Your course, out of your head.

Click right before the first word in the box. Scroll to the end of the box, hold Shift, and click right after the last word. Everything in between is now selected. Copy it (Mac: Cmd+C; Windows: Ctrl+C), then paste it (Mac: Cmd+V; Windows: Ctrl+V) into a new chat in your AI tool.

You are going to interview me to help me get my course idea out of my head and into one organized document. I'm a physician, and I'm an expert in my subject and new to course design. The questions are below, in sections 1 through 10.

HOW TO RUN THE INTERVIEW

1. Before the first question, ask whether I have any existing notes or an outline to paste in. If I do, read them, and when a question comes up that my notes already answer, show me what you found and ask me to confirm or correct it.

2. Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer. Show the question and its helper text and example exactly as written.

3. At the start of each section, tell me its name and where I am, for example "Section 4 of 10."

4. I'll often be dictating, so my answers may ramble or come out of order. Work with them as they are. Don't ask me to tidy them up.

5. If an answer is vague or missing specifics, ask a follow-up. Ask no more than 2 follow-ups per question, then move on.

6. If I say I don't know, accept it, add it to the still-to-do list, and go to the next question.

7. Don't answer for me. If I ask for help with a question, offer 2 or 3 options once, briefly, and label them as suggestions. Record only what I choose or say myself, then go back to the interview.

8. Keep your responses between questions short. Don't praise or evaluate my answers.

9. Use what I've already told you. If a later question connects to an earlier answer, remind me of what I said.

10. If two of my answers contradict each other, point it out at the end of that section and ask which one is right.

11. Section 6 repeats 5 questions for every topic I listed in section 5. Take one topic at a time. I can answer all 5 for a topic in a single reply.

12. In section 8, if I don't know who else teaches this and you can search the web, offer to search. Label anything you find as research, separate from my own answers.

13. In section 9, don't recommend or compare course platforms. Record what I use or "undecided."

14. If I start going off on a tangent, such as brainstorming course names or rewriting my offer, don't follow me there. Add it to a "come back to this later" list, tell me you've noted it, and return to the question we were on. Include that list with the still-to-do list at the end.

THE QUESTIONS

SECTION 1 OF 10: YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS

1. In one sentence, what do you do?
   The way you'd say it to a colleague at a conference, not the way you'd write it on a website.

2. What is this course about?
   A rough answer is enough here. You'll sharpen it in the promise section.

3. What do you sell right now, and at what prices?
   1:1 work, packages, groups, speaking, anything. If the answer is "nothing yet," that's an answer too.

4. Where does the course sit next to everything else you sell?
   It could be the first thing someone buys from you, the main thing, or the option for the woman who can't afford your 1:1 work. If you don't know yet, describe what you'd like it to be.

5. What do you want this course to do for you?
   Income that doesn't depend on your calendar, reaching more people than you can see 1:1, a way to stop repeating the same teaching to every client, something else. Be specific, since this shapes the format and the price later.

6. Why are you the person to teach this?
   What you've lived, done, or figured out that your learner hasn't yet. Include the clinical background and the personal one.


SECTION 2 OF 10: WHO THE COURSE IS FOR

1. Who is the one person this course is for?
   Describe a real person if you can: a client, a colleague, a friend, or you a few years ago. A real woman is easier to describe than an invented one, and the answer comes out more specific.

2. What has to be true about her before this course can help?
   The decision she has already made, or the stage she's at. Example: for a course on negotiating a physician contract, she has an offer in hand or is actively interviewing. For a course on building a coaching business, she has already decided to build one.

3. What are the basic facts about her?
   Profession or specialty, career stage, age range, family and work situation, income. Skip any fact that wouldn't change the course. Example: a resident and an attending 15 years out need different examples and have different budgets, so career stage matters. If her age changes nothing about what you'd teach or how, leave it out.

4. What does she already know when she starts, and what are you assuming she doesn't?
   This decides where lesson 1 begins. Example: an OB/GYN teaching menopause to patients has to explain what estradiol is. Teaching the same topic to primary care doctors, she can skip that and start further in.

5. What has she already tried, and why didn't it work?
   Other courses, certifications, books, free content, hiring someone, doing it alone. What did each one leave her without?

6. What makes her say yes to something, and what makes her walk away?
   Example: many physicians trust data, specifics, and a teacher who has done the thing herself. They walk away from hype, income screenshots, and countdown timers. What is your learner's version of that?

7. Who is this course not for?
   Start with your single biggest disqualifier, then anyone who might buy it and be disappointed. Example: a sleep course for parents of toddlers is not for the parent of a newborn, who is too early, or for a family whose child has a medical sleep disorder, who needs a specialist.


SECTION 3 OF 10: WHAT YOUR LEARNER IS LIVING WITH

1. What is she feeling about this problem right now?
   Name the emotions, and what each one is about. Example: a woman in perimenopause who keeps hearing that her labs are normal may feel dismissed, and then start doubting her own read on her body.

2. How does the problem show up in an ordinary week?
   The small, annoying, repeated things. Example: for the parent of a child with ADHD, it's 40 minutes to get shoes on, a call from the school on Wednesday, and homework that ends in tears for both of them.

3. What does she say about it, in her own words?
   Exact phrases from clients, patients, consult calls, DMs, comments. Example: "I'm doing everything right and nothing is changing." If you don't have real quotes yet, you can find them. Women describe this problem in their own words on Reddit, Quora, Facebook groups, and the comments under YouTube videos and podcasts on your topic. Note that you still need to collect some and move on to the next question.

4. What does she think the problem is, and what do you know it to be?
   These are often different, and the gap between them is where your teaching starts. Example: a night-shift nurse thinks she lacks discipline around food. What's happening is that every plan she has tried was written for people who sleep at night.

5. What is it costing her?
   Money, time, health, relationships, opportunities she has passed up. Use numbers where you have them. Example: 3 years on the same plateau, $4,000 on programs she didn't finish, a promotion she didn't apply for.

6. What is she afraid will happen if she tries to fix it?
   The fear that keeps her from starting, or from buying. Example: a physician who wants to go part-time may be afraid her partners will see her as less committed, or that she'll spend money on one more thing that doesn't work.


SECTION 4 OF 10: THE PROMISE

1. What is the one promise of this course?
   Finish this sentence: "By the end, she will ___." Aim for something she can do or have, which someone else could verify. Example: "feel better about money" is hard to deliver on. "Has a written spending plan, a savings target, and her student loans on a payoff schedule" is a promise.

2. What does she physically have when she finishes?
   The things she could point to. Example: for a course on opening a direct primary care practice, a fee schedule, a patient agreement, a membership page that takes payment, and her first 10 names on a waitlist.

3. What can she do on her own afterward that she couldn't do before?
   The skill that stays with her once the course is over. Example: after a course on expert witness work, she can review a case, write a report, and set her own rate without asking anyone how.

4. What does success look like in her words?
   What she would tell a friend she wants. It is often simpler than your promise. Example: you promise a full system for managing her child's ADHD. She wants a school morning without yelling.

5. Why does this matter to her?
   What changes in her life once she has it, and what another year without it looks like. Your answers on cost and fear from the last section belong here.

6. What is left out of the promise on purpose?
   The outcomes you don't control, and the nearby topics you're choosing not to teach. Example: a course on getting started with locum work can promise she's credentialed and ready to accept an assignment. It doesn't promise which assignments she's offered or what they pay.

7. How will she know she's done?
   One clear finish line. Example: for a course on giving a conference talk, she's done when she has delivered the full talk to a live audience of any size and has the recording.


SECTION 5 OF 10: THE BIG TOPICS

1. What are the 3 to 7 big topics she has to learn to reach the promise?
   Topic names only for now. Example: a course that helps new attendings finish clinic on time might cover visit structure, charting during the visit, the inbox, delegating to staff, and after-hours boundaries.

2. What order do they go in, and why?
   What has to come first because everything else depends on it, and what would give her an early win? Example: in that clinic course, charting might go first even though visit structure is more foundational, because getting home an hour earlier in week 1 keeps her in the course. If you aren't sure of the order, list them and your AI will propose one.

3. Which topic will she want to skip, and can't?
   There is usually one that she doesn't think is her problem. Example: a physician starting a podcast wants to go straight to microphones and editing software, and skip the lesson on who the show is for and why they'd listen.

4. What do you know belongs in the course but you can't place yet?
   A parking lot. Pieces that might be their own topic or might fold into another one. List them here and keep moving.

5. What are you saving for later?
   The topics that are good, and that would keep version 1 from ever getting finished if you included them. Example: a course on investing for physicians starts with retirement accounts and index funds. Real estate and angel investing wait for a later version.

6. Do you already have a name, a set of steps, or a method for how you teach this?
   Something you say to every client, a sequence you always follow, an acronym, a drawing you make on a whiteboard. If you have one, describe it. If you don't, skip this. Your topics in order are the raw material for one, and your AI will suggest options at the end.


SECTION 6 OF 10: THE GAPS

This section repeats the same 5 questions for each topic from section 5, one topic at a time. The examples all come from one course: strength training for women over 50, and the topic "starting with weights."

For each topic from section 5:

1. What doesn't she know here?
   The facts, steps, or vocabulary she's missing. Example: how heavy to start, how many days a week, what good form feels like.

2. What does she believe that isn't true?
   The assumptions she walks in with. Example: that lifting will make her bulky, or that it's risky at her age and walking is the safe choice.

3. What does she do by default that works against her?
   The habit she brings from somewhere else. Example: she picks the lightest weights in the room and does 30 repetitions, because that's what the classes she took in her 30s taught her.

4. Where does she get stuck or give up?
   The specific moment. Example: she's sore for 4 days after the first session and decides her body can't handle it.

5. What do you tell every single person about this topic?
   The shortcut, the reassurance, or the rule you repeat most. Example: 2 sessions a week is enough to see a change.

Then, once for the whole course:

6. What connects these topics that she can't see yet?
   The thing that makes the pieces work together. Example: she sees lifting, protein, and sleep as 3 separate projects. They are one system, and the lifting does very little without the other 2.


SECTION 7 OF 10: EVERYTHING ELSE SHE NEEDS

1. What does she need from you that isn't a topic?
   The things that get her from knowing to doing. Example: in a course on feeding a family on a busy schedule, she already knows what a healthy dinner looks like. What she needs is someone to hand her this week's shopping list so she doesn't have to decide, a set day to cook, and to hear that frozen vegetables count.

2. What does she think she needs that she can skip?
   The purchases and projects she believes come first. Example: a physician writing her first book thinks she needs an agent, a finished manuscript, and a big social media following before she can pitch, when in reality she only needs a proposal and 2 sample chapters.

3. What does she need to see finished before she makes her own?
   Real, completed examples she can work backward from. Example: for that book course, an actual proposal that sold, with the numbers and the chapter summaries left in.

4. What would save her time?
   Templates, checklists, scripts, worksheets, calculators, AI prompts. Think about where she'll stare at a blank page. Example: the email asking a former colleague for an introduction, word for word, ready to adapt.

5. What does she need to watch you do?
   The parts where explaining isn't enough. Example: in a course teaching ultrasound to primary care doctors, she needs to see where the probe goes and what the screen looks like when it's right. For anything involving software, a screen recording with your clicks.

6. What will get in the way of her finishing?
   Her schedule, her budget, embarrassment about asking questions, the urge to keep polishing. For each one, what would help? Example: she's working through this between shifts, so every lesson shows how long it takes, and there's one place to ask a question when she's stuck.

7. What does she do the day after the course ends?
   Where she goes next, with you or on her own.

8. What else?
   Anything about this course that hasn't had a place to go yet. Stories, opinions, things you'd fight for, things you're unsure about.


SECTION 8 OF 10: THE LANDSCAPE

The examples in this section all come from one course: a urogynecologist building a course on pelvic floor recovery after childbirth.

1. Who else teaches something similar?
   Courses, programs, memberships, books, apps, well-known experts. Example: postpartum fitness programs run by trainers, 2 or 3 popular apps, a bestselling book, and a pelvic floor physical therapist with a large Instagram following. If you don't know who's out there yet, say so. Your AI can search for you if it has web access, and you can also ask your learners what they've bought.

2. What sits right before and right after your course?
   What she uses before she's ready for you, and where she goes once she's done. These are neighbors more than competitors, and they can send people your way. Example: prenatal classes come before. Return-to-running programs come after.

3. What do the others do well?
   Why people buy them. Example: the apps are cheap, take 10 minutes a day, and she can start tonight.

4. What do they charge, and in what format?
   Price, length, self-paced or live, whether there's any access to the teacher. Rough numbers are enough. Example: apps at $15 a month, a trainer's 12-week program at $200, 1:1 physical therapy at $150 a visit.

5. What do all of them leave out?
   The piece your learner still doesn't have after trying them. Example: every one of them teaches exercises. None of them tells her which symptoms are normal at 6 weeks and which ones need a doctor.

6. What do you do differently, and why are you able to?
   Your angle, and the experience behind it. Example: she has examined and operated on thousands of women with these problems, so she can teach what's happening anatomically and when exercise won't be enough.

7. What does she do if your course doesn't exist?
   The real alternative is often not another course. Example: she searches YouTube, tries the exercises from one video for a week, sees no change, and stops. Then she lives with the problem for years, assuming it's a normal part of having had children.


SECTION 9 OF 10: THE CONTAINER

1. How long does it take her to get from start to finish line?
   Base it on how long the work takes inside her real life, more than on how many lessons you have. Example: the lessons in a course on opening a private practice might total 8 hours of video, and the doing (the lease, the credentialing, the hiring) might take her 6 months.

2. Does she go through it alone or with others?
   Self-paced means she starts whenever she wants and moves at her own speed. A cohort means a group starts together and follows a schedule. Some courses mix the 2. Example: a course on reading an EKG works well self-paced, since she can study it alone whenever she has an hour. A course on building an exercise habit often works better as a cohort, since it's easier to keep going when other women are expecting her to be there.

3. How much of you is in it?
   Live calls, office hours, feedback on her work, a community, a way to message you. Then look at your own calendar: how many hours a week can you give this, and at what times? Example 1: one live call a week, recorded so she can watch it later. Example 2: open office hours every Friday, where she drops in with whatever she's stuck on.

4. Where does the doing happen?
   If she has to build, write, practice, or set something up, when and where does that take place? Example: a course on writing a book proposal includes a 2-hour working session every other week, where everyone writes with cameras on and you're available for questions.

5. What form do the lessons take?
   Video, audio, written, slides, screen recordings, a workbook. Think about when and where she'll be going through them. Example: if she'll listen on her commute, the main teaching needs to work as audio, and anything she has to see goes in a short separate video.

6. Do you have a platform to host it?
   If you already use one, name it. If you don't, write "undecided." Choosing a platform comes after the course is shaped, and this document will make that choice easier.

7. What price are you considering, and where does that number come from?
   A range works. Look back at what the others charge, what you already sell, and what your learner has spent before. Would a payment plan matter to her? Example: "$500 to $900, because my 1:1 package is $3,000, the closest comparable course is $400 with no live support, and mine includes weekly calls."

8. What should it sound like?
   The tone of the lessons and the materials. Example: "Like I'm explaining it to a friend from residency, with the jokes left in," or "Calm and clinical, because my learner is anxious and needs steadiness."

9. Do you have a name, or any ideas for one?
   Working titles, words you like, words you'd never use. If you have nothing, your AI will suggest some at the end based on your promise.


SECTION 10 OF 10: WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE

1. What have you already made on this topic?
   Outlines, slide decks, talks, handouts, blog posts, emails, social posts, podcast interviews, recordings of you teaching it. Rough and unfinished counts. Example: a grand rounds talk from 2 years ago, a patient handout you rewrote 4 times, and 30 Instagram posts.

2. What do you have from working with real people?
   The questions you get asked over and over, intake forms, notes on where clients got stuck, before-and-after stories, testimonials. Example: the 5 questions every new client asks in her first session are probably 5 lessons.

3. What research or data do you have?
   Surveys you've run, interviews, studies you cite all the time, numbers you know by heart. Example: a 10-question survey you sent to 20 colleagues, or the 3 papers you reference in every talk.

4. What do you already use that could become a resource?
   The templates, checklists, scripts, and worksheets you made for yourself or your clients. Example: the spreadsheet you built to track your own progress, which every client ends up asking for a copy of.

5. Where does all of this live?
   List the places: your laptop, a drive folder, your phone's notes, your email, a notebook. You don't need to gather it now. A list of where to look is enough for today.

NOTE: before you paste or upload anything from client or patient work into your AI, take out names and identifying details.


WHEN THE INTERVIEW IS DONE

First, ask me what kind of document I want, and tell me which formats you're able to produce. For example: a Word document, a PDF, a Google Doc, or text in this chat that I can copy and paste.

Then produce these 4 things in the format I chose:

1. A one-page course brief: who the course is for, the promise, the finish line, the topics in order, the format and length, the price range, and what makes it different.

2. The full write-up: everything I said, organized by section and cleaned up, in my own words. Keep my real quotes, examples, numbers, and stories. Don't add facts I didn't give you. Where I didn't answer, write "not answered yet."

3. The still-to-do list: unanswered questions, thin answers, decisions I postponed, and research left to do. If I had no real learner quotes, list where to find them: Reddit, Quora, Facebook groups, and comments under YouTube videos and podcasts on my topic. Add the "come back to this later" list here.

4. Your suggestions, in their own clearly labeled section: an order for my topics if I wasn't sure, 2 or 3 ways to turn my topics into a named framework, and a few course name ideas.

Then ask me to read the brief and tell you what sounds wrong, and correct both documents based on what I say.

Start now with step 1.