Mistake #3 of The 3 Workshop Design Mistakes Sex Educators Need To Avoid
Join Reid Mihalko for this FREE TRAINING on what embarrassing mistakes to avoid so YOU can build a thriving sex ed career that pays the bills while reaching more people and transforming more lives!
Reid: Hello and welcome back to video number three in the three workshop design mistakes to avoid. Congratulations! You’ve made it to video three, thank you everybody! Who watched the first two videos and left comments and sent me emails. If you haven’t watched video one or two, I’m going to recommend that you push pause right now and jump over to those videos ’coz they will they will give you a better more complete picture of today’s mistake the mistake number three to avoid.
Mistake number one was designing workshops where you lack frameworks and a framework being a way that you present information that allows people to remember it more clearly, more powerfully a way for it to anchor so that people can retain the information but also implement the information. It’s great if people remember it but if they can’t actually if it’s not actionable, if they can’t implement it then you’ve increased their….their retention and their memory for cool stuff but they actually can’t transform their lives.
In video number two, we talked about a common mistake and I’ve made all of these mistakes and….and learned my lessons which is why I’m sharing them with you. But video number two we talked about how so many people myself included put too much information into the workshop or the lecture that they’re….they’re designing and if you’re like me you’ve…. you’ve sat in the in the PowerPoint presentation with seventy four slides or ninety six slides and it’s only a forty five minute presentation I mean like you put so much PowerPoint it might as well just be an animation at that point. But again, when we overwhelm people they…they retain less and they can’t transform their lives. And some people over time, will start to associate their inability to transform themselves with that it’s you, you did this. You’re content is crap and doesn’t actually work. So again avoiding these mistakes will help you help other people but in helping them they actually think that your stuff is better and in a world where so many people are making these mistakes over and over again, if you can tweak these pieces of your workshops, your curriculum, and your programs and make them more powerful, you start to rise to the surface of what’s out there in our career field.
So for those of you who are joining me now and haven’t met me yet, my name is Reid Mihalko. I’m the creator of https://reidaboutsex.com/ and most recently http://www.sexgeeksummercamp.com/ which is a business retreat for sex educators, workshop facilitators, sex positive entrepreneurs to learn the business behind the business of sex education and I’m also the creator of http://www.sexgeeksummercamp.com/design which is the workshop where we take you through to three days form start….the idea of a workshop to finish the completed workshop complete with promotional copy all in three days and even if…if you never get a chance to like come to design studio or to camp, hopefully these information’s is going to serve you really….really well so that you can have thousands and thousands of people raving about your work, your frameworks, your presentations wanting to….to take the things that you teach them and share them with other people which you know creating great content and powerfully changing lives is one if the easiest ways to create amazing word of mouth advertising which is the kind of stuff that you just can’t buy these days.
So, without further ado dive in into mistake number three the….and there are a lot of mistakes that people make and in designing studio we’ll go we’ll go in to much more depth of covering them and how to avoid them but these three big one’s really held me back for a long….long time and mistake number three is the one that kept me from actually making a living as a sex and relationship educator even if at the height of cuddle party’s popularity in the me…in the….the media I was still pretty much broke. I was working three jobs having the hustle as a bartender and as an actor and a film producer and you know just to keep cuddle party alive back in the days when Marcia Baczynski and I were helming that behemoth of the media news story and go back to video one if you don’t remember that. Sorry if you haven’t watch the video one yet. Remember, if you haven’t watch the video yet, hit pause watch the video one and two ‘coz it’ll make this mistake make so much more sense which is “No Next Solution.” Too many workshop facilitators create their amazing workshops and then there’s no next step or next solution to….for them to provide or invite people to do. And what I mean by No Next Solution is I’ll…I’ll attribute this piece to Lisa Sasevich who I learned this from who’s one of my business mentors she’s more in the you know teaching people how to run live events and put butts in seats. That’s her specialty and she’s the….. she’s known as the Queen of Sales Conversion but something that….that Lisa Sasevich taught me and Callan Rush is also one of my mentors is this idea that when you solve somebody’s problem or challenge powerfully, what you’ve created for them is another challenge that they may not be aware of yet. So the example here for me is my first is my big six week online course with a three day live event was my online course called the Relationship 10X and the whole concept of that was transform your relationships ten times or by tenfold and as little as ten minutes a day and that online course focused on ten minute daily videos, five days a week for six weeks and then audio podcast for people who listen to homework ad worksheets for them to download and transcripts for them to read. But the whole course was surrounded or built around this ten minute daily videos for single people and for couples to be able to watch and learn slowly and integrate these….these frameworks that I was teaching and these tools that I was giving them around building better relationships. A lot of people loved that…that course. I think we had thirty six or something like that where people come to the live event which was my first big three day live event that I did at the Flamingo Casino and Resort in Las Vegas so you know I launched my first big weekend in Las Vegas and it cost….I learned a lot about running a live events which I’ve taken Lisa Sasevich’s live event mastermind before then. But then you know sometimes you learn the hard way and what not to do next time and that’s still progress. If I can shorten your learning curves ever, that’s my great wish for you all to not have my mistakes and for you as experts, you’re kind of doing the same thing for your attendees and your fans and followers. The area that you’re an expert in you know you probably, made mistakes in and developed solutions and tools and now you’re sharing those tools and helping the people avoid the mistakes that you made so that you can shorten your learning curve. And shortening people’s learning curves and lessening the amount of pain and struggle in their lives, certain people will exchange money for you for those services especially if your content is great. And one of the things about great content isn’t that it’s just got snazzy marketing that makes people buy but does it actually change people lives? And now we’re coming back to….to this piece for number three which is when you don’t have that next step, it’s harder for people to continue anchoring the transformation that you’re giving them.
So one way to look at this, and this is kind of a riff on…on some of my other mentors on how they teach it is you think about that you’ve got we’ll get over here you help identify whatever the problem or the challenge that people are having in their life. Okay? So this is also you can also take this approach and actually apply it to marketing too. So this is a version of this in a kind of holographic way the way that I see it where when you design a workshop at the same time you’ve actually kind of design the marketing and identified the problem. And this is where I’ll get meda and by meda I mean I’ll demonstrate what I’m talking about while I’m teaching the piece that I want to talk about. So here, I identify that for a lot of workshop facilitators or teachers or educators maybe somebody who’s never designed a workshop before. Designing a workshop feels really insurmountable and overwhelming and “oh, we’re going to do it wrong” and I’m going to make all these mistakes. So one of the things that I could help with is “oh, so if you’re worried about designing workshops, if you think you’re going to, you know make a lot of mistakes or if there’s going to be a lot of struggle, here let me help.” Here’s three workshop design mistakes to avoid. If you can start designing your workshops today with the idea of frameworks and….and package your information in those ways, if you want to lessen the amount of information so people aren’t drinking from the fire hose so that they can actually remember what you’ve taught them and in video number two we’ve talked about you know this rule of four which I like to keep for like a an hour or ninety-minute to two-hour workshop to kind of like rule of three. But like three pieces of information, three chunks or three frameworks most people can kind of handle that. And then create some worksheets, things to email them after so that they have resources and that will help anchor you know any time somebody can hang the stuff you’ve taught them on their refrigerator with a fridge magnet, you got them. Anytime you can put what you’re teaching them on the fridge magnet, bonus points my friend and then the third step is design so that you have the next solution in mind for people. So, I’ve got this problem I want to help people making workshops easier, I have a solution. I create these free video training series or could be an e-book or could be an audio podcast where I’m just teaching you via audio, it could be a downloadable worksheet or something like that. I could even identify the problem and write a Facebook post or do a Facebook live and then send you to the worksheet or to the checklist or to another video that goes into more depths to teach you how to solve that problem. And what happens when you do this and what happened with Relationship10X is that I had couples come to Relationship10X to work on their relationships. They were feeling distant, they were feeling frustrated with each other, they felt like their relationships were just getting more difficult and like the emotional scar tissue is just building up they take my Relationship10X course maybe come to the three-day event and then all of the sudden the tools that they have accessed to and that are using are actually making their relationships better, more powerful they’re feeling more connected, more attracted to each other, less angry, more excited and alive again and then “ta da!” They start having sex and because they’re better at communicating and better at noticing what’s going on for them emotionally as they’re having the sex, I’m getting…I’m starting to get feedback from people then they’re like “Reid like our relationship is going really well but we’re noticing that the sex isn’t so good. Do you have another product or event that we can go to….to work on the sex?” And so out of the very feedback that my course was successful, my course created the next problem for them.
The next problem that some of them were willing to pay me to help solve. So, the idea and it doesn’t always have to be a paid solution but as far as like building a career for yourself, this idea of the program or the solution that you create if it’s successful, creates the next problem for people is a really powerful concept. And again like if you don’t have a lot of workshops created yet, if you haven’t created a lot of programs as you start to create, pay attention to the feedback and engage with your costumers, with your fans and your followers and ask them what is the next thing that they would like to see from you. Often they will start to share with you what the next problem is based on what you’ve already helped them with and out of that next problem comes your next solution which is your next program or offering it’s your next event. For those of you who are authors it’s going to be your next book, for those of you who run retreats and things like that your live event might be the situation that then creates the online course that you offered next the thing that they come to your live workshop. An example for me, is people come to the you know maybe my https://reidaboutsex.com/poly-curious101/ lecture that I do at a lot of events, a lot of sex toy stores and adult boutiques and things like that they come to the PolyCurious 101 and they get an idea, an orientation around polyamory and I’ve tried to not give them too much information but wet their appetites and then they….I make the offer for them to purchase the online course that helps them dive deeper in to a specific area that they want to be working on. I’ve got my “Date Your Species Workshop” that people can buy on my store. So when I’m giving a podcast talk or a lecture on dating and why dating is so frustrating you know I’ve…I’m solving people’s problems by sharing with them why dating is so weird and the….now that they know that, the next problem they have is like how….well how do I actually figure out what my species is? And I created a program for that.
So again this…..this idea you can even apply to like podcast interviews. Here’s the thing I’m talking about I’m talking about that for free and now that you know what the problem is because I defined it, are you interested in solving the next problem which is “what do I do about that? Now that I….I didn’t know I had this thing, now I know. Well now, what do I do?” And you offer the next solution. This approach is going to be really useful for you ‘coz now you can start to think in how you’re going to build out the support and the offerings, your programs, your events, your courses how you’re going to build up your offerings so that then you can continue to help people who’ve already experienced great things from you? Like hopefully you’re…you’ve learned a lot in this training video and then you know I’ll invite you to…to come to camp or come to design studio or something like that and I’ll send you the….the information for how you can learn more about those things and then figure out if it’s a good fit for you or not. And last but not the least when you start to understand the solution piece and how to how you just never stop teaching right remember in video number two, we talked about ABE the Always Be Educating. You get to have this really interesting experience which was transformative for me which is when you’re inviting people to do the next solution, the next program you just keep teaching. You just educate them as to why this program might be useful for them; why they might not want to do it like how to know if it’s the wrong course or program for you; and then you just never you never stop being an educator and you never have to get salesy or weird about things because you’re like “hey you know if this works for you, and you’re noticing this next problem I’ve already designed the solution and if you like to working with me then come on! Like let’s take a pick and see how deep and how far we can go together.”
I hope this video has a lot of really juicy useful information for you. Please leave a comment below on the thing that was most useful in this video for you. Again, I’m just going to you know invite you to share these videos with as many sex educators or healers or workshop facilitators as you can. I want this information out there for people and today I’m going to send you a link to another video in the page that will help you educate on whether you want to join me at sex geek design studio which is going to be three days devoted to learning the process that I use which is this and so much more. The process that I used when I’m designing workshops and it’s a very particular process that I think is really going to be useful for you and a lot of other sex educators because once you learned the process you’ll be able to design as many workshops, lectures, talks, programs, certification programs as you would like because it’s always going to be the same approach. And for you to be able to take in the three days that we’ll spend together an idea, a concept for workshop from idea all the way to finished promotional copy.
It will be my great joy to show you how I do that and I’ll bring you that to the next video. Thank you so much! Leave a comment below what did you get out of today’s video? And I’ll see you soon.