Over the past few weeks, our CEO Paul Spiegelman engaged in a conversation with SGC member Jason Todd over the value of membership in the community and Jason’s professional and community oriented goals. Jason gave us permission to use some of his response as an opportunity to begin bringing members together through the sharing and understanding of their unique stories.

Once you’ve read up on Jason’s and Elevated Learning’s story, you can start a dialogue with him about continuing to build a great company through the Small Giants Community member directory. (We’re not big fans of putting e-mail addresses on the web, but Jason can also be found at www.elevatedlearning.com)

We pick up the conversation with a question from Paul and Jason’s response…

(And by the way… If you’re a member of the SGC and would like for us to share YOUR story to in the pursuit of mojo, send us your response to Paul’s question that’s highlighted below and we’ll take it from there.)

Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community CEO
Wed, 7 Jul 2010

…Let me ask you…what would make the Community most valuable for you? Tell me more about your business and some of the issues you are facing. That will really help.

Paul

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Jason Todd
President Elevated Learning Solutions, Inc.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply email. I have a computer software training and design company and have been in business for 6 1/2 years. We work with companies to design and deliver onsite training programs for their computer programmers and developers. Most of our clients are Fortune 1000 companies with large IT staffs. While there are many training companies and independent instructors out there that can train on the same topics as we do, our process for designing training programs and selecting instructors is what makes us unique. With our clients, our focus is on looking at what their goals are and specifically tailoring curriculums to meet those goals. This not only means that we tailor our material to our clients environment (which most training companies will do), but also to the job function that the students will have to perform once the training is completed. We are able to reduce the number of training days needed, make the students more productive on projects right away, and save our clients money.

I use the analogy of ordering a meal in a restaurant to describe how we are different. If you go to dinner at a restaurant, you look at the menu and select which pre-designed meal you want and can possibly add or remove an ingredient to suit your taste. This is how most of our competitors offer training. Pre-designed outlines for classes that they can tweak to get closer to what you want. In our “restaurant” we don’t have pre-designed meals, we offer a large selection of ingredients, and our “waiter” will just ask you what you feel like eating and then design the meal to exactly what you want. We do not provide pre-designed outlines to our clients. We first discuss what they are trying to accomplish with the training and then provide a list of topics that fit their requirements and design each class to the specific audience.

Our focus is on the partnership with our clients and our vendors. We do not look to add 100 new clients a year, in fact we try to focus on adding less than 10 per year. That way we can form a true partnership with them and really understand what their needs are. We also have a very loyal group of instructors (both full-time and contractors). Most of our contractors will call us before they book any other business to see if we have anything that would allow them to work with us rather than taking other business. They feel like they are part of our organization, which is why most of them try to work almost exclusively with us when they can. This is why I felt the Small Giants community would be a good fit for us. We do not want to be the biggest training company in the world, just the best at what we do and know that we are positively effecting the organizations that we deal with.

We have been successful in working with our clients and vendors from day 1. We do not attract one-time clients because the value is in a longer-term partnership. 90% of the companies that we work with have made us their primary supplier within 2 years of working with us. The challenge now is moving to the next level, which will involve finding, hiring and training instructors and sales people that meet the standards we have set, getting our value message across to new clients and expanding our service offerings to some related areas. For me, this also means that I will need to move a bit more into the President/CEO role and less into the direct sales role, as well as maintaining the passion for the business as I move into a support role for my employees.

I spoke with many business owners at the GrowCo conference who had been in business about the same length of time as me and seem to experience a lot of the same issues with growth and time management that I have. I am looking for the community to provide some support and advice as I move forward.

Paul, I appreciate you taking the time to see how this community could benefit me. This shows that you are all working to make this effective for business owners and further reinforcing why I thought the community would be a fit for me. I do think that this community has the capability of being a great resource for many small business owners like myself. As I know my experience could be of help to someone just starting out, I know that there are others who have gone through the growth that I am getting to and would be very valuable for me.

Jason Todd
President
Elevated Learning Solutions, Inc.
www.elevatedlearning.com