ValueHiring Rebrand

Why the rebrand?

ValueHiring is a little too specific. It gives off the impression that I’m in the recruitment space. With the intention to explore soft-skill development, training, and HR consulting at the same time, I’ve decided that a more general brand will serve better.

This is Pivot #2

You can read more about Pivot #1 here.

If you notice, the mission is not changing much. I’m still grounding myself in what I’m passionate about: Influence how the education system develops the talent of tomorrow – more emphasis on value discovery, personal development, soft-skills training.

I’m passionate about the problem/cause, and flexible about who I address in order to accomplish my mission.

So what’s the plan?

Or Plans – A, B, C… because

“Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything”

Dwight Eisenhower, 34th U.S. President

Below, I’ll be going into detail on how I plan to build financial sustainability for ClassyNarwhal. Not to brag about how much money I can make, but to be transparent and to hold myself accountable to my goals and motivations.

“Here I pledge that I will only take what I reasonably need to give myself and my family a comfortable life.”

Not that I’m trying to build a billion-dollar venture scale company. But when profits do come (and they will), I won’t pull a Bob Iger and rake in a salary that’s 1,424x that of the median Disney employee. I’ll ensure fair pay for employees and invest in supporting other educational initiatives.

Not that I’m a fan of Dan Lok, but as he says “You can’t help the homeless by joining them”

Bear in mind, all plans could run in parallel and aren’t exclusively independent of each other.

Plan A

B2C – Business to Consumer

Offering my service directly to consumers:

• Start with workshops to build an audience & community
• Find a subset of people who are interested in more hands-on experience and are motivated to push themselves to grow.
• Start mastermind groups to better serve them – not the group coaching type of groups, but the more authentic groups that are about members supporting members.

Financial plan

• Workshops will be free to register, sustainable through donations.
  • Inclusive education to permit those who can’t afford it to learn as well.
  • Not a fan of upselling during free workshops to a paid comprehensive course so I won’t be doing that.
  • Estimating $400/workshop in donations. Might not even break even on cost once I need to start paying for venue/food & drinks/employees.
  • At 4 workshops a month = $1,600 revenue.
• Mastermind membership for the seriously motivated. $200/mo to join.
  • 10 people in a group, that makes for $2,000/mo.
  • I should be able to start the first group in 4-6 months and start new groups every 3-4 months after.
  • As the only facilitator, I could probably run up to 6 groups ($12,000/mo) at the same time before needing to find new facilitators.

Logic

Here’s what I’ve learned about program/membership models while I was at Spring:

• Upselling to programs is possible but challenging. It’s more suitable in larger markets where you constantly have lots of people who could be new students.
  • Programs require that you fill the funnel from scratch for each new cohort (since people rarely take the same program twice).
  • To increase the LTV of your customer, it requires that you constantly create new programs that they want to sign up for (I rather do 1 thing really well, than do lots of things mediocre).
  • Since you need to constantly rebuild the funnel, it requires a strong marketing engine.
• If done correctly, mastermind members are highly loyal.
  • Higher LTV without needing to constantly create new content.
  • Easier to scale – you can promote an existing member to a facilitator and offer complimentary membership in exchange. Programs, on the other hand, require more instructors once you start to add on more programs.
  • It allows me to focus on building a good experience which will foster word-of-mouth referrals rather than marketing.
• This is my current first-choice as it plays best to my strengths and experience. I know what it takes to fill a group, and how to run a good one.

It’s all about the experience, so why join this group over another group?

• Nope, not going to try to sell you here. As a matter of fact, joining any group is better than not joining a group. I’ve been a big proponent of mastermind groups as I’ve received immense value from participating in them myself.
• The group you choose to select really all depends on your own personality, who you want to surround yourself with, and your motivations. There are some groups specific for entrepreneurs, others for personal development, and yet others for relationships.

So what makes a good group?

Yes, feel free to take what you’ve learned here and start your own if you have the right network & resources!

Not that I have the perfect solution, but here’s what I’ve learned from running masterminds with Spring:

• It’s vital to match the right people into a group. Avoid people who are entirely similar, they will enjoy being around each other, but it promotes groupthink and you miss out on the rich feedback that a diverse group can bring.
  • That said, it’s also bad to try to throw people who are too dissimilar together.
  • They should be in a common “stage/state”, have a common goal, face common problems, but possibly come from different backgrounds, have different experiences, come from different industries, or have different skills.
• Mastermind is about community, it’s not a product. Good masterminds are dynamic and organic, members are sincerely motivated to support each other outside of meetings and don’t need to be prompted to do so.
• The experience is crucial, it’s more important to focus on having a few strong groups rather than push to start new groups at all cost.
• Trust is everything, it creates the following:
  • Good mastermind groups create a safe environment where you can be vulnerable and share your problems without judgement.
  • Trust creates room for honesty. Sometimes what we need to hear is not what we want to hear.
  • Everyone is committed & present. It’s not just about what you can gain, but you also need to be an equal contributor to the betterment of others.
  • The group is accountable, everyone holds each other to a higher standard, pushes each other & the group to grow and improve.

Beyond these basics, format, tools etc. are all just a means to accomplishing an end. Good groups will sell themselves as members will be proud to give a good reference.

Plan B

B2B2C – Business to Business to Consumer

Support individuals by providing private training to corporations or other educational institutions.

• I would still need to run workshops/create content to build thought leadership & establish my reputation.
• This plan would involve more sales than marketing. Securing single or multi-session training/speaking engagements with other organizations.

Financial plan

• Speaking engagements start at $1,500 for a 2-3 hr workshop.
• They’re a lot harder to secure, the optimal situation is to find a long-term engagement.
  • e.g. a company who would like to offer soft-skill development as a perk for their employees and would pay a monthly/annual fee for me to train new & existing employees on a regular schedule.

Plan C

B2B – Business to Business

HR Consulting to support organizations who would like to improve their HR strategy, employee brand, recruitment & onboarding process, and company culture in order to find better aligned and motivated employees.

By doing so, indirectly influencing education. Institutions will adjust what their programs impart if they start to see that companies are looking for these new qualities in their candidates.

Financial plan

• On a project-by-project basis, revenue depends a lot on the scope of the project. On the lower-end, $10,000 for a project.
• I expect profits to be marginal with this channel because I may have to farm out certain deliverables to more experienced contractors. I would take 20% for finding & closing the project, they would retain 80% for doing most of the delivery.