You Probably Don’t Need Another Digital Course

14 Sept

There is no shortage of things small business owners are apparently supposed to learn.

SEO. AI. Analytics. Content. CRM. Automation. Social media. Email marketing. Websites. Cyber security.

There is an almost unlimited supply of courses available to teach you all of them but I’ve been wondering whether we’re starting in the wrong place.

What if you don’t need another course? What if you need somebody to help you work out what you actually need to know?

Most people don’t arrive with a learning problem

People rarely come to me saying:

“I’ve identified a knowledge deficit in search engine optimisation.”

They say:

“I’ve got a website, but it doesn’t seem to do anything.”

Or:

“Everyone keeps talking about AI and I feel like I’m falling behind.”

Or:

“I know loads about what I do, but I never know what to post.”

Or simply:

“I’m doing loads. Why isn’t any of it working?”

Those aren’t subjects.

They’re problems.

And problems are a much more interesting place to start.

Because the apparent problem might not be the real problem

Take two business owners who both say: “My website isn’t working.”

One isn’t appearing in search.
Another is attracting visitors, but they’re the wrong visitors.
Another gets the right visitors, but nobody takes the next step.
Another has never looked at the data, so doesn’t actually know whether the website is working.

Should all four people be sent on the same SEO course?

Probably not. Before deciding what somebody needs to learn, it makes sense to understand what’s actually happening.

Find the gap. Then fill it.

That’s the thinking behind Human First Learning Labs.

We don’t start with: Here’s what I’m going to teach you.

We start with:

What are you trying to do?
What’s getting in the way?
What do you already understand?
What’s missing?

Then we fill the gaps that matter and, importantly, we use the learning immediately on your website, content, business or systems.

You don’t need to become a digital expert

I don’t think every small business owner should become an SEO specialist, analyst, developer, AI expert and marketer.

That would be ridiculous but you do need to understand enough to make good decisions about the things affecting your business. Enough to ask better questions, to know when you need help, to recognise whether something is working and enough to remain in control.

You don’t need to know everything about digital. You need to know enough to make good decisions.