The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Terawatt Professional Development Platform of Top Coaches at CES 2020 Booth Interview

Episode Date: January 11, 2020

Terawatt - Professional Development Platform of Top Coaches at CES 2020 Booth Interview Goterawatt.com

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you here, we're at the Terawatt booth, booth number 52948 here in Eureka Park. And we're interviewing some wonderful folks that have launched this service called Terawatt. And we're here with the CEO and founder, Francie. How are you doing, Francie? Welcome to CES. Yeah, thank you.

This is my first time. I'm a newbie. Yeah. So you guys have is my first time. I'm a newbie. Yeah. So you guys have got this wonderful booth here. Tell us about Terrawatt, what it is, and what you guys do. Yeah, so we are an online marketplace, and we make career coaching affordable by hosting virtual live classes with talented career coaches that are group classes. So we bring on great, vetted, great coaches and then we host like 10 people, 20 people classes.

And right now, career coaches are in high demand, and they're very talented people. They have their own content. So their time is expensive. So we want good career coaches. So what we say is, okay, if we bring you 10, 20 people, that makes it a lot more affordable for individuals. And they can learn from you live, but you don't have to pay her transportation time or upfront time or opportunity costs even. And so for the coaches, they love it. It's just an hour or two of their time.

And it's a lead generation without being a loss leader. So it's a great platform for people that are coaches and everything else. And it makes it so they can go on there and basically help sell their wares better, right? Exactly. And right now what's happening in the coaching world is that it used to be that most coaches were meeting in person with their clients, and now most are using actually Zoom and Skype. And so there's a lot of comfort level in the coaching community with virtual video conferencing. And then a lot of coaches have different levels of gold, silver, bronze. Sometimes you're like, yeah, there's a certain level.

And so this probably gives an opportunity to take advantage of some of those lower levels where they just want to automate it maybe more. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you want to, especially if you want to test it out, it's a great way to do that. So instead of spending, let's say, $10,000 on upfront costs to reserve the coach's time for six months, you can say, you know what, I'm going to take a class with this coach, I'll pay $75 and I'll see what I think. And after two hours you can say, okay, that, they weren't really for me, but you're only $200 out. You're not $10,000 out. Cool. So what else is in your model? What's your answer here?

Yeah, so a really important part of this is that we have three constituents, three stakeholders. One's coaches, one is mid-level professionals, and the third is HR managers. And the HR managers are ultimately the ones paying for this because career development is now becoming more and more of a reimbursable benefit. HR groups are using it for a recruiting tool but also for a retention tool. Millennials now expect career development from their employer. If they don't have it, they leave. So you can't get millennials and they leave quickly. But the thing that's wild is that there's crazy positive research for what happens when you do career development for your employees.

There's higher innovation, higher profitability, higher revenue, better culture. It's endless. Higher retention. Everything positive comes out of it. And most companies now are reimbursing about $1,000 to $1,500 a year for their employees. So we say, listen, take a few classes with us they're a hundred dollars or less which is much more engaging and interactive than going to a conference and sitting in a chair you're gonna really learn a lot more and really propel your career and so we're trying

to be an outsourced tool for the HR crew. Is this great for small companies, small coaches, for large companies? Yeah it's really the only people that don't really want it would be like a Walmart or anyone who's in-house learning. But if you like that idea but you can't afford to do all the work for it, we're the outsource solution. So they go to terawat.com? It's goterawat.com.

Goterawat.com. Yeah. So if you're a coach, you can go there, you can sign up and everything else. And you have an experienced coach here with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I would love to introduce you to her. Her name is Denise Blondo. Hi, Denise. How you doing? Come on over. She lives in Northern California. All right. Come on down. Hi, everyone. I feel like Bob Barker. Right. Exactly. Come on down. So you used to service Terawatt and you're a coach. Hi, everyone.

And tell us what your experience is like. Absolutely. Well, I have 25 years experience in corporate training, and I've worked with Oracle, Intel, Google, and most recently Sprint. And I can tell you that I've been on the front lines of online course offerings. And it's really key that you have effective and trained facilitators if you're going to do online. We know that 6.1 million students this year in education are now doing blended learning,

taking courses online. So what we've done is, with Francie's organization, is put a place where coaches can come with their experience, offer classes to individuals or to whole companies. My expertise is that I customize training for large corporations, develop and deliver, and we have high engagement. These are live interactive classes. The same as we did at Sprint, same as we did at Google, only now they're accessible to you. Awesome stuff. Awesome stuff. So you love the service. How long have you been using it? I joined Terawatt in 2018. We've already been doing company-wide training and we're getting great reviews. That's awesome. Awesome. So be sure to check it out, folks. You can come down to Eureka Park and see booth number 52948 Terawatt. Look for the folks here. They even have tangerines, or I think these are cuties, or some fresh new startup. I like that.

So a whole new variant of oranges, if you will, so you get some vitamin C. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, guys. Be sure to check these guys out and go to goterawat.com to look them up if you're not here at CES and watch for more of our coverage. Thanks for tuning in, guys. We'll see you next time.