IAM1880 – CEO Helps Students Revolutionize the Education System to Achieve Professional Success

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”:

In this IAMCEO Podcast episode, Guillermo Elizondo, co-founder of Territorium Life, discusses how his company is revolutionizing the education system to better prepare students for professional success.

CEO Story: Guillermo and co-founder Gerardo Saenz have been partners since high school. They established Territorium in college while engaged in various social works. They even considered dropping out of college to focus on their business, but when they told the university about their plans, they were offered a credit for their project towards their degrees. Subsequently, they developed a unique approach to learning by building a simple online platform for students.

Business Service: Territorium Life, a pioneering company in the EdTech space, helps students transition from education to work by creating a skill profile for them. The platform, powered by AI, offers personalized learning experiences that mirror the qualities and skills sought by current job market trends.

CEO Hack: Guillermo believes in surrounding oneself with people more experienced and planning ahead.

CEO Nugget: He encourages having a strategic life plan, where all aspects of life, including family and work, are thoughtfully organized.

CEO Defined: For Guillermo, being a CEO means finding people who are more skilled and holding values aligning with the company's. It involves heading the human resources and making sure that these talented individuals have the necessary tools for their roles.

Transcription:

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Guillermo Elizondo Teaser 00:00

Finding a set of amazing people to work with you, people that have the skills, people that are good, the values that want to move things forward that are even more skilled than you in doing things. And making sure that you're finding those people. It might sound like HR, but really at the end, being a CEO is being the chief of HR.

Intro 00:26

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 Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the IAMCEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:52

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresham from the IAMCEO podcast. And I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year, and we're doing something a little bit different where we're.

Repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call the CB Nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on operations. The systems will set you free. So think about systems, think about flow, sustainability, potentially working out in your morning routine, waking up early, e-commerce, and different business models. Think of the operations in the models that basically set up the foundation to allow the creativity within organizations, but also to make sure the trains are running on time and things are going as they should.

Now, this is extremely important because we often turn to the sexy parts of business and forget about the operations and how important that is. So, I really want to focus this month on this specific topic. So sit back and enjoy this special episode at the IAMCEO podcast.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. Guillermo Elizondo of Territorium Life. Guillermo, it's great to have you on the show.

Guillermo Elizondo 02:13

Thank you Gresham, very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Gresham Harkless 02:18

Yes, absolutely. It's super excited to have you on the show and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And, of course, before we jumped into the interview, I want to read a little bit more Guillermo so you can hear about all those awesome things.

And Guillermo Is a computer science engineer who has always been interested in creating an impact on society through technology. When he was only 17 years old, he developed his first online education app.

And while attending college, he co-founded Territorium Life alongside Gerardo Science a company pioneer in ed tech that revolutionizes the education system to reflect the qualities and skills sought by the current job market.

Territorium is an A.I. Power Skills Cloud, which through personalized learning experiences helps the students to achieve professional success. Guillermo, it's great again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the IAMCEO community?

Guillermo Elizondo 03:07

Great to speak to the IAMCEO community. Thank you.

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Gresham Harkless 03:09

All right, let's get it started then. So to kick everything off. I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started what I call your CEO story.

Guillermo Elizondo 03:17

Great great. So, a little bit about the story of how I started the company with my co-founder. We were both in college. As you said, we had an initial company when we were in high school. When we were in high school it was mostly around classroom collaboration on those days. Basically, we did not like the traditional or online platforms that were on the market and we wanted to create something simpler.

Also, my co-founder and I, we're in a lot of social projects. We are from Mexico. So we went to low-income communities to teach kids English also to teach them math and teach them also software development and coding. We like it a lot of education. We wanted to create something that help it to change the way people learn and we created that 1st company while being in high school.

As we built that company, we went into college. We were growing that company, as I said, it was mostly around an app for classroom collaboration and while we were rolling the company, we were not going to classes because we started traveling. I started traveling around Mexico went to Mexico City. So I was not going to classes.

So one day I told my co-founder, Hey, we need to drop out. That's the only way we can continue growing the company. And he told me, yes, we'll drop out which we'll focus on our company. So, what happened is that day I decided to go with my mother just as context here in Mexico. Normally, you still live with your parents when while in college, you don't go like away.

So, I went with my mother and I told her, hey, mom, I'm thinking of dropping out. And she told me in a pretty serious manner. Hey, if you drop out, forget about your last name. And she was serious to put all my stuff in my luggage. That night I slept at my co-founder's house. And I was thinking, hey, how can I finish college and at the same time continue building a company?

So, I thought I needed a meeting with the college president. So, we went to the college president that university was already a customer for us on that initial project that we had from high school. And I told him, hey, Mr. President, we're thinking of dropping out. And for my surprise, the president of the university told us.

Okay, this university is transforming. I want to propose you something different. What about if we give you credits for what you're doing in your business? And it was great. I told him, okay, that's a great deal. He told us, you just need to document everything with your team, work with the academic staff on how you are going to show that you're developing the skills that you are supposed to develop while we're going to classes. So, what we did is we needed to create something just to took an evidence in there, so that someone can validate that evidence, and then give us credit for college.

So, by doing that, we create a very simple platform in which my co-founder and I, we were uploading stuff of things that we were doing in our business, so that then teachers and professors can go in there and validate it and show that we were progressing on the skills that we were supposed to develop on the learning outcomes of each of the courses.

So, that's how we really created our product and that's how Territorium started because we found out it was very interesting. We were developing something that was not a transcript with courses and grades, but really in a skills profile of us, and we started thinking this can help a lot of other students building a full profile based on skills and then use that data to help them to move them from education to work, understand which are their gaps, even learning skills recommendations and help universities and institutions, educational institutions transform more into the skills based approach.

So, that's basically how we started then the rest is history. We have now over 10, 000, 000 users worldwide and we are growing our user base around the globe.

Gresham Harkless 07:51

Nice. I absolutely love that. So, I know we touched on a little bit upon, Territorium Life and how you're serving your clients. Can you drill down a little bit more and tell us how it works, how you're making that impact for all those users that you've been able to impact.

Guillermo Elizondo 08:04

Correct so a lot of what we do and our focus as a company is helping students to move from education to work. So we're in the border between education and work. And basically, what we do, instead of having that traditional transcript with courses and grades and credit hours, that doesn't tell us much about you, what we're doing is creating a full profile of the student in which instead of saying this thing going to be in accounting 101. We say, hey, this is how to know, manage and understand some issue. So, really is creating a full profile of the service base and skills. We call it the C. L. R. the comprehensive learner record, but around that record, we start using the data to understand, the student has these gaps on the skills required for the job market.

This course can help the student improve their profile, improve the probabilities of getting a job on the other side, connecting the student to possible jobs to help them transition from education to work.

And that's basically what we do, and that's how we help students, we help institutions or educational institutions understand how they can help better their students to get jobs. And at the same time understand how they're progressing under learning based on skills, not in grades.

And finally, also helping employers to take a look at profiles of students that might have the required skills so that they can take the jobs that they are posting.

Gresham Harkless 09:30

Awesome. Awesome. So what would you consider to be like, what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself, the organization or a combination of both.

But I almost wonder if that data piece that you spoke on and being able to streamline that and bring all those things together. Do you think that's part of your secret sauce?

Guillermo Elizondo 09:48

Yeah, I will say our secret sauce of the company is really the data as you said. The data based on skills is making that transformation, universities and educational institutions. They're finding out now that they need to transform and in the future, universities will not be the same as they are today.

And we're at an inflection point in which we're providing a unique. Platform that help them on that transformation helps them on that transition. I will say, we're the transitional platform on our side, a very seamless, easy transition from their traditional transcript to a comprehensive learning record with skills.

And I think that's our secret sauce. I will say, the data, but also the seamless way in which we do that transformation.

Gresham Harkless 10:40

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

Guillermo Elizondo 10:51

That's a great question. I'm thinking about a lot of that has helped me through time. Surrounding myself around great people with more experience than me. As you said, we started very young. And I have learned a lot from people.

But I will say that something that helps me a lot myself on being productive is I plan every single minute of my weekdays. On weekends, I try not to plan because it's nice to have some days that you don't plan anything and you just go with the wave.

But normally, and that has helped me since I was very young, I start my day very early 5 in the morning, starts with some exercise and having healthy habits. If you're not healthy, you will not have anything. And I learned that the bad way.

And, then planning every single minutes but I will say having these 15-minute slots, even our slots of things that they will do. And everything is map back with these strategic points that I'm trying to move forward.

So in that way, every time I plan or I plan my week, I'm very thoughtful of how I'm using my time and how I'm using like this 30 minutes will be used for strategizing on this part, these 15 minutes that I was thinking of doing this, that's something that someone else can do.

So, in that way, I'm very thoughtful and mindful of what I'm doing every day. And that has helped me a lot through time. That may sound I'm micromanaging myself, but it really helps me to move things forward.

Gresham Harkless 12:51

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I believe too, that a lot of times when you see people reach a certain level of success, you start to realize they do have that thoughtfulness, that mindfulness, and, as much as the day as they can, every single minute, if at all possible.

Guillermo Elizondo 13:05

And as everything's life, there are important things in life, right? Your family, your health. Your job but planning everything around that hey, if you're having a strategic plan for your life, everything should have a piece of that. And everyone, every stakeholder to also have a piece of that. So, it's really organizing everything.

Gresham Harkless 13:25

Yeah, that's so powerful. I love that you said that it almost sounds like your nugget, the piece of advice that you might tell your younger business self.

Guillermo Elizondo 13:33

And the other part, I think it's also very important is how at the end, the things that you do, how do they map back to your values and the people you surround yourself. In my case, I always say that there are 3 very important about this for us- hunger, force of spirit and loyalty to people.

When you have that very clearly, you look for people that are very hungry and growing just as you on the 2nd, part of the force of spirit, that they're able to do anything that's needed to achieve things and to make that hunger possible to get more and at the end, also, the loyalty to people. Organizations come and go, but we are building things for life.

Gresham Harkless 14:17

Awesome. Guillermo, now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping that different ‘CEOs' on this show. So, Guillermo, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Guillermo Elizondo 14:27

For me, being a CEO is about really, I will say two things. 1, finding a set of amazing people to work with you, people that have the skills, people that are good, share your values that want to move things forward that are more skilled than you in doing things and making sure that you are finding those people.

It might sound like HR, but really at the end, being a CEO is being really the chief of HR is because you are pushing the company. You're finding the greatest people. You're pushing the values. And that's number 1 and number 2 is making sure that all that great people that you have the tools, have the things needed to make things move forward. And of course, sharing with them the vision of the company saying where you're going, what you want and how the organization can grow. But I will say that those 2 things that I said are the most important things.

Gresham Harkless 15:38

Guillermo truly appreciate that definition. 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 can let our readers and listeners know. And, of course, how best people can get out of view find about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Guillermo Elizondo 15:55

And if you want to be in touch with me, just shoot up an email. I think you have my email. I will say it is maybe it's not that easy. It's cg.elizondo@territorium.com.

Gresham Harkless 16:08

Yes, absolutely. To make it even easier. We're going to have the links and information in the show notes too. So that people can reach out to you and contact you find about all the awesome things that you're doing. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Guillermo Elizondo 16:18

Thank you very much, Gresham.

Outro 16:19

Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. IAMCEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at cbnation.co. Also, check out our IAMCEO Facebook group.

This has been the IMCEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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