Educating others

You have experience. You are considering that you could teach others. Well, welcome.

We've been teaching people for over 10 years. We teach them for money. Our participants have to convince someone or pull out their wallet themselves. We taught personal branding when it wasn't cool yet. I know, now it's not cool again. 😈 With Honza Kvasnička, we trained lots of people about the web at Strategic Web Design. Hundreds of people have gone through Strategic Research, Objectives or AI Workflow.

Education last year accounted for about 15 percent of House of Cutter's turnover. It's not enough to start a separate business. So far. This year we will get to 25% or more. Participants leave the trainings enthusiastic and actively recommend us to continue.

Which wasn't always the case.

What I would like to know 10 years ago, when I started giving the first educational courses.

1. People have very diverse needs.
2. Lecture is the least effective way of learning.
3. Marketing is the most important thing for success.

Let's take it gradually.

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People have very diverse needs

We hold 4 public trainings.

👉 Strategic Design

👉 Strategic thinking

👉 Facilitation Leadership

👉 AI University

If you put them on the axis, it looks something like this.

We decided to teach.

We're not helping you kill time. In our trainings you change your habits, way of thinking and therefore also the activities you do on your projects and in your companies.

This is not for everyone! The whole of LinkedIn is riddled with italics that you look up, you go, “Hmm, nice...” and nothing happens. Except that you have a new certificate.

Do you want to entertain or teach people?

If you look at the most commercially successful courses on AI... they're pre-spun meatballs... that most participants have never seen. At the same time, they feel that they have done something for their education. They'll tell the boss. Or they'll tell themselves that AI isn't for them after all.

It's cool to entertain a group of 400 people times 500 CZK, i.e. 200,000 CZK for an hour or two. Commercially cool. It's hard to actually teach them something. We also do infotainment... in the form of webinars.

If you want to teach people, you need a small group... ideally about 12 people. Sixteen is still cool. Around 20-24 it breaks and it stops being effective. Because learning requires completely different competencies than having fun.

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Teaching is not lecturing

In order to teach people, you need to understand area X. In our case, design, strategy, customer research or AI. In addition, you need to be able to teach.

I started learning 10 years ago. It was hell. The only thing I could manage was a frontal assault. I got up in front of people. And he spoke.

Within 15 minutes, everyone was attention elsewhere. I didn't care because I was an attention-grabber elsewhere too! Not in people, but with topic X!

Forget lecturing.

The most popular activities of participants in our trainings are those in which I do not speak.

👉 They are practically trying something.

👉 They break down some topic.

👉 Reflects.

At the same time, these are the most effective activities for their own learning.

Lecture < Practice < Reflection.

At the same time, in order to reflect, you need to try things. And to try them consciously, you need a theory.

So our workouts are inverted class. Lectures in the form of short videos and materials in Teachable. Meeting with practical activities that follow up on theory. We gradually iterated on this by trial and error.

When we are in the wrong. I used to tell people that theory was optional. It was a mistake. Today I tell them they need to go through everything. Ideally before meeting and again after meeting. They take an order of magnitude more from training.

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Realization is not the hardest part

The hardest part is getting people to practice! The following factors are key to the commercial success of the course:

1. Timing
2. It's communication
3. Perseverance

Note that there is no content, form, execution of your course! These are crucial only in the long run, when the participants either recommend you and come back for a lift... or remain silent... and are dissatisfied.

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Timing

I first experienced this with Strategic Web Design. People wanted that course. We sold out one term after another... and it went by itself. By the way... Strategic web design was infotainment! Such an eight-hour standup in two. The second time I experienced this with AI Workflow. This was no longer infotainment.

Timing means you hit the trend. People want what you sell and are willing to pay for it. And there are a lot of them.

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It's communication

At the same time, you need to get your course to them in such a way that their needs and your offer meet their needs. The key is the name. Description. Testimonials from participants. And in particular the size of your mailing list. The secret to a commercially successful tutor is a giant active mailing list of people looking forward to his next course.

Why a mailing list and not LinkedIn? Because social networks keep changing their algorithms to your detriment. You need a cheap efficient way to communicate with people. Because doing a good workout is expensive.

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Perseverance

You wrote out the training, showed it to people and nothing. Where's the problem? You have three basic options.

👉 People have no need.

👉 They don't understand your offer.

👉 They are not willing to pay.

Sit down with potential participants. Do interviews, design probes, or other type of customer research (the one we teach at Strategic Design, wink wink 😜). Find out where the problem is.

Sometimes you have to change the name. Other times the content. Other times it's just the wrong term. It is quite possible that the training will catch on for the umpteenth time. It's happened to us many times.

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Teaching people is expensive

To create a training means, at least for us, to invest hundreds of hours of work. In addition, you write off some of the trainings — we wrote this way, for example, AI Style. Generating texts was much more popular than generating brand images.

A little math. Take strategic thinking, for example. Training for 2.5 days + networking.

• Initial investment 100 h
• Marketing 20 h
• Administration 10 h
• Running a cycle of 30 h
• Changes after 10 h cycle

If you do 10 cycles, which is a successful workout... that means 80 hours per cycle including the calculated initial investment. Times 2500 CZK... we're at 200,000 CZK with no reserve. You really need twice as much for it to make sense to do it! 400 000/12 = 30 000 CZK and more per person and 2.5 days of training. Excluding VAT. At a minimum.

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What follows from all this?

1 ️ ⃣ Do you want to teach people? Start building a mailing list.

2 ️ ⃣ Are you listing your first course? Do landing page. Describe what the participants will gain. Expand it into your network. If they subscribes enough, thanks start preparing that training. It doesn't make sense before.

3 ️ ⃣ Do people care? Are they buying? Do everything to give them They didn't give a full day's lecture.

In that order.

“Everything I do is sales. “
-- Nick Huber

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Reading for the weekend

How to be More Agentic

Cate Hall is an inspirational woman. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The best poker player in the world. Founder of several companies. This is an article about getting things done.