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GSD Episode 18: Darin Francis
42 Plays7 days ago
In this episode of Gettin' Stuff Done in Higher Education, Kelvin, Fritz, and Kevin sit down with Darin Francis, Managing Partner and CEO of Harbinger Lane Consulting, to discuss how colleges and universities can strengthen connections between education and vendors. Darin shares his humanistic approach to help start-up vendors become trusted thought partners by thoroughly understanding institutional needs.
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Transcript
Introduction: Hosts and Guest Darren Francis
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome everyone to the Getting Stuff Done in Higher Education podcast with my colleagues Fritz and Kevin. I'm Kelvin and today's guest is Darren Francis, a higher education and workforce strategist with more than two decades of experience helping institutions, ed tech organizations, and employers build transformational partnerships that improve student success and career readiness.
Darren's Role and Experience in Higher Education
00:00:46
Speaker
Darren is the managing partner and CEO of Harbinger Lane Consulting, where he works at the intersection of higher education, workforce development, experiential learning, and innovation.
00:00:58
Speaker
Darren, welcome to the podcast. Oh, I'm super excited to join you guys. Thanks for having me on. No, a anytime. Darren, i'm i'm I'm a big fan of yours in terms of the various podcasts that you've been doing, especially your recent series talking with um you know leaders of ed tech companies around career connected learning, experiential learning, work-based learning.
00:01:24
Speaker
um work integrated learning, right, that that whole ecosystem. And so it's a pleasure to have you with us today with all of our guests there. And we love to, of course, take a step back and and have our guests, you know, to spend time telling us more about their background and their educational, professional um you know backgrounds, their journey.
00:01:49
Speaker
So we would love just to learn more about you. um And if you could take this through um you know take us take us back to when Darren kind of first started thinking about what he wanted to do next professionally.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
College Days and Career Beginnings
00:02:08
Speaker
Well, I mean, um you know, i don't talk much about my my college background primarily because I'm it was it was a pretty big disappointment to me. i went to a small private institution in Michigan that my parents were willing to pay for because it was a religious institution.
00:02:31
Speaker
um And um I can name it, it no longer exists. It was called William Tyndale College. I studied counseling and psychology. And, you know, I met some friends there and that was interesting, but it it it was... um it It lacked the the gravitas that I see in many and many of my peers when i when I have conversations with them. i also was at it, I would say from a career perspective, I wanted to be a musician and, you know, the proverbial rock star in the 90s. And I had no real direct path to that from Detroit, Michigan. so so i was
00:03:16
Speaker
um you know, kind of lost in that space. And I studied psychology because I was really attached to
00:03:27
Speaker
relationships and really fascinated with mental health. Certainly saw a lot of things in my own experience that led me to believe that there was a real mental health crisis out there to to work on.
00:03:41
Speaker
and Ultimately, I stepped away and didn't complete and and didn't pursue actually the the credentialed path towards becoming a psychologist or even a social worker at the time.
00:03:57
Speaker
But i went into sales and, um, and I remember my, my wife got me my first job. She was before it was while we were engaged.
00:04:10
Speaker
Um, I had been working in, in sales already an, in a manufacturing context and I hated it was, I was helping sell like these widgets, right. It doesn't even matter what it was.
00:04:22
Speaker
And, she was working for Gale Research in Detroit, which later got acquired by Cengage. Well, later got acquired by Thompson Learning, which became Cengage.
00:04:35
Speaker
And um she got me on my first job and in the ed in the ed tech space.
Transition to Ed Tech at Cengage
00:04:41
Speaker
And I stayed in ed tech and she she moved on. But ah but nevertheless, the work
00:04:49
Speaker
Starting out and in the publishing world, um I was directly in K-12 and higher ed. We were serving both those markets. I stayed at Cengage. We kind of went from Gale as a publisher to um to to Thompson Learning, to Cengage Learning.
00:05:08
Speaker
And through that process, we I got to see them move a And I moved into an online learning division almost immediately when I was there, which gave me a great lens into seeing how content could be very purposefully and interactively and engaged in the curriculum. And so I was you know pretty early on in my sales career working with faculty and deans and libraries at institutions, higher ed institutions and K-12 institutions with teachers.
00:05:52
Speaker
to apply some of the the great published content in in that and their catalog and in online contexts. um But from there, I moved around quite a bit. I moved into, i mean, at its biggest, at its peak at Cengage, I mean, we probably had a I probably had a ah sales organization that I was a part of that was maybe 300 people.
00:06:22
Speaker
um And then I went into these little startups where I was like one of four people that were selling into the market. um And i navigated a bunch of different areas across higher ed um where i was I went from selling content to selling platforms to um selling services to into institutions. and And I stayed really within higher ed and just kept growing sort of my footprint and understanding of of the higher ed market by
00:06:57
Speaker
going to different companies that that serve different needs.
Exploring Higher Ed Systems in North America
00:07:01
Speaker
Eventually, I went from sort of the content and teaching and learning space into the enrollment and recruitment space. And um And throughout all that, I got to know all of the different types of higher ed systems and in the US s and and Canada and saw just how differently structured they were and how um how the incentives were aligned so differently from from role to role, from institution to institution, depending on the type of institution.
00:07:34
Speaker
and That all started to come together for me, I would say, in the last five years of that career, ending around right around the pandemic,
00:07:45
Speaker
um ah because I was starting to think about going into consulting. But i was doing a lot of the work that I was doing for these little companies was I was helping them with go-to-market strategy. and And I started to see that that the background that I had um could be used in a lot of different contexts and i was i was really interested in seeing instead of just wearing one logo working with one company could i work with several and offer ah level of support and solution to them as they want to pursue the market and so so i started to do that back um when i first officially launched harbinger lane consulting 2023 september 2023 and
00:08:31
Speaker
and um And yeah, I haven't looked back. It's been great. Now, that's that's really cool. I, you know, I feel like when you and I talk, I find um again, just additional examples of how we are similar. We're both from Michigan originally, right? you youre you're You live in the Southfield area. I grew up on the east side of Detroit.
00:08:54
Speaker
um Didn't know Eminem back in the day. Maybe you did. I don't know. But but it's it's cool that we have that in common and also psychology. So I went to Wayne State University and studied psych and then decided to double down and go into clinical psych. But I had a quick question for you, Darren, about you mentioned sales.
00:09:16
Speaker
And so what, I know your wife kind of helped you find your initial, um your your initial job kind of after finishing up college, but um what what attracted you to kind of a sales position, which of course, as you just described, kind of opened up a lot of additional doors eventually um in the years that you worked with Cengage?
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's worth double clicking on um because I think that if i if I attribute any of my success in higher ed to anything, it's sort of being the antithesis of a salesperson. And so,
00:10:00
Speaker
I think what i what I did straight out of college was I just got the first full-time job I could, which was at a family's...
Purpose and Integrity in Educational Sales
00:10:12
Speaker
Friends of our family had a manufacturing company in Clarkston, Michigan. They made these these containers, these industrial containers.
00:10:23
Speaker
And so I took a full-time role working for them and helping to sell these industrial containers. And it was, I thought i the money was good, but I just was like, oh, I just don't, I don't like this. I don't like anything about sales. And,
00:10:41
Speaker
um and so my wife had just gotten hired as an editor at, at Gale research and, because we were going to get married, she was pretty incentivized to help me find something I liked better. And so she went and, uh, she kept telling me about, about this company and how cool it was and working in downtown Detroit and all this stuff. And then, uh, she went and talked to, to like a sales manager there to see if there was any openings. And he said, yeah, there is. Why don't you bring them in? And so, um, literally she introduced me to, to my first boss in the ed education space.
00:11:17
Speaker
And the thing that I think, um,
00:11:22
Speaker
resonated the most was it was the it was the first connection I made where I was like, oh I really need to believe in something in order to sell it. That's what I thought was the missing link was I need to believe in something. And and Gail at the time offered this high quality and content.
00:11:42
Speaker
they were They were providing it to, at the time, libraries, K-12 and higher ed, and also just public libraries. And it just felt like a noble thing. And I was like, oh, I just needed belief to in order to sell, and that would work. And so I started of selling um in that context. And really, I did really i did really well. and it was...
00:12:07
Speaker
um i went through a to a ton of like sales training, but um which I think was helpful, like fundamentally to understanding like how to be efficient. Um, if you think about people in higher ed today, the salespeople in higher ed today are the, are the recruiters, right? They're the, they're the folks in the admissions teams that that go in there and do this, this work. It's really noble work, but it's really thankless work. And it's really like a, a, a drudge, um, of a, of a thing. And so,
00:12:36
Speaker
um what i i guess that What I would sort of hold on to and I think this kind of comes from the psychology lens too, is that I found almost every sales program i was you know provided to go learn and and as sort of like a professional development opportunity.
00:12:59
Speaker
I found them pretty lacking in terms of my ability to apply them without it feeling like manipulation or leverage that you would have in a process. And, um, and,
00:13:15
Speaker
So i I was given quite a bit, especially, this is even in the later years as i as I grew into other roles, I was always given quite a bit of level of um latitude to sort of do my own thing because people knew that I was establishing these good relationships in higher ed and that I was getting the results that were needed.
00:13:33
Speaker
And I didn't really think of it as um as having my own system. I thought of it more as just, the effective way to to sell in higher ed is to is to be, these are the most educated buyers in the world.
00:13:49
Speaker
you can't You can't like try and even manipulate ah these people. And you're working in these in these complex um buying environments where you've got you know committees that are coming together.
00:14:03
Speaker
The best thing that you can do is just show up as honestly as as possible. And um I even learned from a couple of people early on that it's even better to give your competition a a win um and hold your integrity than to try and pretend you've got something that they don't. And so i remember at times realizing how freeing it was to be in a sales environment, talking to higher ed leaders and realizing, oh, you know what? What we're selling is actually not right for you. You you would actually, based on what you're looking for, you would benefit more from this other business
00:14:42
Speaker
product and, and realizing like how much like credibility that get, that got me too. It wasn't just sort of the pat on the back. Hey, Darren, you did a nice thing, but it also just endeared me to people.
00:14:52
Speaker
Um, I think even more. And so, um, so anyway, over time, I feel like the quotes, the the path into sales for me, I don't know that I would have been a successful salesperson if I would have gone and worked at a car dealership.
Complexities of Selling to Higher Ed Institutions
00:15:08
Speaker
Right. Like, cause I think I, ah For me, that that the transactional nature, even if it's a complex sale, no offense to people that do that for a living,
00:15:20
Speaker
um I just don't know that I would have been able to buy into the psychology of the process. And so higher ed in that way saved me and made me a better, and a better partner because I, I, I had to do it in a pretty unconventional way in order to, to make it a work and be effective and be do it in a way that I could feel good about, about the work I was doing.
00:15:45
Speaker
That's great. Yeah. You know, so Darren, whether you knew it or not back in the day and along the way, you picked up on that institutions are a giant web of relationships.
00:15:59
Speaker
That's how they work, really. you know The relationships from up and down the stack and laterally across silos, there we <unk> that's what perforates the silos when they're when when the silos actually harmonize.
00:16:11
Speaker
but um So yeah, you picked up on it and you realize that's the way to do it well. I mean, ah what I was gonna ask before you started digging into that is, how did you How did you make sense of this very complex space where there's different types of institutions at all kinds of levels from community colleges all the way up through r one research institutions?
00:16:34
Speaker
And then each one is its own little culture. And then each inside of each one is there's little cultures. There's i cultures in IT and in the staff side and the faculty side between different colleges and departments, there's different cultures. So, i mean, you kind of answered the question I was about to get into, but I mean, did you have along the way, did you have the dead ends go flat faced, you know, like, Ooh, I need to change, change my tactic in this space. I know I've got plenty, uh, from, from inside institutions, but I'm interested in what, what helped you find that, find that thread.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think, um, The one thing I would say that resonates with me, and actually i' coach companies today and help them like with sales training or even hiring people in in sales that would sell into higher ed. And so I think about this part a lot. I think there's a there's a few things that are important um in order to get to what, to sort of the, the,
00:17:47
Speaker
the the level of success and understanding the nuances of the market and such. um One is just relentlessness. Like I think in most company cultures, if you're where the sales hat, um you are expected to be either on campus so many times a week or making so many phone calls or whatever,
00:18:13
Speaker
you know going to conferences, whatever, you're you have to spend so many reps in relationship and in trying trial and error that um if you're really relentless and you're out there and having those conversations, you learn really quickly like what works and what doesn't work. um failure is your teacher in that context, because i would say this, like I at one point when it went back and added it up because people are always interested in how much have you sold and all this different stuff. And so at one point I went back and added it up or a couple points I added it up in my career. How much in terms of revenue did I sell into the market? And my last estimate was around $60 million dollars worth of of sales across about a 20 year span. And
00:18:59
Speaker
and To do all that, I would imagine that I lost four times that um in terms of to competitors, to other things. And at each loss, each time someone said no or went with another solution was another opportunity for me to understand more about the culture and what I missed or about what my my company was doing wrong to position its product um or why my company's product roadmap was really far afoot from what the market was looking for. Right. And so um so there was
00:19:39
Speaker
I think that just that ability to be persistent and just kind of going after all of these opportunities to to learn, you just you learn it really quickly and you keep you stay um immersed in it um across all different markets and all different parts of the higher ed market.
Curiosity and Sales Success in Higher Ed
00:20:00
Speaker
And and the other thing is is that um I had one of my very first
00:20:09
Speaker
bosses that I worked for in this engage space, um, made an observation about me that stuck with me. They said, you know what, you are like one of the most curious salespeople I've ever had on my team.
00:20:23
Speaker
And i was like, know how to take that. And he's like, no, he's like, curiosity is probably the greatest trait that you could probably have in this, in this space. And I think, you know,
00:20:34
Speaker
um If you see what you're doing as I'm coming and selling a thing to assisted a sophisticated buyers group within a higher ed market, you're really at a disadvantage. If you see um the problem that they're trying to solve,
00:20:52
Speaker
as the main thing to be curious about. And you just go in and you're just constantly leaning into, well, why is this a problem? And what have you tried? And, you know, are there things that prevent you culturally from solving this yourselves? Why do you need an outside partner to do this?
00:21:12
Speaker
You know, like, Getting into just all of the potential questions, I think being a really curious person is is I think also really key to, of course, building that kind of understanding over time too would be the other piece I would posit.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think you know it's it's interesting because i've I've been on both sides of the fence as well. right So I've been i've sold with it into higher ed. I've been ah consultant of products that have been sold into higher ed and having to deliver what the salespeople said we you know was going to be able to be done.
00:21:48
Speaker
um And I like to I have a good friend who is still in sales and has done car sales before he got into higher ed sales. And it's just interesting, you know you kind of make that connection. And I think you would argue too, I think it is a different thing, right? Like sales is not sales.
00:22:07
Speaker
And I think sometimes organizations think that there's a sales strategy and we've all and they've all followed this certain type of sales strategy where they've been not Not anything against you, like they've been coached a certain sales strategy. That isn't necessarily the right sales strategy in higher ed. Where where I think higher ed has always had this problem, and I just love your thoughts on this is,
00:22:33
Speaker
There's so many products and services out there saying that they can do x y and Z and higher ed doesn't know how to implement them.
00:22:44
Speaker
Right. And I'm not saying that we don't figure it out. Ultimately we do, but I do think sometimes we go after, we keep getting bombarded with all these different types of products and services and so and so forth.
00:22:58
Speaker
Then I think sometimes that makes it more difficult for companies to really help them understand what product is the right product. because they just think the product is the solution. And there's so much more on the other side that has to be done, right? Like you can go buy an SIS, but if you don't implement it the right way, if you don't code it the right way, if you don't think about your structure and how you put things in, then you know it's it's not gonna be useful. so um And it's not you know innovative, but I think you know when I was in sales, it was always this label of consultative sales, right? like
00:23:34
Speaker
I really wanted to understand what their problem was and really help them. under And then this is kind what you're saying, right? Help them understand what the actual solution is, but to also help them understand that just buying this is not the solution.
00:23:47
Speaker
there's more to that. And so I'm just that was just i'm just curious, like how in your role of thinking about now all these different, and we had Phil Hill on our last conversation, and he does a lot of stuff in this tech space, kind of like raising the flags of what's happening and and so forth. I'm just curious from your perspective of working with companies,
00:24:09
Speaker
not from a standpoint of how do you increase revenue by working with higher ed, but how do you really listen to higher ed in developing your product or their product?
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. no i what you're saying really resonates because you know both the higher ed leader on the other side of the table from, we'll call them the partner as opposed to the vendor um or counterpart, which is another term I i prefer these days, which we can get into.
Challenges in Higher Ed Procurement Processes
00:24:44
Speaker
the the counterparts on either side of the table are both aware that if we get to some sort of agreement where this solution should be deployed,
00:24:55
Speaker
we have to go through this massive bureaucracy to get the deal done. And so so soon, we we actually quickly start to turn a bunch of our focus and attention towards the compliance and the process of procurement, which you know, in some state systems can take six or nine months or more.
00:25:17
Speaker
I can name one on the East Coast that I remember taking us 12 months just to just to go through the acquisition process post-RFP,
00:25:31
Speaker
which is unusual. But but nonetheless, we we get so focused on the on on, yes, this is a solution worth going through that process. And then we go through that process. And I don't know that as much. sometimes we forget what we bought by the time the process is over. Right.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've had times when people said, boy, you know, but now now that we're deploying this, we're almost, we almost wanted wanted to walk away because, ah you know We've got a lot of time invested, but but I'm not sure this is the right solution anymore. So much time has gone by. You've learned some things, and maybe now you have buyer's remorse right at the moment of of deployment.
00:26:13
Speaker
um Those are real enterprise-level problems. What I mean by that is just like like when you you mentioned like an SIS, an LMS, like a a really large system acquisition, which thankfully those are rare um acquisitions today, but even...
00:26:31
Speaker
even um you know, various teaching and learning solutions or point solutions um can have the same dilemma. And what i what I would sort of get to is that that there's <unk> sort of two two components in the sales process that I think help both the both sides of the table um understand what's coming better.
00:26:59
Speaker
One, one i i use a framework that I teach people now that I call co-readiness. And it's just simply to help signal that there's nothing magic. We're not trying to apply leverage in the sales process to get somebody to to to buy a thing.
00:27:19
Speaker
And we're also, i also think it's it's a little dangerous when either side starts to go through this as a process of de-risking a deal. It also creates this tension.
00:27:32
Speaker
And I think when you think about readiness, um it's it's it's two people honestly saying, I think there's something here. Let's keep this conversation going. And as we continue to to scaffold a set of decisions and evaluations, we're still looking each other in the eye, peer to peer across the table and saying, yeah, this still makes sense. Let's keep moving forward. And so that that concept of readiness um in my mind is one of the things that helps people on the sales side stop trying to use leverage and start to think in terms of just relational ah equity. Yeah, but that's hard, right? Like, i mean, yeah the reality is, and I think this is where higher, and again, having been on both sides, I think higher ed sometimes doesn't understand this.
00:28:16
Speaker
You know, your your point earlier where salespeople, they're they're kind of held accountable by the number of calls I make, the number of visits I make. and all of that, something that sets in the pipeline for nine to 12 months, even though you can the salesperson can justify to their administration, you know, their their own internal folks that, hey, this is a 12 month process. There's nothing I can do. That was 12 months of booked revenue that didn't happen six months ago.
00:28:44
Speaker
Right. yeah So so that's hard on organizations too and the salespeople, because now they're just kind of like, all right, how do I continue to move this forward?
00:28:55
Speaker
and it's a bureaucracy that's holding it up. But yet, I already told my management I was gonna book a million dollars this quarter, and now it's $200,000,
00:29:07
Speaker
right So there's there's struggles on both sides. And I think sometimes higher ed doesn't really like, again, we had this conversation about business. I don't think higher ed sometimes understands like why the salesperson continues to like, where are we how are we doing? What can I do to help you move this process forward? Because, you know, in, for them in the backside there, there's a, there's a revenue recognition aspect to this, that they're being held accountable to that,
00:29:39
Speaker
I don't know that we all are I've just worked with some really good salespeople who are just like straight up front with it, right? Like, you know, this this is, ultimately this sale is what we're what we're looking for. And your framework of thinking about, I've got to put teams together. I have to get all these folks ready to help you launch your product. Like those things help kind of with that process.
00:30:04
Speaker
But I do think higher ed just thinks, you know, if it takes us 12 months, it takes us 12 months. it's It's nothing to you as the third party vendor. like it's You should just stop pushing us.
00:30:16
Speaker
Well, yeah so i sit at this I sit at this intersection all the time. So i I do RFPs for partners that our office works with, mostly marketing, but also market research and other kinds of services that we make available to the university.
00:30:33
Speaker
And i I often sit at the crux of these conversations. you know When is this ah RFP going to be done? Or when are we going to be able to sign an MSA or SOW or whatever? like getting them through the vendor risk assessment process. And sometimes they push hard. And the answer is you cannot go faster than institution.
00:30:54
Speaker
I would love to make it go faster. Cause I'm, this was frustrating for me. Cause I, you know, I want to get, i want to get the deal done so we can then have you at the ready to, to utilize.
00:31:05
Speaker
But, you know, in some ways, you know, I've, I've told them like your revenue is not my problem. I know that sounds really blunt, but it's like, yeah, And what I want to say is, and what do you propose? You want it to go faster? And what do you propose? You want me to like go faster than I can't. But that's the annoying piece between, like that's what I'm just trying to, that's really the crux, I think, sometimes of of ed products.
00:31:29
Speaker
and services to higher ed is that I think to your to your point, Fritz, wait like we know we have a process. We know that there I'm not saying the processes are great. No, I right. and I'm not i' not saying that they are anywhere. i mean, I've been on both sides of that. year i like I mean, but it's but I think sometimes that's why there's the bad taste of the mouth about vendors.
00:31:54
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Like vendors. I mean, I can look at LinkedIn and there are tons of people who are just like, if I get another email from another vendor, dah, dah, dah, dah. It's like, you know, then, then stop being on don't give your email address out, block them, do whatever you want to do.
00:32:08
Speaker
But. that's the process, right? Like, and I, that's all I'm just getting like to your point, I mean, you're managing that in the middle, but I think sometimes those of us that sit on the totally opposite side of it, just forget that that is the process. And so now they get this, oh my God, this person just keeps calling me or they keep nagging me. They keep, it was just like, but, but that's the pro like, that's, that's their process. That's their process. So that's where they're having, having been on both sides. Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
Really, it's helpful because i i to the internal stakeholders can say, look, this is this is why they're pushing. And to to the partner, I can say, this is what we're dealing with. And then because I feel like that allows me and our office to then, least on the internal side, to say, hey, can we smooth this process out because it's taking so long? or are you short staffed? Do you need us to help you advocate for more tools to move this along faster? I've been asking that recently of the security review process. I'm like, this is taking a long time. Like, do you have what you need? Like we can help advocate to the IT organization. Like, Hey, you all short staffed on the resource side. How can we help? Or, you know, do you need, we can give you visibility into this. So it under, it helps to really understand having been on both sides of table.
00:33:26
Speaker
um And under to do that, to help change and to do some help with change management on the inside. And also frankly, acculturate some partners like, look, you're in higher ed. This is the nature of it.
00:33:38
Speaker
We're a you know, the university of Minnesota is older than most corporations in the United States and in the world. So you're not going to change us by, by saying, when are we having this done Fritz? yeah So um i I like being able to feel like I'm on the inside, like helping to try and round the corners off on this because it does, it often takes a long time. Like,
00:34:02
Speaker
You can't be nimble if it's taking eight, nine months to finish an RFP. after it's After the vendor and the partner's been chosen, not even getting it done. you know So it's interesting to be at the crossroads of this this intersection between these two sides, the institution and the processes the bureaucracy, and also the the partners that we're trying to find to help us be nimble.
00:34:26
Speaker
So, yeah. Yeah, i mean I mean, just to close on that that topic, I mean, what maybe we can go on as long as you want, but like I have a couple thoughts on it One is um both sides need to seriously look at what they're doing. Because, I mean, on the higher ed side, we should...
00:34:45
Speaker
We are at points of of crisis at many institutions where every day you wait and delaying a particular solution is costing you and the institution and your students money. If it's a real transformational solution,
00:35:01
Speaker
We ought to look in the mirror on that side of the table and say, man, what could we do to be able to facilitate change, at least in certain contexts, and ah in ah in a more rapid way?
00:35:13
Speaker
that's That's a conversation that you all can have in your institutions, and I appreciate that you you do in different contexts. But on the other side of the table, on on the side that I spend time coaching,
00:35:23
Speaker
um I would also say that that somebody who who is not listening to you when you've described your process or is not asking you enough questions about your process up front and then gets alarmed and panicked later that it's taking a long time, that's actually a that's actually a sign that you're potentially working with an organization that is going to be a problem for you long term. Because that it's not that...
00:35:51
Speaker
and I'll give the salesperson a little relief. The salesperson in that process is simply using the quote playbook that the senior leadership has given them.
00:36:03
Speaker
Right. And so if if if they're if they're that off in in the process that they're working with you on and you detect that early enough and you've given them a few ways to figure out your process and your timeline and and they're just not getting it.
00:36:18
Speaker
um I would seriously see that as as almost disqualifying because I do think that Vendors need to, and um now I'll use the term vendor. These are typically the larger ed tech vendors that have been overcapitalized. They're owned by private equity that don't really care about the market. They're just looking for profits and they're looking to enrich shareholders, not trying to create innovation for you. So if that's the kind of company you're working with,
00:36:47
Speaker
just acknowledge that that's the kind of company you're working with and decide, do I want to keep going down this path or should I actually pivot and start to work with maybe a new generation of solution providers that and are more aligned to my interests?
00:37:04
Speaker
a That's the only other comment I would throw out there around that. No, and I love that. i think yeah know I think it just kind of goes back to this whole like higher ed sometimes just doesn't understand that world. And again, I think sometimes, and you know this because you're working with a lot of companies that are thinking about getting into this space and doing things in this space, they sometimes don't understand the other world either. And so it's bringing those two together. You're You mentioned the technology piece. And so I'm curious from your perspective of having worked with a lot of companies thinking about go to market, where is AI really fitting into ed tech type organizations now?
Role and Impact of AI in Ed Tech
00:37:46
Speaker
um you know I think that's a big selling point. Everybody's like, oh, let's get a product because that's AI built into it. how do you How do you, or have you had conversations with some of these ed tech companies that are starting to think about getting into this space, or maybe they're in the space and they're trying to transition, the role of AI in software or products or services or whatever in higher ed?
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a couple of layers to it that I'm seeing. um And I'm happy to talk to you about the even just the the types of types of companies. But because I think there's there's a real difference depending on the level of maturity of a company in their ability to adapt AI in a meaningful way.
00:38:35
Speaker
and To me, the greatest beneficiaries of AI are those that are first gen AI companies. um So that means companies that ah that you probably haven't heard of and and are just emerging today. Those are the ones that are actually able to build their tech stack from the ground up using AI. And you know this the biggest disruption in technology is that that with AI, you don't really need to have software as a service anymore.
00:39:08
Speaker
You don't need to have software. The idea of software was to create guardrails around so that when Kelvin wants to implement my software, it can look like Kelvin, right? And you know when Kevin wants to implement it, it can look like Kevin. And there's there's sort of some things that make it look almost customized, but it's not at all.
00:39:29
Speaker
And in order to do that, there's a big tech stack on the background that costs a lot of money and a lot of sophistication and a lot of engineering to make happen. Well, today you can kind of like set all that stuff aside. You don't need to build the tech stack. AI can actually, with Cloud Code and and a few really bright engineers, you can actually build this from the ground up, unique to every institution without having to have all of this legacy tech in the background running.
00:39:59
Speaker
it's it's It's literally being run and and built through AI in a much lighter and more easy to to deploy and and and maintain way.
00:40:09
Speaker
um So that's so on the on the technical back. And I'm not a technologist, so I'm giving you like what people tell me as as what's happening there. But there's huge innovation there and there's really massive risk to larger organizations who are maintaining those massive tech stacks today because their costs are so high and their ability to bring those costs down are in in any kind of meaningful way and ah in a short period of time is very minuscule.
00:40:38
Speaker
I mean, yeah, you can lay off a few hundred employees or whatever, but at the end of the day, you're not really making a big dent in what you've built and trying to reform it. So that's one area of AI. But the other area that I think is just um really important to notice is that um it's workflow-related higher ed. You guys have some of the most sophisticated workflows and organizational structures.
00:41:05
Speaker
And if you think of it, the best some of the best AI solutions will actually give you your time back so that you can you can do more meaningful work in committees, you can do more meaningful work with students. It's more about automating all the the the tasks that you hate that slow you down in order to facilitate greater human connection.
00:41:31
Speaker
um There's a company that I'm on the board of and they're they're called Kai and they they actually talk about creating belonging in the enrollment process and also in retention process. And their whole thing is to use AI to to effectively help the humans on campus that are in ah engaging with students and creating belonging, giving them more of their time back, showing them, hey, this is when you need to engage with that student instead of creating a cheap chatbot to go do that engagement for you. Right. So it's I think a lot of people think, oh, no, AI is going to depersonalize
00:42:08
Speaker
what's happening. i think it's the kind it's it's the reverse of that. Where AI is meaningfully going to make a difference in higher ed is when it actually allows you to hyper personalize your engagement.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah. but i think But I think a lot of institutions are being sold on that, right? I can think a lot of institutions are being sold. Do the chat bot because now if the person has a question at six o'clock in the morning or 12 o'clock at night, the chat bot can answer that question for you versus exactly to your point is,
00:42:39
Speaker
how can we use it to actually better, sick you know, it's it's like the old early alert systems, which I shouldn't say old. I mean, they still exist. They're just in different. It's just formulating that early alert system in a different way to really say, you need to reach out to these three people today, like first thing in the morning, because here's what's going on or here's what. And I think there's a little bit more sophistication with the chat boss of kind of like trying to, you know, somebody asked about something specific and that's a red flag that we see at the institution.
00:43:10
Speaker
um But I think you're exactly right with, we we don't think about improving our workflows to have more time. And and I definitely wouldn't sell it as having more time in committees, but but I think I definitely have more time, right? To do the things that we wanna do. I think, they again, I think across all of the all industry,
00:43:35
Speaker
there's a fear of AI is just gonna cancel out people. And we don't have i mean won't have, right? You're gonna get rid of your admissions people because you don't need them anymore. You're gonna get rid of your academic advisors because you don't need them anymore. AI is gonna do that.
00:43:47
Speaker
And I think that's the ah ah bigger fear in, especially in higher ed that you're trying to get rid of jobs versus, no, there's there's ways to make your roles more efficient and effective by using tools.
00:44:04
Speaker
Well, you can you can also course correct, right? the The examples you just gave, um the truth is you kind of need a both and scenario. We can't have institutions anymore. We shouldn't have institutions anymore where the student to advisor ratio is one to 600, right? that can be let's maybe maybe maybe that it can be one to 300 in a really efficient way with a chat bot in certain context and a lot of the busy work getting pushed out of the way so that advisor knows when to engage which person in real time. i mean, there's there's some ways to really create some efficiencies and it could be a both and things. I'm not even anti chat chat bot, but I think, um you know, there's so many spaces where
00:44:54
Speaker
um you're also looking for assessments been been completely turned on its head, right? Like this idea of authentic assessment.
00:45:05
Speaker
um And there's a bunch of versions of of how we would use AI in assessment that I think is really worth looking at But the other thing that's kind of cool about it is I think i think AI disrupting assessments actually probably from a teaching and learning perspective, a really good thing because now we're we're having to work with multiple modalities of assessment.
00:45:30
Speaker
We're having to think more about using oral assessment in meaningful ways. We're having to find ways to assess student group projects in new ways um and getting students to show up tech-free in certain instances and contexts in order to really you know show a level of competency and skill development.
Experiential Learning and AI Advancements
00:45:54
Speaker
And that's the other thing too, is that, um you know, Kelvin and I were talking about this. I've done 33 weeks of podcasting on experiential learning so far. I added it up.
00:46:05
Speaker
And um And the big thing that I'm taking away on the experiential learning side is it's kind of the antithesis of the AI problem in assessment, because as more institutions realize they need to provide greater internships, apprenticeships, micro internships, you know simulations and different ways of creating that experiential component in education. you you're not you can't any longer be reliant on the traditional modes of assessment that you're worried AI is disrupting anyway. you know So there's there's um there's some really interesting ways in which the market's saying,
00:46:49
Speaker
you know, show us that students can be more, you know, career ready and saying ai is going to destroy everything. And I think there's the the the combination of these factors actually, I think is starting to show us some healthier ways to handle something like assessment and to balance out our instructional needs to include more modalities of of experiential learning in in the curriculum.
00:47:18
Speaker
Yes, i I, you know, given, i mean, this has been a ah great conversation, great topics. um One of the things I wanted to also ask you, Darren, is like, how do you, in your coaching with, you know, like startup companies, right, startup companies, depending on how they're funded,
00:47:39
Speaker
they have a runway, right? And so there's a tension between, yes, we got to get our first few sales so that we're more, you know, we're more solvent, so that we'll be around for a little bit longer um versus the long sales cycles that you referenced earlier. So i guess I'm just curious about like when you coach a company, how do you help, you know, how do you maybe like think about,
00:48:09
Speaker
working with, like, how do you vet the companies that you work with such that you can, you know, again, help them help help those companies that can be more
Coaching Startups for Sustainable Growth
00:48:22
Speaker
patient? Or have you found examples too of of maybe, you know, newer companies that are a little bit more impatient, but you've been able to like,
00:48:33
Speaker
help them take a breath and walk with you to better understand those sales cycles and and to help them be more of like a marathon runner versus a sprinter in this process?
00:48:46
Speaker
Great question. Yeah. I mean, a few few things on the the company side. the urgency of of these founders that can can be both a a strength and a weakness, right? if if you're One of the things that I do in sort of a pre-qualification call with everybody is I actually talk to them about you know their urgency and ask very deliberate pointed questions about, are you um
00:49:19
Speaker
Do you do you are you more more motivated by an exit in the next six to 12 months? Or can you be patient about, you know, seeing the results? Right. Because when people show me that they're interested in working with me, but their runway is is six months and they haven't done a sale in higher ed yet.
00:49:39
Speaker
I just tell them, look, you it's it's save the money. you're It's over. You don't have enough time. like so So go do something else like or or you know find a path to to being in the market longer. i had a recent conversation with somebody that went exactly that direction. And we agreed not to to work together because ah they realized everything that wanted to do and anything that I could help them with, I just, I had to stay firm on, there's no, you're looking for shortcuts.
00:50:17
Speaker
And I'm just telling you, if if if I took your money, i'm I'm certain you I couldn't get you those those shortcuts. On the other hand, I work with with certain companies, especially startup companies, and I say, look, i'm gonna so i'm gonna it's a flat fee that I'm going to work with you on. I'm going to get you through these different stages, and I'm going to stay with you as an advisor until you get your very first deal, and I'm going to help you through that very first deal because you need you need that you need you need that experience. and that first deal might be nine months out from when you're done learning from me. So, um, so I, I do include that in any, engagement I do with, with, with startups is I just say, look, you, the project we're working on together, here's the, ah here are the things that we're going accomplish and here's the timeframe we're going to do it in. And then I'm going to be with you no matter what, until you get your first deal as a result of the work we did together. Um,
00:51:10
Speaker
And that's a small commitment in my my mind, but I think it just it's it's important that they see that I have the patience too, right? That I'm asking them to have, um that you're asking about. And the other thing that I would say is that that a lot of times when I think you encounter the the urgency ah know on the higher ed side from companies, I think a lot of times you experience it less from the startups and more from companies that have been in the market for four or five years, what's happening is they've that they've already lost a huge amount of their equity.
00:51:47
Speaker
they've They've raised money and they've prized the idea of raising money over the idea of building transformation ah transformational business. and In retrospect, that's what they would probably say in the moment. They're just so thrilled that they raised their Series A or whatever. But what's happened is they've diluted their equity so much that somebody else now in the board seat is actually calling the shots and showing that their their urgency needs to be there or they're not going to their minority stake, they're gonna be removed as the CEO or as the CRO or whatever. And so a lot of times I think the urgency you experience is is is a result of
00:52:30
Speaker
um of private equity or venture capital um applying a huge amount of pressure because those funding sources didn't understand um you know the time it was going to take for profitability to occur. And so that's when some bad things really start to happen. But typically you can find that the startup companies coming in None of them are being offered huge amounts of money. In fact, what I would say is if you're if you're talking to a startup founder today, you're talking to to a real saint because they're that they can't raise money until they've proven themselves in a really significant way. Like they have like 30, 40 clients.
00:53:12
Speaker
you know, paying full freight, not just pilot rates. They can't raise money until they they really are forced to sort of bootstrap their business. And the only reason you would go into higher ed um and and not some other more lucrative space where the where the venture capital money exists is if you're if you're really passionate about helping from a transformation standpoint. So that's that's the other piece I would say is that I think To me, what is emerging now is this big flip.
00:53:43
Speaker
It used to be in higher ed that you you go with the safe name brand, big you know organization because they can't let you down. right and And now what we're seeing in headlines in the last few months, but also just to a reality that's been around is that a large a lot of these large ed tech companies are not operating in the interests any longer. They can't operate in the interest any longer of innovation in higher ed.
00:54:16
Speaker
They have to be in service to their share shareholders. And so, So i I really feel like the risk tape the risk profile is flipped and you can find you' you'll do a better job and get greater results working with the smaller startup companies coming into the market than you will in many cases with the legacy ed techs. And that's not to throw all of the legacy ed techs out under the bus bus. It's just to say that um that there's there's a lot of market forces happening that are pushing larger companies into a reckoning right now that make them a bigger risk profile for you as institutions than smaller companies.
00:54:58
Speaker
And that's interesting you say that because, mean, like most entities, any enterprise, they value stable environments. Higher ed is in a very unstable environment after many decades of bumps and fits and starts, but a mostly upward climb.
00:55:16
Speaker
But, um you know, that's it's riskier from an institutional perspective to go with the smaller or less incumbent players because are they going to be around? You know, is this LMS or whatever the technology might be, are they going to be around to support their product? they to be around with us through multiple years? I mean, a lot of institutions like ours every product, not just product, but every category comes up for regular review. So your captioning tool or your LMS, like it, it goes through a review process every couple years. It goes open and out in an RFP, even if everyone loves the thing, just as a matter of stewardship of public dollars and all that kind of appropriate stuff. But um I mean, that, so you have that, what you're saying is, you know, there's this tension,
00:56:09
Speaker
this changing dynamics of the ed tech space based on all these kinds of factors, financial and otherwise, which doesn't necessarily align with the the instincts of institutions of higher education in general. I'm making a blanket statement just for the sake of conversation, but so yeah, all these things are at play and intention and in a tension with themselves.
Balancing Innovation with Risk in Ed Tech Adoption
00:56:32
Speaker
So it's,
00:56:34
Speaker
it doesn't make it easy for anybody on the on the partner side on the institutional side it's it's uh it's a difficult terrain yeah yeah i almost feel like darren i maybe you do this already based on what ah fritz just said i wonder if your consultancy you know um like given your approach to things and given how you um I almost feel like you're kind of like this, I don't know, guru, salesperson, someone who sells without selling, right? Very like, you know, there is no spoon matrix like person, right? Very, very insightful. Like, I almost feel like there's a part of your business that could, again, help higher ed institutions understand that flip, right? Especially around certain technologies.
00:57:27
Speaker
around like AI platforms and helping institutions be a bit more less, um um you know, risk averse, right, so that they could actually do something that's maybe a bit more engaged than just a simple pilot, but where they can actually collect more data and and then hopefully along with that company move forward to to grow their use of of a particular product, especially around AI tools that I think just you know really need more data behind them in terms of how institutions use them to then make the the greater case for a bigger investment, right? Which we all know, but then sometimes that that doesn't happen for various reasons.
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, i'm curious what you guys think about this. I have this working theory. Actually, but it it it has worked. we've We've done this in a few different instance institutional settings.
00:58:35
Speaker
and we're exploring it, but it's really early. And it's the idea of of co-building or doing shared work with an institution. And I'll unpack it slightly, but let me first set the table. the the Right now, you name the institution, they're usually large state flagships or ivies that have um very involved startup incubators on campus. They have even sometimes the accelerator programs with funding associated to launch new companies. ASU is famous. for actually having a separate nonprofit arm, and called ScaleU, that is run to to to meet the needs of ASU from a teaching and learning perspective and and bring new innovations.
00:59:29
Speaker
to to campus right and so but there's this big haves and have-nots scenario that always takes place in higher ed that we're all aware of right and um to me the institutions that need that greater innovation it's no disrespect asu or any of the large flagship flagships that are doing wonderful work with innovation but the institutions that need all that are regional comprehensive universities community colleges small private institutions and the ones that are that are actually have the appetite and the risk profile to do really innovative things right now, don't have massive endowments. They're actually looking at some some fairly dire circumstances and trying to problem solve. And so the thought I had on this, Calvin, is to is to
01:00:19
Speaker
and is to actually bring a group of startup founders um together on campus and work a problem. doesn't even matter if if that problem is a problem that any of the startup founders solve in with their individual companies. But it's more about have about practicing for the higher ed institutions behalf, it's about practicing this idea of what does it mean to innovate in this time?
01:00:51
Speaker
What if we did have partners around the table with us that we could truly trust that you know were had an equal stake in the problem with us and could sit down and really work on this? And we did this in Orlando. There's a got company that I'm involved with called Counterparts. It's really looking to try and enable the next generation of startup companies across industries.
01:01:14
Speaker
And I took two i higher ed leaders. I took somebody from Bowling Green and somebody from Emory and to this event. It was a weekend long event in in Orlando where he had about 15 founders.
01:01:26
Speaker
And we swarmed the problems of two different universities for about a half a day together where you had people that were startup founders that were building in higher ed in there. They also startup founders from other industries that were sitting around the problem sets that were brought by these higher ed leaders. And did we solve all the problems? No, not at all. But like but did we give those institutional leaders asc sense for how they could think differently about those problems? Absolutely. We gave the the startup founders a real an opportunity to really exercise a muscle around um how do you really get to the heart of a problem and explore something. a lot of times we get right to our solution. We go, oh, you got that problem? I've got a solution. And what we really need to do is do slow down,
01:02:17
Speaker
um come together, really try and understand that problem from a few different angles and figure out whether or not we can we can work together. And in this shared work environment that I'm envisioning with higher ed, I think we could teach some of the things that you're thinking about, Kelvin. i think It'd be interesting to work. i'd bed I would be volunteering to work with any of you guys on at any campus to find a curriculum that was meaningful to the institution um that we could build together.
01:02:45
Speaker
And while we bring in this kind of innovation and help foster that innovative thinking and that more entrepreneurial spirit in an otherwise world. ah you know different context. so Well, I would volunteer my university as as as some as an entity that would be interested in having, or at least being able to have those types of conversations, being at an HBCU. What you've raised is just a very interesting thing. right like so
01:03:16
Speaker
I think all of the conversation around the venture capitalist and you know all the money that's coming in, i think sometimes we think of you know that's pumping money into an organization, but you're you're missing the entity that's actually going to use it as part of those conversations. And so I would mean, 100%, I agree with exactly with what you're saying. I would love to see companies that are interested in building a product just go to a university and I'll again put mine out there and just say,
01:03:46
Speaker
we want to We want to learn from you and we want to build our product on your campus and you get the product for free because you're going allow us to test and do all the things that we need to do in order to take this to market. And whether whether the institution ever gets a ah kickback on that, but to be the founding you know era, there was, oh no, I can't even think of the name.
01:04:13
Speaker
There was an SIS years ago that that's exactly what they did. Like they had two or three universities that were their founding universities, but they did all the builds at those universities. Like they built out what works, what doesn't work.
01:04:30
Speaker
And they basically helped shape what the SIS would look like for them, for what they were gonna be selling, what their product was gonna be, but they never paid for it. They were always the guinea pig product of that. right i think I think it's great. I mean, i and i and and you may tell me we already do that, Kevin, like stop asking for something that's already done. But I think that's a missing piece sometimes in a lot of the products and services that are being created is there's people out there thinking this is what higher ed needs.
01:04:59
Speaker
And to your point with a go to market strategy, but then they go to market and higher ed's like, no, that's not really what we need. We need da da da da. because they didn't go to higher ed to begin with. And again, I know we're all different. We all have something you know unique that we would want. But I would volunteer Skiki University any day of the week to be a founding partner of some sort of product software if there's people that are interested in building stuff.
01:05:25
Speaker
I think that is, A, it's a refreshing concept, right? And I love that you jump on the idea. um but B, I'll tell you, it's it it is happening in some contexts. You bring up a good example from your past that you're aware of. i i have a client right now that we're helping through a process and I can't announce it just yet. but the they They will actually sell this technology to this this university that they're working with.
01:05:52
Speaker
But the president at the institution got involved early and wants an equity stake in the in the company. And what it's what it's doing is it's saying, it's helping this company realize that maybe, yeah, for the first several years,
01:06:11
Speaker
large deployments that we do, we work out an arrangement where we actually get we we give equity. And what the president of this university wants is he's like, I actually want innovative, I want to have an equity stake in innovative companies um that are serving our institutions And then I want to basically take what we're what we're earning from that and be able to use that as a way to to give scholarships to students. yeah Right. Like that's his that's this this this president's vision. And he's I'll just tell you, he's at a at a regional comprehensive university that would not. Again, he's he's able to think way outside the box, just as you would be at Tuskegee and and you guys also at your institutions like.
01:06:54
Speaker
because you just recognize where we have to do things differently. And I think everything's on the table um right now. And I think trying to find that early company that could come to campus and potentially with the right problem to solve that matters to you, I think that's totally a reasonable path to explore. so Yeah, we should just do more of it. and And again, I'm happy to, I work with several startup accelerators around the country and I'm expanding that work. And all that means is I get to work with a lot of new startup startups that are coming you know into the market at their pre-revenue stage. And um so, and I can just tell you that the investors that I'm talking to they're much more of the
01:07:48
Speaker
mindset of we can't go the path of traditional investing because that's done a disservice to the market. We know it. And they want to they want to invest in companies that have proven themselves, but at an early stage, they need this type of thing to happen in order to invest. They need the success at Tuskegee.
01:08:09
Speaker
to to occur in order to to invest in them. So that's the, I think there is a real opportunity to to do that kind of work. And i I'd offer it to your guests, reach out, you know, if you wanna explore that at any institution, um we can talk more about, you know, depending on the problem set that we're trying to solve for and see if there's some companies that would be early enough that would, you know, be able to come and incubate their products on your campuses.
01:08:40
Speaker
Well, I think we could keep going and going. This is really, this is interesting. And I love the novel talk. I was just thinking, you know, this is a, this is a new take on ah a very proven ground, you know, like institutions kicking technologies off through research and then taking equity stakes in them as they spin out to companies is nothing new, but to have an external partner come in and,
01:09:07
Speaker
it's a, I, the novelty of it is really interesting to me. So, um but I think in the interest of time and, and everything, this is a good place to to wrap us up for today. Darren, thank you very much for being on Getting Stuff Done in Higher Ed.
01:09:23
Speaker
We look forward to hearing where you, are where you head and where you're going. And, you know, we always extend the at some point it'd be fun to come back and and catch up and hear how things are going. Especially if if some of these things you talked about, i have announcements that come out and are public record, you know, and to hear how they're going.
01:09:41
Speaker
That'd be great. And thank you guys for taking the time. Wonderful to to have this conversation and, and love what, love what you've you're putting together here with this podcast. So I look forward to spending more time listening to what you guys are, are doing. Thanks.
01:09:56
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, thank you.