Learning design that transfers into action is respectful and what your clients pay for.
Teaching products are a great way to;
- build your client base,
- move away from services ($ for hours), and
- create more freedom in your business.
But too many people concentrate on slick looking products…
often at the expense of creating products that empower actions that stick and transform your clients’ future.
Choose stick not slick. Make your clients’ outcomes your priority. Create USEFUL teaching products.
You want your clients to transform their lives/businesses with your tools. You want to be their go to person for solutions they trust. You want your clients to sing your praises and tell their friends. You want learning design that transfers into action.
Create teaching products that are useful for your client. Time and time again. Repeatable success tools.
Have you paid to do someone else’s training products lately? I have.
Lots of them actually.
Partly because I love to learn and partly because it’s a way to see how people present their solutions.
For those of you who are new to my blog, I’m an education designer, with a Master’s degree and 20 years experience so I have some opinions on what makes for a good learning product.
Here’s my observations…
1. Pretty is not the same thing as useful
Some of the products I’ve purchased have been beautiful. Amazing graphic and web design.
Others have been really basic webpages or emails with a logo.
I don’t care if your market is women. The focus has to be on the content not the curtains.
Let’s say you’re an interior designer. Yes. Your product should show beautiful examples and it probably works best with your brand to be beautiful in design, however if the content is just beautiful without the instruction necessary to allow others to replicate your advice…
it’s just pretty curtains covering a brick wall. There is nothing worth seeing behind the curtain.
Pretty without useful instruction will not generate rave reviews because your client’s simply won’t know how to replicate your methods.
Pretty had no correlation with useful.
2. Information is not the same thing as useful
Some products are full to the brim with facts, statistics, graphs and case studies that do nothing more than tell me why something is important or useful.
Why is only half of the solution. I need to know ‘how to’.
Have you been to a conference lately? Or a presentation on the financial state of the country, or even up beat topics like women in leadership or a motivational speaker. They tend to be great as getting the audience aware and inspired and then….
Nothing.
No tools. No strategies. No – ‘from here do this’ instructions. (Bloody frustrating to a pragmatist like me).
Why + How to = Useful
3. Complex is not useful – nor is it more valuable
I’ve paid $1000s for some courses and a couple of hundred for many courses.
Which ones do I rate best value? The ones that gave me exactly what I needed and no BS.
One of them cost me about $260. It was sent via weekly emails with a couple of videos and PDFs embedded. Really basic. No interaction or collaboration but it was really useful.
The videos just explained the why and gave examples. The worksheets let me sort my own stuff out and the teacher was really honest about how long the activities would take.
I hate it when a teacher belittles the process ‘this is so easy’ ‘it will only take you a couple of minutes’ when it’s perfectly obvious that the activity is going to take at least 2 hours.
This course was a bargain. It delivered what it promised. I had great outcomes. I would have paid more.
Include just what’s necessary and be real about the time commitment so the learner can plan their time and not feel like an idiot when it feels complex or time consuming.
Bare bones content + learner focused activities = Useful
Conclusion
Don’t try to compete with the slick and complex.
Bring your solution back to bare bones and get it out there. You can adjust and adapt as you receive feedback but don’t let the lack/expense of technology or design get in your way.
Your product shouldn’t be slick and huge.
Your product just needs to be useful.
Of course getting this bare bones structure can be challenging. That’s where excellent education design comes in. That’s my talent.
