👩‍🏫 Why Online Education is Broken (But We Can Fix It) — with Sally Burns of The Portal

Amelia HrubyHey there, off the grid listeners. Amelia here popping in before this episode with a special announcement. Come to class, which is my three day workshop intensive, where I will teach you how to teach and sell online with competence and care, has been rescheduled for June fourth, fifth, and sixth. You probably heard me talking about it here on the podcast in May, and I had to push the dates because my beloved dog, Zoe, sadly passed away the week that come to class was going to happen, and I just couldn't teach in those immediate moments of grief. So I rescheduled come to class for the beginning of June, and I added even more support if you'd like to join us.

Amelia HrubySo this is just a very quick message to invite you to head to the show notes and check out come to class. You have until the end of May to sign up. It's going to be a great time. And since it had to be rescheduled, you can still join. Again, head to the link in the show notes to sign up.

Amelia HrubyNow, let's get into this episode.

Speaker 1Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay.

Speaker 1I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah. Okay.

Amelia HrubyHello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about sharing your work and making money online without relying on social media, big tech, or any of the extractive algorithms and AI tools out there. I'm your host Amelia Ruby, and right now we are doing a mini series all about teaching and selling classes, workshops, and courses online as a part of your creative business. I'm hosting this mini series because I am preparing to teach a three day intensive called come to class, how to teach and sell online with confidence and care. And I am thrilled to inform you the registration is now open, and it will be open through May 12. So you can head to the show notes to check out the sales page, to sign yourself up.

Amelia HrubyIt's gonna be an amazing three day intensive happening March fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. There is also a little optional prep session happening on the thirteenth. There are follow-up office hours on the twenty first. There's the opportunity to submit questions to me through the end of the month. There are so many ways to engage and come to class because I want more of us to be teaching and selling online and making money by sharing the things that we know and love how to do.

Amelia HrubySo head to the show notes, learn more about Come to Class, and while you do that, let me tell you about my guest today and what we're going to talk about. Sally Burns spent over a decade in corporate e learning before leaving all that behind to start the portal. The portal is a digital learning neighborhood where you can handcraft engaging resources, workshops, and group study programs as part of a wider ecosystem of people who believe in livable futures for all of us. It's for creators who want to host live events, run private learning groups, and build meaningful relationships within and beyond their existing communities. I have to say that as an experiencer and now creator in the portal, I love what Sally is creating and in today's conversation, we are gonna get into so much.

Amelia HrubySally and I are gonna talk about why she left corporate e learning to build the portal, and then go through a pretty involved breakdown of why we do not like Money Networks, Kajabi, Teachable, or so many of the online learning platforms out there. And, you know, sometimes it's not them, it's us. But I have to say that I have talked to so many people who want to teach and sell online, and they're always asking me, should I be on Circle? Should I be in Mighty Networks? Should I do this in Slack?

Amelia HrubyShould I have a Discord? And what I have found through all those conversations is quite simple and very annoying, which is that none of us like the existing options, and we're still waiting for someone to build something better. So that's why I was really excited to talk to Sally today, to understand what the portal is and how it might be the thing that we have been waiting for. As Sally tells us about the portal, we're also going to talk about the regenerative ethos that she brings to online learning and how she's designed the portal so it can help you fill your classes, especially if you have a small audience, and so it can rejuvenate some of your older resources, recordings, workbooks, workshops, if you want them to have a second or third or fourth life. I am thrilled to have Sally here on the podcast and thrilled to be partnering with her in the portal to create some special perks for come to class students.

Amelia HrubySo if you join us in come to class, you will get a six week free trial of the portal and be able to come to some fun build with us sessions where Sally and I will be creating resources there together. So head to the link in the show notes to check out the portal, head to the link in the show notes to check out come to class, And for now, let's dive in to my conversation with Sally Burns of the portal. Hi, Sally. Welcome to Off the Grid.

Sally BurnsHello. Thank you so much for having me.

Amelia HrubyI am very excited you're here to talk to us all about elearning, which I feel like even saying that word, I'm like, but, also, like, do we use the prefix e anymore? I guess we don't talk about ebooks, but I'm like, for a while when the Internet was more new, everything was like e conferences and e this and e that, and now I'm like, oh, yeah. We kinda got rid of that language. It feels a little antiquated, as does elearning sometimes. So I'm very excited to dive into this conversation with you, both to talk about sort of your background in elearning and the ways that you are, I think, trying to, like, revolutionize online community and educational spaces right now.

Amelia HrubySo can you take us back to the beginning and just tell listeners a little bit about your background with corporate elearning? How did you get into that space, and what did you learn there?

Sally BurnsYeah. Firstly, I'm very aware of how dull elearning sounds as a place that I came from. So I started really early. Before I kinda got into this, I'd had around sixteen years designing and developing online learning for corporate companies. So I started when I was about 21.

Sally BurnsAnd I kinda worked my way around different roles enough to kinda see a lot of different things, a lot of different ways that things were done, and I kind of moved up. So I was designing and developing for kind of big quite big corporations, big names, online learning for them, and then made my way to be a technical lead and then moved over to kind of the platform side. So the place that and this is another really dull way to put it, but learning management systems, which went on to become learning experience platforms. So really understanding the environment that they were taking the learning and how important that was as well, which is kind of a key pieces to what I then went went on to. But, yeah, that was a really, you know, really good time of I learned a lot, which I've then brought into this world.

Sally BurnsAnd so the kind of company that I kind of spent my most of my time with was really at the forefront of kind of disrupting elearning anyway. So really trying to change, you know, this whole kind of sit down and, just watch a video and then tick to complete. We were kinda changing disrupting that anyway and trying to, make things as interactive and as engaging as possible. So really kind of bringing in storytelling, bringing in kind of activities, ways that people would, yeah, be engaged with it, want to finish it, obviously, then actually learn about it and bring it into their their kind of wider lives or into their jobs. And video didn't you know, it was kind of a no no to have video.

Sally BurnsIf you had video, it was, like, five minutes, and you'd have it at the beginning. And then you'd go on to have, as I say, kind of these much more interactive elements in the screen, really breaking out content, things that you can kind of click and reveal. So just things that made the learner stop and pause and kinda take it in. So very much as I was kinda coming to an end of that time, it kind of went from learning management systems to learning experience platforms. And these were, like, much more kind of vibey hubs, places that, you know, people logged into and they wanted to log into, and it was part of their work.

Sally BurnsAnd then colleagues were there as well. There was a lot of kind of gamification. And they're very much they were giving autonomy to kind of create the learning that they wanted and needed in that moment. So sort of a lot more responsive to their needs. There was a lot more well-being stuff coming in at that point, kind of stress relief modules and kind of microlearning bits.

Sally BurnsSo, yeah, it was really kind of changing, becoming much more exciting even even that when I kind of then moved over to this side of things.

Amelia HrubyYeah. You know, to me, learning management system is a maybe unsexy way to talk about the architecture of how we learn. And it actually matters so much because the same information can be presented in different ways, and how it is presented, how it is scaffolded will determine if a student or learner can take it in, can implement it, can work with it, can put it into practice. And, you know, I don't have a background in corporate e learning, but I do have a background in university education. And I have used so many of the learning management systems as a student and a teacher in universities.

Amelia HrubyYou know, I was in Canvas, I was in Moodle, when I was in grad school at DePaul, I think we used D2L, which is like desire to learn. And so, my experience was like, I was teaching and learning in the classroom, and then the learning management system was there for, like, assignments, it was there for quizzes, it was there for forums to interact with other students, and it became the architecture of, like, how the learning happens alongside and beyond this in person class. And so I was already thinking of, like, working with all of that when I then, like, moved into self employment and moved into teaching online through, like, the phenomena of an online course. And I think that there are similarities, but also very big differences when we're thinking about corporate e learning or university e learning and online courses in the more just, like, general, you know, d to c or b to c space. Because when I think about, like, oh, I wanna start a course as a business owner, I'm thinking about where am I gonna set that up?

Amelia HrubyThat's my first question. Right? And I'm like, maybe I'll go to Teachable, maybe I'll go to Kajabi, maybe I'll do what are other options? Like school or circle or, you know, my courses and things are set up in the Thrivecart learn portal or whatever. And something I've been realizing as I sort of dissect and deconstruct how I teach to prepare to teach this class on teaching is that that jump from, like, I wanna teach something, to I need to find the platform for it, I think actually just erases all of the work of the architecture of learning.

Amelia HrubyLike, if you go straight to platform, you're not designing an educational experience. You're, like, being like, can I put a video here? Can I put a button here? Like, you're going right to the technology of it, like, the gamification, the widgetification of the educational experience, instead of really digging into, like, what is the scaffolding a person needs to learn to get from where we're starting to where I want them to end up? And I'm curious, you know, for any reflections you have on that or how, you know, maybe realization similar to that helped you decide to build a different kind of online learning platform.

Sally BurnsYeah. I think I mean, that's exactly it. It was the kind of for me. So when I started consulting with with small business owners that were trying to kind of get well, they're getting their face to face offers online, or they were kind of they've created something that they want to help to improve. The it was the tools that really kinda tied my hands and made me think, oh, this is why what they're producing isn't very good because you're just there was no flexibility.

Sally BurnsAnd it was all kind of linear menu, you know, start to finish, down the left hand side, video, video, video, PDF download. And for many of the people that I was working with, they didn't want that. And so they were trying to, like, shoehorn it in to the to the platform, and they weren't able to deliver the experience that they needed unless they were then sort of adding in loads of different platforms and trying to kind of mishmash the experience. So, you know, you'd have, like, a WhatsApp group, and then you'd have something on Kajabi. And then sometimes, you know, you'd have a library on Dropbox of meditation.

Sally BurnsLike, it was just Yeah. Really disjointed. And slightly confusing for the end learner, especially, I think, at a time when, you know, you you would sort of, like, be part of six different courses. And so for the learner, you're sort of on about 10 different platforms as it was. And then also, yeah, for the kind of creator, they were just, like, weren't able to deliver the experience that they needed.

Sally BurnsAnd as you say, to kind of make sure that the person was able to finish that learning in the appropriate way and to kinda get get to the end and to have digested it enough to have the course do what it said it was gonna do or have the course help them in the way that they they were promised. So there's kinda, yeah, lots of things letting them down, really.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I mean, I can definitely relate to piecing all the things together. I'm even currently doing that in the interweb membership. Right? We have a Slack and we have a ThriveCart resource library, but, you know, when you click buttons in that resource library, a lot of them will pop you to a Dropbox link because that's what I can use to host the PDFs and things.

Amelia HrubyThere are embedded videos. And I love what you said earlier too. Like, I very clearly remember being told, like, do not put video in your courses because it's not skimmable and scannable. And, like, working with university students, people were like, they're they aren't gonna watch this. I'm not actually sure that's so true anymore.

Amelia HrubyLike, now I do include video because people want it.

Sally BurnsBut I think as well you're able to kind of because we have videos, and I encourage, you know, put the recording of your workshop within a resource and build that out around it because you need the kind of environment around it to then sit and watch it. Like, give people an introduction as to what they're about to experience and how they might want to be sitting and, you know, get some water, get a blanket. We'll be covering this. Here are some key points if you weren't able to finish it. So there's kind of like a real care around that video, then I think it makes sense, and we can kind of do a really good job of that.

Sally BurnsBut I think the way in which Kajabi and Teachable, and they've they've changed over the years as well, actually, because of, I think, because of this kind of feedback and this you know, a lot of distrust kind of came out around this course buying. As you say, they're really structured and not flexible, and you're not you're unable to kind of set that environment that then makes it, you know, a nice way to watch video. And, yeah, we're all we're all addicted to our screens and able to watch some video, just maybe not six hours worth.

Amelia HrubyYeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think so much again to keep using these words about, like, the architecture of learning is the contextualization of it. And, like, part of what I wanna do and come to class is help people think about how do you invite people into a virtual space, what type of time do you take to ask them to attend to their bodies, invite them to arrive in a certain way, tell them what's going to come and happen in this before you begin. Like, those elements are often quite simple, but so overlooked.

Amelia HrubyAnd I also find that a lot of people, when they want to start teaching online, recreate either the, like, problematic dynamics of whatever, like, college experience they have, like, the the previous classroom learning they've done, or they're just kinda, like, copying stuff they've seen other people do in classes that they take. And it's not that that's bad per se, like, we all learn from each other, but it means that, like, if you do either one of those things, you're never actually sitting down and being, like, how do I wanna hold space? How do I wanna invite people into learning? I'm getting ahead of myself here because I wanna go back to your story. This is an episode about everything wrong with e learning, but it is not just, like, Emilia's personal grapes.

Amelia HrubySo gotta come to class for that. But I wanna go back, Sally, though, to this time where so you had this, like, long background in corporate e learning. During the pandemic, you're seeing everybody start to teach online, realizing that the available options for how to, like, sell or structure a course are, like, really problematic, have all these sort of flaws and failures, and you decided to build something else. So can you take us to that moment? Like, what made you decide to start the portal, and what have you built from there?

Sally BurnsOne of the things that used to really wind me up was the sales page, right, being this big shiny thing and promising, you know, to change your life. And I remember every time I'd be like, wow. What this must be amazing. It's cool. So I wonder what they're using.

Sally BurnsAnd I'd buy it, and I'd be like, oh, no. It's just videos. So that's kind of one of the influences was this culture that I found needed challenging. And then also, yeah, the tools that kind of were available, but the kind of culture piece being, firstly, the whole kind of passive, you know, passive income. You get to make money in your sleep ten k months, which, you know, with inflation is now thirty k months, I think, is now what kind of big coaches are saying you can make.

Sally BurnsSo, you know, you get you've got people that have left potentially left their kind of jobs that are kind of persuaded that they can start a business and just launch a course around bringing up their baby. And it's okay because they'll just be selling that course in their sleep. And don't get me wrong. I wanted them to succeed. Absolutely.

Sally BurnsI want you to be able to make a course and to be able to start your business and for it to be that easy, but it's not that easy. And, again, I'm kind of these are my these are my complaints that led into it. Was this kind of hierarchical learning again. Like, I'm a guru expert leader in this space. You're the student, and you're you're kind of just listening to me.

Sally BurnsAnd then we finish, and then it's it. That's it. And it kinda just took away this firstly, that's not how we learn, which again is kind of these issues that we that we have. You know, you've taken away that kind of peer to peer piece. And it also doesn't allow for what is the best thing about learning, which is, like, we're spiraling together.

Sally BurnsWe're kind of constantly learning. Right? We're learning from each other. You know, I, as an instructor, have just as much to learn from you as you have to learn from me. As I say, Kajabi and Teachable, with those platforms, it's about you taking a course from one person on one topic on your potentially on your own.

Sally BurnsYou might have a kind of a group. It's in a vacuum. You know? There's no kind of edge being touched there or explored. And so, again, it takes away it's not the environment that we need to collectively grow again and learn, or it's not the best environment for that.

Sally BurnsSo then kind of there's, like, mighty networks and circle and things that started to bring in kind of that community element. Again, it's just, you know, the that you're running your business individually like that. So those that are just kinda starting their businesses could do that. They could create a course and you you use Circle or Mighty Networks, but the where do they get people to take the course? So you're then forced to kind of go find your audience on social media, grow it there, then bring them over to something like mighty networks or something like circle.

Sally BurnsSo, I mean, you have to have kind of an audience before you before you do that. So I think, again, it kinda takes away this experimentation of those just starting out and and therefore really kinda key voices that should be given a space and a voice to begin. And whether you are a learner or you want to create something, I think we should all kind of be starting off in the same place. So kind of on this, like, level playing field, and you can kind of share a practice, but not have to start an entire business in order to kinda contribute to the ways in which we need to grow and support each other.

Amelia HrubyYeah. This is so interesting. Okay. So what I was hearing you say is, like, there are these problems with online learning in the sort of, like, online business, wellness, spirituality space that we inhabit. Right?

Amelia HrubyDuring the pandemic, we saw people spin up these courses. They made huge promises, which then suggests to you that something really exciting and interesting is happening, and it's just the same old PDF. It's the same old videos. It's like, it's not gonna change your life, actually. So one problem we've seen is just, like, so many online course sales pages are overpromising and underdelivering once you actually get into the course.

Amelia HrubyAnother problem we see is the hierarchical nature of how things are sold and taught online, where it's very, like, here's the expert, and they know everything, and you're just gonna listen to them talk. And, like, that's all that's gonna happen here. And I can say, like, some of that does come from the liberal education model. Right? Like, the professors in the classroom, they know everything.

Amelia HrubyTheir job is to literally lecture at you, and you should learn from that. Like, that's a move from university learning into online learning or e learning. It was it invented in that space? Right? I mean, it also comes out of for, like, the spiritual and wellness spaces comes out of, you know, religious traditions where the charismatic leader is the head of the religion, you know, is the one that we listen to.

Amelia HrubySo that, like, hierarchical nature of learning is is deeply ingrained in a lot of educational practices, but we really see it online. It's amplified by, I think, the influencer economy, where influencers become these aspirational figures who are held up as the teachers, and then they sell these, sometimes, just, like, frankly, bullshit courses that aren't about transformation, aren't about helping anybody do anything else. They're just about making money for the person to, like, share some vague ideas. Maybe that's a little harsh, but I think it's

Speaker 1real. Just, like, I'm

Amelia Hrubyjust putting it out there. So I heard you talk about those two issues. And the third issue that you spoke to, I think this is where, like, we really get into something that's, like, unique about the portal or really interesting to me because the third issue is that, like, sometimes people just wanna teach a class, and they don't wanna have to build an entire business to sell and teach a class. Right? Sometimes you're just really good at making jewelry and you wanna have a jewelry making class.

Amelia HrubyOr maybe you just, like, really have this journaling practice that you're like, this is it, and I've done it with some friends and they love it, and now I'd love to, like, teach this online, host it somewhere I could sell it or pass it to other people. And I am not trying to, you know, build an email list of a thousand people just so I can sell this little journaling workshop that I love. So when we talk about those three issues, then what I see, knowing the portal from my perspective at this point, right, is that, like, the portal is this sort of open space for learning. So anyone can come and set up their courses or classes there. It gathers learners, so you don't have to bring your own audience.

Amelia HrubyYou can benefit from the audience that's already there signed up to experience these things. And you're able to set up your materials in a way that is very flexible. You can add a lot of context around them. You know, it's really more like a web page than it is like a, you know, strict course platform I've been in. There is no, like, left hand side bar where you have to, like, put in modules and lessons.

Amelia HrubyYou can kind of build it in flow. You can embed video there. You can have audio. You can have these really fun flip cards that you have. And so I think in these ways, the portal is trying to be the answer to these, like, issues that we've identified with elearning.

Amelia HrubyThere are no super lengthy sales pages in the portal, so you don't get that same degree of overpromising that can happen in the online business space. There is a full interdependent network, so no one is held up as the same, like, guru expert way in the portal. It's more like a course catalog when you get in there as an experiencer. And then in the design of how you set up courses as a creator or workshops or classes there, it's much more flexible and fluid. And so those are, like, the direct connections I'm making between your diagnosis of issues with online learning, and then what you've built in the portal.

Amelia HrubySo with all of that really lengthy introduction in mind, I just wanna you then to sort of, like, introduce folks to the portal as you see it right now. Like, who is it for? What do you do there? And what does it offer?

Sally BurnsThank you for explaining my business so well as well.

Amelia HrubyI got you. I got it.

Sally BurnsThe portal began as a kind of response to those things that we spoke about in terms of kind of what the problems were with the platforms, the tools, what I saw as limiting. And then end of twenty twenty three, the genocide in Gaza began, and I became very repoliticized, I would say. And along with many around me, everything became like, what are we doing? You know, there was kind of, like, no more business as usual. It just everything just unraveled in a sort of, what do I have to share?

Sally BurnsWhy does it mean anything? And those kinds of feelings coming up. And so just before COVID happened, I did a kind of permaculture design course, and a lot of kind of what that framework teaches kind of looking at nature as our guide is that kind of all of these problems are interconnected and so are all of the solutions. And this whole kind of linear approach to trying to find a solution won't work. And it started to feel like this was a huge influence to what we were building in that people wanted spaces.

Sally BurnsSo firstly, we're looking for spaces to to be and to kind of just to be. Actually, there was no, like, I want to learn how to make six figures anymore. It was like, I need to be held in a circle of people that understand what is you know, how this feels. But then also people bringing forward, you know, practices that will help in that moment or visions of what we could imagine that is better. So kind of bringing in, like, the work of Bell Hooks or the work of Rob Hopkins or, you know, how can we use imagination as a tool?

Sally BurnsSo everyone in that circle was bringing forward kind of different pieces to add to this kind of learning community that we were building. That then kind of fitted that piece of wanting to create something that allowed that interconnectivity and allowed us to collaborate with our work in order to kind of build something better, I suppose. And so on the portal, we call it a digital learning neighborhood. And you can build out like, people build someone at the moment is building up, like, a ten month program. Again, that kinda is about reclaiming your imagination, actually.

Sally BurnsMonthly Sunday service sessions, so they're kind of live sessions, and then there'll be resources on the portal. There's people that run memberships that have the community space, and they'll they'll add, like, monthly prompts, and then they'll have a library of practices that they add to that people can kind of jump into. Or you have, like, six week study groups. You have texts that people are studying, and they study it in, you know, groups of six and then discuss it for longer in the community. And then you also have people who are just beginning, who might share, like, a workshop, see how that lands.

Sally BurnsYou know, they feel like, okay. There's people here that understand you know, we're on the say I feel like what I'm bringing fits here. I'm gonna test that out with this workshop. And what we really want and what we found is, like, this great kind of cross pollination in that and that you'll get people attending one program. They meet other people.

Sally BurnsThere's a natural networking there, and then they go start their own community group, and people go, oh, you know, I'm gonna join that. So you kinda got a 10% cross pollination of people going, into different places. At the moment, it's kind of done manually in a way. It's what we encourage. So you come teach on my course.

Sally BurnsI'd love you to do a workshop with me. You know, we have kind of we host collaboration opportunities and whatever. But where for the big vision for the portal, once we kind of have the funds, you'll be able to cross collaborate with people as part of kind of the platform. So, you know, if you're running your course, you could take in a module from someone else that's kind of hosting it for something else and kind of borrow it and put it into yours. So you're able to kind of enhance your your program and the learning for kind of the end learner in that way.

Sally BurnsSo, again, it's that cross pollination collaboration bit.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I really appreciate even just how you've answered this question because my brain obviously started from the place of, like, here's everything that's broken in elearning, and here's, like and here's how the portal will fix it. And then your brain is like, here's everything that's broken in the world and in, you know, online gathering together. Like, I think that you're re you came from the like, I came from the perspective of, like, what's broken for teachers, and you're like, okay, but also what's broken for students. Right?

Amelia HrubyThey're disconnected. They can't find the instructors that are deeply, like, tender and transformative. There's not a space where they can gather many tools from a diversity of perspectives. Right? Like, everyone just has to go to, like, the one expert and then find a bunch of them.

Amelia HrubyAnd where's a space, like, that they can really be embedded in their values? Right? Like, where you began was, like, I was repoliticized because of the genocide in Gaza, and I wanted to build in a way that brought a totally different value system. Like, I love that the word polycrisis is all over the portal website. I think that that, to me, is, like, something that is, like, very, very different between what you're doing and the typical, like, SaaS software as a service tech platforms that are, like, built for online courses.

Amelia HrubyRight? The, like, the Kajabis and etcetera of the world. You know, they're not rooting in to liberatory values in a public way. They're not building from a, like, eco somatic influence in the way that you are. And I think that that's really different.

Amelia HrubyI also sort of wanna ask you and highlight for people that, like, you are bootstrapping this with the support of the community. It is not VC funded. It is not, like, fancy constant build outs and changes and all of this. And something that I try to talk about, but I think is really important for listeners to hear is, like, if we want different solutions, if we want different options for our businesses, if we actually wanna operate from a different value system, we also have to work with platforms who are building as they go. We have to work with people who are like, you know, this is what we have so far, this is what I want.

Amelia HrubyLike you said, I want the collaborative aspects of this, but I can't get there until more people buy in here. And even myself, I noticed, like, I will have a very high standard for the tools that I'll use in my business, but that means I'm, like, disregarding and totally not considering tools that are still trying to make it work, tools where I may maybe actually can know the founder or, like, trust that person. I I don't know who the hell runs ThriveCart, and that's which was what I use. I don't know who the hell owns Slack. Like, you know, these tools I'm using, I'm sure if I dug deep enough, I'd be like, yikes.

Amelia HrubyAnd so, yes, I find them to be, like, very reliable and, like, they build out new features and all of this, but also this has become the problem with Substack. Right? Is people are like, oh, they have all the functionality I want, but the people who run it and their VC funds are awful. And what do I do about that? So that's kind of a tangent, but I'm curious if you could speak a little bit to, like, how did you start building this tech, and how are you finding the money to do it as you go?

Sally BurnsYeah. It's hard to get that across. I think I too fussy on technologies that I use, and then so I find it really hard. Sometimes I see some people sign up to the portal, and I'm like, no. Not now.

Sally BurnsI can't see it now. It's not ready. But I have to let that go. So, yeah, I bootstrapped and community funded. Basically, did and kind of first build over on learn worlds.

Sally BurnsSo it's a learning management system course creator one. And I did it there because I can I could host, like, different creators' content, but I was, like, manually doing it for them, and then they got paid? And that grew, like, really quickly. People really wanted it. It was kind of really proved a concept.

Sally BurnsAnd then so we were able to basically, we had community members invest around £45,000, and then the rest, I bootstrapped, and we took it to a development company to begin basically to be like, please, can they do it themselves? Because I can't do it myself anymore, and we want these kind of other things and to be able to grow and not have to rely, on somebody else's technology, obviously. So that's where we are, and we launched that in October. And by that point, because we'd had I mean, we're kind of victims of our own success in a way in the it was an MVP, a minimal viable product, but very much serving people with established businesses or who want you know, are running their businesses through it. So we've had to kind of enhance it as we go with the money made.

Sally BurnsSo it's a slow process, but it also means that we're kind of building it with the community. We've been able to, you know, like, integrate with Stripe so that people kind of there's, like, international payments, and people are able to kind of have their tax sorted in that way and whatnot. So recently, we released a couple of new features that just, like, made the dashboard tidier. Like, the live sessions are on their own tab now. Just kind of, like, little things like that.

Sally BurnsIt's quite painful sometimes how slow it is, the progress, because it's still you know, it's just me marketing, and I don't wanna be on Instagram. I really don't. Whenever I go back on that now, I just yeah. It just it doesn't align to to what we're doing, but, yeah, it's just me marketing. And it's like until you get a big injection of cash, you either kinda go for that big injection of cash, but that would mean giving it you know, going for VC funding.

Sally BurnsOr you do it slowly like this, in which case you have to kinda keep asking people, can you compromise on your tech to not compromise on your values and help us build this thing? So there's a lot of that going on. And I think until you are able to deliver that message really well, which we have, you know, I do struggle to explain exactly what the portal is. Yeah. It was probably gonna be, you know, a a slow grow, but we're getting there.

Sally BurnsI think there's a few tipping points happening, just kind of with collaborations that are coming up. And so, yeah, a lot of people kinda signing up to it.

Speaker 1You know,

Amelia HrubyI wanna be clear that you have so many supportive and beautiful features already. Like, the path I took in that I would recommend to others is head to the link in the show notes. There's a special off the grid link to learn more about the portal. Watch some of the videos, read the stuff there. Sign up to become an experiencer.

Amelia HrubyGrab a bunch of free resources or the free classes and things in the portal, and then, you know, watch them, enjoy them, see how they're put together. Join the circle so that you can meet some other people who are building there. And then once you get a sense of, like, okay, I like these sorts of things, this is seems to be cool and is working well, then sign up to become a creator, and just try something out there. So what the path I'm taking in is that I'm hosting two book clubs this spring for friends of the show who have new books coming out. So one for Becky Mollenkamp's Liberate Your Business, and one for Shannon Algio's The Power in Your Hands, which is a book about social media and attachment theory.

Amelia HrubyAnd I offered to host a book club for them just through Off the Grid because they're trying to sell their books, and they're great books, and they're very related to the topic of the podcast. And so in my mind, I was like, well, I'll just put up a Zoom RSVP link and, like, that'll just be what it is. Like and then, like, I'll put it up, I'll record it to the cloud, I'll send out to the recording to the people who, like, sign up and RSVP, and then it'll just be kind of done, like, over. And with the portal, I was like, oh, no. I could actually, like, have the recordings in there.

Amelia HrubyI could build out a space around the book. It could come with all these links. Like, the sort of things that I used to just do, like, over email, very one off, only for the people who found it when it was happening and then never for anybody else. Now I see that those things can live in the portal where it's actually a community that will be exploring and looking for resources there. Because the other thing for me has been, like, you know, I could put that book club recording on my website, but I don't have enough traffic to my website.

Amelia HrubyLike, people aren't actually looking at it. I've put so many low cost workshops and things on my website, and, like, nobody buys the recordings. But I can put them in the portal either for free or low cost, and people will find it. Like, there's there's a community of people looking for stuff like that there. So, you know, I'm someone who has online courses set up.

Amelia HrubyI have a membership set up. Like, I have my own infrastructure for that. I'm not gonna move my whole podcast course into the portal because, frankly, that would be a nightmare for me. Like, it's it is left hand side menu, so many modules. Like, it's very much built in that way.

Amelia HrubyAnd for a linear journey like starting a podcast, I think that's fine. But for all this other stuff that I feel like I create and then it just disappears from my world, I'm so excited to bring it to the portal and to be, like, putting it there. And, also, you know, hopefully, some new people who've never heard of Becky or me will come to the book club because they saw it on the portal. Right? So that's kind of been my way in, and I think that there's so much that I'm finding and that can be built there.

Amelia HrubyAnd, yes, there are moments where I'm like, why can't I sort the library like this? But, also, then I just say to myself, because this website also says polycrisis. Like, quite literally. You know what I mean? It's like I I remember I talked to Elise Granada about this a little bit.

Amelia HrubyOver a year ago now, we had a conversation about community on the podcast, And it was like, there's a certain point where we have to adjust. Like, if we keep all of our standards at the level of friction free, VC funded tech, nothing will change. Like, if that's where the standard stays, we will only ever be able to use tools by people that we loathe and disagree with. We have to shift the expectation, and that doesn't mean use shitty tools. It doesn't mean accept when founders are mean to you.

Amelia HrubyLike, I'm not saying any of that. I'm just saying, like, it's okay that I can't sort the library in one particular idiosyncratic way. That's actually perfectly acceptable friction. And I like that you're bootstrapping and building the portal in this way. And I like that you're open about, like, there's functionality that I want, and it will come as people get bought in.

Amelia HrubyThis is also how I suggest people build other businesses. It's like the only way to build a giant infrastructure without people in it is to get funding from an outside source, and the way people have that much money is by doing other problematic things. Right? So we have to build as we go, and that means that we have to, like, adjust alongside that.

Sally BurnsYeah. Friction free is something that comes up a lot in terms of so the tool. So it's kinda like a notion like tool, but you build out blocks of content. So you haven't seen the creator side yet, have you? So it's very much, yeah, like blocks, and then you kind of put in you could you can have, like, colored background of box.

Sally BurnsYou can do, like, audio notes or the as you say, then you've got fun things like flip cards. You've got accordions. So I'm kind of building out this multimedia page, and it's I think, like, we love to say it's like reclaiming our attention and our creativity, and it's like a slow handcrafting process where you are forced to think, what am I doing? Or you're like it's like an unfurling of your learning and kind of, like, how you're deciding to kind of put it onto the screen, which I think is something nourishing for you as a creator as well as for the final learner. It's like giving us something that that that we've lost, I think, from tech, which is like this fun element, I guess.

Sally BurnsIt's like that Myspace. I get to build my environment, and it doesn't have to look the same as everyone else's. And, you know, I can, yeah, do fun things like the flip cards. So people might use the flip cards for, like, journal prompts. So it's kinda like making the experience a pause and kind of think about things.

Sally BurnsAnd then feed them as a creator as well, I think that that's that that's a nourishing thing for them to do. Okay. How can I put these journaling prompts into this resource in a way that, yeah, really makes people sit down and think think it through and take some time? So it's like I don't know. It's bringing something different to the Internet, I like to think.

Amelia HrubyYeah. When I experience the recordings or the pieces that I found in the portal that I am watching or enjoying, there is something about it that both feels like early Internet, because there's, like, all these different background colors. Like, it feels a little bit like, you know, I've stumbled upon a GeoCities page, but also, like, innovative and different because I think the flip cards are something I don't see in other online learning platforms, and the way that it's integrating so many different types of materials and inviting instructors and teachers and coaches and guides to really think about, like you said, how you're moving someone through.

Sally BurnsI would love there to be kind of elements where you're able to bring the learning onto the live calls and kind of interact with it there. And I think that that kind of brings it a bit more alive. But, yeah, I was saying earlier how we kind of have this fake community vibe on Instagram, right, or on social media. And then we have our learning over on Teachable, and it's the bringing together that is, like, what we're trying to create, and it will will also kind of create an environment, hopefully, that improves upon those two places as well.

Amelia HrubyI do think there are a lot of ways to be very interactive on a Zoom call, and this is part of what I'm interested, like, in come to class. You know? And I don't do any of the gimmicky ones. Like, I don't do polls. I don't do, like, I don't do any of the actual, like, appified stuff they teach.

Amelia HrubyBut even just in the interweb, like, I am a very, like, chat focused, reaction heavy, like, that's what I encourage in our spaces, and people do that. And it makes it feel more alive. It makes it feel more participatory. And I think even that makes all the difference in how a space, like a virtual space, feels. And at the end of the day, like, I'm still thinking of these things, you know, even in the way I've set up the interweb.

Amelia HrubyLike, we have the live calls where there's, like, a certain type of learning and sharing happening. We have Slack where there's a total like, a different type of conversational flow happening. I wouldn't even call it learning. I'd probably call it connection more so. And then we have our online resource library.

Amelia HrubyLike, I don't think it's bad to have separate spaces because I actually think they function quite differently and they have different uses for people, but I think maybe some of it is, like, being really specific about what learning is, because not every online gathering is for learning. Right? You know? And there's a difference between teaching and facilitating that I'm also trying to help people begin to see. And so I love that you've built the portal from your background in learning, so it can be an educational space.

Amelia HrubyAnd I think that's just that's different than trying to be, you know, a place for coworking or a place for chatting or a place for something else.

Sally BurnsThere's this, like, regeneration piece as well, like, being able to refresh content in the way that you have said kind of about workshops that have, you know, potentially gone and gone and died or collecting dust on your website of being able to you to reuse that and put it in a place that's kind of organic and can be brought back alive again. But also so if that's marked as free, people being able to take that and use that in their own work as well. So as long as kind of your name goes with it and if you're happy with it, then being able to put that module or whatnot into their course. There's this piece of regeneration reciprocity just kind of like building, like, a better way to do things again, I guess. And so one of the again, once we have our full vision funding is to give a lot more for the experiences to be able to do.

Sally BurnsSo we have creators and we have experiences, and experiences are what we call users. And we want them to be able to kind of have their own profiles on the portal where they can create their own, like, learning paths. So we'll we'll just call them paths, but, say, they can take a mixture of other of creators' content and put together their own paths that they want to experience over, say, over two weeks or over a month or however long they want to experience it for. So say if I, as kind of as a mother to two young kids, have a deadline in two weeks that's, you know, I don't know, a public speaking thing. Here are all of the resources that I need to get through the next two weeks, and I can kind of build that from different, from different creators.

Sally BurnsAnd then, potentially, I can follow creators. I could then also share that path that I've kind of built together as a kind of public, almost like a kind of Goodreads thing. So it's like experiences are given just as much autonomy and get to play with the platform as much as creators do. They're not just, like, passively experiencing content. They're kind of part of the shaping because, again, if we go back to that kind of hierarchy piece that we're talking about, we don't want that.

Sally BurnsWe want everyone to be kind of muddling in and creating together. And then if you then kind of feel like, okay. This is something that I would like to share and and charge for and, you know, I've actually got a course that I want to put together then, you know, potentially then become a creator and kind of put something and sell it in that way. So, yeah, again, just kinda creating tools that we can build keep building something better with.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I mean, I love those visions. I think it's a very cool way to sort of build off of the, like, personal curriculum trends that has happened over the past year. Right? People could come into the portal and and build a curriculum for themselves that could become a shareable thing.

Amelia HrubyAnd, you know, I love, like, book clubs and study groups in those ways. Right? Not just that you could do that for yourself, but you could gather other people around you to, like, go through a particular curriculum or study something in the portal together. And as a creator, if there's a space where that's a standard norm, that's, like, a that's the culture of it, those are the norms of it, and then, like, people are going through my work without me having to be present, like, what a gift. And I also love this idea of the regenerativity of the space.

Amelia HrubyI like that it's not centered on when each thing was created such that things feel dated. Right? I think that's, like, one of the big harms of social media, right, is that, like, your content just churns so fast, and nothing from the past ever resurfaces. It's one of the reasons people like YouTube because things do resurface there. You can have a video that has years and years of longevity with how many views, and if you monetize, like, you can make money off of things for a really long time.

Amelia HrubyAnd it feels like in the portal, you can kind of build in that sort of, like, you know, I would love to see, you know, recommended things that are resurfacing, recommendations for people people way from the past, not even knowing it. They feel present. It doesn't matter if that was put up five years ago. Like, this this is something I even did on my own website. I took all the dates off my blog posts because I was like, who cares?

Amelia HrubyYeah. That's good. Like, especially particularly on the softer sounds one. I have a free resources blog. I'm like, why tell someone this was published in 2021 when the information is still accurate, it's very timely.

Amelia HrubyAnd if they know it's accurate? It's very timely. And if they know it's five years old, that's gonna give them a certain immediate impression of it. And, in fact, I can just not tell them when it went live because it doesn't actually impact the information. That's like a bias we have for newness.

Amelia HrubySo I love hearing that kind of built in, and I do wanna put some of the things that I've already created, like the court the class I taught on how to run your creative business during a recession, that lived on my website for a while, and then, frankly, no one ever bought it. It was only $29, but I don't think a single person purchased it off my website. I wasn't really sending traffic there. It was just there. But I think it's something that in the portal could be, like, a beautiful resource, and people might find.

Amelia HrubyAnd that's one of the ways I'm really trying to lean into this, is, like, the regenerativity, because it's something I can't create solo in my own ecosystem. I actually need to, like, enter a bigger ecosystem for that to work. And that's one of the things that excites me about the portal that we've talked about today. So, Sally, as we wrap up, is there anything we haven't discussed about the portal that you'd like to share with listeners now?

Sally BurnsI'm sure I've missed a 100 different things. I find it so hard to explain what it is because it's an alive thing and because it is totally different to what has already been created. So I think I just encourage you to experience it. So you did such a great job at kind of giving that how you would tell people to come in. I will also say it's free to experience.

Sally BurnsSo you can sign up and see lots of different free content from lots of different creators. You can enjoy those different practices, workshops, anti capitalist pricing workshop, and then come into our community, which is easy enough in there and set up a profile and either, you know, come say hi or you can just kinda watch from the sidelines. There's lots of free events going on in there, including our communing series, which is where creators are kinda creating and sharing live events. And then, as I say, if you want to become a creator, then it's £45 a month plus VAT. You can create unlimited resources, and we call them collections.

Sally BurnsSo you collect together resources, and you get a private community space to run your community as you wish on circle as well.

Amelia HrubyAnd also that last piece is like sort of like understated real benefit. Like, if you're someone who wants to teach a class, workshop, or course and have a little community element, you don't wanna pay for Circle yourself, which is expensive these days, to be able to pay for the portal where you could host all the resources, and then also get a Circle space for your pea your own Circle space for the people who sign up inside of the broader portal. Like, that's so fucking affordable for what you're charging for that. And I I don't think people see that because you're not, like, when you know, especially, like, in a US based context, and you're like, okay. Well, I just you know, I wanna do this thing, and I'm gonna do a circle, and I'm gonna do all this, and it's so expensive.

Amelia HrubyBut, like, essentially, the point of this is, like, what if you didn't have to go it alone? What if you could build inside of an ecosystem that's already happening, and you get a place to host all your course materials and a private circle space inside of the portal circle space to launch from? And, also, you get all the support of the other creators in the portal because your people in there, they love the portal. So if you're building and you're like, I don't wanna do this alone, it's all right there. This is so exciting, Sally.

Amelia HrubyI know it took me a while to figure out what the portal was and how it worked, but I feel like we elucidated a lot today, and I hope to see a lot of other off the grid listeners in there. I hope to be building with you. And for folks who sign up for Come to Class, we're gonna have some, I think, like, special portal onboarding videos just to try to help you figure out how this works and how it might benefit you. And I'm really excited to be partnering with you on that. So thank you again, Sally, for being here.

Amelia HrubyThank you, listeners, for tuning in. You can find the portal at jointheportal.com, or that special off the grid page is also linked in the show notes. So go check all that out. And until next time, we will see you off the grid.

Speaker 1I've kinda

Speaker 3hate social media. Teeds on my brain

Speaker 1like a bacteria. If you're in my Wikipedia, it'll say, I kinda hate social media. Host a picture of myself. Sacrifices my mental health. Use your product time to tell.

Speaker 1I would rather go to love. Do you like this? Leave a comment. This? Do you like this?

Speaker 1Leave a comment? Can you share this?

Amelia HrubyOkay. That was an abridged version of Social Media by Surfer Boy and Rectangle. To hear the entire song, find Surfer Boy on Spotify or head to the link in the show notes. Thanks so much to them for sharing the song with us, as well as to Melissa Caitlin Carter, who sings our theme song that you hear at the start of every show. I'm your host, Emilia Ruby, and if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.funtoolkit.

Amelia HrubyUntil next time, I will see you off the grid. Hello again, it's me Amelia. Remember me, that voice you just heard seconds ago? I'm popping back in because I wanna share a special gift with you, or three gifts in fact, as thanks for staying tuned in to the very end of this episode. This spring, I led a program called Close Biz Friends inside the interweb, and I helped people create resonant free resources that they could share strategically on their marketing channels and then amplify their visibility through cross promotion.

Amelia HrubyAnd I'm arriving here to share a few resources that folks created in that program with you. The first is from Andy of Spiral Tending. Andy's a therapist and they made a super helpful toolkit with 10 ways to market your healing business when time and money are scarce. I got a few new ideas from it myself, and if you're a healer, I highly recommend heading to the link in the show notes and grabbing it right now. The second gift I wanna offer you is from Heather Backs of Small Business Rodeo.

Amelia HrubyHeather's created a simple tech stack field guide that is an essential resource for anyone who's ever wondered, what invoicing tool should I use, or where do I find a good calendar link, how do I pick a website platform, or an email service provider. If you've ever wondered any of those things, then you're definitely going to want this amazing Notion dashboard full of recommended tools and advice on building your tech stack without overcomplicating it. So head to the show notes to grab that free resource today. And then finally, Julia Kiambi has just launched the free solpreneur corner, which provides support for the inner work side of running a business. Julia is a medical doctor turned intuitive guide, and her Soulpreneur Corner missives are beautiful compliments to the very practical, tactical work that we do here at Off The Grid.

Amelia HrubySo if you could use Soulpreneur Corner messages or a simple tech stack field guide or 10 ways to market your healing business when time and money are scarce, head to the show notes to grab those free resources today And thank you so much again for being here. I am forever grateful that you tune into the show. And until next time, you know where to find me, Off the Grid.