Transcript of Short 53 – Free vs. Paid Education. Real Talk.

The Wedding Pro CEO SHORTS are quick, bite-sized episodes are meant to inspire you as you build the business you’re dreaming of! 

[00:00:00] Brandee Gaar: Hey, their CEOs. Welcome to today’s Thursday short of the Wedding Pro CEO podcast. I’m your host Brandee Gaar, and as always, my mission with this podcast is to help you to build a profitable wedding business that you actually love. 

On today’s podcast, I want to talk to you about free, versus paid education and friends, we are gonna have a real heart to heart today on this podcast.

Now, the reason that this is coming up is because recently a coach friend of mine in the industry, and yes, I did ask if I could share this story with my listeners. She reached out to a few of us and said, how would you. to this comment, and she got an email from a student that purchased her signature course and the student said, you know, the course was wonderful, but I’ve been watching your free content for years, and I feel like now there really wasn’t

[00:01:00] much, in the course that you hadn’t already taught through your free content. And so I would like a partial refund on my purchase of your course. 

And she was like, I really don’t know how to respond to this. Because there’s several reasons that it makes no sense. But the, I really want to touch on this because I think that in our world right now with so much available online education, right, like you can Google almost anything, and now with the onset of AI like. You can literally learn anything from Google, YouTube, podcast, whatever it is, right? Like there’s so much opportunity for education out there. And listen, it’s great education. Hello. I show up twice a week into your AirPods or on YouTube, and tell you like really great valuable information that can help you move your business forward.

And I’m one of a million podcasters, right? So there’s so much valuable information out there. But I wanna talk about the difference

[00:02:00] between free education and paid education. And I really, really want to help you to understand what the difference is and why there’s value in paying for education when there’s so much out there.

Right? So there’s a couple things.

The first one is that with paid education, most of the time you are getting a step by, how to do something. With free education. I get to come on here on the podcast, and you guys know, twice a week I’m dropping nuggets into your ear, like, here’s how you can move your business forward.

Here’s how you can get outta the overwhelm. Here’s how you can be profitable. Right? , but I only get to share so much in this very small timeframe that we have available. In addition to that, I don’t know the ins and outs of your business. I don’t know where you are or what your team looks like or what your finances look like, right?

Whereas with my students who are in my Mastermind and the students who join my accelerator, I get a firsthand look, I know the names of their employees. I know

[00:03:00] exactly who’s on their team. I know what their financial goals are. I know what their market is like. I get to work with them and help them to really know what’s right for their business so I can dive so much deeper into what I’m teaching them.

Whereas here on the podcast, I love getting to share these nuggets with you, but it is a surface level. It’s only as much as I’m able to share to a mass group of thousands of you that listened to this podcast, and I’m so grateful for that. 

The second piece with free education, it’s a much longer process, right? 

So you guys know I purchased a podcast course last year. I talk about it quite a bit. Kevin Schmidlin from Grow the Show. You can go listen to his podcast if you’re ever actually interested in starting your own podcasts, I highly recommend him. But he also does two podcasts a week, and every one of those podcasts is packed full of a very particular nugget that can help you to really move your business forward. And oftentimes before I purchased

[00:04:00] his course, I would hear something on his show and I would be like, I’m gonna go implement that right now. Like I, and it would help. Right? Which is great. That’s what we want as podcasters. That’s what we want. 

But once I was inside of his paid community and I was able to watch the course and I was able to go through the course and each one of his tips, and then I was able to go to the coaching calls and say, Hey Kevin, I’m not really sure how this applies to me, or I’m getting stuck here, or This is what’s going on in my business and I really wanna understand how I can apply it, y’all. You have heard me say that I quadrupled the downloads on this podcast from last year to this year, and I attribute so much of that to the changes that we made throughout the course and being able to work with Kevin in that group setting and be able to pick his brain and help him to really look at our business and to figure that out.

The other piece of this is how quickly that happened, right? So when you listen to free education, again, it’s

[00:05:00] so, so valuable, but I liken it to getting one piece of the puzzle, right? 

My middle daughter loves puzzles, okay? She loves puzzles. So we do them often. So let’s say you go to the store and you buy a puzzle, a thousand piece puzzle, and you’re so excited, you get it home and you go to dump all the pieces.

and there’s only one piece in there. There’s only one piece, maybe two. And inside there’s a note and it says, fun adventure. Every single week we’re gonna send you two more pieces. How quickly do you think you’ll get that puzzle together? Because now you’re only gonna get two pieces of that puzzle every single week, it’s gonna take you 500 weeks in case you’re wondering, that’s about 10 years to complete that puzzle. 

Free and paid education is the exact same way. And stay with me here for a second. If every single week you’re listening to a podcast, you’re going on YouTube, you’re googling, you’re going through trial and error.

[00:06:00] 

I, I heard this from that coach. I heard this from this coach. It’s kind of conflicting. I’m not really sure. And then I saw this on YouTube, but maybe I’ll try. That’s what it’s like to get a puzzle with only two pieces in the box. You’re gonna get the pieces, but it’s gonna take you a heck of a long time to get the finished product.

because normally when you start a puzzle, you’re like, let me start with the corners, then I’m gonna fill in the sides, then I’m gonna fill in the middle. You get these pieces, you’re like, I don’t even know where they go. Because until you have quite a few of them, you don’t even understand how the puzzle goes together.

Right? So you’re just like sticking ’em places and they don’t even make sense. It’s like throwing spaghetti against a wall. 

When you join a paid course like my accelerator or like the podcast course that I joined, or like this course that my friend, a fellow educator has. You get the steps from A to Z, literally like start here all the way down.

And most of us, I can speak for myself, but in most paid programs, you’re

[00:07:00] also getting access to that coach. So you can actually do the course right alongside the coach and you’re getting access to them to be able to ask questions and get help with how it applies to your business.

You’re getting a community of people that are doing it with you and are having the same struggles, or maybe they’re one step ahead of you cuz they joined a

“The reason that coaches like me create these courses that go step by step is to accelerate your growth is because I want you to get into my program, be there for six, 12 months, and I want you to say to me at the end of it, Brandee, my business looks wildly different.”

Brandee Gaar

month before you and they’re able to help bring you along. The value and paid education is so, so much compared to free education. 

And what I don’t want you to hear, free education is crap. It’s not. I love getting to come here and give you a tangible tip that you can take today and either work on your mindset or work on your sales. Do something for your team, work on your time management. Take a vacation, build your profit. Like that’s what I’m here for and I love it. I love when I get dms from you guys and you’re like, Brandee, I listened to the podcast and here’s what I was able to implement from it. And it was amazing. I just closed a new sale and I’m like, yes. That’s

[00:08:00] my favorite thing. 

But if you wanna accelerate your growth, if you want to get the steps from A to Z, if you want to be able to ask the questions and pick the brain and get somebody to be in your community with you, in your business, with you, to help you through what you’re working on.

That’s when you pay for a course. 

That’s when you pay the coach and you say, Hey, I want your help. Like I don’t wanna wait 500 weeks. I don’t want to even wait a year or two years and only get little bits of the puzzle here and there out of order. I don’t wanna do that. I want you to tell me step by step what I need to do for my business to take it from where I am now, to ditch the overwhelm, to build profit, to be able to take a vacation for my business, to be able to create an exit plan for my business.

To be able to sell it one day. Like that’s what I want from it. And so you say, you know what, Brandee, I wanna be all in. I wanna join the accelerator. I wanna be all in with you. Or for another coach that you’re listening to. If you hear their podcast and you love it, I

[00:09:00] want you to think about joining their course.

You don’t consume the free education to always just get the free education from that coach. What I really want you to think about is when I’m consuming free education from someone, it’s that like, Intro into them. It helps me to understand how they teach, what their personality is like, what their values are, what are the things that light them up, and how do they speak to people?

Do I feel like the things they give me for free are actually making a difference in my business? And then if I go pay for their course, I’m gonna just accelerate that growth so much. 

It’s almost like an interview, right? When you’re listening to somebody’s podcast or you’re watching them on YouTube, or you’re consuming their content through Instagram or TikTok, it’s like an interview. That’s what I want you to be thinking about. Is this the coach for me? Is this the person that I want to pour into my business and pour into my life? Do I think they can make a difference for me? 

It is not a substitute for their course. It’s just not because here’s the thing, friend, you will literally spend [00:10:00] years consuming free content, conflicting content, tiny pieces of the puzzle as you go along.

It will only frustrate you if you only rely on Google, podcasts and YouTube. Because those will only take you so far. 

The reason that coaches like me create these courses that go step by step is to accelerate your growth. I want you to get into my program. I want you to be there for six, 12 months, and I want you to say to me at the end of it, Brandee, my business looks wildly different.

It is nothing like it looked like a year ago, and I’m like, that’s exactly right. My job is done and I’m so proud of you. So you guys, thank you for letting me jump up on a soapbox today. I got this text earlier this week and I was like, push all of our other podcasts aside. I’ve gotta jump in here. I’ve gotta help you understand the difference between free versus paid education.

And I want you to find a coach that works for you. I want you to get into their program. I want you to stop going through trial and error. Stop learning through the School of Hard

[00:11:00] Knocks. Stop throwing spaghetti against a wall and get into a paid program. Get into a community, get into a coaching program. I would love to have you inside the accelerator.

The accelerator is open right now. My community of mastermind members is so ready to welcome and to embrace them and to help you to take your business to the next level. If you’re interested in joining the accelerator, the Wedding Pro CEO Accelerator. We have a link down in the show notes below.

You can apply there. We wanna make sure it’s a great fit for you, a great fit for us, that you’re gonna get everything out of it, that we want you to get out of it. 

So apply today guys, thank you so much for letting me be here every single week, and I will see you next time.

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