Brian Washburn chats with learning consultant and author, Mike Taylor, about his new book with Bianca Baumann, Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro. Taylor dives into the overlap between marketing and learning & development, arguing that marketers are far better at capturing attention and sparking behavior change, two areas where L&D often falls short. He shares ways that, with just a shift in mindset, applying marketing principles to training design can create a strikingly more engaging and effective learning experience.
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Introduction
Brian Washburn: Hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of Train Like You Listen, a podcast about all things learning and development in bite-sized chunks. I’m Brian Washburn and I’m the co-founder and CEO of a company called Endurance Learning.
We are an instructional design shop that can help you put together any kind of training program, whether it’s classroom and instructor-led training to elearning. Today I am joined by learning consultant and all-around training personality extraordinaire, Mike Taylor, who just finished writing a book entitled, Think Like A Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro (Editor’s note: co-writer is Bianca Baumann).
Hi Mike, how are you?
Mike Taylor: Hey Brian, it’s great to see you. This is a big treat for me.
Brian Washburn: Well, I’m so excited to have this conversation. We’ve known each other just through like social media for years and years. Every once in a while we get a chance to hop on a Zoom call. Very rarely do we get a chance to rub elbows in person, but it’s an opportunity to chitchat here a little bit.
Mike Taylor’s Six-word Biography
Brian Washburn: And so, I know you, and I have a feeling that a lot of our listeners may know who you are. They know of the famous Mike Taylor. But if you had to describe yourself and your work using a sentence that’s exactly six words, how would you do that?
Mike Taylor: So I would say marketing secrets, elevate training into results.
Brian Washburn: All right. Well that is on-brand, right? For this book that you just have. You have a new book that is, just about to come out where we’re recording this here in kind of late April. Your book comes out in May, and it’s called Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro. Can you give us like a super high-level summary of the book?
Like when you were writing this book, what was the problem in L&D that you were looking to solve for? And if nothing else, is there one key takeaway that you wanted people to take from this book?
What Does Marketing Do Better Than L&D?
Mike Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. So, most L&D kind of has a tendency to focus– they’re gonna jump straight to content and–
Brian Washburn: Mm-hmm.
Mike Taylor: Without very much thought about how do we capture attention and our ultimate goal of driving action. So depending on where you get the numbers from, you know, there’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 billion spent every year on training. And a huge part of that doesn’t create any behavior change.
So, you know, what we want to do is sort of help people understand how people process information, you know, get to know their audience and close that gap of, you know, what’s being spent and what’s really effective. And if you think about it, both marketing and L&D share the same common core goal, and that is capturing attention, changing behavior.
But I would say as a whole, marketing does it a lot better.
Brian Washburn: Like, if you were to just take a look at my children, they would absolutely agree with that. Like all the messages that they get, whether it is on TikTok or on commercials or whatever it might be that they’re being marketed to, they are moved to act, to purchase, to do something.
And yet when we talk, sometimes with some of the people that we train, they’re not always moved to act, which is, really, it’s fascinating. Is that the big takeaway, like marketing, “hey, marketing/advertising, we’ve kind of cracked the code in terms of getting people to act”?
Or is there a different takeaway that you had?
Marketing Messages That Stick
Mike Taylor: Well, you know, I think, if you think about marketers, if you spend any time kind of taking a closer look and looking deeper at what they do, like they are primed and have been experimenting and perfecting, sort of, this science of engagement for decades.
Brian Washburn: Mm-hmm.
Mike Taylor: Right. And they’re using psychology and behavioral economics and all these things to create messages that stick. And if you compare that to a lot of L&D approaches, you know, there’s a lot of text and it’s, you know, a lecture and all that sort of stuff. It just doesn’t line up with the way people process information and the way that our brains work.
So for example, you know, you mentioned your kids, but it’s not just a generational thing. I’m certain that all of us can go back to our own childhood or even, you know, recent times, decades, decades ago, whatever. You probably still have commercials and marketing messages that you can know by heart.
And that probably still to this day evoke a feeling and an emotion that you’ll have your entire life, right?
Brian Washburn: Yeah. Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Yes.
Mike Taylor: Or, yes, like, “Hey Mikey. He likes it.” Like, yeah, that’s how I’m really old, right? Like, that’s how old.
Brian Washburn: Of course.
Mike Taylor: I still have it from my childhood.
How Audiences Process Information
Mike Taylor: And so, you know, when I see those powerful ads that make you feel something like instantly and compare it to, you know, some text-laden slide, like it’s a really, really striking difference. And I think, you know, one of the biggest things is marketers understand– Um, Daniel Kahneman, if you read his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, it’s all about this dual processing theory of the way we process information.
So marketers get that and they understand that it’s a combination of these two types of thinking. So, Daniel Kahneman calls ’em System One and System Two. System one is the quick emotional, reactionary, super fast, super powerful. We can’t turn it off. Like, we see a shadow move and we jump or something, which drives the vast 98% of our behaviors. And decisions are subconscious and automatic. But it has to work in conjunction with that slower analytical thinking.
So, for example, you know, this is a reason why you’ve never seen a billboard with bullet points, right? Because it would not get attention. It’s, you know, it’s colors and it’s imagery and it’s emotion. And I think that that piece is something that’s largely lacking. It’s certainly lacking in instructional design programs and educational programs and in most, training and L&D teams that I have seen. Like it’s a simple concept to implement.
And that’s another cool thing about it, like you don’t have to buy a bunch of expensive tools or get this big extensive training. Like it’s really a perspective and a mind shift that anybody can do, and that’s the coolest thing. And it’s tapping into those subconscious, you know, we’re hardwired to pay attention to certain things and if you do, you know, there’s, six what we call “attention triggers”. And if you can leverage those people are probably gonna pay attention. And if you can get them to lean in, that first impression is super important because it colors everything that comes after that.
Brian Washburn: I love where you’re going with this and, and some of what you’re like– I’ve known you for a while, like, and you have been fascinated by this crossover between L&D and marketing for years.
You and I co-facilitated a session like 10 years ago on this topic at a training magazine conference. What is it about the overlap between marketing and L&D that has, had you focused on this for so long?
The Human Connection of Marketing
Mike Taylor: Well, it’s really, you know, that connection and crafting experiences and messages, you know, that use both of those levels.
You know, we’re all really familiar with the marketing aspect and the memory we were just talking about. But we can do that with learning stuff and we can do important things, but still have some personality and some humanness to it. You know, as a matter of fact, part of my day job, I work in a cybersecurity group, which is not exactly thrilling content, but I send a newsletter every two weeks and I try to be humorous and I try to, like, understand there’s a human on both ends of this conversation.
And I think a lot of times training people, they’re working intuitively, largely based on what they have experienced in school or in other places.
Brian Washburn: Yes.
Mike Taylor: And that’s usually a problem.
Brian Washburn: Yes.
Mike Taylor: And so digging into, you know, part of the– my favorite thing about this book was, you know, I’ve got all of these thoughts and ideas and I’m fairly confident, but really digging into, you know, what’s behind this stuff and is there research that supports it?
And there is, and there’s a ton of it, and it’s great. Like I said, it’s simple to implement.
Brian Washburn: And so speaking of this idea of simple to implement, right? So there’s lots of good ideas out there, and yet we don’t put them into action. So if somebody is listening right now thinking, this all sounds great, and I’m super busy. I have my own system, but fine, I’ll bite. What is one specific thing that you think that somebody could do tomorrow to begin putting some of these ideas, or at least an idea to work for them?
Top Marketing Takeaways for Trainers
Mike Taylor: Yeah, I, I love this question because before we started writing the book, you know, goal number one was it has to be practical.
So each chapter at the end has got here are activities and things you can do today, right? And so even if you don’t read the whole book, you can still go to, oh, this chapter I’m interested in,. You’ll get stuff to do immediately, right? So day one.
So, in the book we talk about, we have an acronym. It’s, SURE, we call it the SURE Principles, S.U.R.E. So I’m gonna give you four and anybody can pick their favorite one. Okay? The “s” is for “simple.” So this is readability. Don’t use a three-syllable word when you can use a simple one-syllable word, things like that. So, cognitive ease, all this stuff. And it’s also amazing how well the marketing stuff lines up with the learning science stuff as well, as a side note.
So for “simple,” one super simple thing that anybody could do today is run your training content through a readability tool. So. Word has it, Hemingway, Grammarly, take your pick. As a general rule, you know, we aim– most people in America read about a seventh or eighth-grade reading level. And if you could shoot for that, it’s not dumbing things down, it’s just making it more accessible and simple and easier to understand.
So there’s, learnability is a good proxy. Readability is a good proxy for learnability. So check your readability levels.
Brian Washburn: And when you check– when you say, put your materials through a readability tool, are you talking about like PowerPoint slides? Are you talking about handouts? All of that stuff?
Mike Taylor: Yes. All of the above. Anything that people on the other end are consuming.
Brian Washburn: Mm-hmm, okay.
Mike Taylor: So just making it more accessible, easier to process, cognitive fluency. So that’s the “s” that’s for “simple.”
The second one is “useful.” So ask yourself, what specific problem does this solve? If you can’t answer that question, that’s a big problem.
You know, this requires having an understanding of your audience. And this is a common, I think, pitfall of a lot of training teams is they wanna jump straight to content, but they don’t know the context in which that’s being consumed.
So we have a chapter in the book talking about learner personas as one way. There’s other ways. So pick your favorite way, but know your audience as well as possible. And then put that value– so if you can figure out what specific problem it’s solving, put it at the very front. Don’t make me go through eight pages of objectives and mission statements and all that stuff because it’s too late. Hook ’em up front. I guess I sort, kind of, call it parachute in, right? Put it right up front so that they know. Hook them. Marketers start using the term, you know, “what’s your hook for this content?” So–
Brian Washburn: Okay.
Mike Taylor: So, second easy thing to implement would be what’s the specific problem that you’re solving for your learners?
Brian Washburn: Mm-hmm.
Mike Taylor: The “r” is for “resonance,” so emotionally resonant. Our brains are wired for emotion for story. So how can you intercede or interject some brief emotionally compelling story to make it memorable? So, facts and figures just don’t cut it. It’s “why do I care about the facts and figures?” “What do the facts and figures mean?”
Humor is a good thing. Can you add a little personality? Easy. These are all easy things anybody could do on zero budget.
Brian Washburn: Yep. And then the last one, the “e” is for “easy” to scan, easy to process. So if you have much text, if it’s a document type thing or a manual or instructions, you know, break that up using headings, subheadings that can help people find what they’re looking for.
You know, we’re skimmers and scanners. We’re not really, you know, read everything. And you know, research shows that readers will decide whether they’re going to engage with your content based on that initial first impression. So if I see something that has white space, visual hierarchy, graphics instead of walls of text, you know, those will dramatically improve both the comprehension and retention for what people are processing. So, simple, useful, resonant, and easy to skim.
Brian Washburn: Yeah. Now that’s really interesting and several of those kind of overlap with something that I have a– like, personally I’m not good at– I’m not great at visual design. So for somebody like me, like when I was asked to go out to do a session about the visual design of handouts my team laughed at me because of anybody on the team I’m the worst person when it comes to visual design. We have somebody else on our team who’s fantastic on it, and she makes all of my slides look so good.
Now for those who are listening who are a little bit like me, who are like, they sound like great, but I’m not good with PowerPoint. Like, bullet points are my comfort zone. Do you have any advice for them?
Advice for Trainers Wanting to Learn from Marketing
Mike Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So this is something that’s, that I’m kind of near and dear to my heart. I love PowerPoint actually. I think it’s intimidating. So most people aren’t graphic designers, so it’s a common scenario.
Brian Washburn: Yeah.
Mike Taylor: And I think if I would give one rule, it’s less is more. So fewer words, more white space. If you’re using imagery, use it intentionally versus don’t decorate, right? Like I’m gonna go through– if you’re gonna put some graphic in there, let it carry some of the message or carry some of the weight. If it’s not, it’s just decoration, just get rid of it. It’s perfectly fine. I have slides all through my deck. They may have three words that are giant and big and colorful and nothing else. And it’s that, you know, that really touches on that simple piece.
Brian Washburn: Mike, I really appreciate this conversation. Obviously we could talk for a long time because you have a full book on this, Think like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro, which is out in May, 2025.
Beyond that, where can people find more about you? You work, I know that you have Mike’s Friday Finds, which is a weekly newsletter that you send out and I find it super valuable. There’s always interesting articles in there. If ever I’m thinking about what are we gonna do for our team meeting this week? What can we discuss? What’s a hot topic? What’s a piece of research? There’s something in there. And so what, like where can people find out more about you and your work?
Mike Taylor: Yeah, so my personal website, mike-taylor.org is where you can sign up for the newsletter. the book website is trainlikeamarketer.com. So. we have handouts and blog posts and presentation decks and stuff there. And then LinkedIn. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn and easy to find there as well.
Brian Washburn: Excellent. Well, Mike, thank you so much. It was great to, to connect again, if only so briefly for this conversation.
And for everybody else who’s listening, thank you so much. If you found this helpful, find a link to this and share it on LinkedIn. You know, I mean, you can share it on, on other social platforms or whatever, but I think LinkedIn is probably the, the best place to share any of these conversations if you find them helpful.
If you ever wanna nerd out over anything training related, let’s grab virtual coffee, send me a note. And until next time, happy training everyone.
