Recently, I attended a webinar and I learned something very important.
However, I didn’t learn it from the content of the webinar because the webinar was thoroughly devoid of educational content.
I learned it from what happened next.
The fellow teaching the webinar I knew to be a smart guy. I had gotten some good advice from him, and then saw him speak. In that talk, he shared a concept that seemed interesting. He invited us to attend his webinar the next week to learn more about it.
I signed on to the webinar, expecting to go deeper into this interesting topic.
As you may know, my time is quite precious. I have to be extremely selective whom I meet with and how I spend it, so when I invest 90 minutes in something, that’s a big investment for me.
Early in the webinar, he rehashed what he shared from the stage. He shared that he had an amazing, powerful, life changing, incredible process. He shared that people had gotten great results from this process. He talked about the decision process to decide if you should more forward (in buying the process).
77 minutes later, I realized I didn’t know one iota more about what I came to learn than I did at minute one.
AllI knew was that if I wanted to know more I should buy something. I didn’t even know what I was expected to buy or what it would cost.
77 minutes and I had learned nothing.
I shared this experience to Facebook, and I got a number of comments like these.
I don’t often attend these sales-inars because the education I attend is offered by people in my community: the kind of people I invite to be Mentors in the Entrepreneur Mentor Community.
I naively assumed that if someone offered a free training that it would contain, you know, training.
But apparently this kind of thing is super common. One person even shared that she had paid for webinars that were pure pitch.
I don’t mind an offer in a training. In fact, done right, that is a form of service. After you teach me something, you should offer the way for me to go deeper and get more of it.
But it’s after you teach me something. Not instead!
Around this time I thought “someone should do something about this!”
The problem is that there is no way to know before getting into one of these things if it is really going to offer training or just more pitches than Spring Training.
If only there were some way to know that a coach is the kind of coach who really offers content rather than wasting time with a pitch.
If only there were some kind of community that had as one of the standards that any coach in that community would never disguise a pitch as a training.
If only I ran such a community.
Oh, wait! I do run such a community.
Up to that point, it hadn’t been something I’d been thinking about because I never ran across it, but after this experience I added that to the rules for Mentors.
But here’s the thing. It’s not so much a rule. Because a rule is something you put in place for people to follow because otherwise they might not.
Rather, it’s more of a standard. The rule wasn’t necessary because the kind of people I invite to be Mentors wouldn’t do this. They lead with service which naturally leads to sales.
Were I to discover that a Mentor in my community did this, it wouldn’t be a matter of “you broke a rule and here are the consequences.” It would be a matter of “I have misjudged you and am now disappointed.”
So, if you are one of those people who have stopped attending webinars because you assume they’re just a sales pitch, then let me assure you that our Mentors do not do that. And if they do that, I want to know about it immediately.
Furthermore, I’d like to offer you this guarantee…
Should you find yourself in one of these bait-and-switch sales pitch calls, I will redeem your time that you have invested.
Leave the webinar and reach out to me (email, Facebook Messenger, smoke signals, whatever). Tell me what you were hoping to learn in the webinar, and, if you like, who was “teaching” it.
What I will do is introduce you to someone who teaches that thing and has resources that you can really learn from to get you the knowledge. It could be recorded content, YouTube videos, a book, or even a live event. But if it is live, it will be an actual live training. Not some sales pitch dressed up as a training.
This is free, and you can access many of our Mentors through the Entrepreneur Resource Community Facebook Group. Of course, you are also encouraged to become a member of the Entrepreneur Mentor Community to be more immersed in a community committed to providing value first.
Want this kind of not pitchy content on a regular basis? Sign up for my Resource Letter!