PODCAST - why i’m selling certifications now (and why you should too)
===
[00:00:00] Learning Transformed is brought to you by E-Learning Partners, your guide to designing transformational learning experiences in the age of ai. For millennia human intelligence was the highest form of intelligence on earth. Until now. Hi, I'm ai. I can process more information in seconds than any human in a lifetime.
This shift raises not only practical questions about the future of learning, but existential ones about the meaning of human life, growth and evolution
on this podcast hosted by me. Johnny Ha. We navigate these questions with clarity, creativity, and confidence. As the most adaptable species on the planet, we cannot only survive the rise of [00:01:00] artificial intelligence, but create better human centered, AI powered learning experiences that elevate humanity to a new era of abundance, transformation and meaning
AI is rising. And so are we
Now, let's dive in.
Many organizations have seen a massive drop in online course in e-learning sales in the past couple years. There are others who are having 30 plus percent year over year increases. What is going on here and what is the difference? Well, today on the show, I'm gonna share it with you. Why I. Am now selling certifications, not just online courses, and Well, I [00:02:00] talk to a lot of different organizations selling online courses, e-learning programs, learning experiences, training their employees and contractors, training their customers to have a better experience with their brand, to get more out of their software products, more out of their physical products.
And of course, those that just sell these information products as a business. And what I've noticed is that if you are going to continue selling an online course or e-learning program, you need to make sure that you are selling a certification and that you are selling a certification that actually gets results.
For your learners now, and that's why I've broken this episode into two parts. First, I'm gonna take you through the three reasons why I transformed my e-Learning Simplified Academy online course into an enterprise proven learning system. That guarantees 10 x results to the price point you pay for the program, plus you earn a certification, [00:03:00] which you're only going to earn if you get the results that the program says you're going to get.
And I'm gonna share with you why I am coaching all of my clients and students to either just create a certification if they're creating a program for the first time, or how to transfer. Form what they currently have into a certification, just like I have. And then I'm gonna go through exactly what you need to do in order to have a successful certification.
Now in our learning businesses, if we're going to continue to create global impact, which at e-Learning Partners, we believe in using learning. To change the world. We work with organizations who are using learning to change the world. Our vision is to impact a hundred million people worldwide through the power of learning.
'cause learning changes lives. Yes, AI [00:04:00] is a thing, but you and I have brains. That are meant for learning, for taking in knowledge, and creating change in the world. So the power of certifications starts with what we call at e-Learning Partners, the certification revenue wheel. This is extremely powerful and first discovered this working with my s and p 500 company client, CoStar Group, $2.7 billion.
A year in revenue is what CoStar brings in, and they sell a software product that empowers students, professors, and commercial real estate professionals worldwide to have the best data on all these properties throughout. The world and what they have done is an amazing job of creating a certification that you can earn that helps you get the most value out of their software.
Well, what happens here is when you have a product, maybe you have a product or a [00:05:00] service, maybe you have a product like CoStar Group. Maybe you have a product like my other Enterprise Learning Accelerator partnership client kir, which is medical grade CB, D, and. Maybe you have this product and you also want to educate the users of your product, the professionals who are responsible for helping others with your product.
Well, that is when a certification really comes into play, and this is how we create the revenue wheel. Because what happens is your learners earn their certification, so they pay you for 'em. They pay you X amount of money. CoStar group, we sell at different price points, depending if you're a student, you're a professor, or you're an industry professional.
My certification, I sell at one price point. Right now it's $5,000, and you get certified to create 10 x change in your business. And in your customer's [00:06:00] business. 'cause I have a lot of organizations that invest in my products who help organizations build learning products. So my certification helps you get 10 x the return on your investment.
So you're gonna get at least 50 k worth of return on your investment when you invest in my certification. And if you don't, I'm gonna give you a full refund just how it works. That's how much I believe in my certification. Learners earn their certification. Then what happens? Learners promote that they earned your certification, especially when your certification is good, which I'm gonna share with you how to make sure that your certification actually gets results for your learners.
In the second part of this episode, learners promote that they earned your certification. They do it in multiple ways. Word of mouth, LinkedIn, indeed resumes, et cetera. This is why organizations like Salesforce, like Meta, like Google, have [00:07:00] certifications on their products because when. Someone earns a certification first, they pay for it.
Now, some of these certifications are free, and I understand why they are. At CoStar group. We actually gave away our certifications for free to professors for a long time because the thought is by certifying professors, professors are gonna be more likely to bring classes of students through the certification.
Well, the more classes of students they bring through the certification, the more students we have paying for the certification. And more importantly, the more students we have learning about the CoStar product and using the CoStar product, which is really where this revenue wheel starts going crazy. And don't worry, I'm gonna draw it on the board after we go through the theory of this word of mouth.
More people start taking your certification. The more people that start taking your certification, the more people that start buying your core product. Others start buying your certification and others. Start buying your core product if that's what you're selling. I know a [00:08:00] lot of organizations this sell certifications and there's no other product, and that's why this certification revenue wheel still works even if you're not selling another product.
It just amplifies. It accelerates when you are, and this is what the revenue wheel looks like before we accelerate it. Learners earn your certification, learners share with others your certification. They promote your certification and those others. Purchase or earn your certification. This becomes a flywheel.
And when you throw in a product or service that you are certifying people on, the use of this accelerates. So if you are lucky enough, like my Enterprise Learning Accelerator partners over at CoStar or at Cash Mirror, then the certification that you sell is. Directly or indirectly related to a product that you sell.
When this happens, we're able to take this wheel and accelerate it, [00:09:00] and we do that through adoption and retention. So here's how this works. Learners either start by earning their certification or purchasing your product. Now, depending on how your strategy is set up, this could be one and the same. For my partnership, client cash me.
Our goal is to equip medical doctors with the education they need to powerfully serve their patients. So this could happen at the same time, but the cool thing is if it happens at the same time, if it doesn't, you're gonna have people that are coming into your ecosystem in different ways and. They can come in one way and uh, go do the other thing.
So when someone comes in and they purchase your product, let's say that they start by purchasing your product. Well, if they get really excited about the product that they want to get the most out of the product, they're eventually gonna wanna earn a certification on the product. Well, when people earn a certification, they're also more [00:10:00] likely to purchase the product.
So I remember back in college. We were required in the business school at the University of Denver to get certified in Microsoft Excel, word and PowerPoint. We were required to get certified. Well, guess what? Ever since I got that first certification, I don't even think my certification is valid anymore.
I have continued to purchase. The Microsoft products just because I got certified in them. So same thing. If you enter this ecosystem by earning a certification, you are more likely to purchase the product. If you enter the ecosystem and you purchase the product, you are more likely. To earn a certification because you wanna get better at the product.
You wanna show others that you're better at the product. So what does this ultimately mean? This means that along with having this certification income stream, you are going to drive adoption of your product. So more users [00:11:00] using your product, more customers using your product, and you're gonna drive retention of the customers using a product.
They're gonna be using it. For longer. That's why this is so powerful 'cause we have more people getting certified. And what happens is when you get certified, you're gonna go and tell other people about the certification. These people that you're telling about may not even get certified at first, but they may hear about the product and they're gonna go purchase the product.
They're gonna get certified. We have arrows all over the place here. Have people who purchased the product who may not get certified, may tell people. About the product, then someone finds out that there's a certification related to the product and they get certified. So this becomes much more than just a new revenue stream for your organization.
It becomes an adoption and retention accelerator. Now, e-Learning Simplified Academy and my E-Learning, simplified professional certification isn't meant to certify you on using a product. It is. [00:12:00] Certifying you on the enterprise proven system that I use with my Enterprise Learning Accelerator partnership clients to save multiple six figures per year, millions of dollars over time while scaling their businesses globally.
I do talk about various technologies that I resell, so there is that. Of it, and I have free courses teaching people how to get the most value out of the systems that I resell, systems that I can match you with for free. If you wanna check out my e-learning Platform Finder link in the show notes and in description below, if you're watching this on YouTube.
So you may not directly have this adoption and retention accelerator with adding a certification to your business, but if you think hard enough. And think strategically enough. Or if you work with us, we together can come up with how to get the most ROI in your business by harnessing the power of online courses, e-learning and, and ultimately learning experiences.
The third reason why I have started selling a [00:13:00] certification, why I'm telling all of my. Clients have started selling certifications other than the fact that the data shows that while course sales are going down, for most organizations, certification sales are improving year after year. The third reason, maybe the most important for humanity as a whole.
And that is intelligence versus wisdom. And this also brings me to how you need to look at your certification, how you need to look at creating any type of online course e-learning program or learning experience. Really learning experience. You need to focus on wisdom. Intelligence has been solved, artificial.
Intelligence information has been solved. There is so much information that is out there nowadays about everything. This isn't where the value is in your program, in your certification, in your learning experience. Wisdom is, [00:14:00] and you need to create your. Programs based on wisdom, my certification, my e-learning, simplified professional certification is built on empowering you to get a 10 x return on your investment, a 10 x or more.
Because the system that I'm teaching you is the same system I use to save my partnership clients, my enterprise learning accelerated partnership clients multi six figures per year. So think about if you could save. A hundred K total, then your investment at $5,000 certification is more than worth it.
Think about if you could just say $50,000 total, that would be 10 x return and that's what I guarantee. Then it's definitely worth it. Even if you just two x your investment, which if you just two extra investment, I'm gonna give you your money back. But even if you just two extra investment, it would be worth your time investing in this program and it's worth your time because it's wisdom based.
And I'm gonna share with you [00:15:00] exactly how to do this right now. Now I want you to have an e-learning partners or an EP compliance certification, and here is what you need to make sure that your certification has in order to do so. The first is applied. Reasoning. What you need to do in order to incorporate implied reasoning into your program is as follows.
You ask your learners to share in detail how they have applied what they learned in your certification program in the real world, and what results have they gotten. This is extremely important. This is wisdom. This is how we create an EP compliance certification, or a Wisdom certification applied reasoning.
We apply what we actually learn. We set up our certification to assess the results that are actually being gotten in the [00:16:00] marketplace, in the real world. In my e-learning, simplified professional certification, we challenge you. To share these results. If you haven't applied what you learn in our program, in your business, or in your client's business, then you cannot earn your certification at CoStar Group, we have real world simulations that you need to complete in order to earn.
Your certification. And that's the second piece. 'cause some people may say, well what if I'm certifying students? What if I'm certifying people who aren't ready to actively be working in the real world? What if people are earning their certification before they're in the real world? Well, I still think applied reasoning is important 'cause you want people to go and do the thing.
But at the very least, and I actually add both of these to my certification, you want a simulation? Or a project as part of your certification. And really, just to back up a little bit, how you want to create this [00:17:00] in the first place is you wanna create a course with an A to Z journey. You want to create a learning experience with an A to Z journey Point a.
Is where your learners start. Point Z is where they end up. This is the result that they get by taking your program. You bring them from A to Z with your program, with all the other letters, or we call these milestones. Now, I talk about this much deeper in my free masterclass that I created. So that you can stop creating the wrong e-learning programs and online courses and create the right ones, and not only will save you and your organization multiple six figures per year, but help you expand globally using the three pillars of e-learning.
So, so A to E journey. This is what our learning experience actually is. This is how we are taking the knowledge. In our course, our learning experience, this is our learning experience. So once people go [00:18:00] through your learning experience, we want to assess them. We want to challenge them, we want to inspire them to take their knowledge and apply it.
That's why we do applied reasoning. That's why we do simulations and projects. Now a simulation and project needs to look like this. Give your learners an actual project or simulation that they need to complete in order to earn their certification. I recommend doing both of these. My certification. Isn't hundreds of questions.
It is a small group of highly practical questions that takes on average 90 minutes to complete, but depending on how deep into it, it could take you 2, 3, 4 hours to complete. And really, when you look at applying what you've learned in e-Learning Simplified Academy into your business, into your client's businesses, the certification itself.
May only take 30 to 60 minutes because you have gotten results for your business and for your [00:19:00] client's business. And all you're doing is taking those results and sharing how you made the decisions, how you started with ROI started with the return on investment, started with the results for your company, the results for your learners.
Here's your company, here's your learners. Here's your program. It's the intersection of the results, the ROI, that your company gets and your learners get, and this is what you're creating. This is how we create change in the world, and all I'm asking you in my certification is to apply what you've learned either in a project or.
In real life. And when you do that, you get results for your company, you get results for your learners, and you change lives everywhere. Thank you for being here today. I invite you to comment below and tell me about the certification that you are working on in your business. Now, if you're listening to this as a podcast, you can find me on LinkedIn.
Just look up Johnny Ha, [00:20:00] J-O-N-N-Y. And then my last name, habe, H-A-V-E-Y. Send me a connection, request, and a message to tell me about what kind of certification you are looking to build and what is the return on investment you are looking to get at your organization. If you wanna work with me, I have links to all the things in the show notes and in the YouTube description.
I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to Learning Transformed Now, if you're designing a transformational learning experience and wanna skip the overwhelm of trial and error. Check out our e-learning platform finder. Just answer a few simple questions and we'll match you with the right platform plus an extended free trial.
And as a bonus, you'll get free access to a course that walks you through building your learning experience on your matched platform. Click on the link in the show notes or [00:21:00] go to www.elearningpartners.com/elearning-platform-finder. I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or drop a comment on our YouTube channel.
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you in the next episode.
AI is rising and so are.
