Happy at Work Podcast:
Recently, GrowthSpace CEO had the opportunity to join the Happy at Work podcasters for a conversation about enabling professional development. Discussing our unique one-on-one expert matching that matches employees of all types to the right expert for the job, why it’s important employees actually want to be developed before a sprint, and why the five-session format works to well, the podcast is well worth a listen – or read!
Transcript:
Jack
Okay, so here we are happy at work. And today we’re welcoming Omer Glass, CEO of GrowthSpace, and Happy at work is all about bringing positivity in the workplace, empowering workers, making them happier. And we bring on these smart, amazing guests who are leaders who have really great things to offer. Maybe we could just start out. Omer. Maybe you could tell a little bit about yourself and your company.
Omer
Great to be here, first of all. And so, you said, my name is Omer Glass, for example, the last time you and I spoke, we talked about , how we know how to match each individual to the perfect expert in order to, achieve what they want to achieve.
So for example, we basically take and mimic what companies do when they want to develop their CEO, for example. So let’s say I’m a CEO, I need to work on my leadership skills, or learn better public speaking. So usually what companies will do will match me with a CEO coach. Or if I’m in sales and I’m relatively new, the best thing you can do is to understand, okay, I want to work on my sales skills. Let’s say on my pitch skills and match me with a sales expert who will support me through the journey. So that’s basically how GrowthSpace started: enabling businesses to basically match their people in the hundreds to the relevant experts to run through development sprints, and eventually improve each one, according to what they need to improve in.
Michael
Alright, it’s good to have you on the show and I’ll start us off because I’ve been coaching for 20 years. So I love what you’re doing. And one of the challenges that I’ve had is sometimes I’ll have a client come and they’re , I want to do better. I want to be more successful, but I don’t know what I really need. Do you ever help them identify what skills they’re needing to, to improve upon when they’re, when they’re not really sure themselves, any sort of assessments?
Omer
Definitely. So first of all, you’re spot on. I would say that no one needs a coach or no one needs a mentor in general.
Jack
Wait, wait, wait, that’s your whole business!
Omer
So people did not need coaches. People don’t need therapists or people do not need doctor. You go to a therapist because you’re depressed. You go to a doctor because you have a headache or are coughing or something alike. But. That you usually in the professional work, I’m not talking about well-being usually you go to a coach because you want to work on your communication skills, on your leadership skills. You want to be better at something specific. What we say is the more specific you are, the higher, the probability of success. So definitely first of all, you’re spot on. The way we do that, we basically in the beginning of the process, and now I’m talking about the one-on-one, we do a bunch of other stuff, but it’s a good place to start.
And we basically come and do the assessment between the individual and the direct manager, identifying what you want to focus on. And the manager, the direct managers, the participant is a key component of the process because the manager is a great observer of your behavior and your skill gaps.
So usually the manager will even initiate the process and we’ll recommend a specific thing that you should focus on. For example, you’re a great programmer, but you’re not managing your time properly, for example. So you can work on your time management. Great. And then it comes to the individual and then it says, yes, you’re right.
And more specifically, I would like to focus on that and that. And then basically the platform matches this individual with the productivity expert. So not just a general coach, but a coach or an individual or a trainer, even that specializes on productivity and they go through a development sprint. And then when it’s over, we will come back.
The platform will come back to the individual and the direct mail. And ask, do you see behavioral change?
Michael
Gotcha. So if someone came to you, let’s say a long-term client, maybe they’re trying to develop a junior person into senior management. Do they go through just a host of different coaches and mentors on your platform? Like I get the public speaking one and the listening one, the leadership one. So do people tend to rotate or do they get assigned one person that sticks with them for different skills?
Omer
Vice versa. The power of the platform is by having different people who specialize in different things. Because if I will ask you Michael, what’s your sweet spot? Like where, what are you best at? I guess you will tell me, okay. Maybe I’m very good at leadership productivity I can do, but it’s not my thing. And you know what? I know nothing about marketing. So our go to, and by the way, every employee at GrowthSpace participates in at least three programs a year. And usually these three programs will be around different skills with different experts, because two things happen First there’s momentum. When you work just in a sprint on something it’s becoming more like you have a positive tension that eventually increases the performance or the outcome that you get. Number two is you get someone whose expertise is exactly what you need. So it’s not general. I will match you with the coach and the same coach can do productivity, leadership and management and sales and marketing.
Michael
Gotcha. So it’s like micro niching, the coaches and mentors. They’re just, they just teach their sweet spot. Beautiful. Thank you.
Jack
So, so it’s really interesting. Cause when you started out talking about. You know, I’ve, I’ve heard about where they’ll bring in coaches, the CEOs and the C-suite because, you know, maybe the person is brilliant, but they’re kind of a, you know, an arrogant jerk and they’re kind of turning off people and it’s not helpful.
So now what you’re doing is you’re democratizing it. Basically is that it doesn’t have to just be the C-suite we’re looking at all levels within an organization. And then finding people who could benefit from extra help. Now, is it, does it go from a junior person who just started a job and hire, or do you kind of pick a certain sector or a certain amount of years experience?
Omer
We depend on the organization, but usually it’s a, like you said, it’s kind of a democratizing. So it starts from individual contributors, usually up to like main management. And again, the approach is objective first. So the goal will not be matching people with coaches because that that’s not the point, but identify what the individual needs. Again, with the individual and manager, matching them with the right person and then have a measurable impact on the specific thing.
Michael
How does that go? Is that, would it be, let’s say I’m working at ABC widget company and I feel I have to be a better speaker. Would I go to my boss and say, Hey, I think this is holding me back.
Or does the boss say to me, Hey Jack, would you want to get some help in this area? What’s what’s the usual kind of way it plays out?
Omer
Yeah. So usually it come from the manager and again, it’s up to order of the organization. Like some organizations just give it to anyone -it’s open to anyone. Then you can just ask, hey, I want to work on that. A lot of times organizations prefer to start from the managers. So basically they give it to their managers as a tool to develop their people. And what we’ve seen in a lot of companies, we started even engaging with the companies through the manager. Because eventually, the individual who supposed to be in charge of their employees development is not HR.
It’s the manager Because as a manager, if you get the right tools to develop your employees, you will eventually get better. And this is part of like something that is sometimes missed in the learning and development industry, the manager, like the managers is on the side. And then it’s like direct from HR to the individual.
And by enabling the manager, giving the manager more tools to develop their employees and you eventually get better results that are more connected to what’s really needed, like to the business. I love the fact that the manager or managers are a part of it. Cause they really help with the emotional intelligence of how other people see you.
Michael
I’m curious if you, how you feel about the actual client, the person who’s really doing the learning it. If they need to opt in, for example, let’s say that my manager says Michael, you’re an introvert and I want you to be more of an extrovert to do public speaking and networking. That petrifies me. I have no interest in that. That’s just not my thing. If, if they send me, do you, do you kick me back? If I say I’m not willing, do you require an opt-in or do you just work with me? Because my boss said I had to be here. The COVID extrovert. I don’t think you can develop someone who doesn’t want to be developed. Like, I cannot force you sit here.
Omer
It’s not like the metrics where I connect you to a software now, you know, cook food. Right. And so of course, and the goal would be to have alignment between the participant and the direct manager are objective. And definitely, the individual can definitely say to the manager, no, I don’t want to work on that.
And then like the, basically the platform figures out their alignment together. And then only the sprint starts.
Michael
And when you do these assessments, I think I had read, cause Jack sent me some information over ahead of this, that there’s hundreds of things that you’re measuring. I’m curious what you’re, what sort of metrics or things that you measure in general, just to give our viewers a sense of what the data can do to be helpful. What do you look at?
Omer
So, first of all, there are different types of objectives for different things, right? Um, so we always try to start with the business KPI you want to drive. So business KPIs can be different for different functions in organization. It can be something like sales, some quota or how many prospecting you did them in their recent week? Or for example, if you’re in a engineering or number of bugs, like we tried to get to the heart of things and connect them with a certain skill.
So there’s always the business KPI and a specific skill you want to drive. And we basically want to link them together. For example, I want to sell more by improving my trust with the customers, like the way I build trust or the way I pitch, or the way I prospect. So it’s a skill connected to a business KPI, and then we try to measure both the impact on the specific and the hard skill, like on the hard KPI and both on the impression of the manager and the individual about the improvement on the specific skill. Uh, I’m hope I’m clear,
Jack
Makes a lot of sense. Are you noticing certain age groups or generations or certain categories where you’re noticing that certain skills really need to be developed. Like some group of people don’t have them and they really need them from your organization. Any, any spots where people seem to, oh, we really need this. Anything that pops up on your radar?
Omer
I think that’s generational because you know, most of the employees currently are millennials, so it’s more or less like standard. Right? Most of the individual contributors up to mid managers are millennials. So I don’t think this is a big differentiator. You do see different types of skills in different functions in your organization.
Think about it: like sales people or people who are customer facing tend to be more extroverted. So, usually their problem will not be around communications because if you’re a salesperson or are in customer success and you don’t know how to communicate, you’re in trouble. So usually the communication will be more popular in more of like R& D engineering and like backend things, for example.
So you see some correlations and vice-versa, you see like places that in sales people try to focus on. What are some of the other things that you offer coaching for? Cause it sounds like it’s runs the gamut, right? So it goes through the whole spectrum between soft skills and hard skills. And we focused a lot like in the doc so far about the one-on-one, which can one-on-one is basically the best way you can develop an industry. Because it’s about you, it’s tailored to you getting an expert and then it’s all about you. But also, and we enable companies to run internal mentoring programs, meaning onboard your experts, tag them on our platform, run through a development sprint with an experts from your organization. So this is like internal mentoring. Or group sessions where you can sit with like minded professionals like yourself, like say your team and work on a specific topic. For example, product. So think about three product managers working with VP product from another company around a specific topic or on leadership or something like that.
Omer
So with covers basically the whole spectrum between soft skills, communication, leadership, to harder skills like management and client management and like sales, engineering, product, marketing, et cetera, which is more like best practice exchange, like to work on specific things from your day-to-day.
Michael
Could you take someone? I know you’re it appears that you’re your most, your more, more of a B2B operation, but let’s say that I was a salesperson and now I want to get into AI. I want to jump the tech bandwagon. Could I come to you as an individual? Hey, what skills do I need to be an AI person? I know nothing about it to sounds really sexy and groovy.
Could you, could you tell me what skills I need assessment and an upskill. Me as a private individual. Could you do that for people?
Omer
There are two ways to look at it, even from your path. So in order to, if you want to move from sales to AI and you can be interested in best practice exchange, meaning just to be matched with someone from AI who can guide you, or you can work on specific skills that are attributed to this specific profession.
Jack
Gotcha. And would you be able to do this? Like for academics, let’s say like undergraduate students, they’re just starting out there. They’re kind of at the beginning. Could you take people that, that don’t have any background or history and start them from zero up to one plus?
Omer
We’re mostly focused on a B2B, like you said. So I think in academics and we have some professors, but more in like the business concept, because eventually we serve our customers and who are fortune 500 companies, mostly in north America, as some of them are a mid market companies, like 2000 employees. So we basically, the way it works, everything starts with a skills and experts on top of the skills, right?
Like the skill taxonomy and experts attributed to different things that they can do. So the way we built, basically our supply, or like the people who are delivering am and the training, the development is according to the needs of our guests. So it’s not broad. Like we don’t have a zoo professionals or academic professionals because we don’t work with a lot of academic gains petitions, but in business we have a good time.
Gotcha. And how do you find your experts? How do you bring them on board? So there are different types of experts. First of all, um, some of the experts are people like you and Jack, and these are usually a main directors to C-levels in different companies and we approach. Kind of slack. We approach potential customers.
We approach them with like cold emails. Hey, would you like to become a mentor grow space? And then some of them are interested. They’re picking up the call, um, an expert from our experts. People are interviewing them, validating that they’re good. We tag them according to the specific behavior, they can, the specific skill that they can drive.
And then we start basically we onboard into the platform. So this is one category of what we call mentors. The second category is coaches and coaches are professionals or certified by the ICF, the international coaching Federation, and like, like yourself basically. And when we onboard them, we ask them again, Michael, what’s your field of expertise?
Where do you see. Are you better with leadership or management or communications or productivity, and specifically in management with metrics management with delegation, like what are the specific things you’re best at? And then you, you are interviewed by well, like minded person who is already a vetted expert on there, like the scope of management.
Let’s take a look at yourself. And then basically we start matching you with cases around management. And then the beauty of our platform is then that’s where the data starts to kick in because we match you with people. And then we rate you about the impact that you generated in your life around management, and the better you are, the odds of being matched again within another individual who needs to drive their metrics.
Michael
Benjamin, for example, And if you’re not good, so decreases basically. So with every data point that our eh, platform gets basically the hard, the probability of success in the next match. And this is where you’re using the AI to pop in to help you. Definitely.
Jack
So Omer, let me hypothetically let’s say there’s this guy, who’s a Harvard professor has a wall street background and is coached.
So we’re talking about. The worker, but what about the other side? Can people make money being a coach on your platform? So someone, you know, you know, who’s like wears a red sweater and, and, uh, you know, is, is, is it academic, but is it is as a coaching background, could that person then say, Hey, wait a minute, let me sign on.
And I’m really good at what I do. So I’ll be in a high demand across the board and it could be like a rock star. You know, coach is there, is there money to be made for these, for these. Definitely. So, first of all, it’s not volunteering. We charge good money from customers and money from the other end. And so, first of all, definitely, and the better you are, again, you can make a lot of money on our platform.
Omer
That’s part of the beauty and. An anecdote we work with, um, we, we see increasing demand from digital nomads, like people who just travel the world want to create like different source of income and from clients from the, around the world. So definitely if you’re good, you can make an isolated and you say like, what, what do you think that, you know, I don’t mean to be too personal, but like, what are we talking about?
Michael
What kind of range for someone who someone who’s okay to someone who’s like.
Omer
So it depends on how much they want. They’re like each experts give us their availability.
Michael
Right.
Omer
So you can say, okay, I want to take just one engagement Okay. So for one engagement , maybe. You know, and not that a lot of money like hundreds or like a few thousands. For a lot of our engagements, you can make a thousands of dollars a month, or like even tens of thousands a year, if you work a lot.
Jack
And it sounds for the professionals, not the ones at the, at the company, but the outside professionals, that’s kind of found money because you don’t have to go prospect for clients. You don’t have to go out there and hustle up business. You’re on the platform you’re, you’re noticed. And I’d imagine like anything, word spreads.
So if you’re really good at what you’re doing, if you’re really good at coaching somebody to be a better public speaker, you could probably be sought after. And I imagine then you could kind of name your price because everyone realizes, Hey, you know, if Omer is going to be that person teaching entrepreneurship.
You want him as that mentor. You want him as that coach because he’s the guy and it’s worth paying it because you know, you can get results.
Omer
Definitely. And what we say, first of all, you’re absolutely right. Like individuals have a hard time entering B2B. Like it’s hard to get into fortune 500 companies as an expert working with their individuals and you can definitely do it through the platform.
But I think the most value for the experts is that we’re basically, you can think of us like of the platform, like an objective. Because the platform is not biased. Right. And the inputs eventually like your score is based on the actual change that happened in someone’s life observed by their direct manager.
So it’s not biased. And then we see experts on our platform sharing the feedback that they get. This is what I can do. So this is a good validation of the actual impact you can make and not something fluffy. Like, yeah, I’m a good coach because what is a good coach, right? It’s very subjective for someone.
You can be a good coach for somebody. You can be a bad coach, but if consistently people rate you, this individual helped me to become a better leader, to speak publicly better, whatever it may be, then it’s a good validation of your skill.
Jack
So Omer, I also teach, an entrepreneurship course at Harvard. Um, so I can’t help, but like stick in my ideas that I give away because I’m too busy to like, do all the ideas. But, uh, I wanted to just go back a little bit and just intersect a few things I’m seeing. So you talked about digital nomads, adding an interest in what you’re doing. Um, and actually I’ve done so many interviews that were kind of relabling the Great resignation to the great reshuffle cause people really are just moving around.
And then you have these HR managers that are very frustrated that they can’t find the right people, even though there’s lots of people looking for things. Have you ever considered the filling that gap of going to an HR manager or a company that says, Hey, you want to fill this role, but you can’t find those people.
There’s someone that wants that job, but they’re not qualified. And maybe offering a program of, Hey, a lot of people want X job, but you’re missing. Y skills, according to the recruiters. We’ll teach you why and then make you more qualified to do that career switch. Have you seen that as a potential opportunity for maybe another product offering?
Omer
It’s a very interesting one. And we are actually speaking at the moment with a company that like a placement company that we’re like, we want to experience, we really like A/B testing as a thing. Right. Because when you build a startup and you know, Jack, you spoke about the, um, leadership skills management skills, like things that we need to develop.
So, eventually I think the beauty about building a startup is that you don’t have the truth. You do not own the truth, but you can A/B test a lot. So a lot also in our product and the way people basically do business so we A/B test but we don’t know the truth. And this is a great idea. So we definitely are going to examine it, even in a small scale to see if it works.
And we do see some of our customers that are giving our product. to people who were just onboarded because companies onboard people and they just want to improve a specific skill among the specific individuals. And definitely like companies offer that this happens a lot, but placement companies, it’s still new.
Michael
That’s really interesting because like, what I find and hear is the hardest. So it’s a hot job market, you know, here in the U S let’s take it. If it’s kind of 4 million people quitting, so I don’t wanna say each month, but on a regular basis, there are 11 million jobs open. So, so it is hard for businesses to find people. And even with this big gap between the needs, a lot of companies still have, have their fear, their expectations, so high that there’s a mismatch. And so you’ll have people go on 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 interviews. I’m not exaggerating over six months where you would think in a hot market, you just, you know, try to make the best, pluck them up.
But it sounds like what you could do over there. Is that now you can close that gap a little bit because you say, okay, Jack, you know, is pretty good. He has six out of the 10 ingredients, but I got a feeling. If we could get him a coach to do this, and maybe another coach to do this, we could bring them aboard and figure maybe within six months, nine months, he’s, he’s going to be fit for it. And this way you can…. That could be another tool in this war for talent to get people in, as opposed to what now happens, Omer, is I’ll say, yeah, Jacqueline, he has six out of the 10. Let’s keep looking. Let’s keep looking. And then what happens?
You keep looking in the Jack finds another job and he’s out of the picture and you’re still looking and looking and looking and looking and that seat is empty. And then when I find out too, when the seat is that the other people do all the work and then they get ticked off like, wait, why am I doing all the work? And then they’re saying, screw it. I’m going to leave too. I’m going to quit. So it becomes a snowball effect of that’s that’s an interesting piece to it. So it really sounds like part of what you can do. Like, oh, what you are doing is, is, is helping. The whole, you know, attraction recruiting, retention, and, and, and, and muting the attrition because I’d imagined as well, is that if, if, if I worked at a company and they’re, and they’re giving me all this help, I’m going to feel some sort of loyalty.
I mean, like, wow, they’re really, they’ve really taught me a lot. You know, I’ve learned this skill, that skill, the other skill that’s really cool. And, you know, I’m kind of, you know, gracious, you know, I wanna express gratitude. So. So I imagine, is that part of your pitch when you talk to, you know, to companies, because it does seem like something that’s really relevant for this time period.
Omer
So first of all, your second point and I think it’s a. Because again, the core objective is development and it will always be its development. Like we try to offer the best development, then it’s not like things around it, but yes, if you, you know, one of the main reasons for people to stay in the company is if the company is investing in their development, because people want to grow.
This is a top, by the way, we spoke about millennials. This is something millennials want. They look at places. I always looked at places I’ve worked. Like schools, what will develop me the most, not where I will make the most money. So definitely it’s great by- product and we see companies, um, buy GrowthSpace for this reason.
And to your first question, definitely like this is the, just basically what we do, whether if it’s new, just new recruits, where you need to upskill them for. And just, they may improve their skills or new managers who need to step in and become very good managers fast than a lot of our customers are like hypergrowth companies, like tech unicorns and companies like that when you don’t have time and you don’t have the capacity to basically onboard a lot of people. So a lot of people are from being promoted from within. And then when you give them like the right expert, who will help them to do the next leap in their management, in their leadership.
And it’s personalized, it’s about them. It’s someone who really is good at what they do. So definitely helps companies grow and they also recruit.
Jack
So overall, I’m going to ask you a funny question. We’re going to play a little game if you’re, if you’re up for a little game. Sure. So, um, so I’m going to, I’m going to be a prospect.
I’m going to be a potential lead. So my job is I, I work at ABC company and I’m the coach manager. I manage, I manage the coaches that we have. Um, and you’re pitching me and you’re trying to pitch me to outsource everything to you. So I’ve already heard, and I have bought in to the part where you say. All of your coaches are sort of generic.
And we’re going to bring you these micro niche expertise, and you’re going to hop around and get exactly what you need. So we’re going to give you better quality coaching. I buy that. Can you make, how do you make the financial argument that okay. I’m going to dissolve my coaching division and maybe their average salary is, you know, one, one hundred, a hundred and fifty, let’s say a year.
How would you make the financial argument? It would be economically advantageous to me to outsource my whole department to you. Could you make that pitch?
Omer
So, first of all, I will ask you why, like, oh, why do you have a coating department?
Jack
Well, we basically to be specific, this would be for an academic institution with about a thousand undergrads and we basically want to upskill them.
So kind of, you know, get them out of just the pure academic and, and get to really ready for work. So we want to upskill them. So the original idea is, Hey, let’s get a bunch of executive coaches and then I heard about your place that, oh, you get better. Coaches really specified on certain stuff.
Omer
It’s not a, I don’t think they’re better, but I will ask you how many coaches do you have in house?
You know, I would say we would have one coach for 50 students. Okay. 20 about 20 on deck of 20.
So you’re 20, I’m sure that your 20 are great, but you can’t expect the level of precision of 20 versus over a thousand experts, right? First of all, because the thing is, you know, it’s not a one size fits all, and then I can bet that they’re your people can be a great fit for a specific individual, but not for every.
So I will have a hard time to believe that your 20 or specializing in what, like all of, you know, the 1000 or more and needs. So this is number one, number two, sometimes, you know, again, um, I love like I have a coach who helps me with my leadership skills and really I’m a big believer in coaching and naturalyl, but sometimes you don’t need the coach.
Sometimes you just need, okay, you want to go into engineering. You need someone who spent a lifetime career in engineering, who is the CTO, for example, who can talk to you about what it is to become an engineer, because this is what you do. You want to upskill them in order to prepare them for like real life.
Right. For the job market basically. So I would say, okay, so you have 20 coaches, but how many of them are CTOs for real like tech companies? This is number two. Number three, is I will ask you, how do you collect data about their performance?
Uh, yeah, there would probably be just the observational assessments, which I don’t think is the best way to go. What do you do this better? How do you, how do you track the progress when someone is under your wing?
So again, there are two types of observation. I can observe myself in my progress, which is very biased. It’s highly biased because you know,
Michael
I’m doing wonderful. I’m doing great. I’m killing it.
Omer
I’m Steve jobs. And the, the thing is like about them. An anecdote. My mother is a library. And they just had an it course. And she told me it was terrible. Like, eh, the was like, um, someone very old trying to teach them in a very monotonous, say manner, et cetera.
And then came the feedback like surveys. How was the instructor? And then she said, five stars out of five. And then I asked her, why, why did you give him five stars? Because she said it, let him have it. Why should I care? Right. Someone external asks you, I want to help him. He’s a nice person. Eventually he did a terrible job, but I think is great.
So basically self-reporting is biased because a, maybe nothing happened. You hated it, but you want to give someone because you care about like the human being in front of. But it was terrible. And be like you said, maybe I think I’m Steve jobs, but I’m not Steve jobs at all. So the way, the more objective way to see the improvement is basically someone who observes your.
Usually it will be your direct manager now in academics, it’s kind of hard. So I would say that you need that to maybe a pure, like a connect pair, like a peers together. So someone else will be able somewhere else in the objective will be able to monitor your progress. For example, when I’m doing a growth space programs and my partner and the COO Dan is usually observing my.
So he’s not my direct manager, but he sees me in the day to day and he can see, okay. In my communicating gross puss vision, better now to our employees, for example, or not. But it has to be something that is well-defined in the beginning that you know what you want to achieve. It’s not generic. It’s not like I want you to be better, better leader.
What is a better leader, but I can definitely see. For example, you never spoke up in a team meetings and now you started to speak up. I see a behavioral change. I see a progress. Gotcha. And have you found from your longer-
That it was, it was cheaper to outsource it. Have they any notice on that? So I think the economic benefit doesn’t come because the prices are low per hour or something like that. And so basically there are two sides of the equation. One is the value. We spoke about it about the cost. I think what’s, um, when you’re objective driven and you want to create an impact on someone’s behavior, usually what we see in companies is they give them very long coaching.
So, for example, you meet your coach every other week for six months, nine months, et cetera. This is a lot and eventually like, you know, um, Mike, what do you teach?
Michael
Oh, I’m all over the, uh, basically, uh, entrepreneurship and. Uh, positive workplace has had to be happy at work. That’s where the podcast came from.
Omer
Okay. Nevermind. I’ve had, maybe you gave like a economics 101, but in economics one-on-one you basically learn that, you know, the contribution of every marginal unit basically is declining. Right? So I would say like in the first session you get a lot of value the second, less, less, less, less, and then it becomes stagnant. So it’s kind of the same. So what we try to do is basically to find the sweet spot where we optimize your ROI or optimize the benefit, um, in the minimum cost, basically. So our standard model is always. And usually the spring is five sessions. Again, companies customize it, but like the go-to would be five sessions.
So I would say it’s much more economic compared to what you do, because it’s just, it’s very focused. It’s a sprint. It’s five sessions. And we’ve proved through data that with five sessions you get eventually overall big numbers, the highest ROI.
Michael
Gotcha. And I imagine the company feels more comfortable with that because then they probably worry about. This is going to go on forever. You know, Jack and Mike to keep having these coaches for years and the, and the cost build up. So this way you can imagine your expectations. No, we can. We’re going to do a sprint. We’re not going to drag this out now.
Jack
Also, Mike just out of curiosity, do they do this in, in, in the university setting, you know, to have that like bootcamp for particularly live a bootcamp for kids who maybe are graduating or you know, the year before they’re going to graduate to kind of teach them like we were talking about in your class yesterday, like real world stuff.
Michael
The reason I’m asking all these pointed questions to Omer is that, uh, I’m under consideration for leading that program. It’s brand new. What we want to do is take in freshmen from 135 different countries and coach them for four years. So they’re always going to have someone. Looking out over them, but I’m thinking that it makes a lot more sense to send them to these micro niched experts. And then, and send them home, like, okay, you’re out for five days to get sales or out for five days for public speaking.
And it seems to make more sense because it doesn’t make logical sense if they get assigned, you know, coach Betty, that coach, Betty’s going to be able to do all of that. She could probably Google it and do an okay job, but it’s not going to be the best possible job. So I see the money coming out the other end, not, not the savings on the coaches end, but the students getting higher starting salaries, uh, because they, they truly are highly skilled when they walk out.
So that’s where this is coming from. It’s, it’s a new program we’re thinking of, well, actually it’s a new program we’re doing, and I’m just thinking the best way to execute. It is kind of the micro-niche thing. It just makes more common sense to me.
Omer
Um, you know what I would love to AB test again, the customers do not buy it. I said it to Jack in our last interview. If you can’t A/B test it don’t buy it. And this is like, I want to help you eventually to get to the truth. And you know what I say makes sense, right? Like these what you call micronations or ecologists specialization. Right? It makes sense.
Like I’m not good at anything. I’m good at some things. And you’re good. And Jack is good, but it’s not like the same thing. It’s not specific, but do not take my word. A/B test it, divide your people into two groups. One of them uses GrowthSpace. The other one use, whatever. You do see how much money you spend.
See eventually our data landing jobs seller is et cetera. And if we win, if your test basically of the test group versus, um, like, uh, the experiment group. And so if we win, then just, uh, you know, deploy it. And if not, don’t.
Michael
I love it. I’m game for an experiment and I’m looking at the clock and I see we blew way past our time. Yeah, this is great. Thank you. It’s really, the customer got a new customer, right? This is awesome.
Jack
So, so yeah, it’s it’s to what I, what I’m hearing with. I think it’s such a really great platform that you have because it’s, it empowers workers. It helps them learn. It shows that they’re appreciated. It can grow within the organization.
Yes. You might risk them moving on after they get those skills, but that’s, that’s the risk you take, but hopefully they stay. And then I think for the other cohort, the ones who are offering these services, that’s kind of a neat deal. You know, they don’t have to have to hustle a business. To a two-sided platform, really?
That benefits both. So this is great. And I’m, and I’m glad you’re able to speak to the LinkedIn folks because that’s exactly the people who are interested in this, like, What do I do? They can go to their boss and say, Hey, you know what? I do need some help. Maybe you could kind of, you know, check out Omer and see if you could help me out here.
Or there might be there’s lots of coaches and recruiters and all those folks and say, huh, this is pretty neat. So this is what’s cool about it then. Well, we try to do is, is just help people and bring things up to their attention. And, and I think you offer a really useful, you know, productive tool that could benefit so many people. So I’m glad that you took the time to share it with us on our, thank you. Thank you so much.
Michael
I think you’re doing some really interesting things. I love the idea. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you very much. And uh, and they, Hey, let me know when you get like whatever the new stuff is. Let me know and we’ll have you back on. Yeah, we really here, we can set them another one, which very, yeah, this was a very focused on the one-on-one, which is brilliant.
Omer
I love one-on-one. I love personalization, but let’s catch it on the other one for the next one.
Jack
Cause I know there are other things you want to talk about, but you know how it is.
Sometimes the conversation goes and you just try to digest. Nobody is sometimes you want to digest it. When it, instead of going to all over the place, you kind of really understand it. So the people who are watching it, you can kind of really dive, okay, this is what it is. And then yeah, gladly come back and then we could talk about some of the other things as well.
Yeah. Any, any final thoughts or anything that we missed that you wanted to share with the audience today?
Omer
Going back to the beginning, you asked me about you know, leadership skills what’s important, right? So first of all, growth is important, really like focused on your growth, focus on whatever will help you to take the next step to where you want to add.
But I think the other thing is that, you know, even for the more experienced of us, like the, both of you, you know, beginner’s mindset, I think beginner’s mindset is basically the next leadership trait because the world is changing and it’s changing so fast and you have to be agile and you need to adapt.
So the less you think, you know, and the more like question marks you put instead of. Definitely and you know, definitely answers. I know this is my experience, et cetera. I think eventually you will be able, like the more flexible you are to able to get to better results. So more questions, less answers.
Michael
Perfect. Excellent.
Thank you so much. Thanks for coming out and we’ll see, we’ll see you soon.
