Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm your host, Eric Hudson. Welcome to the Essential Dynamics podcast. In the Essential Dynamics podcast, we explore the concepts of essential dynamics, a framework for thinking that I've been developing. And, we enjoy having deep conversations with, interesting people.
Derek:In season three of the podcast, we're focused on focusing on helping leaders of organizations, get unstuck, get clear on their challenges and their opportunities, and to help them with their quest. Today, I'm really excited to have, a friend, a colleague with me, Chris LaBossiere who is an Edmonton, entrepreneur who's been involved in a number of different ventures and, has all kinds of great stories. So, Chris, welcome to the show, and thanks for coming.
Chris:Thank you, Derek. I'm I'm excited to, well, anytime I get a chance to chat with you about these kind of big, you know, fun, interesting conversations, may maybe not always for everybody, but for entrepreneurs or for, you know, owners of, operational, you know, companies like ours. It's it's always fun to, you know, talk to, somebody about the kind of big stuff you don't often think about every day in your business. You don't get the chance to think about. So Yeah.
Derek:And as you know, I like asking questions about those about those big things. And, recognizing that, you and I have a have a consultant client relationship, I'm not gonna ask you to share your secret stuff, but you can share whatever you want with the community about what you're doing and then we'll we'll have a conversation about that. So so Chris, I think the first, first question that I I'd just like to ask you is could you just give us just a bit of a profile of, what you're doing now and how you got there with respect to the, ventures that you've been involved in?
Chris:Sure. You know, I'll probably use, our we we have a investment business that was created after the divestiture one of our one of our companies, in 2020. And and, you know, so we're involved in a number of operating businesses. But the biggest one in our portfolio, which we have total control of essentially, and I'm the CEO of is, well, how I'll probably refer to a lot of the things we talked about today because it's certainly the one that, you know, required the most thought, needed the most thinking, your guide you know, guidance and, you know, and and assistance, was important in helping along the way. And so that that's a company called Ouino Training.
Chris:It was formerly part of a bigger company called Yardstick Testing and Training. We essentially started as a software application that, allowed people to deliver exams online, so kind of multiple choice, you know, at its origin exams. Good is going back twenty years now, and that original software is developed. That evolved in in about, you know, since to the point we sold it, from about 02/2015 to 02/2020, into the largest testing company in software and test administration, which became like we were involved in delivering exams. We had psychometric consultants on staff, about 10 people, I think, with PhDs that, assisted organizations, primarily regulators or a level of government, in developing assessments and exams and managing their exam programs.
Chris:We sold the exam business in 2020, to an American strategic acquirer, and we kept the online training part of that business. It was roughly it was roughly two halves, in terms of size, and, what then became We Know Training, which was just a rebrand, which was necessary in that transaction. And and we now provide, online training, essentially, at its core, on top of our technology, which is designed to essentially, you know, serve, you know, online training audiences, primarily external online trained audiences, and that'd be for regulators, government, associations. And those are our customers in this case, so we'll deliver alcohol and server training for the government of BC. And you don't you don't see us there at all.
Chris:It's it's just us actually doing all of that facilitating it in our on top of our technology and us building the content and stuff of that nature. And that's about 25, 30 percent of our business, and the rest would be where we own the brands. And, that would be everything from health and safety training under a brand we acquired in 2016 called Danatech, which has grown, you know, fairly significantly in terms of the number of titles and training, programs that we deliver, finance insurance, real estate, mortgage training, and that kind of, professional and financial services realm. We have, a company called Business Career College. We do we do work with, cannabis and alcohol training where we own the content.
Chris:We run the cannabis training program for retail workers in Ontario under a brand called Cancel, Guard Academy, Rello, a new real estate online real estate school we developed. So yeah, at its core, it's it is training business first and foremost where we have content that meets the standard, and that what that's what makes it different than your normal online training for inside your company. This is training that you have to take generally to comply with the regulation or to become licensed or to maintain your license, like continuing education, or to maintain a credential or a certification. So regulated industries, online training, but we have an a unique approach in that we have our own technology that's kind of like a Shopify. So when we refer to our training websites, we call them storefronts, and we operate hundreds of storefronts that sell online training on top of our tech.
Chris:And so it's a very much a tech enabled training business that focuses on regulated industries.
Derek:So, you said, Rello was one of your new ones, and I've seen those billboards up around in Alberta. And so you have a digital storefront, but you advertise in other ways to get people to your digital storefronts. And then, one of the things I think that I understand from what you're saying is a lot of times the courses that people take give them access to, new professions or advancement in the in the careers that they're they have.
Chris:Yeah. Most of so you kinda have the big categories would be licensure training. So that's training that's required to get a license. So some professions are regulated to buy a license. So, you know, obvious ones would be medical professions and, real estate.
Chris:And if you wanna sell insurance or financial products, you know, that that would be an example of a licensure. And then you have credentialing organizations, which are generally the same principle, but just not as much regulated by the government or a regulator or a college or a royal college. Credentialing organizations could be associations. They can be organizations that that exist just to to create that designation or credential. And so you'd be familiar with that as a, you know, as a CPA or a, you know, certified financial planner.
Chris:You know, maybe, you know, in almost virtually every industry, there's, and everything from, like those are professions we might readily know. And then you have things like, you know, industry trade associations around door people that install commercial doors. Will they have programs to ultimately improve, the quality of the product or service being delivered at a higher standard? And and so, generally, that's why a lot of associations exist, is to protect the standard of the industry that that they're in. So, it's, if the community doesn't often see this layer of, training and education and certification that goes in, and it's that's around them everywhere.
Chris:It's everything from restaurant businesses to IT shops. But it's a very, very, a very, very large market internationally and, and very important one because, obviously, we're we're helping people, you know, attain and meet a higher standard when it comes to delivering professional products and services to their industry.
Derek:So we all benefit from, qualified people on the other end of a of a transaction or the other end of a jackhammer or anything in between. Right?
Chris:Yeah. A %. And, obviously, health and safety, we we we deliver hundreds of thousands of safety training programs a year. I mean, the the direct benefit, of course, there is that you send people home to their families at the end of the day. You know, if they practice their work safely and and for industry and for just society and community in general, that that's why these these matter.
Derek:That's pretty cool. So a lot of times we hear about, acquisitions and mergers where there's some kind of integration that either happens or doesn't happen and the strategic objectives of the merger, might not happen because you can't actually put two organizations together very easily. You've done the opposite. So you had a yardstick and you took it apart and were left with a part. What were some of the things that were interesting about creating an organization that was previously integrated into another organization?
Chris:Well, you know, it's it's, it's the opposite of a merger as you can as you can imagine, as you explained. It it it, you know, it comes with, sometimes the opposite effect. Now you you have to take it into consideration and and in context of why we had to do it. You know? You have you have this two headed beast that you know, that's constantly pulling you in two directions.
Chris:And, you know, so we struggled with that for many years. And and and, you you know, when you're growing and and YardStreet grew quite rapidly and, you know, probably an average about 25 to 30% annualized kinda compounded annualized growth rate. That that so that growth covers a lot of problems, and you can you can become a complacent. But every day, you still have this struggle of, are we a testing company? Are we, you know, focused on exam delivery testing and, you know, dealing primarily with regulators, or are we an online training company?
Chris:And those are very, very different markets. Now we we were smart enough to be able to recognize that and make that decision and separate the businesses, a little bit before we actually sold it. So we saw this trajectory, and we realized but, you know, the effect it has on everything from, you know, asset allocation, resource allocation like capital and, you know, what should what ideas should you invest in, which new products should you build, or in our case, software features that were required by each of those kind of use cases, they're very different. It was pretty evident, probably five years, up to five years at least, maybe ten before we we ultimately made the decision to sell one that neither will be as successful as it could be if you kinda have to share, how much attention you give them. And, so that was the rationale.
Chris:After the fact, you you do that, you get end up with a, you know, a kind of an overhang, I guess, of, things like overhead, you know, I IT and technology, so platform. Some of these things that were, you know, designed to serve two purposes, it it actually takes a significant amount of focus and work to clean it all off and only have on, you know, the if you wanna if you wanna call the business, you know, a a vehicle, we we had to get all the like, I would use an air prod analogy or an airplane analogy. We had to get the ice off the wings. You know? Ice builds up over time.
Chris:And your effectiveness, your ability to climb or fly, you know, can be can be affected. And so over time, you gotta kinda go back and clean everything up again and get it into a much at least a much more focused and a much ideally, hopefully, much more elegant organizational structure and stuff like that. You know, we we and then the literally, with a month after we sold the testing business, COVID hit, which, was a real blessing to that business, which luckily we were we were still shareholders not to some degree. But, you know, it affected our training business and kinda like everyone else that was affected by that. It kinda threw on its head what, you know, what were the immediate drivers, which were the products that we're gonna just not sell for a while, which ones kind of exploded.
Chris:And, and so we had a we had that valley that we walked through for a while. It was awfully awfully challenging. We had a lot of extra overhead. We had, lack of clarity and focus on the company we wanted to be. We still had all these, parts of the company we were.
Chris:And, you know, so it really probably took a year and a half, two years to get to where we are now, and and, you know, you've been integral to helping us, you know, kinda certainly gather focus and clarity.
Derek:Well, we'll we'll get to to that part in a second. I just wanna go back to one thing you said, and you said that, you you when you were operating the two businesses testing and training, you had you had to allocate your attention between them. And that and that was limiting both of them. And one of the things that we we talk about a lot on this podcast in the central dynamics is that, management attention is one of the core resources of an organization and there's only so much and you really can't make more. Right?
Derek:Like you can add to your executive team, but then it takes supervision if you have a 20 person executive team. So you can't just add capacity. So using and allocating your management attention is very important. So one of the things that you did, just as an example to, you know, other listeners is you cleaned up your business by saying, these parts operate together and these parts operate together and they're splitting our attention. So we're gonna focus on one and let someone else focus on another.
Derek:And I think that's that's pretty significant. So So you have this new business that you're trying to get all the pieces together. And, you know, I have opportunity to talk to you about that at some point. And we come up with this concept, which we've talked about on on the podcast before of a business model or as we like to call it, a value creation system. What what was the process like for you to have it in your head and then have it in front of your team?
Derek:Like, maybe not. We don't need to necessarily jump into how you did it.
Derek:We can talk about that in a bit, but but
Derek:what was different for you when your team understood the business model compared to when it was all in your head?
Chris:Well, I I you know, it's it's in virtually every entrepreneur's head, it would be fairly clear what they're trying to accomplish with their idea, you know, I think regardless of that idea. And then, you know, we rely on everything, you know, human's ability to communicate, time, distraction, and other things. And sometimes that message just it doesn't transcend through an organization, even from one layer to the next. So as a CEO, you know, I suppose part of my role big part of my role is obviously is, you know, the vision and communicating it to folks. And, and I struggled because we have a complex model.
Chris:You know, so we we're a house of brands, if you will. We have, you know, safety training, and the next next thing over here, we have real estate training. And, and you you know, in in each of those industries from at least from an education perspective, those are typically served by individual organizations that only focus on that subject matter expert as our subject matter. And that's really, really good for us because that's part of our consolidation strategy. We can find these really smart, great schools that teach certain things that have online training, you know, either it's it's a it's a great way to get in, you know, to to scale their business, but they don't have the capital to invest in on that training infrastructure.
Chris:Or they do, but they don't have the capital or the will to, you know, to diversify their offering. And so you have these small mom and pops that are generally very good educators. So to me, that whole model has been clear. What was missing was, you know, what's a business model? You know, I mean, it's a guess it's it's it's a way to, to structure and describe, what you do.
Chris:It's, it's a way to report on how you do and how you're performing, in terms of management information. And and so it was it was always in my head why we could build this, and and this is a really important part of this, this scalable thing. I I didn't want it to be, you know, I didn't want it to be six stand alone brands that have their own technology, their own financial department, their own, even sales and marketing. Like, we really felt strongly that we could have these support operations as we call them now, that can support, you know, unlimited or at least it'd be agnostic to what type of train delivery is being delivered. But the customer, they aggregate around the topics.
Chris:So what I mean by that is the real estate industry, people that wanna get a real estate license, you know, generally, that is a community. It's regulated by a real estate regulator. There's real estate associations. There's other schools that are typically real estate schools. So we had to learn how to be able to be you know, to present our value to the those industries in a way that they understand.
Chris:It's a brand that understands. It's in their words their industry's words of voice. But I wanted to build this scalable business. And, there's a few models, sorry. There's a few companies in North America that'll be here trying to emulate.
Chris:And, if it was in my head, I could explain it, but I can't be in every room. You know, when you hire, you know, like, even just the next level in an organization, so let's say a director of sales, and they're leading salespeople across all these different verticals, it gets hard for they're put in a position immediately to have to you know, how do you prioritize each of these different things? And so it's it's basically creating a model where we track, you know, where certain costs are, where you know, how revenue is recorded, cost of goods, and this value creation model that, you know, that that we that we basically designed, just allowed me to now make it a training product as opposed to, you know, for people to guess what it means and then interpret that when they go and run their department or run their part of the business. So so it's just it's really it's kinda like a blueprint for a house that I knew exactly what the house would look like, but I I just couldn't get a blueprint spit out of my mouth, and and that blueprint has to, you know, do everything, provide in a you know, provide guidance on your financial chart of accounts to, you know, hopefully, tracking metrics, like financial metrics or impact or performance.
Chris:You know, we have a dual purpose organizations as you're well aware, and one is it's not just about financial sustainability. It's also about, about, learning impact, like making a true difference in the in the lives of the people that take our training. So so once we got that model figured out, we could figure out everything else, our organizational structure. We could figure out, training requirements, obviously, management systems that we need to run our business.
Derek:I I wanna grab on to that dual purpose organization for a second and, let her let's take our listeners back to some very early episodes when we talked about purpose x and purpose y. So you guys have run with that. And, tell me about the two purposes again and just elaborate on those and maybe how that helps you make good decisions in your organization.
Chris:Sure. Well, the first one is probably most obvious and most evident. I mean, we are here to, you know, to to build a sustainable company, financially that, you know, generates the margins it needs to to reinvest in new content, new product areas, and and, and or new, you know, product features like software development or market development through our BD activities. So so financial sustainability is the key. Like, obviously, it's a key in virtually any entity for profit or not.
Chris:I think it it does need to be able to be sustained. So that was the first that is our you know, definitely one of our purposes. But when we try to, you know, key back to why we exist and why we're here, then it's not about financial sustainability. It's really about, you know, making a difference in people's lives with the training. And and because we're in the industries that are primarily regulated or fall under regulation, this training matters.
Chris:And so I like to I like to use those terms. Now, you know, we focus and help, you know, deliver training that matters. And what we mean by that is obviously protecting the public, you know, the things that, you know, training can make a difference for in terms of how a profession serves their customers or their industry. So that, you know, that second purpose is really about, you know, impact. And, you can't you I just don't believe you can be financially sustainable if the product that you deliver doesn't meet a bigger purpose or a higher purpose.
Chris:And in this case, for us, that's, that's making a difference in people's lives. They wanna better themselves in their career. We wanna avoid a serious incident or fatality in the workplace. The the public wants to protect, citizens in a real estate transaction or in an alcohol or drug situation where there's, you know, inherent, risks to the community. So it's it's really that's our first purpose.
Chris:And and if we do that well, obviously, it should drive us towards a more financially sustainable entity.
Derek:So those, there are trade offs to that from time to time, things like pricing or how much effort you put into putting material together and stuff like that. But they're guided, by trying to accomplish both of these things. And, is that something that always comes to you? Or is down up and down the line, people can use the model and the purposes to make, you know, what what are good decisions on both sides?
Chris:You know, I I'd be honest and say that I I didn't look at our, you know, impact purpose as often as necessary. And and what I've noticed is in the in the in the real widespread adoption of us talking about that, that we have some real champions of our organization naturally who are very passionate about that because that's why people come to work. It's you know, It's not always and, generally, you can find an income almost anywhere. So so the impact in in our core purpose of, training that matters is, is a big thing, and I see it now regularly when we you know, we're balancing the how much to invest versus the quality and the outcome and and always wanting to have, you know, the highest impact possible. You know?
Chris:And and so and that's why we choose to be in regulated industries. Like, obviously, we could be in, like, soft skills training programs that are unregulated, and there'd be no scrutiny on, you know, the competency framework for that training or the, you know, what does success look like in terms of measurable outcomes. And, but we didn't wanna be that. We wanna be in a highly scrutinized, highly regulated, you know, I'd call it important, sectors because, we're prepared for that. And partly because in our DNA, when we were a testing company, we tested for that.
Chris:So, you know, in regulated industries, you you take your training from, you know, approved or accredited educators, and then you go and you write an exam. And that's generally facilitated by the regulator, by government. So we're very comfortable in that world, and we believe in it. And we think that the world's gonna become more regulated over over less regulated, as time goes on. And for us, it was a perfect alignment of what our actual impact was.
Chris:We wanna train people well, and we wanted to make an effect or have an effect on their lives, but also serves the needs of the industries we work in. You know? So we swim towards the highest standard. We we we're we're pushing constantly in every one of our sectors, for more and more standard and whatever that means. So, like, obviously, trying to prevent online training fraud, low quality content, you know, stuff that doesn't have an impact.
Chris:You know, the click and complete check, you you know, check the box that I got my training, but I I don't or I had you know, I got my nephew to do my boat license because I I really didn't wanna take the four hours it did to do that. And so we we do everything we do to prevent those types of things, which ultimately, you know, could dilute the effectiveness of the training and and and ultimately up heed what the intent of the the regulated industry is.
Derek:One of the things we talked about on the show a lot is, individuals having a sense of purpose that aligns with their organization and how much easier it is when people are motivated to, sort of adjust and coordinate line things up rather than to try and get people to do stuff they're not inclined to do. So so it sounds like you have a lot of people in your organization who really identify with that, make the world better purpose, that impact purpose that you have.
Chris:Yeah. And and, you know, specifically, the business model and the systems we've been able to develop since that model has been identified, we always look at both those things. So we can measure, financial impact, and we can measure learner impact literally with real data that we can track on a day to day basis in real time. Aggregate that. We could have a, you know, kinda red, yellow, green light, in our organization for both those things.
Chris:And we just wanna keep the green light at all times. Like, we're not we're trying to be, you know, not not have financial on sustainability because we've got the world's best training that nobody can afford to buy, or vice versa, of course. You know, it's one thing to be financially profitable, but if you're selling crap, you know, that's not sustainable. So we we we have really engineered now it's it's a long process, and it's nowhere nowhere we're no long far along as that helps to be, but we're certainly engineering all of these abilities for us to now, measure if our model's successful or not in real time. And that that was that was ultimately what I really wanted more than anything.
Derek:So so, Chris, we're just about time. I wanna run over a couple of minutes because there's one other thing I wanna put together, close off, and that is that you you used the word scalable. And you said, if we have our systems in place, if we have that model defined, then we're more scalable. And, so that that's, I guess, the other way to improve your impact is just to do more and more places. And so you've built a machine that allows you to do that.
Derek:Is that right?
Chris:Yeah. So and, again, I didn't have the words for it, but I think you and I, when we were going through this and you were guiding me and and, you know, I guess, putting my thoughts to paper, and the constraint analysis that you did. So I wasn't familiar with that as a management's, you know, technique or but but when it it became so evident that our constraint was not our technology, so technology enables almost infinite amount of scaling in terms of servers and one we're selling ones and zeros over the Internet. So that that was not a constraint, and our constraint was really about our business development, our ability to go to market and and, and either having to invest in our own content or partner or, acquire. In in in our case, we've done some tuck in acquisition.
Chris:And when it became evident, that was our constraint. The whole organization can start to realize, well, that should be where we focus the vast majority of our efforts. Perfect. What are you know, those things that allow us to scale, so our platform and our technology and our management systems, but invest heavily in where we, where we do have a constraint, which would just be capacity and business development, sales, marketing. And, and that's definitely starting to pay off, and that that just just having that understanding allowed our whole organization to know what to focus on and what not to focus on.
Derek:Chris, this has been fantastic. There's so much more we could talk about, but we're out of time. And I think you made the case for that kind of thoughtful examination of your business model and putting it together in a way that makes sense for your organization and it's unique every place. So I'm really excited with what you're doing and, like to have a conversation again. But I think we're going to move to another topic next time.
Derek:So we'll see what we come up with. Great. So Chris, thanks very much. Bryn, thanks to Bryn Griffiths for making this recording possible. And I would just like to say to everyone, check us out at getunconstrained.com.
Derek:And don't forget, consider your quest.
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