How to Create a Course That Actually Gets Results

Not every course should look the same — and one of the biggest mistakes creators make is assuming there's a single "correct" structure. Jasmine Jonte, founder of Cre8tion, sat down with Jake Kelfer to break down exactly why, covering everything from her own dramatic business pivot to the three distinct types of courses that actually work. Let's get into it. 🎯

Q: What made you shift from building your own programs to building them for other people?

A: A genuinely bold decision made during a stretch of business frustration. Jasmine had created somewhere between six and nine of her own programs, and nothing was scaling — despite buying scaling courses and joining masterminds to try to fix it. Her eventual response wasn't to tweak harder; it was to shut the entire business down. She fired her team, ended client relationships, and closed every course and program she had running — with no clear plan for what came next.

What followed was a deliberate period of open space and honest conversations with trusted mentors and friends, where she asked directly: "What do you think my zone of genius is? What do you need help with?" The recurring answer was curriculum and content — building actual learning experiences. She hadn't realized other people struggled with this, because it had always come easily to her.

💡 The lesson underneath the story: sometimes the clearest path forward isn't found by pushing harder on what isn't working — it's found by creating enough space to actually hear what people are asking you for.

Q: Why did you specifically choose "done-for-you" instead of teaching people how to build their own courses?

A: Because she recognized a real gap in the market. Most courses about course creation focus heavily on selling and marketing a course — not on actually building an outstanding learning experience. Jasmine compares her role to a ghostwriter for a book: she extracts the expert's knowledge directly and builds the learning experience around it, rather than teaching the expert to build it themselves.

She also gets asked a predictable question — "Why don't you just build a course teaching people how to create courses?" Her answer is direct: that's a fundamentally different business. Running an agency and running a course business require completely different marketing, sales, and operational models. As she puts it: if you really want to scale a course, you're not a coach or an author anymore — you become a digital marketer, unless you hire someone else to fill that role.

Q: What actually makes for a great learning experience in today's market?

A: Short, actionable, and resourced with tools that save the student time. Jasmine frames this through a TikTok-era lens: gone are the days of hour-long trainings. The new standard is closer to a five-minute lesson paired with a two-minute action step and a ready-made swipe file.

Her metaphor for content prioritization is one worth remembering: think of your expertise as 100 files in your brain. Your job isn't to include all of them — it's to identify the 10-15 files that actually matter for the specific person you're teaching, put them in the right sequence, and let the rest go. Most experts should expect only 10-15% of their total knowledge to end up in any single course.

Q: Are all courses supposed to be structured the same way?

A: No — and this might be the most useful practical framework in the whole conversation. Jasmine identifies three distinct course types, each suited to a different kind of promise:

1. The Encyclopedia — a comprehensive catch-all covering everything a student might ever need to know about a broad topic (think: a program covering every possible type of product launch). These tend to come with more extensive support — 1:1 access, group coaching — because of their scope.
2. The Step-by-Step — a sequential program where each module builds on the last, and completing all of them is genuinely necessary to reach the result.
3. The Quick Fix — a program where students can get the core result from a fraction of the total content. Jasmine shared a personal example: she bought an email marketing course and never watched a single video — she went straight to the swipe files, applied them, and got the click-rate lift she was after.

✅ The key insight: price point isn't really tied to how much content exists — it's tied to the offer and the level of support wrapped around it. A course is just one component of a larger offer; the same content can live inside a self-paced product or be layered with coaching, community, and live support depending on what you're actually selling.

Q: What's the practical difference between "done-for-you" and "done-with-you" course creation?

A: Jasmine draws a clean, useful distinction:

• Done-for-you: works like ghostwriting. Experts meet weekly (about an hour), review what's been produced, and then go film it. Jasmine's team is essentially the writer.
• Done-with-you: the reverse. Experts are taught how to write strong lessons themselves, produce a draft, and send it back for review. Jasmine's team functions as the editor, not the author.

 🎯 When to reach out for either: the clearest signal is hitting capacity in your 1:1 work — whether you're a coach, consultant, speaker tired of constant travel, or an author whose book has generated more 1:1 client interest than you can personally handle. At that point, some form of group offering (course, done-with-you, or fully done-for-you) becomes the practical way to scale your message beyond your own calendar.

Q: What is gamification, and how does it actually help with course completion?

A: Jasmine's simplest explanation: think about how a video game works. There are levels, progress markers, points, and small dopamine hits along the way that keep players engaged. Applied to a course, gamification means identifying the specific behaviors and milestones you want students to hit, and building in visible rewards for reaching them.

Real examples she shared:

• Students who complete a milestone receiving physical swag or celebratory recognition
• A podcasting program where launching an actual podcast (the core goal) triggers a form submission and a series of celebration touchpoints

The engagement driver behind all of it, according to Jasmine: social proof and FOMO. When students see someone else publicly celebrated for hitting a milestone — a trophy in the mail, a shoutout on the expert's Instagram — it makes the achievable outcome feel real and attainable, not abstract.

Q: What trends do you see shaping courses and online programs going forward?

A: Two stood out in Jasmine's view:

1. Gamification is becoming more mainstream, not a novelty. Platforms are increasingly building it in natively.
2. Community is becoming more central than ever — but not the passive, empty Facebook group kind. Jasmine is direct that a genuinely engaged, intentional community (whether tied to a program or a live event) is what people are actually looking for during periods of economic uncertainty, when messaging naturally shifts from "grow your business" to "protect what you've built." People want to know others genuinely have their back — not just access to a content library.

Q: Any recommendations on course platforms?

A: Jasmine is upfront that platform choice depends entirely on business needs, and she flags a real industry pitfall: watch out for people who only recommend the platform they're an affiliate for. Her honest breakdown:

• Kajabi — a solid all-in-one option
• Experienceify and School (Sam Ovens' newer learning management system) — worth exploring specifically for gamification features
• Thinkific or Teachable — good, simple starting points for beginners
• Mighty Networks — her pick when community is the priority, since students can clearly see which digital products they have access to and which they don't

 The Bottom Line

There's no single right way to build a course — the right structure (encyclopedia, step-by-step, or quick fix), the right support level, and the right platform all depend on the specific offer you're building and the audience you're serving. Keep content lean (10-15% of your total expertise, not all of it), build in genuine milestones worth celebrating, and know whether you actually want to be a digital marketer before committing to scale a course on your own.

Thinking about turning your expertise — or your book — into a course? 🚀 Head to cre8tion.co or find Jasmine on Instagram to talk through what structure actually fits your offer.

Enjoyed this conversation? Follow along for more real talk on building a business and a message that reaches more people.