Andrew: Hey, they’re freedom fighters. My name is Andrew,
Warner. I record these interviews with entrepreneurs for an audience of real entrepreneurs who are building their companies. People like today’s guest, who was listening to me.
And now he’s on here to do this interview. If you’re listening to me, not only you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably somebody who has got this growth mindset loves to learn and wants to improve. And if you’ve got a team, you probably want them to do the same. Here’s what that meant in the past. Imagine you have somebody on your team who is now getting opportunities to.
To some podcast interviews, maybe get to speak on stage. And the first time that they do it, they don’t do a really good job. What would you do in that situation? What most bosses would do is sit down and then be the expert and sit down and say, all right, here’s what you have to do. I wasn’t weak. Like you, I grew strong now on somebody who knows it and then they give them tip after tip after tip, and then they move on with their day.
And when the person doesn’t grow, they think, ah, they just don’t have it. They don’t have that talent that I have. What some bosses will do is say, you know what? There’s this online course.
I’ll sign you up for that. Go spend a couple of months on that. And then they will show you how to improve. And in reality, podcast and presentation may not be the employee’s full-time job.
It’s definitely not the heart of what they do. I don’t know that they need to spend that much time. Omar glass, the founder, who you’re about to meet, came up with another solution. It’s called growth space. He said, How about, we just match the employee up with an expert. Who’s done it. Who can not just give advice and move on, but actually see the person do the work, give advice on improving, watch them improve, give them more feedback and be there like a real coach, a real teacher, a real, you know, a real mentor.
And So he productized it and he called the company growth space. And what’s exciting about the business is how fast the business itself has grown. And, um, and also the way that he was able to make a grow by not by realizing that individuals probably can’t pay for this type of thing. Selling one to one is a difficult thing.
What if you just go B2B and by going to B2B, by finding this new way to help employees grow, not only did he grow his company, but he kept his clients happy. Grew their people and also reduce churn. That’s the whole goal here. I invited him here to talk about growth space, how well it’s doing and to tell me over and over again, why he will not reveal publicly what his revenue is, even though he’s doing phenomenally.
Um, and we can do it thanks to a sponsor called HostGator, which has hosted my host. My website right now is hosted for Omer. And we’ll talk about that later and why I recommend you use HostGator, Omar. Good to have you.
Omer: Hey, Andrew,
Andrew: Do do dog food, your own product. Have you used growth space for anything you have for what, what do you use growth?
Omer: So I’m an addict. So I use gross face personally, and to work on my leadership skills, to work on my growth, hacking skills, to work on my HR skills. And this is about it for now. And I dog footage to all my employees.
Andrew: you’re saying growth hacking. So you need to improve your growth. We want to do some growth hacking. You’ve hired somebody to come and talk to you on a regular basis and tell you how to grow. You’re you’re, you’re leading the company.
Omer: Yeah, exactly.
Andrew: give me, give me an example of something that you’ve done. What’s a growth hack technique.
That’s come out of these mentorship sessions.
Omer: Hmm, that’s a good one. So for example, and I don’t want to reveal the secrets because, uh, I really like my, eh, the way we do stuff, but basically you can think of growth. Hacking is everything, which is not regular. You know, called cold leads to a call is the second call leads to a sale. So these are all the aspects that will make what you do, like contagious or, um, like create.
Creative ways to get from client to client user. So you can think of people using growth space with one companies, a lot of people move to another company, and then they introduce us to the relevant decision maker there because they, as employees got like good experience from growth space. This is one specific growth hacking technique.
Like someone already used us, for example,
Andrew: but how do you, how do you do that? How do you encourage them to actually take you to the next.
Omer: Hmm. So, uh, we have data about who used, uh, or a product. And then, um, we basically can have the information like it’s publicly available if feather changing their status, LinkedIn. Right.
Andrew: Uh, and then you get their email address because they’re tons of tools. That’s how we can find your email address if we ever need to, for example, and then you reach out to them and say, you switched companies. You can still keep this thing that you’ve had going just into. Oh, Okay, that’s great. All right.
And to do that systematically, that makes a ton of sense. All right. And I can understand also how that wouldn’t be something that would come out of an online course, because you’ve got a unique company, different type of a relationship with your customers and others. All right. Give me, give me a sense of revenue.
I know you’re not going to give me the actual number, but what can you tell me about.
Omer: So my is growing a lot. So where we’ve been growing for the. Eight quarters at a pace of between 50 to a hundred percent quarter over quarter. And then now we have a sales team of eight professionals. Like I’m not selling any more. I will tell you only that I sold the first million dollar ARR.
Andrew: million in sales in business was just.
Omer: Yeah,
Andrew: Okay. And now you’ve got eight
Omer: me and my partner, but mostly me like a 95.
Andrew: Okay. All right. I’ll get it in a moment into how you ended up doing sales buyer, uh, what you did in the early days to grow sales. But let’s talk a little bit about what you did just before this. You were a co-founder of something called career ology. What it’s career ology. And who did you create?
Omer: Oh, so actually I created it within one of these experts. Like the coach. He told you about his, one of the first coaches in the world. Is there an Israeli coach? His name is Samwell morale and he coached like the senior leaders, like politicians and senior business leaders of a lot of Israeli in global companies.
And. But participated in one of his seminars, it was like a leadership seminar. It was during my masters. And then after the seminar, I told him, I want to work for you for free, because he’s impressed me so much. So he told me I have an idea. And back then he used the tool called simple apology. And which basically helps you to be more creative, like more energetic.
I don’t know, something.
Andrew: Okay.
Omer: then he said, yeah, I have a good career mythology. So I want to call it Corolla and teach people how to manage your career. So it was basically online course for career development.
Andrew: Uh, okay. And so you had a brand in him, he had a reputation, he had experienced, you just needed to turn it into a product that you could sell online. Um, and then how did it go?
Omer: Great questions. So the product was amazing. Like his insights are incredible. His Brian was on spot that we went B to C instead of B2B, which was a big mistake. And
Andrew: sold it, how
Omer: B to C instead of B2B,
Andrew: meaning going out to individuals
Omer: yes.
Andrew: and trying to sell it. And how did you try to sell it to individuals?
Omer: Let me just online marketing back then. I used the HostGator, I think.
Andrew: Oh, great. So you put up a whole skater site. What’d you do, you went to Facebook, you bought ads, I guess LinkedIn ads. Weren’t a thing back then.
Omer: No, it was mostly Google
Andrew: It was Google
ads. Okay. And then the thing it wasn’t selling, how long were you running it?
Omer: for a year and piloting and piloting in piloting. And I think the problem there was the tweet we didn’t manage to really correct. The experience for the individual, like the lessons, the content was great. When C O’s listened to the content, they say, this is what young people need to do. But then when young people used it, they didn’t use it like, and they didn’t do their homework.
And they did down to their friends. So we haven’t cracked the individual’s solution basically. And I think now I kind of understand why, because. It’s great content, but it’s generic. I cannot expect Andrew and Omer and Dan to listen to the same recorded prerecorded videos and get the benefits they need because we’re different individuals.
Andrew: Okay. So this was from 2010 to roughly 2012. Roughly you then had like what, nine years? Eight years doing management consulting
Omer: Before off there.
Andrew: Right. after that.
Omer: Right. Okay. So right after that, a joined the management consulting firm from when the 12, until. Approximately 2017 and in 12, between 2017 and 2018, I tried and started different things like failed a lot and
Andrew: to failed.
Omer: a lot failed. And one idea that failed that I really like it was really close.
So basically, and. I don’t know if I can talk like the details, but the sign of a major and like the son of the owner of a major rental company, global rental company, one of the top three, um, came to me and told me that they want to create a car sharing.
Andrew: Okay.
Omer: Um, there, there, Brent. So he had some ideas and they fed law.
We have to do something completely different. So we partnered, we got like a million dollar seed from the company. Um, and we ran with this and this was amazing. Like flu, like in three months we had that eight people team. We had a product like in place, we have everywhere. They have everything, a vehicles, branding, whatever you need.
And then another company. Acquired this company. So they just shut it prob the
Andrew: Uh,
Omer: So like misfortune, but retrospectively we do something much more interesting now, but back then, it’s
Andrew: Okay. Meanwhile, your friend Dan was a chief operating officer at a company called signals analytics. How big was the company? How many employees?
Omer: 150 200.
Andrew: Okay. Backed by Sequoia and people were leaving. He had some churn. What was the journey?
Omer: I think a lot of companies, um, expressed churn when they grow, especially when in a very competitive market, especially in R and D. Yeah, we’re seeing it now. Big time. And so he experienced churn. I don’t think something in particular, like it was a good, like healthy company, fast growth, et cetera. Uh, but people were living and he tried to understand why.
So we appear that people were living because they were not feeling they’re being developed enough. So we did some surveys, interviewed people,
Andrew: Uh, huh? What do you mean by not feeling developed enough? I never heard anyone say I’m leaving because I’m not developed enough. They say I’m stagnant. I’m bored. I’m not as excited about work. I’m looking for something else.
Omer: I’m not developing, actually, I, I just spoke
Andrew: They literally said that.
Omer: yep. They’re not failing. They’re being developed. They’re
Andrew: And what does that mean? They’re not being developed.
They mean that they just aren’t growing as people. They’re not what,
Omer: I think, and it’s a good, it’s a good question for them. So you can invite him in there. Ask him specifically. I will ask him, but I cannot pick up the phone now.
Andrew: But what you’re taking away from it is the sense that they want to be better. People like going to a job is almost what going to college should have been. You don’t just get paid, but you grow so that then you can get the next job that’s better than you would have taken. Had you not taken this job, that’s what they’re thinking of.
Or go start a company or do something different you want to acquire, not just money, but a superpower that then. Make you a better, not necessarily person in general that that’s nice, but uh, better, uh, employed next time. All right. I think that’s what it is. And so he spent, you told our producer how much money he spent.
I don’t know if you feel comfortable saying it publicly. Um,
you don’t. I see you shaking your head. All right. So you w were you in Israeli intelligence?
Omer: No,
Andrew: no,
in the army. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed here from Israel who were in intelligence. And those guys will never spill anything.
I can, I can get other guests to reveal stuff, but once they’re an intelligence, forget it. It’s just not going to work. All
Omer: no, but I was
Andrew: to give us that
Omer: Like, uh, I was in the special.
Andrew: You are what special forces mean?
Omer: Um, it’s one of fail elite units in the Israeli military.
Andrew: And what makes you elite? I’m looking at you now. I’m trying to get a sense. Do you have big muscles? You don’t. Do you
Omer: No, I’m, I’m not that strong Mo most of my exercise today is yoga, but then back then I was much bigger.
Andrew: Okay.
Omer: so when you go to the military, you can go for different Alec units. One of them wants to be unit. I was accepted.
Andrew: And so when you say elite, what do you, what do you get to do that other people don’t
Omer: I like a special forces.
Andrew: And what do you do?
Omer: Great
Andrew: different guns? Do you get to do anything to get the jump out of airplanes?
Omer: Yeah, kind of in the, you know, the Netflix series father
Andrew: Yes.
Omer: like
Andrew: that
Omer: more or
Andrew: that is one of the doubt is one of the best kept secrets on Netflix. It is so good. It is so well done. It’s so well done that Netflix then commission the writer, I think of and then they had actor to do another show, which they started publicizing a lot, but it’s not nearly as good photo is just kinda nailed something.
Oh, wow.
Omer: Yeah, it’s an amazing note. Not like , but it’s like, think about it.
Andrew: Yes.
Omer: decrease the volume 90% and something like that.
Andrew: I got a more realistic version of that. Okay. All right. I’m with you on this. All right. So meanwhile, your buddy, Dan, he can’t keep people in. He’s realizing that they’re not developing themselves. He sits down with you and he says, I think we could do something with this. And what did you decide to do?
Omer: back then he told me, he asked me a question, um, because he tried a lot of things and he didn’t get the F activity. Like he brought in lectures, workshops solutions, anywhere he can find. And in New York, right. Not in Tel Aviv. So. And nothing worked like you did a lot of surveys afterwards and didn’t really improve the situation.
So he just called me and asked me, Omar, how do you create an effective employee development? And my initial response was nobody knows
Andrew: Why would you say nobody knows is
Omer: because there is no data because there is no. It’s like nobody knew if their marketing is working 20 years ago, right. Marketing 20 years ago. It’s not personalized. It’s generic banners, billboards, TV ads. It’s not data driven and it’s not connected to the business KPIs. So you spend money on marketing, maybe something will come back.
You have no idea. Not like today that everything is measurable to the dollar, you know, definitely how much.
Andrew: So if, if I’m understanding you, right, you’re saying you don’t, I I’ve talked to companies that offer employee perks, discounts at the gym, health benefits and all that stuff. They don’t know whether any of them. Discounts and perks key people at the company longer or make them happier. Right. That’s what you’re saying.
There’s no way to
Omer: exactly because, because I like to distinct between employee well, Which is the gym. It’s a concert, nice food, et cetera, and employee development and play development is actually helping you to become, to present better, to do better growth, hacking, to communicate better, to receive better feedback, whatever you need, but it’s like professional growth.
So less distinct. Then I’m staying in the latter. It’s very hard. A to predict whether the program you’re buying will do something, be it’s very hard to measure it. Most of the measurement is based on utilization. It’s based on self-reporting. And my mother is a librarian and she just had an, a, it course.
Right. And she told me this was the worst course ever. It was boring. I fell asleep, et cetera, and then came the review and she gave the dude five stars out of five. Why is that? It’s a nice old guy. Like, let him have it. I don’t care. Right? That’s a problem. That’s a core problem of the industry.
Andrew: right, right.
Omer: Not real.
It’s not reliable and it’s not relevant,
Andrew: Okay. And the best that I’ve seen people do is ask employees to take tests after they learned something what’s wrong with taking a test afterwards is a measurement of success.
Omer: not bad, but it’s very hard. Like how do you take tests in a leader? Or in billing product roadmap?
Andrew: You ask a few, you ask, you teach a few leadership skills, and then you ask a few questions to make sure the person understood them.
Omer: No, but the leadership is like swimming. You can’t learn, you can learn about swimming techniques, but eventually leadership is swimming and communicating swimming. Right. You can ask questions about swimming in order to understand how.
Andrew: Okay. All right. And so you said it’s impossible or we just don’t have enough data on this. So then what did you do next? how.
did that lead to this, to this company to growth space?
Omer: So we said, okay, let’s read about the industry first. We’re both. Ex-consultants we’ll like to investigate things before we dive in. And then we went and brand online and looked for like different articles about the effectiveness of learning and development or employment. There is one article. I really like, you should read it.
It’s called where companies go wrong with their learning development. And it’s a Harvard business review from 2019. It’s more or less when we started company. And they asked a lot of people in the United States, like the gathered different articles, like a different surveys, one from McKinsey and other one from 24 7, something like that and ask people like McKinsey asked.
Is your performance being better because this whole learning and development you get from the company and 75% that know. And another one asked people, have you applied skills, learning your learning and development into your day to day? That’s what it’s all about. 88% of the people said no. So we said, okay, it’s not just us.
It’s the industry. And then we said, okay, so we need to create something. That will help people enable growth. We’re not growing them, they’re growing their self. We’re just supporting them, but make it real, reliable and relevant. What is real real is basically something that happened. Something that changed, like actually changed
Andrew: Okay.
Omer: reliable is basically predicted.
So if I’m buying 100 programs, 400 different employees, I can know for, with high level of centered D that it will work. It will be real and relevant. It like growth can be in a lot of forms. Some of the forms are not relevant to the company, to the KPIs to the day to day. Like I can grow in my spiritual exercise, which will be great for Omer as an individual, but not for growth spaces.
Andrew: Okay. And then at what point did you decide? I think I need to start this. Well, actually. How did you come up with, uh, with mentorship? One-on-one.
Omer: The basic concept that we ask ourselves. Okay. There is a big problem in the industry, but if we needed to solve this problem just for one employee, what would we do? And my injury may do it. The response was I will understand what they need and find the right person who can help them. Right. It’s relatively straightforward.
99% of the people I’m speaking with are saying just the exact same thing. So with that, okay. So basically we know the solution and everyone will tell you the same thing. The only problem is how to take it from one to thousands. How do you see.
Andrew: Yeah. And then also can people afford it when it comes to, for example, growth hacking can accompany afford to get a real growth tack or not someone who plays one on the internet and blogs about it, but a real growth backer and hire them for that per for, for each one of their team members. Right.
Omer: then the answer is yes, and we work our mentors. Chief technology officers in like mid size companies, like 500 employees. These are well-paid professionals. The working with our team leads directors for customers,
Andrew: Y.
Omer: EI they get paid, and this is a nice siding, but this is the note.
Andrew: take a, let’s take a leadership trainer, someone who is at a company who’s already a leader to company would be a mentor On the growth space platform.
Omer: On in another company.
Andrew: Yes.
Omer: Yes.
Andrew: Okay. All right. So the real leader, meaning exac at another company they’re available on your platform, what would that person get paid?
Omer: I’m not sure. I want to disclose that again, military.
Andrew: hundreds of dollars per session. What are we talking about? Okay. Hundreds. So my theory on this is that leaders don’t necessarily do it for the money that teachers don’t necessarily do it for the money they have alterior benefits. One of them is maybe the cloud company will hire my agency to do growth hacking for them once they understand it.
The other one is I found the people who are really good at a topic want to teach it. So that they get even better at it. That there’s a sense of mastery that comes from explaining to someone else. Is that, is that it?
Omer: Yeah. And you miss. Two things. One is a lot of people and you’re talking about professionals. I’m just like professionals in growth, hacking that the work is worked with other people on growth hacking. I’m talking about people like you, Andrew, you can be a great mentor in our platform. Why is that? You you’re incredible in interviewing people, right?
And let’s take this
Andrew: think so, too. Right. And so if I think about why would I what’s my skill is what my skill is in. I could help people do podcasts. I’m noticing the more and more executive being asked to do podcasts. They suck at telling their stories and.
then they hate themselves
Omer: you’re a great, you can do storytelling. I will tell you, you can do storytelling. You can do presentation, you can do public speaking, great skills, very
Andrew: I were to do it and you, and you
Omer: I will
Andrew: you get,
Omer: let let’s say Andrew, you will get. You will get paid. It’s different for different categories, different their geographies.
Let’s say you get paid and you get paid nicely, not your normal hourly fee, but you get paid nicely. You develop your mentoring skills because now you’re not a mentor, no one is paying you to mentor and teach other people to do what you do. I think, I don’t know, but maybe you do that. And this is one number two.
Um, we have a great community. So basically we training also to be honest, We teach you to be a mentor. You you’re being taught by what top coaches of like how to coach or how to manage people. Number three, you’re connecting to other experts like yourself. Like we put people together and the networking is an honor.
And I think, and it’s a great gig economy. You’d never know when you will quit your job and we’ll move to Thailand and you can always work as a mentor and.
Andrew: Yeah, I get, you know, what, for me, one of the big benefits would be, I want. Figure out how to teach the things that I know. Well, if I get to work with people without having to go and.
post ads or email my audience and say that I’m available and then figure out who the right person is, and who’s Not and all that, then it’s a huge bonus.
And then by teaching, I can do. Oh, look a write up after each one of my sessions of the key topics that come up and then maybe eventually it turns out that storytelling or origin storytelling, or how to be a podcast guest becomes a topic that I care enough about that I want to write a book about maybe give presentations and, and, and become the expert, or maybe create an agency and got it.
Now I’ve got it all. Just because a growth space hooked me up with a few people who really needed my help. And I also get all their case studies afterwards and stories that I could use in my book and on stage and blah, blah, blah. Okay. I
Omer: only that not only that you get reviews like actual, reliable, again, reviews on the actual change that, that happen. And these reviews are not only from the individuals you worked with, but also their managers, because sometimes, you know,
Andrew: they were able to become better because let me take a moment. Talk about, about my sponsor and I promise this is relevant to what we’re talking about. I’m not interrupting then I want to figure out once you, once you figured out this model, what did you do next? So Walmart, here’s my sponsors HostGator.
You’ve used HostGator. I’ve used HostGator for years. I don’t want to just say because we use it. People should use it. Let’s give them an idea of what could be done as I listened to your story. Or there’s an idea that’s been in my head that I wonder if somebody should create a new, tell me if this. When I want to learn chess.
There’s one of my obsessions lately. I do watch videos on chess. I don’t benefit enough from them where I’ve benefited the most is the times when I’ve had a coach that will analyze my actual games and say, this is what you should do when I got into video editing. Cause I wanted to come become better at shooting videos of my family and all, I would take all these online classes and I wasn’t making enough progress.
I wish there was someone I could say, how do I improve my workflow? How do I. Uh, make this one minute video more interesting. I’d love to show it to someone who’s an editor, get feedback and then improve and then show them next week, what I’ve done. And then they also hold me accountable. I couldn’t get it.
And so my video editing stalled and I stopped when it came to writing my book. Stop asking questions, a book on how to have. Conversations with people. I hired an editor once a week. She would give me assignments. She would give me feedback. It really helped me grow. So what I’m noticing is if I want to get good, I need a human being to give me guidance to give me feedback, hold me accountable, answer my really specific sticky questions. A lot of these things are not work that I do within the confines of a company. They’re personal. Do you think that there’s room for somebody to do. I’m going to create the growth space of hobbies, where if someone wants to take a test, they could find a real coach. If someone wants to do video editing, they could find a real coach.
It’s almost like a skill share is, you know, where you can go and take a course on any topic, but for one-on-one mentorship, do you think that would work for individuals? Should someone steal that idea or do you think it won’t work be open with.
Omer: That’s a great question. First of all, I must be humble and say. A lot of people come to me and ask me if this idea will work. If that idea will work, some ideas will not work, but for most ideas it would say, go and try. And the market will tell you, right? I had no idea if gross base will work. And then we started selling and when people pay for what you have to offer, then you.
It makes sense. Now I know that there are models that I have one friend who teaches English like online, right? So people buy skills B to C I think literacy is completely different than B2B. Like it’s completely different table game. And I think it’s a good idea, but you know, like Seth Godin says like, Nobody really knows what will work and you have to fell 30 times in order to find a right idea.
So, yeah. I encourage you to do these, uh, hobbies
Andrew: Alright. If anyone takes this idea and needs a hosting company, go to hostgator.com/mixergy, they’ll give you a great price, make it easy for you to get started. And frankly, tell me about it. I’d love to be a part of this, and here’s, here’s the way that I would suggest doing that. I think having a standalone site, the way Skillshare has, is not going to work.
I think it’s better to have a site that then gets syndicated to other people. So you could imagine, for example, if there is someone who has a website that teaches chess and they’re a bunch of them, I love testable.com. For example, obviously chess.com. They don’t have this find a mentor site, right? You let them white label it as their own mentor, chest mentor.
They put it up on their site and then their people can find a person to work with one-on-one and it’s an extra revenue source. If I decide to create a podcasting website where I teach people about podcasting, I’m not going to be able to create a whole mentorship platform for it. I would maybe just take the subset of mentors who work on podcasting podcast, editing sound, design, interview, style equipment, whatever it is.
And I would put that. I would take those out of this big company, put it on my website and say, look, if you like all this and you need someone to work with one-on-one, don’t ask me about what Mike to get. Don’t ask me to help you with your lighting and set up, hire one of these mentors they’ll work with you that I think is a model, right?
Omer: Exactly. And just like Amazon focused on books, not on everything. Find podcasts, find, I don’t know.
Andrew: okay. You’re saying maybe Andrew,
Omer: Find one category, find one category. Yeah,
Andrew: only got it. And then I go to someone like pat Flynn and say, look, you have all this stuff on your site. You surely people need to get help setting this stuff up, send them over to us. We’ll all right. I love this idea. Maybe I should just run with the idea and go to HostGator.
Hostgator.com/mixergy. And if you steal this idea, good luck. And if you want to partner with me on it, hit me up and if not, and you have a better idea, also follow skater, we’ll be happy to host it. Inexpensive hosting. That’s done. Right? Okay. So now you have this idea, you know, where it’s going. You want us to start to figure out whether it makes sense.
What did you do to iterate, to figure out what was working? What was the first.
Omer: So the first version was like, Almost zero technology. And we started with coaching just like the purchasing. Why did you start with coaching? Because it’s the easiest. These are trained people who know how to train other people through great for a lot of soft skills and we could match them with a lot of people and get the benefit of.
So, this is how we started. It was like almost manual behind, eh, like behind the scenes, we just created a presentation, came to the first customer and then they bought and we’re like, yay, great five programs. They need to find five coaches now. And then the second one bought and then the third one bought and the third one was massive company.
It was almost by
Andrew: know the company, I don’t know if you’re going to tell me, but I’ve interviewed the founder. Let’s go to the first one, the first company that you called with this idea to see if they would buy it before you even had coaches ready and lined up, how did you get them to say yes. What was the need that they had?
Omer: So it’s funny because when we started, we were more focused than coaching. We came with the concept of coaching for my lineals. We try to find, you know, the smallest addressable market,
Andrew: What do you mean by coaching for millennials? It’s
Omer: W we, we said, okay, we understand like the vision, the big vision that we’re working on right now, but we need to be a specific.
So we, we needed to find one channel of employee development. That will make sense. So again, this was coaching and then we said, okay, who needs coaching? So executives gathered coaching who doesn’t get a coaching or the millennials who are. They do not have patients for group things for boring, like generic stuff.
They it’s all about them. They’re moving from company to company. So we thought it’s a good idea to offer coaching brand coaching for millennials. It’s just the place to start. So we started with that and then the company that we sold this concept to gave us people in their fifties. So we said, okay, having let it be fifties.
And then, um, but uh, they needed, they wanted to develop their mid-level managers,
Andrew: to be able to do what? To become better managers to guide their people better?
Omer: better managers work on better manner. Usually it’s management and leadership
Andrew: Okay. And so where did you go and get the coaches for them?
Omer: ICF database.
Andrew: What database?
Omer: ICF ICF is the international coaching Federation.
Andrew: Ah,
Omer: So it’s public, you can find coaches. So we found coaches and then match them. How did we imagine them? Senior coach, senior executive junior coach junior employee, this like, it was very not sophisticated. And then w w what we’ve seen is that sometimes.
Coach can do an amazing job in one incident, but allows the job in another. And then we went for the data and try to understand what they’re working on. And we, we saw that it’s interesting. Those who good at leadership are not necessarily good working on productivity issues. For example, they’re good leadership.
And then we started bringing data into our system or basically tagging the experts back then. It was only coaches according to their field of expertise. So you can be, so we basically broke down the concept of general. Which derives from the way coaching is being done, because the concept behind coaching is, I don’t know, nothing.
I just know how to ask questions. You have all the information on the questions asker, right? But we said, no one needs coaching. Well, like, I’m sorry. Some people need coaching. Like some people need psychologists that no one needs coaching and whoever needs psychologist, because why do you go to a psychologist?
Because you have a trauma. Why do you go to a coach? Because you need to figure out your career because he want to communicate better because you want to.
Andrew: Yeah.
Omer: Do public speaking. I don’t know. So we started using , which is a term from data world, or just list of competencies or families of competitors, and basically tagging the coaches according, what is your field of expertise and then matching them accordingly and then rating them accordingly.
And then we started getting data about the actual performance. Each expert, which basically transformed our performance and really increased the, or predictability of the.
Andrew: I think Omar, I would get a better understanding if there was something specific. So I get that people don’t really need a coach. What they need is something like, how do I explain to my boss? Or how do I, uh, how do I get somebody to produce the work on time? Maybe that’s a problem. Right? So I’m guessing then find a coach who could help get that result for them.
Is that right?
Omer: Exactly.
Andrew: Oh, okay. And then how do you know, how do you know that you’ve succeeded? Do have them keep track of whether employees are returning their work on Tod.
Omer: So I think the beauty of having the manager involved in the definition of what do you want to work on and in the measurement is. It’s not that complex, like understanding every manager in the world know exactly where is their headache with their employees. Right. Like one of my employees is to stop on one of them.
I don’t know why he can’t make like, things happen. I don’t know why one is then not receptive to feedback. I don’t know a lot of things. And the manager knows, and it’s very easy to say, okay, so what will be different in your day to day? If something like that will happen, right? If, if this will improve. Um, so, okay.
So next time I will provide feedback. I will not get. Immediately. He will wait like that second. I dunno. Something very specific. So the combination of having the employee and manager agree upon what are we going to work on? And after the problem is over to measure success enables us basically to get better understanding of whether a behavioral change has.
Andrew: Got it. All right. You’re you’re asking them ahead of time, how the world will be different if they succeed and then you’re checking in and seeing, did we get that result for you? Okay. So the first company you got had thousands of employees and they said yes to you. Why did they say Yes, to you? Is it the management background?
Is it your smile? What does.
Omer: I guess my smile. No, because, and then it’s only as a business. Um,
Andrew: They just had a
Omer: I approached, I approached, I approached the someone I studied with 10 years ago. I just started with her. She wasn’t even like a good friend. We just knew each other. And I told her, Hey, I have a cool concept of matching people with great coaches.
And then she said, Hmm, it’s interesting. We do need some in. Australia, Anna Merck, Belgium, South Africa, and they states UK. So she said, okay, so why don’t we just pilot? Just one here, one there. And then they just went for it because once the risk giving five people were escaped, they will get the bad coaches.
Okay. You know, $5,000, not the big thing. And, um, but it worked really well and people really liked. And then it grew from like six people to 50 people to 140 like skateboarding.
Andrew: that’s the thing about companies that if you sell it to an individual, even if it’s like $5, they won’t say, well, it’s $5. Who cares? What’s the big deal. But if you say to a company, let’s give it a shot. What’s $5,000. Sure. It’s
Omer: They have millions of dollars of budget a lot, like, eh, the average budget per employee. I’m sorry.
Andrew: if it works, they get a clear, measurable financial payoff for it.
Where for an individual, if it works, life is better. Not necessarily better financially. All right. The third company, can I say the name of the company?
Omer: Um, what do you want to say
Andrew: major company.
Omer: it? The major
Andrew: It’s what.
Omer: Yeah, it’s a major, let’s say one of the world’s largest cybersecurity.
Andrew: Okay. I think most people will buy that, figure it out. How many of their people were you able to sign up?
Omer: Like just five people.
Andrew: Just five people at first. Okay. All right. So that’s how you start off. Give me just five of your people. Let’s coach them. If this works and you see measurable results go even further. How’d you get access to this?
Omer: Um, this is the, what I described
Andrew: Oh, This is the third, company is
Omer: This is the third, the first, yeah, the first one was all also like a personal one of the partners. It was like a engineering company, a hundred employees. And I knew one of the partners. He was my mentor in the program. I volunteered for like many years ago. So I told him, Hey, can I talk to your HR about that?
And he connected me with her. And then she had the name. The third company was, um, HR business partner who started with. And she liked the concept. She had the needs. She said, why not? Let’s try worst case. It would work. And.
Andrew: Alright. And so now I see this model coming together. Now it’s all about refining it. How do you refine the matchmaking process? How do you find a search for mentorship process? How do you refine your sales process? The business works there. Do you, you did go beyond coaching. There’s what’s the difference between coaching And.
mentoring, um, on your platform
Omer: Great question. So. Basically and coaching is helping people and developing specific competencies. Usually in the soft skills domain mentoring is what we call best practice exchange. So these are not professional people who developing may other employees for a living there like VPCs. But people can benefit from VP sales, working with them on, I don’t know, creating a sales plan, creating a prospecting plan, doing things that are on their day-to-day engine.
So this has mentoring mentors. Our coaches are basically certified coaches. Professional mentors are people like you. You can be a mentor. The third population by the way is trainers. And that’s like people who for, for your living, helping other people to do public speaking negotiation, et cetera.
Andrew: Got it. This would be something that maybe a sales company might bring, uh, a trainer in and they’d help them with their sales, or maybe frankly, they’d help them with. Uh, zoom sessions or something like that. Am I right? Um, okay. Let’s talk about one of the problems that you had, you and Dan, good friends.
How far back do you go?
Omer: And we met in 2013 and in the UK, we both worked there.
Andrew: Okay. Management consultants. And then you’re now running a company that’s growing. That makes sense. There’s an investor that you to consider taking money from? One of you said no, the other said yes. How harsh was that argument? Be open.
Omer: Um, this was harsh and because my intuition went against it, but the logic. And I think this was the only argument we had. And because that is very, very logic kid, like the most incredible person I know, like is the best hire at gross space. And our partnerships work works like a, like a term. I think I wish everyone to find the partnership like that.
But back then it was in our early days, upper partnership is one like almost the first or second money we brought in from angel investors. And there was one individual that something didn’t work in my stomach, but we needed the money. It was just before COVID hit and. When or went like back and forth and done was persistent.
And he was right, because like, it’s very hard to make decisions like that. And I went, yeah, the logic says, yes. Intuition says no, and yeah, this was our first and maybe only fight that we had about anything. And since then it’s like smooth, stale.
Andrew: I do. What’d you decide to take the money?
Omer: Yes.
Andrew: Has the investor been a pain? Yes. Will you tell me who the person is like?
Omer: I am private. I don’t want to. Yeah,
Andrew: All right. And private, just so in case anyone else, actually, frankly, to be honest, I’m not going to prevent anyone else from working with them. I’m just so fricking curious about who it is and what the issue was. All right. I freaking love your business idea.
Grilled space makes so much freaking sense, right?
Omer: I think so. Yeah, I think it’s
Andrew: It feels.
Omer: the bottom line. Eh, listen, I am, when Dan and I started, he asked me, why do you want to be an entrepreneur? And he told me that people do it for four reasons. They do it because of the fame. They do it because of the money they did because of the challenge. And they do it because of the impact.
So I said it’s between challenge and impact for me. And what I like about it, it’s like, You meet a lot of people and like, you know, it’s becoming big. So you meet a lot of people who used growth space who want to for experts, like change their lives, then like, it’s it creating so much impact with like
Andrew: Can I, can I use it on there if I needed it for presentations? Can I go to the growth space and hire somebody just for me? Not for, for my team, but to say I’m giving these webinars and I’m giving talks in public. I need one person to listen and give me ongoing feedback. Can I go to growth space as an individual or do I have to buy it For my company?
Omer: For your company
Andrew: It has to be a minimum of how many people.
Omer: and usually it’s company above 200. Sometimes one 50.
Andrew: Wow. All right. So here’s what I’m taking away from you on this number one. There’s a lot that I’m taking away from this. Number one is going B2B makes a ton of sense that a lot of ideas that we think of for individuals, if we just stretched ourselves a little bit and found ways to make it apply to companies, the growth would be more sensible and it would be easier.
Uh, once we get. It’s for doing that. Number two. I think that whenever I think about personal growth, I think about the old way of doing things. How do I get an online class? How do I get a online video, but when I’m benefited the most, and those, I don’t want to discount those, they absolutely helped me. A YouTube video will help me in online class will help me.
Skillshare has been phenomenal for me. Um, But there are topics that it feels almost weak to say, I need a person to watch me. I don’t want to learn it on my own. It’s not laziness. Maybe it is sometimes I don’t have enough time, lazy, whatever it is. I accept it. And to just say, I’m leaning into people being better than software for helping doing with someone is better than learning it and figuring it out on my own.
And I think that there’s going to be more room for that just like courses expanded years ago. When I did courses on Mixergy, people thought it was weird. Why you teaching? Why you selling it? Then you, Tommy did it. And people thought you to me was weird and took them awhile to get things going. And now there’s Maven and all these other platforms it’s totally accepted.
I think what you’re doing is going to be totally acceptable and then it’s going to be growth beyond a growth space, but you picked up on the. Probably the cream of the crop here, the number one space, maybe, maybe it’s this. And then, and then like something specific like programming, where if you could get an individual to help.
And I think it does exist in, in, uh, the development space, right. Where you can hire a, uh, a teacher to work with your people individually.
Omer: I am not sure, but I think it’s, since it’s B2B, it’s totally on our roadmap because eventually what we want to do is I don’t care what your challenge is. I have an expert for you. It can be Andrew for public speaking. It could be like a Jane for programming. I don’t care. As long as they can help you grow.
Andrew: Pop down my lung, uh, standing and sponsor. If you want to figure out how to do your projections, you pass it on to them and they’ll do it. And I think that makes a ton of sense and businesses will always need that. This is a new way of doing things. If you want to figure out projections by doing it yourself, instead of figuring it out for yourself, we’ll have somebody come in and coach, I freaking love this idea.
All right, the website is growth, space.com. Uh, Omar. Thanks so much for being.
Omer: Thank you so much, Andrew.
Andrew: You bet. And if anyone wants to run with my idea or any of the other ideas that I’ve come here, come up with in past ads for HostGator or your own idea, need a website, go host it at hostgator.com/mixergy. All right, I’m gonna hit stop right now.
And then I’m gonna go to Omer. And I got to ask him about who this investor is. All right. Let’s both hit stop.