It is not the strongest that survives, 
nor the most intelligent, but the one 
most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin

A Clash of Beliefs

This post is essentially about one man's view why fashion design cannot be taught online and one woman's view why it can! 

For anyone interested in understanding the potential for online learning in their profession or business this post will give you confidence that learning outside of the classroom has finally reached a point where it's recognised as being an effective tool.

The post came about through the work we are doing with online learning platforms weteachfashion.com and thefashionstudenthub.com

I had an exchange of comments on LinkedIn by someone describing themselves as a 'Creative Catalyst' who vehemently held a belief that there was no place for teaching fashion design online.

His view was that it is impossible to teach fashion design online and that anyone or any organisation that was adopting this approach...

In this post, we discuss some of the challenges franchise holders when it comes to training franchisees. We'll give you some tips on where to start and where to get further support.

Here's what's covered in the post:

1. Challenges You Face
2. Who Needs Training
3. General Approach to Your Training and Development Path
4. Offering Different Learning Approaches
5. Blended Learning Approach to Franchise training
6. Six Training Trends to Be Mindful of for Your Franchise Training
7. Free Consultation

Challenges You Face

Your role as a franchisor is to build your brand and grow it successfully following the ambitions, vision, and purpose you established when you first embarked upon this format of trading.

You’ve entered into a way of doing business that gives you much control but also leaves you open to the limitations of your franchisees. It's only through adequate training will you be able to deliver on that vision and grow your business.

Here are some of the key challenges you...

In 2001 we embarked upon our first journey into online learning with a membership site targeting the automotive sector, car dealers in particular. This was pre-Facebook and YouTube and social media wasn't even on the agenda and WordPress... that wasn't going to be released for another two years.

We invested in developing a bespoke platform that allowed us to continually add content and online courses with all manner of benefits and features for the end users using our own content management system (CMS.) We had a crude (by today's standards) course creation editor, quizzes and learning logs for users.

Everything was coded and created from scratch. It took months to develop and cost us a small fortune. The product was sold either as a membership offer with a small monthly fee or as a white-label package allowing businesses to brand it as their own for use by their employees or partners. It was a gamble but thankfully we achieved a respectable ROI.

That was then.

...

If your business model is based upon franchising your business then you'll know just how important franchisee results are. Without their success, you fail!

Any competent franchise will be offering relevant and comprehensive training across the board. In this post, we're summarising the key areas that franchisors need to pay attention to in order to build a worthwhile suite of training options that support their franchisees.

A franchisor training program is one of the major benefits of franchising. It lets franchisees acquire skills rapidly through the initial training program, and then gives on-site and ongoing training to reinforce those skills. It's a major selling point so it needs to deliver on its promise.

Franchisee training enables franchisors to ensure consistent delivery of their brand promise and customer experience from site to site regardless of the market.

General Approaches to Training Your Franchisees

1. The Operations Manual

Creating an operations...

Do you have a business book published or one in the making? Have you got a manuscript that you have finished but never got around to actually publishing it? Would you like to generate extra income from the content of your business book?

Well in this post I share with you some advice on how to take your business book and turn it into an online course and use this to generate extra income.

Creating a course is a way of “repurposing content”, to recycle something already written in a different format so that you can squeeze additional income out of the same piece of work. 

If done well it can be highly profitable for the author.

There are numerous ways to repurpose your book content and build upon your expertise and experience. For example:

• Selling related services.
• Selling software relevant to the topic including apps.
• Consulting / Coaching on the topic of your book.
• Speaking at events.
• Facilitating workshops on your book's topic.
• Creating and selling an online...

Is it me or have service standards been dumbed down by the smartness of phones? Everywhere I turn it seems, there are people on their phones catching a quick look at their most recent notification or posting?

In restaurants, shops,  garages, petrol stations, newsagents, hospitals.

Everywhere.

And everyone who owns a device has done it. You are guilty too!

In the last week alone I've witnessed the following examples of people on their phones whilst 'working'.

• An airport security officer while screening passengers hand luggage.
• A shop assistance while checking out a customer at the cash register.
• A forecourt attendant at a petrol station at the payment point.
• A waiter in a restaurant checking his phone in between trips to the kitchen to serve customers.
• A shop assistant standing in the doorway of her shop as customers entered and left.
• Employees checking phone status during meetings.
• Course participants checking email during a course.
• A hotel receptionist checking...

This is a short and simple (can be made more difficult) group challenge that asks participants to arrange themselves in a line according to certain criteria.

These criteria can be anything you choose for fun such as height or colour of shoes. But they have to arrange themselves without speaking to each other.

This energiser not only gets the blood flowing but it also promotes non-verbal communication and teamwork.

Use simple versions in early stages of group development and more creative and complex ones to challenge more established groups or teams.

Step 1

Give the group the task of lining-up in order of height (tallest-shortest) without talking or making any non-verbal sounds.

Step 2

Repeat the challenge two or three times with more challenging tasks that get progressively more difficult. For example:

• Line up by hair color or eye color (lightest-darkest)
•  Line up by date of birth (oldest-youngest)
•  Line up by where you were born (farthest-closest)
• ...

Whether or not you are a freelancer, retailer or international brand, your success lies largely in how well you serve your customers. And in today's rapidly evolving world of globalization and consumer awareness, paying close attention to the consumer has never been more important.

Customers are precious and need to be guarded like precious stones.

Over the past decade, I've been involved in helping organizations striving to deliver great customer experiences as a strategic differentiator.

They've seen that this is their only true point of differentiation because delivering a great customer experience has such an impact on others because of the rapid viral spread of stories about these experiences.

Within minutes stories can reach thousands.

The Anatomy of Word of Mouth (WoM) Stories

We've all done it. Told others of our great or crappy customer service experiences.

Right now someone is sharing their story about your brand.

About their experience in your store.

About their...

For many years since first being published in a Harvard Business Review, it's a generally accepted rule that loyal customers buy more, purchase more often, cost you less to do business with, stay with you longer and are more likely to recommend you to others. So winning and keeping customers is vital to ensure the long-term success of any business.

There are many strategies to build customer loyalty such as building a winning culture in your organisation which I wrote about previously in this post.

You can also educate your customers to help them through the various stages of using your product or service. Offering free online courses are a great way to do this.

Software companies are usually very good at supporting their customers in this way. They know that the more educated their users are the fewer support calls they'll get, the happier the customer is and the fewer complains they'll receive.

The smart consumer will opt to buy from the company that’s...

So you've heard about creating online courses as a means to generate income or build your brand. But what are your options for making it all happen? If you've been following our work for some time you'll know that we've written extensively advising you about the nitty gritty of course creation. Just take a look at our blog.

In this post, though we're zooming out and giving you the broader options so you can see what choices you have apart from the DIY route. We're not going to be selling you on the idea of creating online courses or highlighting all the benefits for you or your business. If you've still need convincing we'll leave that for another time.

Read this post for some great advice to help you determine what's the best route for you to take if creating an online course is on your agenda or might be in the future.

First, we're going to tell you about the four types of people/businesses that create online courses. Then we'll look at the four options you can choose from for...