CEO Campfire Chat: Recent Episodes
Rob Ristagno
Recorded before a live audience of leading executives, CEO Campfire Chat teaches you how to accelerate your revenue growth by learning from others who have been there. CEOs of mid-size companies share the inside story behind strategies and actions that drove substantial growth. If you’re an executive of a middle-market, PE-backed company and need proven processes and strategies to reliably grow your revenue now, within your limited time and resources, this is the show for you.
CSR and DEI initiatives are top-of-mind for many leaders these days. Some think of them as boxes that need to be ticked. But Joseph Fung, CEO and co-founder at Uvaro, sees them as much more than that. Not only is he passionate about CSR and DEI initiatives because they’re the right thing to do—he’s found that they’re also good for business. He shares how embracing socially-conscious business practices has changed Uvaro for the better.
Even an organization with a fantastic product and innovative features will struggle to gain traction without a clear and compelling vision to guide it. Matthew Scullion, co-founder and CEO of Matillion, discusses how a clear vision helped transform the organization from scrappy startup to industry-leading brand.
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There’s often tension between the sales and marketing teams in large organizations. Becca Apfelstadt, CEO and co-founder of the treetree agency, works with B2B giants to unite the two groups and help them achieve the organization's goals. She shares how she gets everyone on the same page.
Greg Alexander successfully sold his consulting firm in 2017 and now helps other founders grow, scale, and exit their businesses through his membership program, Collective 54. He shares what he learned about building a service-based business and why it requires a different approach than product-based sales.
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Kaarel Kotkas, founder and CEO of Veriff, dreams of becoming the global leader in identity verification. He and the team have made great strides in Europe, but as they expand, they must build trust in each new market with governments, regulators, brands, and individuals. How do they do it? Kaarel shares on this episode.
Every business has data they can learn from, but many leaders struggle to synthesize that data and create actionable learnings the whole team can rally behind. Experienced CEO Kermit Randa shares how he removes data from the academic realm, transforming it into something that drives business decisions and growth.
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Professional services organizations, including law firms, are not always known for explicitly focusing on the customer experience. However, when Devin Miller founded his IP attorney’s office, helping startups navigate intellectual property law, he was intent on bucking that industry trend. Hear from him how he scales efficiently while keeping a focus on great service.
Everyone wants a viral marketing campaign, but creating one is far easier said than done. Daniel Stone and Lou Montemayor, co-founders of Bandolier Media, have developed a reputation for possessing the kind of creativity, humor, and heart that results in the creation of content that demands attention. They share their approach in this episode.
Billy Libby, CEO of Upper90, believes founders should hold the greatest portion of equity in their companies. But with the current VC model, many lose valuable equity in early rounds in exchange for necessary growth capital. Hear from Billy about the innovative model he’s developed to help startups delay their series A round and retain a greater portion of equity.
Professional services firms are essentially run on the premise of selling access to your team’s time and expertise. So when it comes time to scale, how do you do it without loading everyone down with endless work? Tom Barry, Managing Partner of GHJ Advisors, shares the four levers his team relies on to fuel growth.
The consumer packaged goods space is notoriously difficult to break into. But Colin Darretta and the team at Innovation Department have formulated a repeatable process for starting, launching, and growing CPG wellness brands. With three CPG companies already in their expanding portfolio, Colin shares their recipe for success.
Sharon Love, President and CEO of Community Brands, manages dozens of brands and a team of thousands spanning the globe. That’s a lot of complexity, but Sharon finds that focusing on basic tenets—like listening to employees, creating commonsense sales incentives, and letting each brand lean into their unique superpowers—keeps things surprisingly simple.
Many organizations claim to support innovation, but what happens when a fledgling company begins to grow within an enterprise business? Terry Jones, founder of both Travelocity and Kayak, shares the difference between his experience with intrapreneurship at Travelocity— the organization began within American Airlines—and more traditional entrepreneurship with Kayak.
David Kinsley became president of the family business, The Kinsley Group, 12 years ago. In that time, he’s grown the organization six and a half times over. He shares how having a company culture focused on compassion and empathy—for customers, employees, and the planet—has driven this success.
Bryan Clayton was already a landscaping pro when he decided to found GreenPal to solve a problem he saw in the industry. He shares how listening closely to customers enabled him to build a blossoming platform that connects lawn care providers with homeowners across the US.
David Friend is a serial entrepreneur who’s successfully launched and sold five companies. He now runs his sixth, Wasabi, a hot cloud storage business looking to take on Amazon and Google. David shares how he goes about building a trusted brand that’s well-positioned to challenge household names.
Nancy Ham, CEO of WebPT, is no stranger to disruption. The physical therapy industry, which her organization serves, has seen tremendous change over the last decade. COVID added yet another wave of rapid shifts. Through it all, Nancy has developed a method for remaining agile and fostering innovation.
Businesses solve a problem for a specific audience. But many leaders make the mistake of identifying symptoms rather than the root cause. John Campbell, CEO of Cambium Learning Group, shares how his organization drills down to find underlying pain points for students and teachers and develops new platforms to address those core needs.
Zvia Schoenberg is passionate about education. She credits her interest in the field to her own experience as a student in Philadelphia at one of the oldest public high schools in the country. After earning a JD from NYU, she knew immediately she wanted to use it to make the educational experience more equitable for all students.
Zvia began doing pro bono work with charter schools, and it was there that she first noticed parallels between the world of charter schools and startups. Establishing a charter school is about identifying the need and market. From there, you need to sell your stakeholders—both government agencies and parents in the area—on the benefits of your school. Why your charter school over all other institutions?
She now takes what she saw working with charter schools and applies those learnings as the CEO of A-List Education, a test-prep and advisory company for school systems and individual families.
This dual business model is unique, and it allows A-List Education to reach even more students. Through its private tutoring services, it works with children whose families have the means to hire a tutor. Through its partnerships with school systems, students access its tutoring and advisory services at no charge to them.
Because A-List Education has a number of stakeholders and customer segments, listening to all of these parties is incredibly important.
Zvia and her team have spent time defining the different personas they serve. On the institutional side, they serve both individual schools and entire districts. Some of these clients need only access to test prep materials, while others turn to A-List Education for comprehensive support, including access to teachers and help administering tests. Listening to each type of customer allows the A-List Education team to understand their needs and develop products and offerings to meet them.
On the private-pay tutoring side, Zvia is very focused on listening to parents and tapping into their networks to build referrals. The business is referral-heavy; A-List often stays in touch with involved parents to expand its reach to other parents in their networks. A strong referral business is only possible when you know your customer intimately and continue to evolve to serve their changing needs.
What’s next for Zvia and the A-List team? In the coming years, the focus will be on expansion into adjacent markets. Zvia wants to offer test prep services and tutoring support for other stages of the educational journey. She wants to remain in touch with happy high school student customers as they move onto college and more advanced degrees and continue to offer them tutoring services.
Zvia will continue to rely on listening as she looks for new ways to grow the business. By listening to the needs of her customers and understanding how they grow and evolve, A-List Education can continue to help students achieve success at each stage of their educational journey.
Episode Transcript Rob Ristagno: Today we hear from a first-time CEO of a college test prep and advising business. And although it's her first time leading an organization, she's a veteran in the education space. Hear how she's taken her deep industry knowledge and combined that with her skill for listening to customer needs in order to build a successful organization that's primed to expand into new markets.
Announcer: This is the CEO Campfire Chat with your host, Rob Ristagno. Taped in front of a live studio audience, join us to hear successful growth stories from middle-market companies just like yours. Sponsored by the Sterling Woods Group.
Rob Ristagno: Welcome to the CEO Campfire Chat recorded live in front of a studio audience of senior executives. I'm your host, Rob Ristagno and have the privilege of introducing you to Zvia Schoenberg, the CEO of A-List Education, which is an organization dedicated to improving student performance and supporting schools when it comes to things like exam prep and college admissions. Zvia is a true leader in education; she has served on the management team for several different charter schools, the New York City Department of Education, and various ed-tech companies such as Kinvolved. Welcome, Zvia.
Zvia Schoenberg: Thank you so much, Rob, for having me.
Rob Ristagno: All right. So a long track record here in the education space must be some passion behind it. Tell us a little bit about how you first got interested in the world of education.
Zvia Schoenberg: Sure. Happy to start at the beginning. And I think it all started in my high school. I attended a school in Philadelphia called Central High School, one of the oldest public high schools in the country. And I attended in the 1980s at peak integration, which means like around the country that was the peak time when our schools were integrated. And I had a really positive experience, but years later, after I completed law school, I was looking around and I realized things devolved a little, they weren't as integrated as they were in my little enclave, right?
Zvia Schoenberg: And I saw what New York City looked like, where I was living at the time, and I realized that my experience wasn't everybody's experience and I wanted to do something meaningful with my law degree. I never viewed myself as just going to law school to be a lawyer. I wanted to go to law school then change the world, right? And fortunately, my law firm had a pro bono program, and we ended up working with the first charter school to open in New York State.
Rob Ristagno: What was that like?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah, that was great. We represented them pro bono and it was literally the first, so we were charting a new course and it was super exciting and I felt like I could really dig my teeth into this.
Rob Ristagno: All right. So you got started on the legal path in the education world, but then you've transitioned over to the business part. So tell us a little bit about how that evolved.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. Like I said, I never really wanted to just be a lawyer I wanted to do something. Like, a legal degree was a tool to do something. But then I had to figure out what I was doing with that. So I was always motivated by this education issue and it was just a path to get stuff done. So I did spend the first ten years being a lawyer. And a lot of that was with the department of ed and with schools and the district in the City of New York, but I realized that working with a charter school is a lot like working with a startup. We started schools and ed-tech was big back then, it was new, newer, at least. And I transitioned and I moved to the business side and I built up a story around the parallels which I really believe were true and made the switch.
Rob Ristagno: Nice. Tell us some of those parallels between charter schools and entrepreneurship in the business world.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah, sure. First of all, identifying the need, identifying your market.
Rob Ristagno: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Zvia Schoenberg: That was important for both, right? There's a lot of charter schools already, fewer back then, but why do we need another one? Why is this one going to be different? Knowing your customers, persuading them that your product or your school is going to be a good choice for their children or is even going to be something that they're going to want to consider and then considering the needs of the local community and the government who's going to fund you, AKA the payer. So who's the payer for the product, right? It's either a customer or a state or a government entity. So all of those were pretty consistent, I thought, and listening and understanding your customer to me is the biggest driver.
Rob Ristagno: Excellent. We'll come back to all those points when we talk about A-List Education, but now it's clear to me what you meant by the similar experience there. And I see a lot of parallels. So actually speaking of A-List Education, why don't you tell us a little bit about the company itself, what the mission is and what your business model looks like?
Zvia Schoenberg: So we are all about putting young people in the best position to fill their long-term education and career goals, whatever those goals might be, right? So how we do this is help them win on game day. And typically for us, that's standardized tests--SAT, ACT--it could be a state test, like the regions. We do, do some academic tutoring, but mostly it's these standardized tests which are so meaningful. Like, they can be more meaningful than four years of high school. It's really crazy, but that's our opportunity, is you can help them succeed on that one day in that point in time.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. Got you. And diverting a little away from the company itself, we see a lot during COVID some of these standardized tests have been canceled or shortened or abbreviated, what's your assessment to the extent that you have a crystal ball, is this a big change, or is this a temporary change, or will there be a new model that emerges? What are some of your thoughts there?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah, I liked the word assessment, was that a pun intended?
Rob Ristagno: That's as good as your chart new course with the charter school upon I caught earlier but...
Zvia Schoenberg: I do think these changes are here to stay, I do. I think there are a lot of changes in education that are here to stay. That said, I do think there's always going to be gates and gatekeepers and there's always going to be a need for a filter. There's a limited number of opportunities, whether you're looking at college seats, high school seats, even playing on a team, a team sport, not everyone gets to participate, right? And so how are those choices made? They could be made by a computer, by an algorithm, they could be made by standardized tests, there's a lot of pathways. So, yes, I do think there's going to be change, but I do think that there's going to be a system always in place and that we need to remain the experts so that we can be relied on for how do we do our best in this system, whatever the system is?
Rob Ristagno: Another example, just listen to your customer, understanding your community and evolving alongside of it.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. Exactly.
Rob Ristagno: So back to A-List Education, tell us a little bit, what's the business model? How do you make money? How does it work?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. So we have two sides to our business which not every test prep company has. We serve schools and school systems in districts, but we also provide services direct to consumers, which are our families that we work with, and we charge a fee for service or subscriptions depending on the product and then who we're serving. And we don't monetize through the back door. It's literally like, this is what we're providing, you pay a fee for the service, but what's cool about it is our school business often relies on grants or funding streams that are federal or state or local, but the kids don't pay.
Rob Ristagno: Yeah. Okay.
Zvia Schoenberg: Most of the students who pass through our classroom doors so to speak, don't pay for our services. So for that reason we always say that we're mission-driven organization, that we have the same amazing high quality educators and products and they're available to all, right?
Rob Ristagno: Yes. So real dual mission company, I guess, you have shareholders and have to hit some financial targets, but it's nice to have this altruistic arm and doing something that's great for society.
Zvia Schoenberg: Exactly.
Rob Ristagno: Now, tell us a little bit... We've heard several of our guests that have sat around the campfire with us in the past, that when you first take the reins of a new company as CEO, you have a fresh perspective, a new set of eyes and you can see a clearer path to growth than maybe your predecessor--just human nature. You kind of do something for too long and maybe you don't have those fresh set of eyes. So tell us, you've only been there about a year, year and a half? Tell us what your initial impressions were and your vision for growth.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. I am a first-time CEO, so that probably adds another layer to this as well. But I took over a company that for most of the life of the company had been run by the founder with a brief transition that brought a couple of different leaders. And our founder is still very involved today. And what we ended up building together is something that I think is really valuable. He is essentially playing a chairman role and his experience that he brings, like, I can text him any day anytime.
Rob Ristagno: Well, nice.
Zvia Schoenberg: And he doesn't run the business day-to-day, he doesn't make these decisions, but he helps inform me. And his experience and my fresh perspective together, I think, is what has enabled us to grow.
Rob Ristagno: Nice. Nice. It's always good to get the wisdom and what do you call it? Institutional knowledge from people who've been there and done that, but marry that with some new ideas. So what are some of the new ideas that you've had and have tried?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. So one of the first things I did was look around for silos and break them down. And there were a bunch of different silos in the company and we really opened things up. And we did that, I think, through partly when we all went remote during COVID. I think that forced everything to be transparent, online, use our systems properly, and now everybody can see everything. So when you're all on Slack and chatting, we all say things to the same CRM, everybody sees everything. Posting shout outs and really recognizing performance has really helped bring us together, but it's also brought out the best in people like folks now feel like it matters, what they do matters. They're going to be recognized and their ideas are going to be listened to. And I think that's been really helpful for all of us, for the whole team.
Rob Ristagno: Yeah. So it sounds like using technology to create an extra layer of transparency so everyone can just see what's going on. And so in some weird way the remote world has helped you innovate in this way and figure out this new way to keep everyone engaged.
Zvia Schoenberg: Definitely.
Rob Ristagno: Great. Tell us now a little bit one thing that you've mentioned to me offline is that, the company is simultaneously a tech company and a services business. And there's a school of thought, again, no pun intended, that you should pick a lane and focus on it. You're either a tech company or a services company. Could you walk us through the story of how you evaluated that problem, where you landed, what helps you make that decision and where you're going as a result?
Zvia Schoenberg: Sure. I do struggle with this because we want to be both, but I do think that it's true that we have to pick, and we've always been a services company. We have an amazing group of educators who care deeply about student success and that's how we grow, and that's how we get the referrals that we get. Every business is a referral business and ours is no exception. That said, we do need technology to get that job done. So we made an acquisition over the summer. We bought an adaptive learning platform and that has really been transformational as has the use of an off-the-shelf learning management system that we also use. We need technology to get it done, full stop. We wouldn't say we're the best at technology so for that reason, I err on the side of being a services business, because that's not what we're best at, what we're best at is delivering the education services.
Rob Ristagno: That's a good point. You're tech-enabled services, but you've recognized where your sweet spot is and where your real advantage is and it's on the providing an amazing experience/service side. But you recognize that there's a need for technology to be able to deliver?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yes. Exactly.
Rob Ristagno: Great. Tell us a little bit back to one of the parallels you made between charter schools and businesses really understanding your market and the needs. Tell us a little bit about the ideal customer for A-List Education.
Zvia Schoenberg: Sure. We have a number of different personas that we think about when we think of who our customers are. So we have the institutional side which are schools and districts and other education institutions, and then we have the families that we serve. So we're going to have two very different profiles. For the schools that we work with, they are from around the country--we've worked in 36 States from rural to urban--and really the only thing that unifies all of them is they have focus on getting kids to college. And so I hate to say this because it's not the right answer to say ever, but it's everyone when it comes to schools because even schools that have resources to teach these types of classes, college access classes, SAT prep, ACT prep, they need additional resources, they need materials, right? And they need a video library or they need pieces of it.
Zvia Schoenberg: And for schools that don't have the resources we come in and do it all. We send the teacher, we run the testing days, we do everything. So there's really a broad spectrum. And this is why it comes back to listening, in my mind. What do you need? How can they help you? We're looking to be a partner and we even call schools partners. So for schools we have a really broad band of who we serve, and for our families it's a little narrower. It definitely is folks who want to pay for test prep, and that's a lot smaller of a band.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. And is there other even sub-personas within the consumer side, on the private-pay side, just any sub-personas that you've noticed, certain trends around the people that make for the best students/client/customers?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. I mean, what's interesting is the family involvement, because typically our clients are referrals. Most of our business has always been referral, pretty much from the first few years. So either referred from a school or from a friend or a neighbor. So there's really a lot of family engagement in the student success. And that's one thing that we find pretty consistently in our successful relationships.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. Got you. So word of mouth here, how do you harness word of mouth? I mean, how do you formalize that? How do you build upon it? Other things you've tried from a marketing standpoint?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. Lots of ways. We have relationships with certain high schools, certain guidance counselors love to refer that steady pair of hands, to the students, too, are looking for support. We also have referral bonuses that we pay our educators, right? So that's always an incentive. And then we have certain parents, usually it's the moms, who are very networked and we end up using them and collaborating with them as sort of a hub. There's always that mom in the neighborhood you turn to for stuff. So we look for those moms, we seek them out, we make sure they have an amazing experience, that their kid improves in whatever test or whatever subject they were looking to excel in, and we stay in touch with them and we ask how we could be of service and usually those folks end up being really great resources for us.
Rob Ristagno: Excellent. I'm going to shift gears in a minute, but let me pause here to see if our audience has any questions about your business model, go-to-market strategy, leadership approach.
Steve: Zvia, this is Steve. Wondering about two things pre/post your arrival. One is, was the business always an online business or was it primarily in-person or a mix? And then the other question is, I know you have a college advisory part to your business, was that something you added on and how does that do relative to the SAT, ACT prep work that you do?
Zvia Schoenberg: Sure. I will answer the first part first. So 75% of our business, or 75% of our revenue, was from in-person business prior to COVID. 25% was distance products. So we really had to flip, it was a very stressful spring. We had to move all of our content online and get our partners accustomed to that. But nobody had a choice. In every part of your life you were doing this so that really helped. And we didn't have to do much persuading. We just had to do a little bit more handholding and I would say there was a little bit of a pause, so purchasing decisions were dragged out a little longer in the spring while people felt uncertain. By the summer that shifted, I think, people were making decisions in the normal timeline, but I think the spring people didn't know to make of it.
Zvia Schoenberg: So we did have to shift, but that shift really ended up being positive for us because we can track things more easily, deal with quality control much more easily. So it's been great and we can reach a broader range of customers than we could before. So, yeah, that was definitely hard. The second question was about college advising and we've always had a college advising function, and in our industry it's kind of a separate thing. A lot of folks function as standalone college advisors, that's their business. They don't also do test prep. Some folks do both, but it's a pretty small industry and by the way, we all know each other. People from Kaplan work at Princeton Review and then they switch over--
Rob Ristagno: It's not like opposing gangs or anything they're all friends?
Zvia Schoenberg: Mostly. Yeah.
Rob Ristagno: Okay. All right.
Zvia Schoenberg: Not a softball league or anything, but maybe we should.
Audience Member: You've got to get a tattoo.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. People come in and out. So it really depends on the people. And in some years we've had strong teams and in some years you have folks leave, start their own business. So that piece of the business has definitely gone up and down over the years, but it's also complementary. And so depending on who's in that seat or those seats within our company will really drive how it's integrated into the rest of our business. So right now we integrated both on the retail side for families who want both test prep and college advising because there are really two pieces of the whole and with our schools it really depends on the funding. What are they looking to achieve and where's the funding coming from and do they have funding for this? So it's kind of a different approach.
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Audience Member: What percentage of your family customers do both or what percentage just do test prep? And I assume nobody just does college advising, but probably some do.
Zvia Schoenberg: Some do. So our business is 50% institutional, 50% retail. And the college advising business has gone anywhere from 10% to say 40% of our retail side. It's always been a little bigger on our retail than our institutional side. And I can say why in a minute, but, yeah, 10% to 40% lately it's probably 15% to 20% of our business on the retail side. So more people do tutoring than college advising. But that business is up this year, and by year we think in school years, so 2021, because of all the uncertainty. You just don't know, so that's gone up. But again, it's like people follow, depending on who we have on a team, people follow those specific advisors. Like they want to go to this person or that person because they've heard from another family. So it's really word of mouth that drives it.
Audience Member: Now, one quick question. There's been a lot of talk, at least what I've read, about the ACT possibly going away and not needing those tests anymore. So how do you guys look at evolving and look at the situation if and when that did happen?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. I believe that may happen, but again, colleges need a way to evaluate incoming applicants. So the risk is if the SAT and ACT actually go away, the risk is that state systems are going to design their own tests and that we have a much more distributed and diverse set of exams that kids are going to have to figure out, which is really a challenge for everyone, but especially for families that don't have the time or resources to figure that out. Or you could use the computer algorithm to figure it out, but there has to be some system, it has to be transparent or else there's a concern about unfairness or even litigation. You need to announce these are the criteria, this is our rubric, this how we evaluate candidates, and this is how you can put your best foot forward, is what we're looking for.
Zvia Schoenberg: So I do believe that some schools aren't going to bring the tests back. There've always been test optional or test blind schools that won't look at the tests. And I think that'll continue to be the case. And some students do really well on their tests. They do better on the tests than they ever do on their grades. So those students are going to continue to want to take the test and kill it. And then there are other students that do much worse on the test than they do in their grades. And they're going to be excited to apply to a school that won't ask them to take those tests. So I think it'll just be you find your right fit as a young person and I think there'll be something for everyone.
Audience Member: Zvia, I have a question just out of curiosity, what your personal feelings are in regards to the college admission scandal and just maybe where you all come from in understanding that these institutions are working so hard to fundraise on a daily basis and if you could see that there's some value in offering a spot for a freshmen for, I mean, I hate for it to be sold in some ways, but just maybe what your personal opinion is and in regards to how that broke down?
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. I mean the scandal was awful and mortifying and the way college costs are out of control and the system is broken, right? We can all recognize that. It's not fair, it probably never has been fair, right? But this is the way it is right now and if you are an 11th grader, you've got to work within the system that exists because you want to get ahead and you want certain things in your own life.
Zvia Schoenberg: So from an individual's perspective, you've got to play the game. This is the game. We can fight to fix it, but this is game right now. And schools have a lot of financial obligations and they have reasons for setting their tuition rates where they do, so from their individual perspective, they can't just make school free, right? So they have their obligations. So from each player if you can put yourself in any of the player's shoes, it's really hard to see your way out of this and to see your way into change. And for me, I think this needs to be something on the federal level. I think it needs to be something that's regulated, not that we're asking schools to do, because I don't think it's in the interest of any one school to take any action and without collective action, if that makes sense.
Audience Member: Thank you.
Audience Member: Zvia, another question. There are a lot of players who have been aggressively growing and expanding and investing in tutoring businesses and a lot of them have been making news, some have been acquired recently, others are just growing very fast-paced, raising a lot of venture capital--do you find yourself competing at all in that market there--just such a big market that's growing significantly and you don't really run up against any of these other players?
Zvia Schoenberg: Well, compared to some of the big players we're a small player, so there's that piece which benefits us in a certain way. But yeah, it is very competitive. I feel like ed-tech is finally having its moment and there's just been a lot of interest and activity, which is great. And yeah, it is competitive. I'll just say that. For sure it is. But there's also a lot of need and I believe because the world of education is getting more and more distributed, there's a lot of different types of companies that can exist. It's a big marketplace. And so for folks like us we have contracts with certain districts, which are really valuable and they renew every year, and so we have those relationships.
Zvia Schoenberg: And so all we can do is look to provide the best service we can for these students in those districts and get those renewals and work our hardest to just be responsive and meet the need. And there may be bigger players that come in with shinier pieces of software than we have, and that probably will happen. But a lot of education is person by person, block by block, you know your local principal and the school that's around the corner. So a lot of this is these relationships. And so that's historically where we've competed and where we played really well.
Audience Member: That's great.
Rob Ristagno: All right. A few other questions here. I mean, one thing I want to come back to is you mentioned that you have a dual mission. Youhave the institutional side which is often funded by grants and you have the retail side which is private families paying. At some point I imagine there's a conflict in, how do you prioritize something, there's limited resources, maybe you need to do something that's in the best interest of the institutional side of the house even if it's drawing on the profits being made on the retail side, how do you make these trade offs? And maybe you have some specific examples you could share with us.
Zvia Schoenberg: It's interesting because the institutional work we do is actually profitable.
Rob Ristagno: Oh, okay.
Zvia Schoenberg: Right? So we calculate our costs, we hire the teachers or produce the books or whatever it might be and it's just a fee for service typically with the schools. And we have to disclose to the school districts what our costs are because it's with a government agency, the contract, so, yeah, we're transparent, but we're profitable. So it's just a different piece of business. So there's never really been that push and that pull. We have the content, we have the educators and look for business wherever it comes. And so a lot of our tutors can also be in the classroom one day and in a family's home or Zoom room on another day. And so I think they enjoy that kind of diversity of work and that kind of makes it work for everyone actually.
Rob Ristagno: And you also mentioned this was your first time being a CEO, what advice do you have for other people who are in the seat for the first time?
Zvia Schoenberg: Listen and be humble. We don't know everything and it's great to learn from folks who know more than you and being surrounded by folks who know more than you is the best. So I feel like I have a team that just has so much experience and I'm so grateful for them every day. And the fact that I mentioned the former CEO, who just gives me so much insight and so much learning, and I think it's fun for him. And I think it's also fun for the rest of the team when they're valued and when they're listened to. And it sure helps me right now.
Rob Ristagno: Where do you look for mentorship at the top? Do you look to your team for mentorship, even though you're technically their boss or where else do you look for mentorship?
Zvia Schoenberg: That's a great question that I haven't fully figured out; I really haven't. I have a few folks that I turn to for different types of questions and different types of advice in situations. I think young people today are much more focused on that in the early part of the career which is amazing. I know certain people turned to me as a mentor, but I didn't do that in my 20s and early 30s. And so to do that now, I can do it, but it's not as ingrained as I think folks who are just growing up now are treating it. So good question.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. Got you. And what's the future for A-List Education, for assessments, for education, for yourself? Tell us a little bit about the future.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. So the future for us is to keep growing through our platforms, through our tech platforms, and reach a broader geographic range of people as well as demographic. And what that means for us is we need to diversify from most of our business being SAT and ACT related, and we need to get into different tests. We need to get into different education levels so not being all about pre college, but rather including a lot more of high school, like grad tests and professional licensing exams, etc. Because what we believe is there's always going to be gates and gatekeepers. So what are these additional gates that we can focus on and where can we add value? So looking for that and using our adaptive learning platform to really scale so that each client is served not only by our educators, but also by the technology and finding efficiencies there. So that's what we're looking to do in the next in 2021 and for the next couple of years.
Rob Ristagno: Excellent. So you found a way to solve problems for your core market and now you're figuring out how to solve similar problems for adjacent folks?
Zvia Schoenberg: Exactly. Or for returning clients, right? So clients who worked with us before and now are onto their next phase in life. So how do we keep them engaged?
Rob Ristagno: Any other questions from the audience before we wrap up?
Audience Member: I was just curious when the company actually was founded and if at the time it was a book type of business where someone would go and buy the SAT prep book or not?
Zvia Schoenberg: That's kind of what it is. It was five guys who were tutors, worked for a different company and they thought they could do it better so they started their own company. They had a lot of hustle and they made a lot of great materials. They wrote something called The New Book of Knowledge, trying to be funny, and it's a foreign topic, prepping for a test, right? So added some levity to it.
Rob Ristagno: Not as good as my puns though. I'm sorry.
Zvia Schoenberg: Yeah. So they just worked it and grew the business and just delivered great service and got a ton of referrals. And hustle is the key word. So 2005 to now, it's been around for that many years.
Rob Ristagno: Zvia, this has been so helpful for us, we've learned a lot. What can we do to help you?
Zvia Schoenberg: Well, we are always looking for like-minded folks who might be interested in collaborating with us. We have a ton of partnerships that could look like so many different things. We work with a union as part of their employee benefits plan. We've worked with financial service advisors to provide free seminars for their families.
Rob Ristagno: All right.
Zvia Schoenberg: There's so many types of partnerships that can provide help to families who have questions. So we love doing free sessions. We love talking to people and getting out in the world and we often send one of our educators out there and usually it's an engaging time and it's more fun than folks thought it would be so any introductions would be more than welcome.
Rob Ristagno: Excellent. Where should people go to provide such introductions?
Zvia Schoenberg: So you could go to alisteducation.com. And we are the U.S version of A-List, even though it's a global brand, but come find us in the U.S version if you're here in the U.S.
Rob Ristagno: Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you've done here and shared for us and best of luck--we're going to be keeping an eye on how A-List Education evolves. This has been the CEO Campfire Chat with your host Rob Ristagno. To listen to more episodes, sign up for bonus content or to take a two-minute business assessment, visit ceocampfirechat.com. See your next time around the fire.
Rob Ristagno: Like trees in a forest, your organization's revenue problems can keep you from seeing a way out, even when the way out is right in front of. Our data-driven solutions deliver the shortest, fastest route to increased sales and lower marketing costs. The trick is in knowing how to find and use the data you already have to reveal, test and implement remedies in a matter of months, not years. When you can see the forest and the trees, everything improves. To learn more about our approach, head to sterlingwoods.com.
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Jason Davis, Co-Founder and CEO of Simon Data, believes deeply in the promise of data science and analytics to improve business performance. He shares some basic applications of data that any leader can use to begin accelerating growth for their organization.
When it comes to making smart growth moves for your company, should you follow your head or your heart? Sam Yagan, Co-Founder of OkCupid and SparkNotes and current CEO of ShopRunner, knows the answer isn’t always cut and dry. Hear how he’s learned to strike the right balance.
Gabby Wong became CEO of FranConnect in 2019. Over the course of her tenure, the franchisors FranConnect serves have seen good and bad times. But through it all, Gabby has remained focused on customer data and experimenting to create products that address her audience’s changing needs.
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CEOs who lead private equity portfolio companies face unique challenges. Bob Post, a serial PE-backed CEO, has developed an approach to jumpstarting impressive turnarounds at the organizations he leads. Bob shares how he tackles each new role and what he’s doing to guide his current company, a data analytics firm serving the hospitality industry, through the turbulence caused by COVID.
Kate Eberle Walker was brought on as CEO of PresenceLearning to turn the ship around. The company was experiencing flat growth and high employee attrition.
Within two short years, Kate has guided the company to 70% growth year-over-year and break-even on EBITDA. The secret to her success? It turns out, passion for her work has no small role to play.
Kate began her career in investment banking but quickly found her way into the world of education. Through roles at Kaplan and Tutor.com, Kate came to know and love the space. Soon enough, she was taking on bigger and bigger roles at The Princeton Review, finally serving as CEO for several years.
When she left The Princeton Review after a successful exit, she paused to regroup and think about what she really wanted from the next step in her career. She knew she loved the education space and was especially interested in using technology to build a better connection between students and experts, like the work she’d been focused on at Tutor.com.
An investor she’d met happened to have the perfect company in his portfolio: PresenceLearning. It ticked all of the boxes Kate was looking for, and it was a company in desperate need of strong, decisive leadership.
When Kate came on board, she had some fires to put out immediately. About half of the workforce had left. And when she announced to the San Francisco-based team that she planned to recruit for new roles in her city of New York, even more people departed.
But she did not let that deter her. Kate began meeting individually with each remaining colleague to build interpersonal connections and better understand the inner workings of PresenceLearning.
The business still faced hurdles. As a telehealth provider, one-to-one meetings are central to PresenceLearning’s offerings. To scale, Kate needed to hire hundreds of clinicians (and, eventually, thousands more).
Additionally, the pandemic hit in the midst of Kate’s second year with the business. With it came an increased demand for virtual telehealth services. The technical team at PresenceLearning has worked to build out a more robust system to manage capacity, with algorithms that can predict needs so clinicians are utilized effectively.
The pandemic has also inspired PresenceLearning to branch out into the world of SaaS. They are now licensing their secure teletherapy platform for use in private practice and school districts that have an existing network of clinicians.
Towards the end of the show, Kate discusses her other passion: supporting women in the workplace. Her forthcoming book, The Good Boss: 9 Ways Every Manager Can Support Women at Work, comes out in March 2021 and explores the common thread women leaders share in their career paths.
Surprisingly, that common thread isn’t an MBA or special business certification. Rather, every woman leader said that somewhere along the way, they had a great, supportive boss. Kate has written this book to guide those (mostly male) bosses out there who want to mentor and support women on their career journeys.
Kate’s story proves that business is anything but a dispassionate enterprise. Whether it’s her commitment to the education industry, mentoring other women in business, or driving impressive growth results, Kate doesn’t create distance or remain cool. Instead, like many great leaders, she puts her heart into everything she does.
Episode Transcript Rob Ristagno: After a successful exit as CEO of The Princeton Review, Kate Eberle Walker has some time to think about her ideal next career move. By clearly defining what she wanted for herself, she found the absolute perfect role, CEO of PresenceLearning. While the company was struggling while she came onboard, her passion for the role and expertise in the education industry combined to help her lead a remarkable turnaround. We discuss her leadership philosophy that's garnered these impressive results.
Intro: This is the CEO Campfire Chat with your host Rob Ristagno. Taped in front of a live studio audience, join us to hear successful growth stories from middle-market companies, just like yours. Sponsored by the Sterling Woods Group.
Rob Ristagno: Welcome to the CEO Campfire Chat. This is your host Rob Ristagno. And I have the pleasure of introducing Kate Eberle Walker. She is the CEO of PresenceLearning and has been leading education companies for the past 20 years. She also sits on the board of directors for Rosetta Stone and previously served as the CEO of The Princeton Review. She's an author whose book The Good Boss: Nine Ways Every Manager Can Support Women at Work is coming out soon, March 9th. Welcome Kate.
Kate Eberle Walker: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me.
Rob Ristagno: Yeah. We're glad you could make it here. You're a seasoned CEO. Now, tell us your backstory. How did you know that one day you wanted to grow up and become someone who could lead an organization?
Kate Eberle Walker: Well, for a long time, I would say that I didn't know that. I was out of school as a finance person. I worked in investment banking, I did deals. And one thing that I wrote in my book is that 65% of the women who become Fortune 1000 CEOs didn't know, or it didn't occur to them that they would be or could be a CEO until someone, typically their boss, told them that they saw that in them. And that was exactly what happened for me.
Kate Eberle Walker: I had worked for a long time in investment banking, like I said, M&A. And when you're doing deals, when you're in hundreds of deals, you study all these business models. You start to form very strong opinions about what you would do if you were running it. But it still kind of took me a little while from there to make my move.
Kate Eberle Walker: I had gone to work for Mandy Ginsberg at IAC after 10 years of doing M&A at Kaplan and started forming a strategy with her. She was running Tutor.com at the time. We put together a plan that included acquiring Princeton Review. And as we're working on that, at one point she turned to me and she said, "I see you as my successor." And kind of even to my own surprise, I said, "Well, I see that too. That's what I want." And it sort flowed from there. So it really came from getting to work for someone who helped me see my own potential.
Rob Ristagno: It's great to have a mentor who can point you in the right direction, right?
Kate Eberle Walker: Exactly.
Rob Ristagno: And be supportive?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah.
Rob Ristagno: Okay. So two years ago, you're brought in to turn around PresenceLearning. Let's start with the outcome and then we can reverse engineer it. So you've been there about two years. Tell us, how is it going? What are some of the metrics here that you've been looking at?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. Times are pretty good for us at PresenceLearning now. The business, when I came in a couple of years ago, was facing a second consecutive year of single-digit growth. Right now, we're pacing at 70% growth year-over-year in our top line, which is exciting. And we also reached breakeven on EBITDA earlier this year after we were, at the time that I came in, losing $14 million. So things are good.
Rob Ristagno: Those are impressive figures. And I'm sure we're all curious here to hear about how you actually accomplished that. So before we dive into what you did, let's take a quick step back. Tell us a little bit about what PresenceLearning is, what you do, what you and your team work on?
Kate Eberle Walker: PresenceLearning, we are a telehealth company that exclusively serves the education market. So all of our customers are K-12 school districts, mostly public school districts. And we're providing special education services. So we provide, live online teletherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, mental health counseling for students who have special education needs, have learning disabilities.
Kate Eberle Walker: There's about seven million kids in the US public education system who have required services to support their leaning needs. And public schools are obligated to provide those services. So we work with the schools to help them cover their caseloads, deliver the therapy, and to evaluate students to determine what they need.
Rob Ristagno: All right. It feels to me like a dual mission type of company. Of course, you need to turn a profit for your shareholders. But it sounds like you're really doing great stuff for society at large.
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. Well actually, I talk a lot about—we actually have multiple missions, because of course we want to grow the company and drive profits. But we also see our driving force is to get as many kids as possible the services they need.
Kate Eberle Walker: There are significant gaps across the country. And those gaps are larger in areas where there is low income or racial inequity. There are a lot of kids that, even though it's federally required for them to get these therapy services to support their needs, they just don't get them. Schools really do struggle to get the therapist in place and to deliver the service.
Kate Eberle Walker: So we have this driving mission to make sure that every child who needs support gets support. But we also have an equally driving mission of supporting the therapists in giving them a way to work that works for them.
Kate Eberle Walker: So a lot of our therapists are speech language pathologists (SLPs), which is a profession that is 97% female. And a lot of the SLPs, they start out working in a school. Those are really hard jobs, very demanding. And a lot of those women go on to have children and find that they can't keep doing that work they love with students and maintain their family, manage what they need to do at home.
Kate Eberle Walker: The company was founded 11 years ago. And we created this new way for all these SLPs to keep doing what they love, to keep delivering therapy to students, but to not feel like, to be able to do that, they needed to hold these full-time jobs where they were driving to school and staying in the school all day. So we are as passionate about that, about what we're doing for all these women that want to really keep on using their degrees and keeping doing the work that they love.
Rob Ristagno: So it sounds like a triple or maybe even quadruple mission organization. What else besides the mission got you excited to take the job as CEO?
Kate Eberle Walker: When I was deciding what ... So I had sold Princeton Review, and was thinking hard about, "Okay. What's my next company going to be?" And I think about the companies I run as sort of an infatuation, maybe even an unhealthy obsession. When you're running a company, you care more than anybody else cares. And you want more than anything for your company to succeed. You lose sleep over it.
Kate Eberle Walker: So after Princeton Review, I had this chance to take a deep breath and really be thoughtful about what I wanted to run next. And I was having coffee one day during that time with a friend of mine who's an investor in the education sector, which when you're a job-seeking CEO, you have a lot of coffee with a lot of investors. So that was not unusual.
Kate Eberle Walker: So it was my friend Jason Palmer at New Markets. And he asked me to describe like, "What's your ultimate company, if you could invent the next company you're going to run?” And I said, "I want to run something in education.”
Kate Eberle Walker: Ideally, I wanted to have a similar business model to Tutor.com, which had been part of Princeton Review. And I really loved that business. It was using technology to facilitate a better connection from a student to an expert. So it was still a services company. We were still connecting experts to students, and having that human connection. But we were using technology to make it more accessible, more affordable.
Kate Eberle Walker: And I loved that business model. And I said, "If I could have another business like that, maybe doing something even more meaningful than helping kids get better grades, or better test scores. And if I get to perfectly design it, I would love for it to be earlier stage than Princeton Review so I can really come in and have an impact. But not too early stage. I want it to be mature enough that I have got a team and people to work with.”
Rob Ristagno: A good concern.
Kate Eberle Walker: And so Jason, he was like, "We have this company in our portfolio. And we're hiring a new CEO. We're about to launch the search for our first outside CEO. The founder is ready to transition."
Kate Eberle Walker: And so it was kind of perfect. So that company was PresenceLearning. And it was all of those things. It was exactly what I wanted. And when I got to know the rest of the investors and the team and find out what they did, it was like I got that infatuation feeling that I was kind of looking for. I was like, "Okay. This is my company. This is the company I'm supposed to run." So it was actually a very easy decision to join.
Rob Ristagno: I love that phrase, infatuation feeling. I think it's something that we should all keep in mind on a daily basis as we're looking at our careers.
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah.
Rob Ristagno: It also sounds like a story—and you were crystal clear about what you wanted—and so if you know what you want and you can communicate it, you shall get it. It sounds like-
Kate Eberle Walker: It does. It's a little shocking when I look back that I literally found exactly what I wanted. But it certainly goes a long way to get your own clarity on what is your perfect result? What's your perfect outcome? And turns out you can find it.
Audience Member: What to me is really interesting is your comment that—so, I was a CEO of a company for 11 years. And it was turnaround, and then a growth play. Right?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah.
Audience Member: But company became you, and you became the company. When anyone criticized your company, they were criticizing you.
Kate Eberle Walker: Yes.
Audience Member: And you took it personally. It's a much more personal thing than just, "Oh! I'm running a company.”
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. And one of the things that I do is every new hire that we make—and when you're growing, it gets into the hundreds—I schedule a one-on-one introduction in the first week, where we don't talk about the company or the work. I just get to know them and share more about myself personally. And each conversation is a little different.
Kate Eberle Walker: But I feel like you are responsible for every employee, for their livelihood, but also I think for their happiness. You want them all to be as fulfilled as you are running the company. So I try to stay true to that even as companies get bigger, to actually know every person who's there.
Audience Member: Exactly. I mean, I ran a company in London. So the local pub, we had an open tab for all the employees to come out after work and have a couple of pints. And everybody could talk to everybody else. But it was like a family. It was everybody knew ... I knew every employee's name. I knew most of their spouses' names. And in many cases, I knew what university their kids were going to. And it's a different kind of world. These are smaller companies. You couldn't do this at GE. But in a smaller company, you can. And I think that's the really good stuff.
Rob Ristagno: That family feel in a corporation can be magical.
Audience Member: That's the good stuff.
Rob Ristagno: Hey Fred! I think you had a question. It looks like you had a question for Kate about PresenceLearning.
Fred: Well, you blew me away with the 70% growth rate. I mean, 20% or 30% is hard enough to manage. And I'm curious about how you might continue to scale at that, when my experience with technology in learning, especially ... It sounds like you have a one-on-one relationship with everybody. Is that part of your issue? Is that the school's issue? How do you manage that technical connection between your students and your therapists?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. There's a lot that goes into it that I think a big part of what why the board brought me in for the next phase was to figure out: How do you scale something that is a series of one-on-one connections? And there's a couple of different things that are working for us here.
Kate Eberle Walker: One is that, I mean, you do have to hire, ultimately, thousands of therapists to be ready to serve the work. And Princeton Review, we had about 7,000 teachers and tutors. So I often draw parallels between what managing that workforce was like and what we needed to do here to make sure we have enough people, we have them in the right places, to match the right individuals to the right students.
Kate Eberle Walker: So the answer there is more technology. So I brought over my CTO that had been the founding CTO at Tutor.com, was the CTO of Princeton Review with me. He's here now at PresenceLearning. And he has built and continues to build algorithms on the back end to manage all of that capacity and predict the needs. So that's huge.
Kate Eberle Walker: The other thing we've done is launch a totally different business line that is smaller but it will get to about 10 million of revenue this year, which is not a services. It's a SaaS model where we are licensing our teletherapy platform for private practice providers and school district providers to use. And so having that other thing to sell, source of growth, that is a different kind of a model and really a less complex operational model, I think has helped to support growth.
Rob Ristagno: What other questions do we have for Kate? Go for it, Dave.
Dave: Yeah. So sort of two unrelated questions. And you don't have to go into too much detail on either. I'm really curious around the efficacy of online versus in person, and from the perspective of students, from the school and from your huge workforce of licensed practitioners. So that's one.
Dave: And then on completely other note, I'm also super-curious about the business model in terms of things like pricing and what happens during the summer, and what sort of on demand versus subscription, and does it get the districts pay less if they use more sessions? How does that all work?
Kate Eberle Walker: So in terms of the efficacy, there's a lot to come in that area. So when we talk about our own success measures of impact, and we have our impact metrics and well as financial metrics. We are still in the zone of being very focused on, “Are we making sessions happen? Are we delivering therapy that wouldn't get delivered if we weren't in the mix?”
Kate Eberle Walker: And I look at the sort of evolution of online adoption and compare it to tutoring. And I think for online therapy, we're still back—well, we were until COVID—in that phase of you're proving to people that online was just as good. That it's okay to do it this is. It's equivalent.
Kate Eberle Walker: Literally, we've done, our research studies have largely been equivalency studies where we're taking data sets and proving the equivalency. So that's kind of where the research is at. That's where the conversation is at. Of course, it is much more exciting to get to the next step of where is it? Is it better? Where is it better?
Kate Eberle Walker: So we've kind finally, now that we've gotten bigger, now that we're not feeling as budget constrained—still budget constrained but not as much as we used to—we actually got to the point where we've decided to hire our first research leader to start designing the studies, because we think we have more volume, more data than anyone else would have to be able to start getting into those questions, because we hear a lot anecdotally from our clinicians who all worked in both ways.
Kate Eberle Walker: We don't hire anybody unless they do have some experience in school setting. So we get all of these anecdotal comparisons where they think that the progress is made more quickly because they establish the rapport more easily. And then kids these days are often more comfortable engaging through a screen. They're very used to it.
Kate Eberle Walker: And particularly for certain needs, we find that the students are less comfortable in the room with an adult they don't know. And they can open more quickly online. So just the ability to have thousands of video, picture, emojis at your fingertips to pull from, it's a little quicker to figure out what is this child into? If somebody says, "I like animals." It takes two seconds to pull the animal flashcards. You couldn't do that kind of staff if you were in a room. So I don't have good data to share with you yet. But I think that that is next frontier on the research front is to start proving that it's better, not just as good.
Kate Eberle Walker: And then the economic model and pricing. So in K-12, I do find you need ... There are a few different ways for districts to pay. So the short answer is all of the above. We have some districts that are entirely hourly rate, pay as you go. There are others who prefer to set a budget upfront and pay it upfront. So we do a flat rate. We say, "Okay. You're going to have 100 students getting biweekly speech therapy, and we're going to charge you this per student. And that's it.”
Kate Eberle Walker: And then there are others who do it on a sort of employee-like structure where they say, "I need you to give me 10 dedicated clinicians." And we're charging for their time more like a salary. So it's kind of all the above. And then now, with the introduction of the teletherapy platform, that's the only one that has that sort of subscription [crosstalk 00:19:52].
Dave: Different revenue.
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah.
Dave: What happens in the summer?
Kate Eberle Walker: In the summer, everything gets a lot quieter. So it slows a lot like a school. So a lot of our clinicians like to take the summer off, and they do. So that's easy to give them that time. There's always some that do want to work. So they're going to raise their hand to cover summers. There's summer school. There's extended school year for these services for a subset of the kids. And so we have some work and some clinicians that want to take that work. But things get really quiet during the summer.
Dave: Thanks for that. Interesting.
Rob Ristagno: And Michelle, you have a question for Kate?
Michelle: I guess I had a question about—I know that whenever you're selling something to a school, it's really complicated because there's school boards, and there is different sources of funding, and there's all sorts of rules and regulations. And there are lots of hard trade-offs to be made. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you manage that, or if it doesn't come into play for you guys.
Kate Eberle Walker: It definitely comes into play for us. And in other businesses that I worked, we'd sold to parents, to consumer, retail, to higher education institutions, to corporations and K-12. And I never would've predicted that I'd choose to focus in on a company that entirely sells to K-12 institutions because it is by far the most complex and has kind of a slower selling cycle.
Kate Eberle Walker: I have found one of the things that's really nice about our business is, in special education a lot of those dynamics are less so because the services are mandated and funding is coming in through the individual's disabilities and education act, through federal funding, and can also be supplemented with Medicaid. There are these sources outside of your typical school budget, school district budget that are there, and are reliable.
Kate Eberle Walker: So even in times like this where, of course, everyone is talking about cuts, school budget cuts, we're fairly insulated from that. So it makes for a different kind of behavior than you'd find elsewhere in K-12.
Michelle: Okay. That's really interesting. Thanks.
Audience Member: Kate, I had a question. So I think the materials Rob sent out kind of said Kate runs an education company. And you even described a minute ago that you were looking for an education company. But when you first introduced yourself, you said you run a healthcare company. So I'm really kind of curious what ... Obviously, it's sort of the intersection of those two. But what's different about it in terms of the healthcare aspect of it? Are you subject to all kind of HIPAA regulations? Are there other factors that make it more of a healthcare company in fact than an education company?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. This was most of all an ongoing debate when we were fundraising last year. We raised our Series D through last winter and closed it in the spring. And the question of whether we were going appeal to healthcare investors or education investors was this dynamic throughout because the reality is we're a healthcare company. And we're providing services entirely through licensed clinicians. We are HIPAA compliant, in addition to needing to be FERPA compliant for K-12 student data privacy. It's funded by Medicaid, a lot of the services we provide.
Kate Eberle Walker: So I think it's really interesting because I think we are a health company—healthcare services company—that happens to sell to an education end market. But I would say our investors, Bain's Double Impact Fund, led our series D. And our other investors, Catalyst New Market, they're largely education-focused investors.
Kate Eberle Walker: And I think that the education end market is so different and complex in its own ways as we were just talking about. So when people look at us as company, somehow education trumps the healthcare side of it. And I guess you can just throw it out. I guess I do that too, as much I think we're providing a health service. And boy! We operate, we sell into education and see that as the market we're in. We don't talk about customers. We talk about students.
Audience Member: Interesting. Okay, thanks.
Rob Ristagno: Al?
Al: I have a question. With 70% growth rate, I would imagine that a lot of that has been ... COVID has been a factor in that, as schools have gone out of brick and mortar buildings into online. So two questions. One is, are you finding your new customers—obviously, some of this growth rate is probably you're finding external customers, new customers. Are you finding them or are they finding you? And are you supplementing those resources that are at the school? Are you replacing them in this environment?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. I almost jumped in because I got so excited to answer the first part of your question of are you finding them or are they finding you, because they're finding us. And it is of course the most exciting for a sales team when you see your inbound leads spike upwards. And we continue to see about 10 times the engagement volume as we saw pre-COVID.
Al: How are they finding you?
Kate Eberle Walker: Well, if you google online speech therapy, or if you ... A lot of it is word of mouth in this market. So every district has a special education director. And every state has an organization for all of the special education directors. And in pre-COVID times, this is very much a conference-driven selling process and even still it's those groups, it's those gatherings of special education leaders who talk to each other.
Kate Eberle Walker: And we are fortunate to be in a good position. PresenceLearning really created this concept. I mean, it was the first of its kind. Back in 2009, the founders saw this opportunity to introduce teletherapy to the K-12 market. And we've kind of been doing it the longest. We're the largest.
Kate Eberle Walker: And so if you ask a special education director, "Who have you heard of? Who do you know? Who do you work with?" Our name comes up in word of mouth as well. So that's a lot of what we do, in addition to, of course, making a lot of phone calls and doing a lot of our own outreach. But yeah. We have definitely been a business that has benefited from COVID and the need for online student services. And so that we saw pretty quickly in the spring. And it's continued to grow.
Kate Eberle Walker: And then your other question about are we all or part. We are almost always supplementing the school's services. So the school will have a special education director, a team of onsite therapists. And they will, more often than not, have some needs come up in some districts, particularly very rural districts, districts that have other challenges, might be very low income, might not be a place that—it might be harder for them to hire, they might have a large need where, there are districts where we serve all of their students.
Kate Eberle Walker: But most of the time, we're working with a district to help them manage the gaps. So we do. They'll send us case loads. They'll ask us to take their evaluations that their staff is getting backed up. We cover leaves—there’s a lot of short term leave, medical leave, maternity leave, that happens in the space. And we'll come in and cover that.
Kate Eberle Walker: So it's almost, there is some collaboration with the district team, which is why we were able to, in response to COVID, launch this other business line of licensing our platform and training school-based therapists on how do you do teletherapy. So you've been with a student in the classroom, how do you adapt that? How do you engage with that child online? What are the tips, tricks, tools?
Kate Eberle Walker: We were able to launch that because we already had all of these working relationships where we were collaborating with those teams, and we knew they needed. So it was really nice, and it was a very natural extension for us to start doing that, which we did it for free for our existing customers in the spring, started selling to new customers, and then heading into the school year became a paid product.
Kate Eberle Walker: And we didn't know. You sort of try things and see. We know it will be helpful now. We don't know if it will turn out to be a longterm viable revenue line. We don't know how big it'll be. My CFO and I had a great debate over how much revenue to put in the budget for this school year.
Kate Eberle Walker: He said two million. And I was like, "What?" I was like, "That's not enough. You've got to put four. Double it. Put four." And now, here we are. We've already sold seven, tracking to 10. But we don't know how big it's going to be this year. But all that came from that sort of position we're in, where we're working with the district and not totally replacing them. You're sort of there to take on what they need.
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Rob Ristagno: Sy, go for it.
Sy: So I think this is also kind of a two-part question, although the second one you might have slightly addressed. When you were answering Al's question, you said that sometimes with school districts or rural areas where there's not as much funding that it can be a little more difficult. So I'm wondering if the opposite of that is true. Do you not address needs so much in affluent school districts where they can maybe provide more of those things on their own?
Sy: And then the second part of that is, and this is kind of—your crystal ball is no better than mine, I suppose—but how do you anticipate if, when things go back to students being in school and not being virtual, the impact on what you're doing?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. On the types of districts, we are seeing different trends. So we typically didn't work with very many affluent districts. They didn't have the same need, because it's all about, can that district ... Do they have enough speech pathologists, occupational therapists living in the area to hire and to attract them to come work in the building?
Kate Eberle Walker: And so we tended to see, particularly in wealthy suburbs, they had no problem hiring and retaining those groups. And the challenges were central, very urban districts and the very rural districts. So that was who we worked with. That tended to be correlated with lower income. It tended to be correlated with racial diversity. So that's always been who we've served.
Kate Eberle Walker: What we've seen is during this time, particularly with the SaaS offering, with the teletherapy platform and training, now we're serving—the customer base for that product is more heavily weighted in the affluent districts, because they have the teams and they can afford to invest in more training and technology.
Kate Eberle Walker: So I won't digress too much in this direction. But I mean, I could talk for a very long time about what ... It's very frustrating to me to see what I see of the inequities across all districts. And I do. I see it every day. The differences in resources and the ability to get services, get technology to these kids.
Kate Eberle Walker: And it is very disheartening. And we are sort of very determined that even as we see the market need shifting, we are determined to keep finding more ways to support these districts that have always needed us the most.
Sy: And in terms of that vision of moving forward when students aren't so much at home and aren't so much online?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. For that, we talk a lot about ... Most districts have some need for our kinds of services at some point. Before COVID, the greatest challenge was getting them to consider it and try it, and sort of buy into this idea that you could therapy online, or you could do an assessment online.
Kate Eberle Walker: And so this was just a really kind of forced trial for everybody. And it's a huge breakthrough for us to have had this. I mean, so many more districts have tried. And they've seen the sort of pros and cons, the right ways to do things. It's given us this much more access to our market. So I think that that will always be helpful to us for our services business. I think this has just given us, it's opened a lot more doors.
Kate Eberle Walker: So I think for that trajectory, it's really going to help us for the long run. I think we are spending a lot of time now looking at this newer business line and the teletherapy platform and thinking about what about that? How much are we changing work habits?
Kate Eberle Walker: I think, of course, introducing technology into the toolbox for all of these therapists that work in districts, it's not just that they're getting to continue to serve the kids when they're in different locations. It's putting more therapy activities and planning tools at their fingertips. It's streamlining the documentation and paperwork. It's integrating with more engaging video activities. I mean, of course I won't sell you the whole platform.
Kate Eberle Walker: And there's all of these things that ... in most of those jobs, they're responsible for kids across multiple sites within a district. So they were losing drive time. They call it windshield time. And that's very expensive in time and money for schools.
Kate Eberle Walker: So we're thinking a lot about, how do we really help them change the way they work and come to view these tools as not just a stopgap measure whilst schools are closed. But that's the big topic in every management team meeting, board conversation, is really making sure that we're making the most of the opportunity to get to do it.
Sy: Thank you.
Rob Ristagno: I hear you on that windshield time thing because my wife is a BCBA—she’s in this field. And she had a Honda Accord which had almost 200,000 miles on it driving around from different locations. It actually was stolen, and recovered. And she kept driving it till it hit about 200,000. Then it finally failed inspections.
Rob Ristagno: But anyways, I see there's a couple of more questions. But I just want to talk a little bit about the turnaround itself. It's January 2019. You're joining the company, fresh set of eyes. How much of a turnaround is it? You mentioned unprofitable and slow top line growth. How much of it was on fire? What was your assessment? And what did you do in the first 100 days?
Kate Eberle Walker: Okay. When I started, this company, at one point, had had over 150 employees. And when I started, they were down to about 80. And that was partly driven by some layoffs. They had had two rounds of layoffs that had been very disheartening, demoralizing, destabilizing for the company. And then on top of that, there had been a lot of attrition.
Kate Eberle Walker: So I came into 30 open positions that needed to be filled, including a CFO, a controller, a CTO, head of sales, head of marketing. I mean, the list kind of went on. And all but two of the sales reps had quit. So we only had, at the time, two sales reps to cover the country. Although I will say, fun fact, those two reps are still with us.
Kate Eberle Walker: One of them is having the best year in history of the company for any individual rep. She's already ... We measure our year starting July 1st for the school year. So at this point, one quarter in, she's already sold more than three times her quota for the year. So something to be said for her sticking around.
Kate Eberle Walker: But we basically had all these vacancies. And I needed a team. The Glassdoor ratings were negative, angry, abysmal. So hiring wasn't going to be easy. So I will say that was also part, weirdly, I guess it was part of the appeal of this opportunity to me. It was that I knew, I had learned from my previous experience, because Princeton Review was quite a turnaround as well.
Kate Eberle Walker: And I had learned that it's easier to execute a turnaround when you bring in your own people. It's not the only way to do it. But it is easier. It's a little more frictionless, I think, from a CEO perspective. So I had this opportunity, I realized, to very quickly bring in a lot of people who I had worked with before, who I knew I could sort of handpick of everyone in my network, who do I think would just be perfect to come in and do this, and solve this problem.
Kate Eberle Walker: And I found pretty quickly that I had this ability to recruit really top talent because of what the company did, because of what the mission was. And no one said no, of the people that I called for all those positions. They've all come. They're all here doing it with me. And I think it was easy to convince people to leave jobs in larger companies to come and really believe in this. So regardless—
Rob Ristagno: You can take some kind of credit for that, hopefully. They've enjoyed working with you in the past.
Kate Eberle Walker: I hope. So at least part of it was getting to work with me again. That was the first 100 days was mostly hiring.
Rob Ristagno: And how did that new guard along with the people that were still around?
Kate Eberle Walker: That's complicated. We had a lot of departures in the first six months. So another thing that I should add is that, when I joined the company, it was based in San Francisco and had been founded there, headquartered there. Back at the time, all our 150 employees had been in the office there.
Kate Eberle Walker: And here I come, and on my first day I announce that, "Oh! I'm a New Yorker. I'm not moving to San Francisco. I am going to stay in New York and I'm going to start hiring here." And that was not popular.
Kate Eberle Walker: When you know you're going to go through all this change, you just got to get to know people. I mean, it's back to what we were talking about earlier. You get to know people, one-on-one, one by one, and you figure out that some people are going to lean into it, and they're going to be excited for the opportunity. They have ideas. People who had been at this company for years knew it way better that I did when I first came in.
Kate Eberle Walker: And I knew some of them, they're going to have idea of things they think we should do, should have been doing. And I just sort of ... I spent a lot of time in those first days as well just meeting one-on-one and giving people that opportunity, if they wanted, to step forward and share their ideas. And a lot of those people who did are really critical parts. They've been promoted over these past couple of years. They're really critical parts of the company. But we did have about 40 people leave in the first year.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. And was any of that related to the fact that you took over from the founders? Or what were some of the other implications of taking over from the founders?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. I mean, the thing about founder-led businesses is there's this emotional connection from the company to the founder and the founder to the company that is, it's there. And it's different. It's different from, I think, the relationships and connections of every outside CEO who comes along later.
Kate Eberle Walker: And I kind of learned you’ve got to recognize that it's there. And it doesn't go away. I mean, it never goes away. I mean, I think when I was at Princeton Review, I remember one time I'd asked the tutoring manager to take care of a VIP that I sent her way. I said, "Find a really great SAT tutor for his daughter.”
Kate Eberle Walker: And so, "Okay, great." So she goes and does that. And the finance person came into my office a couple weeks later and was like, "Oh! I need you to sign off on this tutoring credit." And it was thousands of dollars. And I was like, "What is this? Why would I sign off on this?" And he's like, "Oh! Well, I think you said to take care of the VIP.”
Kate Eberle Walker: So I go get the person I'd asked. She comes in. And I'm like, "I didn't say give it for free. I just said get a great tutor." And she was like, "Oh! That's how John wants it done." And John Katzman was the founder. And there literally had been five CEOs between John and I at the Princeton Review.
Kate Eberle Walker: So you pick up on things like that and you realize that the founder will continue ... People will continue to listen to the founder long after the founder is gone. And that's really nice in a lot of ways, that connection to the origins, the origin story of the company. But you have to be aware of it when you come in next and really sort of be alert and understand what are some of the ingrained assumptions that are happening here in the business?
Kate Eberle Walker: And what of those do I want to change? I need to be explicit, very, very, very explicit with people about changing. And what of it do I want to embrace and turn it into something that's really part of the character that the company is. So you got to be just really ... There's a lot of hidden habits that I think are different that you just want to be aware of.
Rob Ristagno: That's a good point, because I imagine you want to keep some of them, but some of them just need to change.
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah, exactly. And people get that. The nice thing, too, is you have this relationship with this founder who ... Actually, you do have this other person who cares about the company as much as you do. We talked before about that infatuation. And nobody cares as much as you do when you're the CEO. It's actually different when you take over from a founder. That founder continues to care as much as you do. And that's different too, and I think really nice from my perspective.
Rob Ristagno: So you've done this before, it’s not your first time being a CEO. You've mentioned you got to bring your own team with you. What were some other advantages you had as a seasoned CEO that maybe first-time CEO Kate might have made a mistake?
Kate Eberle Walker: I mean, a lot of it just comes down to trusting your own judgment. I think it's actually very similar to parenting. You're very daunted with your first child. And you think that there's a right way to do everything and you just don't know it yet. So you've got to learn it and figure it out.
Kate Eberle Walker: And then you realize, or at least don't tell my younger daughter if this isn't true, but I feel like I realized by my second one, like, you know what? My own intuition about what the right thing to do is is better than any other fact out there. So I got to have more confidence. And if I think something is the right thing to do, I should do it.
Kate Eberle Walker: So I just moved a lot more quickly the second time around, and had more confidence that if every sign was there for me that I needed to make a decision or change something, I should just go ahead and change it.
Rob Ristagno: What is that calculus that's going on in your head when you're making a decision? How much are you relying on data and facts versus experience, intuition, other people's opinion? I know it's complicated. But what's going through your head?
Kate Eberle Walker: I mean, I definitely, according to a lot of the sort of behavioral analysis and assessments that I've done over time, they test any person coming from that world, I definitely over-rely on intuition. And I usually start from, "I think we should do this. Or I think I want to do this. Let me go and gather some data to prove or disprove it." And then once I get to kind of decent-enough confidence level, I'm like, "Okay. Let's do it.”
Kate Eberle Walker: And that's different with every company too. I mean, right now, because I am in something that's high growth and still early-ish stage, it's kind of fun for me, because I feel I have more luxury to do that. And it's better to err on the side of moving quickly than to be too deliberate. So I do rely on intuition.
Kate Eberle Walker: But also something that has always worked for me is, because I know that that's my own tendency, the executives that work with me, that I bring onto my team, are all super opinionated and vocal about it. No one is afraid to debate me and call out when they disagree. So we have very lively management team meetings. But I sort of surround myself with people who often talk me out of my own intuition.
Rob Ristagno: All right. Important to have those people who can keep you honest. Al, you have a question?
Al: Yeah. Something just hit me. So going back to your work in COVID, have you given some thought to what happens after a vaccine?
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah. I think, because school will come back in session, and we all want that. We're certainly not rooting against it. I think, for us, first of all, I'll say, it makes us probably particularly manic in pace right now, because we feel like this is our moment of opportunity to get connected to as many clients, as many school districts as possible.
Kate Eberle Walker: And when we do, we're thinking about the reason that we were brought in was to help with something that happened because of COVID. But once we're in, what are all the conversations, what are all the things that we need to be talking about to find those longer-term opportunities. That this is the season of cross-selling, upselling, finding what the longterm need is going to be. So we think about that a lot.
Kate Eberle Walker: And then I think there will be a more permanent shift in online education services, online services in general, probably. Maybe not in the school district itself, but with parents, with private practice. So we've accelerated, we are already kind of working on a growth plan around proving services directly to the private practice market. We've accelerated that because I think there is a marked trend in that direction of parents getting, wanting to take on more direct involvement in sort of finding services for their kids.
Rob Ristagno: We have a question from Mark in the chat box here. What were the best tactics you used to uncover student opportunities? Basically, how did you do your market research, focus groups, surveys, one on one interviews, et cetera?
Kate Eberle Walker: We do a lot of market ... Market surveys are good. I don't know. Maybe in all markets. But I find that we've worked with some groups that are going and doing surveying of districts, professionals, administrators. We've gotten so much data that helps us zero in on which districts are going to be the right match for what we need. Which districts are likely to have the most significant need?
Kate Eberle Walker: And I've actually got to give Bain a ton of credit there. I mean, having a fund like that that is so analytical and so resourced in those areas has actually been a dramatic change for us for our sales targeting. I mean, the amount of research they did in this spreadsheet, a beautiful spreadsheet, that they have created.
Kate Eberle Walker: I mean, it's really allowed us to get much more scientific about tiering out our opportunities and focusing efforts. So it's data. I mean, there's a lot to be taken from analyzing the size of the district, the percentage of the special education population within, the income profile, the racial profile. They all correlate to what makes a good customer for us.
Rob Ristagno: I want to shift gears now so we can learn more about your book coming out March 9th, The Good Boss: Nine Ways Every Manager Can support Women At Work. How did you come up with the idea?
Kate Eberle Walker: I started out, actually, I get asked for advice from a lot of women about, "How do you break into the C-suite? What's your advice?" And so I started out, I wanted to actually write a book about that. And I thought, "Well, I'll interview all these successful women I know about and they'll tell me about their success strategies. And I'll put them on the book.”
Kate Eberle Walker: And I started doing interviews. And nobody really had these strategies to share. I kept getting like, "I've never actually applied for a job. I've never actually asked for a raise." And as I kept working through those conversations, I always got to this common endpoint where they said, "I just had a really good boss. I never had to ask for those things. I had a boss who gave me promotions, who pushed me to do that, who dealt with that issue for me.”
Kate Eberle Walker: And so that was how I kind of got to what the book is, which is, I realized the single greatest determinant of the success of whether talented and successful women will succeed appears to be her boss. So we need to create more good bosses who care about supporting women and who take it on as their responsibility.
Kate Eberle Walker: And the majority of managers are men. And I wanted to write something that, more than anything, spoke directly to them and said, "Let's not leave this to women should mentor women. And women CEOs should cultivate the next class of women CEOs." Because there aren't enough women CEOs to do that and have an impact. I mean, we need the men to commit and to be a part of it.
Kate Eberle Walker: And so I wrote this book from just a really practical perspective of advice for male managers, for all managers, but particularly male managers, of like, "Here's some things that you can do that will have a huge impact." And some of them are small but they go a long way to really creating a better working environment for women.
Rob Ristagno: Okay. I have to ask. What is a common thing that men do that's really obnoxious that we just don't realize is bad?
Kate Eberle Walker: It's actually getting names wrong. So the first chapter of my book is Call Her By Her Name. And there's a lot of layers to that. There's terms of endearment which are ... It happened in a meeting yesterday. You hear people thinking, "Yeah. We know ‘don't call somebody honey.'" But people do it. They call me young lady.
Kate Eberle Walker: So no terms of endearment. Nicknames. People think I'm Katie. I'm like, "I did not introduce myself as Katie. That's not my name." Or they just get the name wrong. And there's all these statistics that show, of course, you could a man's name wrong, too. But statistically, it happens to women far more often in the workplace that somebody mistakes their name, or uses a nickname that they didn't choose, or uses some other term. So that's the biggest one.
Kate Eberle Walker: Oh! And then, sorry. I could go on. When she gets married and changes her last name, a lot of people continue to get it wrong, forget the change, dismiss the change. That happened to me a lot. People saying like, "Oh! I'm just used to calling you Kate Eberle. I can't change." And it's like, "You could remember someone's name has changed and you could give them the respect to call them what they asked you to call them." So get her name right.
Rob Ristagno: All right guys. Get her name right.
Sy: I want to jump in on that if you don't mind.
Kate Eberle Walker: Yeah.
Sy: I want to say three very quick things to you from what you just said, Kate. I am, I think, an outlier on this group here today. I don't know. Is that accurate?
Rob Ristagno: It's true. Go for it.
Sy: Okay, because you know what I do. Thanks.
Rob Ristagno: Yeah.
Sy: So I'm a writer and an actor and a director. And so there's three things I want to say. First, as an actor, I have two agents. One is in New York. I'm in Connecticut. And one is in Connecticut. The one in New York is a man and the one in Connecticut is a woman.
Sy: And I was working with the man in New York for years. And he constantly would call me Sigh, which kind of drives me crazy anyway because I just kind of really hate. I like my name and I just don't like that.
Sy: And one time he did it, and it was just after so many times. And he called me up about, I don't know, a job or an audition. And he said, "Sigh." And I went, "My name is Sy (pronounced: Cee).” And he said to me, "What's the difference?" I'm not kidding you. He said, "What's the difference?" That's the first thing I want to tell you.
Sy: The second thing that I want to tell you is ... Maybe I forgot the third. I'm just going to go to the others. I'm also a teacher. And when I was still in New York, I did work in the school systems for a while.
Sy: And I will tell you that I'm so big on Ms., M-S, and what that means. And I cannot tell you how many schools that my daughter has gone to, and that I have worked at where Ms. has only just become a substitute usually for Miss, so that all the teachers are either Mrs. or Ms. And I have written articles, blog articles, trying to explain once again that Ms. is the female counterpart to Mister, which does not designate marital status.
Sy: And it's so lost. People don't get it. And when I talk to younger people, they have no idea what Ms. is anymore. But even my peers who were around when that first came around, sometimes they just have no idea.
Sy: So, I'm sorry to jump in there. But I had to just jump in on what you were saying with some of those —it drove me crazy that he literally said to me, "What's the difference?" And that people don't understand that there's a title when you talk about changing your name. That there is also a title that we have the right to chose that doesn't designate marital status. But that's gotten lost. Sorry. Those are my [crosstalk 00:57:11].
Kate Eberle Walker: It exactly demonstrates why it's important and it is rampant.
Rob Ristagno: it doesn't seem hard to implement. So guys, come on! Get on the ball here. Hey! This has been phenomenal. Thank you so much for spending your time with us. What can the group do to help you out?
Kate Eberle Walker: Well, we are hiring more people than ever. So if you have talent that you think ... We like to find people who are obviously very talented but also who are drawn to our mission. And I do find there's a lot of people out there who have had a personal experience with speech therapy, or someone in their family did or really benefited from getting counseling when they were a student.
Kate Eberle Walker: So if you know anybody who's really, feels the connection to this area and is passionate, I would love an introduction because we're hiring in sales and in marketing and product and engineering and finance. We're hiring everywhere as we grow this year. So I'm just always looking for people that will really be into what we do.
Rob Ristagno: Great. So if we know someone, how can we get in touch with you, or go to your website, or what's the best way for us to suggest some folks for you?
Kate Eberle Walker: The best way is LinkedIn. And I hope you all connect to me on LinkedIn. And I'm always active on there. And if you want to introduce anyone to me, or send a message, I can obviously fill in others to reach me from there. But that's the best way to set up the connection.
Rob Ristagno: Kate Eberle Walker, CEO of PresenceLearning. Virtual round of applause. Thank you so much. This has been the CEO Campfire Chat. To listen to more episodes, subscribe to our email companion or take a two-minute growth assessment, visit ceocampfirechat.com. This is Rob Ristagno. See you again next time around the fire.
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Elizabeth Green is the founder and CEO of Brief Media, a publishing company focused on the veterinary medicine space. She shares how she and her team have uncovered new ways to care for customers and colleagues during the COVID crisis.
Brent Diamond is a serial CEO for private equity-owned businesses. Now he's working with a team to acquire and run his own organization.
Brent shares insights into the world of private equity and how it's changed since the start of the pandemic. Whether you're looking to buy or sell a company, or want an investor's insights on the market, there's something for everyone in this episode.
David Stephens accepted the role of CEO at a growth-stage sports technology company, Guided Knowledge, in January. Little did he know that the coronavirus outbreak would upend the company’s plans to launch in the US professional golf market.
With sports on pause and America on lockdown, David and his team needed to pivot their focus quickly to a new geography and a fresh audience. He shares what it took to make those moves happen, all while keeping his investors calm and the team engaged.
For more than 20 years, EB Medicine has been producing peer-reviewed, evidence-based emergency medicine treatment guidelines for doctors on the front lines. It’s important to stay abreast of the latest trends and discoveries in any industry, but when your job is caring for people who are gravely sick or injured, up-to-date information on best practices and advancements is all the more vital.
So even in a normal year, the service that EB Medicine provides for its subscribers is critical. But 2020 is not a normal year, and with emergency room physicians on the front-lines of the pandemic, CEO Stephanie Williford and the team at EB Medicine had to rise to the occasion to support their members.
Stephanie mentions that, because her team is made of experts and medical professionals, her editors were flagging the growing need to cover the coronavirus way back in February—long before it was on the general public’s radar.
The challenge was that the editorial team at EB Medicine is not in the business of breaking news. They typically operate on a longer cycle—about nine months to one year—to produce their content. But with coronavirus, their timeline became condensed. Doctors who saw their emergency rooms filling up with ailing patients needed immediate guidance on how to best provide care.
Stephanie and her team worked long nights and weekends to rapidly disseminate information to their subscribers. They also reconsidered how they gated their content, not wanting to bar any medical professionals or hospital groups who had financial concerns from being able to access the content.
As the team has adjusted to this new pace and workflow, they now look towards the future. Stephanie notes that, contrary to what some outside the industry may think, the medical profession is hurting financially right now. With most elective surgeries and procedures paused for months during the first surge of the virus, some hospitals and medical groups are in dire straits. How will this affect EB Medicine’s subscriber base moving forward?
That’s certainly something Stephanie is thinking a lot about. Members of the Chat’s audience chimed in with some creative solutions to finding the middle ground between continuing to serve the company’s audience while securing revenue growth for the long run.
In the end, what Stephanie and her team remain most committed to is making sure that their members feel supported so that they’re well-positioned to care for their patients.
Episode Transcript Rob Ristagno: Many emergency physicians are going through the most challenging year of their careers. The ER is a high pressure environment in normal times. The coronavirus has only amplified that reality. On this episode, we sit down with the CEO of a publisher in the emergency medicine industry. When the pandemic hit, her organization had to accelerate processes and innovate quickly to provide our healthcare heroes with the vital information they need to stay ahead of the curve.
Announcer: This is the CEO Campfire Chat, with your host Rob Ristagno. Taped in front of a live studio audience, join us to hear successful growth stories for middle market companies, just like yours. Sponsored by the Sterling Woods Group.
Rob Ristagno: Welcome to the CEO Campfire Chat. I'm your host, Robert Ristagno and I'm honored to introduce my friend, Stephanie Williford, the CEO of EB Medicine. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Stephanie Williford: Thanks Rob.
Rob Ristagno: For those of us not familiar with EB Medicine, tell us a little bit about what you do.
Stephanie Williford: Sure. EB Medicine is an evidence-based education provider and CME provider. We've been around since 1999. The EB in our name stands for evidence-based. It reflects our philosophy that that should be the guiding force in medicine. And all of our content is written by practicing emergency physicians and peer-reviewed by practicing physicians as well, because our goal is to provide really practical, relevant information that practicing clinicians can use on their next shift after they use our content.
Rob Ristagno: Sounds to me like your customers, emergency physicians, are on the front lines of all things coronavirus. Before we jump into how you manage that, let's rewind the clock. Let's rewind it back to January 1, 2020. No one had any idea that the pandemic was on its way. What were your goals for 2020? What were you hoping to accomplish?
Stephanie Williford: Yeah, so well that feels like about a million years ago at this point, but we really start every year with the same guiding principle, which is focusing on our customers and what their needs are. We do regular surveys and the number one thing that our customers have been asking us for, for a couple of years, is a mobile app. We came into this year really wanting to develop that, figure out exactly what they were looking for and how that would add value to our content and to their clinical practice.
We also were looking at developing or expanding our content so that it would be more accessible and usable at the point of care.
And then we were looking at some, I guess you could call operational areas. We wanted to implement an auto renew program just to make it easier for customers to continue getting access to their content and developing curricula for practice providers was also on our radar.
And a big focus as well that we wanted to work on was our brand. We, I mentioned, we launched in 1999, we really haven't done anything since then to update even the look and feel of our journals or our brand message and positioning, and we felt like that was something we really needed to focus on and make sure that we had a clear and consistent message that we're putting out there and that we're reaching and appealing to the younger audience because we found that we really not attracting as many of the younger folk as we would like to.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. Big slate of initiatives, very optimistic, lots of customer driven ideas, as you mentioned. You had a full plate, I'm sure you're very busy, and then COVID strikes. Tell us a little bit, what's going through your mind when things start? Let's say we're in early March and things start to look like, oh wait, this is serious. This is something that's just not going to pass us by kind of, what were your initial inklings?
Stephanie Williford: Honestly, I did not expect it to have the impact that it's had it. Maybe I just was naive, but in terms of literally across the globe in every industry and every person in the world has been impacted by this in some way. And I just, I didn't quite anticipate that, but I will give credit to our editorial team who did and understand how important it was going to be for us to cover this. Obviously emergency physicians were impacted probably more than most and we're not in the news business. We don't normally rapid-fire turn out content or new information. It often takes nine to 12 months for us to produce an article. It's not normal for us to say, "Oh, this is something we need to cover."
But actually in early February, our team said, "No, we really need to do this and our customers are going to need this information and it's really important that we be there. And even though there's not a lot of evidence yet, because this thing literally just happened, there is some evidence that is available already and there is a lot of expert advice and there's a lot of experience with it internationally that we can learn from." And we were lucky that we had an editorial board member from Italy who was able to give us recommendations and lessons learned from that. We did start producing content very quickly and very early on.
Rob Ristagno: Did you have to change any of your processes there to get, you said it usually takes several months, you're working months ahead and you're not used to quote unquote “reporting the news.” Kind of, how did you have to change some of your processes? And how did that go over?
Stephanie Williford: I don't know that we changed things so much because we still think it's incredibly important to have the vetting process and have the content peer-reviewed, make sure that it's accurate and relevant and practical. The biggest change was just accelerating it to an incredible degree. And we were lucky that the physicians that we worked with, we had several, our editor-in-chief is at Mount Sinai in New York and he had several people on his team that were willing to put the time in to create the content.
And then we, our editorial team worked nights and weekends to get it done and our online content team to get it posted and then the marketing team to get the messaging out there. And so it wasn't, I don't know that we changed the process so much. It's just everybody really dove in, all hands on deck and let's get this done and make it happen, which was really amazing and I'm very proud of our team for what they did.
Rob Ristagno: It's good to see when everyone gets, I love the all hands on deck situation. And it sounds like this actually was initiated from your editorial team thinking about the customer first. You had a bit of an advanced warning system built in there because you're good at listening to your customers and figuring out their needs.
Okay let's fast forward again a little bit now, it's becoming not only serious to your team, but serious to the world at large, what's going on? What are you thinking? What are you reprioritizing? What are you focused on?
Stephanie Williford: Focus, my team would love it if I could focus on one thing. There's still so much to do. No, we were actually able to proceed with a lot of the things that we wanted to work on. We did put our auto-renew program in place, took longer than expected, but we kept kind of working on that in the background.
We are still investigating mobile app options and that. We back-burnered a couple of things - so the advanced practice clinician group curricula we put on hold. We had actually wanted to pilot that at a hospital this year and obviously they were like, we have no ability to do that right now. That's been put on hold, but we are still focusing on a lot of the things that we wanted to.
We did pivot quite a bit in terms of wanting to capitalize - kind of hate to use that word in this situation, but - on the traffic that we were getting from COVID, because we had over a 100,000 visitors to our COVID article, which in comparison to maybe five to 10,000 visitors that we would get for a regular article.
Rob Ristagno: Okay, wow.
Stephanie Williford: Then we said, "Okay, well, now these people are coming what do we do with them? How do we get them to sign up for an email list or subscribe? And so we had a lot of conversations about that and we made changes to our website and our marketing strategy to take advantage of that situation.
Rob Ristagno: You had a big surge in traffic. I want to actually pause here for a second, just maybe some other people in the audience here have some thoughts on things that you had to shelve, things going into 2020 you thought were high priority but you had to shelve some them because of COVID and other priorities took precedence. Any stories to share there? Any similar stories?
Audience Member 1: I will add on the second part is nothing that we shelved, but we accelerated the launch of a number of new products. We were just launching them as fast as we could this spring, because they were working and the market, other than a very brief three week period, the stock market was strong and investors were interested in buying and we didn't know how long it would last so we thought, things we are going to be launching in the fall, we launched in the spring. It was a very busy spring for us.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. It sounds like another example of all hands on deck, everyone chipping in, going above and beyond. And this for anyone in the group, how do we bottle that magic? It seemed like we got everyone rallied against the cause, doing new things much more quickly than expected and outside their comfort zone and learning and growing. Unfortunately took a crisis. Any lessons here, stuff we can note and try to inspire this in other ways?
Fred: It's hard to maintain a sense of urgency. Very hard.
Audience Member 1: The only thing I think is being prepared. I just remember a professor in college and grad school used to say, "Never waste a perfectly good crisis." And so, to Fred's point, I don't think you can artificially stay sustain that for very long at all, but being ready to jump on it as quickly as possible gets you the most mileage out of it I think.
Rob Ristagno: There's some adage about preparation and luck and I'm going to botch it if I try to say it, but if you're prepared and ready and had a good culture already in place, I think that allows you to, I also hate to use the word capitalize, Stephanie, but allows you to respond quickly when there's a crisis.
Okay, great. Back to Stephanie, your traffic windfall, 10 to 20 times increase in the number of people coming to your website. What are some things you tried that worked? And maybe what are some things you tried that didn't pan out as you'd hoped?
Stephanie Williford: That's a really good question. One thing that we did that has worked well, which seems obvious, but we implemented, we just took out a step in our checkout process. It's something that we had thought about doing for a while, because the quicker and easier it is for them to get through that, the better, but we just never got around to it. And we were looking at our abandoned cart rate and thinking, well, shoot, we're getting more people than we've ever gotten, if just a few more of them could complete the cart process, then the revenue potential was huge. We cut a step out, that's worked very well.
We also implemented a pop up in the cart. I think, can't remember if it was an on exit pop up or I think it was just a time delay. We looked at how long people typically were in the cart and left. And then we had the pop up occur a little bit before that so the people that we were likely to lose, we were keeping and the ones that were likely to continued anyways, didn't get the additional discount because why give away the money if they were going to order anyways?
One thing that we tried that did not work well was attempting to gate some of the COVID content. I will say we did that rather late because we didn't have an easy mechanism to make that happen on our site where you enter your email address and then get access to it. We ended up doing it on some content that was more specific than our audience generally likes because it was in a very focused area, administrative and less clinical type thing.
It didn't get as much traffic as some of the other content anyways. And then the traffic that it did get, most of them didn't end up getting to see the content and the conversion rate actually was very good on the email sign up form. I guess it worked and it didn't work at the same time because we had a good conversion rate, but there wasn't enough traffic to the page to really make it worth it so we ended up ungating that content.
What I think I would do differently, and hindsight being 20/20, is I would have been reluctant to have gated all the COVID content, even just asking for an email address because people were so insistent that they needed access to it quickly and they didn't want any barriers to that. We also got a lot of international exposure and associations and organizations reaching out to us because it was free. And I think if we had even asked for an email address, they would have been less likely to link to it and share it and things like that. But I think we could have played around with that a little bit more, maybe had portions of it in front of the paywall and then other portions not paywall, but at least gating it and requiring an email address to collect email names, to collect more earlier on.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. Got you. Okay. You had this surge in traffic. What other changes did you experience from a sales and marketing perspective?
Stephanie Williford: Well, we were worried that it would have a big impact on our larger group sales and site license sales - so we have about 70% of our revenue comes from individual practicing clinicians and the other 30% comes from hospitals or groups that are purchasing it on behalf of their clinicians. And we were very worried that the hospitals, since they were taking a big hit financially, were going to just pull the plug on everything, that we wouldn't be able to close any new deals, that renewals would struggle. And our account executive was really great about reaching out to the customers that we had and staying in touch with them. We made sure that we were just sending them a lot of resources and information, things about COVID and to help their team trying not to push the sale, but just be there for them and provide value.
And we were very glad and very lucky that we didn't see the big decrease that we expected. We actually re-forecasted, anticipating that it could go away. And so far that has not happened. Although I will say we tend to feel the impact of economic downturns, recessions a lot later than other industries.
Even going back to ’08 and the crisis that occurred then, we didn't really feel it until ’09. It took so much longer to get through it and medicine and healthcare is relatively stable. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the plan we use then and that we're using now as sort of a hope for the best, but expect the worst. To your poll earlier, we're cautiously optimistic and I'm watching things carefully.
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Rob Ristagno: Anyone else in the audience here - sounds like Stephanie took care of her best customers. There were some customers affected. Actually, by the way, I don't think it's common knowledge that hospitals are in bad shape. People might falsely assume that hospitals are doing well, but it's really all the elective stuff that's been put on pause and so they really aren't doing very well. Anyone else in the audience had a segment of their customer base really negatively affected? And how did you stay ahead of the curve, work on building that relationship and help them out?
Adam: Well, just a question. I have a, this is probably not very good data, but I have one client who's an emergency room physician who was cut back by 30% and so did you feel an impact from those smaller hospitals? I don't know if he's a subscriber. I have no idea, but he may, I don't need to do this now because I'm cutting back on my expenses?
Stephanie Williford: Yeah. It has been a challenge. To Rob's point, the elective procedures getting essentially eliminated had a huge financial impact on the hospitals. And the other side is actual ED volumes, non COVID-related have been down and still have not returned. And they don't anticipate them returning soon.
Hospitals have been reducing shifts, significantly cutting back their CME budgets or eliminating them. And we've had customers that have reached out to us and said, "I can't afford this anymore. I don't have a budget, I need this, I want the information." And we work with them, if it's okay, let me give you a three months free extension or let's do a monthly billing option or we can offer a discount. We've tried to be really flexible and understanding with that to meet their needs and keep providing them with the information that they really do need. It helps them improve patient care and they realize and recognize that. But yeah, it's definitely been something we've had to address.
Audience Member 2: Can I ask you two questions?
Stephanie Williford: Sure.
Audience Member 2: Do you have an ad revenue model at all? Is there no advertisement?
Stephanie Williford: We do not have any advertisements.
Audience Member 2: And printed content is the only delivery that you have? You don't have video, you don't have podcasts, you don't have anything like that?
Stephanie Williford: We do have a monthly podcast and we are starting to do more video content. We don't produce a lot of it ourselves. We partner with organizations and other individual physicians.
Audience Member 2: Video can give you tremendous legitimacy, with some of that - and my son is involved with something that has completely radically changed, particularly the COVID environment. Changed by doing training, if you will. And I don't know how it's applicable as to what you have, but creating subject matter expertise that they connect the videos a lot more than they do with printed word. And it has worked out marvelously for them.
Stephanie Williford: Yeah, that's a great point. And actually, one of the things I didn't mention, our marketing director really advocated for doing a webinar series because she said, "Well, if ever there was a time to launch that it would be now when they can't go to conferences." And we did two in June that we were very successful. We got great attendance. We offered them for free. We wanted to see if people would show up. Because previously our audience hasn't really been interested in a webinar format, they do like video content, but more focused on short procedural or how to.
But that worked well and now we're looking at what we want to do next with that. And we just did a survey this week about video content and what they're looking for. You're a 100% on target with that.
Audience Member 2: Well, the last thing is, do you have the ability for somebody to search by voice versus typing in what they want through your content? Do you rely on other people to do the search mechanism?
Stephanie Williford: I'm still trying to get the type in search correct so no, we're not at the voice level yet.
Audience Member 2: Well, that's where the future is going. That's why I bring it up.
Rob Ristagno: Did you do any paid advertising during COVID? And if so, how did that work?
Stephanie Williford: Yes, well, we were doing paid Google ads before and continued that. We've increased the budget for that. We also started doing social media ads just in the last month. Actually, I was on this Campfire Chat a couple months ago when Mark presented their successes with social media and I ran back to my team and was like, "We should do this." And they did make it happen. We had good success with Facebook ads when we started those in June.
We're now on LinkedIn and Twitter and experimenting with those. And so far we've seen really good ROIs. Actually it does not cost a lot of money. Well, I guess it depends on your industry, and keywords, at least for us in the space that we're in. And we've been able to see pretty good returns on that. We've mainly been promoting and selling the actual subscription. We might test doing lead generation efforts. A little bit more reluctant to do that because it's harder to measure over time whether or not they actually convert and the cost can be a lot higher. But I know that's very effective for others so we're looking at that.
Rob Ristagno: It's terrific to hear your team stepped up, completely maintained a sense of urgency. Are you seeing any fatigue now? And if so, how are you managing it?
Stephanie Williford: Yeah, they're incredible. They work really, really hard and there's definitely a sense more often than I would like to admit of feeling overworked and overwhelmed. We talk a lot about that as a management team of how do we better focus our energy and our time? We need to not take on so much. It's a conversation we have on a regular basis. I honestly, I have to take responsibility for that because I can be a bit of a shiny object chaser at times and want to capitalize on every new opportunity that walks in the door.
Rob Ristagno: I think that's in the job description for any CEO.
Stephanie Williford: Yeah, we've worked on creating criteria, how to evaluate a new partner opportunity or something like that, so that we're not just going after it. We've gotten really good, or much better at strategizing and then staying focused on that. We meet every month as a management team to look at what our big initiatives and priorities are. And I am trying to make a point every time of crossing something off the list, rather than adding to it. I cannot say that I do a great job of that, but I try.
Rob Ristagno: Anyone have to have some advice or wisdom to share in terms of avoiding this shiny object? Because on one hand you don't want to have FOMO [fear of missing out]. You don't want to, oh, I missed, it wasn't really shiny object, it's the future. But on the other hand, there's something about focus and deploying your resources in an effective way rather than spreading them too thin. Wisdom, thoughts, experiences people want to share?
Adam: This is Adam. I feel like you should set aside a specified time and number of hours during the week for stretch, crazy, bonkers, left field thinking goals, whatever you want to call it. And whether it's putting your feet up on your desk and staring at the ceiling and letting ideas flow or networking with someone you haven't talked to in 10 years and getting ideas that way, whatever it is, but pick out time dedicated to not doing your normal work and then let your mind go and then get back to the grindstone.
Glen: This is Glen. I struggle with this a lot too, so I don't have any good data except to tell you there's a great book called Deep Work and another called Essentialism, which I'm trying to learn how to use.
Rob Ristagno: The books are there. We just need to figure out how to put it into use.
Glen: Right. That's a little bit harder to do.
Audience Member 1: Stephanie, you've told me before, I think you actually have a good system for kind of keeping that in check. And so you didn't get to answer that question, but I wanted to throw that to you because I think you have a good perspective on it.
Stephanie Williford: Thank you. Well, we've tried to get better at it. We created a few years ago, what we call our vision criteria, which is how we measure new ideas against the vision and mission of the company. And the three kind of pillars are that it has to be high quality, high value and high impact. And we define what each of those things mean for us. We do try to use that as a vetting process, but even sometimes I forget to use it myself, but it can be very effective when we do.
Rob Ristagno: Hey, Stephanie, what are some things that you think have changed your business forever? Things you were dealing with a surge in demand, dealing with a spike in traffic, dealing in changing customer preferences. What's going to stick versus what's going to go back to normal if there ever is a normal again?
Stephanie Williford: That's a good question. In a lot of ways, everything changes and everything stays the same. I think we still will be focused on providing evidence based content that's really practical and useful. We still want to continue evolving our formats and the interactivity and the usability of our website.
I honestly don't know that we've made some huge change that that forever will stick. I think a lot of it, some of it is culture wise. We're capable of doing things that we might not have thought we could do to produce content that was that important that quickly. And really, I think I want to build on a lot of those successes and keep the team motivated and moving forward, continuing to think about innovation and focusing on the customer. I think that's still going to stay front and center for us.
Adam: This Adam again, have you considered moving to a model specifically addressing the crazy COVID times, which is if you're able to continue your current payment plan, please do so but for those who are struggling, we want to support you. Pay what you can, pay what you want and then we'll revisit in six months, 12 months, what have you. We're still showing you our customers the love, but you're not over quote unquote overcharging based on their budget.
You could also marry that to a gift sponsorship program. Hey, you got a few extra bucks in your pocket, help offset our costs, help your colleagues in the industry to still maintain and receive this information. Create a sense of camaraderie amongst your membership base.
Stephanie Williford: We have not talked about that, but I love that idea. I'm definitely going to put some thought into that, how we could do that. I think that's a really smart approach.
Audience Member 1: Adam, have you done something like that that's worked?
Adam: Take the example from a number of restaurants and other businesses I've seen do this, which is pay what you think is right. I personally did that with a consulting project in Australia once and I just had the guy, you can pay me anything or something, it is totally up to you. They actually paid me more than I was expecting. Great, but I said, "I want to be fair to you. You tell me what value you've received." And it worked out, I think very well for both parties.
Audience Member 1: My concern for that with in a restaurant, if you know the owner and the chef and you love the food and you walk in and they know your name and know your table, there's a strong bond there.
These are hospitals. Some are private equity-backed and some are not for profit. It's hard for me to see them of their own, stepping up to help Stephanie. But if you put the message out there to everybody, "Hey, we're open to taking less than full fare," rather than waiting for them to say, "I can't do it anymore." I've got to lapse and then we talk, I'd just be concerned that you're going to take everybody stepping up and saying, "Yeah, I can't pay the full freight right now." And that you could take a massive hit there. That would scare the heck out of me to go that route in your environment. But I could be wrong.
Stephanie Williford: They may be trusted on a small basis first. Let's see how it goes.
Audience Member 1: I could be wrong, I just wouldn't jump in with both feet. Yeah.
Rob Ristagno: It reminds me of, from an HR standpoint, companies who move to unlimited vacation, they actually find that fewer people take vacation. It could go either way. There's always a risk that no one shows up in August or you can see that. It's probably a lot in the execution and the nuances of it. But sounds like something that's worth a test.
Audience Member 3: Stephanie, is there any way, if you had clients that couldn't pay the fare and you're going to be losing them, is there a task they could provide to you to reimburse you in some way? A new topic, an experience? I agree with Ed completely. In any of our consulting practices, we do that, we would decrease our margin by 50% overnight. Just, we wouldn't lose them, but we'd certainly cut our margin. But if you provide them with the dignity of doing something to continue to get your valued services, then they're contributing in it. I think he got a chance to build a stronger longterm relationship with them.
Stephanie Williford: Yeah, it's interesting. I was thinking about too, for the customers that have lapsed, but there's less risk there as well. And I am also thinking it could work better for individuals, particularly those that have been with us for a long time, which is a question, if you've been a subscriber for five or even 10 years and all of a sudden didn't renew, really, we should be reaching out to them and asking what's going on? And how can we help you? It's a good opportunity to open that door for discussion.
Audience Member 4: I feel like a referral code to work well there. Refer a friend and get.
Audience Member 3: Bring us a new customer and you get a 25% discount for your own subscription.
Stephanie Williford: Yeah, that's a great point. We have a large percentage of our new orders are referrals already and that's without even asking or encouraging them to do it. That seems like an easy win for sure.
Rob Ristagno: I have one more, Stephanie. I understand in your limited spare time, you're launching a brand new association organization. I think it would be of a lot of interest to a lot of people in the listening audience and the folks in the live audience today. You want to tell us a little bit about it?
Stephanie Williford: Yes. I would love to. Thank you for asking. It's called SME Meetup. It stands for Subscription Membership and Events. We are really aiming to bring a community of people together to very much like this, discuss ideas, share what's worked, what hasn't, new opportunities, challenges and questions. We started with a Slack channel where there's daily discussions about these kinds of topics. And we just kicked off this month, a webinar series and round tables on different topics. We have one for marketing, another for events and then there's one for strategy and growth for executives and owners.
We're just, we're building it out. We have over a 160 members already on the Slack channel and it's totally free. We're open to everybody. Would love for people to join and participate in the discussions online, register to attend the webinars. It's so new I don't even have a website to tell you to go to yet so if you're interested, you can email me at sw@ebmedicine.net. I can say that slower. It's S-W, my initials, Stephanie Williford @ebmedicine.net and I will send you the link and get you signed up.
Rob Ristagno: And what about people in the listening audience who happen to be emergency physicians or maybe are related to or friends or loved ones with emergency physicians, ebmedicine.net, anything else that you want to call their attention to?
Stephanie Williford: Yes, we would love to connect with emergency physicians and their friends and family, so ebmedicine.net is our website. Tells all about us and there is a lot of free content that's available. You can check it out and share resources with colleagues as well.
Rob Ristagno: Right. Well, please join me in giving a virtual round of applause to Stephanie Williford. Thanks for spending time with us. We learned a lot from you and your story and congratulations in all the successes you've had. This has been the CEO Campfire Chat podcast with your host Robert Ristagno. Be sure to check out ceocampfirechat.com to subscribe for the email companion, listen to past episodes and to take a two minute assessment to see how you can grow your business. That's all for now. See you at the next chat.
Rob Ristagno: Go with your gut, follow your heart, trust your intuition. We've heard this kind of advice before, and sometimes it works. Like when you're trying to decide what movie to binge tonight. Or you're on the fence about asking her out for that second date. Or you have a sneaking suspicion about which neighborhood dog keeps digging up your lawn.
But it's not the way to make major business decisions. When you're facing challenges with growing your revenue, it's not enough to rely on instinct. That's why we've developed a data-driven solution to help you easily unearth your best opportunities for growth. No guesswork required. To learn more about our system, go to sterlingwoods.com.
Vistage Worldwide has always focused on bringing together CEOs of small to midsize companies to share knowledge and best practices. And with the seismic shifts in the business world caused by the pandemic, its services have never been more needed.
However, Vistage Worldwide’s model typically depends on in-person events and networking. CEO Sam Reese and his team had to think on their feet to continue to offer the support and camaraderie that Vistage is known for, without the ability to meet face-to-face. He shares how they pulled it off by placing their members’ needs at the center of every decision.
Join us around the fire to hear successful growth stories from middle-market companies. Recorded before a live studio audience of leading executives, the CEO Campfire Chat podcast teaches you how to accelerate your revenue growth by sharing the experiences of others who have been there.
CEOs of midsize companies take you behind the scenes for the inside scoop on strategies and actions that drove substantial growth for their organizations.
If you’re an executive of a middle-market, PE-backed company and need proven processes and playbooks to grow your revenue reliably—no matter how limited your time and resources—this is the show for you.
If you'd like to learn more, join or live studio audience, or have an inquiry about becoming a featured guest on the show, email us at ceochat@sterlingwoods.com.
Listen & Subscribe First-time CEO Zvia Schoenberg is gearing up to expand test-prep and advisory business A-List Education into adjacent markets. How does she plan to do it? By listening carefully to customers, understanding their needs, and finding new and innovative ways to serve them. Hear more from Zvia about how listening can drive growth.
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Coming up on April 6: John Campbell, CEO of Cambium Learning, runs a PE-backed organization in the K–12 education space. In just two years, he’s tripled revenues for the organization. He sits down to share the secret sauce to Cambium’s success.
Recorded before a live studio audience of leading executives, the CEO Campfire Chat podcast teaches you how to accelerate your revenue growth by sharing the experiences of others who have been there.
CEOs of midsize companies take you behind the scenes for the inside scoop on strategies and actions that drove substantial growth for their organizations.
If you’re an executive of a middle-market, PE-backed company and need proven processes and playbooks to grow your revenue reliably—no matter how limited your time and resources—this is the show for you.