‘I realized that managers are promoted because they’re good at what they do, not because they’re good at leading people. But being a top performer does not have the same skill set as a leader.’
Founder and CEO of Raise the Bar and Stride Aaron Levy helps businesses succeed by providing leadership training and confidential coaching for all employees. Learn about his vision about building better leaders — making managers into coaches
‘Managers are the reason why people stay or leave their jobs.’
Aaron believes that achieving success is possible for everyone, whether you’re in a management position or a member of a team. That’s why he strives to provide access to coaching for all levels of employees.
Find out how he started as a film major and what made him shift to coaching, as well as the lessons he learned early in his business.
For more about the business leaders of today and success stories of entrepreneurs, listen to previous episodes.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aelevy/
Raise the Bar: https://www.raisebar.co/
Stride: https://www.strideapp.co/
John: Thank you for listening today. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode. My guest today is the founder and CEO of Raise the Bar and Stride. Aaron helps businesses succeed by providing leadership training and confidential coaching for all employees. Thanks for joining me today, Aaron.
Aaron: Thanks for having me, John. It’s a pleasure to be here.
John: So, I’m excited to learn a little bit about your backstory. So, how do people know you’ve, you know from when you first started and how did you become who you are today?
Aaron: You prepped me a little bit but it’s still a big question when it comes off. You know I think, when I think back to that you know that question and how do people know me and more of kinda like my journey I would this is, it goes back to some of the memories of loving films in high school. I just was a geek about loving movies and I wanted to go into, I actually became a film major and a business major in college because I love that feeling when you left a movie and it changes your perspective on the world. You would go into a movie or a documentary and you leave and think differently about the world and I was always fascinated by this idea of human behavior change. How do we change the way we think? How do we change the way we act? Why do we do what we do? And I didn’t realize it at the time, I didn’t realize when I was you know, 17, 18. Going in and coming out of movies like “Oh this is it!” but over time you know through college and going through documentary, film production and going down that route in school. And also being a personal trainer, and helping people kinda change their habits and their behaviors and not knowing why I loved it so much but it started to come together as I was graduating college in my first role at a startup where we looked at why do people do what they do. We were a healthy well-being coaching and education company and I was the first employee and I really had the chance to start to explore, why do people do what they do? Why do some people take action in their lives rapidly and others not so much because it’s not knowledge, it’s not knowing what to do that moves a needle but it’s knowing and having something else and I wasn’t quite sure how to capture that. And so, I spent a lot of my time done like a lot of the books that you have on your wall behind you are books that I read and explored, and studied you know looking at Carol Dweck’s mindset looking at Daniel Kahneman and Ivan Staroversky work. I looked at Daniel Goleman’s work like all these different types of works around human behavior, around positive psychology, around behavioral economics, and I studied all of that for our company to understand how do we get people to be healthier. And then it was one thing to just study and look and learn but as we were doing that we were a company and so I was ahead of operations, and I got to test out these theories with thousands upon thousands of leaders and individuals and we got to test out what really works and what doesn’t. We did year long coaching programs and weak-long trainings and lunch and learns and webinars and animated videos and newsletters and text challenges and you know, all these different types of things, and over the years there’s none of this happened all at once right over the years it start to formulate in my mind what really works to drive behavior changes and what really doesn’t. And I also learn that it, like the things that lit me up the things that got me most excited and most energized were when people had that lightbulb moment where it wasn’t just “Okay, now I know how to change this one thing in my life.” They start to know how to change so many other things. They start to like drive and move toward action and it’s like the lightbulb moment for them where they start to move toward action more readily and more consistently. And so, I realized I want to be doing more of that in my life, I want to help people awaken to their power and their potential. As I say now to unlock their potential, and all of that right all of those early experiences those journeys those one-on-one coaching moments when I was coaching people to be healthier or run their business better or team members to to elevate their games those moments built up with kind of all this training started to help me realize, “Hey! What really matters to me is helping people unlock their potential and I just want to be doing more of that.” And so, I maneuvered my way and started to make my journey much more clearly and with focus to say “How do I help people unlock their potential?” What are the problems that I’m seeing in people doing it right now?” And I was you know my mid 20’s millennial jumping from you know seeing friends jump from job to job to job and I realized companies want their people to succeed employees want to be great at their jobs but its not happening right there’s a discontent and disconnect and a disengagement and were seeing it again today. With the incredible amount of job hopping and people leaving and I wondered why, I wonder what was behind that, and it’s not anything new you open up anyone of these books right like the go giver Jhon, on the you know top top of your screen. You realized that managers are the reason that people stay or the reason people leave their jobs, but a manager who can actually support and help grow those were the examples that I heard of people saying “I’ve been here for seven, eight, nine years.” versus the people who are jumping from job to job to job they said my manager sucked. I realized what happens is managers are promoted because they good at what they do not because they’re good at leading people and they are promoted because they’re like they are the top performer but being a top performer does not have the same skill set as a leader of people and so, knowing a couple of things one is I know how to help people drive change and two I’m a certified coach and we actually built a coach training at our first company and knowing how to like aft, as I went through the coach training and I got the coaching skills I was like “Men, this is not just helping me be a better coach. Yes, but it’s helping me a vastly better leader.” And how do we give this to every manager? Equip them with the tools to be coaches of their people so their people unlock their potential so their teams elevate themselves and that was kinda, the start you know the real genesis of the journey of what started raise the bar and then eventually Stride. You know several years after it and raise the bar was designed to help build better leaders. I mean that’s if you go to our website you look what we do it’s like our so focus is very niche we help build better leaders, we help create companies where leaders are coaches, where they are not task managers but they are the people that unlock your potential and you know like that’s the future vision that I see for the world is, is a world where managers are coaches. Where managers are people who unlock the potential of their team, and their people and it just would make work a whole lot of fun, a lot more engaging, and in my mind is the future of the world of work. We’re not there yet by any means, we have long way to go but that’s the journey that like that I’m on currently and we’re looking to do I Raise the Bar at Stride with the open honest to direct community, all of that.
John: That’s amazing! I love how you got started by actually living through that personal training journey of yours like making, seeing small transformations right? Not just psychologically but like physically as well and then, embodying these habits of things right? Like, and then you’ll notice that things get brighter on the other side like all these other things start happening when one of these core foundations gets kinked right? And I think it all starts in the mind right? Like you have to have some sort of strong mind will to take action but also there’s people that need to support you. So, question I wanted to ask you like, how long were you on that journey being that stocking command in that before you transitioned to starting your own company?
Aaron: So, yeah. I mean we had a great team in command there. I would say I was one part of that picture and I got to learn from a bunch of people there but we, I did that for about 5, 6 years of that journey and then I was going to build Raise the Bar and I was talking to our founders, one of which was my brother and they said “Hey! Talk to this guy before you go.” and he was a consultant that we had to work with and he focused on an actuarial consulting firm focused on wellness and the future of work essentially. And so, I looked at him and his name was Andrew Sykes and he’s great at selling and he convinced me, he’s like “Come do this with me.” and as I looked at it and I kinda mapped out. I like remember going to a coffee shop and mapping out if I go into a another consulting firm versus building Raise the Bar. What does that mean? What does that look like? What do I want to get out of it? And I was very clear to say, I want to grow by learning from you. I’ve done operations but I’ve never sold, I’ve never done the things that required to build a business right? Running a good business you need to have actual clients and you need to have people in and so, I got clear to say “Hey! I want to come here and learn and grow, and develop, and get mentored.” And so, I spent a year doing that and actually had a brilliant time, we had a blast but we didn’t end up building the more in-depth trainings and products that I was looking to do and so, I said “It’s time for me like the problem still isn’t solved in the market. I don’t see it being solved and we need to go to work on empowering managers to be better leaders to people.” and really hit that at the core level of working one-to-one with managers or one to groups of managers. And so, that was you know kinda had a little interlude there which was incredibly helpful. I learned so much about getting out of my comfort zone, about selling, about you know even building new products again in a different environment, a different scenario and what’s tremendously valuable for how the next step for myself.
John: And then early stages, question, was this you and this partner of yours. Was it funded? Or were you kinda just in it bootstrapping trying to figure out generating revenue from the offset?
Aaron: Are you talking about Raise the Bar?
John: Yes, free support.
Aaron: So, Raise the Bar I went off and did that on my own. I left the consulting firm habits at work and I created Raise the Bar on my own and it was bootstrapped. I looked at my wife and
I said “Hey! We have this many months of runway and every dollar that we bring in extends the runway.” and I built some you know a very crude model in excel and said like, here’s what we spend every month, here’s what our mortgage is, like “Here’s what we’re gonna live off of and we’re gonna like I have and idea that it’ll take 6 to 9 months to gain any sort of traction but we do it in 6 to 9 months then we’re really gonna,we should be okay.” And here we are today. We’re still around, we still can pay the mortgage and you know the team’s grown vastly since then but yeah, it was definitely it still has been you know bootstrapped from the very start.
John: So, how many years has it been? And, tell us a little bit about the times of, because every business goes through ups and downs right? So, some of the challenges, some of the high moments of this journey so far have Raise the Bar.
Aaron: So, it’s been almost just about 5 years, nearly 5 years since we started. We started with just me and now, we have our 15th person starting on Friday, I believe 15 or 16. So, the team has grown it’s you know, it’s definitely the high moments are these moments where you have team members joining the team and you have other people leading and living into this vision that was this idea that you had and living into our values, and communicating it like those are the exciting moments I mean, I kinda have them daily. I had somebody a leader who went through our training, we’ve had hundreds of leaders go through our trainings and a leader who went through our training last week and emailed me and said “I’m running this leadership group with you know people in my space, he’s an engineer with other engineers and we have a book club and we’re you know we’re gonna use you book for our book club.” My book is open honest and direct and he’s like “Do you have any other besides the talking points are in the book, do you have any other good ideas?” and I was like, “I’m just so honored and grateful that you chose to use my book for your book club like that’s incredible.” Those are like the little moments are high moments where you kinda pinch yourself and say “Oh this is, I’m still doing this?” This is a living I get to work with amazing clients and amazing people on our team that just love what they do when we have fun and so, yeah. There’s a high points all along the way I would say, one of the things that help me get off my feet and we’re talking you know, early entrepreneurship days and something that I try and pay back as much as I can is talking to other entrepreneurs at whatever stage they were at, you know ones that had just started their business 9 months before me and one that had started the business 3 years before me, and one’s that had just sold their business right? Getting all those perspectives really helped and I remember somebody early on told me the first nine months really sucked, actually it wasn’t somebody, it was multiple people told me this right? The first 9 months, the first year, the first 18 months really suck and one second right now you go I once went 3 months without closing a deal in my first year and just knowing that was really helpful because that was very true. You know they were getting off the ground, getting your idea from you know a notepad to somebody buying it, that took I would say 6 to nine months to really formulate and be something that could actually be sold as a product. I had ideas of what I wanted, I had all these things but I wasn’t gonna build anything until we sold it but I had frameworks and different things and it just it morphed and merged if I had conversation. I think I had 300 different conversations with business, businesses my first year and not all of them were direct sales but there were ways in right there were connections, there were people who can connect me with somebody else, they were people who give me help and advice and people I still meet for coffee with and say thank you or learn from them, or share you know connections with them now but it was all those things were excitements but also challenges right? The first year I tell any entrepreneur “You have no idea what you’re doing is right.” Like we had a strategy, part of my strategy was to build thought leadership in the space of leadership, in the space of millennials, in the space of coaching as a manager. Like thought leadership in those spaces, write articles for Forbes, write a book like all these things are gonna come over time and in the long run that’s gonna pay off. Well, when you’re doing it in your first year, you have no freaking clue if anybody’s reading it or doing it right if you have 10 readers or a thousand of readers but that’s no business right? And so, you’re making an estimated guesses and I tell people it’s like you know business is a series of experiments and so, I was running experiments and I had no idea if I was doing it right or wrong and that’s really scary especially when you don’t know if you’re going to pay for you know mortgage and all those things. And so, those first you know years and months we’re definitely hard, we’re not sure if you’re making the right choice or what you know what little decision you make or what option you say in a conversation to a client is gonna actually get you the deal or not get you the deal. And so, for me those early years we’re definitely, they were fun, they were creative but they were you know you’re trying to figure out how to make this work and definitely has you know scary moments, there’s definitely a level of anxiety that rides in you I would say probably for the first 18 months of like “Okay, are we gonna do this? Are we gonna do this? Is this gonna work? Is everything gonna work?” and then there becomes a point at least you know when you get a couple of big, strong, at least in our business I can’t speak for everyone’s business but couple of big, strong clients enough traction with in the market that you can feel confident. Okay, we can do this, we can adopt, we can adjust, and we can make it work but first couple of years, it’s a journey.
John: A lot of business entrepreneurs don’t really understand and again it’s not for everyone either right? Like you have to be ready for a lot of challenges and mentally prepared. You got to have stability at home, you got to make sure that whatever you put forth, you’re okay with the outcome right? Because not everyone’s gonna succeed, not everyone’s gonna make it out, 5 years, 10 years, exit. You know whatever it is like be okay with whatever it is that you’re gonna get yourself into and learn from that mistake or growth, or challenges, right? Because all those people who supported you at the beginning those 300 conversations that you had, they were networking opportunities. People that gave you some small little tidbits of advice or guidance and support but they motivated you continue pursuing right? But you took action, you actually did something and that’s why I love about entrepreneurs. People that actually make it past 2, 3, 5 years, they’re already on a different league on their own right? Because a lot of people just give up. They’re like, just like any relationship they give up but if you actually continue pursuing your dreams and aspirations and your vision right? Because this is your purpose and it seems like you’re the living proof of it and very similar like when I see a staff or a client give some really good positive you know, estimate like whatever it is, a testimonial case study. Just good advice like I really admired what you said here, “I’m gonna take it to heart and I’m gonna pursue this.” it means the world right? Like these small moments like you mentioned it’s so rewarding because it seems like you’re doing something that’s really worth it right? In the end even though it’s not monetary making a big difference it’s these other intangible stuff that are, right? So, if you don’t mind sharing, were you ever like surrounded by a lot of business owners? Like growing up where your parents, your family members, anyone in your circle of influence, like entrepreneurs in your own right? Like, what really motivated you get started do something that’s completely different from everyone else?
Aaron: You know I think the personalities around me I have a very independent personality and so, I always like growing up I would ask my mom to have garage sales as often as possible so we could sell stuff from our house and I could you know make money doing that or we went to and my mom took me to city council once to say “Hey! Can we put up a little stand to make, I don’t know bracelets or something that I could sell on the corner of our house.” So, I always kinda interested in doing those things and you know whether it was raising money for charity those are ways in which you were kinda go out there and putting yourself out there. And I could trace that back to my dad as an immigrant from Israel and he was a tennis pro and so worked for himself and then became a trader and kinda found his way into that and you know each of those are things where your livelihood is on your back and my mom was a travel agent and also then become a personal trainer too. And so, like our family all had their livelihoods on their back and we’re just used to that and my brother, my oldest brother was the founder of the first business that I owned. An entrepreneur, he’s a doctor as well as an MBA and an entrepreneur and so, it just I think it didn’t, it didn’t make that feel like that was abnormal to go do something on your own. I wouldn’t say that made me say “I’m gonna do something on my own.” from the time I was a kid. No! I probably the best, the best but not that the nicest thing to say is I probably wasn’t great to work at a company. I didn’t, I didn’t like to listen to people telling me what to do and not that I couldn’t respect that and be part of that. I just like I wanted to do things my own way and I was always more independent with that and that’s not necessarily a great reason to start a business but I think that definitely had influence of like “Hey! I see some ways which I want to do this things, I wanna built it this way and, I wanna influence this.” When I learn from these different businesses that I was a part of what I did and didn’t like and just thought working for myself was gonna be you know it is how I wanna create this.
John: Amazing! And very similar, topical question. Were there kinda mentors or coaches that you gravitated towards? If it wasn’t your intermediate family, were there people that pushed you further? Or did you ask for support during those early years? I would say.
Aaron: Oh! I mean during those early years, my old, I mean both of my brothers were really good support. My oldest brother who’s and an MBA and has his own business and was starting a second business at the time. I had a coach, I’ve been working with my coach Rich for 6 or 7 years now. So, I’ve been working with my coach Rich and a lot of mentors, you know I wouldn’t say I just have one or two, I had a bunch of people who I was connected with through my network, through my brother’s network, through people I’d met or known. We’re just willing to give help and I you know and I just would ask them for coffee or lunch, or just a phone call and I was not shy about like asking for help and learning and asking questions. I still am doing that I’m doing that, I’m going to lunch with a, with a friend this week who was Stride or it’s a SAS business and so, subscription is a service. And so, it’s a very different business than Raise the Bar which is a leadership development company that does training and coaching and so, I don’t know all the in’s and out’s but my clients do because they’re SAS businesses and some mentors do so I’m going out to lunch with a mentor like “Hey! I need to pick your brain.” like “How did you do this? When you built this business and you did these things and tell me a little bit more. I want to just learn and know.” and so, all the time I you know I’m just like a thief of everybody else’s insights and information and I’m not shy about it, I’m happy to share that information and I feel like you know there’s enough, there’s enough wins in the world for everybody to get their wins. And so, I’m happy to share what works for us at Raise the Bar and learn what works for others so that maybe we can take some things and you know take some lessons learned from others.
John: And I love hearing that because I’ve always been curious and you know there’s a difference in people right? Like they’re introverts, they’re extroverts, they’re shy, there’s a lot of personalities out there right? But as an entrepreneur that’s actually taking action and acknowledging where the gaps, where you need to learn, where you need help on is a huge thing for a lot of entrepreneurs. Like, a lot of entrepreneurs think they need to do everything but acknowledging where you need help and then finding people for it, is probably a skill set on its own right? And a lot of people don’t do it right? Like the ones that aren’t successful, they think they need to touch every aspect of the entire operation right? But when you start understanding where your strengths are, what you actually enjoy doing then you start allocating people resources to certain departments and then you freeze up your time to learn other things that will actually be better for the growth of your business right?
Aaron: Yeah. That’s 100 percent true and that’s we’ve done it at Raise the Bar’s, we’ve grown as a business. I’ve you know if we’re going to teach others on how to be coaches and how to lead in this new way, we better be doing it ourselves and so, you know I prefer to actually have my hands off of as many things as possible. I don’t want to be the single bottleneck in our business because that’s not gonna make anybody’s life fun and it’s not gonna make my life fun and that’s what inspired Stride really was noticing what was going in the market, what was going in the clients and you know companies will pay more for their managers to get training and to get executive coaching and they’ll pay for their execs to get executive coaching but that’s a really expensive service. And we offer it’s amazing we have incredible coaches but we’re thinking how do we actually serve everybody else in the organization right? If you have an organization 500 maybe you only have 80 or 100 managers, what happens to other people? How they served and supported? And you know how do we give access to coaching for all? Especially as we’re talking about this idea of access and equity, and that’s where Stride really came in it’s like we can actually be serving companies at a higher level, at a deeper level by offering coaching on demand when people need it and so Stride was this idea that bubbling and it was kinda the side and I was like, I don’t know how to incorporate you know the use of technology with what we’re doing but there’s some way and it was always in the back of my mind and you know I was at a wedding in a gym. Like before the wedding and a friend of a friend came up to me and we’re talking about our businesses and he was like “ We should do something together.” and it just kinda blossomed and we started to explore. What Stride came to be which is an on-demand coaching solution for every employee in a company. Where they have access to chat with a coach whenever they need it and because it’s in demand coaching and because it’s chat based coaching, it is a much more affordable like monthly option that people can get for all of their people and you know, and we’ve seen initially is just people are asking the types of questions, people ask type of things, people are needing. They wouldn’t be getting ask otherwise if we weren’t there so, I wouldn’t have known that until we kept our eyes open and explored, and I wouldn’t known that until you know going to the hotel gym and meeting a friend of a friend or an old friend and him saying “ Hey! We thought about this.” and just be like, not it that way I haven’t, let’s explore and just seeing what blossomed out of it and it’s evolved so may ways but yeah. It’s, it’s super important and it makes it super fun and interesting and it’s yeah, it keeps life interesting, that’s for sure.
John: Well, there’s always gaps in the marketplace right? And then, you as an entrepreneur now you’re thinking completely different than when you were an employee. Even though you were curious, now you have the foundations in place right? Like how do you grow? Have employees and make your dream come true right? Like people’s vision, those values, actually implemented to a bigger goal and see it to blossom right? Into like a real business. So, I love hearing that, would you mind sharing any, your biggest mistake. If you don’t mind like I know the 5 years you must have, had some bad hires, bad clients, or something, if you don’t mind sharing.
Aaron: Yeah. I mean it’s like where do I start? There’s so many mistakes, there’s a mistakes on a daily, weekly basis. I mean we could do a whole episode just on my mistakes that, that’s for sure. I’m thinking about this audience in this group and I’ll give two of my biggest mistakes. The first one was this these are early on ones I think are really useful when you’re starting out, was I was so excited to just get working that I sold our services for free to a client, a friend, and a client and it was like a big name and I was like great, like we’ll do great work with them and then they’ll want to end. And it was very early on right in the first couple of months we started business like this is great, great start and we rolled out and we did some of the work and over the course of the couple months, it just fell apart. And I remember the day it fell apart to nothing and I was like part of my language be like this. “Is this gonna work?” like “Is this business gonna work?” It really made me rethink everything and I remember calling my coach at that time and he was like, the people that you’re working with needed context like why are they doing this? And when it’s pitched as “Hey! This is free, you get some free solutions.” Like people didn’t, they didn’t believe in the weight of it and we’re testing it out like it just wasn’t, it made me realize like I needed one there were several red flags with the potential client when we started that I just avoided because I was excited about the big name of the client and that they were gonna be a client. And so, I avoided the red flags and I delivered something for free that really didn’t give anybody else the commitment to being a part of it. And so, I learned not to one, I don’t, I don’t give away things for free not because I don’t want to serve others but because others especially in the work of human development and leadership development. If you don’t have anything at stake, it’s gonna be really hard for you to show up in the same way. I knew that for my research and my studies, and I used it for my other work but like it just didn’t click and I avoided it right? And two, like really look at who your target client is and who the target buyer is and like, what do you need from them? And you’re not there, you’re not there just to like give them everything and pacify them but like if they’re a client you wanna make sure that they’re fit for you so that you can be successful with them. And you know, we’ve learned that and gotten much more clear over the years and our clients are tremendous and they’re so much fun to work with and they’re great relationships and they bring more to us in the future and they last for a long, long time. And so, it’s really really important to get clear on who your target client is, who your target buyer is, what expectations you have for them if you’re gonna work together, what expectations they should have for you and getting clear on those things and I know it narrows the pot down for you. That the more we found that we narrowed the potential pool down the better we did and we continue to do that and we’re really picky about who we work with and who we don’t work with, and I found that’s just tremendously helpful but yeah, that was really big script and I just think it’s a big script it just tick in my mind because it made me rethink like. Are we like, am I doing this all wrong?” Like it made me really question what I was doing and that was, it was a challenge and I would think the other one on line with that was I made this mistake, I don’t know maybe 50 times. Not that mistake, but this mistake maybe 50 times was sending a proposal after a first meeting, and a friend told me this, he was like her mentor told me this like, never send a proposal or statement of work after your first meeting and it, as soon as you told me that it clicked because your first meeting you’re just getting a sense for each other, you’re not saying. And then, they’ll say “Okay, send me a proposal of what you can do and you send them a proposal, and spend all this time putting something together.” You’re not even sure what they’re looking for, you’re not even sure what the parameters, you’re not even sure anything and you’re kinda like throwing something in the dark and spending a lot of time and then they look and they’re like, oh! It’s either this or nothing, or something else. Versus what we do now is we spend a lot more time like getting to know each other and getting clear on. Hey! What does success look like? And, how we know if you’re being successful? And, what are like, what are the barriers to doing this? And here are the barriers that you should expect when you’re doing this with us and here’s things you should expect are going to work really well and let’s start to see and let’s put something on the whiteboard, and let’s see does this plan work together. And so, it just it transformed the way we sold but I can’t tell how many times I did that and people still say “Well, we’ll send us a proposal.” and I’ll say “We won’t do that, that’s not how we work. If you’re trying to work in a bigger relationship together, we’re gonna map out a plan together.”
John: These are really good tips Aaron, and I probably made a lot of similar mistakes early days because just not knowing the value of what you bring to the table. So, taking on clients at a very low cost or giving it away for nothing, he values the product or service that you have right? And then of course the whole promise of understanding what you’re offering right? To the business owners. So, I was doing a lot of sales prior to starting my business, that was my background actually.
Aaron: That’s what I wish I had, the background.
John: Understanding personas, understanding like I first of all is 90 percent asking questions, open-ended questions, taking notes and then putting together where the opportunities are so I can fill it with what we offer to complement what their gaps are right? But that takes, it’s a skill set right? It doesn’t happen overnight but you have something like that and I didn’t have a problem selling early days. I had a problem finding good people you know understanding the operations, how to actively you know fulfill right? On all the promises I had. So, it’s just different challenges for different entrepreneurs and business owners because you bring to a different skill set to the table right? So, I love you know you sharing that with the audience members, so regarding some of the changes. So, over the last couple of years you’ve seen your company transform, more employees, more maybe changes within the environment, the scope, the industries, the marketplace. What are some of the major ones that you had to change in your offering? Did you have to hire differently in order to scale? Did you build some new system process? Did you, you know your intake is a little bit different? With knowing your ideal persona avatar, like what has changed in the last 5 years?
Aaron: I mean a lot has changed, we’ve you know we deliver the product but then, we’ve evolved it over and over and over. I mean our product, our main product is a boot several boot camp series, series of boot camp trainings where it’s immersive where you have a you know 2 to 3 hour workshop. Where you go to work on, learning a skill like listening and then you have homework assignment and then you have a coaching session then you go to work on th next skill and it happen over a three month period. And what we’ve had to do is get really clear, I mean some of the things we’ve done is getting really clear on the journey for the leader and the journey for the client. So, what is your leadering experience? How does it, how do we work together over the course of our journey together right? 2, 3, 4 years of our client journeys and that way they know what they know, what to expect and what supports them, and doing that has allowed us to be really successful with clients and really sticky with clients over the years and we, we really wanted to be hands-on and really support each leader and not make it this machine like stamp factory. And so, we had to bring on people, we brought a head of operations in, we’re bringing client experience specialists, and we have a you know 10 different coaches that we use to make it so that each leader has a chance to be successful and we customize each training even though our training is a training right? Even though our booth camps are boot camps, we still customize it to each leader and that’s something that we found is really, really, super helpful cause if we’re trying to move the needle on the future work, if we’re trying to create organizations that live into these future and leaders who live into this future. We need to think about each of these we work with and so, making that was the focus as we evolved and and as we changed and how do we enhance that experience, we spent a lot of time enhancing that experience and knowing that will pay off in the long run and it has, right? Leaders who do well only talk really well about us and there’s plenty that don’t do well, you know a handful that don’t do well but leaders who do really well, continue talk and benefit and benefit long term cause they’ve changed their behaviors. The other things that we did was covid hit and we had a decent chunk I would say probably 60 to 70 percent of our training was live and we’d go to clients and go to clients in Belgium or New York , or Chicago, or you know wherever else in the world. And deliver trainings then have some virtual stuff and mix and when covid hit we had to pivot for all of our clients and for our future business to say “How do we do this remote? And “How do we do some of this intimate, personal skills and soft skill training and one-to-one stuff virtually?” and we had to rethink we didn’t just like say “Okay each workshop, here’s the outline.” and now we’re gonna go deliver it virtually. We had to rethink each of the sessions and we look at the activities and we look at all the different interactive things that we did to optimize them and so, we spent a good chunk of last year really doing that going deep into each session and revamping and revising, and going virtual actually we realized opened way more doors because people would come in. Like last week we had two new boot camps kick off and we had people from Israel, California, Belgium, London Chicago, Arizona, Texas. Like all these different places, all one room and so, it opened doors for us to increase access for people, increase access for clients, make it easier for them to be part of the room and that really made it open the doors in a lot of different ways and we found it actually it’s if not better just as good of a training like our net promoter scores are better than they’ve never been in terms of how people are taking it and taking action from it. So, I love in person and plenty of people still say “I wish we had in person.” but virtual has been you know just incredibly powerful for so many people.
John: Yeah, and especially when you built your business on 67 percent in person, this change of pandemic. You know not just strategically but even long term right? Like how are you gonna do business when things open up again and is it going to stay this way? Or do you want to go back to live? And what is the bandwidth? What is the scalability and profitability potential? Or what are the demands from the customers like what are their expectations? Are they actually enjoying it better being remote online? Or do they actually enjoy the in person? And listening, understanding like, what do they want? So that you can cater your deliverables so that you get better customer experience better, better loyal sticky clients right? And that’s how business owner should be proactively growing right? Listening.
Aaron: Yeah, and we really have two, like solutions types or customer sets. One are companies that are big enough to have team trainings internally where we do cohorts and boot camps with them and that’ you know it’s a bulk of our businesses where we do that. And then, we have individuals who want to come to a boot camp or companies who want to send 2 or 3 or 5 leaders to one of our boot camps where we have you know 15 leaders from seven different companies. And so, there’s kinda like individual boot camp and then there’s team training and both tracks it really makes a difference and so, we’re staying at least for now virtual and we’re gonna look at what’s best for the people, what’s best for the leaders, and what’s best for the companies. And so, if the company said “Hey! We’re in Chicago or we’re in New York.” or we’re in a place where it’s safe to be, to be in person and we’re not putting anybody at risk on our end and they’re putting anybody at risk on their end. We have no problem going back live and doing things in person, we’re planning that right now. We have some things planned in person and we’ve hybrids of in-person virtual because what we found is clients you know bringing all their people into one place is actually quite costly and doing it multiple times. We don’t just do a one-off training, our training is built over time that’s kinda what makes us different and unique is like the training build that evolves and people have to practice in between. And so, bringing people in multiple times into a live setting can be expensive and logistically challenging and so, what we’re finding is client are wanting to talk about hybrids or certain groups in certain populations we do certain things. And so, that we are you know we’re seeing and we’re advising, and we’re giving them you know advise based on “Hey! Like where’s your company at? Are you gonna put who doesn’t feel comfortable with high risk, at risk?” We’re not gonna do it, like there’s no reason to put somebody to be in our training room you wanna feel safe in the first place physically and psychologically safe because that’s where growth and development happens. And so, if the physical environment’s gonna make people unsafe then we’re not gonna do it because they’re our clients not gonna be successful like they’re not gonna get what they want so there’s no point. So, where we really juggle all those things and look at each scenario independently and say, we’re not gonna say everything’s live or everything is virtual. Well say, we’re gonna take it case by case with people and what we’ve seen is in the worst case for people who wanna do in person, virtual is just as successful and they’re gonna get just as good of an impact. Virtual, even though it doesn’t you know some people are like “I don’t believe you Aaron.” We’ve seen it, we’ve seen people be super super successful in that way.
John: Well, I just have a last couple of final questions Aaron. So, where do you see yourself in the next 5, 10 years? Your current businesses, like are you planning on growing, scaling, different countries, different events, different boot camps? Or like and even personal besides business, what about your personal?
Aaron: Yeah. I see us continuing to evolve Raise the Bar to serve leaders, to serve not just hundreds of leaders but thousand of leaders a year and what that means in terms of how we have to grow the business that’s like kinda secondary. It’s like not like “Hey! I want this much revenue and and this big of company.” Like I want to actually impact this many companies and this many you know these types of leaders. So, our pictures, our visions of the future when we look at as a team are you know thousands of leaders touched and impacted, and hundreds of businesses changing the way they work. And so, what that means of how the business needs to grow, we’re gonna map that out each and every year is what we do, we map that out, we map that out a three year and one year picture of what that looks like and it really seems around that right? If we do that with 30 people on staff or we do it with a hundred people on staff, I’m gonna let that evolve in the way it needs to. I personally, I love smaller teams but I’m not gonna hold back serving others in that way just because I like a smaller team. And Stride, I see Stride really growing, incredibly, rapidly, it’s a market that’s there it’s people who need not only mental but professional development and this is access for them so I can imagine that growing, incredibly, rapidly, really really fast over the next 5 to 7 years. To be one of those you know bigger SAS player in the market. I imagine that going fast and for me, continuing to enjoy working with the people I work with, continuing to make sure that there is time for family and friends and personal pursuits like triathlons. I don’t know if you could see over here, you know riding and and running, and doing things that make me feel connected and fulfilled, and it’s not you know work is a huge portion of that and it’s a huge portion because it fills me up but it’s not the only portion so, I see myself kinda continuing to enjoy life in those ways and not choose to limit myself based on “Oh my God! I got to pull these hours to work in.” It’s like no we can grow it in a way that’s different right in my mind the future work is not one where you put in 80 or 100 hour weeks. Yes that helps you be successful but that’s not the only way to be successful, I’m not a proponent of grind it out until you burnt out type of work.
John: But it also means you, it’s your business it’s different when you’re funded, it’s different when you start of VC you have a lot of obligations. So, for you I think growing at your own, having your own say making it your own speed, having a well-balanced lifestyle, that’s what business owners should be like and therefore, timing has to do a lot of it because people have different circumstances that they have to endure. Let it be you know elderly parents or children, or whatever different parts of the world right? So, understand where you are and when is a good time for you because has a dream, everyone has their own pursuits right? Just make it ypur own so, I love how you put it in the end. I really wanna thank you Aaron, I will have all the show notes with the links. If anybody wants to reach to you, what’s the best way to contact you?
Aaron: So, they can find me on LinkedIn, just Aaron Levy or they can go to raisebar.co that’s our website or Stride website, strideapp.co and you can reach me on either one of those.
John: Amazing! Well, thanks a lot. I’m very honored to have you, thank you for providing such great input, wise comments, wise feedback, because business owners is hard right? And I’m glad that you’re in it for 5 years and you’re still loving what you’re doing, you’re still excited hiring more people, you know doing your traithlons, having a balance in life. This is what life sould be all about with every entrepreneur right? But not everyone is taking it this way. So, thank you so much Aaron! And hopefully you had fun on the show.
Aaron: Yeah! It was a pleasure John. Thank you for having me, thanks for the great questions and listening to me and sharing my, sharing my story, I appreciate it.
John: No problem.
