Premise/Problem:
- There should be more mid-career continuing education
- The current model of ~10-15 years of learning then ~40-50 years of earning based on that knowledge isn't very well suited to the needs of the current economy
- This is not a knock on the current education model per se, just that there should be a better model for continuing education/learning mid-career
- A few other relevant macro trends:
- Companies having a hard time hiring for new skills
- More people moving to consulting, though some challenges to the business model
- Explosion of information but it can be hard to consume or find relevant information
- There are ways to continue to learn but they aren’t great
- Watching one-to-many videos (Youtube) is OK but not great for going deep on a subject or for doing contextualized learning
- Online courses are hard to commit to (I assume pretty low completion rates?) and also don’t offer context or much real-time interaction
- The ROI on self-directed learning for an individual isn’t easy to calculate and people are reluctant to spending substantial sums (and time) on their own continuing education
- Bosses rarely have time or educational experience (and sometimes skills) to properly teach employees
Potential solution:
- Match consultants with companies for continuing education programs for their employees
Example:
- Company X has a great digital marketing team but not a ton of experience with technical SEO. The company is not sure that hiring someone full time makes sense but would rather have the skills in-house than hire an agency. The solution is to have a 4 week course with the marketing team taught by an SEO expert. The cost can be in the few thousands to the company (vs. much more with either hiring or using an agency), the employees are happy to learn new skills, and the educator gets to teach for meaningful compensation and the potential for a longer term relationship.
- Other example skills might be: Excel, Facebook Ads, Machine Learning, Statistics, Copywriting, Public Speaking, etc.
Business model:
- Take ~20% of each transaction
- Multiple course types:
- Lunch and learn (1 hour, $500)
- 4 week crash course (4 hours, $1,500)
- 3 month deep dive (12 hours, $5,000)
Why does this make sense for the three players involved, Educators, Employees, Managers?
- For employees:
- People want to learn new skills, but would prefer to do it on company time and $
- For managers:
- They know that skills drive results but don’t have a great way to upskill their people right now, and often rely on hiring new people to fill gaps
- For educators:
- Finding ‘clients’ is hard and not easy to monetize in a one on one or one to many setting
What is the pitch to each group?
- For employees:
- Learn new skills to increase your earning potential and grow professionally
- For managers:
- Give your employees a perk that they want
- Maybe remove the costly need to hire new people
- For educators:
- Good hourly rate earnings
- Potential for longer term consulting contracts
What are the potential pitfalls?
- Are there enough good teachers?
- Will people go outside of the platform after one class? Is 20% too much?
- Are companies willing to pay for this for their employees?
- Whose budget does this come out of? HR?
- How do you match supply and demand efficiently? What if demand outstrips supply?
Growth ideas:
- Teachers/consultants posting content, improving SEO
- Credentialing that students can put on their websites/Linkedin/etc?
- Teachers/consultants earning reviews/points driving more interest in teaching
- Share with your friends at other companies to get your company a discount?
- Share on Linkedin to get more learning points? How can you gamify learning?
- #ilovelearning campaign, #imateacher campaign
- Site for posting learning needs (reverse marketplace)
- Partner with benefits groups or other services for employees?
Next steps:
- Talk to consultants, talk to teachers, talk to employees
- Recruit one teacher per concept
- Better understand answers to the questions above
- Send out a survey via Pollfish