396: Storytelling for Businesses with Park Howell

We’re at an important point in time for lifelong learning. Much is shifting and unsettled in how humans live and work. That unsettledness means opportunity if your learning business is willing to grapple with the uncertainty and shape a vision for its role in the lifelong learning market.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele look at the current lifelong learning landscape, near-future trends, and the implications—and opportunities—for learning businesses.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode400.

To realize their fundamental mission of developing and delivering learning products and services, learning businesses need revenue. Along with direct-to-learner fees for enrollments and registrations, sponsorship dollars are often a key part of that revenue equation.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Bruce Rosenthal. Bruce helps organizations create sponsorships and partnerships that increase revenue and value for all stakeholders.

Jeff and Bruce talk about sponsorship versus partnership; the importance of thinking of “partner” as both noun and verb; why logos, visibility, and recognition are no longer a compelling value proposition; the growing emphasis on ROI and other trends in sponsorship; and COVID’s longtail impact on how sponsors engage.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode399.

Learning businesses care about creating effective learning. Doing so is at the heart of why learning businesses exist. But what happens when effective learning practices clash with what learners want or what they believe is effective?

That clash is precisely what Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore in this episode, which looks at desirable difficulties and the specific difficulty desirable difficulties pose for learning businesses.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode398.

Learning, education, and professional development are not the same. Similar, yes, interrelated even, but fundamentally and importantly different. If learning businesses take the parochial view of learning as merely education, they unnecessarily limit their impact and their possibilities.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore the strategic importance of recognizing the differences between learning, education, and professional development. Learning encompasses informal experiences in addition to formal education and professional development, making it the broadest, more encompassing term.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode397.

Everybody loves a good story. It’s what draws us to good books, good movies, good podcasts. And we know that good stories can draw prospective learners to us and the learning experiences we offer. But telling a good story is harder than it looks, particularly in the realm of business, where often too much emphasis is put on numbers, data, and building a case rather than appealing to emotions, human connection, familiar patterns, and satisfying hooks. If you listen to this episode, you’ll get a mini class in how to tell a good story for your learning business.

Park Howell is the founder of the Business of Story. Park comes from the marketing world, where he ran his own advertising agency for 20 years. One of his big a-has is the and-but-therefore (ABT) agile narrative framework. Leading Learning Podcast co-host Celisa Steele talks with Park about the power of storytelling, its connection to how the human brain works, and how the ABT framework works at a conceptual and a practical level.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode396.

Digital credentials aren’t as valuable on their own as they are in an ecosystem that uses open standards to connect learners and employers and where relevant data about skills achieved, pathways to new roles, and the needs of the job market intersect.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa talk about standards-based digital credentials being at tipping point and the need for learning businesses to adopt them in order to adapt to what learners are coming to expect when receiving a credential.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode395.

Learning businesses rely on the revenue that comes from their educational offerings. That means learning business professionals have to know how to determine the best pricing—the best pricing for attracting and converting prospective customers, the best pricing for maintaining and maximizing revenue levels, and the best pricing for achieving strategic goals.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele touch on three principles of pricing that can help: Prices prime perception, prices drive profit, and pricing is strategic.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode394.

With the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, artificial intelligence broke into the mainstream and became a more practical rather than theoretical topic than ever before. AI has the potential to lighten the existing load and to enable new activities for learning businesses, particularly in the realms of marketing and personalization.

Erica Salm Rench is the chief operating officer at rasa.io, which uses AI to send personalized newsletters to every recipient on an e-mail list. Before joining rasa, Erica worked in digital media and advertising at an agency, leading a team of content marketers, SEO specialists, Web developers, and online advertisers. She also worked at Tulane University in undergraduate admissions. Erica is passionate about designing effective marketing strategies, and she’s an avid student of AI.

In episode 393 of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Erica about the state of artificial intelligence, what’s on the horizon for AI, e-mail marketing, personalization, the importance of data, and the interaction and interplay of humans and AI to get work done well.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode393.

Just as taking time to look back and reflect is a good practice, so too is taking time to look ahead and plan.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele share survey data about what learning businesses plan to focus on in 2024. You can use the data for quick benchmarking and to help you get clearer about your learning business’s priorities for the year ahead.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode392.

Reflection is a good practice, in life and in learning, especially for those working in and for learning businesses. But it’s all too easy to skip because taking time to reflect often isn’t as pressing and urgent as other things on the to-do list.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele act as avatars and model doing the behavior they encourage others to engage in periodically as they reflect back on 2023.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode391.