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[00:00:00] Brandee Gaar: Hey there, CEOs. Welcome to today’s Thursday short of the Wedding Pro CEO podcast. I’m your host, Brandee Gaar, and my mission is to help you, the wedding industry entrepreneur, to build a profitable business that you’ve always dreamed of.
[00:00:15] Brandee Gaar: On today’s podcast, I wanna talk about why that course or mastermind or coaching program you bought, didn’t work for you.
[00:00:25] Brandee Gaar: I don’t know if you’ve ever had that feeling where you bought a piece of education, whether it’s a standalone course, like a self-paced course or a mastermind or some sort of a group coaching program, but you bought it and you thought, oh my gosh, this is gonna be amazing, and it didn’t work, or it really didn’t return the value that you thought it was going to.
[00:00:46] Brandee Gaar: Now, I’m not gonna kid myself. Yes, I know that there are programs out there that maybe genuinely aren’t valuable, but I’m gonna choose to believe that most of the courses that you’ve put the time into really researching or getting a recommendation [00:01:00] for are vetted. Right? They’re good courses. They’re good programs, and they have great reviews, right?
[00:01:05] Brandee Gaar: They’re worth the purchase, but for some reason it still didn’t work for you. And you’re frustrated. You’re like, I buy all these courses and my business is still in the same place that it was a year ago, or I joined this program and nothing has changed. And I wanna challenge you on this episode. I wanna ask you to honestly think to yourself, Did you go into that course or program and give it your 100% all?
[00:01:31] Brandee Gaar: All because what I’ve started to notice is that the students who come into any of my courses, my accelerator, my mastermind, my one-on-one coaching, Those students who come in and they’re ready, like they’re hungry, they’re ready to do the work, they want to know like, how do I get the results that these other students that you’ve had get?
[00:01:53] Brandee Gaar: And I’m very, very honest. I tell everyone that I work with everyone who buys anything from me in my [00:02:00] education business. I let them know, you’re only going to get out of this, what you put into it. A course is not a magic wand, A self-paced course, a database, a download. It’s not a magic wand. A one-on-one coaching is not a magic wand.
[00:02:15] Brandee Gaar: If you come and you do the session and then you don’t do the homework or you don’t dig into the things that were on your list of things to go back and work on. If you join a mastermind, but you only come to like one call every three to six months, you’re not going to get the results that the students who come and do the work are getting.
[00:02:35] Brandee Gaar: You’re simply not. So when you are looking at a course or a program, And you see all of these reviews or all of these students talking about the results they’re getting and you’re like, that’s why I’m gonna buy it. And then you buy it, and then you shove it in a drawer somewhere because you got busy, you’re not going to get the same results.
[00:02:51] Brandee Gaar: A course, a mastermind, any type of education is not a magic wand. It is not going to all of a sudden magically make your business different. It [00:03:00] simply doesn’t work that way.
[00:03:01] Brandee Gaar: And so on today’s podcast, I wanna give you three really tangible tips to help you to evaluate if you are ready for that next piece of education that you want to invest in.
[00:03:12] Brandee Gaar: Because oftentimes, when we think a course or a program doesn’t work, it wasn’t actually the course or program, it was that you weren’t ready. To do the work, and that’s okay. I’ve done it, you guys. I’m gonna give you some examples in this podcast of courses that have worked for me and courses that haven’t, but not a single time was because of the actual education.
[00:03:34] Brandee Gaar: It was because of me, because I was or wasn’t ready to implement it.
[00:03:37] Brandee Gaar: So let’s start with tip number one of the things that you can do to make sure that you are ready to invest in that next course or program before you start handing over your credit card.
[00:03:48] Brandee Gaar: Tip number one is, does this serve an immediate need in my business? So what do I mean by that? You really wanna think about what is my business need right now [00:04:00] to really help me with the overwhelm that I’m feeling in either your finances? Maybe it’s in building a team, maybe it’s just that. You don’t even know what the next step is, right?
[00:04:09] Brandee Gaar: In your business, you know that you’re growing, but you’re not really sure what to do next, and so you’ve really found a course that could help you with that. But I want you to understand what is the immediate need in your business. I’ll give you an example. I have a content vault called Social 365. It’s one whole year of blog posts and social media posts, reels, captions, Canva, templates, all of it. Everything you need to post as a wedding professional for one whole year and grow your sales from Instagram for your business. Okay? So I absolutely love it.
[00:04:44] Brandee Gaar: But if social media is not an area that you struggle with in your business, like if you’re like, I actually really love social media. I’m very consistent on it. I post all the time, this might not be a tool that would be helpful to you, right? Why would you need a social content [00:05:00] vault? If you really thrive and find joy in posting social media? That’s not something that would benefit you.
[00:05:05] Brandee Gaar: But if you’re someone that’s like, I know I need to be posting consistently on social media, and I, I don’t mind doing it, but I honestly don’t know what to post.
[00:05:14] Brandee Gaar: I sit down every single week to create content. And it’s just a blank screen. This would be a perfect product for you. This would be perfect because it gives you all of the content that you need.
[00:05:25] Brandee Gaar: But what it isn’t is it isn’t a magic wand. I’m gonna keep saying that throughout this episode. It is not a magic wand.
[00:05:30] Brandee Gaar: You can buy social 365 content vault and you can have it, but if you don’t actually set aside time every single week, or hire a VA to implement the social media that you’re given. It’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna post itself. It’s not an automated posting schedule. It is literally there to tell you what to post, but you still have to actually put it in your own voice, right?
[00:05:54] Brandee Gaar: And so it’s really, really important that if you know social media content is somewhere where you struggle, this would be great. [00:06:00] But if it’s not somewhere that you struggle or you don’t have the capacity to actually make the posts, it’s not gonna work for you. It’s not a magic wand. Okay, so the very first point is, does this serve an immediate need in my business?
[00:06:13] Brandee Gaar: Does what I’m buying serve an immediate need? Right? That’s something I really want you to think about. What is a struggle that you are having in your business right now that this course or program can solve for you?
[00:06:25] Brandee Gaar: Okay. Number two is what is the time commitment involved with this course or program, and do I have the capacity to put in the work that’s gonna be required from this course or program?
[00:06:36] Brandee Gaar: In the spring of 2022, my husband came to me and said, I really want us to invest in this podcasting course.
[00:06:44] Brandee Gaar: We have a great podcast, but we’re kind of capped out on how far we’ve been able to grow it. And I think we really need to invest in some tools and resources and knowledge and how to really grow a podcast like, Scale a podcast so that we can [00:07:00] continue to impact as many wedding professionals as possible with your podcast.
[00:07:03] Brandee Gaar: I thought about it and I said, I’m, I’m honestly completely overwhelmed. Like, I don’t know if I can commit the amount of time that we need. This course was $7,000. It was not a small amount of money. And so I was like, I really wanna make sure that if we do it, that I’m gonna be able to really invest the time.
[00:07:22] Brandee Gaar: we did a discovery call and I really wanted to understand, okay, so we get the program for life, but the coaching calls and the support we get six months of, and how much time should I be setting aside every single week to really make sure that I’m getting the results that your students are getting?
[00:07:36] Brandee Gaar: Because I want those results. Like If we’re gonna invest this much money, I want those results.
[00:07:42] Brandee Gaar: And so he gave me those parameters and I really looked at my schedule and I said, okay, for three months, I’m going to go ahead and block my schedule every single week for time to join the coaching calls. I blocked my schedule for time to listen to the modules before [00:08:00] the coaching calls so that I would be able to go with any questions that I had, and I scheduled time to implement what I was.
[00:08:06] Brandee Gaar: Every single week for three months and I blocked that into my calendar so that I wouldn’t just get busy and then only be able to do the course randomly here and there.
[00:08:16] Brandee Gaar: And then the second three months, I only blocked the coaching calls out because I really wanted to implement in the first three months.
Which of the 3 tips helped you take charge of investing in your education?
[00:08:23] Brandee Gaar: I wanted to like move here, you guys. I wanted to move. So I implemented in the first three months and then the second three months I was starting to really see like, am I getting the results? Are there things that need to be tweaked? Is something feeling like it’s not working and I can join a coaching call to refine that a little bit.
[00:08:40] Brandee Gaar: And my goal was by the end of the six months, That I would get the full return on investment that we had invested that $7,000.
[00:08:48] Brandee Gaar: But I did achieve that goal. My six months was the end of October, and here we are in December, and I absolutely achieved that goal.
[00:08:56] Brandee Gaar: But it took work like there were weeks where I would have to stay up [00:09:00] late to finish the work that I was doing in this podcasting course, but because I knew that I had to do it to get those results. And I’d spent $7,000 on this course. I wasn’t about to let $7,000 go down the drain.
[00:09:12] Brandee Gaar: I really want you to think about, do you have the capacity to really engage in the program that you’re buying?
[00:09:19] Brandee Gaar: What kind of a time commitment does it require from you? Do you have that kind of time and can you block it into your calendar so that you are committed to making sure you get the results that you want from this program?
[00:09:30] Brandee Gaar: Number three. And the last one is, what is the ROI that you’re expecting to get from the program that you’re buying?
[00:09:37] Brandee Gaar: So sometimes it’s really, really tangible. It’s like you’re gonna 10 times your engagement on social media, right? And you’re like, okay, that’s tangible. Did I 10 times my engagement by this time?? Right?
[00:09:47] Brandee Gaar: So what is the ROI that you’re expecting? Okay, for example, I did a 90 day one-on-one coaching with a coach about 18 months ago, and I [00:10:00] did it at the end of the year, and I’ve shared this story before, but it was also $7,000. What is up with me in spending $7,000 on education? I don’t know, but it was also $7,000 and it was 90 days of one-on-one coaching.
[00:10:12] Brandee Gaar: And I specifically went with this educator because there were very specific things I wanted to learn about how to be a better educator and course creator, like, how can I make it so that my students get the most out of everything that I teach? So I actually joined this one-on-one coaching with another course creator who was teaching how to make a bigger impact with your courses and how to really break down your content.
[00:10:37] Brandee Gaar: And so it was a large investment. It was a very large investment, $7,000, nothing to sneeze at. And so, Bought the 90 days of coaching and I said to my husband, I promise you that at the end of this 90 days, I will have been able to make up that full investment with courses that I am selling and that I create during this 90 days.
[00:10:58] Brandee Gaar: Cause I already had courses [00:11:00] created, but I wasn’t really understanding how to sell them and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if they were making the impact that I wanted them to make. And that was really important to me. I never wanted to sell something to anyone that wasn’t gonna give them the return.
[00:11:12] Brandee Gaar: So I did it. I set a goal for myself. I said, at the end of this 90 days, I will have sold $7,000 in courses because I want to ensure that I am getting that full return back. And then of course, I want to maximize and get even more. But within that 90 days, I was gonna sell $7,000 in courses, and it was hard.
[00:11:34] Brandee Gaar: It was very, very hard because I had to take what she was teaching me during our calls, implement it, and then also go implement into my courses and really make sure that I was doing all the things that she said. So it was a lot of work, but I did it. And because I not only set the goal of what I wanted that return to be, I set a timeframe on it and I so told my husband.
[00:11:54] Brandee Gaar: So that helped to keep me accountable to those specific and measurable goals that I had set [00:12:00] for this investment.
[00:12:01] Brandee Gaar: When you join a course or program, whether it’s $47, or it’s thousands of dollars, right?
[00:12:06] Brandee Gaar: My accelerator program is $2,000. It’s not a small investment, but when you join it, if you are all in, if you say, during this six months of this accelerator, I’m going to show up to every call.
[00:12:20] Brandee Gaar: I’m going to be invested. I’m going to do the homework, I’m going to do the things that I am told to do. In this course, you will get the results that are promised at the end of it, because they’ve been proven. But when you buy a course or a program or a download, whatever it is, and you don’t set aside the time to get that return on investment, you will not get the results that the students are getting in the reviews.
[00:12:47] Brandee Gaar: You just won’t.
[00:12:48] Brandee Gaar: You must put in the effort to get the return so that you can be that star student, so you can be the one that says, I completely transformed my business in six months.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] Brandee Gaar: I consistently posted on social media every day for a year, and I 10 times my sales from social media, from Instagram. It is possible. We know it is because we don’t make these claims lightly. I don’t, at least I do not make the claims lightly. I only post reviews from actual students who’ve used my products, and it works because they did.
[00:13:21] Brandee Gaar: They came and did the work. So I’m gonna encourage you that when you’re looking at your budget for next year and you’re thinking about what pieces of education you wanna buy, whether that’s social 365, or if you wanna join my accelerator, or you wanna jump into one-on-one coaching with me or from any other educator.
[00:13:37] Brandee Gaar: I just wanna encourage you to really think about these three tips I’ve given you today and to really think about what is the return that I wanna get
[00:13:44] Brandee Gaar: what will I need to do to get those results from this program? Okay? All right, you guys, thank you so much for being here every single week. I cannot wait to hear what kind of education you’re gonna invest in next year. I would love to know. So jump over to the Wedding Pro CEO community. [00:14:00] I’ll post about it. I’d love to know what kinds of things you’re looking at purchasing for next year, what type of education you’re looking at buying to make sure that you are taking your business to the next level.
[00:14:09] Brandee Gaar: So thank you so much for being here, and I will see you next time.
[00:14:12]
Cheers to a brand new and prepared for 2023!!
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Hey there!
I'm Brandee!
I help creative business owners sustainably scale their business so they can create a thriving career and work-life balance.
entrepreneur
small biz coach
mom
wife
I have experience speaking at both live and virtual events, educating creative and wedding entrepreneurs how to step into their role as CEO. If you're looking for speakers for your next conference, workshop, event, or the next guest for your podcast, I'd love to see how we can collaborate!
Hey there!
I'm
Brandee!
your business bestie + mentor + coach + cheerleader for wedding professionals and creative entrepreneurs
@brandeegaar
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