Trading Secrets - More Than Money: Changing the business game with Abilitie’s 12-week MBAs with founder and CEO Bjorn Billhardt

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

This week, Jason is joined by Bjorn Billhardt, the founder and CEO of Abilitie, a leadership development company that offers coaching and leadership programs to global Fortune 500 companies, and most notably the 12-week MBA! Jason and Bjorn discuss the expenses and time that go into an MBA, what makes the 12-week MBA radically different from the traditional route, what someone should consider before getting an MBA, how they ended up working with some of the top Fortune 500 companies, what the two things they focus on are, and the power in being curious and hungry.  Resources: Abilitie It’s an episode you can’t afford to miss!  Host: Jason Tartick Co-Host: David Arduin Audio: John Gurney Guest: Bjorn Billhardt Stay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast!  Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast  Youtube: Trading Secrets Facebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial 

Come alive, come alive, and the world Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we are joined by Bjorn Bilhar. Bjorn is the founder and CEO of Ability, a leadership development company, that offers coaching and leadership programs to global Fortune 500 companies, and most notably the 12-week MBA. With over 20 years of experience in the learning and development industry, Bjorn leads a talented and diverse team of professionals who design and delivered award-winning leadership development programs and many MBAs that teach through team-based business simulations.

Today, we are going to pick the brain of one of the pioneers of alternative advanced education options and educate ourselves on the opportunities that we can get from enrolling in the 12-week MBA program. Bjorn, thank you so much for being our trading secrets. Thank you, Jason. Well, let me tell you, I'm excited about this episode because on trading secrets, we talk money, we talk consumer protection, we talk consumer navigation. So when I hear, when we had the opportunity to interview you, Bjorn, I was like,

hell yeah, now let me tell you why. I got an MBA at a school and it was over $100,000 and it was, let's just say it was a lot when you think about how to get the repayment done and how to do it. I got such little value out of my MBA that on my LinkedIn Bjorn, I swear, my title said, overpriced MBA gone entrepreneur. So when I think about what you have found it and what you are doing, it's like the sweet spot for me. So I want to throw some stats at you before I get into the question. But I looked at some facts on MBA programs. And the average tuition of an MBA program is $20,000 to $80,000 per year. The average cost to the top-ranked MBA programs can cost anywhere between $130,000 and $170,000 per year. And I'm just

going to list off the top three MBA programs I looked up in the price points. Worton looks like $168,000 first year tuition, about $85,000. NYU, $161,000. 1,000. That was the class of 2023 with an $82,000 first year tuition. And then MIT Sloan, $159,000 and then an $80,000 first year tuition. These are big numbers. These are big dollars. Bjorn, you heard what I underwent. Tell me a little bit about the 12-week MBA, the price point, and how it could help someone like me. Yeah. And first of all, people forget that that's not all the money that you'll ever have to spend because I'm sure you're also going to get lots and lots of fun emails from your alma mater to ask for donations. And so for your entire lifetime of spend is pretty significant.

So and the other thing from my personal perspective, though, I should say, and I have, it's my personal service announcement because my wife is in the other room. I should say that I got a full ROI from my MBA because I met my wife there. So good cover there. I got to make sure I say that first. And also that this was before, you know, before you could like swipe on. and Bumble in all those places. So I think that cheap. You got your lot for sure. I got my ROI, but there may be better ways to find your wife these days.

When they come knocking on your door for a donation, you're like, you know what? I'm going to donate strictly because you put my wife at my fingertips. Yeah. So, you know, absolutely everyone's been talking about, you know, higher education is just out of control, right? there's just enormous sums that are being asked of students. And I feel that are being, you know, in many institutions wasted, right? When you, I mean, there's only so many times you can cut the grass at Harvard Business School. And, and, you know, at some point, there's just, there's just too much in terms of the ask and too little in terms of what, what do you get back?

I started being an entrepreneur right out of business school, and I honestly can say that outside of my personal gain, my wife, they did not use many, if not, most of the tools that I learned in my two years. Now, there are a lot of things that actually are somewhat helpful, right? I mean, you kind of have to understand what an, I mean, you're running a really successful business now. You got to, you know, you're going to see a financial statement. You got to understand what gross margins are and where net margins are, right? So there's some basics that you, actually do need to be successful, but spending two years full-time, you know, it's not just the dollars, it's also the time investment to learn, you know, really, really interesting concepts in

supply chain management when, you know, for your business, I don't think you'll ever have probably have to deal with supply chain management, right? You don't have inventory, right? So there's a lot of stuff that is really interesting. And if you have the time, if you have the money, that would be fun to learn, but it's not necessary. And so that's why I think some of these alternatives are springing up everywhere. That's really cool. And I want people back home to know this. Bjorn hasn't said it yet.

But you just heard him say that one of the only big takeaways he got from his MBA was his current wife. And I want to put this in perspective. His MBA, everybody listening, was from Harvard Business School, one of the top, if not the number one business school in the entire planet. So that is someone coming from the biggest, best, probably most expensive education out there. those are big words to say. Now, Bior, we talk dollars here. So we already talked the dollars of what it costs for some of these higher educations, right? We heard that we're in $168,000 in total tuition fees for the class of 2023. What does the price point of a 12-week MBA with through ability cost? So the 12-week MBA is, you know, if you sign up early enough under $2,000, and so are many of these

other alternatives that that are springing up. So it's a, it's a pretty rational. radically different kind of price. It's also a radically different product, of course. And I should mention, first of all, I should mention, again, since my wife's sitting across Zoom, she's far more than a takeaway. Your husband's in a year catching these things. Well done.

She is the best half of you. She is the best half of me. She's more than a takeaway. And also, the other thing I think to mention is that I did get a lot more from Harvard Business School. And I will say if you have the chance, if you get in accepted into one of the top 10, top 20 programs, and I think your school is among them as well, like there is so much you are getting out of it that you will not get out of a $2,000, 12 week, part-time virtual program, period, full stop. Like, we're not going to compete with that because outside of spouses, you're also making a huge network, right? There are so many people that I am now best friends with that I can call up that can give me advice.

on all areas of business that have been extremely successful in life, I wouldn't trade that for the life of me. So I think if you are lucky enough to get accepted into some of the top 20 programs in the world, yes, it's probably still worth that investment. But the truth is so that 90% of managers don't get there, right? Like they don't have the time, they don't have the money, and they still need some type of business education. So in many ways, Anyways, you know, I know it's kind of this, our tagline is, you know, we're competing with, we are not competing with that, right? It's, you know, in the airline business, right, when these cheap carriers first come out, like, they didn't take business away from the main area of carriers. They, they made people think about twice about driving.

And so we're really the program for, you know, the 90% of people that are looking to advance in their career, but that just don't, you know, want to go. to Harvard Business School for two years. I love when a founder can understand their product and see and give credit to what might be considered competition and know specifically what their audience is, perfectly said, right? Like if you get into one of these top 10 programs, I would probably argue in those specific programs, when you look at the average return on those individuals in their careers, the return is there.

Like you said, though, 90 plus percent, that's not unfortunately the case. are many programs out there where the return will not connect to the dollars spent. I love that you said that. So then what I'm going to challenge you with Björd is, is our people back when we call them the money mafia. So they're listening to this. How would they know if ability is for them? What are some big points that they could be thinking about to say, wait a second, for under $2,000, this investment makes sense? Yeah, I think that's a great question. The first thing to ask yourself, right, if you're sort of in the position, like, do I need an MBA, right? Like, is am I really happy with the job that I currently have and do I want to do that for the rest of my life?

And if the answer to that is, yes, you don't need an MBA. And it's, and most people in this world, right, don't actually step into leadership roles. They do, they learn a craft and they spend years, decades, perfecting that craft and retire with really incredible. knowledge and skills on their hands, right? If you are a craftsman and whatever that craft is, you don't need to understand business. You don't need to understand value creation, how to measure value.

You don't need to understand how to motivate others. So if you're happy in your craft, don't get an MBA. But if you are looking to see if you can make an impact beyond your own work product, if you're looking to lead others, there's a whole slew of things that actually many people fall into without having any formal background, right? They never even thought about getting an MBA, but all of a sudden they're leading a team of five, right? And now they have to figure out, why are four out of my five people not working? You know, it's like, what's the, how do I, how do I engage? How do I create the environment for people to allow their intrinsic motivators to

really kick in and so they can give their best? And those, if you start having those questions, Right? Like, how do I work with others and lead others? If you're, you know, kind of curious about, well, why was there an investment round, but there's still layoffs, right? Like, how does that all work? That's when I think you should think about some type of education that goes maybe beyond, you know, kind of just a casual YouTube video. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And the other thing, too, I have learned, I think as the years go on, the more we niche down, the more we get more specific with our. acumen, the more value we're creating, the more value we're creating, the more monetarily we are benefiting from it. And one of the things with like a general MBA, and even my MBA was in accounting and finance, you're still taking classes from literally every single touchpoint of business, some of which you'll never use. I think one of the cool things I researched about ability, the program's offered, you got the rising leader program, becoming an effective

manager program, developing business acumen, executing and cross-functional team, senior leader program, creating strategic business value, and leading organizational change. So you can niche down based on specifically which one of those will actually advance your acumen, which will hopefully lead to an R.O.I. My question is you, Bjorn, then, if someone back home is like, all right, I'm here for this, this sounds good, I think I want to invest in it. I think about the time I had to deploy in my MBA, it was aggressive. It was a lot. I mean, I was working from 8 to 6, and then it was about 6 to 11 p.m. almost every weeknight for two and a half years for me to get the completion.

If someone does sign up, what does it look like? How long are the classrooms? What's the process? Yeah. So as with any education, you get as much out as you put in, right? So that's saying that that means that, you know, some people, the official times are Wednesday for lunch and then Friday mornings or Saturday morning. So you pick between Friday morning or Saturday morning, you know, one cuts into your work time,

someone cuts into your personal time, you know, you decide. So those are the only times that you meet. And then the rest is really up to you in terms of how deep you want to go in those 12 weeks, how much you want to invest in your study groups. So unlike some of our other competitors, there are a lot of programs that are $2,000, you know, kind of around 12 weeks. Many of them are basically just online videos. And you watch the online videos and you write a paper and you're done. And you get a little certificate. That is not what we do. We, we're solely. social. We put people into teams. We, in fact, actually, it's not just teams. You play in these super interactive business competitions. And the entire 12 weeks, instead of learning by lecture, you're actually in kind of a shark tank kind of environment where you have to practice with others how to read an income statement, how to motivate others. So it's super fun. And you get as much out as you put in. You do have to set time aside. So, you know, my recommendation is if you cannot make Friday mornings or side, Saturday mornings work for 12 weeks in a row, you know, you probably should wait until you have

that time. Education is, I think, a lot more than just knowledge transfer. So you can learn the concepts. You can get the knowledge pretty quickly. But for you to really understand the concepts, for you to really internalize them and be able to use them, you need practice. And that takes time. One thing I got for you is all MBA programs have different strategies when it comes to grading scales. I'm curious with ability. Is it a pass-fail? Is it a GPA 4.0? Is it an AD-minus? How does the grading scales work? Yeah, it's a great question. It is a certificate program, and it is past-fail. So we are not distinguishing. We are thinking, actually, of putting in a little bit of an honor system, so that may be coming up here in the next few months. But it is past fail. We do have a

the end kind of a process where you need to make sure that we need to present and you need to make sure that you have understand enough of the concepts to really feel confident walking into the boardroom or walking into any type of meeting and you know understanding what's what's the difference between profits and cash flow right why is an income statement the way it structured the way it is so those are the types of questions if you can't answer them then then then you may have to repeat it but it is past fail. We're, you know, we are wanting to make sure that people are set up for success when they graduate. That's amazing. Okay, so one of the things to my listeners back home, I don't have founders on until I do a ton of research on the company and find credibility within the company.

Ability has a ton of that. So you guys develop over 12,000 learners per year with your leadership program for Fortune 500 companies. You've been teaching individuals in 50 plus countries, 100K plus participants, 1,700 plus virtual deliveries. I mean, the proof is in the numbers, and that's why I love numbers, because numbers don't lie. When I saw this, though, and I saw a lot of these Fortune 500 companies participating in your program, to me, that was like the ultimate green flag. Like, when you have leaders at that level saying, this is going to be our solution for our employees. And the reason I say this back home, people, is because what do you think a Fortune 500 executive is going to think about when they invest in something like this. They're going to

invest. They're going to think about where are we getting return for the dollar spent? So if they are engaging with a program like ability, to me, it's like the leadership says this is our answer. Tell me a little bit about the Fortune 500 companies that you do work with, how they integrate it with their employees. And why do you think these Fortune 500 companies are now coming to ability as opposed to some of the alternatives for their employees and best? Yeah, that is probably our strongest kind of selling point to people. It's like, why should I learn from you versus thousands of others? And the answer is, you know, we've been working with Fortune 500 companies for 22 years. I mean, you go through like the roster of, you know, Dell, Garment, Marriott, Southwest Airlines. We started actually our business. So, so I was a little bit flipping and saying, you know, my wife was, she was the biggest thing I got out of our business school. because value. But the other value was that also we actually started working with Harvard a little bit after I graduated. And so based on that work, we then branched into working with leadership teams

at very large companies. And initially, you know, a lot of times you find these curricula, you find professors, they think really, really hard for 20 years. And then they write a book. And then they say, this is what business should be like. We did it the opposite way. We actually went to Fortune 500, you know, companies, we went into the boardrooms and we said, what is it that we need to teach? And then we custom developed the material for all these large companies for 22 years. And we slowly build a curriculum based on what we have heard executives at the top, what they feel their employees need in order to grow into leaders. And so it's a very practice based curriculum. Number one, it's all doing. It's, you know, you play in these simulated and

environments that are really cool and fun. But it's also very, very focused on the things that you really need. And not to get too much into the depth, but like you, you're completely right earlier. And like, there are so many concepts you learn in a two-year full-time MBA that are not necessarily 100% relevant to the role that you have. So we stripped out all of this functional content, right? The latest supply chain theories, really interesting, but may not be applicable to your business, right? And we focused on two things. And the two things that every, executive says their people need in order to advance to a management or a leadership role are an understanding of the numbers. You need to understand how the business operates, what creates

value. And the second thing is you need to understand people. You need to know how to work with others, how to motivate, engage others, how to lead others, and how to balance, you know, getting things done with making sure that your workforce is engaged. So it's really simple. It's those two things. It's the numbers of a business and how you create value driving, revenues, profits, cash flow, EBITDA, all the, like understanding that and understanding the people. We stripped out all the other things. You're not going to learn supply chain management. You're not going to learn marketing. You're not going to learn. That's functional expertise. And we believe you can learn that best on your job. That's really interesting. You know, someone, you know, I have employees

for the companies I manage. And one thing I love to do when I hire is I like to find people from alternative industries with unbelievable transferable skill sets to get them in and then watch them excel. It allows me to get them at a price point that's great. But when they excel, it allows me to see their value and make sure they're overcompensated. So that's really worked. But I look, I think about two employees I have and their people skills are unbelievable. Their work ethic is the greatest out there. But their skill sets just from education and from previous job history, it has nothing to do with numbers. And I want to put them into an executive role. I'm now thinking, like, I need these two employees to go through ability. And when I think about less than $2,000, honestly, this is

going to be part of their program. So I appreciate that. The other thing I'm thinking is for people back home, the one thing that's going through my head is I'm thinking, if you guys went into the boardrooms of the CEOs and the executives and the C-sweets and the managers of the Big Fortune 500, and you customize programs that they're telling you that their employees need, for me, it's like that is the perfect gap of understanding you are getting a purely concentrated education path that is exactly what will get you ahead. But I want to ask you this, Bjord, because you were the CEO of Inspire, right? And one of the things that you guys did is you use intelligence to advance employee engagement and productivity. You now run ability. Ability is your client.

for the most part are employees. So for over 20 years with an MBA education and all the success you've had, your clientele has always been the employee. This is more of a general question. But what are some of the biggest things that you've seen in your 20 plus years that employees aren't doing that they need to be doing to increase productivity, to increase their career navigation, whatever it might be, you've studied employees for 20 years. What are the things us employees that are listening to this can hear from someone who's an expert in it and say, hey, these are things I need to think about. Maybe these are things I need to do better. What a great question. I think probably the number one thing that comes to mind is

be curious and ask questions. It is so many times. And actually, I have the exact same philosophy as you, Jason. Like we hire people not with industry expertise. We hire people from outside the industry because you can learn that if you are curious and if you ask questions, what is much harder to teach is the ability to ask questions and be curious. Because if you think you know everything, if you think, you know, I'm good at my job and and everything, you know, then AI comes along and blows everything out of the water and you're

stuck with the way things used to be and you're not curious, you're not asking questions, and you're not ultimately, and you're being out-competed by someone else. So I have the exact same philosophy. I hire for aptitude. And then I teach industry. And sometimes we even hire outside a function. And we teach industry and we teach functional skills because they're easily teachable. But we always hire for hunger and curiosity. And those are the two things I look for. I love it. Hunger and curiosity. So back home, make sure those two things. are part of your everyday. And also, I think a huge takeaway from this is if you're in an industry and you feel stuck, know that you have me at a little bit of a smaller scale, but know that you

have business leaders out there that are saying, we want hungry people with transferable skill sets. So use that to your advantage. I also want to put out there, I know we talked about a little joking around facetiously about the whole donation back to your school, but Bjorn, I think one thing that's really cool I read is that you and your family donated a million shares of the company to the University of Texas at Austin to benefit students in the Plan 2 honors program and university-wide programs that run through the school of undergraduate studies.

You know, I think that's so important that the things you're doing every day, you're also finding ways to give back when you find success. So that is really cool. But Bjorn, we have to wrap. I know you're a busy man. I only got you for so long.

We have to get a trading secret from you. So it's something about life, career, maybe education, financial, tips or tricks. it's a trading secret we can only get from you beyond given your career path what trading secret can you leave us with well so i'm gonna i'm gonna say something controversial because i think half of you half of your people are probably invested in i think don't invest in crypto it's not going it it's at a very high now so if you have crypto get out before before it crashes again but probably more on a serious i am serious about that but probably i'm happy to talk more about that with with anyone that wants to argue with

Let me just ask you this. Leave us because I know we're on a time constraint. The people are going to listen to you and you have credibility so they want more. Give us just one of your top reasons why you would tell people to avoid crypto. One reason. What would it be? Well, I mean, if you study economics, it's not a great store of value. It's speculative. It's not a store of value. And speculative can go up and it can go down. Probably my biggest thing, though, is invest for the long term. And invest in yourself because you can invest in all sorts of stock, all sorts of, you know, and you may get lucky and you may get a lot of money. If you want to be sure that you get money when you retire, invest in yourself and invest in the long term and invest in your own education. I love that.

And also, if you guys picked up on that Bejorn's trading secret, he used some jargon that you would need education to know when he said speculative. I know the curious Canadian who does Recaps with me is going to say, Jason, my Christmas gift, I want an ability program because let me tell you, he needs it, but that's what it also makes it special. Bior, and this was cool. It was really interesting to learn about your history, this excessive ability, where it fits in the marketplace, how we can benefit from it, and all the other pieces of advice of course, against crypto.

I think that is fun and exciting. But Bjorn, if people want to sign up for Ability, if they want to learn more from you, where can they go? Ability.com. And it's misspelled with an I-E at the end. So if you watch this, you see it as spelling up there. It's A-B-I-L-I-T-I-E.com. You can also go to a 12-week MBA.

You can just type in 12-week-M-A and Google. Our marketing team has done their job, which I think they have. You'll find it at 12-week MBA. You can sign up. We're on the wait list for, I think, the April court, but we have a few coming up in the fall that we'd love to invite people to. 12-week MBA, go search it, or A-B-I-L-T-I-E ability. Go check it out in our show news.

show notes and on our Instagram page, we will make sure to link it because I truly believe this is extremely valuable. B.R. And this was extremely educational. Thank you for going a couple minutes past your time. I know as a leader, you are a busy man. So thank you for being on this episode of Trading Secrets. Thank you so much, Jason. My pleasure. More light, let it burn so bright, reaching up to the sky, and it's hope and white, you're electrified. And the world becomes a fantasy, and you're more than you could ever be, because you're dreaming with your eyes wide open.