When you're thinking through your course topic, a lot of that work is mostly theoretical. Sometimes, though, to make real progress, you need to get your hands dirty.

::pulls on rubber gloves::

If you're watching this lesson and you don't have a specific, transformative course topic in your back pocket, head to the beginning of Choose Your Topic and work through the lessons. If you do, you're ready to map out your actual curriculum.

The easiest way to begin mapping out your curriculum is by writing out the major milestones that your course will cover. This process will ensure your course isn't too big. Now, at Teachable, courses come in 3 sizes: small, medium, and large.

We call those small courses mini courses - mini courses are very short, and usually offered for free. You'll use a mini course to grow your list. And that's covered in Build Your Audience. Large courses are flagship courses - they're high-dollar courses that gather ALL of your knowledge in a niche and promise a huge transformation to your audience. They're kind of like your life's work as a course creator. Medium courses on the other hand, are your bread and butter. And as you're curriculum, you want to be thinking about your regular old medium sized online course. Everything else will naturally grow from there.

Remember, we're creating regular size courses, not flagship training programs that take weeks for students to complete and even longer for YOU to create. The process of visualizing the building blocks of your curriculum also makes it SUPER easy to create a mini course and start building your audience.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, work your way through Choose Your Topic and learn about the types of courses you can create with Teachable, as well as the relationship between mini courses, regular courses, and flagship courses.

The simple way to get started on your curriculum is to revisit your course transformation. You need to break the transformation down into all the major milestones your students need to pass to be fully transformed. ::cue spooky music::

Here's the transformation for my dog training course: After taking my course, people who dread taking their rescue dogs on a walk will have dogs that walk on a leash without pulling, lunging, barking, or stopping. They'll feel proud of their dog's behavior and excited about taking their dog on walks. They'll be the person with the well-behaved dog.

To achieve this, here are a few milestones my students need to pass:

• Understanding the way dogs learn
• How to use reward training (instead of punishment)
• How to get your dog's attention
• How to teach your dog that pulling doesn't work
• Learning your dog's triggers
• What to do when your dog regresses
• Things to never do (or else you'll erase all your hard work)
• How to remain calm/patient

I'm not an actual dog trainer, so those might not be 100% on the mark. Aside: Someone, please create this course! These milestones will become the big sections, or units in my course. Now, all I need to do is outline the steps needed to achieve each milestone.

• Understanding the way dogs learn
  • Understand dog brains
  • Understand dog memory
  • Understand dog habit forming
  • Understand PTSD and rescue dogs
• How to use reward training (instead of punishment)
  • Why reward works better than punishment
  • Using food as a reward
  • Using sounds as a reward
  • Using touch as a reward
• How to get your dog's attention
  • Why maintaining eye contact is necessary
  • How to get eye contact
  • Pro tip: don't wear sunglasses
• How to teach your dog that pulling doesn't work
  • The bait and switch technique
• Learning your dog's triggers
  • Squirrels
  • Pigeons
  • Any dog enjoying life
  • Plastic bags in the distance
• What to do when your dog regresses
  • Why regression happens
• Things to never do (or else you'll erase all your hard work)
  • Let them "cheat"
  • Change your commands
• How to remain calm/patient
  • 10 ways to stay calm while dog training

These steps will become the lessons that make up each section of my course. Now before moving on, work through this process for your course. Get all the milestones down, then start adding in the steps needed to reach those milestones.

Hold on a second. This is starting to look like - an outline!! That's right - I tricked you into outlining your course. Wasn't it way less stressful that way?? You can thank me by sending chocolate to Teachable HQ. I like 70% dark.

One thing to notice: I didn't decide what types of content to use for my course. I didn't make any notes about demo videos, PDFs, slide decks, etc. That's because I don't need to worry about that yet. I just need to know what content to cover in my course, and start getting it organized.

Now, finish outlining your course. Keep an eye on the length and the level of detail you need to complete your outline. If you find yourself going more than two levels deep here, it's possible that your course topic is too broad for a standard course. It might be better as a future flagship course, or it might also be better to split it into more than one standard course. Same thing if you have more than 10 sections in your course. They might be better off as multiple courses, or you haven't chosen a specific enough topic. Just look how long my course got on the very specific topic—leash training for adult rescue dogs!