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Episode #328 – If I Were Building as an Educator Today

TUNE IN: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Is the education space in our industry over-saturated? Is there just a quality issue? Let’s talk about it! 

There’s no denying that education in our industry has drastically changed since I started out over 12 years ago.  

In today’s episode, I’m breaking down what challenges and opportunities educators face in today’s industry and what I would do if I was building as an educator today! 

 

Don’t miss these highlights:

>>>Some of the feedback that I have received from stylists about the current state of education in our industry  

>>>What I believe causes educators to rise and fall and the short term trends I’m seeing  

>>>The impact of an educator not having a depth of knowledge or experience  

>>>Why I recommend finding what works for you or what didn’t work for others in the industry 

>>>The biggest mistakes I see educators making today and that I want you to avoid 

>>>Tips for categorizing yourself in education sector 

>>>Why you need to gain the trust first as an educator, and not have people just know and like you 

>>>An breakdown of the growth model and a look at my own journey as an educator 

Like this? Keep exploring.

Have a question for Britt? Leave a rating on iTunes and put your question in the review! 

Want more of the Thriving Stylist podcast? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and make sure to follow Britt on Instagram!


Subscribe to the Thriving Stylist podcast for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer. Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.

I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists, and this is The Thriving Stylist podcast.

Britt Seva: What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and this week we’re talking about what I would do if I were building as an educator today. Now, the full transparency, I would not consider myself somebody who’s building as an educator today. I’ve been educating in the industry for 12 years. I started in 2012. I was coaching one-to-one for three years before going online in 2015. I thought that this episode, first of all, it’s inspired by a question and I’m going to read the question. But what I loved about the way that this question was phrased is the person was specifically asking what I would do if I was building as an educator today. What I did building as an educator in 2015, 2016, 2017, would not work today. Somebody could not follow my journey step-for-step and end up at the same destination. It wouldn’t work because I was building in a different time, in a different landscape with different players, different technology. Everything was different.

This is the thing that I think can be tricky to understand is that I often talk about in my program’s wealthiest year yet especially I talk about often we get caught up following influencers, which by the way, anybody with a social media presence is an influencer. You’re creating influence one way or another. But we follow people and we say, “Oh my gosh, okay, I like where the way their life looks. I’m going to follow the exact same steps they did hoping to get to the same place,” but you can’t because you’re always jumping into their journey months or even years later. The decisions that were made at the crossroads that that person made them don’t necessarily make any sense today.

That’s one of the kind of fatal flaws I see some educators making today. Not all of them, but I’ve certainly made that mistake too, been like, “Oh my gosh, look at what this person did. I’ll try and do that.

It’s like, “Oh girl, you are four years too late.”

I’ve been there and so I want to read this question. I want to dig into it. First of all, this is not the only time I’ve talked about growing and becoming an educator. It’s not something I talk about a lot, but every once in a while I go there. Episode 240 was one of the more recent episodes, so on episode 240, I talk about myths and realities of what it’s like to be an educator. Also I talk about how to find out what your rate should be, what you should be charging people. If you’ve not listened to episode 240 and you’re an educator or an aspiring educator, go back and listen because that was a really, really great in-depth and formative one too. Then we’re going to layer on here because I think that one was recorded in 2022, probably something like that. The formula that I share is the same, the myths and realities all the same, all of that stands true, but it’s time for a little bit of an update.

This question comes in from Brooke. She says, “Hey, Britt, I love the podcast. I’ve been listening for a few years and have subscribed to Thriving Stylist Method, and I’m seeing real results. I’m excited to see you in May in Chicago.” Brooke, I’m excited to see you too. We’re going to have a good time, “And continue learning more. I know that the industry as a whole says we are so oversaturated with industry educators, but my dream since 2018 was to become an industry educator. I’m finally in the space, I have the finances, I have the time, I have the resources, and I really want to start. I’m just wondering, how would you recommend new educators navigate our changing industry, market ourselves to stand out, and have long-term success?”

Well, if that isn’t a smart question, I don’t know what is. Brooke, props to you because it just goes to show me you are in the right head space of like, “Yeah, but how do I do it today?” I hear the buzz about we’re oversaturated as an industry when it comes to education. I don’t want to be a part of that noise. I want to be a part of the solution. I freaking love it. You’re coming from a place of awareness and I’m obsessed.

Let’s start with that first part where she says, “We know education is saturated today.” I actually don’t believe that’s the issue at all. I think the problem is we are having a massive quality issue in education. We saw an explosion of people choosing to shift into education in 2020, 2021, 2022, specifically those three years. The challenge is education looks easy, specifically online education looks easy. In theory, you’re like, “Wow, amazing.” You set up a camera, a tripod, you’re smart enough, you film some stuff, you teach them stuff. There’s a million platforms that you can use for it. You build an email list, you show up on social media, done and done. That’s the way to build a terrible, crappy, poor-quality online business for sure. But that’s not the way to do it professionally and properly and in a way that will impact lives deeply.

The reason I speak to a quality issue is because when people reach out to me, which they do quite often asking for advice and saying things like, “I’ve been burned by such-and-such an educator, what do you think I should do? How should I handle this?”

That’s the thing is I don’t hear people saying, “I’m so confused. What educator do I pick?” The saturation thing is not the problem. The problem is people investing and are having these terrible experiences after they pay the money and so it’s making them gun shy to invest again because they’ve been burned once, twice, three times. They can’t trust anymore, right? I think that we’re actually in equality issue over a saturation issue.

I am going to speak from that vantage point because I believe that success is possible for anybody. There’s enough room for good people doing good work all the time. You don’t need to worry about saturation if your work is phenomenal. If your work is not great, the issue is, again, not saturation, it’s the quality of your work.

I actually wanted to start this episode by sharing some of the quotes y’all sent me. Preparing for this episode I just openly asked on Instagram, this is one where I didn’t want to just give opinion only. I really wanted to have facts. I asked on Instagram very openly, “If you’ve had an education experience that was negative, explain to me why.” This was one of the more popular Instagram polls I’ve ever done, and I want to read to you some of the feedback. The first kind of cluster of feedback is a lot of people used this word “influencer” and how it was negative. Here’s one of them. “I’ve been to a few industry influencer classes in the last couple of years. Every single one of them was disappointing. They look great on Instagram, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.” Here’s another one. “I went to an in-person class hosted by an influencer,” and that’s in air quotes and it says, “It was overcrowded, felt very impersonal, educator acted too cool for questions, seemed more concerned about the meet and greet than the actual education.”

Here’s the thing about that. I can see it both ways. I think there’s a lot of influencers who did not necessarily intend to blow up as fast as they did. Now you’re like, “Okay, seize the day,” because that’s what people tell you to do. Okay, you’re in it. This is your opportunity, take the chance. S.

O you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to start booking classes and selling tickets.” Meanwhile, they might not know how to facilitate a great class, but the people are begging for it. The people are like in the DMs, “When are you teaching? Are you coming to my town? Can you come here?” I don’t think that all the time when people create these opportunities, it’s coming from a bad place. It’s like, “People are begging for it, people must like me,” and then you show up, but you just don’t know how to facilitate a good class. I think that’s where a lot of it comes from.

I think very, very little of the feedback I got was truly malicious. I don’t think there’s a ton of people who are actively trying to scam. I just think that there’s a lack of skill right now around what great education looks like.

On that note, another stylist said, “The educator I went to see clearly had zero experience with public speaking and it showed.” Then we have another one, “Educator was clearly burnt out and was annoyed with our questions. Maybe this is a topic they’ve taught lots of times, I haven’t heard it lots of times. I don’t find value when someone’s not willing to communicate.” I thought that was interesting.

Somebody else said, “This was an in-person class, the educator wasn’t keeping control of the class. Everybody started to get bored and talking.”

Here’s another one. “My most recent class I went to was too big. There was probably 100 people in the room. It was advertised as a look and learn for $700. It’s very difficult to be in a room with 100 people on a look and learn and not for a $700 ticket.” This comes up a lot too. This is that perceived value piece of sure, when people say, “Charge your worth and tax,” sure, but if people don’t perceive the value in what you’re charging, it’s always going to be a misfire. This was a big one. “The educator came in looking like she rolled out of bed, had no class structure. The educator came straight in from the airport, was running late, wanted to talk about her travel story for 20 minutes, seemed flustered, and the entire class sustained that level of energy.”

Here’s another one. “It was obvious that there was no curriculum, there was no explaining, no true educating, just a lot of talking.” That’s a big one too. You can’t just get in there and do talking. There has to be some value to what’s happening.

“I paid $1000 for online education. It was supposed to be about branding and social media. There was zero return on investment. Absolute joke.”

“I can’t stand it when I pay for a class and the class ends up being full of foul language. I myself have a potty mouth, but if I’m paying for you to educate me, I don’t want to hear yours.” I thought that one was very interesting. As a fellow potty mouth, if you know me in real life, I have a sailor’s tongue. I’m really bad. Even my son, I have a 9-year-old son who’s like, “Mom, you can’t talk like that.” This is an embarrassing confession, but the reason I share it is because I don’t know, I’ve always been this way. I have a bit of a sharp tongue and cuss words roll off real easy for me. You don’t hear me talk like that in a professional class setting. When you go into Thriver Society, there’s no cuss words. Listen, if you’re an educator and you’re like, “I cuss, it’s just how I am,” that’s fine, but you also have to know I’m getting messages of people saying, “As soon as I pay for your class, I don’t want to hear that.” If you want to say, “That’s not my people,” that’s fine. You can totally say that, but you have to know people are going around talking about how when you cussed in something that they paid for, they felt a type of way. If you’re okay with that feedback, great, but just know it’s coming through.

This was a good one. “When the value of their class is way below their follower count, it makes me wonder if they bought their following.”

Here’s one, “I spent $700 to see two educators together. They showed up 20 minutes late, the class ran three hours long. They talked s about other stylists in the town we were in and spent a huge amount of the class talking about themselves over teaching. It was a wild waste of money.”

Here’s another one. “I’ve gone to too many classes from educators/influencers who aren’t experts. They have a following, you think they’re going to be able to teach you something, but they can’t.”

Oh, I’m going to wrap it up on this one. “I can’t stand it when I pay for education and the educator talks badly about competitors and why they’re so much better.”

What it comes down to, and I could go on and on and on, I have a few hundred of those, but it comes down to, when you listen to it and you hear the patterns, it’s simply people who are not prepared to teach the classes. They put these big price tags on things and then the value is not there on the flip side. That’s literally the simplest way to describe it. I want to talk about how we got to that place, what I would do if you want to grow as an educator, to avoid that happening, and to save your reputation because here’s the thing. I have seen so many educators rise and then fall. When an educator rises and then falls, it’s because of all the things I just told you. You can pull off looking qualified, cool, and fancy for a couple of years. You really can. To sustain beyond that, it takes a very different skillset because the word starts to get out of like, “Ooh, I don’t know about this,” and it starts to become unsustainable.

Few things that happen that I believe cause educators to rise and fall. One is when they choose to coach to a short-term trend. If somebody chose to, and by the way, I don’t know of anybody who did either of these things, so if they did, I’m not talking about them, I’m not certain who they would be. If somebody in our industry tried to be the number one TikTok teacher for beauty professionals. That is such a niched and specific trend that yeah, you probably could blow the heck up teaching that for a short time, but it’s not sustainable. Like any social media platform, it’s not going to be around forever so what’s your end game on that? Same with AI. Do you remember in 2023 when AI was all the rage, and now even now, not even a year later, it’s starting to fizzle. Do I think somebody could sell an AI training class right now? Not at scale. No one’s going to show up to see or hear that. Choosing something that’s a short-term trend or like, “Ooh, here’s something that works really good for me,” something too niched down, those kind of things are going to be short-term educator trends.

But the number two thing, and the one I think is most popular is they don’t have a depth of knowledge or experience, essentially choosing to become an educator too fast. You need a really deep depth of knowledge and experience to sustain as an educator. One of the things that I say is to go through programs and find gaps. Don’t try and reteach something somebody’s already done because what’s going to happen is you don’t have a depth of knowledge to go beyond that. People are going to see right through it. It’s not sustainable.

The other thing that I’ve seen is people who are, I used to call them one-trick ponies, but now I realize it makes me sound old, so I don’t say that anymore. But going back to when I started educating online in 2015, I was part of, there was a bubble of maybe 20 of us who were fairly well-known ish. I was the least known of everybody. I’m going to go ahead and say that with confidence, and I look at the people who were six, seven steps ahead of me who are 300 steps behind me now, and I ask myself, “What the heck? What is it that I did that work that they did not do? Or what did they do that didn’t work for them?”

I looked them up just to see what they’re up to. One of the people was a big time color educator, actually stopped doing clients to travel and just teach color classes full time because the demand was there, there was so much demand for this person. Now they’re not educating, haven’t been for many years. It looks like, there was a post that was talking about it, and they’re back to doing hair. They literally just don’t teach anymore. The reason why they blew up so fast is they were teaching one very specific trendy thing, but again, it goes back to the trends and then they didn’t have the depth of knowledge. So once that trend was like, “Okay, everybody’s learned it. Now what do you have?” It was like, “Well, nothing,” and your charisma can only take you so far, right?

There’s another person who again, blew up on a trend, the trend kind of fizzled, and now I look at what they’re doing. It looks like they took a big gap and they didn’t teach for many years, and now they’ve chosen a new specialty that they’re going in on. They’re going to try and make that thing work. But when you don’t have that depth of knowledge, as trends shift and change, it’s very hard to pivot, and so you end up in a bind.

Biggest mistakes I see educators making today trying to monetize too fast, get-rich-quick schemes. When somebody says that, how does it make you feel? Yucky. Don’t go into education trying to get rich quick. Go into education looking to build longevity. If this becomes something that’s financially good for me in a decade, I’d be happy. That’s when often it works out really, really well. Don’t try and monetize for the first couple of years, which I know is hard for people because we’re living in an Amazon Prime world where we want everything to happen right now. But the problem is if you don’t have lots and lots of depth of experience and you start charging people in your first year or your second year educating, people are going to have negative paid experiences with you, it is very hard to come back for that. Versus if you spend a couple of years just deeply serving, maybe they will have some bad experiences with you, trust me, when I say people had bad experiences with me, but they were unpaid, so you can be irritated about it, but there’s no skin off your nose on that one. It’s not like anything actually went sideways in it, so no harm, no foul.

Lacking clarity around their expertise. There’s a difference between being a smart person and a successful person and being a really great educator. There’s lots of smart, successful people who should never ever teach a class ever. There’s lots of people who are educating and teaching who aren’t smart and don’t know how to do it as well. You kind of have to have both, and they’re different skillsets. A lot of times if I go to an educator’s page or their website or whatever, they look accomplished, but it’s very hard to distinguish but what is it that you help people with? What do you teach them with? What is the finish line you’re taking them to? What is the breakthrough they’re going to have? What’s hard is this is a blind spot. A lot of times educators think they’ve done a really good job explaining it, but if the end user, the stylist, doesn’t quite understand it perfectly, you’ll really struggle to build and grow.

Leads into number three, assuming the industry wants to learn something. If you’re trying to convince somebody they should learn something from you, you’re probably chasing the wrong vision. You want to teach the stuff that people are naturally coming to you for. That’s how I’ve done what I’ve done. If I was to teach what I wanted to teach, I would be teaching something totally different than what I’m teaching right now. When I look at the things I’m really passionate about diving into and researching on or I really feel like this would be huge for the industry, I can want that as much as I want to, but if the industry’s not ready for it or if there’s not a craving for it, I don’t get to teach it. You have to listen to the market, and I think that a lot of educators are like, “Don’t listen to the market. Listen to me.” It doesn’t work that way. There has to be a natural demand for it.

Then we look at … I kind of think about education in different buckets and I think about experience and qualifications in four different categories. For somebody like maybe for this stylist who wrote into me, I want you to think to yourself, I’m going to list off kind of four ranges of expertise, I want you to categorize yourself. The first is a helper. A helper can give advice or show you how they think something can be done. Can I be honest? I think a lot of “industry influencers,” I’m doing the air quotes right now are mostly helpers. They can give advice or show how they think something should be done and they can do a great job of that.

When I started off teaching within my salon, I was definitely a helper. I didn’t know how to be a great teacher, I didn’t know how to be a great educator, but I could certainly show somebody, I could push them to the finish line. I had experience doing a lot of things where I could say like, “Oh my gosh, I know how to do that, let me help you. I know how to do that, let me show you how to do it.” To me, that’s not educator, that’s helper.

Then we have teacher. Teachers can demonstrate techniques that they are trained in. They’re often re-sharing information that was taught to them. Think about a teacher at a high school or a teacher at a college. They’re not making up innovative new concepts. If they’re an algebra teacher, they’re teaching the algebra they learned. If they’re a US history teacher, they’re talking about US history. You are facilitating on something that you learned somewhere else. You’re not creating new stuff. Most “brand educators,” I’m doing air quotes again, are teachers, and that’s totally fine, but think about it, what does it take to become a brand educator? Often you pay to be trained by that brand and then you teach the stuff they allow you to teach. To me, that’s called being a teacher. Has anybody gone to branded education and you ask a question and they give you a textbook from the brand, don’t-go-off-the-script kind of answer? That’s a teacher, that’s not an educator, which is okay, it’s a format. I understand how it works.

This is the distinction for me between teachers and educators. Teachers are going off a script. There’s rules, there’s guidelines to what they’re allowed to talk about and what they’re not allowed to talk about, they got to stick to the system. That’s a teacher. Then there’s educators. Educators can break down complicated topics into simple terms in a way that makes sense to different learning types and styles and has independent thoughts and concepts. They’re innovative and they’re sharing new things you’ve never thought about before. They do great in an on-the-fly Q and A because you’re not going to rattle them because they have independent thoughts versus a teacher or helper, they have a more limited depth of knowledge, and so it becomes more challenging for them.

Then there’s a coach. A coach creates next-level results and breakthroughs. Coach is the hardest one to get to. Coaches don’t speak to the obvious, coaches coach in the gaps. That’s what makes coaching exceptionally hard is that you don’t give someone what they want, you give them what you need, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow, even if what they need is not what they’re asking for. That’s the job of a coach. A coach is not an order-taker. An educator is sometimes an order-taker. A teacher is 1000% an order-taker. A coach is not. A coach gives the hard advice even when the person doesn’t want to hear it.

Four different types. I want you to think to yourself, based on your depth of knowledge today, what are you? If you’re somebody where you’re like, “Well, I’ve got this one thing I want to teach,” you’re a teacher, you’re not an educator just yet. You can get there and we’re going to talk about how, but I want you to think to yourself, based on your level of experience, can you demonstrate things that you’re already trained in which makes you a teacher? Or can you break down complicated topics into simple terms in a way that makes sense to all of the five different learning styles while having independent thoughts and concepts that are constantly evolving? Very different.

Educators and coaches will be the most successful for the obvious reasons. When you’re looking to build as an educator, everybody says, “It takes know, like, and trust,” correct, but to me, those words are in the wrong order. When you’re building as an educator, it goes trust, like, know. Somebody has to trust you before they’ll like you and then they’ll choose to get to know you. I think a lot of educators get that wrong and they’re like, “They just need to know me. I need to create awareness. How do I make a big deal of myself? How do I gain a following?” If the trust isn’t there and they don’t really like you, none of that matters. So to me it’s trust first, then like, then know. People need to have small wins with the person before they’re willing to invest.

Here’s my advice. As you build as an educator, build in silence. When you talk to the most successful humans today, take education out of it. They will tell you, “I kept my head down and I built in silence. For years people maybe thought I wasn’t going to make it, for years people were confused about what I was doing. For years I didn’t look like a big deal. Then when I decided to pull the trigger, everything took off.’ That’s what you want your story to be.

First step I would do is gain your experience. I would suggest working for a brand first. Become a really good teacher, start there. Then participate in 10 educational experiences and make a list of what you love and what you hate, and then the gaps in the education that those educators leave. Next, and this is the piece of advice I’ve given out, I don’t know, 100 times to people who ask me about becoming an educator and no one ever takes it because this is the hard work. This is the hard part. I also think it’s the part that makes the difference. Start with one-to-one coaching only, and do that for two years. Do not create a digital training program. Don’t start doing workshops. Don’t make an ebook. Don’t make a download. One-to-one coaching for two years.

I did one-to-one coaching for three years before I went online. I learned more in those three years that I’ve learned collectively in the years since. That’s where I figured out what I was good at, what I liked, what I hated, where I could not create breakthroughs, where I could create breakthroughs, what were roadblocks for people. That’s where I developed my methodology. Had I not done one-to-one, I would not have had enough data or depth of knowledge to pull this off. It would’ve been impossible for me. You can only learn so much from an Instagram following. You can only learn so much from surveys to your email list. Being in the trenches with the people is where you’ll learn. One-to-one for at least two years.

Then let’s look at the growth model. Start as the helper for free, then do one-to-one coaching for at least two years. Do you know what my rate was when I started off as a one-to-one coach? Guess. What was my rate? It was $40 an hour, 40. If you say, “Well, this was a long time ago.” 2012, 2014, 2013 wasn’t that long ago. If we were to put $40 an hour into terms now, it might be 60 bucks an hour maybe? Maybe 50 bucks an hour? I was doing it for next-to-nothing because all I wanted was the experience, the exposure, and the reputation. It wasn’t about the money. In fact, this is when we were $30,000 in debt. We had no money as a family at this point.

That’s frustrating, especially for my husband who’s like, “What are you doing? You’re spending all this time doing this thing, that’s not making anything.” I totally understood, but I knew I was going somewhere with it. Takes humble in the beginning. You have to humble yourself or humility in the beginning to make it happen.

While you’re doing that one-to-one coaching, don’t sell anything online. How do I monetize this? Don’t even worry about that yet. You’re learning. You’re putting yourself through an educator mentorship, internship, you are learning. Build up your network and your reputation. Figure out where you’re creating breakthroughs for people and what you enjoy teaching the most. There will be stuff you love teaching and stuff you don’t enjoy teaching. Learn that now. Figure out who you like teaching the most.

Little known fact, the initial name for my business was Flourish Salon and Spa Business Development because from 2012 to 2015, I was coaching stylists, salon owners, and spa owners, so I did all three. In 2015, when I decided to create Thriver Society, I had decided at that point I wanted to just focus on stylists and salons. If you email us, sometimes you’ll get an email from Flourish Salon Spa, that’s where that comes from. But I wouldn’t have known had I not done one-to-one that really I wanted to harness my focus in because this is where I’m able to create stronger breakthroughs at this crossroads. You figure that out by doing that one-to-one.

Now, when it comes to creating awareness around the fact that you even exist as an educator, we have a few options to build on. We’ve got essentially YouTube, Instagram, podcasts, TikTok, Facebook, paid advertising, I guess. That’s kind of it when it comes to awareness. When I rattle off all those things, I think that most educators start with Instagram because where our industry mostly hangs out, so that completely makes sense. I would do that. I think it’s the strong move. Then I think people kind of gravitate to podcasts, mostly because you don’t have to be on video, which is nice. It’s easier, and it seems easy. Podcasting is extremely hard and time-consuming to do well, and the other thing is, there’s no algorithm in a podcast. No matter what podcast platform you’re on, Spotify, Apple, Google Play, whatever, those platforms have no interest in growing your podcast for you. You must do it manually yourself. I started my podcast when I already had, I don’t know, like 40,000 followers or something, a lot, so I already had a pretty strong following. When I launched my podcast, yeah, I got 12,000 downloads the first episode because I had the following already, and that’s why it’s been able to sustain. Podcast is one of the hardest things to grow so it feels like easy in execution, it’s very hard in growth.

What is much easier in growth is things like TikTok or YouTube. Video is still queen. People say, “King,” I like to say, “Queen.” Video still wins and so if you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to do the video thing.” If you don’t want to do the video thing, the path as an educator’s going to be hard because getting strong on video is a part of going from helper to teacher to educator.

Here’s something that other people don’t know. I’ve been coaching, starting in 2022, I started hiring on coaches for Thriver Society and mentoring that at depth. If you ask them what the coaching has looked like, they will say, “Under no uncertain terms, truly no blood, but a lot of sweat and tears, a lot of sweat and a lot of tears.” Because when you try and teach on video, when you try and teach on audio, it’s a lot harder than people understand and I don’t settle for mediocre with my coaches. I think a lot of educators or teachers or helpers or whomever don’t take time to learn the nuances of video education, of audio education. If you choose to build awareness around your educator brand using TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, video, you will learn it. You’ll learn it through the reps. Be messy in the beginning. Be clueless in the beginning. It will get easier the more often you do it. Video marketing is going to be crucial, and I would be showing up daily.

Wrapping it up, this was a rather long episode. For those who want to grow as educators today, do not believe the lie that the industry is too saturated. It’s not too saturated, we have a quality issue. If you can overcome the quality issue, you can be successful. The way to overcome the quality issue is for you to be experienced and to go from helper to teacher to true educator or coach. I think that we need to see more people with education aspirations in the industry choosing to learn how to really be good at that craft before putting any kind of price tag on their offering. Learning how to educate to all five of the different learning styles, thinking to themselves, maybe 100 people is too much for a look and learn, really thinking about the quality, really thinking about the impact. Not thinking about, well, we’re renting this ballroom, we need to make $7,000. Really thinking about, but what’s the educational experience I’m providing to these people and how can I make sure it’s stellar?

It’s something that whenever I coach and experience, we are always trying to better what we did the last time. I’m somebody who even has room for growth, but I never stop at good enough. I think that if you’re choosing to be an educator, spending at least a few years educating for a brand, educating for somebody else, really understanding and learning what it looks like to be a high-quality results instigator, I guess you would say, really getting people to results and to the finish line, that’s going to be the recipe for success. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.

Before You Go . . .