 Consumers now have so much access to information, the professional needs to go deeper. And the only way that the professional is going to be able to go deeper is to get really relevant learnings from the manufacturer. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my host, Beth Lumpkin Glove. And today we're talking about CEUs and what manufacturers should know about CEUs, how they can be strategic in their efforts there, and why it's important for you to be thinking about this now in 2022 and beyond. Educating your customers and giving them a way to continue their own education is such a valuable resource and service. And we see manufacturers do this well and some not do it as well. So we are really excited to welcome Jan Rutgers. She is the president and founder of the Vestibule School of Design. Jan, welcome to the show. Thank you, Beth and Zach. I'm thrilled to be here. We're really excited to have you. Why don't you take a couple of minutes, introduce yourself, and tell our listeners a bit about your company as well. Great, thanks. So my name is Jan Rutgers and I've actually been in the home design business for almost 30 years. And my passion has been kitchen design. That's where I did get my start. But right from the start, especially because becoming a kitchen designer in the late 80s, it wasn't even a thing. And so a big, big part of kind of developing that role was to be educated. So I had just graduated from university. I got interested in home design and fell into kitchen design. But I spent a tremendous amount of my own time and effort early on educating myself on everything to do with kitchens. So that's probably why I've landed where I am right now. So Cole's notes in the last 25, 30 years, I became certified as a master kitchen and bath designer, one of the first ones in Western Canada. I became an educator. I started teaching, lecturing, writing courses and bringing other people that are passionate about the industry along with my knowledge. And I think really to kind of to back it up, I've done just about everything in the design industry from owning my own manufacturing facility. I manufactured high-end custom millwork out in Vancouver for 10 years. I had a to the trade showroom where I had a large kitchen and millwork showroom that was just to the trade where I again would educate them and offer courses there to help them with their journey on kitchen design. And I've worked for manufacturers all over, all actually all over the world, North America and Europe. And got into product design for a while, did that for the last six or seven years and have landed now as an online educator. Feeling that I can take a lot of the knowledge that I have and help transfer that to other people, again passionate about the industry and just branching out, helping manufacturers do the same thing on how they can I guess teach or educate their customers better. So that's kind of where I am. And I've had Vastuville School of Design up and running since spring of 2020, I think was a strange time for all of us. And that was my big pivot moment where I went strong into the online education. So cold notes, but I could probably sit here for the whole hour and talk about all the things that I've done in the home industry. But that's about it. Well, I'm really glad you're on the show here, Jan. I mean, for the reason you just mentioned that, you know, there's been this huge online shift, but your background and your skill set is actually played almost every single role that we talk about. Like you've been in a manufacturer seat, you're an educator seat, you understand design. And so I want to start by just hearing a little from you about why should manufacturers invest in CEUs? Like we hear that question a lot, like, oh, should we do this? Should we not? Is it really going to have ROI? From your perspective, from the seat that you're in, like the unbiased perspective, why should a manufacturer be investing here? Well, do you know what? I really think that a big, big reason for doing it is that the professional needs to differentiate from the consumer. When we talked about how, you know, the online business is exploding, you know, I definitely, you know, see that. And consumers, they now have access to stuff that, you know, 20 years ago, it was just me. I was just lucky if I could, you know, see a manufacturer and get that information. Consumers now have so much access to information, the professional needs to go deeper. And the only way that the professional is going to be able to go deeper is to get really relevant learnings from the manufacturer. When I'm talking with manufacturers or if I'm writing educational programs myself, I speak to the professional. I don't speak to the consumer. And I think that the manufacturer has that opportunity to do that because they know their stuff and they're talking to a different person. So that's very important. So first of all, Jan, I have to say, saying the professional needs to go deeper. I mean, I have that in my notes that makes so much sense because we spent a lot of time talking about the burden on manufacturers to offer end consumer education because that's what end consumers want, even though you're not their target audience. So how do you further help the professional audience and the way you sound it up, the professional needs to go deeper or must go deeper in order to differentiate is so huge. So if a lot of manufacturers have some form of CEUs, whether on an official website or on their own side or many ways, and if I'm a manufacturer that's already released some type of CEU course or is currently developing one, how would you recommend that I evaluate it to know if I'm doing it right or not? Yeah, well, I think, first off, when you're sitting down to write a CEU, even just putting aside all of the rules and the regulations, there's all of that. I think that just like I said, you've got to go through it and make sure you're talking to the professional, not the consumer. That would be the first thing that I'd be looking for. What type of little tidbits can you offer to that professional that they're gonna get? Like, and I think that's another thing too, as a designer, I've been trained in the elements and principles of design or as an architect, I'm trained in structural and mechanical things. As that manufacturer writing a CEU, be okay with talking that technical end of it, but without making it dry. So that'd be the first thing. I'd go through making sure you were talking to the professional. The other thing, and this is a real pet peeve of mine, is to really look at your images that you wanna make sure any of the images that you're using in your CEU are appropriate. I cannot believe how often I'll be looking at some educational piece of information and they'll have an image and I'll be reading something and then I'll see the image and they don't compute. They've grabbed a marketing image or they've grabbed a stock image and nobody's really paid attention. And as a professional, you've lost me there. I've seen mistakes from the big organizations right down to the small guy. They make the mistakes. They hand off that end of it to an intern to find some images to go with it and they miss the mark. So those two things, talk to the professional, make sure your images are reflective of what you're saying would be very important. Can I ask you about measurement though? Cause I could think about this and manufacturers think, okay, how do I do this the right way is important, but are you thinking about this through the lens of how am I measuring ROI at the onset as well? Is that a helpful thing to think strategically about it? And if so, what are the ways that manufacturer can measure effectiveness? Effectiveness of their CEU? Yeah, like on their bottom line. So there's an element of like, yes, you want your CEU to be effective for the architect, the designer, whoever it might be. Like you wanna make sure that's valuable to them. Like that's number one cause you don't want your brand tarnished. But what kind of outcome should they be thinking about? Like what kind of benefits is gonna bring the actual manufacturer? Yeah, well, I think for the actual manufacturer, if the manufacturer gets really good at writing the CEUs and giving the good agnostic information, they will start to become the go-to for the professional. Because professionals, we're crazy busy and there is not a lot of time to go and look at every manufacturer that's making something. And I think about like, especially the building products market, like that's a really tough one. How do you get ROI with a melamine panel? That's something that is there. But I look at it as a designer and I'm doing some educating right now with designers on textured melamine panels. And we're starting to find that there's certain manufacturers there that their reps are knowledgeable and they're coming in and they're talking to us. Now, I probe them on questions that designers need to know. But I think somebody that has a product like that, that can actually write a CEU that isn't all technical about how many layers of melamine and core and all of that's in there. But what's important to the designer? I would see that eventually if they keep talking that way, that they're gonna pull the designer in to spec the product because they're trusting them. How do you actually measure it? It's hard to say. I don't think you're right a CEU and the next week you can count how many new orders you have. I think it is more long-term. And with any of the marketing that you're going to do, you do have to look at a strategy. I would probably, during the initial development of the CEU, make a determination are you going specifically after the architect or specifically after the designer this round? So if it was the designer, then it might be tracking your inquiries coming in for designers. It might be tracking or designers starting to follow your blog. Is the phone ringing? What are your reps saying? I don't know if there's gonna be anything that is gonna be hard, but I think that if you kind of look at the big picture, start to see, is there a shift on the questions that are coming in? What you're saying is there's a lot of different ways to measure it is what I'm hearing. But I think the biggest one is, are people coming back? Are they coming back for more? Are you seeing people refer your training to somebody else? Is it a positive brand builder? Those are things that you want to be seen and we talk about this a lot. You want to be seen as that trusted source, that trusted guide. And we do our own market research with manufacturers as well as different players in the channel. The big thing people want is they want manufacturers to be that go-to expert. And if your CEO is invaluable, you're hurting your ability to market to them in other ways as well, not only with your CEOs. Exactly. And I think too, Zach, where you say if your CEO is invaluable, if your CEO is dry and boring and people just tune out a few minutes into it, yeah, don't even do it. You know what it makes me think of, and this is not a great example, but it makes me think of, I go on a flight somewhere and they had that minute long introduction video about here's safety on the plane and you're like, dear God, like what is this thing gonna be done? Because you can't ignore it because it's loud and it's in your face. But there are airlines the last few years, I don't know the last decade or so, they're trying to make them entertaining and education to actually watch them. That's a great example though, of something that it had, I mean, the information has to be communicated. It has to be communicated exactly in the way that it comes across. You can't jazz it up. Yeah. You can't tell a story and someone has to assume and infer what you're saying. Yes. That's a great, but the level of elevation and creativity that's been put into those flight, not that a lot of us have been on planes lately, but into those in flight safety videos. That's a great example actually, Zach. It really is. There's a lot out there. I probably get 50 emails a day on somebody saying, they've got a course and they've got this or come to this webinar, do something. Yeah, differentiating yourself is the way to go. And I must admit, it's gonna get tougher and tougher as we move more, move more online. So you do have to have something that it is a little bit entertaining, but it's still, for me, and if I were to now put on my professional designers hat, I want to learn something. I don't wanna go through a lot of fluff. I've got to say, I get that feedback quite a bit from designers that get to the point. If I were to give the biggest hint, there's different ways of presenting CEOs. They can be live, they can be in a PDF form online. They can be as a video. There's lots of different ways to do it. The one thing that drives me crazy is 10 minutes of, who is this person? I cannot, you know. Because nobody cares. Because nobody cares about that. Nobody cares. Nobody cares, you know. They don't care about you. Like frankly, like if we had this podcast and all we were doing was talking about how great Beth is, people would probably listen. If we're just talking about me. You need a different example. People would listen about me. No, I'm kidding. That would be awful. I don't want to listen to that. Yeah, it would be awful. And I think to that, now there is a process for going through, having your CEUs accredited. And I know when I have written them, I have gone through everything. Sometimes I see CEUs on websites or online. I don't think they've gone through the accreditation process that they should. But I actually will have more trust in a manufacturer if they follow the rules and they are not giving me a sales pitch. And that the title that they put on their CEU actually is what they teach. And that the learning objectives that they put at the beginning are covered. Like those types of things, you know, we can't forget about them. And so often, you know, they do. And I think about, you know, my time is valuable. And I remember I put time aside to go to a webinar, you know, on something that I thought, oh, this is great. This is something I want to learn. You know, I want to know about this. It, I don't think it was an accredited CEU. It may have been, I can't remember. But, you know, the title sounded great. And, you know, you both know I'm on the West Coast. So I'm up at six o'clock in the morning to go to this, you know, this webinar and the great title, nothing in that webinar came back to that title. I'll never go back to that manufacturer. Like it has really turned me off. And I think in this day and age, the manufacturer needs to understand that they can't, you know, pull the wool over the professional's eyes anymore. They're, you know, they're getting tired of it. There's too much coming at them all the time. And, you know, if the designer, architect, builder, you know, contractor are getting really good information from, from that manufacturer, you know, I think they can build a good strong following. It makes me think of that Warren Buffett quote. He says, it takes 20 years to build a reputation of five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, we'll do things differently. You know, it's true. Absolutely. Absolutely. I heard someone rework that quote recently. I was listening to a podcast this week about that. And they said, well, but in this day and age, it's four seconds of social media. No pressure. No pressure. And it is tough. And I've, you know, I've got to, I've got to admit that, you know, sometimes it is tough to, to hit on it. But, you know, another strategy I have, and I use this myself, is that, that I have put together my own personal, you know, designer council. And, you know, it's just, you know, it's a, it's a group of designers that, that are passionate about the industry, passionate about what I do. And I get together with them every quarter, or even a couple of times a year. And I will, I will run my, my courses by them, or I will, I'll have them, you know, check them out just, just to be able to give me feedback. So I've done that in my corporate life, when I was in, in corporate, as a product designer for seven years, I always had, I always managed a designer council and would use them to get the feedback before, before I would launch things, or before the company would launch. And they'll give you some feedbacks going, oh, this is interesting. Oh, I want more. That's really cool. This is boring. Yeah, that's really smart. Oh, absolutely. I love that. You know, right down to, you know, I had one of, one of the designers' combat to me with my, my layout. She loved that to my PowerPoint slides were clean and simple, you know, they, they, they followed good interior design elements and principles of design. You know, like a little thing like that, like that has resonated with me. I always make sure that everything that I put out, that I'm using my design training, you know, to make sure my, even my slides look great because it can become a distraction. And, and they, and that's, I also got back from my design council was that, yeah, they loved, you know, it was like a 20 second introduction and that was it. They commented, oh, you didn't go on for 10 minutes, you know, about, you know, how great you are or whatever. I mean, it's about thinking about your audience, right? If you're creating a CEU for a highly visual, highly visually trained audience, like architects and interior designers, then your content at the very least can't be cluttered and distracting. We're not asking you to care about fonts as much as that cares. Yes. But if you have a font question, shoot it his way. He'll blow your mind. Absolutely. But you should be presentable because that's going to communicate to them the quality of your content as well. I think that's a great point. Yeah, you're exactly, that's exactly what I'm wanting to say. And it's those little, those little details of trying to rise above, you know, the, you know, just the chaos there. And, you know, just, you want to be able to have a product, i.e. your CEU, that is reflective of your business and again, is talking to your audience. Jane, who's doing it well? What manufacturer do you look at in the space? You're like, these guys set the bar? Yeah. Well, you know, that's a hard one to answer because I'll admit to you, I've really been, you know, diving into it in the last, you know, couple of months, you know, starting to look at manufacturers. So I'll kind of go back to, you know, a few years ago. I would say like a firm like Kohler has been really good, you know, just based on their whole marketing plan, you know, just how they take their marketing and bring it into their CEUs. I've been to a few of their CEU presentations in the last couple of years. You know, they've been pretty good. You know, popping on to some of the providers like AEC Daily and Hainley Wood, you know, there's different places and it's kind of a hit and miss. Like, you know, I'll kind of go through and it's a good thing. You've actually prompted me. I'm gonna go through and start looking at them and writing down who I think are doing a good job. That's great. Great. Jane, for our listeners, what advice would you give them if they're listening to us going, yeah, like you sold me, I need to either double down and invest in this area. I haven't or I need to elevate my CEU efforts. What one piece of advice would you give them? Well, I think the one thing that I would do is make the decision at the beginning, you know, who are you targeting? You can't be everything to everybody. So are you targeting the architect? Are you targeting the designer, the home builder, the kitchen designer? And then go to that organization and kind of get their criteria for the CEUs. Because if you look at like architects, it's the AIA designers, especially other US, it's ASID, home builders in the US, Nari has accreditation for kitchen designers and KBA does. So I would go decide exactly who the target market is, then go look at what that organization is looking for because they're promoting that within their organization. So you wanna make sure you don't try to muddle it all together and try to be something to all of them and miss the vote. Love it. Gian, for our listeners, if they wanna connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? You probably email me direct. I actually do carry it around all the time and they can reach me at vestibule and another topic one day on the name, but vestibule is spelled V-E-S-T-A-B-U-L dot design at gmail.com. Yeah, and then also too, the website is good too. You can contact me through vestibule.com. This has got everything there. That's great. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been super valuable and insightful information. I know we hear questions all the time from people about CEUs. And so I'm sure that people will reach out. If you have questions, definitely connect with Gian for our listeners. If you enjoy this content, make sure you go to venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth Love and the Glove. Thanks everybody.