Hey,
It’s Paddy here. Long time, no talk!
We have been incredibly busy at Triage the last while, and I thought I would just fill you in
on what has been going on. I always enjoy when companies give you a little peek behind the scenes, so I thought you might enjoy it also.
As many of you likely know, Gary has been doing a lot of work on social media, especially in the realm of
science/health communication. This tends to involve a decent bit of “debunking” and discussing poor health and fitness information that is pushed on social media.
What do you think of this approach? Is it something you enjoy, or do you feel it isn’t a great approach?
The thing about social media is that you kind of have to play the game to see any traction. Which makes it difficult for us, as we want to provide you guys with the best health and fitness information you can find online, but very often, that kind of stuff isn’t “sexy” or doesn’t get attention on social media.
When we were
coming up in the health and fitness world, one of the key problems was that you just didn’t have access to much high quality information. Now one of the key problems is that you have too much access to information and can find it difficult to know what is right or wrong. This is especially the case on social media.
So, we are really trying to push to grow our audience
on social media. If you have any feedback on our social media approach, by all means, do let us know your thoughts! If you aren’t following us on social media, we would appreciate it if you started!
I have also been doing a lot of work to build out our website, with lots of free content. Social media is very ephemeral and transient, and oftentimes you want more information than can be provided in a short and snappy infographic or short video.
So I have been creating a lot of content to help you understand all of this health and fitness stuff, as it applies to your life. We
have a lot of free content on site, especially as it relates to exercise, nutrition, sleep and stress management.
There is a lot of stuff in the works here, so I would recommend checking back with the website frequently. At the moment 1-2 articles are being posted per week, and I do hope to be able to get this up to 2-3 pieces of content per week.
Ultimately, we want to build a one stop shop for all the foundational stuff you could want to know with all this health and fitness stuff. Sort of like a manual for how you can look after your body. But it will likely take the next 2-5 years to really build this out to the level we want, at least to the foundational level. In reality, it would take 2-3 lifetimes to create
all the content we want to create.
Growing on social media and increasing our website traffic serves our key purpose of helping more people, and of course, as a business, it naturally helps us grow our revenue too. After all, the only way we are able to provide all the free content we do provide is because we make money from coaching and our courses.
Which brings me to the next point, our education offerings.
Most of you are aware that we do online coaching (if you aren’t, then
what did you think we did?). Well, Brian does a lot of outreach on social media to help us find out what kind of content you want us to create and to see if we can help solve any problems you may have. And he tells me that most of our followers are unaware that we have an education division in the business.
That is our fault for not pushing it that hard. We do struggle to find the right balance between sales focused content and then content that will genuinely help you. We have always focused on creating content that genuinely helps people, and as a consequence of that, people want us to help them via coaching.
However, I know we could be more aggressive with our marketing endeavours and do more marketing for our products and services. But it kind of just doesn’t fit our vibe.
I know I personally hate when you follow someone, or some company, and they end up spamming you with marketing material or only really view you as a way to make more money. So it is hard to strike
the balance of providing you with lots of free content but also ensuring you are aware that we have services that could help you.
You may think we do too much sales/marketing stuff, however, as we frequently get messages like “do you know anyone that does online coaching?”, I am inclined to believe that we are leaving a lot of money on the table and not doing enough
marketing.
With that in mind, I would like to make you aware of our educational offerings. But rather than just link you our services, I want to continue with the peek behind the scenes.
I have been doing a lot of work on the education
side of the business this year. We now have a very up to date nutrition course (I took the feedback from students who have completed the course and improved it, and I intend to do this frequently until we have the absolute best course possible).
We
already focus a lot on the actual application of nutrition and how to coach, but we have really doubled down on this. Unfortunately, the actual application of information is very lacking in the health and fitness education realm.
Most courses just tell you information, rather than how to actually use that information with your clients. However, we fundamentally
believe that information should be as free as possible. We don’t mind charging to show you how to actually apply that information, as that is actual expertise. But the baseline information should be free. Many universities don’t even do this, and effectively just tell you to buy a book, show you some slides that are just summaries of topics, and then give you an exam on the topic.
In our opinion, this is a very bad service. You could just buy the book yourself and get AI to quiz you on it if this is all you are getting.
We initially had envisioned having this mega course with everything you would need to know to be a phenomenal coach. However, it very quickly became too big and we realised from talking to many coaches, that
they would actually prefer shorter courses.
Our nutrition course initially had modules on sleep and stress management, as that obviously fit in with the idea for a mega course. But we have now separated out the sleep module, expanded on it by 50% and now sell it as a standalone sleep course.
We will also be doing this with the stress management module that is currently in the nutrition course. This will make the nutrition course cheaper (as there will be less in it), and it will give more people the option to tailor their education journey.
I know there are a lot of coaches who already feel they have a decent level of nutrition knowledge but want more knowledge in the realm of stuff like sleep and stress management. So it makes sense to have these separated.
I hope to have this done by the end of
the year, but I am not rushing the process. It will be done when we are happy with the product.
We also have a program design course in the works, and this is slowly coming together. Creating a course how we want it does take a lot of time,
because we both have to do a lot of research to ensure we are providing the most up to date information, and then we actually have to create the content. We don’t just tell you to purchase a textbook, we actually write our own textbook. Then we create other resources like images and diagrams to help better explain the information.
I also try to do some “beta
testing”, whereby I get someone I know who is not in this health and fitness world to read the content and see if they find it easy to understand. Of course, some parts are going to need to be more technical than others, but I can still try my best to explain the content in an easy to read and understand manner.
So course creation does take a lot of time,
especially when trying to balance it with creating a lot of free content. But we do want to do both. I know a lot of you get a lot from our free content, so we don’t want to deprioritise that. We all enjoy coaching people, so don’t want to deprioritise that. We have ~100 students on our courses now, so we also don’t want to deprioritise that. So that just means we have to push in multiple directions.
Further to this, we also want to create some more longer form content for YouTube, as some stuff does just make more sense in video format. Also, I know a lot of people don’t necessarily want to sit down and read an article, and prefer to just watch a video about the topic (which is also why we have both written and video content in our courses too). So, that is another thing we want to add into the mix.
Time is just the major limiting factor. But we are enjoying the journey.
Now, I would appreciate some feedback. What do you feel we are doing well? What do you like and what don’t you like about our content approach? What would you like to see us create? Do you think we are striking the
right balance between marketing ourselves and providing helpful content? Or are we wide of the mark?
Your feedback is very much appreciated.
Chat soon,
Paddy Farrell
Gary’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drgarymcgowan/
Triage Method Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/triagemethod/
Triage Method Website: https://triagemethod.com/
Triage Method YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TriageMethod
