Learn Today, Implement Tomorrow: How to fast-track the benefits of employee training
Why hire someone new, when you can train within?
This is the same question Rob Price, founder of Mashay, asked himself when working on his newly-launched startup. But instead of hiring someone new, the person he trained was himself.
For Rob, Growth Marketing wasn’t his strong suit; marketing wasn’t even in his list of skill-sets. So, when he began his own bootstrapped business, he realised for his startup to grow, he would need to hire talent or up-skill his own staff.
For early-stage startups, every dollar counts and every staff member contributes to the company’s success or failure. In the first year of business, startups need to grow as fast as they can to validate their minimum viable product (MVP) and beat their competition.
The odds for startup success are low. Only one out of every 10 startups succeeds. But the risk of disruption to large organisations from the one company that succeeds is undeniably great.
In 1995, Fortune Magazine revealed the 500 largest companies in the world. When people thought of Blockbuster, Blackberry, and Yahoo, they thought of money and success. However 62 years later, less than 80 of those companies still remain.
Whether you run a large organisation or a small startup, an innovative and future-focused mindset is crucial. The fate of Blockbuster, Blackberry, and Yahoo may have changed
if they invested in people who knew how and when to prepare for the future.
For Mashay, a company still in its early days, thinking about the future helps to separate it from companies who are less agile. The ability to train and innovate within the business is what differentiates Mashay from larger companies who would rather hire than up-skill.
“I was working with experts in the field at Academy Xi and they were working intimately with my business. It taught me how to learn and develop in this space,” explains Rob.
For both startups and large businesses who already have skilled workers, learning new skills like Growth Marketing needs to have a practical focus.
“I could have just read a bunch of blogs and tried to have a play, but sitting with growth experts in a 10-week course, two nights a week, gave me a really solid foundation and a more targeted approach to [Growth Marketing],” Rob explains.
“90 percent of what we covered was directly relevant to what Mashay was tackling at any point in time. As I was going through the course, I was adding tickets on JIRA for what we should do, purely on the basis of what we were talking about,” says Rob.
Since launch, Mashay has grown 15 percent week-on-week and is now starting to dive into more partnerships around Sydney. In the next 12 months, Rob reveals that Mashay will look to launch in Brisbane and Melbourne.
For companies to grow and expand, team training and investment should be a top priority. At Academy Xi, we believe companies who invest in their employees education will see the benefits straight away.
For a traditional marketer who takes a Growth Marketing course, new marketing avenues are opened and tools can be implemented into the business the very next day.
Invest in your employees today and reap the benefits tomorrow. For more information, check out our range of full and part-time online courses.
