Some courses are bestsellers.
Others are not.
The difference isn't your expertise.
It's four strategic pillars:
1. Your Opportunity
Your expertise can solve many problems. Only one of them is the right angle for a successful course.
I research your competitive landscape, adjacent market demand, and your target audience to uncover opportunities you may not have considered and qualify the ones you have. Each opportunity is scored against rigorous course-market fit criteria.
2. Your Audience
A course that's "interesting" gets bookmarked. A course that hits the right buyer with the right trigger gets traction.
I run research across the structural, psychological, and political forces shaping audience decisions. I deliver ranked personas and purchase journeys, and the insights needed to design for commercial traction.
3. Your Course Outcomes
Interest in your topic won't close a sale. A clear, concrete return on investment will.
I articulate your practical course value: stakes, career upside, transformation, all calibrated to land as credible, urgent, and dramatically cheaper than inaction. Professionals enroll when the investment case is obvious.
4. Your Credibility
Experienced professionals won't pay for content. They'll pay to learn directly from you.
I identify the stories, credibility cues, and signals of judgment that make your authority and expertise clear. An outside editorial perspective is critical here. Most experts are too close to their own work to see what makes them uniquely compelling as an instructor.
I'm Vanina Schick. As VP Marketing at Maven, I spent years studying why some courses become bestsellers, while equally qualified experts launch to polite interest and low conversion.
A course is like any product, you can't just build it and expect they'll come. I work with you to identify and validate your course opportunity, develop it with critical buyer insights, and deliver a bespoke Course Brief and Course Page content.
Book a free call →Successful course development can take months of your time.
My process asks you to contribute just 3 hours across 3 sessions: one to download your context, one to set direction, one to converge.
Between sessions, I run extensive AI-powered market research and apply years of Maven buyer insights to your specific area of expertise. The result is airtight commercial strategy, and ready-to-publish Course Page content.
We spend 1 hr together to download your context.
I use AI-powered research to explore your competitive landscape and what the market is willing to pay for, then generate multiple course-market fit hypotheses and score across 5 criteria: audience pull, market urgency, outcome clarity, competitive logic and topic credibility.
→ You get a rigorous map of where your expertise meets market demand
We spend 1 hr together to weigh trade-offs and set your direction.
I regenerate the strongest hypotheses from what was learned in Discovery and put the buyer at the center: a full persona and journey map revealing what triggers their interest, what makes them hesitate, and what moves them to commit.
→ You get clarity on what your best course opportunity is, and why
We spend 1 hr together to converge on your final hypothesis.
I develop your Course Brief, which includes a bespoke Style Guide, ranked buyer personas and supporting artifacts to shape your go-to-market decisions. Then I deliver your Course Page content. You just need to finalize the syllabus, then you're in business.
→ Your Course Brief & Course Page content are delivered
Turn your expertise into an authoritative public profile and recurring, independent revenue. $3,900, all-in.