, or so that you can enjoy this delicious snack at any time. And enjoy is a word that we’ve picked up on. Because we’ve used language here, enjoy this simple thing.
So yeah, enjoy this delicious snack, we’ve chucked in a bit of a qualifying adjective in there. So we’ve got so that equals delicious snack. And remember, the so that is the thing that they want to achieve alright.
So the title is the label for what is what they’re going to do, how to make perfect toast, the so that is the thing they want to achieve, which makes the even if the thing they want to avoid. So the thing that they are feeling is wrong at the moment, it’s the challenge, it’s the obstacle, it’s the barrier that’s in their way.

So the even if well we’ve already got it in our statement, the even if produces something even the dog doesn’t want. So even if dog rejects. So now, we’ve got a working title and promise, that is How To Make Perfect Toast So That You Can Enjoy This Delicious Snack At Any Time Even If You Currently Burn Your Toast So Badly, The Dog Rejects It.
I know I’ve chucked in a bit of extra stuff in there. But that’s just because I’ve been doing this for a little while, and it comes relatively naturally to me.
But play around with all of those and you will be able to come out with something just as good, if not even better. The final thing on here are the three results.
So we could possibly have tangible results, flexible results or fixed results. If you remember tangible results or where there is a physical or a tangible thing that they will come out with.
Particularly useful if you’re teaching a skill, such as woodturning, or something like that, people can come out with an actual physical object that they’ve created at the end.
So you definitely want to make sure that that is included in there somewhere. Or a flexible result might be to 10x something. So I’m not sure how that would work in the context of toast making? So you can 10x your pleasure from eating perfect toast? Or maybe a fixed result, so this is where you promise a specific amount of money so that you can make 10 grand from your toast making skills or whatever it might be.
I don’t think these actually work in the context of our example at the moment. But, that doesn’t mean you should reject them.
Specificity can be really, really important for making the outcome something that people can really get their heads around and buy into.
So if you are absolutely positive that your course will teach somebody how to do something that will deliver a specific result, you should definitely put that in your title and your promise.
Alright, so have fun playing around with that, as always ask any questions in the community. And I will see you in the next video.