28: What is B-School & is it worth it?
What is Marie Forleo’s B-School? (2024)
I’ve spoken a lot recently about Gen X women and it seems like that really resonated with you all because I have seen an uptick in listeners and downloads.
In this episode of ill communication, I’m sharing the next episode in this series about Gen X women and small businesses. I’m sharing my experience with B-School, which is an online business and marketing platform by Marie Forleo.
You’ll learn what it is, whether it’s worth investing time, money, and energy into, and the special way that I can support you if you decide to join.
I get that not everyone is interested in starting or scaling a small business, or interested in B-School but I want to encourage you to listen anyway, because I'll be sharing some of the things I did that helped me be successful in this program and in starting a profitable copywriting business.
Maybe you'll pick up something that you can apply to your business or to your life!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
What B-School is
The structure of the curriculum
Who B-School is for
The people that are most successful with this course
How I can support you if you join B-School
Investing in B-School is one of the best business decisions I ever made. It taught me so much about how to be a successful online business owner. If you want more information about the bonuses I’m offering if you sign up for B-School using my link, check out the details here.
If you didn’t get a chance to listen to the other episodes in this series, you can check out episode 26 about why GenX women are an untapped market, and episode 27 about what I wish I knew before starting a small business.
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Welcome to Ill Communication. Copywriting Tips and Sales Strategies for Small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and changemakers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soul mate clients. Let's get started.
Hey there and welcome to today's episode of Ill Communication. I am delighted that we gather together every Wednesday or whenever you happen to tune in to the episodes. And in the last couple of weeks I've seen a pretty big uptick in listeners and downloads. It seems that the last two episodes have really resonated with a lot of you. I had quite a few people reaching out to me to share their stories of being a Gen-X woman firmly experiencing the squeeze of this season of life and feeling a little unsettled in their careers and businesses. So if you haven't listened to those episodes yet, check the show notes for links to The X Factor. Why Gen-X Women Are an Untapped Market, which is Episode 26 and five Things I Wish I Knew before I started a Small Business Episode 27. And this episode is the next in the series about Gen Xers and small businesses. Today I'm sharing my experience with B School, which is an online business and marketing program created by Marie Folio. You're going to hear what it is, whether it's worth investing your time, energy and money into. And I'm going to share a special way I can support you if you decide to join her program. And look, I get that not everyone is interested in starting or scaling a small business or interested in B school, but I want to encourage you to listen anyway, because I'll be sharing some of the things I did that helped me be successful in this program and in starting a profitable copywriting business.
And maybe you'll pick up something that you can apply to your business or to your life. So let's get into it. If you're newer to online business, or maybe you've only been listening to me for a short while, you might be wondering what B-school even is. In fact, B-school is two things. Number one, it's an abbreviation for a business school and is most commonly associated with MBA programs or business schools within a university or post-secondary institution. And secondly, B School is also the name of an online learning program created by Marie Leo, who is a very successful serial entrepreneur, public speaker and author. Marie launched B-school in 2010 and has since gone on to train a whopping 80,000 entrepreneurs across 650 industries around the globe. It's a six week online course that gives new entrepreneurs and more seasoned ones a roadmap to starting and scaling your business. I joined back in 2018, but I have to admit I followed Marie for over a year before I joined the program. I think I discovered B-school and Marie Folio in late 2016. Actually. I watched as she promoted B-school in 2017 and I thought, all this stuff is available for free. I don't need to join this program. I can find everything I need on the Internet. But when I got to the end of 2017, womp, womp, I was no further along in launching my business. I knew then that I needed to follow a curriculum.
I needed some accountability, and I wanted a community because I knew very few people in online business or entrepreneurship. So in 2018, when Marie Folios annual B-school promo came around, I jumped. And when I say jumped, it was really me talking to my husband about why I thought this was a good opportunity. At the time, it felt like a very big investment and in fact, it still does. I had, fortunately a little bit of money set aside in a personal savings account that I put towards the program. But it was scary because suddenly exchanging money for this little dream of mine made it very real. And as I've said before, it was one of the smartest investments I have ever made. As soon as I joined, I was impressed with the course platform. It was beautiful. It was organized and it was intuitive. I could easily find my way around. And before the full six week course even began, there were some quick start bonuses that I used immediately. In particular, I loved a special bonus training called Start the Right Business. It was perfect for me at that stage. Here I was a 40 something woman with no business experience trying to become a freelancer or a consultant or a writer or a wordsmith. I didn't even know what to call myself. I didn't know the first thing about what kind of business to even start. And I didn't know what I didn't know. And this program provided a beautifully simple process for me to think about my lifestyle and work goals and understand different business models.
At the time, I decided I wanted to build a micro-business and become a solo entrepreneur. I still refer back to start the right business any time I'm feeling a little uncertain about my path forward as my business continues to grow and evolve. B-school is delivered in six weeks with six modules designed to give you a blueprint for building your business. It provides foundational curriculum to help you fast track your growth and avoid the endless hamster wheel of trial and error and going down the Google rabbit hole. There are so many steps and things you need to do when you're starting or running a business and it is so easy to get overwhelmed. So I loved how B school drips out the content and information week by week in a step by step process. As a B-school alum, I have lifetime access and I frequently go back into the course portal when I need a refresher or if I'm trying something new and I need a little tutorial. What's exciting is that this year and if you're listening in real time, it's 2023. B-school has been totally revamped and updated. There are new videos and worksheets and curriculum and it's been updated for what's working now in today's online marketplace. I cannot wait to see what's included and incorporate some new tools into my business. I just checked the curriculum and these are the six core learning modules for each week of the program.
Week one Your Profit Plan and Business Vision Week two Creating offers That sell. Week three Timeless Marketing Strategies. Week four Easy Content Creation, Week five Email Marketing and List Building and Week six Creating a website that sells and converts B-school is very, very tactical. It gives you the strategy, the reasons why it's a good strategy, and then the steps to implement those strategies, which worked so well for me. But let me be totally honest with you. While I followed a lot of the steps, I was far from perfect. I took my time to consume the lessons, and sometimes I didn't even follow the right order. As a Gen Xer with young kids and a busy life and a day job, I had to pick and choose what I had the bandwidth for. At the time, I was maybe a little slower to implement and launch, but I got there and there are some things I still haven't even done yet, and that's okay. I've built a beautiful, pretty chill, multi six figure business because of the foundations and strategies I learned from B-school. Now maybe you're asking who is B-school for and wondering if it's the right investment for you. B-school is designed for product based businesses. So if you sell a physical product like candles or soap or even a digital product like a course, it's for brick and mortar businesses. And I think what it really does well is it helps you develop an online presence to support your brick and mortar business.
And it's great for service based businesses like bookkeepers, designers, financial planners, and yes, even copywriters and more. So it's for people who are creative and driven. I've discovered that the people who are the most successful are willing to take action, and they're okay to take calculated risks. In B-school, as in entrepreneurship, you have to be willing to experiment your way forward. Perfection will slow you down or even prevent you from fully launching. And B-school is not for anyone who's expecting to get rich quick. This is not a system you buy into and start selling like a pyramid scheme. It's a curriculum and training to provide you with guidance on how to grow your own business. If you're looking for 1 to 1 business coaching, this ain't it. It's an online training program. But if you're looking for some 1 to 1 support, keep listening because I'm going to share how I can support you if you choose to join B-school. But I think B-school is a brilliant program for Gen X women who want to start or grow their businesses. Marie Falo is a Gen Xer, so you'll get a lot of her references and jokes. She's mature and she understands how important it is to build a business that supports your life and not the other way around. B-school also really clearly explains a lot of the technology and systems and strategy you need to build an online business.
And for Gen-Xers like me, we're probably a little more analog and a lot of the online stuff might feel a little overwhelming, but B-school breaks it down very beautifully. Now, if you're listening to this in real time, B-school is just about to open its doors and welcome new students in. Doors will open on February 9th and close February 23rd, and the program kicks off February 27th. If you're interested in learning more about what's included in B-school when it starts and all the dates, the investment, please visit Kim Rigby school. That page will give you a little more information, including some frequently asked questions at a link to join Marie's program. And if you use my link to join, I may receive a referral fee from Marie's company. And if you choose to join using my affiliate link, I have a beautiful bonus suite that I'm including to you at no extra cost. Here's why. There are two really big challenges when you run a small business. One is that there is a crap ton of copy you need to write and I've got some great bonuses to help you write faster and more effectively. And two. Starting a small business, especially when you're a Gen Xer, is scary. Af And a bit of a mind bend. So I want to provide a community and a safe space for other women who are going through B-school together to give you support, community and a few laughs. So if you join B-school through my affiliate link, you'll receive my Build a Chill business bundle.
This will give you a step by step checklist of all the tools and tech I used to set up my business. This will help cut down on the mental fatigue of decision making and allow you to jumpstart your business faster, and especially if you're looking to grow a very low key, low tech chill business. This bonus is for you. You'll also get my quick Start copy collection. This is a collection of copy templates to help you write the foundational pieces you need for your business. Things like writing your home page and your about page. You'll get the beloved Dinner Party framework for writing an email welcome sequence and you'll get my low key launch formula for when you're ready to promote your services or have a sale. I'm also going to gift you one month inside the Joy of Copy Club, which is my premier copy coaching program. So as you continue to move forward with growing your business, you have some ongoing support and coaching to help you write your copy. And lastly, you'll join the exclusive Gen-Xers B School Breakfast Club. This is a special community I'm launching just for new B-school students. We'll meet once a week in the morning for a group call where you can ask any questions and get help and just be in community with other women going through the program with you. The Breakfast Club will start when B-school begins and run for four months.
To give you the community and support you need to build a chill business. I'm so excited to launch the Breakfast Club. Let me just tell you that you can get all the details about what's included in B-school and the investment, the timelines and the bonuses when you visit Kim Qualcomm slash B-school. Now, hey, if you have any questions at all, please reach out to me. As I've said many, many times. B-school was one of the best investments I've made. It's the reason I have a business at all. It's the reason I can work and make a real. Really good income doing something I genuinely enjoy with clients I absolutely love, while still having the flexibility to be there for my kids or my mom and my in-laws when they need. And it's given me a sense of purpose and pride in my life for the kind of impact I'm having to amplify the voices of Gen X women in business. And all of those things are absolutely priceless. My friend, thank you so much for listening today. If you want more information about B-school and how to join my exclusive bonus offer suite, please reach out to me or visit Kim Holcombe School. And on next week's episode, I'll share a writing prompt to help you grab your audience's attention and position you as an authority in your field. So make sure you're subscribed and following this podcast so you don't miss it. Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Ill Communication. Hey, if you enjoy these snack size strategies and tips, you'll want to join my VIP Copy and Cocktails club. It's my email newsletter where I share more coffee tips, sales strategies and the occasional recipe for my favorite beverage or appetizer du jour. To subscribe, visit Kim Qualcomm slash Newsletter. Thanks for tuning in.
Resources Mentioned
Episode 26: The X Factor - Why Gen X women are an untapped market
Episode 27: 5 things I wish I knew before I started a small business
Get more information about B-School, including my exclusive Bonus Suite
Additional Resources
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