A Radical Opinion On Why B-School Is Not The Answer

Around a certain time every year, if you’re even mildly connected to the online business community, you will start getting tons of emails about Marie Forleo’s B-school.

She very successfully does joint-venture partnerships, and when they launch, her program is suddenly everywhere you look.

Now Marie Forleo really helped me to giggle my way through the first phases of business many years ago. I say giggle because I liked that she was super silly while also being super strategic in her recommendations.

In my addiction to YouTube videos and subscribing to email lists, every Tuesday I was anxiously awaiting Marie’s Marie TV.

At the time, I didn’t have enough money for b-school. But I definitely thought at least once about enrolling. I was convinced that Marie knew exactly what she was doing when it came to creating a business and life you loved… especially online. Gosh, I heard her say that line so many times. Great branding, Marie.

But looking back at where I was and who I was then; I can see now what I would have never been able to understand:

B-school is not the answer.

Who are the other people that are buying Marie Forleo’s B-School?

Well, many of them share a lot of the characteristics I just described in “my symptoms from 2009” above. Plus they have several dashes of their own uncomfortable truths. I’ve met so many of them. They are talented and have a lot to offer, but the program is not in direct alignment with what they need. Let me clarify.

It’s not that programs like Marie’s are not useful. It’s that they are not the critical need for emerging creative professionals and business owners who are isolated in their work space or only hanging around other folks who are in the same position…. working on a dream that is not well defined and not well aligned because they are emotionally unclear about who they are and what their real purpose is in the world.

We had a former client at RBL sign up for B. School. It was a mistake. A mistake to the tune of $2,000.00. While 2k is not the most money in the world, it is a significant investment when you’re just starting out.

It wasn’t the first time that a client made a misaligned investment for what they really needed either before or after engaging with us.

We have found that clients, even after interacting with The Radical Brand Lab, still don’t understand how to most deeply use the tools they have surrounding them or how to effectively evaluate what they need to do next.

Most importantly, they don’t know how to ask for help. The art of getting guidance is to relinquish the idea that you know how to make the best decisions for your business on your own.

They don’t want to admit that, given where they are, the first step to making business and financial decisions that are on brand is to ask the expert from RBL who you know and have been working. When you are much more comfortable consulting your confused inner thoughts and your well-meaning but totally misguided friend and professional circle; it’s a dance with control versus problem solving and next-level creation.

Relinquishing control of decision making is difficult. I know. I struggle with it. But if you need guidance, you need guidance. And who better to give it to you than an intuitive who you already know on some level of your consciousness, knows more about your life and business than you do.

Let’s examine what b-school offers, if that’s what customers really need, and how that compares to what we do at Radical.

This is a picture from B-School’s site.

People who enroll in B-School want to “take a part time gig to full time business, take an existing company to new heights or just start a business.” And, in order to create that. B-School promises to do the following:

It sounds like a great list. Because it is.

But when I first read it, and I thought about our former client who purchased the program; I said out loud “These are the exact services that we provide via forward-thinking branding at RBL.” And, given that the branding is informed by intuitive messages that are specifically yours, for your business; via your spirit-guides; I can’t understand why this client would chose to try to “figure it out” online.

Above all else, Marie is a powerful online marketer. She has spread one clear message consistently for a decade online. Using humor and a network of recommendations from experts and creative solutions of her own. So if you want to sign up for B.School, and get the maximum benefit, then you really need to be in need of a powerful online marketing course.

And who needs marketing?

People and organizations that are crystal clear on who they are, what they do, why they do it, and have a powerful message to spread… need marketing.

I’ll say it again.

People and organizations who are crystal clear on who they are, what they do, why they do it, and have a powerful message to spread ...need marketing.

But the people who are buying B-School on the whole don’t have that.

Of course b-school has video sections to help you clarify and define your vision. But given the amount of emotional turmoil and disconnections from self that many of these courageous seekers are experiencing; these exercises are not going to do the job.

But they don’t know that, and I didn’t know it either back in the day. Although I didn’t sign up for Marie’s b-school, I did sign up for Business Coaching. It helped me until it didn’t help me. It helped me to make money in the short term, but it was not a lasting solution because the business coaching was incapable of seeing the deepest problems that I had. IF I had come to the coaching very clear on my identity and direction, then the nature of the program could have taken a totally different direction.

Your clarity determines everything. So when you’re confused everything’s off. And the program you choose must account for that.

With the exception of the forward-thinking branding that we offer at RBL, the clarity that you bring to the program you’re buying is going to set the foundation of what you are able to get out of the program. What do I mean by that?

I talk about it a bit in my article: Why my intuitive fired my therapist

In therapy, you tell the therapist what’s going on and given what you SAY and their observations of you; they distill solutions. But the foundation is what you present and,like it or not, we’re often not clear enough to advocate for ourselves honestly and properly. We tend to talk about what we’re comfortable talking bout, what is surface level and bothering us NOW but not necessarily what caused the real problem in the first place.

This same “your clarity sets the foundation” dynamic exists in online programs like this. AND it’s even harder because you’re operating remotely from the expert with limited interaction or without full access to them.

So when you say b.s. that isn’t true. It’s harder for someone to catch it. And you’re filling out what the video says in the exercise or the worksheet, but nobody is there to bring objectivity. You’re left a little clearer (maybe) but still largely in the same place you were when you started.

Even when you’re talking in real time with someone to bring objectivity, it is still difficult to pinpoint what is true. It takes time for those only working off of the information you provide to reorient your internal conversations to where things actually need to go.

The forward thinking branding model at RBL, by contrast says :

• Confusion gets more confusion
• Let’s use a tool that can give us source information from the start to guide the entire process.

The intuitive already knows what your core problems are even when you don’t and even when you don’t want to admit it. And that clarity sets the foundation for your experience to be based on nothing but the absolute soul level truth and truest direction that you are destined to travel. If you accept and process THAT, dig deeper into who you are, what you do, why you do it, and create a powerful message according to THAT then secondary tools like online marketing courses become more valuable.

But in some clients’ cases marketing was still not THE answer. And they still needed guidance to make the next best decision and the next best one after that. They were clearer when they started but not clear enough to make the right decision that their soul really wanted them to. But, nonethelessthey still wanted to be in the driver’s seat and in control of their business versus having their business be successful because someone would see more clearly could help them find where they should be in the business, excel at that, and get emotionally clear enough over time to take back the reigns and lead as they were destined to.

Sometimes we want control more than they want success. And it baffles me although I have those same struggles.

Tell me this: Why would you choose to guess about your business when you can not only know the answers but have a space to process why it has been so difficult for you to arrive at them on your own? 

When we tap into that ego need to know all of the answers, we typically end up dumber than we desired.

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The problem with this entire conversation is that the people who sign up for b-school don’t actually need a powerful online marketing course.

They need clarity. And they needed it yesterday.

They need clarity on who they really are. Clarity on why their emotions are all over the place and they haven’t been able to make “this” a go for however long they have been working from home or in a coworking space with others who are struggling on various levels.

They need clarity on if they are headed in the right direction and what the real purpose of that direction is.

Smart people sign up for B-School. But you have to be really smart or super clear to make a program like this work when you are in this stage of business: rebuilding, coming back from mistakes or just trying to get going. Many of the organizations we’ve worked with at The Radical Brand Lab, no matter how massive or tiny, have struggled to reach their goals in part due to lack of emotional clarity and no tactical skill or marketing program will this solve long-term. Often, as a result of this confusion, their ability to choose the best tactical help is impaired.

In minutes, if organizations allow it; The forward-thinking branding based on powerful intuition can pinpoint solutions to any problem the organization is having on the highest strategic level. Forward-thinking branding isn’t words and pretty pictures, it’s the essence of your business and that conversation is at the top of everything.

The videos that Marie Forleo is giving and the community of other motivated but lost souls that the B-School program provides are not going to give you the kind of clarity that you need.

So even if you learn some things from B-School, even if you set up something that is successful: The likelihood that you will hit on the precise, deepest questions that you must clear up in order to live a soulfully-aligned-life that includes a soulfully-on- target business is zero to none. And that’s a fact.

Jordan Hayles is a storyteller, comedic writer and founder of an unusual branding agency: The Radical Brand Lab. She is known for her talks “ The Emotional Cost of Being a Creative” & “Taking Over The Feminine Hygiene Aisle.” Her last written piece on LinkedIn, “Why My Intuitive Fired My Therapist (Part 1)” explores her very personal journey seeking mental health support but needing help even in the seeking.