I recently saw a post from Miss Excel about hiring corporate trainers and it sparked something I have been thinking about a lot. We are in a moment where software, AI, and technology are evolving so quickly that traditional on-demand courses are struggling to keep up.

In this episode, I share why I believe there is a massive opportunity to shift from course-based models to live, membership-driven learning experiences. I talk about the rise of rapid learning communities, the role of corporate training, and why bringing people together to practice, experiment, and share what is working is more valuable than ever. I also break down how having a strong framework allows you to lead even when you do not have all the answers.

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Do you guys remember Ms. Excel, Kat Norton?

Like she was making like dancing TikToks but teaching Excel on social media.

And she ended up with an audience of 2 million people across TikTok and Instagram.

And recently my friend Ashley sent me, actually it was Cheyenne, I don't know, it was in my group chat with my friends Cheyenne and Ashley, both incredible marketers and they sent me this post that was kat Norton, so Ms. Excel on LinkedIn saying hey, I'm hiring corporate trainers.

So she was known for her courses like she has all of these on demand courses teaching different Microsoft products.

Of course there's like AI mixed in there now.

Now like her headline talks about AI as well as, you know, Excel, but she's been doing this like corporate training side of her business too.

And it says that she works with four over 400 organizations.

So she's really gone like agency sort of education model, like corporate training model.

And what I thought was really interesting about her post, she said she was hiring corporate trainers, was that she said I will onboard you in the Ms. Excel method, our proven approach to running engaging results driven virtual events.

And so she brings in corporate trainers, runs them through her method of how she teaches and then they go on to like teach these live classes for like Fortune 500 companies, like Big organizations.

Okay, so why am I even telling you this?

I think there's a huge opportunity right now for anyone teaching software or anything that technology in your niche that is evolving super rapidly because of what's happening with technology right now and the development of AI.

There are so many people that teach Excel, Microsoft products.

Uh, I had a client that teaches tableau.

There's like all of these software products.

There's this like guy going viral teaching canva.

But the reality is that number one, like software iterates very fast and it's hard to keep up with the changes when it comes to on demand courses.

Number two, on top of software iterating fast.

There is no, there's never been a fast.

Like there is a fast today because software is getting updated and pushed.

So I mean we are experts in circle, right?

We build communities on circle.

It's updating so so rapidly.

My team is constantly working to keep up with what features are being released and what's changing and what's coming.

And this is exciting, right?

And so we're seeing this across the board in lots of different softw softwares.

And because of this, there is this like ability for us to have this rapid learning membership opportunity in whatever your niche is.

So everyone has been talking about our courses dead.

Courses are dead, move away from courses, people, course sales are slowing, blah, blah, blah.

I think especially with anything that has this rapid development right now where things are changing really fast, there's an opportunity to move from course model to membership model where we're doing live teaching, live training, potentially B2B corporate training.

Because we're not the only ones us out here doing solopreneur small business stuff.

We're not the only ones dealing with rapid technology change, right?

Like these large organizations move really slowly and they need to educate a lot of employees on this stuff that aren't necessarily motivated externally outside of their organization to do this work.

So like they need to bring in trainers.

I think there's a huge opportunity for corporate trainers.

I think there's a huge opportunity to sell B2B seats into your membership.

And so yeah, there's just this really big opportunity for any kind of like live learning rapid experience where it's like, hey, things are updating fast.

Let's stay up to date together, share what we're learning, share notes, practice together.

I mean, this is like the ethos of everything we teach about building a community of practice and bringing people together that are working toward a goal or working toward building a skillset.

Right now every single person in that works needs to figure out how they're going to work differently in this era, in this new era of tech.

And so we can be the leaders teaching people, not necessarily that we have to have all the answers, but that we're bringing people together to, to work through the answers together.

Right?

Today I actually had my welcome call for my new community, the Collective, which is for advanced community builders, so we can share notes.

And the idea here is the same.

Like I even told them, hey, I haven't added any curriculum at all because it's evolving and changing and we're going to record some stuff as we go.

But really what I'm going to do is as we're figuring things out, we're adding our SOPs in here.

So you're going to get access to our agency SOPs.

But, but while I have expertise, I'm not the only expert in the room.

And we're coming together to share notes, to share what's working, to experiment together, to talk about different AI strategies we're trying.

And that's the power of a membership experience.

A membership experience also happens to be a recurring revenue tool, which, amazing, right, recurring revenue is a lot better than a one time course purchase.

And so I think it's a really incredible time to have expertise in software and technology in your specific industry and niche.

It's a great time to have a specific framework that you work through, especially if it's methodical in like the general high level method methods that you use to pursue the thing that you're pursuing.

Sorry, I'm speaking kind of metaphorically but like in my world we have these like three ways, these three levels of our framework where we help people scale their communities.

We don't dive into the details in that framework of like you're going to use AI at this step, but we can continue to iterate on that.

So we have this framework that we take people through, that's our method.

And there's, it's very methodical in practice in that we are very data driven.

We're bringing the community along for the ride.

It's very co created.

All of that is always going to be important.

Technology doesn't change that.

And so because we have this foundational framework, we're in a very good position to be able to bring people together and practice along that framework while technology evolves.

And so I think this is just a huge opportunity again for membership businesses, membership models right now, especially for those that used to sell on demand courses.

Is this more demanding?

Like do we need to show up more than we did with on demand courses?

Yes, but times are changing and when people can pick up their phone and talk to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and get the answers that they need or get their step by step process walking through, basically taking them through any kind of like on demand education experience.

Why would they need a course?

And so I think that courses aren't dead, but they are going to evolve significantly.

And while things are rapidly changing in the way we work, we need like I think we're in the in between right now.

Like we need just live practice environments to make it through.

And as somebody that could run a membership or bring the person that brings people together, we have an opportunity to capitalize on that.

So that's my take for today.

I think there's a huge membership opportunity for whatever rapid learning community of practice experience you can create in your niche, especially if you have authority with some kind of framework model.

Um, yeah, that's what I'm jamming on a lot right now.

I found this cat post really interesting, this Ms. Excel story and I, yeah, if you're interested in building something like this and you don't have it yet, please book a call with my team and we can talk about how we can help you build something really special.

So a lot to be excited about, a lot to build.

And also, everybody.

Nobody knows what they're doing.

Like, that was actually the theme of my call today with my.

With my members.

Nobody knows what they're doing, so we might as well just, like, share notes and try to figure it out together.

And that's kind of the ethos of building a membership right now.

So go build a membership.

Go bring your people together and figure things out together.

But make sure you're also building a strong member journey along the way for your people.

Okay, Book a call with my team if you want to work through this, and I'll talk to you on the next one.