How physician entrepreneurs sell what they teach

I'm a huge fan of learning new things - in fact, one of my core values is Education and Learning. This is probably best evidenced by my peculiar iPod habits.

How many iPod owners do you know who've hardly ever listened to a note of music on their iPod? Yup, that's me, and yet I listen to my iPod almost daily.

I have over 120 hours of recorded lectures, classes, interviews and audiobooks available to me in my purse whenever I have to kill time driving or waiting in line.

While I might be somewhat extreme in this behavior, I do know that others value access to reliable expert knowledge as well. You only have to walk past our local Borders or Barnes and Noble bookstores on a weekend to see the hordes of browsers in the magazine section, scouring the magazine pages to figure out How to Do It -- lose weight, capture the mate of your dreams, buy the best car, create a beautiful garden.

Being a sucker for these things, I signed up last week for a new self-paced e-learning course called Teaching Sells, created by one of the smarter bloggers I have followed for a while, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, and Tony Clark (?his brother).

The premise is simple - you have expertise that others want, and are willing to pay for. You package your knowledge into an educational format and sell it. Grateful learners buy it from you. And, naturally, the authors of this program are modeling what they are teaching!

What is appealing about this program is that it is being developed even as it is being rolled out. The Clarks make the point again of modeling what they preach (and vice versa) - you don't have to have your program be all perfect and ready to go before you can offer it. You can start with some core content, and a great outline, and then develop your program as you go along, hopefully with the valued input and feedback of your "students". And be up front about it.

This approach allows you to get started (not a procrastinator's ideal!) and deliver right away, while unfolding the program elements over time. Here's what they say:

Creating an information “product” is like talking at someone, rather than with them. And the development time involved often means your information is no longer current by the time you’re done, assuming you get past the procrastination that keeps you from getting it done at all.

But the real advantage of teaching-as-you-go is the ability to develop content that’s better suited for students. By listening to feedback, observing conversations between the learners and collecting assessment data, you’ll be able to adapt your content to the needs of the people paying you for knowledge, rather than blindly guessing and hoping for the best.

This is one reason why it’s better to sell access to a learning environment than it is to sell a static product. Subscribers get a much better experience for their money, and you get to beat the main enemy of the information entrepreneur—the failure to get the “product” done.

Let me translate this with an example.

Let's imagine you are knowledgeable about helping your patients lose weight, because you've been studying this yourself for years, and you were successful in your own weight loss efforts. So you decide to create a self-taught distance-learning product (or teaching environment, as they say above) that you can sell through your office website, or the site that you can quickly and inexpensively put up with a little help.

You begin by brainstorming your program components (maybe a self-assessment, a brief introduction, some good stories to illustrate your points, and then Steps 1 through 7 of the actual program). Using what you learned from Teaching Sells about how to actually create the program - Instructional Design, road map for the student, putting the technology pieces together, writing and producing enough content to get going -- you are now ready to deliver your program.

Obviously you will have to have a marketing plan to get word out about your program (that is for another post!), and you begin to attract buyers because you have priced your "beta model" competitively.

Your online program has a discussion board associated with it and you monitor the conversations, using them as fodder to help shape the next program component that you are getting ready to deliver.

By following these steps, within 3 or 6 months, you will have a full-blown program, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And if you are really smart about it, you will have gotten ready your higher-priced personal support package (time with YOU, on the phone or in person, one on one or in a group a la WeightWatchers) to sell for that customer who cannot go it alone, despite his or her best intentions!

Now that is being an entrepreneurial physician!

I encourage you to look at and sign up for Teaching Sells - the reasonable introductory price of $97 for 3 months (12 learning modules) is available until October 31st, tomorrow (although these deadlines are often extended).

Study how this program is being delivered to you, and use that as your model. Pithy articles, some fun graphics (haven't quite figured out how to do that myself but I know Craigslist, Elance, Rentacoder or Guru could help!), audio, short video clips to match all the learning styles. I'm eagerly awaiting the new modules as they are being released so that I can discover their secrets.

And I'm working on creating The Entrepreneurial MD's teaching environment - just don't let me procrastinate!

Comments

[Erica Ross-Krieger]

Thanks for passing along the info about Teaching Sells, Philippa! I just went and signed up. I look forward to jumping in...I figure if Brian Clark is behind it, and you endorse it, it's gotta be great. (btw, I hear Brian and Tony aren't related:)