Introduction👇

Companies love smart, savvy employees who invest in themselves!

So even if there isn’t a fixed or formal training budget where you work, the company often covers part of all of the cost of a course - especially when it will help you level up, and level up fast! If you've been considering to take a course, this blog will teach you an easy 3-step process to ask to be reimbursed.

The Formal Approach 🤝

Below are three steps on how you can ask your boss or a decision maker in your company to help you get access to a course that helps you accelerate your career.

Before I show you step 1, let me show you quickly how I personally would write an email to my manager to get a course reimbursed.

Convince Your Boss - Example Email 📧

Email Subject: Enrolling in the Python Bootcamp

Hi (Decision Maker's Name),

I’d like to enroll in the Python Bootcamp from Jousef Murad, and I’m wondering if the department or company would financially support this.

The Python Bootcamp is an online class that teaches the essentials of Python and covers all the important core topics of Python programming without wasting too much time.

Here is what I would gain from this class and how our company would benefit:

• OOP - Mastering Object-Oriented Programming - I will learn how to properly use OOP for my own coding project.  With this, I can not only make reuse of my code easier for generations of engineers to come but also provides a clear program structure and a clean code that facilitates easy maintenance and modification of my code
• Jupyter Notebook - Notebooks have quickly become an essential tool when working with data. I will be able to use them for data pre-processing, cleaning as well as visualisation and potentially some other machine learning related tasks that I will be working on.
• NumPy - I will learn to master this incredibly powerful Python library used for linear algebra, image processing, machine learning and much more!
• Manipulating files - Jousef teaches to interact with files and how to manipulate them

In addition to concepts mentioned, the class includes step-by-step guides and templates that I can immediately use in my job. On topof that, the course is not a 5-6 week bootcamp but takes me from a complete beginner to mastering the fundamentals of Python in just a couple of hours!

The class currently costs 30€, and I absolutely believe it’s worth the investment. Other courses that I have found on other platforms are either too cheap, do not offer the promised quality or only focus on a single topic. Multi-topic classes are often 5-10 times the cost (150€-300€) while focusing on theory only and leave out the practical bits.

I have even found some testimonial from a student:

"I loved your guided project on Coursera. It helped in my research!" (Taylor Ginsberg, Aerospace Engineering Student)

You can learn more about the course at http://courses.jousefmurad.com/, and I can share a more detailed syllabus with you if helpful.

Thanks for your consideration,

[Your name]

The Informal Approach 🤝

Instead of making it too formal, you can also be like me and just try it with an informal cold email, a slack or teams message or another fancy tool you're using.

Step 1 - The "By the Way" Approach 😏

You can mention the course to your manager in your One-on-One meetings (which I hope you have!) and tell him/her that you saw a great course. As I said, do it casually and be enthusiastic about it. It should not come of as you being greedy but to show your manager that you're willing to learn and that this expense will also bring benefits to your performance, and help the company's growth.

Hey (Manager's name), I recently found this course and I believe it would be really useful for me to get more knowledge in area X and help us hit our goals (..mention a few KPIs that you defined to support your argument). Can I send you some details? It would maybe even a good idea to cover this for 15 minutes in our 1-on-1, what do you think?

Step 2 - The Preparation 📝

Follow up with an email that shows how well this course aligns with your role, goals and how it fits into the overall company strategy.

You can use the formal email above and certainly are allowed to tweak it a little bit according to your needs. Don't be shy! Just know that people who actively invest into their own growth are quite rare from what I have seen.

Some people are happy to work their 8 hours, call it a day and then watch Netflix for the rest of the day. If that's you, this blog post is not for you. If you have goals and ambitions to grow in your career and push yourself as well as your team, then follow my advice!

Step 3 - The Follow-Up 👣

Your supervisor is most likely very busy and won't be able to follow up immediately. If you don’t hear back, follow up again after ~3-5 days. This shows that you're committed to getting value out of the course and want to invest in yourself.

Hey (Manager's name), did you have time to look at the course I sent you? I really believe it would help us to achieve KPI 1, 2, 3 more effectively in Q3. Here's the link! Please let me know as the registration/early-bird access ends on (end date).

Additional Tips 💡

Alternatively, you can always try to negotiate with your manager to partially expense the course and not the full amount. That's most likely happening if you talk about courses that cost several 100s to 1000s of Euros.

If you're in a recession like now (October 2022), note that you can still try to get a course expense from your company but maybe not as high as you intended it to be.

If you do not ask, the answer is always going to be no! 😉

Bonus - Purchasing Power Parity 💰

Statistically, around 60% of people around the world cannot afford my courses as a large user base is coming from countries where a 50€ course is simply too expensive. This is where Purchasing power parity (PPP) comes in!

PPP is an economic term for measuring prices at different locations. It helps me determine how much my product should cost in each country and apply discounts for those.

Below you can see a banner that you will find on top of the course page that offers a geo-based discount👇

Why I decided for Purchasing Power Parity? 🤗

Parity pricing allows me to build a closer relationship with you by providing you with a more accurate price for the courses. This, in turn, creates more vital customer trust, loyalty, and engagement.

My goal is to provide education for those who want to pay for a course and make products much more accessible to everyone - regardless of where they live!

- India
- Ukraine
- Brazil
- Spain
- Croatia

and hundreds of other countries...

So, what are you waiting for?

That's all folks! Consider subscribing to receive the latest blogs, tutorials and course updates! If you would love to see other blog posts or tutorials on how to grow in your career, please leave a comment or ping me on my socials - cheers!

Keep engineering your mind! ❤️

Jousef