The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – ELEARNING GOLD – THE ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR LEADERS: How to Achieve Excellence in Your Distance Education & Training Program by Annette Levesque

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

ELEARNING GOLD - THE ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR LEADERS: How to Achieve Excellence in Your Distance Education & Training Program by Annette Levesque https://amzn.to/4dkLg8F Annettelevesque.com *Silver Winner 2024 Literary Titan Book Awards* *Winner, Best Book in Education, 2023 International Firebird Book Awards* *Silver Winner, 2023 Nonfiction Book Awards* The world is changing quickly, and the way in which we learn and educate others must adapt along with it. With technology at the crux of all learning, leaders must have a strong grasp on how to create and deliver effective learning and training experiences. In Annette Levesque's new guide Elearning Gold: The Ultimate Guide for Leaders, she facilitates leaders and educators as they navigate the challenging world of virtual education and training programs. Levesque, an experienced leader and education expert, offers practical insights and strategies to help you catapult your learning programs to the next level. From building and launching a virtual learning environment to creating effective policies and strategies for operational excellence, this guide is your key to success. The Elearning Gold roadmap takes its readers on a journey of knowledge, focusing on: *Virtual Learning Success Criteria *Digital Age Learning Models, Including Blended Learning *How to Increase Course Completion Rates and Learner Engagement *Building Your Learning Community *What Leaders Need to Know About Learning Management Systems *Managing Academic Misconduct in your Virtual Learning Program *How to Plan Your Virtual World Launch or Update *The Future of AI and Chatbots in Education Relinquish what you thought you knew as an education expert or trainer and embrace this new ideology on how to reach all learners—especially online. These strategies and techniques will help you create elearning systems and content that meet the needs of learners today and also prepares them for tomorrow.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

The free Voss show. There you go. And it's Noma. That'll wake you up. That's what she's there for. For 13 years, I had to sing that bit. No one really wanted to hear that. And now somebody else does it, so we certainly love that.

As always, we have the most amazing authors and minds on the show, the people who share with you their stories of life, their journeys, their lessons, and help make your life better. And if your life isn't better after listening to the Chris Voss Show, you can go back and listen to all 2,000 episodes in over 16 years, because if you're not getting it, then it could be you. There you go. We have an amazing author on the show with us today. We're going to be talking about her book. It's called E-Learning Gold, The Ultimate Guide for Leaders, How to Achieve Excellence in Your Distance Education and Training Program.

This is always important. Annette Levesque is on the show with us today. She'll be talking to us about her book, her insights, what she does and how she does it. She's an award-winning author, innovator, educator, and entrepreneur dedicated to building excellence in virtual education and training systems. She holds a master's degree in distance education and founded one of the world's first completely virtual accredited private schools. Today, she shares her expertise with universities, colleges, high schools worldwide to provide distance education opportunities and has sought after for a consultant for business leaders to advise on employee training programs.

As a philanthropist, her mission is to create barrier-free programs for children and women in need of access to education. Welcome to the show, Annette. How are you? I'm great. Thanks, Chris. I'm so happy to be here today. And we're happy to have you as well.

Give us your dot-coms. Where do you want people to find out more about you on the interwebs? Yeah, my dot-com would be AnnetteLevack.com and you can find the book at eLearningGold.com. And then I'm on all the usual social media stuff. On all the social media stuff that's out there. There's always something new they're working on these days. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? eLearningGold I wrote this actually during the

pandemic so as we know during the pandemic was a time when whether you were if you might have been launching or running a face-to-face program but everybody had to go online whether they were ready or not i call it basically crisis launches so everything was was sudden, unplanned. And now today, you know, in the post pandemic world, we still have these systems in place. And you know, some organizations have spent quite a lot of money on these systems, but they're not quite sure how to evaluate them. And many of us in executive positions as well, we're not techies. And, you know, we don't want a book that's just on technology, but we need to know the right questions to ask our tech teams to measure the health of our programs. So this is a toolbox of sorts to help make that job easy. There you go.

And I mean, remote work, remote training, remote education is probably, for the most part, here to stay, aren't you finding after COVID has kind of rounded up? Absolutely. And I mean, some of these systems are big-ticket items for organizations, so they've invested the time and money, and now it's just time to pause and figure out, evaluate them and figure out what to do with them and to make these programs successful.

And why is it different to train over? And when you say distance, like a lot of times you mean online or remote, I guess. Why is it so difficult to train in person and monitor the results and et cetera, et cetera, as opposed to distance and remote? The differences between distance and face-to-face, one of the primary differences is the level of engagement that we have with someone. You know, there's many levels of distance learning and they use the terms like distance learning, e-learning, online learning, virtual learning, it all refers to the same thing. And there's different levels of engagement in different

types of learning. So in a classroom, if I have a question or things aren't going well, you can have a pretty not great course and a really awesome teacher and the teacher can kind of make up for that. In a virtual learning system, the teacher acts more as a facilitator. The roles are very different depending on the type of course. So if the course is not good

and if you don't abide by some instructional design principles and if there isn't training for teachers then it can be a really poor experience for for learners and you see things more like so when classroom courses aren't going well we'll see high failure rates you know you'll have the whole school and there's that one class where and i used to get the call sometimes in virtual learning where everybody you know more than 50 of the kids are not passing and we there's a reason for that in virtual learning you'll see more incompletes so people just drop we get bored we don't want to finish it we're not engaged and that's a huge problem for organizations

yeah it's it's because you know when you're sitting in a classroom, you're kind of in a contained environment. In my childhood, it was more like a prison, but school, no, it wasn't too bad. I mean, you're right. Teachers that were amazing and energetic, energy cells and charismatic. I mean, they, I had some that, you know, they made history come alive and history, you know, it can be, it's not, you know, it's not as fun as, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a joke for that. It's funny how that's a joke.

But, you know, and then other times, you know, there were classes where you could see everyone in the room was on their desk drooling out the side of their mouth because they were so bored out of their mindset, even by a live teacher. But, you know, you're in a contained environment. You're there to train and i imagine at home there's so much distraction too that you're competing with as well like you know kids and you know dogs and cats and and you know going get food or you know just doing anything like screwing around the computer playing video games or something rather than learning. Exactly. And I mean, virtual learning in its origins, it was never really designed to replace face to face learning fully. You know, during the pandemic, I heard of kids spending seven hours a day online on

their computer. And I was just like, no, don't do it. It wasn't intended for that. It was intended to supplement what we're doing or, you know, to fill in the blanks for things that face-to-face, there's some really great perks to it that face-to-face classrooms cannot do. As you said, when it's, you know, completely online and if there's no engagement, it can be a snooze, it's like a snooze fest. And yeah, I can see that because I've taken online courses for fun. Usually it was when I ran a stop sign in Vegas and I had to take an online course to have the ticket wiped. And I think you had to do it for two hours, too.

And there was like a timer at Montardieu. It was one of the first times I'd seen the online course. This is a decade or so ago before everybody decided to do remote work. But yeah, some of these courses can be sleepers I guess and I imagine there's a thought I had about this but it has totally escaped me it'll come back to me let's talk about your origins did you it sounds like you got into understanding education and and and distance learning way before COVID and and you kind of had this game down and COVID just kind of met you where it was out with its remote work. So I did, but just before that, wait a minute, you can take an online

course to wipe a ticket for sure. In Nevada you can. Nevada isn't in collusion with insurance companies like other states are. Okay. We're in Canada. Oh, you're in Canada? I don't know what you guys do up there. I don't think we can get... Don't you guys just say sorry and then everything else? I don't know. I guess sometimes it works. But I have a friend that would really like that online course system and would wipe the ticket for sure. That's really interesting.

I had not heard of that. So what Nevada figured out is that the more tickets you get, the higher your insurance goes. So the insurance companies make all the money so they decided that if that's going to be the game you're going to play we'll just have people pay an extra fee so i think i had to pay like 150 bucks for the course or something and then they'll take a course they'll be smarter on the road which is smart governance and and then we keep the money and send the insurance company. Sounds like a good plan.

That's brilliant. So you have a smarter public base or whatever you want to call it, citizen. And then you keep the money for yourself. Because I mean, people here in America, everything's a money scam, as you probably know, watching us from Canada, where you guys are like, what are those drunken idiots doing down there? We're like your guys' drunken brother who's always starting fights and wars and stuff you guys are like why are we within new yukes so many of these idiots so there you go as a Canadian I cannot comment on any of those things you guys are you guys like the good half of North

America you guys are the nice people plus you, you guys originated Rush, and Second City Comedy. We've got to give you that. Sure. So how did you get interested in this? How did you kind of grow up, get motivated, and find your way into this business? What was your journey there? Yes, the origin story.

So I've always been fascinated with technology, even back in the days where I think I didn't have a first laptop till maybe teacher's college. I'm dating myself here. But I've always been really fascinated with it. And I've always been able to kind of figure things out, I guess, on my own. And you combine that with a bookworm and kind of an entrepreneur degree. I finished my education degree and I had my first teaching position actually, filling in for somebody who was on leave. And I was offered a full-time job. And this is a really

common scenario we actually see today still. But the criteria for that new role and to be full-time, I didn't actually have the qualification to be teaching what I was teaching at that time. And so the principal said, you know, we'd love to offer this to you full-time, but if you want to continue with us, you're going to have to get this qualification. And I started looking for the qualification and the closest university offering it was five and a half hours away from my home. And I mean, I was just starting my new job, I owned a home, I had responsibilities, I couldn't just pick up for six months and, and head on off to live six hours away. So I found it was actually I think the University of Western Ontario was offering it online. And it was a beta, it was brand new, nobody was doing this. Like it's not happening. And so I thought this is

fabulous. So I took the course and while I was in it, I just thought this is so amazing. I'm collaborating with other teachers who are doing the same thing. I'm working from my lazy boy chair at home on my own schedule. This is fantastic.-tastic and then of course my you know I'm half educator half innovator the brain my brain started ticking and I started thinking wow why don't we have this for high school students who need to be gone away from school and medically for a few weeks and they're they're missing content and then tested on things they haven't learned or or for amateur athletes that need to be away from school or adults that want to go back. And maybe they missed a credit that they've told nobody about and they want to discreetly get it done.

Like this is a fantastic option to be doing this. And to me, they were just sloughing school and then they couldn't pass the test. Exactly. And then you hit your 30s, Chris, and you realize, I needed that credit because I want to do something else now. No, you didn't get it. No, I actually wrote about this in my book. So in my school, you needed to have 26 credits to graduate high school.

And I knew that it was pretty much worthless what I was being taught. But the only thing I learned that was really important out of school was typing. And that was so that I could type invoices and write business letters to do business. But that was pretty much, that was pretty much, the rest of my education was largely worthless. In America, I don't know what you guys are doing up in Canada.

You guys seem to have got pretty spatter people up there and funnier people from Second City. But yeah, I mean, except for, you know, Nickelback. I love Nickelback. Shame on you. I love Nickelback too. They get, for some reason, they become this meme of kick around. And you can have Justin Bieber back.

Please take him back. Please. But no, I, so I figured out that there was 26 credits I needed to graduate high school. And if I took all the stupid courses that weren't doing anything for me, I was going to have 48 credits. And I'm like, why am I working this hard? Anyway, that's a joke a bit there, but it's true. Let's move on to your origin story.

No, what you're describing is actually really common. And that was one of the other things that kind of ticked off for me was that, you know, if you're not interested, especially in, let's say, smaller schools or remote regions, Canada's got a lot of remote regions. If you're not interested in math, English, science, or history, you know, in the public system schools, they need to fill the classroom with 30 students and not everybody wants to take organizational behavior or introduction to psychology or really interesting courses and so my thought process was why can't we create these courses as an add-on not we're not trying to

replace you know the face-to-face classroom but wouldn't it be fantastic if a grade 12 student could have three courses in the classroom and then add the fourth one online as an intro to psych and they're joining students from around the world or you know around your your region so with that in mind oh go ahead i'm sorry but i think this is a good point one of the challenges i had as a kid was i had massive adhd and i still have a massive adhd squirrel the and one of the problems was the format of learning in the classroom, a prison, you have to sit here for two hours and listen to this, was not conducive to my ADHD. And ADHD is what they call the CEO disease. A lot of successful CEOs have it.

It's what makes us great at innovating. We're just mad scientists, really, when it comes down to it. And we're great at tinkering and we're great at thinking outside the box. And having a format that's like what you're talking about with remote learning where I can do things at my pace and do things when I can tune in and I can defocus on stuff and then I can focus again is much more conducive to at least people with ADHD. Maybe people that are also have other learning disabilities. I don't know. I don't think, I don't know that we need to call them disabilities that, you know, we're actually smarter than other people, you know, people that, what is it?

They read backwards, dyslexic people, you know, they might need more time to learn or more, more time to, you know, soak up something up something or marinate it so they can learn it. I don't know. But stuff with what you're talking about in remote learning and learning where you can do things kind of at your own pace. Because that was my thing. Cramming me in. Our school system was a block system at the time. They called it a block system.

So basically, it was four or five classes of an hour and a half at a time. And that's a long time to be in there. Normally, classes before a block system would be, I think, 45 minutes or an hour. And it would be like eight classes in a day. And it's just a long time to be trapped in a school you know having stuff you know trying to keep focused on all that crap and i think they found the block system i don't know maybe you were you would retain data better but it was still like six hours or eight hours and and locked in a school and it just wasn't conducive to I don't know people like me you know and I started my first company I was 18 and built multi-millionaire companies all my life

and most of my school was breeding and having kids and I don't know working at Chevron gas stations at at my age so it's not like I was stupid I wasn't going anywhere I didn't even do college I mean I just I was like you I I pretty much I'm one of those people who runs on the fly so anyway I just want to get that plug in there what do you think about that no I think you're absolutely right and I think specifically with learners that have ADHD it's really great to you know when you're in the classroom I actually have a niece that has epilepsy. And up until about a year ago, they didn't realize she was having about 100 blip seizures a day, where she would space out in the classroom, and nobody really knew it. But she was always getting in trouble for losing, you know, focus and, and attention. And for students, I call

it learners who learn differently, because I don't like disabilities either. I think it assigns a label that you have to fit. It's great to learn about what strategies can you be using, but it kind of slots people into a box. So I'm not a fan either. But I call it mastery learning. So you can finish where you left off and then maybe you had to take that break because the break shiny new object caught your attention or whatever it was that day. But you just come back to where you left off. And then maybe you had to take that break because the break shiny new object or whatever it was that day, but you just come back to where you left off.

But that being said, there has to be balance and a balance of engagement. The courses you were describing in your block system that were really, really too long. We can still have that today in conferences and seminars. And it's not really about the duration of the program. It's the lack of interactivity and engagement that's happening. If I'm speaking to you for five or 10 minutes, and then you're going to get together with your little team to work on something, right, that provides a break, and then it reinvigorates you. It's not draining. But having somebody talk at you for over an hour, that's not a good time for anybody. Yeah. So what do you think about Zoom meetings? During COVID, my friends, and I think some of them are still in that engagement, my friends were going through eight to 10 hours of Zoom

meetings that were mindless. 80% of them, I guess, could have been just like an email. And they were just getting burnt the hell out with Zoom meetings. No, absolutely. And, you know, a part of that is, again, it was the same thing that happened with schools launching, you know, crisis launching programs.

Nobody really knew. We didn't have the tools and the criteria of how do we create a really great engaging Zoom meeting? And how long should we actually be on Zoom for the meeting before we're doing something else or collaborating offline? You know, like you can't be talking to a computer is not great for our brains for that many hours during the day. And so I think the, yeah, the criteria became, we need to replace what we're doing. And this is what happens a lot in practices from classroom learning to online learning. We just try to replace what we're doing. And this is what happens a lot in practices from classroom learning to online learning. We just try to replace what you were doing in the classroom, but it doesn't

work the same way in an online environment. And we're not asking ourselves, is this effective? Is learning actually happening after the eight hour meeting? Are people engaged? You know, I remember what I'd forgot about when you mentioned that, you know, it's different when it's not in person so we've had a lot of scientists on the show that are the brain scientists and what they and i'm i'm stupid enough because i clearly skipped some of my school to not remember what they're called but i should should have stayed in that one class but they're brain scientists who study the mind and what they talk about on the show is these two-dimensional screens world that we live in,

the phones, the computers and stuff, we're not meant to, our brains aren't wired for this at all. Our brains are wired for three-dimensional interactional experience, one-on-one, human beings to each other, where we can monitor not only facial monitors facial cues facial body language but also body language of the rest of the body you know you can see hands you can see movement you know energy flows through the whole body especially if you're like a great teacher a charismatic leader and when people can't see that whole picture their brains get stunted they're like what's going on and that's why we're having real problems with our society and people being able to be intimate with each other and be able to have conversations i mean i call people and

they're terrorized to have a phone call now here in america why are you calling me you know you have we have people that you know they they i'll i'll even have people that will come to the door to deliver something and they'll they'll honk and send a text message i'm out front at the curb and you're like jesus is is it too hard to walk 20 feet the door you might meet me like like it's really interesting so they've talked about this and how and how number one it's bad for us and i imagine it probably impacts learning as well because you're not you don't have the three-dimensional teacher in front of you and it's the same actually with our learning materials i was always torn on

the topic of digital books because they're so convenient and when i used to work on projects in developing countries where it can be really, really hard to get a book there, that's the option you're using. But we know that when we have a physical book that you can tangibly feel and you can flip the pages and you can highlight it, and you can, you know, navigate it and come back to it, it's not the same experience. And we don't digest the same amount of learning as when we're reading it completely online. You know, but we compensate, we compromise and all of it is about balance. Yeah. I was having that problem where I was trying to do 100 books read a year and I was banging

through Audible at like two and a half times speed. So, you know, the authors are bloop, bloop, bloop. And we had somebody come on the show talked about reading retention they're like so tell me a recent book that you read chris and i was i told him and he goes so what do you remember from the book i'm like the title yeah i'm like and he's like no you really need to get the book you need to sit down you need to mark it up you need to get the book. You need to sit down. You need to mark it up. You need to, like you said, you need to mark it up. You need to make notes.

You need to come back to it. That's how you learn. And he really made me rethink what I was doing. And I'm like, I'm just, I'm just like processing information in and out. It's just going right through the ether of my brain. So there you go.

So, so you help advise a lot of companies and different people in investing in continuous learning and professional development why is it so crucial for organizations in today's business environment to start really looking at this as an investment a long-term thing too i guess because it's going to be here for a while i would actually say that you know way back when if companies offered employee training plans and programs we kind of saw it as an add-on or a perk. It wasn't something that would necessarily maybe steer our decision and what company to work for, but it was, you know, a valuable addition to the list of benefits that you could receive working with a company. But today, I would say we've gone more now from it being an option to it being critical

to a company's success. And I think that in today's world and era, especially with AI, the skill sets that we've acquired, the shelf life on those skill sets has never been shorter. You know, we used to just invest in online training, we saw it more as upskilling or career advancement to move towards that better job. But actually, it needs to happen now to be able to retain your existing competencies within your current role and to be able to remain competitive as a company and to be able to react to change. You know, if learning and if employee training is part of a company's culture, then when new things like AI, like a massive sort of flipping the world on its belly come about, it's not such a culture shift to have to invest in learning time to be on par and be up to date.

There you go. How can virtual learning worlds enhance access to professional training opportunities for employees? How can, you know, if I'm a leader, how can I look at that as a way that we can make employees better? You really need to start by, when we're creating these programs for our employees and our staff, by talking to them to see, you know, what skills. A lot of times we launch courses and we don't ask or we don't check in to see what do, you know, what skills. A lot of times we launch courses and we don't ask or we don't check in to see what do people already know and what do they need. So using surveys and even in learning.

So back in high school when you were bored, if they would have asked you and said, you know, we want you to do this project. You said you've been a CEO at a number of different or had a number of different companies. If you're taking a course and I asked you to write a business plan, you would be like, you know, so you need to know what do you already know? And then what do you need to know when you're building the plan? And then the other critical component, I think, is that, you know,

when we're asking employees to do training and it's an add on to their existing workloads and their days, they're not going to be as engaged, you know, spending four hours on their Saturday or their Friday, at least I know I'm not on a Friday night, you know, conducting this learning. So it's really great when it, you know, one of the schools that I had, we had on Fridays, we subsidized a certain amount of learning for each staff member related to their role, and they could engage in that during work time.

Like it was, it's the same as innovation time for product development, if you will. It was, you know, employing, employee upscaling time. So building it into part of the culture, not making it extra work is more likely to get people on board and excited about it and engaged. I like what you're saying. Make sure that you recognize that we don't need to be adding more homework or more work to what people are already doing. I used to hate that.

I used, I, I, I worked before I worked for myself, there was an environment I worked at, at a corporate thing where they were constantly having these, we have an improvement meeting you need to come to. And I'm like, you you know i have projects i have to get done today and uh do you just think i got nothing better to do all day than attend your your little thing there and and so i think being mindful of that and trying to you know like the the zoom meeting thing i was so glad i didn't work for other people during that whole thing and i think some people are still doing it.

I mean, I'll see people complaining about Facebook, like I'm just in a Zoom eternity. And I'm just thinking, oh, my God. And you always have the idiot who's asking all the dumb questions in the corner that has no business being there. Amazon has a great policy that they developed decades ago, I guess, where when they do meetings, they make everyone stand at the meeting. There's no chairs. Oh, wow. Yeah. It actually helps those Zoom meetings get over really quick in person that they were doing it.

But yeah, when you're standing, they find that people got to the point much more quicker than they do when they're just lollygagging and everyone's sitting in a chair. So there you go. I mean, it's really important people understand this is, you know, this remote learning is here to stay. A lot of companies here in America are trying to claw back people in the office and the resistance is incredibly high. I think people found that they're just more, they just benefit more from a higher quality of life. What are some of the key

factors that contribute to successful integration of virtual learning environments with existing training programs? So again, you definitely want to have your employees and your staff on board with what you're, you want them to be vested in it because there's definitely an intrinsic value to, or value to pursuing any type of upskilling. And they need to know what that is, like what benefit is it going to have to them? And then you also training adults is very different than training younger learners. And training needs to be designed with some of those core principles in mind. In the book, I provide a checklist that organizations can go through.

Yes. So some of the criteria is, you know, adults don't like busy work. We want to get, we don't have a lot of time. We want to get right to it. Tell us what to do. Tell us what we need to know, but not always more than we need to know right now. You know, micro learning is really popular right now for adults where you have small, less than 10 minute segments of learning that usually have immediate relevancy to something that you're doing. That's super popular.

That would have been good with me with ADHD. Mm-hmm. 10-minute learning or, you know, I can do 15 or 20 probably. I think everybody is dealing with a version of that now because there's so much information overload coming at us and there's so much information out there that we have to try to validate and turn it into knowledge that when you can just you know we want to have be learning things that have immediate relevancy to what we're doing you don't want to be training on something you're not going to use a year from now because you're not going to remember it so relevancy is one of those key

criterias is it relevant i looked at a study put out by a skills development company and they said that 33 percent of adults that were involved in employee training programs felt disengaged because they felt the training wasn't related to anything they were doing so they found it hard to stay motivated of course if you're learning something they said another 25 percent found they just quickly forgot the training. And then 24% said that they just lacked the time to complete it. So those are the things that companies need to address if they truly want to get their teams involved and on board. So it's not just a checkbox that we're checking.

You say we offer the training, here it is, but what benefit is it bringing to our company? Definitely. And I imagine cost-effectiveness is the same as well on how companies can offset the cost of it because that's something they always look at. How much is it going to cost us? And I imagine in your book, you help people, companies and leaders take a look at what employee training is going to cost. And by making it cost effective, I imagine is the key to offsetting how much of the investment makes. And the major criteria to making it cost effective is making sure the actual training is effective.

The Association for Training and Development, they did a study and they found that companies that invested in employee training actually experienced 24% higher profit margins. But that's if it's effective, relevant, engaging training, right? So there is a core benefit to that. And the cost factor, you're right, is the number one roadblock to CEOs and companies, they want to know why should we invest in this training? What happens if we invest in employees and they leave? So these are major concerns for them.

And I always say, what happens if they stay? Yeah. What happens if they stay? There's a, you know, there's a famous old story. I think it's from IBM where a executive vice president lost. He did some sort of deal where he lost like 11 or $12 million or something of that nature. And he came into the ceo to tender his resignation and the ceo said we just spent 11 million dollars educating you

what not to do we're not gonna fire you and you know what you said is a way to think about it so in in doing these professional development opportunities i imagine employee retention and attracting top talent help. Is there some numbers behind that and percentages or how much it can help with employee retention? It definitely helps with employee retention. It's one of the major attractions right now for employees and recruiting top talent. People who are in high level positions and perform at a high level, they know that employee training is going to have so much value to them. Percentages, I don't have percentages for training and attracting, but I did actually see several different studies.

It's always in the positive frame that, of course, companies, people feel more satisfied. They feel more engaged to their employer. And for the most part, they feel more loyal to an employer that's invested in training for them, you are, of course, going to have cases that you were describing before I went AWOL of, you know, people who leave, and some companies offset that with if it's a larger investment in training, maybe there's a contract for an employability period. But I mean, but overall, it definitely, you know know i picture it when we go to a conference do you remember the day i don't know if you do conferences but you go to a conference and you collaborate with other people and you learn new things and you feel really reinvigorated

and you bring that back to your organization and it lasts for a period of time until we get to do something else that's new and reinvigorating. But it really helps accompany culture. And all of those things contribute to employee retention. Wow. There you go. You know, the smarter your employees are, the better they can be. I mean, that's really it.

And then, of course, you know, I think learning over a time of a lifetime makes the difference, too. You know, I've talked about this ad nauseum on the show. People are going to be like, he's going to say Peter Senge again. Peter Senge had that great book, The Fifth Discipline, and how to build a learning organization. And so having people that are constantly learning and evolving, you know, if you have the people that don't, you want to wash them out. You know, that's, you know yeah microsoft washes like 10 of its workforce out there's just always a curve of people and you know you have people that they don't want to learn they don't want to do anything they don't want to grow they don't they don't want to change those

those are people you really want your company long term you know they can go back to mcdonald's sorry i'm just mean that way tough love that's That's what I deliver. But, you know, you want the people who are growing because you want most of the people in your organization to rise up through that organization and become the leaders and eventually your CEOs. You know, pulling CEOs outside of a corporation is, I mean, it's a good idea sometimes, I guess, if it's a rock star CEO. But for the most part, you want people who they know the corporation, they've worked for it for decades inside of it. They understand the culture there. They understand some of the problems and things that are wrong with it internally that sometimes upper management doesn't see. And you want those people to rise through the corporation with education and learning.

And that makes all the difference in the world I think. The people you're describing I mean they have an integrated lens right and I mean that's part of what I do when I go to organizations if you've only ever worked in one role at a company you have one lens and one perspective on how things should operate but when I started way back when with you know four courses online in my first school and less than 50 students, and I had to build the course, teach the course, launch the company, get the schools accredited, you know, then grow internationally when you've gone through that whole process. So now when I visit an organization and I look at their programs, I have a very

integrated lens on how different variables can impact one another to create success or drastic issues within a problem. So retaining your employees, as you've just described, and providing those opportunities for advancement, it has a great, great benefit to companies. Definitely, definitely. You know, you mentioned it great where it just helps so much. And this is your future leadership for your organization usually. People are going to get promoted into, you know, from whatever the workforce level is then to management. And, you know, you've got to plan for these people because if they're not rising through the organization and getting better, you know, over time you've seen people where it's like, hey, I'm the CEO, and I started it. I started the bottom. I started the entry level four years ago or 30 years ago.

And so it's so important to know this. So as we round out about your book, let's talk about some of the offerings that you do on your website that people can get to know. It looks like you do some speaking and maybe some courses and consulting consulting tell us about what you're offering there and how people can get to know you better there yeah on my website anyone can you can contact me through my website but i offer i do a lot of teacher training seminars conferences i've done a lot of international teacher training which is a lot of fun as well but you know right now and in in the current times we we also have, like, when I did my own master's in distance education, Chris, it wasn't available. I think I finished it around 2016. I had to do it later in life. And even any teachers I was hiring within my own schools,

very few of them had any experience teaching in a distance learning program. So that's one of the criteria. If you're offering an employee training program, you need to have instructors that know about engagement and know some of these principles. And they're just not ready. They're still in 2024, not readily available to them because there's not enough people who've done the full journey from way back when to today.

You can find information certainly on how to build a great course and how to now teach with Zoom. You know, those things are coming about, but the actual boots on the ground training needs to happen. So I will do that for organizations. And then, you know, sometimes I'll train a lead teacher who's training their teachers on an ongoing basis after I leave. And I'll have a declining consulting value basically within an organization. One of the primary roles I serve right now when I have time, I take on a limited number of clients each year where I'll conduct a needs assessment. So maybe they've got a really great program

that they've invested in, and they're seeing really high incomplete rates, a lot of the symptoms of an ailing program, and they just don't know why they purchased a fifty thousand dollar a year learning management system you know they've got the best technology and they really need to someone to go through the journey from point a that that learners and participants entry into their funnel right through the course to the end to determine all right where where are the areas that we need to do some checks and balances and create some fixes for the program so that it can be successful. There you go. There you go. So how can people reach out to you? How can they onboard with you? How can they find out if your services are fit for them? They can email me through the

website at annetteleveque.com or they can send me an email. I'm going to say it out loud. I hope it's not, I don't get a lot of spam from this, but annetteleveque.com will get ahold of me. And please do, even if you just have a question,

I really, I love building new projects and I love helping people make their learning visions come true and resolve these issues. Yeah, I don't like to stay. I won't run the program. I did that for 15 years And I love helping people make their learning visions come true and resolve these issues. Yeah. I don't like to stay. I won't run the program. I did that for, you know, 15 years and that was fun too.

But I, I, you know, I build it and I hand it off with a bow and, and then I move along. There you go. There you go. Lynette, it's been wonderful and fun and energetic to have you on the show. We certainly appreciate it. We actually learned a lot. So there you go. And I didn't find any squirrels.

So. I learned a lot too. I, I just, I learned that if I get a speeding ticket in the US We actually learned a lot. So there you go. And I didn't find any squirrels. I learned a lot too. I learned that if I get a speeding ticket in the U.S., I take a course to get out of it. That's pretty cool. Nevada. Nevada. The other states are in collusion usually with the insurance companies. I don't know. There might be a lot more people who figured out that scam.

The states. And now they're like, we're going to keep the money. But, you know, everything here is, as you you guys have what was it national health insurance down here everything's about money and profit and about just farming human beings for every damn dollar they can have welcome to capitalism it's so great but you know you guys you guys got moose. There's that. The moose. We have the moose. Yes, actually. Nickelback. I'm very astounded by how many people actually lose a vehicle in Canada to hitting a moose.

Do they really? People think we live in igloos or something because of that. I'm like, that's astounding. My mother lost her vehicle because she hit, it wasn't a moose, it was a deer, but it totaled her vehicle. It's ast a moose. It was a deer, but it totaled her vehicle. It's astounding. Those things are huge. I've seen videos, I think they might have been from Alaska or Canada,

where they just decide to tear up a car one day that's parked out front. And you're just like, people are running from them. And you're just like, yeah, it's a big animal with giant ass horns. And I guess if you get pissed off enough, you take out a car or whatever. Oh, yes. Horses, moose, I mean, you've got that. I still think of, anytime I think of Canada, I think of the Mounties, those dudes. Like, all the cartoons just had Mounties in them.

So you grew up that way, and you're like that's that's pretty much how people live in Canada they're just riding horses around and and chasing moose and bears or something and it's always snowing that's alright that's the image you guys have but at least you guys have a nicer image you guys you know always say sorry all the time we never we never apologize for anything as the asshole Americans you know you know you guys are so saying A and a boot. So there you go. Annette, it's been fun to have you on the show.

Thanks for coming on. Give us your dot coms as we go out one last time. It's annettelevec.com, and my book can be found at elearninggold.com. Thank you so much, Chris. It was wonderful. Thank you, and thanks for coming on. Thanks, John, for tuning in as well.

Go to goodreads.com, 4Chance Chris Voss, linkedin.com LinkedIn.com All those crazy places around the internet Thanks for tuning in Be good to each other Stay safe or else We'll see you next time