Tiny Courses vs. Signature Courses — Why Smaller Might Be Better for Your Business

14 Aug

“Create one large, high-ticket signature course” is often touted as the best way to build your brand and income. But I believe there is better way, especially if you’re HSP or neuro-spicy. A way that doesn’t require you to pour all your energy into one colossal project, only to find yourself exhausted and possibly bored with it over time.

That’s where tiny courses come in. I ignored the advice to go big and instead, slowly built a suite of tiny courses. This approach has allowed me to reduce client-facing time without reducing my income. It’s an approach that brings simplicity, ease, and more enjoyment into my business — and I think it could do the same for you as well.

Table of Contents

What is a tiny course, exactly?

A tiny course is a focused, practical learning experience designed to address a specific challenge your ideal client faces. Unlike those massive, all-encompassing courses, a tiny course distills your expertise into short, actionable lessons that are easy to digest and implement. Each lesson is crafted to offer immediate value, guiding the learner through a transformation or solution, step by step.

Here’s what makes tiny courses unique:

Concise and Focused: Typically made up of 5-10 lessons.
Time-Efficient: Total watch or reading time is between 30-90 minutes.
Essentials Only: Provides the minimum information needed to start creating results, without overwhelming the learner with unnecessary content.

The beauty of a tiny course lies in its simplicity and effectiveness. By narrowing down the content to the essentials, you’re able to create a course that’s not only manageable for you to develop but also incredibly impactful for your audience. Students experience immense relief and joy from receiving valuable knowledge in a concise, practical, easy-to-implement format — without the need to spend hours upon hours in front of a screen.

Four ways tiny courses generate revenue

Once you’ve created a tiny course, it becomes an adaptable content asset in your business, offering multiple benefits:

On-Demand Self-Study Course: A tiny course can be made available as an evergreen product, allowing clients to engage with your material at their own pace, whenever they need it.
Curriculum for a Group Programme: The content from your tiny course can serve as the foundation for a group programme, providing structured guidance and a shared learning experience for participants.
Part of a Mastermind Resource Library: Enhance the value of your mastermind by including your tiny course as a resource, giving members access to foundational knowledge that supports their growth.
Pre-Work or During a Programme: Use your tiny course to prepare clients before they start working with you, or as a complementary resource during your work together. This ensures they have the necessary understanding and skills to make the most of your services.

By creating a tiny course, you not only establish yourself as an expert in your niche but also provide a meaningful, results-driven experience for your clients that can be repurposed in various ways to support your business growth.

The Three Phases of Creating a Tiny Course

Creating a tiny course is a straightforward process, but it does require thoughtful planning and execution. Here are the three key phases to guide you through the creation process:

Phase 1: Course Planning & Design

This phase is all about clarifying your course’s purpose and structure. It involves defining the problem your course solves, mapping out the content, and creating a curriculum. The goal is to have a clear roadmap before you start creating your course materials.

Step 1: Identifying and Naming Your Tiny Course Topic and Its Transformation
Begin by pinpointing the specific challenge your course will address and the transformation it will provide. A well-defined topic and clear transformation are essential for attracting the right audience.
Step 2: Mapping Out Your Course Outline and Lesson Names
Next, outline the structure of your course, breaking it down into individual lessons. Each lesson should be a step toward the overall transformation your course promises.

Phase 2: Course Creation & Development

In this phase, you’re bringing your course to life by creating the materials, designing the user experience, and recording the lessons. It’s the production phase where everything comes together.

Step 3: Crafting the Content for Each Tiny Lesson
Write or record the content for each lesson, ensuring it’s clear, concise, and actionable. Focus on delivering the essentials that will help your students achieve the desired outcome.
Step 4: Developing Your Teaching Materials and Implementation Tools
Create any supporting materials, such as worksheets, checklists, or guides, that will help your students apply what they’ve learned.
Step 5: Designing a Supporting Course Container Experience
Think about how you’ll support your students throughout the course. This could include a dedicated community, live Q&A sessions, or additional resources to enhance their learning experience.
Step 6: Recording Your Tiny Lessons
Record your lessons, whether they are video or audio, ensuring high-quality production that is easy for your students to follow and engage with.

Phase 3: Course Setup & Sales

The final phase is dedicated to setting up the technical details of your course, including pricing, sales tax considerations, and getting everything ready to start accepting sales.

Step 7: Setting Up Your Learning Portal on Thinkific
Choose a platform like Thinkific to host your course. Set up your lessons, upload your materials, and configure the course settings for optimal delivery.
Step 8: Pricing and Sales Page Creation
Finally, decide on your course pricing and create a compelling sales page. Highlight the transformation your course offers and why it’s a valuable investment for your target audience.

Reduce client-facing time, without reducing your income

What if you could reduce your client-facing time, without reducing your income? That’s exactly what’s possible when you introduce tiny courses to your offerings. If this sounds too good to be true, let’s explore an example together.

Let’s say you’ve created a beautiful tiny course that addresses a common challenge your ideal clients often face, and you’ve designed a supportive participant container to accompany it. You offer this course to small cohorts of 20 participants a few times a year, at €500 each. Perhaps you also have one or two other signature tiny courses in rotation.

Now do the math on that and you’ll find that tiny courses offer a calm, sustainable way of sharing your work with the world.

Tiny Courses Don’t Equal Tiny Prices!

We’re used to measuring value in terms of ‘quantity’ — especially when it comes to online courses. Old-school course creators love to highlight how their courses have 30+ modules, 200-page workbooks, etc. But most people will run a mile these days when sales pages boast, “You receive over 20 hours of content,” because we're trying to reclaim our lives back from our screens.

When pricing a tiny course factors to consider include; the value of what is being taught (i.e. type of result, how rare or not the information is), and the container (i.e. client experience) build around it.

Limited or unpredictable energy for client-facing work?

If you’re someone with limited or unpredictable energetic capacity — such as a Highly Sensitive Person, an introvert, or a Human Design Projector — the traditional business model of constant client interaction and high-energy output can be draining. Tiny courses offer a solution that aligns perfectly with your natural rhythms and energy levels, allowing you to share your expertise without burning out.

Here’s how to know if becoming a tiny course creator might be right for you and your business:

You Have Limited Client-Facing Energy: If your capacity for one-on-one client work is low, whether due to sensitivity, introversion, or simply needing more rest, tiny courses allow you to serve your audience without the constant energy drain of live interactions.
You Need Flexibility in Your Work: For those whose energy levels fluctuate, having a tiny course means you can work on your own schedule, creating content when you feel most aligned and offering it to your audience without the pressure of real-time engagement.
You Prefer Sharing Knowledge Over Client Sessions: If you feel called to teach and share what you know but find one-on-one sessions or large courses overwhelming, tiny courses provide a way to impart your wisdom in a manageable, sustainable way.
You Want a Scalable, Passive Income Stream: Tiny courses can be an excellent way to build a passive income stream, allowing you to continue earning even when you need to step back and recharge.
You’re Looking for Simplicity in Business: Instead of creating a massive, all-encompassing course that requires significant time and energy, a tiny course lets you focus on a specific topic, making the creation process simpler and more aligned with your energy.

By creating tiny courses, you can build a business that honours your energetic needs, allowing you to share your gifts with the world in a way that feels sustainable and fulfilling.

Tiny Course Creator — Hall Of Fame!

And now, drumroll please! Here’s is the beginning of my Tiny Course Creator Hall Of Fame. The following folks are all graduates of Create a Tiny Course.

Simplify Your Finances, by Brianne Grebil
Preparing for Menopause, by Carissa Crosdale
Prioritize Yourself, by Marci Payne
Phone Photography for Business Owners, by Honey Atkinson
Video Backdrops That Connect, by Jennifer Mallinger
Anxious to Unleashed, by Jess Heading
Cultivate Abundance, by Nona Jordan

How long does it take to create a tiny course?

I recommend pacing the course creation steps out over 10-12 weeks to give yourself breathing space and minimise the risk of overwhelm.

Create a Tiny Course provides a framework and templates for progressing through these steps, do check that out if you’d rather not start from scratch with your own creation.

Have a question or a takeaway from what I’ve shared here?

Let’s chat in the comments ⤵

Danielle Gardner
The Quiet Marketer
View my bio