8 min read · Written by Grant Rayner on 20 Sep 2023
Share by emailIn last week’s article, I focused on different approaches to delivering training services to organisations. Focusing on organisations will be the default option for many independent security professionals. The challenge will be that not all organisations require the support of external service providers to run training. In practice, this will mean that there will probably be a cap on your potential revenue from training services to organisations. The good news is that it’s possible to expand your revenue by also offering training to individuals.
The fact is that very few security companies offer training to individuals. Instead, most are solely focused on providing security training to organisations. I’d suggest this approach leaves money on the table and provides an opportunity for you as an independent security professional. There are plenty of individuals willing to pay to gain new knowledge and advance their careers. Provided of course they see the value of what you’re offering.
In this article, I’ll explore the opportunity of providing training services to individuals. I’ll start with some of the benefits. I’ll then outline a few of the different approaches to delivering training to individuals, along with some financial models. I’ll close with some thoughts on structuring your training and building an ecosystem.
I’ll be using the term ‘workshops’ for this type of training. Workshops tend to be more interactive and more interesting than traditional training sessions (one person talking, everyone else listening).
As an independent security professional, you have a lot to gain from running training for individuals. Let’s start with the most obvious benefit, in that you’ll have access to a much larger market for your services.
By opening up your training to individuals, you’re expanding the size of the available market for your training services. However, when considering market size, you’ll need to be realistic regarding the number of people that might be interested to attend your training. The more unique and useful your training, the more likely you’ll have people willing to attend. The best way to make your training unique is to apply your own unique experiences.
One key difference is that you won’t be able to offer training services to individuals at the same price as you do to your corporate clients. If you offer a particular training package to your corporate clients for $5,000, for example, you won’t be able to provide the same service at the same price to individuals. That said, as you’ll learn shortly, there’s a good chance you may be able to earn more for the same amount of time and effort.
A interesting point to note is that, by providing training to individuals, you’ll probably still be servicing the needs of your corporate clients. Companies may send their employees to attend your training. Employees may also request to attend your training and could be reimbursed by their organisations for the cost of the training.
As noted above, most people that attend your training probably belong to an organisation. After attending your training, each participant will know you a little better and have a better appreciation for your level of competence. They should also leave the session with a clear understanding of the products and services you provide. Subsequently, they may refer you to their organisation for additional work.
Individuals that attend your training workshops are more likely to purchase other products and services from you. For example, they may decide to attend additional workshops, or purchase one or more of your publications.
This approach is part of something called ‘Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) Maximisation,’ where your objective is to increase the total value a customer brings over the course of their entire relationship with your business.
Now that you have a better understanding of the benefits of providing training services to individuals, let’s explore different approaches to training.
At a high level, there are three ways you could approach providing training services to individuals:
The actual content for each of these training approaches could be the same, with some variations in how the training is delivered to account for the medium. Let’s look at these different options from a commercial perspective.
Public workshops involve you promoting a workshop and individuals paying to attend that workshop. You may run your workshop in one location. Alternatively, you may run your workshop in different cities or countries.
You could run the same workshop every few months or annually (the more you run your workshop, the faster you’ll recoup the cost of development).
As you start your planning, you’ll want to be clear on a ‘breakeven price’, which will translate to the minimum number of attendees necessary to go ahead and run the workshop. You’ll then want to determine the maximum number of attendees. Too many attendees, and the training won’t be as engaging and you won’t be able to provide the same level of attention to all attendees. As an example, let’s say we don’t want to get out of bed and run this training for less than what we’d be charging our corporate clients for a similar session. We also want to recoup the time spent developing the workshop, and we want to do this in no more than 10 workshops. In this example, your training package took 4 days to develop at an estimated internal cost of $8,000. The workshop itself is 3 hours long, which equates to around $1,500 per of your time. If we add 10% of the development cost ($800) to $1,500, we end up with a total of $2,300.
If you believe you can get people to pay $400 to attend your workshop, then the minimum number of attendees to make a workshop viable is six (rounded up). So, based on this number, the minimum you’ll earn from a workshop is $2,400. Not terrible for three hours of work, but you can do better.
As noted above, you’ll need to be careful regarding the maximum number of attendees. Let’s say you decide 16 is a good number, allowing you to break up the group into four teams of four for workshop activities. So your revenue ceiling for one workshop is 16 x $400, which is $6,400.
Of course, you’ll also need to factor in other costs, such as the cost of the venue, food and drinks, and your own transport to and from the venue location (and the time involved). If you were travelling to deliver these workshops internationally, you’d need to adjust your pricing upwards to cover your travel costs.
What happens if you have more than 16 people wanting to attend your training? That’s easy— once you reach 22 participants, you have enough people to run a second session.
If you conduct the workshop online, the approach will be roughly the same. The benefit is that you won’t have to worry about the cost of venues, food, or transport and time getting to and from the venue. The only cost will be the ongoing cost of whatever video application you’re using for the training (e.g., Zoom).
In terms of numbers, you can follow the same approach as in-person training. You’ll still need to define a minimum number of attendees. You should also set a maximum number of attendees to ensure your session can remain intimate and engaging.
While the experience for participants won’t be as good as in-person workshops, the key advantage of online workshops is reach. Online workshops allow people from different countries to attend your training, expanding the size of your available market.
Of course, you’ll need to be prepared to run training in different timezones, which may involve some late nights or early mornings.
The third option is to record your training and allow individuals to take your course whenever they want to. This approach differs from the previous approaches, in that you’re not involved with the delivery of the training sessions and the training isn’t delivered to groups. In this approach, an individual purchases your training and watches your training video at their leisure.
The time required to develop a recorded training session is substantial and should not be underestimated. In addition, the experience won’t be as good as live training. Participants won’t have the opportunity to work in teams and won’t be able to ask you questions. You could augment your recorded training with live Q&A sessions. But even then, the experience won’t be as good.
The key benefit of running such training is that people can be paying for and participating in this training while you do literally nothing. As such, this approach can scale.
Avoid using the same material for recorded training as you do for your workshops. If you do, you may cannibalise your workshop revenue.
Regarding pricing, you won’t be able to charge a lot for online training. There are established market prices for online training. Price will also be inherently tied to demand. If you’re hoping for large numbers of people to purchase the training, you’ll need to set the price so that it’s easily affordable. An important point to remember is that you’ll be competing with a very wide range of online training options. Why would someone choose your training out of the myriad of other training options out there?
Before wrapping up, there’s value in focusing on realising some of the important benefits of running training workshops by structuring your training services and building an ecosystem.
One of the biggest challenges you’ll face as an independent security professional is customer acquisition. The best way to reduce the burden of customer acquisition is to sell additional products and services to your existing customers. As described above, your goal is to maximise Customer Lifetime Value.
A great way to do this is to provide additional training workshops related to the same topic. You could also have a progression of training, for example a basic workshop and an advanced workshop. Another option is to have a foundation course, then several specialty courses.
Whichever option you choose, they key is to avoid developing a single workshop and flogging that workshop to death. Instead, provide options that will help you scale your business.
Assuming people leave your workshop inspired and interested in what you do, they may be interested in your other products and services.
If you’re intending to provide a training workshop to individuals, consider how your existing products and services might relate to this training. Here’s a few ways you could incorporate cross selling into your workshops:
You’ll find each of these approaches to be beneficial in terms of establishing yourself as an expert in your field and building a strong business.
For now, let’s wrap up with a few important takeaways.
First, there’s a benefit in providing training to both organisations and individuals. They two audiences certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. However, targeting each of these market segments is challenging and each will require a unique approach to marketing and promotion.
It takes a substantial amount of effort to build an audience, which can distract you from acquiring corporate clients (which, on balance, are more important to your overall revenue stream). Don’t underestimate the time and effort building an audience will take.
When considering your approach to running workshops, a good approach is to do both live and online workshops. Run in-person workshops in key locations where you’re confident you can sufficient people to attend. For other locations, offer online workshops.
Overall, workshops are a great product and something you should definitely consider offering as an independent security professional.