Moving Towards a Brighter Future in 2024
Episode Overview
In this episode, host Matt Gjertsen has a personal conversation about the motivation behind creating Better Everyday Studios and the Making Better podcast. He shares his optimism for the future of talent development and emphasizes the importance of continuously pushing the boundaries of individual, team, and organizational capabilities. Matt discusses his ambitious goals for the podcast in 2024, which include widening the scope of guests to appeal to a broader audience. Additionally, he outlines how Better Everyday Studios plans to focus on the talent launch system to drive business outcomes through enhanced employee training. Matt's realistic yet optimistic approach offers valuable insights for individuals and businesses seeking to make improvements in talent development and personal growth.
Full Transcript
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Matt Gjertsen [00:00:00]:
How do you take the skills of one person and transfer them to another person? How do you look at and examine the best employee on a team and make everyone else as good as that employee? Right. How do we consistently and continuously push the envelope on what we can do as individuals, what we can do as teams, and what we can do as organizations? Right. I think that is one of the most fundamental challenges that I wanted to try to solve, and that's ultimately, when I really think about it, why I started better everyday Studios hello and welcome to the Making Better podcast, where we talk about how to make ourselves, our teams, and our organizations better. Whether you are a talent development professional, a business leader, or an individual contributor, this show will give you actionable insights to help improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. This is the first episode of 2024. I'm so excited to be talking to you. And just like we did a little bit of a different episode for the last show of 2023, this show is going to be different as well. Rather than doing our normal style of bringing on a leader in the talent development space or the business space and talking to them, I'm kind of going to be talking to myself.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:19]:
And I'm doing this essentially to answer the second question from last week's episode. So in the last episode of 2023, I had on a bunch of different leaders in the talent development space and asked them, what's something they learned in 2023 that made them better? And then I also asked them, what's something they were looking forward to in 2024? And though I answered the first question, I said I was going to hold off a little bit. And this is the episode where I'm going to answer that question because I have a little bit more to say. Really what I want to do is kind of talk about a little bit more about the podcast of this podcast, making better and the better everyday studios brand, and what we're trying to achieve in the talent development space, and specifically what we're going to be doing in 2024 to try to move towards the big, ambitious goals that we have. So I hope you really enjoy this. Hope it gives you a little bit of insight into kind of the way I think about talent development and what we're trying to do. Before we get into that, though, I do need to remind you, if this is your first time listening to the episode, please make sure you subscribe so you never miss a future one. And if you are already subscribed, then I please humbly ask that you share this show with just one other person.
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:32]:
Go down to the bottom of whatever platform you're listening to. Find a link, shoot it to somebody that you think might find it interesting. That is how we grow. I can't tell you how much it means to me. So, with that, let's get into the discussion. So before I dive into really what I'm looking forward to in 2024, I do want to step back a little bit and talk about my company of better video studios and then this podcast of making better and start kind of by answering the question, why did I start better video studios and making better? And I've answered this on many podcasts, many places that I've been, but I wanted to get a little bit more specific with it, because ultimately, when I stand back and think about what led me to start this, it's really because of this really amazing and optimistic view I have for the future of humanity. I've had the extreme privilege of living a good portion of my life kind of in the future, in many ways, right? Like, I was an air Force pilot, so I was flying all over the place, doing cool stuff. Got to see some really amazing cities around the world.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:42]:
I worked at SpaceX. I remember very specifically this one Halloween when I was at SpaceX. I'd been working there for maybe two years, and it was Halloween, and they had a Halloween party for everybody. And so I'm there with my daughter, who was probably three at the time, and we're doing these little roller coasters, and I'm just kind of looking around. It's like, okay, there's a building over there where I know for a fact we're building rocket engines in. Over. Across the street is this giant metal tube, which was a test of the hyperloop, which was this transportation concept that Elon had come up with. Everybody around me is driving teslas because it was such a popular thing for SpaceX.
Matt Gjertsen [00:04:21]:
In fact, there was a Tesla. The Tesla design studio was kind of right there in the middle of the SpaceX campus. And I was just like, man, this is incredible. And then after leaving SpaceX, I worked for another tech billionaire. I've worked with all these startups. There's a lot of pessimism in the world today, and in some ways, it's well founded, because there are a lot of problems, right? There are a lot of problems in the world, but because of the very fortunate career that I have had, the takeaway that I have is that the solutions to all of our problems exist. We just need to scale them, essentially, right? We have answers to just about everything. We just need to implement them.
Matt Gjertsen [00:05:07]:
I forget where I heard the quote, but there's a famous quote that says, the future is already here. It's just unequally distributed. And I really, really think that's true. So we have this potential for an absolutely amazing future for everyone. We just need to kind of implement those solutions, get out there, do it, scale it, really widen it, and there's lots of challenges to doing that. But in my time at SpaceX, in my time at other companies, I have come to the conclusion that a big part of that challenge, in my opinion, the biggest part of the challenge is specifically the people problem. Right. It's how do we get large groups of people to work together effectively? And that in and of itself, the HR space has a lot of different components to it, but the component that I cared about was the talent development piece.
Matt Gjertsen [00:06:00]:
It was that how do you take the skills of one person and transfer them to another person? How do you look at and examine the best employee on a team and make everyone else as good as that employee? Right. How do we consistently and continuously push the envelope on what we can do as individuals, what we can do as teams, and what we can do as organizations. Right. I think that is one of the most fundamental challenges that I wanted to try to solve, and that's ultimately, when I really think about it, why I started better everyday studios, because I wanted to get out there and work with as many organizations as I could to try to solve that challenge of how do we. I often say in many organizations, there's two ways you can upgrade the talent inside an organization. You can buy it, namely hiring people, or you can develop it. Take the people that you already have and develop them. And I think the vast majority of the corporate world, at least in the United States, is way on one side of that pendulum swing to the buy it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:07:08]:
Where I've worked at growing companies, where the recruiting team is bigger than the rest of the HR team combined, right. If you take core HR learning and development compensation, all of it, all of them wrapped up together, they are smaller than the, and sometimes vastly smaller than the recruiting team. When I see that, that tells me that we've kind of gone really far to one extreme of this idea of buying it or developing it as a spectrum. And so I'm interested in working with companies to help build up the other side of that spectrum of how do we, when we think about getting more talent in our organization, how do we get there by looking internally, how do we develop the people that are already in our organization, how do we make them better? That's what I wanted to do. And so better video studios, that's what we've done every day. The majority of what we do is by creating better training for people, for organizations that is more focused on business outcomes, more focused on behaviors than being focused on knowledge and what is sometimes referred to as vanity metrics, like how many people like the course, how many people attend the course, that kind of thing. Just by really relentlessly focusing on the results of the training that we create. That's what we do for organizations.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:31]:
But as I started down that path, I thought, well, that's not going to help every organ. Not every organization is going to need that or want that or can afford that. Honestly, if you're a smaller organization, you don't have the budget to hire people, hire external help. Maybe you have in place team and you're not looking to outsource anything. Or maybe you're just an individual, you're a manager inside a larger organization. And maybe that organization doesn't believe in talent development as much. And so that's what led me to the Making Better podcast, where I wanted to take this idea of really focusing on this message of if we want to create this great and optimistic future, then we need to focus on dramatically upskilling and upgrading each and every one of us. The making Better podcast is a way for me to try to bring that message to more people.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:26]:
And it really says it right in the tagline. And I changed this partway through the show where now if you look up making better on Spotify or iTunes, then it says making better where talent development and personal development meet. And that really sums it up right there because, and I've told this story in a number of places before. When I first left the military and went to join SpaceX, I'll be honest with you, I was not in a great place. My wife and I, I changed jobs, we moved and had our first child all at the same time. Those are three very stressful things, and we decided to do them all at once. And it just felt like this continuous uphill battle where from the outside it looked like I was doing better and better and better. I left the military to join SpaceX, and I joined SpaceX.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:22]:
Like, I got my job and then I started as a contractor, and then I got a full time job. We moved to LA and everything looked like it was getting better and better, and inside it just didn't feel that way at all. It just felt like it was getting harder and harder and more stressful and more stressful. And so I had to dive into a lot of self know. I went to a Tony Robbins seminar, walked on fire, did the whole thing, and really got to see that energy and enthusiasm that exists in the personal development space and how important that is. And that's just not necessarily what you associate with talent development or especially learning and development, where so often learning and development, it's thought of as school, we're thought of as teachers and lecturers and making PowerPoint slides. And it's just, I just wanted to scream at people like, hey, that's not what we're about. We're about doing the same thing that Tony Robbins is doing, right? We're about the same thing that all these motivational speakers are doing.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:25]:
We are trying to upgrade the people in our organizations. And so that's really what I'm excited about. And the hope, the goal of the making better podcast is to bring that energy and enthusiasm to as many people as I possibly can. So that's a little bit of the backstory. That's kind of how we got here, how better studios and making better started. So then the question is, what am I looking forward to in 2024? What am I going to be doing in 2024 to help drive us towards that goal? Let's start with the making Better podcast. Right? So from the point of view of the making Better podcast, like I said, I'm trying to bring all this energy, enthusiasm to more people. And so I'm really going to be making a concerted effort in 2024 to widen the scope of the kinds of guests that we have on this show to make it exciting and interesting to absolutely as many people as possible, we're still going to be focused on this core idea of making people better, but to this date, as I think would be common when most people start a podcast, I was really utilizing my close network.
Matt Gjertsen [00:12:39]:
And so it kind of started off as almost more of an instructional design podcast, and then it was focusing on maybe a little bit broader talent development, but it was still very kind of, I would almost call it inside baseball, like inside the industry focused. And I want to break out a little bit. I'm still going to absolutely have those guests on. I want to bring on authors from the space, people who are leaders in our industry, 100% going to be there, also going to be trying to bring in business leaders from outside our space to kind of get their input on how we get their view of the challenges of talent development, where the learning and development teams are helping, where we are falling short, what we can do better. I think this is something that all of us should be doing. We talk about this a lot on the podcast about how if you want to improve learning and development in your organization, you need to get closer to the business. I had this epiphany several months ago where I was at a conference, and I basically just kind of thought to myself, well, we all are asking the question, how do we get the business to care about learning? That's the wrong question. You need to flip it around and say, how do we get learning to care about the business? We need to get closer to our customers, really understand what their challenges are if we want to really make a difference in their lives.
Matt Gjertsen [00:14:06]:
And so hoping to bring on more business leaders, people outside of core L&D or core HR, so that we can get that other perspective and talk to that other side of the equation. Similarly, more HR people still outside of L and D, but get the broader people picture a little bit. And then the other thing that I'm really excited about, I still got to figure out exactly how to do this, is to bring on guests who specialize in performance improvement, but not from the corporate talent and L and D perspective. So a great example of this is there's a podcast I listen to called Miko, stands for main engine cutoff, and it's a space podcast. And I actually forget if it was Miko or off nominal. It's the same host does both shows, they're both space shows, and one episode they had the head coach of a Tour de France team on. It was a really fun discussion, but that got me thinking. This is exactly the kind of guest that I would love to have on our show.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:15]:
Get this sports perspective of how they're thinking about improving performance, because, wow. When it comes to improving the performance of teams, sports has it down. They're spending millions, tens of millions, billions of dollars in that industry to try to improve performance. And I think there's a lot we can learn from that. And so getting this perspective on improving performance, but not from the talent development perspective, I think would be really interesting. So I am very excited about that. I'm going all in on this idea of making the concept of making ourselves better. Bringing that to as wide an audience as possible is something that I'm really going to be focusing on a lot with this show this year.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:58]:
So I hope that sounds exciting to you. It's very exciting to me. It'll take a little while. We're already a month ahead in recording, so it'll take a little while before some of these new types of guests start showing up, but hopefully they will soon into your feed. So get really excited about that. So that's what's going on with making better. With better video studios, we're similarly going through a lot of changes, but kind of in almost the opposite direction. I would say in making better, we're kind of trying to widen the aperture as much as possible of bringing this message to a wider audience.
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:32]:
By having a wider array of guests for better video studios, we're kind of narrowing what we are focusing on in terms of the kinds of work we're doing for clients and bringing to clients. For any of you out there who have started your own business or you've done freelancing, you can probably attest this idea that at first you just kind of say yes to everything, right? Especially if you go out on your own last year in 2022. So almost two years ago now, I made the jump and went out fully on my own with better video studios. And so all of a sudden, it's like, hey, got to pay the bills. And so now you're saying yes to any project that comes along. Slowly but surely, you figure out how you best serve clients. And I like to know everything in life is a dichotomy. It's two sides of a coin, and you just need to know when to flip from one side to the other.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:26]:
So many things in life, you need to start them by saying yes to everything. And then once you figure out what you're good at, you need to flip that and say no to everything except what you are good at. And we're really at that stage with better everyday studios, and we're really going to be focusing on this concept that I call the talent launch system, where I'm going to be talking about it a lot this year. It's this framework. It's a four stage framework where it was really me reflecting on, okay, if you want to build a world class talent development system, what do you need to be doing? What are the stepping stones that you need to create to really focus on the business? And so the four stages, it starts off with compliance training, then hiring and onboarding, then manager training, then skill development. And kind of each stage of the way, the whole focus is how do we drive towards business outcomes as fast as possible. That's why the first stage is compliance training, because I talk to most people, like compliance training, that's boring as all get out. Nobody likes compliance training.
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:31]:
That's the thing. You just buy off the shelf, plug it in and everybody just suffers through it like nobody likes it, but you got to do it. Whatever. Compliance training. If you're a talent development professional, if you are an instructional designer out there, I got to tell you, if you're looking to have a positive ROI on your company and you don't have a history of doing that inside your organization, you don't have a history of being judged in that way by your organization. The simplest and easiest thing you can do is go after and customize your compliance training, because I guarantee you, if you are doing anything off the shelf, or maybe it was made custom, but it was made many years ago, if you go through that content with a fine tooth comb, of focusing on behaviors and focusing on the things specific to your organization that your people need to know, you can cut between 25 and 50% of the time out of that content. I can virtually guarantee it. In some cases, this isn't going to make sense.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:34]:
If you are purely an office company, an office based company where the only compliance you do is harassment training, and then the time is literally mandated by the state, that's one thing. I'm sorry, I can't help you. But if you are an organization that in any way touches on OSHA regulations, safety regulations, any of the other legal stuff, I guarantee you, you can do a lot better. I've saved thousands of hours per year. Right. All you got to do is you look at the number of employees in your organization, times the amount of time they are spending doing compliance training, times the average hourly wage of your organization, and there's your ROI calculation right there. If you cut an hour off, boom, you know exactly how much money you've saved for your organization. Is it sexy? No.
Matt Gjertsen [00:20:26]:
Is it fun and exciting? No. But like I said, it's the simplest and easiest way to get an ROI from training for the first time. And from there, you can build up. Right. So that's why the compliance training is the first stage, and then you kind of get bigger and better from there on. But the whole talent launch system is focused on how do we deliver results to the business as fast as possible. So we're going to really be focusing on that with clients, delivering that to the clients. We already started it towards the end of 2023, and people are really liking it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:20:59]:
And the other thing that kind of came out of the end of 2023 is a very standardized way that we have of working with our clients, that our clients are absolutely loving. And the key thing with this, the thing that I was really thinking of is I wanted to find a way to maximize the speed at which we moved forward while minimizing the chances of rework. There's a delicate balance there. And after working with dozens of clients on many, many projects over the last few years, really determined that the key to that is in the editing and review process and being very specific about what you review with people when. Right, when you are in the outline phase, being extremely clear of, we are looking at ideas and Organization. Right. Ideas and Organization. We're not looking at the wordage of things.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:00]:
We're not looking at spelling. We're just saying, are all the ideas that need to be in this course here? And is the flow, is the story that we're telling correct. Right. Like that is what you are trying to do with it. And then you move from that to the scripting phase. And in the scripting phase, you're looking at specific things. Then you go to the prototyping phase and you're looking at specific things. And so as you move through that process, just being very clear with our clients of what we're looking at when and depending on the nature of the project, what they can rework, when and why, and what that's going to mean, because anybody that's ever made instructional content knows that the thing that really delays it is you get all the Way to the last phase, you build the whole course, whether it's storyline, whatever it is, you build the whole course.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:55]:
You show it to your subject matter expert or your stakeholder, and they're like, you know what? I feel like something's just, there's this whole other concept that we just forgot about. If you find that stuff in the outline phase, that's easy. You're editing a word document at that point. But when you find that stuff, after you've built the course, you're talking about doubling the timeline. You're basically starting over again. And so we've, like I said, worked with a few clients now with this new system. They are absolutely loving it. We're getting tons of amazing feedback of how streamlined it is, how quickly we're moving forward, how they always know exactly what they need to be reviewing.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:38]:
It's absolutely minimizing the amount of work and energy they're having to spend while they still really feel like the project is moving forward. So we ended 2023 on such a high note. I'm so excited to continue that moving forward. So, ultimately, to get back to this question of what am I looking forward to in 2024? It's exactly that. It's continuing this new process of working with clients, expanding our client base with this talent launch system. So we are really, really focusing on driving business outcomes through better employee training. I couldn't be more excited about it. If you're listening to this and you think you could be in the market for that, it's a new year now.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:23]:
Maybe you're looking to jump into some new projects, even if it's not something that we're going to work together on. I'd just love to chat with you about, hey, what are the things you should focus on? What are the challenges that you're facing? If it turns into a project, great. If it doesn't, that's great, too. Always looking to meet more people. So please reach out to me. My email is always available. Matt@bettervidestudios.com reach out to me on LinkedIn. It'd be absolutely amazing to talk to you.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:47]:
And that's it for now. So we have a lot to look forward to. I hope you're excited for 2024. There's a lot of turmoil in the world. There's a lot of things going on. It can seem crazy when I reflect back now that I'm running my own business and needing to sell and doing b to b sales. So I'm talking to a lot of businesses. It's really felt like there's just a lot of uncertainty.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:13]:
People don't want to commit to projects. People aren't looking more than like three months into the future. And I get it. But there's just so much amazing stuff, too. There's so many amazing things happening in the world. That's not to take away from all the bad things. I have lots of friends that have been out of work for quite a while now. They got laid off.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:35]:
They're still looking for work. I get it. There's lots of hard challenges out there. But the only way to face those challenges, in my opinion, is with this realistic but optimistic attitude of we can make things better. And so that is what I'm looking forward to in 2024. I'm so thankful for you. If you've made it this far, I hope you're just as excited about 2024 as I am. I look forward to seeing you on this podcast.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:07]:
I look forward to hearing from you on LinkedIn, and I wish you the best new year, and I look forward to many more episodes in the future. Have a great day. Bye.
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