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Larry Jordan says Goodbye
Larry Jordan, one of the prominent FCP trainers is closing his business.
Excerpts and link to the article.
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The Time Has Come to Say Goodbye – for a while…it became a “Bridge Too Far” in that it never generated the revenue we needed to support it. I can no longer afford to keep it.
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But our industry is changing and I need some time to step back and see where it’s headed. … The deadlines are too tight. My team and I are running so quickly amidst the trees that we aren’t able to see the larger forest.
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This also means that, starting immediately, I’m looking for buyers for both the LarryJordan.com and DigitalProductionBuzz.com websites.https://larryjordan.com/articles/the-time-has-come-to-say-goodbye-for-a-while
It is time to say goodbye, but not to our industry, nor to you. I’m looking forward to whatever the future brings – and happy to consider any invitations.
Take care, it has been an amazing time. I’m honored that I could share it with you. I wish you all the success in the world.
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18 Replies
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Sad to see Larry step down from his business and wish him the best. I do respect and understand the hard decision he had to make. Technology is changing too rapidly. I wish him well and the best of luck in whatever path he so chooses. Thank you Larry for the insightful thoughts you have made over the years and for sharing your wealth of knowledge. You are a true friend and a great person. The world needs more people like you. Pardon me as I cry typing this message.
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Given that his new training facilities weren’t generating enough revenue, I wonder if there’s seeds of change in online training and he burnt out trying to keep up. Even more than his training, I loved reading his blog for his FCP/Apple/Industry insight. Although his post leans personal, I can’t help but think he’s leaving us with one more nugget about change…. even in the online training community.
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There’s so many free FCPX tutorials on YouTube that I imagine that may be taking a lot of business away from the paid options. The quality may not be as good but it might be “enough” for a lot of people
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Yet I find most of the free tutorials piecemeal. Great for learning a specific function but not so much if you want to learn end to end functionality in an ecosystem. Also, unless you follow a specific content creator and they are certified (or off that quality), the information is wildly uneven.
I think perhaps Lynda.com subscription model might have been too difficult to compete against.
RippleTraining is a buy and pay for upgrade business model so it doesn’t compete as directly. -
Some of those videos can be useful but the quality does vary. I tend t watch the ones from Larry Jordan and Pixel Corps Asa they tend to be concise, no circus act attached. I have seen ones that are painful to watch either because of too much humor or not getting to the main point in a timely manner. I did wonder if the the free stuff out there could be a factor, in many instances it is.
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I’ve met Larry on many occasions at trade shows or Apple events and have always found him to be a very approachable and knowledgable guy and obviously right on top of how these reiterated NLE’s work.
But to me his teaching style is very old school, avuncular, tell it once, tell it again and then run though it a final time to make sure everything is fully understood. This style for me just doesn’t chime with the ability we have of reviewing any video based training material. So I stopped buying his products.
Ripple seem to keep it fresher and release themed training packages with a high production value, and they are constantly providing free training material to the NLE ‘community’ through their 5 minute training releases.
So I feel that maybe if Larry had changed his style, stepped back a bit on the presentation front and packaged his material in a different way he would have had more financial success with his training products.
But then again maybe these new generation NLE’s are so well engineered and designed they enable people to learn as they go. Whereas when I first started using FCP I found it incredibly complicated and really did need to buy training materials.
And good luck to Larry, an unusually decent and generous guy in what ever ventures he gets involved in. I’m sure we will be seeing a lot more of him.
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[Mark Dobson] “But to me his teaching style is very old school, avuncular, tell it once, tell it again and then run though it a final time to make sure everything is fully understood. This style for me just doesn’t chime with the ability we have of reviewing any video based training material. So I stopped buying his products.
Ripple seem to keep it fresher and release themed training packages with a high production value, and they are constantly providing free training material to the NLE ‘community’ through their 5 minute training releases.”
I tend to agree wholly. Personally not a big fan of slides either. But at least he isn’t/wasn’t this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUtZzi6hag
;-D
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That video reminds me of some of the long, rambling posts that take place here and in the Adobe forum. 🙂
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I’ve been a fan and user of Larry’s tutorials. They are based on firm pedagogical foundations, and while his presentation style sometimes came off a little bit like the SCTV character “Gerry Todd”, I always found his courses well thought-out, logical, and full of the most useful materials, delivered in a logical sequence that was easy to absorb. You can’t get the comprehensive overview he gives, watching some of the “half-fast” online free “tutorials” made by teens on their laptop webcams, without a mic.
I’m glad some of his work will continue with the Creative live folks, who also do some good work. And who’s to say, but that Larry will find another, more profitable way to keep teaching. He does it very well.
It’s really very, very hard to make a buck at training without having a lot of sponsors or a patron in these days of everything being “free” online. I’m sure a lot of what Larry did, he did just out of love, but love don’t pay the bills. He was moving into a subscription model like Adobe’s towards the end, but I gather it was too little, too late. The profit margins for this kind of work are narrow, like investing in restaurants, so any big expense that’s not offset by legendary levels of response business is going to be a problem, unless there’s a cushion in the bank to level out the highs and lows.
What I would compare Larry’s situation to is the music performance business, where today, bands of any size, don’t make the bulk of their money from selling physical albums, or even through the Cloud; the most money is made from live touring and the branded merch sold at the venues. At Larry’s age, The Road and endless tours is probably not an appetizing prospect. But there’s precedent for it. If Adobe was smart, they’d put him on exclusive contract to be their “Factory Driver”.
I wish him only success, and hope that he lands on his feet. He deserves a break, after helping myself and untold thousands like me, learn to make the new toys do what we need them to do.
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[Craig Seeman] “Yet I find most of the free tutorials piecemeal. Great for learning a specific function but not so much if you want to learn end to end functionality in an ecosystem.”
This is exactly why I don’t care for much “produced” training. Too much prattle, not enough info. When I need to look up a “how-to” video, I need straight to the explicit steps. I don’t want an introduction about how we all got here.
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