Revolutionizing Corporate Training | Jason Lavender | 582

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today my guest is Jason Lavender. He's the co-founder and CEO at Electives, and I'll just give you a couple of words that will— he'll figure out how to get them all together for us from his background, because they're usually not words you see on the the same one. So improv, actuary, HR consulting, and entrepreneur. So, all right, let's play Mad Libs, Jason. How does that all come together?

That is a good question. Yeah. So I spent the first kind of 5 years of my career as an actuary. Yeah, I always joke that I realized the more I studied for these exams, the more boring my job got. So I was like, I don't know what my reward for this is. So I had a great manager at the time. She said, why don't you shift more into strategy consulting? It sounds like you love chatting with clients and people. And I said, that would be great. I can study less and I can see more people. That sounds like a really good combination. And then throughout that, it kind of just evolved. I ended up taking up an innovation role at a large consulting firm, really got close to a lot of other entrepreneurs and slowly got that entrepreneurial itch. And then improv came about. It was a, it was actually a gift from my wife. It's, I think she was trying to get, give me a new hobby. Thought it would be a 6-week class and it would be over. And I got sucked into it for 7 years and really fell in love with it. So definitely not part of the plan coming out of undergrad, but it all weaved together nicely.

Right. Well, I love that. So I want to talk about your current venture because you and I had this really interesting conversation a week or two ago. And you told me sort of the, the Electives story. So this is where the entrepreneurial hat comes in. You saw an opportunity in the marketplace and did something about it. So tell me about what Electives is and what the opportunity that you saw or the, or the, the opportunity in the marketplace was.

Yeah. Yeah. So the, the pain I felt was, was as an employee. I was working at a healthcare startup at the time and we just had a, we had a really bad corporate training one afternoon. I vividly remember the, the person who was running the training said that there was a new product feature that they were excited to roll out. I remember feeling excited about it. And then the feature was announced that they disabled the fast forward button on the videos. That was the, that was the new feature. And so I remember spending like 4 hours just watching all of these videos and they were, they were pretty painful. It wasn't a lot of learning. Wasn't a lot of human connection. And I just thought to myself, wow, corporate training really hasn't evolved and hasn't engaged people in quite some time. Maybe, maybe the history of corporate training. Didn't think much of it. And then—

though, because I think that, you know, and not a lot of people want to talk about this out loud, but many of the participants are suffering through it. The delivery folks know there's a better way. The economic buyer is realizing they're not getting an impact on ROI. So if everybody realizes like this is pretty awful, you know, like, why is that? So I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. I think some of it is, you know, price being driven to the bottom, risk aversion. It's not where companies put their energy and their effort, but just the opportunity cost. Forget the hard cost of the amount of time your people are spent, you know, in essence staring at the paint drying on the wall as opposed to doing something exciting. Is criminal. Horrible.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there is a, there is a default of kind of a check-the-box mindset. I want to make sure that everyone has access, which means everyone has access to something not so great. It typically, that next kind of level of thinking of how do we actually make this really good, yeah, need more work for whoever is running that particular program. And, and a lot of people are stretched super thin, and so they say like, I'm just going to take the easy path and put the thing in that covers all the boxes, but at the end of the day, employees don't get too much out of it, right?

So therefore, Electives was born. So tell me what that is, what, what Electives does, and, and, uh, what, what it's trying to do differently in the world.

Yes. So there was really kind of two north stars when we, when we started the company about 3 and a half years ago. So one was we wanted to make live virtual interactive learning easier and more accessible. So it felt like the default in every conversation we had was we have prerecorded libraries of content. And that was kind of the way the world was. And we said kind of in the middle of the pandemic, there is an opportunity here to just make live virtual learning more accessible. So that was one piece we really wanted to over-index on live interactive learning. It's how we've all been learning for thousands of years. Let's— let's— focus there. The second thing which was really interesting to us was there was this assumption in the market that the moment a company needed, quote, corporate training, they had to go find a person called a, quote, corporate trainer. And we just felt like there was so many people overlooked in that kind of, uh, narrow definition of who a corporate trainer is. And so we wanted to redefine who we could be learning from at work. And so we started recruiting FBI agents and astronauts and college professors and C-suite executives. And we were like, do you want to teach? And they were like, yeah, I actually love teaching. And so they were—

a minute, because I think, you know, there's a supply side and then there's a demand side, right? So that clearly the traditional market was, I am a sales trainer, I deliver sales training, right? And I'm certified in these 2 or 3 processes or methodologies or frameworks, and that's what I do. And I do it well, right? And that, and that was your choice. Now, what's kind of interesting is there's so many people, whether they're subject matter experts or whatever, that have the ability to teach others, but it might not be how they fancy themselves. It might not be their full-time thing. It might not be lots and lots of other things. But if you said to them, hey, Mr. Astronaut, would you like to teach a class to whatever on what, on resilience or whoever? You know, from the comfort of your home 2, 3 times a month at a reasonable fee, would that be of interest to you? Now you've changed the game, right? Because that astronaut probably wouldn't have reskilled to say, I'm going to go out and be a corporate trainer, right? So I think that's really cool.

Absolutely. Yeah. And, and, um, I think the interesting part, to just kind of piggyback off that example you just gave, the desire to teach is there for a lot of folks. A little bit of coaching and kind of structure, you can put they're a really good class. The biggest pain point, and you've probably seen this, you know, a million times, is they don't want to, you know, sell themselves. They don't want to market themselves. They don't want to like actually— they just teach. So that's really what Electives is doing, is saying, hey, you know, Astronaut, you could teach a class next Tuesday from 3 to 4. And like, yeah, that sounds great.

I want to ask about another sort of trend, if you will, that I think you're playing into nicely, which is in most large organizations, there's the controlled training, if you will. Corporate says that we learn dot, dot, dot based on our capabilities model and you're a level 3, and therefore you need to take this program and check the box and check the box. And that's fine. But then I think what's happened largely for, you know, because of things like LinkedIn Learning and some other programs that The need has been democratized. So if I am a manager and I've got my team of 10 and I'm like kind of just getting this sense that maybe they're not collaborating well, or maybe, you know, Jason could, could do better at giving feedback or whatever, whatever. I can now, I have some discretionary budget to say, you know what, I can spend it a couple of bucks because I think the team needs this, or I think the team would benefit from this. And it's not, contradicting what corporate dictates, but I have a perspective and a view that they don't. Yes, our people need to learn these capabilities and these skill sets, whatever. But right now at this time for this group, I know, 'cause I'm the manager, or I believe that they need this. Is that part of the, the play here?

Yeah, absolutely. There is a, an expression we often use is the future of, of learning within enterprise is content curation, not content creation.

Yeah.

And exactly to your point, it's like we've seen a pain point. It's urgent. We need to solve it this week. I don't want to go internally and try to create, you know, a net new content over the next 9 months. I want to curate that content. However, going out into the wild and curating that as a manager, you know, doing all the other things I'm doing is really challenging. And so you kind of go into electives, you find, you know, the content that we've already curated, vetted, we know it's high quality, and then you can just tap into it right away.

Right. So yours is live on demand, kind of specialist that can deliver their programs, etc. So that's really, really cool. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com. /ltl and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. And how is it being received in the marketplace? What are you, what are, actually, let me ask you that question two ways. So from when you started a few years ago, by the way, you know, timestamp this one, you know, that was like the beginning of COVID right? Mid or early COVID. To now, what's changed? What's different about the way you rolled it out and what it's evolved into today?

Yeah, I would say the biggest change is there's now two ways that employees can take classes. So when we first launched electives, everything was called a private class. So that was— we partner with a company. Some business leader within that organization would look in our whole class catalog and say, oh, I want to bring that giving feedback class or that presentation skills class. To a group of my 40 employees.

Okay, so that means everybody would— taking the class is all employees of Citibank or Walmart or whoever?

Exactly. Yep. So they're private, they, they're customizing the class, they're prepping with the instructor, they're making sure it really feels right to that culture. Uh, that continues to be a core part of our business, but we've added a second way employees can learn. That product is now called Electives Membership. What membership does is gives employees at these, all these different companies, a license to go pick any 2 live classes every month that they want to take. The caveat is then they're in class with employees from all of these different companies, but they're getting to kind of self-select into the classes that are most relevant and timely for them. And so if you think of the, you know, the classic example I always give is like a company might feel like we need to improve our presentation skills. That's great. Let's bring everybody together. Yes. But those 40 people also have 40 other unique things going on in their personal or professional life that they're trying to develop. And now they can go into the membership program and say, I want to take Coping with Grief. And the other person says, I want to take another presentation skills class, or I want to take a prompt engineering class. So what we wanted to do over time was just give that business leader still the you know, kind of the given to pick the classes, but also give the, the end learner the autonomy to go pick whatever they need to develop in that moment.

Interesting, interesting. And the two models, you know, it's, it's the old school open enrollment versus closed program. One is not better than the other, they're different, right? You know, um, and we could debate the differences of, well, if it's everybody from this company, we know the culture. If it's open, it's more diverse. What are you seeing from a learning efficacy-wise? Any variance between the two formats?

The most interesting thing that we tested early days was even at a high level, when we, when we started membership, we said, are people going to show up and are people going to be on camera and engage? Those were kind of our just baseline period questions. For the more kind of tactical, like manager type of classes, membership is really good because people will just be more vulnerable. They'll say like, I have this manager who does this, or I struggle with this. Like, they don't talk about that as openly in a private setting. For more of the cultural types of classes, I'll put like a DEI class in that bucket. That is way, way better in a private setting because it's, it's a little bit more emotional. There's some human connection. Like, that level of vulnerability is actually more awkward in membership than it is with, with your colleagues. So there's just kind of a content theme difference that is pretty telling.

I think that the delta there is really culture, right? So if we all work in a firm and there's a culture of being passive-aggressive or vulnerable, whatever it is, it's like, oh, we can relate to that as a trait of working at Company X. So that makes a lot of sense. But like you said, on the other side, how smart is it from a career standpoint to say, hey, You know, the problem, the reason I'm taking this feedback class is my boss is a jerk. And then everybody can figure out, oh, Peter works for Mary. Mary must be a jerk. Uh-oh, I just saw her in the cafeteria. Like, that's not a smart move. Yeah. So I, I like the way that you're, you're saying, well, there's different, different pieces there. So I, I love the, the framing and the model and sort of the on-demand piece and expanding it. I think the other thing that I want to touch on is you're also short-circuiting for an individual provider, someone teaching the class, the hell that is procurement, right? Like, so for an individual person that might deliver a class for a couple thousand bucks a couple times a year, the bandwidth sometimes, or the patience or whatever to go through a pretty rigorous procurement process, sometimes it's not worth it. It's, it's just, it's no fun, whatever. But to sign up on your platform, you've kind of already done the vetting and the billing and the finance and the all that stuff that is not why anybody wants to do these type of things.

Yeah, yeah, that was a pain point that we just, we did not know that was such a big pain when we started the company.

Oh yeah.

But then the, I'll share kind of both sides of that pain point. So one of our first enterprise clients, I'll never forget, they reached out to us inbound and we were hopping on the phone and I was ready to like kind of do a demo and walk them through Electives. And their chief people officer said, before you do a demo, can I just share my, my pain point? And I said, that's actually preferred. I would love to know. And they said the prior year they had curated, sourced, and contracted with 126 external trainers, speakers, et cetera. And, and she kind of joked, she was like, that also means they all went through procurement, they all went through everything, they went through data privacy, etc., not to mention the quality was all over the board. So like a total administrative nightmare. And so she closed her opening kind of problem statement with, so if I understand Electives correctly, you do all that and we only pay you.

And we laughed.

We're like, actually, yeah, we never thought of it like that. So that was on the business side. On the instructor side, you're totally right. The, the procurement, the data privacy, The other thing, chasing invoices is a huge pain for them too. And so on our platform, our instructors get paid the day of the class, like they don't need to wait 90 days and, you know, track their invoice software. So there is a lot of those just administrative headaches that—

and you don't have to make the same argument again and again of why I own my IP and derivative use case and all these other things. Interesting. All right. As we, as we start to wrap, What do you see moving forward in terms of your growth and adoption? And, and, you know, are there programs where this works better, worse, types of companies where it works better, where they're maybe they're not big enough to have a full-fledged training group? Like, what do you see as sweet spots and opportunities?

Yeah, I'll share kind of a market sweet spot and then a new kind of tool that we're excited about. So on the market side, For us, it's a pretty broad range, but I would call it like the 50 to 500 employee company where their people team is really lean. They don't have a full learning and development staff. All their employees are asking for development and growth opportunities, but they just don't have the bandwidth to do anything. That, that tends to be our, our sweet spot. The thing that we're most excited about, and it's so hard to not talk about AI these days, but my, my co-founder and team have been working on this new AI tool that basically translates a company's business goal to the skills that are needed to the class content that builds those skills. And that part is the most exciting in terms of just the conversations we're having with people leaders is like, we're hearing we need to improve net revenue retention by 10%. We know that is a business goal. Actually mapping that to development is really hard. It's kind of like, how do I improve net revenue retention? Is that a time management thing? Is that an upselling, cross-selling thing? Like how do I actually use people to develop? To hit that goal. And so part of the thing that we're most excited about is we've spent the last 3 years curating all this amazing content, right? How do we actually just match— this is the right content for these people to achieve that business skill?

Or that, by the way, is what every CEO wants of their training organization without— and, and sometimes they just sort of wash their hands of it and say, well, they're doing the best they can, they're good people, but if only I were her, I could be heard. So I love that. Really cool. I appreciate your time and thank you for sharing your story and your journey. And I think it's an interesting thing you got going there. So good stuff.

Thanks so much for having me, Peter.

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