The biggest obstacles to creating your course aren't technical — they're mental. Over years of working with course creators, we've seen the same four blocks stop people who have genuine expertise, a real audience, and a good idea. Each block has a specific reframe and a concrete exercise to move through it.
Block 1: Perfectionism — "It's Not Ready Yet"
Perfectionism disguises itself as high standards, but it's really a fear of being judged. The tell: you keep revising content that's already good enough, redesigning slides nobody has seen yet, or researching "one more thing" before you can start.
The reframe: Your first version is a draft, not a monument. Courses improve through student feedback, not through more time alone at your desk. Every successful course creator we've worked with says some version of: "My course got dramatically better after the first time I taught it."
Exercise: Set a "good enough" deadline for your next piece of content. When the deadline arrives, share it — even if it makes you uncomfortable. After you share it, write down what you learned from the experience. Most people discover the fear was worse than the reality.
A pilot course is specifically designed for this: teach a small group, get feedback, and improve before scaling. It gives perfectionism a constructive outlet.
Block 2: Imposter Syndrome — "Who Am I to Teach This?"
The word "expert" comes from the Latin expertus — meaning "tested, proved, experienced." Not "most credentialed" or "world's foremost authority." If you've wrestled with a problem and found solutions that work, you have something to teach.
The reframe: You're not claiming to be the final authority. You're offering to guide someone through a journey you've already taken. A hiking guide doesn't need to have climbed Everest — they need to know the trail you're on and the pitfalls along the way.
Exercise: Write down three specific results you've helped someone achieve (a client, a colleague, even yourself). Be concrete: "I helped Maria go from zero email subscribers to 500 in three months" or "I coached my team through a process that cut our project timeline by 40%." These aren't hypothetical — they're proof that you have expertise worth sharing.
Block 3: Fear of Judgment — "What If People Criticize Me?"
This is the most primal of the four blocks. Putting your knowledge out there feels vulnerable — and it is. But here's what most course creators discover: the people who criticize you were never going to buy your course anyway. The people who need what you teach are too busy struggling with their problem to judge you.
The reframe: Hiding your work doesn't protect you — it just means the people you could help can't find you. The cost of not teaching is invisible (students who never found a solution), while the cost of teaching (the occasional critic) is survivable.
Exercise: Teach a free 30-minute session to a small group — 3 to 5 people you trust. Pay attention to their reactions: the questions they ask, the notes they take, the way they lean forward when you hit something useful. That feedback is real data that counters the imaginary critics in your head.
Here's a fact from years of running the 30 Day Course Creation Challenge: we've never seen a course get zero signups. Even a first attempt with a small audience attracts people. The fear of "nobody will come" is almost always worse than the reality.
Block 4: Overwhelm — "There's Too Much to Do"
Overwhelm happens when you try to solve every problem simultaneously: content, technology, marketing, pricing, design. Your brain can't hold all of those open loops at once, so it freezes.
The reframe: You don't need to solve everything today. You need to solve one thing today. The rest can wait until next week.
Exercise: Write down every task you think you need to do to create your course. Now cross off everything except the single most important task. Do that one thing. When it's done, pick the next one. This isn't productivity advice — it's a survival strategy for a brain that's overloaded.
Use our outline generator to break your course into manageable pieces →
The Three Bedrock Principles
Underneath all four blocks is a question: Do I have what it takes? You need three things to create a valuable course. Just three:
- Clear intention to deliver value — You genuinely want to help your students succeed, not just extract money from them.
- Techniques that generate results — You've tested your methods and seen them work, even if only with a handful of people.
- Basic learning design — You can break a complex topic into steps a beginner can follow. (If you're not sure about this one, backwards design will get you there.)
If you have those three things, the mindset blocks are temporary obstacles — not permanent disqualifications. They'll resurface at each stage of your journey (launching a new course, raising your price, expanding to a new audience), but recognizing them gets easier each time.