Episode 82: Creating Training that Sells with Nancy Giere – Transcript

Wealth On Any Income Podcast Episode 82

Rennie Gabriel  00:09
Hi folks, welcome to Episode 82 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 - 10 seconds, and what assets to look at to determine how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®. Last week, we had book agent Randy Peyser, who spoke about how she connected authors to major publishers. We spoke about how to write a book and have it be your most powerful marketing tool and how to run your business without being in your business. Today, we have as our guest, Nancy Giere. Nancy has over 25 years of experience working in training, marketing, customer service, retail management, insurance and financial services. Actually, the only career she hasn't pursued is in the restaurant or waste management business - pretty unusual for a Sicilian from Chicago. Welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.

Nancy Giere  01:33
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here today.

Rennie Gabriel  01:37
Well, let's get right to it with some questions. Tell me what you do and why you do it.

Nancy Giere  01:45
Oh, well, what I do is I work with entrepreneurs - mostly authors, speakers and coaches - that want to turn their expertise into profitable online courses. So that's the place that I operate in. And one of the main reasons that I do this is because I have a ton of experience in the corporate sector, creating training programs for businesses of all sizes. And with the way that the world has changed, and now everybody is putting a course online, really anybody can, which is good news and bad news. The good news is that anybody can. The bad news is that they don't really think through the design and the flow, and how they really, where they want to get people to from the time that they sign in, until they're complete. So what I want to do is give people really solid instructional design principles, so they can really up their game, and have their courses reflect just how brilliant they really are.

Rennie Gabriel  02:47
Cool. Is there a particular charity that you support, and if so what do they do?

Nancy Giere  02:53
There's a charity I support called Power of Love. And what they do is provide resources to women, primarily in third world countries, to be able to help them build businesses - more of a microlending type of a situation - to really help them get off the ground. It's amazing in some parts of the world, how a little bit of money can go a long way, and really make a big difference in helping these women be able to take care of their families.

Rennie Gabriel  03:21
Yeah, and when you talk about a little bit of money, there's a big difference between what that means in the United States versus in third world countries. Where for $25 you can start a business by buying a goat. I mean, it's, yeah, it's a different world altogether.

Nancy Giere  03:40
Totally different. And here, that, you know, barely gets your lunch in California.

Rennie Gabriel  03:46
Yeah, actually, that was an issue just yesterday. I'm guessing your target market are, like you said, experts and coaches and folks like that, entrepreneurs, whatever...

Nancy Giere  03:58
Right. 

Rennie Gabriel  03:59
Let's get to what your biggest failure - whether it was personal or business - might have been?

Nancy Giere  04:05
Well, several years ago, I had a contract and it was with a quasi-government organization, and they had very specific reporting requirements. And it wasn't that I had done anything wrong, but I was very sloppy in how I was keeping my records. And I was flagged for an audit, which was not, they basically they audit, everybody that was a consultant in this program. At some point, you could expect they were going to audit you in your tenure with them. So it wasn't like something suspicious. I want to make sure people know I'm not a criminal. I am a Sicilian from Chicago. So it does make people kind of wonder, right? 

Rennie Gabriel  04:45
Exactly. 

Nancy Giere  04:45
I know a guy. But I had relied on someone to help me and when I was hiring for someone to help me. I was so stressed out and so anxious that I made a bad hiring decision and a lot of the mistakes she made I could have made by myself. So I really had to stop and just pull back and go, 'Okay, what do I need to do to solve this?' And really take my time and find the right person to help me. Fortunately, I had time to get everything in order, and found the right person. And I stopped doing work for some of my other clients. I had to get the foundation for my business laid, to have the right people on board, so that I could scale because I was really stuck trying to do everything myself. And I think that's a real challenge for a lot of solopreneurs. When you're at that point, and you're experiencing growth, and if you try to do everything yourself, you're going to burn out, you're going to make mistakes, you potentially can lose business rather than build business. So it's that tension of, Okay, I have to start contracting with people, whether it's bringing in a virtual assistant, or actually hiring people. You know, the idea of having payroll can be kind of scary, right? 

Rennie Gabriel  06:03
Yeah. 

Nancy Giere  06:03
So, you know, that was the big, big lesson learned for me is that as smart as I am, I can't do everything. And I've got to find people that compliment me, not people that are like me.

Rennie Gabriel  06:15
Yeah. And it sounds like another insight is, you don't hire people when you're under stress. 

Nancy Giere  06:21
Absolutely. 

Rennie Gabriel  06:22
Yeah. Because it's hard to be discerning if you're overwhelmed. 

Nancy Giere  06:26
You're just like, thank God, you're a body here. Let me, let me sign you up, and I'll get you a pen and a pad of paper and you can get to work.

Rennie Gabriel  06:34
Well, let's talk about the typical feelings, your prospects experience. Tell me about that.

Nancy Giere  06:40
Well, you know, there's this - when people think about creating a course -  on the surface, it sounds easy. It's like for some reason it seems to people that that it's easier to write a course than to write a book. When they both require time, they require attention, they require creativity. You have to think through, what is the flow? What is the structure going to be? And when people get into it, they can just start to panic, and then they lose their ability to really think it through. Because oftentimes one of the things, well, I'm going to write my introduction. Well, no, you don't want to start with your introduction. You want to write everything out and come back and do your introduction at the end.

Rennie Gabriel  07:22
Yes. 

Rennie Gabriel  07:23
Hmm. 

Nancy Giere  07:23
So they'll choose pick your platform. 

Nancy Giere  07:23
And there's resistance to creating an outline and creating a framework. And if you can create a good framework - I call it a design blueprint - for your program, that kind of keeps you grounded in terms of, this is what I decided this course is going to be all about. So as new ideas and information come in, you can bump it up against this blueprint and say - Is this going to help me get to my course? Is this a great thing for me to add? Or am I starting to go down a rabbit hole and I need to just take this chunk of information, set it aside, and then you know, pick it up and work on it at another time. And people, the other part that people get very overwhelmed and frustrated about is they'll buy the tool first. 

Rennie Gabriel  07:35
Yeah.

Nancy Giere  07:37
I happen to be on the new Zenler platform. A lot of people are on Kajabi and Kartra. They'll buy the platform, and it's almost like joining the gym in January. The first week. you're like there, and you're looking around, you're poking around at everything, and okay, that's great. And then you stop. And you're still paying this membership, but you're not using it. So I think it's a great idea to kind of get a sense of the platform that you want to be on. But then get your program further along before you actually subscribe and start building so that you don't end up wasting... That's the thing was subscription models. How many, how many people out there have subscriptions? Like do I have, do I have a subscription?

Rennie Gabriel  08:54
Yes, I have to ask my VA when I get notices to pay some subscriptions, like, Is this something we're actually using?

Nancy Giere  09:01
Yeah. Is this, what is this?

Rennie Gabriel  09:03
Yeah, you know, and it's also, I want to emphasize what you spoke about in terms of, you know, creating the course and not necessarily doing the introduction first, because you don't even know what you've created until you've done it. And so how could you possibly be introducing it. This reminds me of, I used to teach some courses for the Learning Annex back when they were in business. We're talking over 20 years ago. And I recall in the presentation, and this is similar if you're designing a course, but in presenting the material, I had three sections I was presenting. And when I would get to the second section, people were demoralized. And I realized I was putting the sections in the wrong order. 

Nancy Giere  09:45
Hmm. 

Rennie Gabriel  09:46
And when I turned it around, everything worked out beautifully. And so it really had to do with I was depressing people with statistics up front and then asking them to set goals that were important. They were too depressed about the statistics. 

Nancy Giere  10:03
Look, I'll never get that from you.

Rennie Gabriel  10:05
Exactly. And so what I did is I turned it around, and said let's talk about what you really want to accomplish. And now we'll talk about what's in the way.

Nancy Giere  10:13
That makes perfect sense.

Rennie Gabriel  10:14
And so when I came up with my book, it was the same order as the workshop, which would be the same order as of the course I'd create. So that makes so much sense. So . . .

Nancy Giere  10:24
That's a real smart move to really think about the design, order, and how can people connect the information to what they already know. 

Rennie Gabriel  10:33
You got it. Thank you, Nancy. So let's do this now. Let me ask you another question.

Nancy Giere  10:38
All right. I'm ready.

Rennie Gabriel  10:39
Isn't that what we're here for?

Nancy Giere  10:40
Yes. 

Rennie Gabriel  10:41
So, what benefit, goal or objective outcome do people achieve when they follow your advice? And this is where I want you to just give me a specific example.

Nancy Giere  10:51
Okay. I was working on a project, where we were, we were trying to look through, well, what's the, what is it that we want to accomplish? And what I had them do - this as a boutique accounting firm - to actually go through and come up with a whole inventory of all of their content - was one part. And the other part was to come up with what are all the possible topics that you can cover. So they had, this is what we want to cover, and this is what we already have. Now, in a content inventory, that could be a podcast, like we're on today. It could be an article that you wrote. Maybe it's another course, it's a presentation. Really, any of your content assets. And it's always useful to bump that up against what it is you want to accomplish, because then you have clarity around how much work is it going to take to build it. And you can also think about, you've got two ways that you can go. Do I want to focus on something that's going to be a quick win, that I can get out quickly, because I already have something developed, or is there something that's a higher priority that I don't have the information for, but I need to work it out? Now, in this situation, when we mapped it all out, and we looked at what was there and how to set priorities, the decision came around timing. It happened to be around this - this is 1099 season right now, that's when this was going on. So we looked at it in the context of, well, this other course may be more important in terms of the content and the reach, really, the priority was, it shifted around. I got to get my employees skilled up, so that they'll be ready to do the 1099 processing and to be able to communicate to our clients. So what the whole exercise was in getting clarity around what to accomplish, and to be able to set priorities rather than, I'm just going to start writing about this. And it just it made a huge difference to step back, and it gave them more confidence moving forward about what they could create, because they went, 'Well, we've already got a lot of stuff already written. So this isn't gonna be that hard.' Instead of what you're feeling like you're just staring at a blank sheet of paper. So that's, that's one example of a way that I work with people to help them to get clarity. There's a reluctance to step back and plan. But if you step back and plan, then you can really see how big the project is. And really, then lean into it and go, 'Okay, this is what is'. Have a realistic picture of what is it going to take to get this work done. Instead of, Well, I think I'll have it done in a week. Could be true, right? But maybe not.

Rennie Gabriel  13:33
Yeah, maybe not. So funny, because I just went through this process on a program that my team and I were working on for a year to get ready, and it's still not finished. And what I did instead, when I wanted to release something last year is I took a course I taught at UCLA, which was recorded, gave it to my virtual assistant, and had her create a course from that. And I showed it, I sent some emails out in December. Sold three of those courses from an email that my VA was able to put together from something I'd already recorded. 

Nancy Giere  14:13
That's great.

Rennie Gabriel  14:14
Yeah, you can do things quickly, or you can do things that take a long time. And we're almost ready to release the one that has been taking us a year. I think from the time I gave it to my VA it was two weeks later, it was a course.

Nancy Giere  14:29
Well, you had good source content to work with. And that makes a huge difference.

Rennie Gabriel  14:33
Yes, it was just just the recordings from a UCLA class that I taught on buying apartment buildings. 

Nancy Giere  14:40
There you go.

Rennie Gabriel  14:40
Well, let me ask you this, because we're about to wrap up, what's a valuable free resource that you can direct people to that will help them develop a course.

Nancy Giere  14:49
Okay. Well, I have a guide that I wrote that's called, Eight Simple Strategies to Create Training that Sells. So people can download - that's an easy download. And I can get you, get the link for you. So people can have that and grab it.

Rennie Gabriel  14:51
I have that link, and I'll put it in the show notes.

Nancy Giere  15:06
Perfect.

Rennie Gabriel  15:07
Looks like it, it's your name and ends with easy steps to create training that sells.

Nancy Giere  15:12
Yes, yes, Eight Easy Steps to Create Training that Sells. And it really shows the end-to-end process at a high level. So if people are looking at getting into creating a course they can have a good sense of what's the work required to get it done.

Rennie Gabriel  15:26
Beautiful. Is there a question that I should have asked you that would also give some additional value? And also answer it.

Nancy Giere  15:33
Okay. Well, I think one question that people have is, how do I go from a webinar to an evergreen course.

Rennie Gabriel  15:43
Mm hmm. Yes. 

Nancy Giere  15:44
One of my recommendations, when you're looking at that is to think when you're planning your webinar, what could this potentially look like as an online course? How many different sections would I break it into? Because typically, in an online course, you're looking at 5 minutes, 5-7 minutes, right? 

Rennie Gabriel  16:03
Right.

Nancy Giere  16:04
Webinars are 30 minutes, 60 minutes, somewhere in that range. So if you think through all the different sections of the course ahead of time, then when you're going to do your webinar, you 'ta-ta-ta' section one. 

Rennie Gabriel  16:18
Yeah.

Nancy Giere  16:18|
And when you get to the end, you pause, smile at the camera. Then go into section two. That simple act of adding that little smile and the pause, when you go to edit it, to stand it up as an online course that's going to be evergreen, you have a clean place to cut.

Rennie Gabriel  16:37
Mm hmm.

Nancy Giere  16:38
And so the edit, so then it there's not this thing's talking over, or you're moving into Q&A, things like that. I also suggest that you try to take the Q&A out if you can, and turn it into a Frequently Asked Questions document. Because when people are going through it in the that self-study type of format, they may or may not care about the questions that happened when it was in real time.

Rennie Gabriel  17:04
Yes.

Nancy Giere  17:05
But you can pull them out and then you have a nice little add-on piece. So that's my, my 'Hot Tip of the Day'.

Rennie Gabriel  17:10
Yeah, that's great. I love it. Thank you, Nancy. Let's see. Oh, it's time to thank you for being on the show. Thank you, Nancy, for being on the show.

Nancy Giere  17:21
Well, you're very welcome.

Rennie Gabriel  17:22
Thank you. And to my listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Next week, we'll have Terri Levine, who is a mentor for coaches and consultants, and offers a guarantee that they can expand their impact, influence, and income. And she's established her own charitable foundation. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review and subscribe. And if you'd like to know how books, movies and Society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page roadmap to Complete Financial Choice® and philanthropy and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money. Again, that's wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.


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