Episode 106: Embrace Mistakes with Adam Larson

Alissa Galligani (00:00):
Hey everyone, it’s Alissa Galligani here, Senior Producer of Learning Life with Jon Tota. Thank you for tuning into the show each week. We love our Learning Life community and are so grateful for your support. We would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review the Learning Life on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening. It helps new people find the show so we can keep growing our community and bringing your great interviews about the business topics you care about. Thank you so much. That’s all from me! Now on to the episode.

Adam Larson (00:26)
You can’t operate in that fear. You have to just go for it and not, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and don’t be afraid to admit that you made a mistake. ‘Hey I made a mistake, but let’s figure out how to make this better’

Introductory Theme (00:36):

Welcome to Learning Life, where top experts share their business knowledge and personal journeys each week. “And The thing that I realized from the CEO to the NFL football player to the janitor- we’re our toughest critics, and we’re hardest on ourselves” -James Lawrence; “I wanted to bring education to the market or wake up in the morning. And I am constantly learning.” – “The only way to grab somebody’s attention is with a story.” – Cal Fussman. Happy learning! And now your host, Jon Tota,

Jon Tota (01:13):

Welcome to another episode of Learning Life. I’m your host, Jon Tota, and we’re happy to have you back this week. My guest today is Adam Larson. Adam is the senior manager of educational technology enablement at the Institute of Management Accountants, and also assists in the learning product design, specifically producing their industry webinars series Inside Track. Adam has over a decade of experience as a learning technology leader and is highly skilled in all aspects of instructional design. He also co-hosts IMA’s podcast show Count Me In, which is about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. IMA serves over 125,000 members in 300 plus chapters across 150 countries. So there’s a lot we want to talk with Adam about learning technology at scale, and the role IMA’s podcast shows and webinars series are playing in delivering member education. So let’s get into it- Adam Larson, welcome to Learning Life.

Adam Larson (02:06):

Thanks, Jon. It’s great to be here.

Jon Tota (02:08):

So what I like to do with all of our guests is really get an understanding of how you got into the learning and development space in the first place. What really brought you to this industry? And I know your background is kind of unique because as you told me, you started as a music producer and a completely different side of the world. How did you come to learning development and particularly for for IMA?

Adam Larson (02:32):

Well, it really wasn’t planned. I went to school for music as I, as I mentioned to you and as I was going to graduate, I had to, I was married and about to have a child and I realized I needed healthcare. And so the music industry isn’t really good for providing healthcare, especially when you’re just coming out of college. And so I decided to get into business and I started in a customer service job. And as I was there, you know, I I’m a quick learn on anything that I, that I, that I pick up on. And so as soon as I went through things I would, before I knew what I was training people, I was teaching people how to do it. I became a team lead and I was teaching people how to do things. They would implement a new system and say, ‘Oh, Adam, go train the whole, the whole team, the whole staff to do that.’

Adam Larson (03:14):

And I was training without realizing that I was training. It’s kind of like a, you know, a backwards way. Fast forward to when I get to IMA I joined in the customer service team here. And then when I saw something open in the education side it was for managing the learning management system. I said, you know, I have ran systems before and I was able to kind of come over. And as I got into working with the system and all the different things that required with the role, I recognize that, ‘Oh, wait, I I’ve been doing training for a while.’ I just didn’t realize it was actually training. It was kind of like all the things that I had been doing up until that point prepared me to be in a training role and, and running the systems and helping them with the training because all my life lessons that had hit me to that point where like, Oh, you are prepared for this. And then it got me into learning about adult learning and kind of getting into the corporate learning side of things, as opposed to just teaching people within an organization.

Jon Tota (04:06):

It’s interesting ’cause I think that, and I’d love to get your perspective on this, that when you come from a different background and then you kind of fall into these training and learning roles- because you just happened to be really good at educating people and you do it by nature- you just start to grow into these roles and you pick up more and more responsibility along the way. Where have you really seen, or where have you wanted to do the most of that? Is it more being a live trainer being in front of people, you know, doing it one-on-one running classroom training or has it always been in the tech space of designing content, producing content and then putting it out in one online form or another?

Adam Larson (04:48):

When I came to IMA I realized that, ‘Oh, wait, there’s, there’s not really space for the type of training that I’ve been doing,’ but then it quickly, then I quickly realized that a lot of it is in technology and I love technology. And so it allowed me to see the benefits of, of the training that are in the benefits of doing online training. And because I’m a lover of technology I’m always looking for what’s the best way of doing something. Every time I look at a problem, I want to learn how somebody does it and then say okay how can I do that better? And so I took that, I started applying that to the different trainings we were doing and the courses that we started creating, or the courses that had been created previously. I was like these are very good and this is not very engaging, this is not, I wouldn’t want to sit here and do this we need to do something better. And it’s been constantly continuing to ask that question over and over and over again so that we can create something that is better and excellent and is actually worth taking.

Jon Tota (05:46):

Yeah. And now just for our audience to understand, cause you have a mix of a lot of different media, obviously you co-host the Count Me In podcast show, you’ve got the webinar series. I know there’s a number of different webinars series, but the main one being Inside Track, and then obviously a lot of traditional on-demand training. What’s your mix look like if you’d said, you know, looking at what we’ve got out there available to our a hundred thousand plus members out there, how much of it is on demand versus traditional live classroom training, and then some of these different formats which are live, but delivered virtually like webinars, of course, and then podcast shows and things like that. What’s the mix look like today?

Adam Larson (06:26):

Today with our webinars. We’ve we’ve got the Inside Talk and Leadership Academy and a strategic management series, and we run about 40 actually about 60 of those a year. And so those are a member benefit to our members. And we’d probably do between two and four per month. And then podcasts are, are an easier medium because they can go out to everybody. And we, you know, we release about one of those a week. But then we have online courses and that’s where the bulk of our training goes into. And it’s we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of courses for people to take. And so that’s probably the where the bulk of our things are. And then we have, we do have some instructional some instructor led courses but those only run one or two or per year. So the bulk of our training is online and self study in the self study format.

Jon Tota (07:12):

What are some of the things, because you’ve really done it. And it seems like you’ve gone in a direction where so much of your learning value is in the, on demand virtual courses. What are some of the things that you’ve done that have been successful in just building up the value of that virtual learning content? So people really feel like they want to engage with it, and it’s as valuable as coming to an annual event or a, or regional event.

Adam Larson (07:36):

You always have to ask a couple questions of ourselves more about to create a learning, uh, create some sort of on demand thing. How engaging do we want to be? What at what level do we want it to go? Do we want to have it really engaging and have it have them applying afterwards, or just want it to be simple where there’s reading something and answering some questions, just some basic, you know, just-in-time knowledge or is it, or is it something that they can just, you know, watch a lecture and answer a couple of questions or do we want them actually applying it right afterwards? And so those are the questions we kind of ask. And some of the more successful things have been some of the simpler ones where we’re just, you know, here reads here, read a bunch of stuff, answer some questions.

Adam Larson (08:12):

And it’s really simple for some people. But then as the, as the learning landscape changes, we’ve recognized that there’s a need for more engaging learning out there. And so sometimes those are the more premium priced ones, but they’re the best experience and people love those. And so we’ve tried to hit all different aspects that people who really, who are worth, who are willing to pay that premium price to, to get those out there. But then we also have the more member benefit type things where it’s just in time kind of thing, and it may be free to the member and they can just go out there and learn those things. So we try to hit all aspects because everybody learns differently and everybody has a different preference or a different budget, or, and we want to make sure we can hit them at all, all those different levels. And each one has been successful in its own, right? Obviously sometimes when you put something out there that’s free for members, that’s more successful because everybody loves free, right? But then you have those more premium priced products that may be more expensive and less people take it. But the feedback you get is more valuable because they’ve wanted it, they paid for it and they put the time in and they can, and it’s more valuable for them.

Jon Tota (09:15):

Yeah. And I think you’ve mastered that art of kind of mixing the free member benefit content with the premium content and the things people are willing to pay additionally for which is, you know, for all the people in our world, that’s kind of the, the goal is where can you provide enough value that people, even though they’re paying membership dues are willing to pay more for certain categories of content. And that kind of leads us to the topic of adoption. I think for all of us who deal with the learning technology side of things, the ones running platforms for a particularly large membership organizations like you’re doing one of the challenges you look at all the time is okay, we can get people to come for the required content, but how do we get them to engage with elective content and then certainly pay above and beyond for premium offerings. And you have that advantage of the continuing ed focus and the, the accredited learning, which obviously in your world, they have to do a certain amount of their of their credit based training. But then it seems like you’re effectively getting them to engage on elective content above and beyond that. How have you done that? What’s been successful? What lessons have you learned along the way?

Adam Larson (10:25):

Yeah, one of the biggest benefits of offering a certification is people need their continuing education, as you mentioned. And so that’s helpful to get people in there, but I think one of the things we’ve been looking at here is trying to find ways to offer things that are applicable outside of their certification. Like, what do you need on your job right now? And that’s, that’s a question we’re trying to ask, and we’re trying to be able to answer that for people so that it’s worth them maybe purchasing an extra product, or even if we put something out for free and they’ve already gotten their credits, Hey, come learn this thing because it’s worth learning and not everybody’s going to go there because some people are like, I’m just doing my credits and I’m done, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of trying to expand that audience because, you know, it would be great if all a hundred, you know, over 125,000 members were going to our system, but I don’t think any membership organization has every single person in there, you know?

Adam Larson (11:15):

And so trying to find ways to, to expand that audience within your membership is it’s not the easiest thing. But finding ways to apply to them or appeal to them in different ways, like, okay, this particular product is going to be specifically for people who are controllers and we’re going to market this to just to the controllers in our audience and it’ll go to those controllers. But then they may say the, that controller may say, you know what, I know this stuff, but I’m going to give it to my finance guys underneath me because they need to learn it from that perspective. You know? So it’s, it’s finding ways to get to that audience. And, and that, that comes back to, you know, working with having a good marketing team where you can learn to segment your audience. And that’s something that we’re, I think we’re just kind of getting to a point where trying to segment our audience properly so that we can reach out to them in a special way so that we can get out there. And, and obviously the biggest role is always because they need their continuing education and that’s, that’s the biggest draw to get people in there every time.

Jon Tota (12:10):

Yeah. And I, and I love what you’re doing with role-based, you know, one role could be very different, you know. A bookkeeper versus a controller versus a chief financial officer and the way they look at their role specifically, and, and just really tailoring your library to those roles. I think a great, obviously great best practice for all of us. Tell me a little bit about when we think about the roles and what you’re doing, because you’re truly like a host of a lot of these products. Now you’re hosting the webinar series, hosting the podcast show. Tell me a little bit about how’s that experience been. I know tons of our listeners want to do the same thing. They have a, either an internal audience or a very niche audience, so they know their listeners very well. How are you, what’s your experience been like running webinars as a host, podcast shows as a host; and what are you doing to make your guests really interesting? How do you get engagement with them? Get the real good content out of them that, that your members and listeners are, are interested in.

Adam Larson (13:13):

I think one of the biggest ways is, uh, finding a way to move out the way and let them tell their story. You know, I, as I’ve mentioned, my, my, my history or my background is not in accounting. You know, I did do a master’s in business and I took a few accounting courses, but I am in no way, an expert in accounting. And so finding a way to just get them out the way, get out of the way and let them tell. And so there’s different ways of doing that. And when you’re on a podcast, you know, you can have conversations with the person before you start recording to kind of ease them up and get them comfortable. So they’re prepared and also, you know, send, send things ahead of time and, and so that they are ready to go, but you also want to put them at ease like, Hey, this is just a casual conversation. Let’s just chat.

Adam Larson (13:54):

And when it comes to a webinar, it’s a little more formal. We have a, you know, we’ve a pretty, a formal process in place, but then when it comes to, you know, doing the poll questions or asking questions, asking Q & A at the end of a, of a session again, you just want to kind of let them, let their expertise shine and finding ways to let that person shine so that all they have to do is come to the podcast or come to the webinar and just talk. They don’t have to worry about or stress about anything.

Adam Larson (14:16):

And so that’s one of the ones, one of the things that I’ve tried to do and constantly re-evaluating how we do things to get, make it better, you know, because in my opinion, it’s always better to, you know, shoot for excellence every time, you know, don’t, don’t try to do something half-baked. If you don’t have everything in place to do a good webinar, the first time you probably don’t want to start. You want to maybe make sure you have everything in place or do some smaller things. Like, especially when it comes to podcasts, we started recording podcasts before we went live. And once we went live, we realized we need to redo some of these. And we ended up redoing how we, how we introduced stuff. We, we ended up changing our methods, our process, you know, into the session because we recognize this isn’t working properly and we want to do it better. And when it comes to webinars, you know, it’s,ufor us, we have, you will have, you know, over 1500 people online, every time we do one, that’s a lot of people you can’t really do engaging things. So you have to keep the conversation as interesting as possible because you can’t interact with the audience with that big of an audience.

Adam Larson (15:14):

So you have to know how big your audience is. If it’s a smaller audience, you can do more interactive things and keep them going. But when it’s a 1500 people, the best you can do as a poll question and keep the conversation interesting. And so you have to find ways to engage that audience and over again. And it’s really, and, and from my perspective, you know, what I’ve been learning is, is people want to hear other people’s stories. If you hear their story and where they’ve been and what they’re doing and how they’re applying it, that engages you. I mean, that’s what gets you into a good movie is a good story. And so when we’re having these professional conversations, let’s, let’s have good stories that we can understand, and that it draws you in so that your attention is there.

Jon Tota – AD (15:52):

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Jon Tota (16:41):

You’re running really large scale webinars with a lot of participants logged in live. And it seems like in some cases like yours, it’s virtually the only way to deliver the education to such a large dispersed audience cost-effectively so webinars, are it. Like you couldn’t get everybody in one location to do that live. The technologies made such a difference. I know you’re a technology person first and foremost. What are some of the things that you’ve learned along the way, some of the things that are really working with your, from a technology perspective with your webinars? Because I think, I think our audience could learn a lot because I don’t think many people are getting thousands of people to log onto their webinars successfully. So what are some of the things that are working for you at least from the tech perspective of that?

Adam Larson (17:30):

So from a technology perspective, making the registration as easy as possible is probably the best way is the first and foremost thing, because then when somebody gets onto a webinar, they don’t want to have to fill out all the information again and again, and again. They just want to do a few clicks and be done. And that’s something we’ve actually had challenges with is, you know, we used to have not have the ability to, to fill out most of the registration form. A lot of our webinars are sponsored. And so sometimes the sponsors want information, you know, they they’re, they want to get some of those leads from the webinar. But we, we also, we also make clear to the sponsor, Hey, you may be getting some leads, but this is an education thing first and foremost. And so we have to make sure that we do that.

Adam Larson (18:09):

So make sure your registration page is seamless as seamless as possible. If you have some sort of single sign on do that, if you can, at least pre-populate some information through the link, through the technology, you know, find that out. If your vendor doesn’t do that, then find a vendor who does, because people want to be able to just go on their phone, click a link and get in there as soon as possible. And being able to have mobile friendly is, is huge. We get, you know, we may get 1500 people online, but 500 of those people are probably on their phones, watching and, listening to the webinar, which blows my mind from like 60 different countries around the world at all different times of the day, they’re watching the webinars and the ability to, to have a seamless experience on the phone and on the computer is, is monument, especially when you’re doing this type of training, when we’re… Cause we, we run our webinars right around lunchtime in the United States, but in the, in the, in the different demographics around the world, like say, in Dubai, that’s around like nine, eight, nine o’clock and that’s perfect for them.

Adam Larson (19:04):

And so, you know, 20% of our audience comes from the middle East, you know, so we have, we have to, you have to know where your audience is and find a time that works best for them.

Jon Tota (19:12):

Yeah. And so one of the things that I think is so interesting, particularly when you’re dealing with such a large global audience, you’ve got access to this data- and it’s kind of the same for me with what we do with Entrepreneurs Organization- that’s really fascinating to see how people interact with your training differently in different parts of the world. Are there any findings or anything that you’ve discovered over the years of doing this now that’s interesting to you about different parts of the world, how they consume content, the either the technology they use or the types of content they’re interested in?

Adam Larson (19:46):

Shorter is better. And that’s one of the biggest things that we’ve, we’ve been learning especially lately. And the problem is, is that when you’re in a world of accounting, you have certain standards that you have to stand up to. You can’t do short learnings without certain processes in place and that makes it difficult. However, you know, the question you asked is what are people wanting and, you know, around the world, you know, in places like China and even that whole Asia Pacific region, they are consuming on their mobile device and your content needs to be available mobile device. You know, we actually have a learning management system it’s completely in Chinese for our China audience, and all of the content in there is in Chinese. And it runs well on a mobile device. We have partners who do webinars over there, so that way they can do it.

Adam Larson (20:29):

I am, you know, I don’t, I don’t oversee that part of it, but we have partners who are doing that. So that way we could, they can consume their device, you know, they can open up their We-Chat and watch a webinar or listen to a training that way, you know, so knowing that, and then in other parts of the world, there, they, they do love mobile and are able to do that, but it’s, it’s finding the time to do it in a, in a way that makes it applicable to them. And then also, you know, with the webinars are, our biggest focus is, is, is application in the, on the job type training. Like, Hey, how do you, how do you close your books better? How do you how do you become a better leader? You know? So we, from all different sides of it, but we want to make it applicable.

Jon Tota (21:07):

Yeah. I think it’s so interesting when you get started in these roles in learning development… Years ago, we didn’t have this opportunity to reach so many different members or users around the world. And now when you think about it, like the reach that you’ve got is phenomenal, that you’re accessing people in all different countries with all different cultures and one way or another, the learning is translating and working in all these different, different places and locations around the world, which I think is super cool. From your background and, and really coming from a music background, what is, and I, I would imagine that so much of your training and education to, to this point was really on the creative side. What are you drawing from that? How does that impact the way you develop learning or the way you host these programs? What are some of the things you can share with our audience, from, you know, kind of that background as a creator or, you know, a true musician, someone in the creative side of the business what are some of the things that you you’ve taken from that to make the learning, you know, really engaging for the end users?

Adam Larson (22:17):

One of the biggest things for me is, is don’t be afraid of chaos. Um, when you’re producing, like, let’s say you’re producing a song, you may have 50, 60 different tracks that you’re trying to put down into a single right left channel stereo track that somebody can listen to. And so you can’t be afraid of chaos to make something beautiful. Um, that, whether that’s what that starting with a blank page and creating a template for a course that you’re going to create, or it’s taking a PowerPoint deck that, that the author sent you and you realized it’s a complete mess and that you need to work on it with them to make it better, or find ways to give them pointers without offending them so that they can make it better. You have to, you can’t be afraid of, of you just can’t be afraid.

Adam Larson (23:01):

You can’t operate in fear because when we operate in fear, you know, we could, we could get philosophical about that. You, you may not get things done and you’re afraid to make decisions. You’re afraid to move forward. You’re afraid to try new things and you can’t be, you can’t operate in that fear. You have to just go for it and not, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. And, and, and don’t be afraid to admit that you’ve made a mistake. Hey, I made a mistake, but let’s, let’s figure out how to make this better. And those are some of the biggest things that I’ve learned over the time that chaos is not bad and I’m a dad of four kids. So I have chaos all the time. And so chaos is not bad.

Jon Tota (23:37):

And, you know, and so from that perspective, and I think it’s, it’s a great learning for a lot of people that they, they feel like I don’t want to put it out there until it’s totally perfect. And of course, it’s gotta be at a certain level so that it, it checks off all the boxes and, and of course. But I feel like sometimes people sit with content from, you know, learning content that should be out there, but they’re tweaking it and trying to make it better. And, and this idea of, Hey, you know, may not be perfect, but it’s an iterative, medium, because you can go back and update it and update it for all users easily. And I think people forget that sometimes it’s not getting burnt onto a DVD or CD rom and getting shipped out. It’s, you’re able to update it and make it better when you get, right?

Adam Larson (24:23):

And that’s the best thing about getting those feedback, getting surveys, or even we have a member services department, they’ll send us a note and saying, Hey, this course isn’t working. We can go into that course right then, Oh, wait, this link isn’t working properly. We must have missed it during all of our crazy testing. We did testing and functional testing up the wazoo and everybody missed this. Let’s fix it right now. You can fix it within 10, 20 minutes. You have the new, the updated course up there. Like I said, you can’t be afraid to admit, Hey, I messed up, but I’m fixing it right now. And we’re going to, we’re going to learn from this process.

Jon Tota (24:53):

Yeah. I think it’s a cool lesson for everybody. Particularly people who have moved from traditional learning, where you get one shot, and if it’s not perfect, your audience walks out of the room angry, you know, whereas now you’ve got the ability to, to make it better all the time. And now as a musician, when you’re not… Do you stick with your music? Is this like an outlet for you creatively when you’re not developing learning content, hosting shows and webinars, are you, have you still kept up with music?

Adam Larson (25:22):

A little bit. You know, being a dad of four kids, it kind of takes a lot of my time, but once they’re all kind of in bed or they’re getting older now, so they’re all sitting on their devices, looking at something themselves, I can go off and just kind of play. It’s just more, it’s become more of a hobby. I’ve got my own little studio at home where I kind of trying to, trying to get back into producing music again and making, writing my own music. So it is a way it is an outlet for me when the, my quietness is going to a sitting down at a piano and playing that’s my quiet.

Jon Tota (25:51):

And you’ve got four kids in the house having a soundproof studio is a nice thing. Right?

Adam Larson (25:57):

Yeah. I wish it was soundproof. [laughs]

Jon Tota (26:01):

So tell me how our listeners can learn more about, I know as you said before Count Me In is a publicly available podcast, really designed for anybody in the accounting and finance space, tell our listeners a little bit, one how they can find it. And who would it be perfect for it? Because it might not be them, but someone in their organization.

Adam Larson (26:21):

Yeah. So you can search for, Count Me In, on any of the podcasts, Apple, iTunes, as iTunes Google Play Spotify, you can search for it on any of the podcasts mediums. We also have a website podcast.imenet.org. But the best way is, you know, most people listen to podcasts on their phone. And that’s, that’s the best way to listen to it. And it’s really for anybody in the accounting and finance space, whether that’s your financial analyst, your CFO, your controller and or your, just your staff accountant, we try to hit, we try to hit the topics that hit all ranges within those people in those spaces.

Jon Tota (26:54):

Yeah, that’s awesome. And we’ll include that in the show notes. So for all the listeners check out, Count Me In. And again, it could be for anyone. It could be a part-time bookkeeper who just wants to get up on the industry trends and know more about finance and accounting. You know, and I, I’m such a fan of these really hyper-focused podcast shows like you’re doing and like what we do with Learning Life, where if you’re truly in that and you’re into it, or, you know, someone who is I think you get so much value out of them. So definitely for anyone who knows someone who get value out of a check out Count Me In. And then if people want to know more about you, I know you also, I think promote a lot of your episodes on LinkedIn and you probably have some thought leadership there. How do they find you? Is LinkedIn the best way?

Adam Larson (27:40):

Linkedin is the best way to find me. I don’t really have any other social media. So find me on LinkedIn and we can connect there. I think it’d be great.

Jon Tota (27:47):

Yes. So, listen, Adam, thank you so much for being here. I think, you know, just sharing how you’re getting adoption, how you’re keeping the engagement going and the creative flow with an audience, as large as yours in all around the world loved everything you had to share. So thank you for being here.

Adam Larson (28:02):

Thanks so much for happening. I appreciate it.

Jon Tota (28:04):

And to all of our listeners, thank you for being here every week. As you know, we have a new episode coming out each week, so wherever you’re listening, make sure you subscribe, leave us comments. We always love to hear from our listeners. And until next episode, happy learning!