IAM1459 – CEO Created an Online Personalised Learning Platform for Students and Teachers

Adrián has created the leading online learning platform in the EdTech world – delivering a personalized learning experience to students and teachers from grade school through college and beyond. Adrián has spent the past two decades bringing together academic experts across all subjects, with the leading technologists and learning scientists to build the most innovative micro-learning platform with the sole purpose of eliminating the most common educational barriers and making education accessible.

• CEO Story: Came from Argentina, with no one to help him, from the language barrier to resources, including his brother who has special needs. These challenges motivated Adrian to build his own learning platform. As an IT graduate, there had to be a way that tech could dramatically increase learning and personalization while reducing the cost of education. With so much passion, Adrian was able to successfully build his cause.
• Business Service: Online learning platform for K12, higher ed, and professionals. Helping learners and educators with 4,600 courses.
• Secret Sauce: Amazing learning platform that can serve diverse learners, users, and educators. Making learning easy.
• CEO Hack: Book mention: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni – talks about the absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, and avoidance of accountability.
• CEO Nugget: Follow your passion. Use data and learn where to cut and where to double down.
• CEO Defined: Setting the vision, imagining the future, and providing much clarity to the team. Finding the absolute best people on how you can get there. Make sure there is enough cash to make the lights on.

Website: study.com

Twitter: Studydotcom

Instagram: studydotcom

Facebook: StudyDotCom

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Transcription

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00:26 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harker values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Audrion Riddner of study.com. Audrion, it's great to have you on the show.

01:04 – Adrián Ridner

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

01:05 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on the show. Talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Audrey so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Audrey is the co-founder and chief executive officer of study.com and an industry leader in education technology. Adriana has created the leading online learning platform in the edtech world, delivering a personalized learning experience to students and teachers from grade school through college and beyond. Adriana spent the past 2 decades bringing together academic experts. Across all subjects with the leading technologists, and learning scientists to build the most innovative micro-learning platform with its sole purpose of eliminating the most common educational barriers and making education accessible. Adrian, super excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:54 – Adrián Ridner

Yes, let's do it.

01:56 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, what I wanted to do was kind of rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more about your background, and then get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

02:05 – Adrián Ridner

Yes. Thank you. So now it's been quite the journey for me over the last 2 decades actually now. I'm really passionate about making education accessible. I'm originally from Argentina and you know when I came here to the United States I was just a few months short of having to graduate high school and figure out what to do for college and my career. I had no 1 in my family who had ever done that. I barely spoke any English and it was really challenging, not just the cost, but even navigating, you know, how to do that successfully as a first-generation student. And not only that, but my brother, Pablo, has special needs.

I needed extra help and different ways to learn, given his learning differences. Both of these experiences have really motivated me to really create an online learning platform that could even the playing field. I just knew as a software engineer, you know, computer science student and graduate, that there had to be a way that tech could dramatically increase the learning, the personalization, and drastically reduce the cost of education, especially in higher ed. And that was a big part of why I started the company and all of the programs and the things you were talking about earlier, that you just mentioned that we've done over the last decade plus. I really just feel that passion and that work and all the great people who have helped me along the way make it happen.

03:47 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And I truly appreciate you for sharing those stories. I often say that we forget about the human aspect of business and sometimes the human aspect of life is that. And I think, of course, we know the understanding of the education, but I love and I appreciate you talking about your brother and of course yourself and your journey and why this was so important and what kind of spurred everything you've been able to create.

04:10 – Adrián Ridner

Yes, and especially on that, people think of students and kind of like Pablo with special needs. And it's not just people with learning differences that learn differently, we all learn differently. Some of us are experiential learners or more visual learners like Pablo or new things in small bite sizes. Others were more auditory learners or readers. So it turns out it's all of us that learn differently. And that's key. And for me, that was a big part of what I believed was rooted in my experience in my own family. But it turns out it's really applicable to every single 1 of us who is trying to learn something.

04:49 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and I think it speaks so much to what I call kind of like the entrepreneurial, when you have that opportunity to just kind of scratch that edge, so to speak, love hearing that. And so I wanted to drill down a little bit more. Could you take us through a little bit more on what we can find at study.com? How you're making that impact and making education more accessible.

05:05 – Adrián Ridner

Definitely. So we're an online learning platform for K-12, higher ed, and what I call professionals, we help over 30 million learners and educators on the platform each month. This includes over 4, 600 academic courses and tutoring from STEM to social sciences and everything in between. And what's really exciting is, you know, our courses are really broken down into micro lessons. So think of short animated lessons. And really, if it's something you're studying because you're trying to understand a concept in math and your textbook or your teacher hasn't been able to explain it in a way that worked for you, or you're preparing for a big, you know, standardized exams like the SAT, or even a teacher certification, nursing certification, we're able to use the platform to help you learn and be successful.

And that's been 1 of the most rewarding things even though we built the platform really around, starting with college, And that was our biggest thing is how do we make college more accessible, more affordable? Actually, 230 of our courses are recommended for college credit. So you can take them from your computer, or the mobile app, and then transfer the credit to about 1, 500 US four-year credited universities. Think of it as community college from your phone, what ended up happening to our conversation a second ago, we had high schoolers using it, we had homeschoolers using it, We had professionals trying to pass their licensing exams using it, all trying to leverage the same learning platform.

And that has been terrific to be able to see and support. Probably the most amazing thing is that about a quarter of our users ended up being educators and teachers who realize we help them make the learning for their students better, and they are using it in the classrooms. Now, a lot of our users are teachers, professors, schools, and districts as well that are trying to, you know, make the learning experience better for all those students. And we're so excited to be able to help them and really allow them to do their best work with what we provide.

07:32 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I would definitely echo that as well too. So I love everything you've been able to kind of build and grow. And so would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? Of course, it could be for yourself personally, the business, the organization, or a combination of both, but is it that ability to create that, I guess, differentiated environment so that so many different people can succeed no matter how they learn or even those that are looking to teach? Do you feel like that sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:59 – Adrián Ridner

Absolutely, I think the concept of having 1 amazing learning platform that can serve such a diverse set of users learners, and educators is a huge, huge differentiator and a competitive advantage for us. But I would say also if you talk to users, regardless if they're in high school or college or a teacher or a principal or district leader, you know, the other thing they'll say is when they're using study.com, they finally get it. And I think that that's as simple as it sounds we make learning easy and we make difficult academic concepts. That's different for all of us. For me, it may be English, and for you, it may be a different topic.

But whatever it is, we made those concepts easy to understand by breaking them down using animated micro-lessons paired with practice in a way that learners can really enjoy anytime, anywhere. And the ability to have technology combined with also human connection, I think, really provides superior learning outcomes than either could alone. And to me, when you talk to our end learners, that is such a huge part of what they said is, you know, I got it. I finally

10:18 – Adrián Ridner

Learned it. I figured it out. Things to study.com. And I would say that's as big a part of our secret sauce as anything else.

10:25 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:37 – Adrián Ridner

Oh, that's a good question. So I guess 1 thing that I rely on a lot, it's a book. It's called The 5 Lest Functions of a Team by Patrick Lincione. It was actually published the first year we founded the company, but it has been really timeless for me as we continue to grow and scale, primarily because it talks about some of the traits that if you have them, it's gonna make performing as an exceptional team and an organization, as a company really hard. So it talks about the absence of trust or the fear of conflict, the lack of commitment or avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.

And there are topics that no matter what stage of the business we've been in, I always find myself really trying to make sure we have clarity around and every team and every team member really feels comfortable with trust and willing to be bold with the group. Or when we decide something, we have full buying and we move ahead. And it's been just time and time again, a really fantastic framework. And I would say, they survive the test of time. It wasn't something that was just used to the first year we started as a startup. But even now in our later growth stages has been really terrific. So I rely on that 1 quite a bit.

12:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I just will add that to my cart now. So I appreciate you sharing that hack. And so now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say, if you were to hop into a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self?

12:20 – Adrián Ridner

Yes, I love I would love a time machine so many things. But if I have to pick a couple, I would say 1 is, you know, probably back to that confidence. You know, yes, it's okay to follow your passion. Because that will help persevere through all the uncharted waters that you're going to go through. So don't double guess, don't doubt it, don't double guess yourself, follow your passion, and always pay yourself on the other side. And for me, this was also when you know, after I graduated with my degree, you know, started a business versus going into a big company. What was a big deal, because my passion was doing this, but my parents moved 4 countries in 8 years to get us here, and a stable big company job was the dream, right? But I had a different dream, and following that and being rooted in passion, I believe, is what allowed me to persevere.

The other one, I love numbers. I'm a geek, I'm a nerd, and I think that I've always embraced data. But if I was talking and when I like to talk to other first-gen entrepreneurs and founders, I talk about using data to learn and iterate and really prioritize and be ruthless with the prioritization. I think that if I had to go back and even tell myself there are times when we're trying to do too much for what we could handle and really trying to prioritize and learn from our failures and learn where to cut and where to double down has been a terrific part of what has allowed us to scale.

So I would probably go back and remind myself, you know, you love numbers, you love data, you can even use it more. And not just myself personally, but it's now 1 of the core values for the team, and continue to make sure everyone, you know, is doing that as well. Because it can be such a powerful tool.

14:23 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO or open up different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Audrey, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:34 – Adrián Ridner

I think, being a CEO means trying to provide that vision, putting vision glasses on and imagining the future, not what it is today, but what it can be, and really trying to provide as much clarity into the mountain we're trying to climb as a team, and that new world, a new reality that we're trying to create. So I think setting that vision and strategy is a key part of being a CEO. And I think that the other big part for me is really finding the absolute best people to then join us in that journey and, you know, help us get there. Because how you get there is all about the people, like we were saying earlier.

So, you know, finding them, sharing the, the, the vision and the strategy leaning on them, you know, much smarter people than, than I am to, help us on figuring out the, the, how we, we, we got there. Are we, are we flying? Are we, Are we rowing? Are we running? But there are many ways to climb the mountain And we want to make sure that we do it as a team. So ultimately, finding that talent and inspiring them and sharing the vision and the strategy, I think, is a key part of being a CEO. I would say the last 1 is making sure there's enough cash in the bank to keep the lights on. Thankfully in our history, we haven't had to worry about that. We've been profitable since the first year in the business, but for a lot of other CEOs, that's certainly something you want to keep an eye on. So I guess that's part of it for me as well.

16:15 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely appreciate that. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you want to let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and Tim are working on.

16:29 – Adrián Ridner

All of the entrepreneurs I like to mentor a coach and really balance your style to where you are in your journey and your approach and the people that you have on your team around you that you've been able to bring in and it's got you to continue to scale and grow yourself as a leader. So I just wanted to share that 1 piece, but I really appreciate your time as well, letting me chat with you.

16:52 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll definitely have the information below so that everybody can find out about all the awesome things that you're working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the Day.

16:59 – Adrián Ridner

You too. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Great to be with you.

17:03 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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