70 | Are online courses for business and marketing worth it?

Annie: Well, hey there, Leah.

Leah: Hey, Annie, how are you today?

Annie: I am great. How are you?

Leah: Doing really well. I'm excited about our topic today and really looking forward to talking about this because I think it's something that comes up on message boards all the time. I see it all the time. No question, all the time. So what are we talking about today, Annie?

Annie: We're talking about online courses for business and marketing, aka the thing I spent too much money on.

Leah: Me too. Me too. I've fallen prey, I have fallen prey. I think all of us do. They're so alluring. You're going to be a seven-figure earner by next week if you just take this ten-day course. They can really get you drawn in.

Annie: I mean, I am very susceptible to marketing, even though I feel like I've studied marketing enough, I can take a sales page and I can break it down and be like, okay, here's where they're using this pressure tactic. Here's where they're appealing to social proof and identifying my pain point. But then I'm still like, but it also sounds really cool. I just recently talked myself out of and I really had to talk myself out of paying way too much money for a course that I literally don't need. I was like, I do not need this. What I had to do is I had to sit down and look at the actual offerings, like here's what you're gonna get. I had to read through each section and say, I do not need that, I do not need that, I do not need that. I'm kind of interested in this and this one thing I could probably find on YouTube. I'm just not going to spend this money for this one little thing, but oh my gosh, these shiny sales pages and the fancy promotions.

Leah: They're so good at it. Obviously, that's why they're teaching a course about marketing because they just got you to spend thousands of dollars. They're like here's my proof that I'm good at teaching marketing because I just got you to spend thousands of dollars on my five-hour course on marketing. It's crazy how much the science and this just like precision accuracy formula for sales and all of this is out there in the world now. That like we're the prey, kind of is scary. But that also means if we implement all that, then maybe our clients are also then turned into the prey.

Annie: Right? I mean, that's the thing is these courses are not necessarily a good fit for what we're doing in private practice. To be really honest about it, number one, when you buy a course about marketing, we're just gonna pick on marketing, but it could be on anything, about creating an online course, things like that. You watch it and you're like, okay, I'm watching these videos. Of course, if you're like me, you're watching the videos and you're also checking email and maybe watching something else at the same time. But it gives you the feeling that you're working, but you're not. A lot of times you're just gone shopping and now you're passing the time with something that like, are you really going to implement it, but then if you like, actually look into like, okay, what are they teaching me to implement? You're like, I don't know if I can do this for families.

Leah: Some of it feels a little aggressive for the population that we're trying to serve. We've got a very vulnerable population and desperate population, which a marketing person might say, whoa, that's easy. That's an easy one to grab but then if you think from an ethical standpoint, like, no, like high-pressure tactics on people that are already vulnerable and already desperate to find answers, and to figure something very personal and very serious, I mean, this is your kid eating. It's not like, do you have a shiny website page with good SEO. This is like your kid eating. So I feel like it can be really hard and the classes that I've taken to kind of take the information they're sharing, and then try to get it to fit into our business model. I always found so challenging and I would do their exercises and go through their processes. I was just like, oh, something in me just never felt really good about it. I'm just like, and most of the time I didn't implement much of what I learned in those. Although now I know it. I could probably make a really savvy like you said marketing copy, but I definitely do not feel like I could put a lot of use of that marketing material into the type of services and offers and things that we really want to provide to families in these hard times that they're going through.

Annie: I know and they have you start, a lot of them like the ones on business, they have you start by like, okay, define your ideal customer avatar. I'm kind of like, I don't know, somebody that wants to feed their baby.

Leah: I know. I'm like, okay, so basically every parent on the planet.

Annie: And free Tuesday, book online, I can help you or I can't like I'm a clinician. Then you start to go really dark with like, okay, let me amplify your pain points. Okay, if you don't work with me, your baby's gonna die. How's that for pain point? You look at a lot of them and these are like the big courses. This is something I've been following and I have been interested in coercive marketing and high-pressure tactics is that they are harmful when applied to families. So like, one of them is they teach you that, and I think this is like in the direct sales world, they'll teach you to close on the call, close on the call. So have a call with somebody and doing things like sending them in the other room and getting another credit card, like you can split the payments, you can afford this, what are you going to spend it on anyway? What is more important to spend your money on than your baby? Do you really want this? If you are aware of it and alert to it and then you look at the sales pages for some of these online courses, you will see exactly that same kind of messaging. If you just read through it and substitute, your baby will die for all of their promises. This course is not for you if you want your baby to die. Literally, that is what they would have us do to families. That is the opposite of how I want to show up to families. I'm really not trying to talk you out of your money. Not what this is about.

Leah: No not at all. I do feel like there's just also this whole package deals and add-ons, and blah blah blah. All this overwhelming information that a new parent could never process like, okay, buy this package and you get these ten things in that package. It's like 2am, and their nipple is about fall off, they're not thinking about being upsold, like click this button, and you'll get an additional blah, blah, blah. That feels so icky to me. It was really hard to go through some of these courses because I felt kind of sad if this was the experience that parents were having. How sad would that be? It was definitely not how I wanted to show up as a lactation consultant. I definitely struggled like you with all these different prompts and things and there's like literally no way to word this or use this idea in our world, has it been my experience. So it's really frustrating because I think if we had any other business, I think we can really utilize some of these great techniques and strategies. But when we're dealing directly with vulnerable populations in desperate times, and trying to give care to anyone that needs it without trying to pick into some ideal person out there, then I really feel like we have to move away from some of that coercive and high-pressure strategies.

Annie: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we need to help people feel safe, to kind of harken back to our last episode about stresses families face not to be an additional source of stress to them. I'm like, we have an appointment booked and I'm going to show up, and I'm going to ask you some questions, and we're going to talk. We're going to take it from there. I'm not going to try to tell you the way to success is to book a five visit package with me. That is how you're going to get where you need to go. No, I don't know how many visits, how can I possibly know how many visits and how can I possibly make you a promise that if you invest this amount of money in me, you're going to have this outcome? I can't promise that.

Leah: No, there's like so many variables and I think that's why the healthcare field has a really hard time crossing over with a lot of the marketing fields because you can't provide many promises and that's what a lot of marketing does. I'm gonna promise you this, I'm gonna promise you that, and then that makes you want to buy it because you've been promised. In healthcare, there's no way to do that. There's way too many variables, way too many things outside of control. That we can't really utilize those. I mean, I do feel like there's some business courses that can be helpful because there is a lot of entrepreneurship that like, sure as heck, I didn't understand when I got into this. Like, how to use QuickBooks and how to keep on top of all the just organizational skills that I needed. I love my classes and courses. I took a course on how to optimize Gmail. I just thought that was so cool because I'm like things I will never think of in my entire life and never gonna figure out on my own. It was so eye-opening and actually a very pleasant break from normal clinical lactation stuff.

Annie: I took that course, too. I don't know. I might have sent it to you. It was, we'll get into the show notes because it was actually really good. It was this woman just doing screen shares of here's how you set up your inbox and it was like she also had calendars and drives. It was like, found it, not just helpful but like relaxing.

Leah: It was like awfully relaxing on a topic that I'm like not top of my list, like what am I going to do today to kick back and relax, it's probably not watching videos on how to optimize Gmail, but I sure did enjoy the information. I thought things like that are so helpful to tap into and to seek out to help you be a better business owner. But I think in the world of marketing, we kind of have to look elsewhere and not maybe to some of these well-known courses that promise you to be seven figures.

Annie: The other thing is there are good courses out there about social media, for example, like Jasmine Star, I think is the person who does all the social media, and she's got this Social Curator that you can buy photos and captions from her and I did that at one point. I do feel like those are a good starting out point to kind of understand, this is somebody who is well versed in the language of social media. I found like it got me posting and then I'm like, okay, all my posts look like everybody else's out there because a lot of people have bought this. But at the same time, I was like, but I'm okay with that because I like how they look and it got me to start doing something as a beginner.

Leah: Yeah and I always remember that, like, just because somebody's seeing your content doesn't mean they're seeing all the content of the people that you see content of. I think about that like they're not on your content pool, or like all your same people. They've got their own, you're just the one little tiny speck on their big web of people. So it's like, most of the time, that probably wouldn't even be the experience that your content looks like everybody else's because guess what, they probably don't even have the same pool of content that they're looking at verses you're looking at. So I do think there are definitely some valid options out there when it comes, especially like business, business information, and business things. Certainly, like with Gmail, there's lots of tools out there that can help you stay organized with your business, and then taking online courses about those tools, I found really helpful. Like one point we were using Trello for business organization and business tasks and stuff like that and I took a whole Trello course and that was really helpful.

Annie: I think I took that course too.

Leah: I think we take all the same things.

Annie: I think they have the Boss Project Shop now, Abigail and Emily, they were super cute, like millennial online entrepreneurs, but I actually liked their vibe a lot. I find that to be not sleazy at all. I often think of with online entrepreneurs, I think that a lot of them are pretty sleazy, and it's hard to find the ones when you find that the ones that aren't, that are genuine. You're like, oh, you actually know something that you actually want to teach and that there's value here and not to get seduced by the sales page. You and I are big fans of Shondra Mattos, she was just in our deeper dive last month about marketing. She has a course on SEO and it's like, yeah, I would listen to Shondra break down super complicated technical and clinical topics any day of the week because her brain is like the most deepest thing. She's so smart. So when Shondra was like I have an SEO course I was like take all my money please Shondra. I will definitely take your course that I've been working my way through it slowly and I also like courses about personal finance and budgeting and taxes and things like that.

Leah: I'd like to pretend like those things don't exist until my accountant calls me and says, Leah, we're gonna have to talk about all the things and I'm like, I don't want to talk about it.

Annie: They want to give me a free spreadsheet template to download that, I can then start populating with my own information. I'm such an easy mark, send me your sales page, I'll buy.

Leah: Now we know how to make money, take Annie's money. Oh my gosh, it's so funny how different things appeal to different people. It's like, that makes me feel slightly nauseous. Whereas, like the Trello thing and it was so visually appealing. Trello is so pretty. I want to use it all the time but like to you spreadsheets are pretty and to me, spreadsheets are like, I don't know what's happening, like so many things.

Annie: I wouldn't say they're pretty. I don't know, like, I might have like some dopamine receptor in my brain that really likes to see a filled-in spreadsheet.

Leah: That's hilarious. I am like, all about the very clean-looking lists. If you can give me just a really pretty list that I can tick the boxes. I feel so good about life. Sometimes I make lists about things that I've already done so that I can tick all the boxes. So I need a course on how to like create lists so you can just like have all the boxes filled.

Annie: You need a bullet journal course.

Leah: I love bullet journals.

Annie: That makes me want to run away.

Leah: Is that so funny? Funny, different strokes for different folks.

Annie: Leah and I are also super jazzed about USLCA because we're both going to be speaking at the in-person conference in Norfolk in September. So what are you talking about?

Leah: So I'm doing a talk on how to pandemic proof or other crises proof your private practice. I've experienced several different types of crises through the time that I've owned a private practice, including with everyone else, a pandemic, and I'm going to be sharing strategies and tactics and policies that can help take care of you, your business and the people that you serve throughout any type of crisis that might hit your area or your world or you.

Annie: I can't wait for that one. I hope they don't schedule it at the same time as mine. That would be a real drag.

Leah: I know. How about you? What are you talking about?

Annie: Yeah, mine is actually related to this topic because I'm doing, my talk is all about the difference between coercion and support and encouragement. So there's coercing somebody and persuading them to do something that might be against their best interests, but there's also supporting people and where's the line? The title is From Breast is Best to Fed is Best. I am very excited because I'm going to talk about all the things that I don't like about how they move about in this world and how you better. It's a topic I'm super passionate about so hopefully we'll see people in person. I already bought my plane ticket. I can't wait.

Leah: Did you really? Oh, yes. Well, that is so awesome. I'm really excited about it.

Annie: Well, this was a great conversation as always. I'm so excited that we had it and can't wait for our next one.

Leah: Definitely, see you then.

Annie: Bye.

Leah: Bye.