Founder & Chief Executive Officer
I am in the middle of prepping a corporate training session for tomorrow. It is 10:45 and I should be winding down.
Instead I am getting more excited, and I have about 5,000 more ideas I want to add. We are definitely not going to cover everything. I am going to put them in anyway and see what happens.
I want to say this out loud, because I think about it often. I wish this feeling on everyone. On my clients, on the people I work with, on strangers. I roll out of bed excited about what I do. With these training sessions I get to be excited about what I do, talk about things I love, teach people those things, and then watch them grow, alongside people I am genuinely a fan of as humans and in their work.
That combination is rare and I know it.
Something worth knowing about the room I will be standing in front of tomorrow. Most of the people in it will be fighting the urge to check something else.
TalentLMS surveyed 1,000 US employees who had received training in the previous year, alongside 101 HR managers, and found 70% of employees multitask during training, up from 58% in 2024. Nearly half of employees, 46%, said their company treats training as time away from real work. Lack of time has been the top barrier three years running, with 53% citing heavy workloads.
So the default state of a training session is partial attention from people who suspect they should be doing something else. That is the actual conditions, and anybody who has delivered training knows it. Beating those conditions is the whole job.
Summary TalentLMS found 70% of employees multitask during training, up from 58% in 2024, and 46% say their company treats training as time away from real work. Partial attention is the default condition.
The reason I do not apologise for being excited at 10:45 at night is that the excitement is functional.
Research on instructor enthusiasm points the same direction, though honestly the evidence here is modest rather than overwhelming. A study by Qin Zhang, published through the National Communication Association, surveyed 165 college students and found teacher enthusiasm significantly influenced engagement across behavioural, cognitive, and emotional measures, with the strongest effect on emotional engagement, which the author attributes to emotional contagion. Enthusiasm predicted intrinsic motivation, meaning the desire to actually master the material. That study is self-reported and small, so treat it as directional rather than definitive.
The mechanism is familiar to anybody who has sat in both kinds of session. Somebody who clearly loves a subject makes it feel worth caring about, and that transfers. Somebody delivering slides they are indifferent to gives a room full of busy people permission to check their phone, and the room takes it.
Summary Research by Qin Zhang with 165 students found instructor enthusiasm significantly influenced engagement, strongest on emotional engagement through emotional contagion. The study is small and self-reported, so the finding is directional.
The other half of holding a room is what you actually have them do, and the data here is less ambiguous.
In the same TalentLMS research, 86% of employees said they learn by doing, and close to a third said their training was too theoretical. For marketing training specifically that gap is easy to fall into, since marketing has endless frameworks and funnels and models that sound impressive in a slide and change nothing on Monday morning.
What works is people leaving with something they can use that week. Writing an actual piece of content for their business during the session. Looking at their own analytics rather than a sample dashboard. Finding the real questions their customers ask and turning one into a page. Auditing their own website while somebody who knows what to look for is standing next to them. The theory can be the scaffolding around that, and the doing has to be the substance.
This is also why I keep adding ideas the night before. The temptation is to add more concepts. The better instinct is to add more things people get to try.
Summary TalentLMS found 86% of employees learn by doing while nearly a third found their training too theoretical. Marketing training works when people leave with something usable that week rather than frameworks.
For a business sending a team to marketing training, the content worth paying for is the content that keeps producing after the session ends.
Website and content skills come first in my sessions, because they compound. A team that understands how to write a page answering a real customer question can keep doing that forever, and every page they produce keeps working. Teaching the fundamentals of search engine optimization gives them a lens they apply to everything afterward, including decisions they make when nobody from outside is in the room. Teaching them what AI optimization for websites actually requires means they stop guessing at a moving target.
Social and email fit around that foundation. The judgment to tell useful content from filler, the discipline to engage rather than broadcast, the habit of writing like a person. Those are teachable, and they stick.
The thing I try hardest to transfer is judgment rather than tactics, since tactics expire and judgment does not. A team that can tell whether an idea suits their business will outperform a team following instructions they do not understand.
Summary Website and content skills compound, since a team that can answer customer questions in writing keeps producing assets. Teaching search engine optimization and AI optimization gives them a lens they apply afterward. Judgment outlasts tactics.
I run an agency, so take this with the appropriate scepticism, and I believe it anyway.
Capability inside your business is worth having even when you also work with an agency. It means you understand what you are buying, you can tell good work from expensive work, and you are not starting from nothing if a relationship ends. It means the person in your team who notices something on the website can act rather than filing a ticket. It is the practical version of staying in the loop on your own marketing rather than handing over everything and hoping.
Employees want this too, which is the part business owners underestimate. The same research found 73% of employees say stronger development opportunities would make them stay longer, and 35% would leave if denied training. So the investment returns twice, once in capability and once in retention.
Outsourcing execution while building internal judgment is a sturdier arrangement than either extreme. A good marketing agency should be comfortable with that, since clients who understand the work are easier to do good work for.
Summary Internal capability means you understand what you are buying and can act without waiting. TalentLMS found 73% of employees say development opportunities would make them stay longer, so the investment returns in capability and retention.
Back to where this started, since the practical content is not really why I was still awake.
I get to be excited about my work. I get to talk about things I love with people I admire, and then watch those people grow because of something I showed them. The excitement is not professional enthusiasm I generate for a session. It is the reason I am still adding ideas at 10:45 when I should be asleep.
I wish that on everybody. If you run a business, the version of this available to you is doing work you would still find interesting at eleven at night, with people you would choose to spend a day with. That is not guaranteed and it is not luck either, since it comes from the decisions you make about what you take on and who you take it on with.
If you have that feeling already, you know exactly what I mean. If you do not, it is worth asking what would have to change.
Summary The excitement is the reason for being awake rather than something generated for a session. The version available to any business owner is work worth finding interesting late at night, with people worth spending a day with.
It is late, I have too many ideas, and we will not get through half of them tomorrow.
Attention is scarce in every training room, which puts the weight on whoever is standing at the front being genuinely into the subject and giving people something to actually do. Enthusiasm is contagious and practice is what sticks.
And I hope you get to feel this about your own work, because it changes everything about how you show up for it.
Sources:
TalentLMS, 2026 Learning & Development Report, surveys of 1,000 US full-time employees who received training in the previous 12 months and 101 HR managers, conducted September 2025 (70% of employees multitask during training, up from 58% in 2024; 86% say they learn by doing, with nearly a third finding training too theoretical; 46% say their company treats training as time away from real work; 73% say stronger development opportunities would make them stay longer; 35% would leave if denied training).
https://www.talentlms.com/research/learning-development-report-2026
Qin Zhang, Instructor’s Corner: Teaching with Enthusiasm, National Communication Association, survey of 165 college students (teacher enthusiasm significantly influenced behavioural, cognitive, and emotional engagement, with the strongest effect on emotional engagement, and predicted intrinsic motivation).
https://www.natcom.org/publications-library/instructors-corner-3-teaching-enthusiasm-engaging-students-sparking-curiosity/
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