Learning With Rebels: Insights from Shannon Tipton

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone. My name is Amanda Prescaro and welcome to the web talk show. Today I'm joined by Shannon Tipton from Learning Rebels. Welcome Shannon. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Shannon, could you give us a brief introduction so our listeners that don't know about you and many will, but the ones that don't, give us a brief introduction so that they know who we're talking with today. Sure. Sure. My name is obviously Shannon Typton. I own a company called Learning Rebels. And the way we like to say it is if you have ever been at work and you had to take part in a training program that was not helpful, it was not useful, it was not relevant to you, we fix that. Nice. So, we help organizations fix training that's not really working for them and make it so that it does. Uh we've been around since 2004. Uh so we've seen some success in various industries, healthc care, manufacturing, home services, you know, we find that every industry has training issues. So we we try not to focus on any one particular industry, you know, because that just makes the job interesting. But in essence, what we do is we help those companies create training that's really going to help them see the business results that they need and require. That's amazing. And that's has been a reoccurring subject with all of our guests last week and this week within the training space, we see that training is broken. like that particular theme has reappeared and we've had very different varied conversations but that theme seems to be appearing and as you said in many industries. So why do you think training is broken in the first place? training has always been **[00:02:00]** broken, you know, from a corporate perspective. And this is because um it's not unlike a person deciding to open a restaurant, right? They they go and they have a good meal and they're like, "Oh, I can do this, right? This is simple. I can do this." And then, you know, they fail spectacularly. And the same thing kind of happens when you talk about learning and development is that you have many people in leadership positions and sometimes even in uh learning leadership roles who have been to school and they say well I've been to school I understand learning I understand how learning works and then they try to apply that university model into corporate training and then they're you know shocked and amazed that it fails And that is simply because adults require different environments. You know, we we all we all learn the same, you know, children, adults, etc. We all process information the same, etc. However, the environment that's required to do so is very different and the foundation of that is also very different. And a lot of people, especially in the corporate environment, they simply don't understand that until they get into the middle of it. And then they find out that their sales initiatives are not working. And then they blame the victim, so to speak, which would be the salesperson. They're like, "Well, the salesperson isn't doing what they need to do." And it really is because the training has failed them. They put them in a classroom, they talked at them for eight hours, or they put them in front of a really terrible e-learning program that was nothing but, you know, a PowerPoint uh presentation and made them sit in front of that and then they wonder why **[00:04:00]** it didn't work, you know, and and so that is the basis of why a lot of training has been broken and continues to be broken because we really from a leadership perspective are failing to shift the paradigm. That actually makes a lot of sense. It's like someone who is good at personal training. And this is for the listeners who are not in the learning and development space. If we want to put it down to another industry, let's say you're good at personal training and you say, "I'll open a gym." Right? Well, great. But if you don't know anything about business, you'll soon realize that now you're going to be running a business and now you're going to be a business owner. You're no longer going to be a personal trainer. And so you might hate it, you might love it, but it's a whole different thing. And so what you said, I think makes absolutely perfect sense. And you know, there's a there are differences. So when you think about a person in learning leadership that is embedded within an organization versus somebody like myself, you know, who is in the business of helping other businesses, you know, there's a different perspective there. Now there are a great many learning leaders who are doing it right within their organizations and there are others who are a little bit more entrenched and could use a new dynamic when it comes to the training that they're putting out. And the frustration I know from corporate learning and development people is that they say, "Well, this is what my business wants." And it's difficult to fight that culture. You know, when you come into a culture within a business that says, "All we want is for you to **[00:06:00]** create crappy e-learning." It's like, "Okay, well then I guess I'll create crappy e-learning." you know, and then again, the business becomes frustrated because that e-learning hasn't really helped anyone. And then you're starting from two opposing corners, right? And then it's hard to meet in the middle. And that's where someone like myself comes in to come in and say, "All right, how can we help these two corners come together where we're really developing learning that is going to help the business but also help the person? And the key here is does your learning help people be smarter, better, faster than they were the day before?" And if it doesn't then we need to take back and take a look and analyze why you know so there are so there are differences in how you're going to approach it and the struggle is real for for a lot of learning and development people that are embedded in corporations. Do you think that this happens mostly when it's in company training provided by the same company's department or does it also happen when they're purchasing licensing or seats in thirdparty training to train their teams? You know, it's a good question and it happens in both areas for sure. And that's a lot of times it's because you know the uh you know the ven diagram, right? You can either get it good, you can get it fast, or you can get it cheap, right? And those two those three things don't marry up. And a lot of times when organizations go and they look for third-party training, they're looking for cheap and they're they're looking for expediency. So they're looking for cheap and fast. And if I would ask organizations to step back and take a look **[00:08:00]** at your personal life and think about the personal decisions that you've made in life, did you make those decisions based on cheap and fast? you know, probably. Did you buy your car? Did you just go on a lot and say, "Okay, that's the cheapest car. I'll get that one." It's like, "No, you probably did not." You know, and so when you think about the training that you're putting in front of people, are you buying the cheapest training? If so, then you can't be mad at the results that you get, right? Mhm. You know, there's a lot of cheap organizations, you know, third party organizations out there, you know, and you you get what you pay for, you know, so it's um that's the other battle from corporate perspective, you know, a corporate person that is in their training department. You know, if you don't have the right background and the right education, then that's going to come back to haunt you. And I'm not saying though, I don't want people who are listening to this and who may happen to be L & D professionals say, "Oh, I don't have an instructional design background or I don't have an instructional um masters. I can't do this job." That's not true. That's not true. And my background is in business and communications. And so it's it you don't have to think of it in that way. But you do need to think about how that with third-party providers there is the certification aspect which most of the time has to be third party which is okay but then there's the you're just getting some training like e-learning or something put in to sort of fit your team into that box which I think is what we're **[00:10:00]** talking about here and it was mentioned yesterday in the podcast as well that if you really want training to help make a change in the team, you have to know who your audience is. And so if you're just getting this third-party training that is not specifically tailored to who that team is, then it might not give the results as if it was created within the company or by someone for the company, right? Then that's absolutely true. You know, and that's the other part of this is I I have a saying that I've said for a long time is uh training for everyone benefits no one, right? So, it's you just can't dump training or learning on a group of people and hope for the best. You you make people angry. You ruin your credibility. You know, if you are an experienced salesperson and I dump, you know, sales 101 on you, what are the odds that you're going to be excited to participate in anything else that I have to serve up? The odds are zero because you're already mad at me because I've made you take a training that doesn't apply to you. And then I've lost credibility because now you're thinking that person doesn't know me. They don't care about me. They don't care about my job. And so now you've alienated a whole swath of your audience, you know, which which happens a lot. And and I'll I'll just say it. It's because a many organizations and many learning and development professionals and even those who are in the business of learning and development will do that because it's the easy thing to do. You know, it's quick and it's easy. Let's just send it out to everybody. Nobody, not nobody, a **[00:12:00]** lot of people don't want to do the hard work that it takes to do the analysis to figure out who really needs what training. And that's what we do as an as an organization. That's what Learning Rebels, part of what we do is we'll go in and we'll do a skills gap analysis and find out who really is missing the skills that it takes to make them good at their jobs and in turn make the business successful because those two things are symbiotic. They have to work together. you're going to make people better so your business can be better. There is not a business owner, regardless of industry, out there who doesn't want more money. They all they want larger profits and they want bigger revenue. And in order to do that, you have to have a well-trained workforce. Those two things go together. And you know, the sooner that organizations and learning professionals realize that and really work towards that, then they'll see success. That makes a lot of sense. A lot of times it it's just the idea of, oh, I'm growing. Let me just hire people. Right. Right. They don't think about who they're hiring. It's just like, let's just fill up the bus. Let's just fill up the bus with people. It doesn't matter where they're going or how they got there. Let's just fill it up. How did you, coming from a business and communications background, get into training and professional development? Well, I was in restaurant operations for a long time and uh specifically working with uh franchises and there became a point in time where I was one exhausted because I was working internationally and I was tired of all of the travel that went with that job. **[00:14:00]** And two, I really wanted to help the franchises do better. And at that time, I didn't know what that meant. I um you know I would help them look at their P&Ls and and make business decisions etc. But I really wanted to see them succeed from a people perspective. And so I went back to the organization. I said what can I do to to make this happen? I don't I don't know what I need to do. And they said well you know if you're good and this is what a lot of organizations do. They go well if you're good at this we'll put you in the training department. And I was like okay. So let let's see what happens there. you know, so I uh took over the the franchise training model and I had no clue. I'll readily admit it here and I've said it before, I had zero idea of what I was doing and those were back in the days before the internet and uh yeah, I'm old, but it was before the before the internet. So I had to do a lot of reading, a lot of talking to other people, a lot of conference going because I really wanted to learn about what this was all about and I had to find good coaches and good mentors. And so I dedicated myself to learning everything that I could learn about training in that moment in time. And subsequently, you know, fast forward here we are today. And I think the key to that is the continuation of learning within yourself. Right? So I am always curious about what's happening in the industry because we're dealing with people and we're dealing with people's brains and that is something that is always **[00:16:00]** evolving and always changing you know. So I think uh my business background really helps because it helps me understand business goals. Mhm. So when businesses are talking to me about what they hope to achieve, what sort of business results they're hoping to achieve through training, then I understand that. I speak that language and I think that also makes me an important asset when it comes to my clients. Wow. And I believe, you may correct me if I'm wrong, but the difference was that you were curious and actually wanted to grow. So even though they put you in that learning position initially without knowing what you were getting in, you you took what it like you actually pushed through because you were curious, right? And I I felt like I had a responsibility and maybe that's because I was going from one leadership position to another, you know? So it was I understood that this wasn't simply about getting in front of a group of people and doing presentations. Now, there's nothing wrong in that. There are a lot of trainers out there who love the facilitation role and that's what they excel at and that's what they want to do. God bless them because we need more of those sorts of dynamic people. But for me, I knew that my role was going to be more than that. But it, like I said, I didn't know what exactly that meant. You know, I didn't know what a skills gap analysis was. I I didn't know, you know, what it meant to uh create training that really was impactful for the business. I really could not connect those dots. So, it was important for me to figure out how, you know, how can I I can't **[00:18:00]** be successful in my role if I don't know how, right? If I don't have those building blocks. So, that was important. Wow. And here here you are. Then here I am. That's great. I I really love these sessions because we are getting knowledge and advice and life lessons really from people who have done this for many years successfully and have seen ups and downs but ultimately have seen the real behind the scenes what's happening in in this case learning and development and you you've seen what works and what doesn't. So, I I really think this helps the audience understand what like it's not it's not just Yeah. Like you were saying, just throw an e-learning course at them and and you're done. Yeah. Right. And those are a dime a dozen. I mean, I can open up Google right now and Google, you know, e-learning developers and 200 million of us are going to pop up. You know, the hard part is determining which ones are really in it to help you succeed, you know, and from a from a business perspective. So, the business of learning, that's the competition that's out there, you know, so the competition becomes I've got somebody out there who can do what I do and what my company does for significantly less. You know, my job is to help the client who is still in the decision-making process understand that do you do you just want content that's going to fill your learning management system or do you want your business to be better? What are your goals? You know, when they say, well, I need people to, you know, I need people to be trained. What does that mean? So if if you business owner listening to this **[00:20:00]** and you you're struggling in this particular area, you know, when you go through that discovery phase with other learning and development companies, you want clarity on how that person is going to help your business see business results, not just whether or not your people can pass a test at 85%. Because that does nothing for business success. You talk about measuring performance change versus measuring activities, right? Right. You know, because I'm the end all beall it seems for that litmus test of success is whether or not they can pass a test. And I would throw people back and I I've done this often to decision makers and say, "Think back to when you were in university or even high school, wherever the last time you took a a formal assessment test." Now, did you study for the test or did you study how to pass the test? Right? And that makes a difference because people are going to study to pass the test. And just because they pass the test does not mean that they know the topic, you know. It just means that they know how to take a test, you know. So then your due diligence as a business owner outside of learning and development looking to find learning and development help is to ensure that the person on the other end of the call or the meeting is really focused on helping your business succeed because that's where it starts. This makes perfect sense. We have built a lot of learning management systems for clients and when we're looking at the data, it's very interesting to see how some people will if you go to their profile take a test and then they took it like six times and then they finally got **[00:22:00]** the the certificate, right? But but if you didn't look closely at their profile and if you don't have the right trigger set up, it'll just look like, oh, this person passed. They did well. That's okay. But once you go into their profile by mistake or just because you were curious, that's when you see the 64 attempts, right? So they and they took it like one after the other. It's not like they took one test and then they went back and spent some time studying and then came back. No, they took it one after the other, right? It's like I'm going to keep taking this damn thing until I pass it. And that's that's exactly the mentality of a lot of people. As a matter of fact, story for you is I was um traveling a few a number of years ago and I was having dinner at a restaurant. I was at the bar and I was having dinner and there was a cohort of salespeople around me. They were just in for some sort of meeting or training something something. And uh one of them was telling another that they paid their kids to take their LMS training courses. What? They paid their kids to take their training, you know. So that tells you a couple of things. First off, the training is broken within that organization. And two, the culture is broken within that organization as well, you know, because it does come from leadership. So either leadership supports a culture of learning or they support a culture of test taking. Which one is it? Yeah. You know, and either either perspective is going to lead you down one road or the other, you know, and then it's about holding up that mirror **[00:24:00]** and saying, what part of the learning culture failure do I have here as as a leader? You know, what have I told my people? And clearly, you know, someone was getting away with paying their children to to take their, you know, training classes, which I thought was interesting. I I held my tongue. I didn't tell them what I did for a living, but I thought that that was amusing. And yeah, well, at least the children maybe learn some skills for the future. Yeah, the children will grow up to be salespeople. What is your view on in the e-learning space restrictions to avoid this type of thing systemwise versus actual involvement and communication with the team to avoid it possibility? Help me understand that question a little bit more. If you had to choose to stop that behavior, Uhhuh. you put in some locks in the system, some barriers versus actually talking with the team and building on that culture, what works, right? Putting in the barriers never works. You people will find a way around that, you know? So I prefer not to build a learning culture around people who are trying to circumvent it. That's not who the audience is. You want to build a learning culture for the people who want to be there and want to participate because that's what's going to make your organization rich, you know, and again that's a a cultural dynamic. So that means those people who are looking to cheat the system like this person, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that they were cheating the system in other ways. Mhm. You know, so then it becomes what is the internal processes for this, you know? So if if it's okay for you to let them **[00:26:00]** do this, if assuming that the sales leader knew about it, if you go ahead and let people do that, then what's the message that you're sending, right? But to further answer your question, I prefer to build for the people who want to learn, the people who want to be in it, the people who want to do better. I am not going to waste my time for the people who want to find ways around the rules. That's golden. And that applies to so many different industries. It's not just learning. We see it on platforms, right, like Airbnb or Upwork. These platforms that are marketplaces that soon enough start tailoring the platform to the rule breakers, right? And as as a regular user, you're like, why? It's I can't send them me. The person wants me to send them an email and I can't because I have to do it through it just because of the rule breakers. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know those tags on the um on the blow dryers that say don't use this in the did. Excuse me. At some point, someone And so now they've got labels on everything for the person who might be silly enough to take a blow dryer into the shower. So it's the same same example, but you're you're absolutely right. Mhm. The car when you pull down the visor and it has all the warning label. Oh, right. all that sort of stuff where it's just warnings everywhere. I understand them and and they have a good purpose, but it's just doing aligning the platform to the rule breakers instead of people who actually want to learn in this case, right? You want to and any good learning provider will want to do this is that **[00:28:00]** they will want to analyze who wants to make an impact, right? who wants to actually go in and learn and do something differently so that they can have a positive outcome or change the outcome or change the behaviors, right? And those are those are the organizations that not only do that for learning and development, but they do that throughout. So, they're constantly putting their business under a microscope and saying, "Where can we be better?" you know where are the changes that are going to impact success both on a business level and on a people level right and that's what a good business will do and so when I'm talking to clients it's also an interview process for me so while a client is trying to figure out whether or not they want me to do the job I'm trying to figure out do I want to do the job for them you know So, are they going to give are they going to give me headaches and, you know, heartburn over every little thing? And if so, that's probably not worth it for me. You know, I would prefer to work with clients that really are invested in their people and they really want to see change, not just tick a box to say, you know, did everybody take their safety training tick. You know, th those there are businesses out there that work with those sorts of clients. And again, we need them all, but those clients are just not for me. That's also a fantastic insight for everyone who's listening. It doesn't just apply to learning and development. If you have a business and you feel that that client, even though they're going to bring some money in, you they're going to give **[00:30:00]** you more headaches and heartburn than it's worth it's worth than, you know, and I understand. So, if you've got people who are listening who are, you know, new you know, so they're new to business ownership then. Yeah. Sometimes sometimes you have to eat some sand. Yeah. Yes. You know, in order to make sure that you're keeping the lights on and that that you're growing, but at some point you need to make a decision as to which path you want to go down. And then that becomes a difficult decision. And so when I made that decision early on, because I I did that at the very beginning, I was like, "Okay, I'm open. I'll take anyone who will take me." But soon afterwards, it becomes exhausting from a mental perspective. Uh uh just physically it becomes tiring. So then you have to make that decision. And I made that decision a couple of years in and it was hard you because I one it really forced me to take a look at my client base and really think about and most businesses have this right you have a customer persona right who is your client and so I had that customer persona and I had drifted away from that and it's like okay so Shannon you've got to be more true to your business and most importantly true to who you are, you know, you only have a certain amount of years on this earth and is this how you want to spend it, you know. So, uh, one of my clients said this and it sticks with me. It's either you want to be greedy for the long term or you want to be greedy for the short term. Which which one do you want **[00:32:00]** to be? Which bucket do you want to be in? And I don't think there's anything wrong with saying you want to be, you know, greedy in that way. Everybody wants to have the comfort of a couple of dollars in the bank. So for me, yeah, for me it's about being greedy in the long term. And and I think for a lot of business owners, that's a delicate balance, you know, and my advice is to really look inward because, you know, like I said, you've got to wake up in the morning and you've got to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, am I happy with what I'm doing? Am I making an impact? or am I mentally tired and I haven't even gotten out of bed? Wow, that's deep. That's a very important thing to consider for everyone who's listening. You are completely right. There are some points in your business life that you might need to do this, but just keep that like Shannon said persona in mind because even if you have to take these jobs initially, just make sure that you don't get trapped in forever going that route. If you keep your original persona, your original purpose in mind, then even if you have these, maybe you get one of the ones you want and then you get another one. And slowly you start to drift away from what you were getting originally, which was getting you exhausted and into the path of what you really want to do and the change that you want to make. Right. Right. Because I truly believe and this is why I got into this industry to begin with. I mean you're not going to make a million dollars being a learning **[00:34:00]** and development professional. You're just not unless you have a big agency unless you're Deote or Accenture or something like that, you know. But really the way that I think about this and it it's a little crude, but this is the way I think about it is people don't come to work to suck. They don't come to work to fail. So, how can I help you, Mr. M business owner or corporation or organization? How can I help your people feel as successful as they possibly can be? And that makes me feel good at the end of the day. It makes me feel like, oh, okay, I found a purpose and I feel good about that purpose. And am I helping businesses succeed? Yes. Am I helping people succeed? Yes. So, tick, tick, tick. I think I'm doing okay, you know. And so those are um you know, the mental gymnastics sometimes that you have to do, you know, when you're owning a business such as mine. When you think about um business services or consultancy or coaching or any one of those sorts of things, you know, it's people will know whether or not you're in it for the right reasons, you know, especially in my line of work. And as soon as they figure out that you're only in it to make a dollar or you're in it to do it and get out, then those people, your clients and the people who work with your clients, they're going to be able to sniff that out. And so you might as well be true to It doesn't seem like it, but it is. But it is the day. Yeah. Why do you think creative problem solving is important as a skill? Oh, well, there's a **[00:36:00]** good question. Um, I I'm a big believer in creative problem solving and I've been to um creative problemolving conferences and classes and that sort of thing because you're you're not going to get rid of the problems of today with yesterday's thinking. So this means that if we're going to solve the problems of today, we have to think for tomorrow. And many times that's going to require a shift. And that shift isn't always apparent. And creative problem solving or creative thinking is something that requires help. And it might be help from somebody like myself which we we do help organizations in that way. Uh it could be just you know going online and you know diving deep into something called liberating structures you know where it's like all right this is going to help me think about my problem from a different dynamic you know and everybody says oh think outside of the box. Well, the box is there for a reason sometimes, you know, but how can you make that box look and feel differently to help whatever it is that you need to do? And really understanding the foundations of creative problem solving and the different actions that you can take. And sometimes and creative problem solving sounds um esoteric, right? It sounds well, I'm never I'm never going to think that way. I'm an engineer. I'm a mathematician or I work in finance and thinking creatively is actually actively discouraged because I don't want to go to jail. It's like I get it. I get it. You know, we we don't want you to take liberties in that way. But sometimes it's simply how can we work more collaboratively? And when we work collaboratively and across departments then automatically creative ideas and creative **[00:38:00]** methods come to light. So take that baby step of just reaching across departments you know and you're going to find that you are automatically thinking in a different way. And there are some companies that do this very well as as far as as I've heard they promote that. So and and some countries specifically that do it as well where there's that culture of instead of just staying siloed in a department, they promote being in the same building and being able to collaborate with another department to get things done. Is that related? Well, absolutely. You want to figure out where do you have synergy? You know there are departments out there have natural synergies learning and development marketing natural synergies there you know so you should be working together marketing and sales a lot of times those are two completely different siloed off departments yet why I never understood because those are two sides of the same coin. they should be working together you know and then when you think about well where does finance play into this finance and it should also there that's also you know peanut butter and chocolate they should be working together everyone really when you think about any major initiative whether it's you know launching a new product or launching a new learning initiative should have representation from the major departments within their steering committee or their you know pack group. You should always have that kind of representation because you never know where the idea is going to come from that is suddenly going to be yeah that's the million idea and you know what it came from it right and so then when you think about creative problem solving that's the beauty of it you know where you **[00:40:00]** can get all of these people together and really take apart a problem and put it back together in in a different way you know we can play Picasso you know with our problems and still come up with a interesting piece of art. Creative problem solving sounds so great when you explain it like that. Yet, I think most people haven't heard the term since they were in middle school, right? And why is that? I think schools beat the creativity out of kids nowadays, if you ask me. I I maybe it's a hot opinion, but and I don't blame the school system per se. You know, the school system, they've got standardized testing, so they've got to they've got to teach to the test to make sure that the kids are out there and they're ready to read and write and do all the math things. And there's little time for things like art or music or theater, you know, the things that make us think creatively when we are actually in the workforce. those lessons carry over, you know, and so you may be a director of operations or uh the director of sales or finance or it think back to those those times where you played as a team, right? You you played football or baseball or you were on the cheer team or what have you and you were thinking about what are the different ways that we can score? There's creative problem solving anytime you if you watch football. There's creative problem solving in action in three hours. And it's the same thing with theater. You know what? Something's always going to go wrong. So, how do you work around it? And so I would encourage people to take those lessons and even **[00:42:00]** though they're not as apparent in school anymore, we still come across those sorts of activities in life. Whether it's PTA or it's the Chamber of Commerce or um just your college friends coming together for pool night, there are still those sorts of activities where if we sit back and we look at it with a different eyeball, then we're going to see, oh, that was that was dynamic. That was a dynamic conversation. How can I now apply that when I get back to work? That's so interesting that you mentioned theater, Shannon. It came up in Leandro the Silva's show episode as well that he was a very shy boy. Okay. Originally in India and his mom put him in theater. Now, his company helps presidents and vice presidents and CEOs of these companies be better at public speaking. And he's outgoing and he's thoughtful. And it all came down from that little seed of theater that besides the point of getting you out there and learning public speaking and getting the fear out of it, you touched on a fantastic point which is something always goes wrong. Right. And people don't realize this if you just watch TV. If you go to theater often, which is also a nice practice as an adult, as a child, right? It's you can see especially you pay attention something is always different and people on stage have to be able to react. Absolutely. Absolutely. I would encourage organization I know it sounds people go oh Shannon okay you've lost me. Um, but I would still encourage organizations to do those sorts of things like bring in a person who teaches improv into your organization because while it sounds silly, it really does force you to think differently and it **[00:44:00]** forces you to think on the fly, right? And so think about when you do your team activities. A lot of times, you know, they'll bring in that teamwork person. It's like, oh, let's do those ropes exercises. It's like, h, okay, we build trust or whatever. Do you really? That's an argument for a different day. But if you think about somebody coming in and really teaching something in a different way that's going to give your people skills, you know, to again bring business performance results, then do that. I love it. You know, it's not silly at all. I have a story for you. I was having lunch. No idea how this happened really thinking back to it. But I was having lunch with the CEO of a large bank and they're just having a casual lunch conversation and it turned out that he was taking improv lessons. Oh, interesting. comedy and and I thought to myself that's so strange. So it stuck with me and he explained that it's the mental agility that it would give him even though he is so successful joining that program just just increased his mental agility so much. I love that so much. Right. Wow. And what a wonderful insight for him to realize that that was an area that needed assistance, you know, and went out and found it in a different way. And folks, that's a perfect example of creative problem solving, you know. So, I know a lot of CEOs, and I'm sure in your talks, Armando, you you do too, is where when you ask them how do they improve, they might say, well, I read a lot, right? or or they listen to TED talks or they listen to a podcast. And those are all **[00:46:00]** really great ways of helping you think differently. But when you step into an actionable item like an improv class, that's that's addressing it in a creative manner. I love that. I thought it was great. And and I've I've been hearing it like the our guest tomorrow has an IT like a managed services IT company completely different from what we're talking about today. And he has a theater background too which is very interesting. Like they're actually I think they're opening a theater. We we'll see it but we'll talk about it maybe tomorrow in the show. And and we were just talking about this which is there's many sides of a human being. And so just acting as if it's just your business and that's who you are in general and just stepping out of the leadership and training side for a little bit. For those of you who say I, oh, I'm thinking of doing social media because you hear social media is good for business, like you can get people for free, which is true. Fantastic platform to get reach for free. But then they they start thinking just like you explained in the corporate world for training. They just, oh yeah, let's just grab you sort of know what you're doing. Get on it. And they just start posting as a corporation. And it's just like corporate speak. It's not it's not human, right? And so that is the problem. So when you start as the face of the brand or the company and put content out there about theater, about dance, about music, about your podcast, about different things apart from what you're doing in the actual business. That's what gets a lot of people to relate to you and perhaps even go **[00:48:00]** with you versus a competition just because you have the same love for the arts or for coin collecting, right? Yes. You that that human element is so important and you know one of the things we do as a business relating to your guest tomorrow is we also do uh fractional department work. So we will act as your L & D department you know. So and that comes with its own set of challenges, right? So people have to see me, they have to see my people as people. Mhm. You know, so when they they look at me, they go, well, you know, will you as a person fit into my organization? you know, so then you're thinking about, you know, a a good culture fit, which I love that, you know, my clients think of it that way because that's how you should. You know, I do great work, but if my if my personality or the way that I do business is going to be diametrically opposed to how you operate, it doesn't matter how good I am, you know? So, it's important that we we know each other as people first rather than business first. You know, I want people to know that I have a life and I have interests and so do they as clients. And that's how we build those really important connections as, you know, as business owners, you know, that's that's really important. Don't forget that. I love it. I have so many other things I want to talk about, but I don't want to take more more of your time. Maybe we can talk another time as well. If anyone wants to find you, Shannon and Learning Rebels, where is the best way to find you or what **[00:50:00]** is the best platform to reach you on? Well, they can find me for sure on my website. So, learningrebels.com and uh there is a button up there where people can get a a consultative meeting with me. So, if you just fill that form out, you can reach me right away. But alternative to that, you can find me on LinkedIn for sure. So I always encourage people to connect with me. It doesn't matter. Uh I'm I'm not the person where if you connect with me, I'm automatically going to come back with a sales pitch. That's not who I am. I really want to find out how can I help you? You know, if you want to connect with me, how can I help you be better at whatever it is you want to do? Uh the next thing we do, we do have a podcast. So the Learning Rebels podcast, that's on all of the channels. So if you are a learning and development professional or if you are just interested in how people learn in general, that's a podcast that you might find interesting. So those are the areas where I sort of lurk about my website, LinkedIn being the main places. Uh so I would look forward to hearing from anyone. I truly appreciate you h coming on Shannon. It has been a pre pleasure. The insights that you've given us are excellent. I will be sharing some clips of these on social as well so people can get little snippets and then come listen to the full show. But I'm going to put all your links in the show notes so people can find you as well. And again, it's been an honor talking with you and hope we talk again soon. Absolutely. **[00:52:00]** Thank you for having me.