Beer with Kyle Fridays: Rethinking Training (Education That Meets You Where You Are)

Hey everyone,
Apologies for missing last week. This has been a CRAZY summer, and sometimes I am just not near my recording equipment. That has been more of a trend this summer than in past years, but it definitely does not mean we are not working hard. Quite the opposite. We are heads down on projects primarily dedicated to Wealthy Affiliate right now.

On that note, we have received some great feedback recently through my posts and our Beer with Kyle conversations about training, and what that might look like in the new refreshed environment we are building toward. So today I want to talk about how we are rethinking training at Wealthy Affiliate. And as always, I want your feedback, because your wants and needs are at the center of what we build.

This Week's Beer

Today's beer is Solaris, a summer wheat ale by Phillips. Phillips is a very popular local brewery here in Victoria, probably the biggest domestically in terms of size and reach, and you might find it in some spots in the US too.

This is a lighter, sweeter beer at 4.0% ABV. I will be honest, these are not usually my favorite. I do not love a sweet beer. But I have actually never had this one, so I am giving it a whirl. Not bad at all. I like that there is a bit of a bitter note to it. I just tend to steer away from beers that are too sweet, like a Blue Moon for example. I lean more toward a hoppy IPA, a pale ale, or sometimes a stout. But this is a pretty good one. Cheers.

The Problem With Linear Training.

Alright, let me take you into the back office, which you are probably very familiar with since you are inside it right now.

Head over to the core training. Many of you know this environment well. If you are just getting rolling, you are probably working through phase one. It is a four phase training process that walks you through everything you need to get the foundation of your business set up, educating you to the point where you are ready to move forward and start scaling in any niche.

We get great feedback about this training. But there is a big problem I want to solve.

The training does not know YOU.

It does not know your history. It does not know what you are specifically working on. It does not know whether you are heading in the direction of creating videos for TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook, running an SEO business, or handling a local business for a client. The training is very linear. It teaches a process and assumes you either have a foundation or are being directed into the proper flow of building a business online.

The issue is that it does not meet you where you are at. If I come back into Wealthy Affiliate as a returning user, I do not really know where to pick up other than the markings in the training. And when I finish the training, what is next?

Sure, we have communities covering all sorts of training across every facet of building an online business. You can venture off and explore those. But that still does not address the core point... meeting you where YOU are in your business.

Training That's Specific and Relevant to You!

Here is where we want to head.

Imagine training that is specific and relevant to exactly what you need right now. Education we can understand and deliver based on your activities and the things you are actually working on.

Say you are working in the SEO world and you are looking for plugins. Through the new environment and your engagement with AI, those are things we can see you are working on. We can deliver precise, timely information related to that. And if you ever have a question, you should be able to get an answer in real time.

But it goes beyond just education. From there, we should be able to help you build out whatever you are trying to build.

The Hybrid of Training and Tools.

This is the key concept. It is not just teaching you and leaving you to figure out how to apply it. It is education fused with the tools to act on it.

Say you have a question about which SEO plugin to install, or how to structure an article for SEO. We should be able to deliver an action item that actually gets you started and helps you build that very thing right then and there. You should not have to go learn WordPress, learn about plugins, and learn how to write an article separately. We can deliver all of that internally, inside the environment.

That is the hybrid between training and tools. Education, plus the knowledge of where you are in your particular business, plus the ability to build directly from your questions.

And you might have several businesses. Maybe a YouTube business in the dieting niche, and an e-com store in a completely unrelated niche. We want to speak to you in a relevant way no matter where you are in the platform or which business you are working on.

What Would Your Perfect Training Environment Look Like?

So here is what I want from you today.

If you had the perfect training environment, what would it look like?

That is our goal. We know we will always come up a little short, because there is always something to improve with any platform. But we are continually working toward it and building the ultimate environment for you based on your wants and needs.

We want to deliver things that are relevant to you, versus a templated "this is the process, this is what you need to do." Because there are so many different ways to build online. You could be a YouTuber and only a YouTuber, running a full time business. You could run a Pinterest business full time. You could run a single Facebook page full time. There are hundreds of different paths, and we want to build an environment that supports all of them.

If you have any thoughts on anything I discussed today, drop them in the comments. What would the ultimate training environment look like to you?

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead. I will have another sip of this Solaris, and we will catch up next week. I really look forward to your feedback, and I will get back to every single comment as I always do.

You help us make WA better every single day, and we have some of our most exciting updates coming up soon. ;)