Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Rachael Nemeth's Opus Training Revolution: From COVID Communication Crisis to Training 110 Million Frontline Workers

Transcript

Rachael Nemeth's Opus Training Revolution: From COVID Communication Crisis to Training 110 Million Frontline Workers · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:16
  today's guest is Rachel Nemeth, CEO and Co founder of Opus
• 0:20
  Training. They provide mobile,
• 0:23
  multilingual, and media rich on the job training tools for
• 0:27
  frontline workers, making skill development easier and more
• 0:31
  efficient. Rachel has an extensive
• 0:34
  background in the training and operations sector, having LED
• 0:37
  organizations like ESL Works and serving in various hospitality
• 0:41
  and educational roles. Since starting Opus in July
• 0:45
  2020, she has used her knowledge to help companies reduce
• 0:48
  training time, boost engagement, and empower A diverse workforce.
• 0:54
  Under her leadership, Opus continues to gain recognition
• 0:57
  for its innovative mobile first approach.
• 1:00
  She has guided the company to partner with major industry
• 1:03
  names, further solidifying its role in reshaping on the job
• 1:07
  training. Rachel's passion for simplifying
• 1:09
  workplace learning comes from her years of hands on industry
• 1:13
  experience, making her a trusted voice in training technology.
• 1:17
  Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
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• 2:00
  All right, back to our guest today, CEO, founder of Opus
• 2:02
  Training, Rachel Nemeth. Thanks for making the time to
• 2:05
  Share your story today. It's.
• 2:06
  Great to be here, thanks for having me.
• 2:09
  So Rachel, you've got a little bit of an interesting work
• 2:12
  background, several stops in restaurant and hospitality, some
• 2:17
  experience as an ESL, English's second language teacher, and
• 2:21
  then you spent a few years as the founder and CEO of a text
• 2:26
  message based English language training company.
• 2:29
  Where did your interest in ESL first come from and how did that
• 2:34
  spark the idea to start that first company around this whole
• 2:38
  concept? So.
• 2:41
  I had had always been interested in language, in even thinking
• 2:47
  back to high school and elementary school, I was
• 2:51
  fascinated by Spanish classes. I spent as much time as I could
• 2:56
  in those classes. And when I went to college,
• 3:00
  ultimately I majored in in Spanish.
• 3:03
  But my love, I think over the years I realized the love wasn't
• 3:07
  Spanish. It was actually language as a
• 3:08
  whole. It was just interesting to me
• 3:11
  and a a really fascinating way to get access to new cultures.
• 3:16
  And so Fast forward to when I moved to New York in 2010, I,
• 3:26
  like most 20 somethings, needed a job.
• 3:31
  So I started working as a barista just to make some cash.
• 3:34
  And then I started volunteering on the side to teach English as
• 3:37
  a second language. So that was really the
• 3:40
  beginning. I, I didn't really have, I
• 3:43
  didn't think that my destiny was ESL, but it was a really
• 3:48
  meaningful way to connect with other people to teach, which was
• 3:52
  a skill that I already had. And to do it in the city that I
• 3:55
  know knew at that point was in need of, of ESL classes for
• 3:59
  folks who were studying to pass their citizenship exam for
• 4:04
  employees who were in working positions in the restaurant
• 4:08
  industry who needed to learn English for specific purposes.
• 4:12
  So the beginning started actually in my own education and
• 4:17
  then it grew really to kind of an impact focus and, and
• 4:21
  realizing that language could be for good.
• 4:24
  Got my certificate to teach and the rest really evolved very
• 4:30
  quickly from there from just volunteering into a fully baked
• 4:35
  tech company. And so, so you got your
• 4:40
  certification to teach and then how did you actually like come
• 4:44
  up with this idea to start something that was text message
• 4:48
  based at the time? You know, it's funny when you
• 4:51
  think back to how all of these things got connected.
• 4:55
  There were so many in retrospect, so many stars that
• 5:00
  had aligned and I can't honestly remember in what order they
• 5:04
  came. But I'll tell you the cluster
• 5:06
  that happened, which is I was working, I was volunteer
• 5:13
  teaching at a a company, a nonprofit bakery called Hot
• 5:21
  Bread Kitchen. It, they provided baking
• 5:24
  training for immigrant women, an upscaling program, and they
• 5:28
  needed ESL classes. So I volunteered to teach ESL
• 5:31
  there. Fast forward maybe a year and a
• 5:35
  half, I actually ended up working there not as an ESL
• 5:38
  teacher because I had an, a background in food and in
• 5:42
  operations. They brought me on as an
• 5:45
  operations manager. So I sort of put ESL on hold,
• 5:49
  but it was still a skill that I was using in the workplace,
• 5:53
  right? My team didn't speak English, so
• 5:55
  I was trying to help them learn. So I would create all of these
• 5:59
  trainings that were sort of folded into the daily work of
• 6:02
  what we were doing. I ended up working there for a
• 6:05
  couple of years. I left and right when I left, my
• 6:14
  father passed away. And at that point I really just
• 6:21
  didn't really have it in me to do full time work.
• 6:23
  So I took on three-part time jobs.
• 6:28
  You know, I was in the morning, I was in the morning, I was
• 6:35
  teaching at at a burn and turn ESL school in Times Square.
• 6:40
  I don't even know if it's still there anymore.
• 6:43
  In the afternoon, I would pour coffee.
• 6:48
  I still was a barista. And then in the after, in the
• 6:50
  evening, like 7 to 11 PMI would fold clothes at REI.
• 6:57
  And but really that kind of mix actually allowed me some time to
• 7:04
  think and to kind of try to figure out what I wanted to do.
• 7:09
  At that point, I realized that what I really wanted to do was
• 7:12
  pursue ESL full time, that the spark for ESL works actually
• 7:16
  started when I got a call from the executive chef of Gramercy
• 7:23
  Tavern, Mike Anthony. And he said, I hear that you
• 7:28
  have experience in restaurants and you know how to teach
• 7:31
  English. Do you want to come teach
• 7:33
  English to my kitchen team at, you know, the arguably one of
• 7:38
  the best restaurants in America? And I said sure.
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  And I was in this kind of period in my life where I was really
• 7:47
  feeling like taking on any risk was fine, you know, and.
• 7:54
  Wasn't a whole lot to lose at that point.
• 7:56
  Not really. And so I I'm pretty sure that I
• 8:02
  filed for the LLC for ESL works within a week.
• 8:06
  I remember texting my family and saying, you know, I need a name
• 8:10
  for this company. And I remember my Aunt Vicki
• 8:13
  saying, what about ESL Works? And I said, that's it.
• 8:15
  That's what we're going to call it.
• 8:17
  I still give her credit to this day and that company that the
• 8:22
  the beginnings of ESL Works was not it as technology, it was as
• 8:25
  consulting. I was, I started with just
• 8:29
  myself teaching English classes in restaurants.
• 8:31
  I realized I needed to scale it, so I hired teachers.
• 8:35
  I contracted teachers to come in and help me teach other classes,
• 8:41
  and then ultimately I brought on a team of of about eight or nine
• 8:45
  people. We can get into the tech story
• 8:49
  later too 'cause there's a whole other side to it, but that was
• 8:52
  really the beginnings of of ESL works.
• 8:56
  Is it worth getting into that tech story or should we move
• 8:58
  into the OK, So what what happened?
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  How did it go from this consulting business into
• 9:03
  something that was text based? Was it just this desire to want
• 9:07
  to be able to help more people at scale?
• 9:09
  Yeah, And I, I was raised in a family that was entrepreneurial.
• 9:16
  So I, I was always thinking about ways to, to grow this
• 9:21
  business. I was excited about it.
• 9:22
  I always wanted to own a business.
• 9:24
  I didn't know what it could be. So I, I didn't necessarily had a
• 9:27
  dream of, of building a tech company like some I, I had a
• 9:31
  dream really of, of just owning a, a, a good, you know,
• 9:35
  sustainable, profitable business.
• 9:40
  And so I started to try to figure out how I could scale
• 9:44
  this thing. And I actually did weigh the
• 9:45
  differences between scaling it as a brick and mortar, so to
• 9:49
  speak, and trying to figure out how to productize it.
• 9:53
  The brick and mortar would have meant I'd have to franchise.
• 9:57
  That was a whole thing that was kind of unfamiliar to me.
• 9:59
  Tech sounded more appealing, I guess.
• 10:02
  It was unfamiliar to me as well. But it felt more accessible, I
• 10:06
  guess, for some reason. And I spent about a year testing
• 10:12
  different prototypes. I'm not an engineer.
• 10:15
  I'm still not an engineer. I've never written a a line of
• 10:17
  code in my life. That doesn't mean that you can't
• 10:20
  prototype something and you can't develop an MVP so.
• 10:25
  How did you do that? Were you hiring developers or
• 10:28
  were you sketching things out on paper yourself?
• 10:31
  Three years. Yeah, I was.
• 10:35
  Well, I joined an incubator, No cash, just ideas, So I could get
• 10:42
  ideas from other founders and from mentors.
• 10:48
  Then I joined an an accelerator program that did give you a
• 10:54
  little bit of cash, but also helped you really think through
• 10:58
  how to take an idea that was not tech and turned it into
• 11:01
  something that was tech. At that point I did a lot of
• 11:05
  accelerated and a lot of incubators because being getting
• 11:08
  that access to other founders was really important to me.
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  And I live in the the greatest city in the world, New York
• 11:13
  City. So I unfortunately had access to
• 11:15
  all of these really great programs.
• 11:19
  So I still remember I was really frustrated.
• 11:22
  I had tried everything. It felt like I was, you know,
• 11:26
  shooting professional videos. I was figuring out, you know, if
• 11:31
  audio could work. I was trying to use other
• 11:34
  learning management systems to sort of house my content.
• 11:37
  I thought I was maybe just building a content business.
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  And then remember, you know, in parallel with this, I'm also
• 11:45
  just like paying rent with this consulting business, right?
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  And so I had access to hundreds and hundreds of working people
• 11:55
  who are looking to learn English and I and I, so I would use them
• 12:00
  to, to kind of get feedback, right?
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  And. On the ideas that you.
• 12:06
  Were build with them, I'd say, hey, what do you think?
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  You know, I speak Spanish and and the majority of our students
• 12:11
  were Spanish speaking. So I was able to connect with
• 12:14
  them and say, what do you think? What feels good?
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  You know what works what, what fits into your life with second
• 12:20
  jobs and kids and commutes and all these things.
• 12:22
  I mean, what you're describing so far sounds pretty incredible,
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  right? You're in the greatest city in
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  the world, as you called it, New York City.
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  So you've got access to all these other great
• 12:30
  entrepreneurial minds. They're able to give you
• 12:32
  feedback. And then the other part that I
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  think a lot of people miss in their startups is this idea of
• 12:39
  sort of field testing, right? It's like they sort of do it in
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  a bubble. Like I, I think I understand the
• 12:43
  problem. I'm just going to go solve it,
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  but without getting feedback from the people who would
• 12:48
  actually be using it. But now you've got hundreds of
• 12:50
  people that you can do that with.
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  All right, let's let's hear where this goes.
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  Right, you know, and not, don't overblow it.
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  You know, I feel like so many people will say, well, I'm going
• 13:01
  to build an app and it's like, OK, well, the, the app is just
• 13:04
  the delivery mechanism, but what's the idea?
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  What's the experience? You know, what problem are you
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  trying to solve? So at this point I knew I needed
• 13:13
  to deliver quick lessons to individuals who are working.
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  I remember it was a Saturday, I was sitting in my apartment.
• 13:25
  I was very frustrated. And at that point it, I thought,
• 13:28
  I've just got to give up. You know, I've spent over a year
• 13:30
  on this thing trying to figure it out and I can't figure it
• 13:34
  out. Maybe I'm just not cut out for
• 13:36
  this. And I thought I'm going to give
• 13:39
  it one more shot. So I created this really quick
• 13:43
  video in Canva or something. I can't even remember.
• 13:47
  It was like me, you know, pronouncing the English alphabet
• 13:52
  with like a voice over over some visual.
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  And then I made a quick quiz on Google Forms and I texted it out
• 14:00
  to all of our students on WhatsApp and 80% of them
• 14:07
  responded and, and watched the video and took the quiz.
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  And that was it. I had real, I realized very
• 14:14
  quickly that I was just, it was, I wasn't building a content
• 14:17
  business. I was building a business that
• 14:19
  was trying to deliver training that was accessible to
• 14:22
  individuals who didn't have access to computers and maybe
• 14:27
  didn't have access to cell phones that could download an
• 14:30
  app at the time, you know, this was 20/14/2014, you know.
• 14:37
  'Cause I was gonna ask. You've got, you know, stuff like
• 14:39
  Duolingo. Oh yeah, now it's.
• 14:42
  Now it's different. Back then it was a different
• 14:45
  story, OK, and. So SMS and WhatsApp, you know.
• 14:49
  So you send out this quiz, this video, this quiz via text
• 14:53
  message, and 80% of the people not only watch the video but
• 14:58
  take the quiz, which is just unheard of.
• 15:01
  Yeah. And so how did you go from there
• 15:03
  into OK, so now, OK, now I've got this idea like, and it's a
• 15:08
  it's relatively simple framework.
• 15:10
  How did you get people to pay for it?
• 15:11
  Really simple. Well, remember, we'd already had
• 15:15
  paying customers. They were restaurants in New
• 15:17
  York City who were. So right, it was the restaurants
• 15:21
  that were paying for this service.
• 15:23
  You didn't have to get all the no and.
• 15:28
  We still to this date don't it, it's always an employer
• 15:31
  sponsored program. Now obviously Opus is a very
• 15:34
  different company than ESL works was, but at the time it was
• 15:36
  really important from an impact perspective that the pitch
• 15:40
  wasn't well, your employees pay for this.
• 15:42
  It's this is actually going to help you build a Better Business
• 15:46
  by offering work specific English training to your team.
• 15:52
  So we didn't really pitch it that much, to be honest.
• 15:56
  We just sort of slipped it into our curriculum.
• 15:59
  And so we would, you know, send weekly videos.
• 16:03
  And then it was daily videos, and then it was daily quizzes.
• 16:07
  And then it was sending audio files that were.
• 16:11
  And then it was asking the students to send us audio files.
• 16:14
  And then it was us pretending that we were robots grading
• 16:17
  their audio files. Just so you see more high tech
• 16:22
  than you actually were or? Exactly.
• 16:24
  I, I, I promise you, we had no coders for many years.
• 16:28
  It was just teachers who were responding to students.
• 16:31
  But it, it was really about that, that idea of just in time
• 16:35
  training. It was about learning in the
• 16:38
  flow of life and of work and being responsive to the needs of
• 16:43
  students based on what their personal preferences were.
• 16:45
  You know, we had some learners who were really active, others
• 16:49
  who could only respond once a week.
• 16:51
  And we didn't really try to put everybody into the same mold.
• 16:55
  Instead, we said, well, let's try to flex this depending on
• 16:59
  what people want. So yeah, that was at least two
• 17:06
  years of developing that prototype, and then it must have
• 17:11
  been 2017 at that point. So this is like, you know, my,
• 17:18
  my dad dying was like a big catalyst for me.
• 17:21
  And that was in 2013. And everything sort of happened
• 17:24
  very fast that year. And then those four years was
• 17:28
  really kind of growing ESL works into this kind of blended tech
• 17:34
  company. You know, that was kind of a
• 17:36
  fake tech company at the time. Anyway.
• 17:38
  I, I actually did pitch for investment with a big New York
• 17:44
  City accelerator, got in, got our first big investment and
• 17:51
  that was really where things took off.
• 17:54
  I hired our first engineer. We really tried to figure out,
• 17:59
  you know, what's the kind of infrastructure behind this and
• 18:02
  how are we actually going to serve.
• 18:05
  You know, at that time we were just focused on individuals who
• 18:09
  are learning English. So it was a, you know, a big
• 18:12
  market, but very different than what we serve today at Opus.
• 18:18
  And that was, you know, it, it didn't take long once you, once
• 18:22
  you have an engineer, it didn't take long to figure out how to
• 18:25
  scale it and really get it out into the world.
• 18:27
  And at that point, it was just, OK, let's figure out how to
• 18:30
  package this and sell it to employers knowing that there was
• 18:32
  a a great need for it. So did ESL works sort of morph
• 18:38
  into Opus? Like, did you sort of wind down
• 18:41
  ESL works as you were spinning up Opus or does ESL works still
• 18:45
  live on today? No, ES Alworks does not live on
• 18:48
  today. What happened was that in 2019
• 18:55
  we were really ready to to take off.
• 18:59
  I was raising my first round of capital of a precede round, you
• 19:04
  know, Angel investors and 1, you know, New York City, BC Fund.
• 19:09
  And so come December, I think we we really were starting to like
• 19:16
  turn the corner on this fundraise again.
• 19:18
  Like I had never fundraised in my life.
• 19:19
  I didn't know what I was doing. And crazy to think that that's
• 19:23
  2019 and how far we've come. Got a term sheet March of 2019
• 19:33
  or 2020. Excuse me.
• 19:36
  Yeah. So you know what's happening
• 19:37
  next? COVID hit at that point, I had
• 19:42
  1/4 of $1,000,000 in the bank just from our own customers.
• 19:45
  No, no VC funding at that point. A term sheet in my hand with,
• 19:51
  you know, investors who fortunately are still investors
• 19:54
  today who believed in US and said we're not going to like
• 19:57
  pull our terms. We're not going to pull our
• 19:58
  cash. We're going to stick by you.
• 20:01
  But every other investor backed out.
• 20:06
  At the same time, frankly, I was thinking about this funding, but
• 20:09
  I was also just thinking about the world possibly coming to an
• 20:12
  end. We all felt that way.
• 20:13
  We didn't know what was going to happen next.
• 20:15
  I was trapped in my New York apt.
• 20:18
  I called all of our customers and I said, yeah, I, I know we
• 20:22
  can't be super helpful right now.
• 20:23
  I know ESL isn't what you need in this time of, of strife and,
• 20:28
  and struggle. And they said no, but you're the
• 20:31
  only one who can reach our people.
• 20:34
  Remember, at this point, restaurants were open,
• 20:37
  businesses with frontline teams were open.
• 20:40
  And all of these legacy systems, you know, of which many
• 20:46
  businesses in America are still using, use e-mail as a primary
• 20:49
  means to access people. Well, I can tell you from
• 20:54
  experience, having been a manager of many of these
• 20:56
  businesses, no employee checks their e-mail.
• 20:59
  Those are burner emails that are used to log into those systems
• 21:04
  and they never checked them again.
• 21:06
  But we had everyone's phone numbers.
• 21:08
  So they said, can you help? We, we just need people's phone
• 21:13
  numbers and you have the most up to date.
• 21:16
  That sprung an idea where we said, well, well, let us help by
• 21:20
  at least delivering like notifications to your team about
• 21:23
  updates on COVID and and how to stay safe while they're working.
• 21:27
  So I actually pivoted the entire business.
• 21:29
  I called an investor. I said I need help.
• 21:37
  He said, you know, I'm all in, what do you need?
• 21:41
  And, and I said, I don't need money right now, I need people.
• 21:45
  At that point, he had actually just sold his business, which
• 21:49
  meant he had a lot of engineers who needed a job.
• 21:53
  And so they, I, I brought on, you know, 5-6 volunteer
• 22:00
  engineers to help me sunset ESL works and build a free public
• 22:06
  initiative that was called Stop COVID.
• 22:08
  We delivered SMS and WhatsApp based COVID safety training and
• 22:13
  notifications translated into 3 languages and that.
• 22:19
  Spanish and. Spanish, Portuguese, French and
• 22:25
  English, all SMS based all what we, we use kind of the same
• 22:29
  idea. And remember, like at this
• 22:33
  point, what's going on in my head is I'm just going to see
• 22:38
  what happens here. The world's on fire, you know,
• 22:42
  let, let's see what we can do to at least help out.
• 22:45
  And meanwhile, I have this kind of like spark of an idea,
• 22:48
  thinking, well, if this works, maybe we've got something.
• 22:52
  We ended up growing from zero to 20,000 users in a matter of
• 22:56
  weeks. And, and that was all of the
• 22:59
  validation that we needed to build something different and
• 23:02
  bigger that was really impacting all 110 million Americans who
• 23:06
  don't sit at a desk all day. So ESL works in a sense was dead
• 23:12
  within, you know, a night. And we ended up getting funding
• 23:19
  with that Sprint and a couple months later we came out to
• 23:23
  market with Opus. So we obviously don't do COVID
• 23:27
  safety training or ESL today, but but the makings of that were
• 23:32
  were in those really tense moments during the the early
• 23:35
  days of COVID. That this is fascinating to me
• 23:38
  because and, and I want to get your take on this, Rachel.
• 23:41
  You know, as somebody who has been through this, you know, as
• 23:46
  founders, as entrepreneurs, we often times fall to the
• 23:52
  distraction of shiny object syndrome.
• 23:55
  I've got another idea over here, another great idea over here and
• 23:58
  you know it, it's important that you stay focused so that you
• 24:02
  can, you know, get one good idea really going and off the ground.
• 24:07
  And so I'm always fascinated to talk to people who have ignored
• 24:13
  that advice to stay focused on one thing and they have gone
• 24:17
  after something else. I think we, we call it a pivot
• 24:21
  when it works. We call it a distraction when it
• 24:24
  doesn't, right? Yes.
• 24:26
  And I think in your case, like there was almost no option, like
• 24:31
  you had to pivot. It wasn't like you were getting
• 24:34
  distracted. It was like COVID crisis.
• 24:38
  What do we do? Was there any thought to you to
• 24:41
  just stay the course and eventually the world will come
• 24:44
  back to normal? Or were you like?
• 24:45
  No, no, not not a thought for you.
• 24:49
  Not a bit. I literally had nothing to lose
• 24:55
  at this point and I, I really didn't give it a second thought.
• 25:02
  It also gave me something to work on, you know, and I've
• 25:06
  always found a lot of calm and hard work.
• 25:15
  I know it might sound antithetical, but, you know, I
• 25:19
  grew up with two parents who I witnessed working very hard,
• 25:23
  long days. And that gave me a sense of
• 25:28
  security as a kid. And so for me, it was, I'm going
• 25:34
  to kind of psychologically bury myself in this thing right now
• 25:38
  because I don't know what else to do in the world.
• 25:41
  You know, I can't. I can't do anything at this
• 25:44
  point except build and build and build.
• 25:48
  And so those are some of the longest days I I had it was
• 25:52
  waking up at six or seven. It was working until midnight
• 25:56
  building this thing and I found so much calm and, and solace in
• 26:04
  it to the, to the extent where frankly, like today, I'm
• 26:08
  actually kind of reeling from that because I never actually
• 26:11
  like lived in the anxiety of COVID.
• 26:13
  I sort of just bypassed it all together.
• 26:18
  Because you were just, I don't know, sort of put yourself in
• 26:21
  this bubble of like laser focused on making this pivot.
• 26:24
  Yeah, and, and I didn't like take a moment to kind of feel
• 26:28
  what I was feeling at that time. I was just like, I'm going to
• 26:31
  build this thing and I'm going to get through this and I'm
• 26:33
  going to help other people. And, and when you're kind of
• 26:37
  sucked into that vortex and you're fortunate enough that an
• 26:42
  idea works it, it's very hard to get out of it, obviously.
• 26:46
  And, and I, and we're still in it today.
• 26:48
  You know, it's five years later and Opus is very big and very
• 26:51
  different. But to answer your questions
• 26:56
  concisely, no I I had. There was no other thought in my
• 27:00
  mind. Besides, this is exactly what
• 27:02
  you need to do right now. So in the short term, you turned
• 27:06
  it into basically a communication platform to get
• 27:09
  across COVID training updates because things were changing
• 27:13
  every day. But you already had it in your
• 27:15
  mind, hey, we're, we're building something that once COVID
• 27:20
  hopefully passes, at the time, nobody really knew what was
• 27:23
  going to happen, that I've got something in which I can deliver
• 27:27
  more communication, more training.
• 27:28
  Is that what was percolating in the moment?
• 27:31
  Yeah, because remember the the what we knew that other people
• 27:36
  didn't at the time was that the core problem wasn't content,
• 27:41
  which is what a lot of people were thinking, you know, or, or
• 27:46
  delivery mechanisms. It was this concept of
• 27:48
  accessibility that was the problem.
• 27:51
  No one was saying, but what is it like for people to stand on
• 27:54
  their feet all day and be distracted because they're
• 27:59
  thinking about picking up their kids at the end of school and
• 28:01
  not being charged by the daycare and having to navigate the New
• 28:04
  York City subway system? At the time, we were only in New
• 28:07
  York and worrying about their next paycheck and trying not to
• 28:13
  be late for their third job. You know, when you put into
• 28:18
  account all of these different factors, that concept of
• 28:22
  accessibility gets really big and it's a very hard problem to
• 28:26
  solve. And it's really not as simple as
• 28:28
  I'm going to build an app it, it has so much to do with every
• 28:34
  nuance. Things like, you know, I'm kind
• 28:38
  of fast forwarding to Opus today, but you know, if somebody
• 28:42
  didn't graduate high school and maybe, you know, it is kind of
• 28:48
  uncomfortable and learning environments, how do you make
• 28:51
  that environment comfortable for them?
• 28:52
  If somebody maybe can't see very well and prefers to listen to
• 28:58
  their training? If someone actually does want to
• 29:01
  switch back and forth between, you know, one language, you
• 29:06
  know, Turkish and English, depending on how they're feeling
• 29:11
  that day. If someone wants to, you know, I
• 29:14
  could go on and on and on, but the point is, is that this
• 29:18
  concept of accessibility was what I was obsessed with them
• 29:22
  and still what we're obsessed, obsessed with today at Opus.
• 29:25
  And I don't mean by the kind of standards of, you know, like ADA
• 29:32
  necessarily. I mean about like the standards
• 29:34
  of the working American adults. And so the, the makings of Opus
• 29:40
  as it is today, we're really founded in that concept of
• 29:43
  accessibility and kind of erasing everything else and
• 29:46
  saying all there's 1700 other systems that are trying to
• 29:50
  deliver communication and and training and they've got it all
• 29:55
  wrong. So put to put it bluntly, we
• 29:59
  just decided to burn everything to the ground and start over
• 30:01
  because we couldn't take any inspiration from thing from any
• 30:06
  other platform, you know? So I understand at least part of
• 30:09
  what you're talking about here. You're like, hey, none of these
• 30:14
  frontline workers are checking their e-mail address.
• 30:17
  That's just not how they communicate.
• 30:19
  They're not in their inbox text message.
• 30:21
  Absolutely. So that's going to be part of
• 30:24
  how we're sending out information, updates, getting
• 30:27
  them to come into our app. Aside from that, Rachel, what
• 30:32
  else is it or was it that all the other delivery platforms
• 30:37
  were getting wrong that you guys figured out the?
• 30:42
  Same thing they're still getting wrong today, which is you have
• 30:47
  to be eagle eyed on your end user.
• 30:50
  And there's all of these different platforms are focused
• 30:54
  on everyone, the majority of whom are desk workers and that
• 31:00
  only makes up 20% of Americans. And So what we have found and
• 31:06
  frankly, what I know to be true based on my own experience and
• 31:09
  in management positions, you know, and in positions myself
• 31:15
  being a front line team member, is that all of these platforms
• 31:19
  were built on for desktop users and English only and e-mail only
• 31:23
  users. And then they were repurposed
• 31:27
  for the the desk list worker, which makes no sense.
• 31:33
  And so some of the other things that really make Opus as it is
• 31:40
  today different is that Opus is really meant to be a real time
• 31:47
  learning platform or just in time learning platform.
• 31:50
  And there's a big, I think there's an important component
• 31:53
  here. A lot of people hear that and
• 31:54
  they think, oh, micro training, you know, just like Duolingo.
• 31:58
  But if you use that as an example, Duolingo is still
• 32:02
  helping you build toward an immense goal of being fluent in
• 32:06
  another language. So I think micro training is
• 32:09
  sort of a misnomer. This is really about how do you
• 32:12
  get the right information to the right person at the right time
• 32:15
  in their employee life cycle. One example of that might be,
• 32:19
  you know, a new hire getting up to speed within three days so
• 32:23
  that she can get to work and feel confident in what she's
• 32:25
  doing in, you know, a retail environment.
• 32:29
  Or maybe it's somebody who needs to learn all of the Christmas
• 32:32
  specials in a week so that they can get ready for Black Friday,
• 32:37
  you know, at Best Buy or what have you.
• 32:40
  So. And so sorry to cut you off,
• 32:43
  Rachel, I'm trying to wrap my head around this.
• 32:45
  So in that retail environment, your platform Opus is delivering
• 32:50
  training, whether it's audio, video, however, you guys have
• 32:53
  whatever options you've made available.
• 32:56
  And then are you also quizzing that employee kind of borrowing
• 32:59
  from what you guys were doing at ESL works to sort of verify
• 33:03
  that, OK, they paid attention to that material.
• 33:05
  It seems like they've got a command of it.
• 33:08
  Yeah. So from an approach standpoint,
• 33:09
  there's a couple of things to know about Opus.
• 33:12
  The first is that Opus is a training platform that delivers
• 33:17
  training. Now we don't use SMS and
• 33:19
  WhatsApp. Now we actually have an app and
• 33:22
  lots of engineers who helped build it, but Opus delivers a
• 33:29
  shift level learning to employees at the right time in a
• 33:36
  sort of kind of like TikTok or social media style learning
• 33:39
  experience. So it's.
• 33:40
  Short. Format.
• 33:41
  Short format. It can be stacked up so it's
• 33:44
  longer form, but the point is, is that you're learning in these
• 33:47
  kind of moments, so you can take what you learned back to work
• 33:50
  well. What makes Opus really special
• 33:53
  is that we never make the promise to employers that we're
• 33:56
  going to digitize all of their learning and digitize all of
• 33:59
  their, you know, employee experience because that's what
• 34:03
  we know that's different, is that real learning happens on
• 34:07
  the job when you're in the front line.
• 34:10
  It doesn't happen sitting in front of a computer.
• 34:12
  So if you are working in a manufacturing plant or in a car
• 34:17
  wash or in a restaurant, the best learning happens shoulder
• 34:20
  to shoulder. So we've actually developed
• 34:22
  technology that can help you track those shoulder to shoulder
• 34:25
  moments. The good stuff, right?
• 34:27
  The stuff where I need to know where, when, how my team lead is
• 34:33
  training my employee on how to fry the French fries and I need
• 34:36
  to track how well they're doing both parties.
• 34:41
  So we have a, a, a feature called skill validation or check
• 34:45
  insurance that is a, a component that requires that a training
• 34:51
  lead or a team leader, whoever manager is grading an employee
• 34:55
  on the physical skill that they're doing on the job.
• 34:59
  And all of that gets pushed upstream to the employer so they
• 35:01
  can understand the efficacy of their training overall, not just
• 35:04
  who's completing that quiz. Like, of course we do quizzes,
• 35:07
  but that's not really the meat of of how you understand how
• 35:10
  your team is actually performing.
• 35:12
  And so are people pulling out their phones during their shifts
• 35:15
  to take some of these trainings. Most of the time it's a great
• 35:19
  question. Most of the time our customers
• 35:22
  are asking employees to take a short training at the start of
• 35:27
  their shift. So, you know, taking that micro
• 35:30
  lesson so they can apply that lesson on the job immediately.
• 35:35
  And then it's actually the team lead or the manager who's using
• 35:38
  their phone to grade the employee.
• 35:40
  So really the the hourly employee is at not spending a
• 35:45
  ton of time on their phone. They're spending just enough
• 35:47
  time to pick up a new piece of information and then apply it to
• 35:50
  their their day's work. OK.
• 35:54
  So we've talked about the retail use case.
• 35:56
  We've talked a little bit about like a AQSR use case, you know,
• 36:00
  are they learning how to do the fries correctly?
• 36:04
  What are some other industries that you guys are serving?
• 36:07
  We also work with universities dining services.
• 36:11
  So if you're, you know, a student right now at Vanderbilt
• 36:14
  University or UMass Amherst or RISD, we are training the
• 36:19
  individuals who are working the the student workers and also
• 36:24
  that the year round workers who are at universities.
• 36:29
  We work in a lot of consumer services brands.
• 36:34
  So things ranging from fitness brands, you know, gyms to car
• 36:40
  washes to facility services companies.
• 36:46
  We work in lots of restaurants, not just QSRS, but you know some
• 36:51
  brands that you probably know well like Smashburger and Blaze
• 36:55
  Pizza, Jose Andres Group. So our sweet spot at Opus is
• 37:00
  really any company that employs a large distributed or an hourly
• 37:07
  workforce. I'm going to assume that company
• 37:12
  needs to be of a certain size for disengagement to make sense,
• 37:16
  right? I've got a little diner with,
• 37:19
  you know, 8 employees. Sort of the setup cost of
• 37:22
  getting that training into your system and delivered to them
• 37:25
  probably doesn't make sense. What what's kind of the the
• 37:29
  ideal size client for you? Yeah, for us, you have to think
• 37:34
  about the the use case for training and really the reality
• 37:37
  is when you are, and I lived this as a small business owner
• 37:40
  in the early days, usually it's the owner who's training her
• 37:44
  team. So you don't really need
• 37:46
  technology for training. So at a certain point what we've
• 37:50
  really found is it's the multi unit groups, you know, anywhere
• 37:53
  from 5 to 5000 units, those the folks who really need a system,
• 37:59
  a a piece of technology to help them deliver on that training.
• 38:05
  Anything before that, you know? It's usually kind of managed by,
• 38:08
  for the same reason that a schedule is probably still on a
• 38:10
  spreadsheet, you know? So when during your sales
• 38:16
  process, who is it that you're traditionally talking to within
• 38:19
  the organization? Usually, so I'm sure everyone
• 38:22
  out there is thinking we're talking to HR, we only talk to
• 38:25
  Co OS and operations managers, VPS of operations, of course
• 38:30
  training operation, you know training leaders.
• 38:33
  Opus is really the central nervous system of these
• 38:35
  businesses. Training touches every
• 38:39
  department from marketing to operations to sales, etcetera.
• 38:45
  And so it's really important that we're having that
• 38:47
  conversation with the COO because we can actually show
• 38:50
  that OPUS can have an impact financially on these businesses,
• 38:53
  saving them a lot of money in labor costs, but also in things
• 38:58
  as simple as just eliminating paper printing.
• 39:05
  So the the operation side is, is who we're we're selling to.
• 39:13
  And what's the biggest hurdle for you to overcome in that
• 39:18
  process? Like where do you get pushback
• 39:20
  from folks? What's the the piece that they
• 39:21
  need help kind of understanding? On the sales side in particular,
• 39:30
  you know, for the first time, it's so funny, I, I, I have to
• 39:34
  really spend time kind of reminding our team that what we
• 39:40
  are doing is very different than what's out there, even though we
• 39:43
  consider it just commonplace. You know, even you and I,
• 39:46
  Anthony, and we're like, yeah, of course it's obvious to do it
• 39:48
  on your phone. It's not so obvious to the the
• 39:52
  hundreds of thousands of business businesses in the
• 39:56
  United States. So some of that comes around to.
• 40:01
  Leaders understanding that their team needs to learn in a
• 40:04
  different way, but not quite being able to envision how that
• 40:08
  works. Like what you're telling me my
• 40:09
  team has to use their phone. I've been telling them not to
• 40:11
  use their phone for five years. Well, when you say listen,
• 40:16
  they're actually already using their phone.
• 40:18
  They're checking their schedule. They're checking that text
• 40:20
  message you sent them. You know, they're used to using
• 40:23
  their phone in order to interact with work.
• 40:25
  You just had to have to set into best practice so that they can
• 40:30
  sort of learn more comfortably. One of the biggest mistakes that
• 40:33
  an employer can make is sending someone home to train.
• 40:36
  It's a it's a complete waste of money.
• 40:38
  Not only is it, it's not fully lawful because federal law
• 40:43
  states that you have to pay your employees to train them, but
• 40:49
  it's also just a function of that kind of blended learning
• 40:52
  experience that you and I were talking about.
• 40:54
  Learning on the job means that you have a better outcome for
• 40:58
  training. So with these kind of micro
• 41:01
  moments on your phone, you get 2 things with Opus.
• 41:05
  The first is I know and trust that my team is going to learn
• 41:09
  this thing because it's in a format that that is accessible
• 41:12
  to them in the language that they prefer, in a, in a modality
• 41:17
  that they prefer. And at the same time, I know
• 41:21
  that it's not going to cut into my labor costs.
• 41:24
  So they're not going to sit around and watch a 90 minute
• 41:27
  video and then get to work. They're going to take a 5 minute
• 41:29
  lesson and then get to work. It's very different than what
• 41:32
  the way I was learning, learning, you know, 1520 years
• 41:36
  ago in an office with like cobwebs and a broomstick on the
• 41:43
  on the left hand side. It's just not feasible anymore.
• 41:48
  So I want to talk about data for a second and I'm thinking we've
• 41:51
  got sort of two different lines of questions here.
• 41:55
  During the sales process, what kind of data can you share with
• 42:02
  your prospect to say, hey, this is making, I don't know, a, a
• 42:05
  difference in work efficiency or economic output or reducing
• 42:10
  turnover or whatever it is. How do you paint that picture
• 42:14
  with numbers for them? Well, I'll start by saying it
• 42:17
  depends on what problems they're trying to solve.
• 42:19
  I think the age-old response is, well, how are you reducing
• 42:23
  turnover? I never have those conversations
• 42:24
  with employers because The Dirty little secret is none of them
• 42:28
  are actually tracking it. Name any hourly business, hourly
• 42:34
  business who employs hourly workers in the United States and
• 42:38
  I guarantee you that they are not tracking all of their
• 42:41
  turnover. They're either tracking the
• 42:43
  turnover of their managers and not their frontline teams, or
• 42:46
  maybe they're tracking the frontline teams.
• 42:47
  They're only tracking the folks after they've completed their
• 42:50
  first 90 days because the turnover in the 1st 90 is so
• 42:53
  high. So we call those ghost
• 42:55
  employees, the employees who never really get tracked.
• 42:59
  So what we really focus on is where are the employers actually
• 43:02
  benchmarking today? And a lot of it is how can I
• 43:07
  save time, save money or make money.
• 43:10
  So I'll tell you a story to kind of articulate some of the things
• 43:14
  that some of the the ROI that we can get.
• 43:18
  I was talking to you about real time learning with Opus.
• 43:22
  One of the things that we do that's really special is Opus
• 43:24
  integrates with 50 different platforms and more coming in
• 43:28
  2026 that can help you train your team in response to what's
• 43:33
  happening in your business. So we work with a large fried
• 43:36
  chicken brand called Big Chicken, Shaquille O'neal's
• 43:39
  fried chicken brands and great chicken.
• 43:43
  And but they had an issue. Their issue was order accuracy
• 43:49
  and more specifically, the Shack sauce wasn't making it into the
• 43:53
  bag when delivery orders were going out.
• 43:56
  Well, that's actually a big deal for a a fried chicken brand.
• 43:59
  If the sauce doesn't get with the the chicken, then you're
• 44:03
  losing the whole experience. So they said we need to solve
• 44:07
  this. So what we did is we integrated
• 44:10
  with their customer feedback platform called Ovation, but we
• 44:14
  can hook into Google, Yelp, what have you.
• 44:17
  We were able to use our AI in order to analyze that data,
• 44:21
  identify which locations had the issue, what in particular the
• 44:25
  issue was, to kind of validate what they thought the issue was
• 44:29
  and then deploy a recommended training.
• 44:32
  As a result of that, within 30 days, they reduce this accuracy
• 44:36
  issue by 70%. So this is about focusing on the
• 44:41
  immediate issue that the employer has and being able to
• 44:45
  reduce it as quickly as possible.
• 44:47
  I have another customer, Bahama Box, it's 116 unit shaved ice
• 44:52
  brand. And in Texas, they're really
• 44:55
  focused on growth and it's important to them that they're
• 44:57
  attracting more franchisees. Well, for anyone who's
• 45:01
  listening, if you're a franchise, you know this.
• 45:04
  If you're not, you don't. Franchisees are business owners
• 45:08
  and they're looking for efficiencies and profits.
• 45:10
  So Bahama Bucks is a is a very efficient business, but they
• 45:14
  wanted to show that they could decrease new higher ramp time
• 45:18
  because the faster, you know, a 1617 year old can get out on the
• 45:22
  floor and make shaved ice, the more efficient that business is,
• 45:26
  right? Less training time, less
• 45:29
  overhead because I don't have two people serving a customer, I
• 45:33
  have one person serving a customer.
• 45:36
  You kind of removed that trainer.
• 45:38
  We were able to reduce their new hire ramp time by 25%.
• 45:41
  So this is, you see where I'm getting at.
• 45:44
  We're like we're really focused on that kind of real time
• 45:48
  business problem and a real time training solution and linking
• 45:52
  those two together to solve it specific to that business.
• 45:58
  Are there other, are there ever times where you're working with
• 46:02
  a client or talking about working with somebody and they
• 46:06
  like the idea of what you guys are doing, but maybe they don't
• 46:11
  know specifically where their issues are?
• 46:13
  Like the two examples that you gave me there, it was like they
• 46:17
  came to you with a very specific problem and said, you know, how
• 46:20
  can you help us? Yeah.
• 46:23
  That's a lot of what's next with Opus, and that's what I'm really
• 46:26
  excited about in the coming year.
• 46:28
  We've always been an AI native platform because we have, we
• 46:34
  originally used it five years ago for proprietary translation
• 46:36
  technology, then we used it for content development.
• 46:42
  We don't have, unlike other systems, we don't have a big old
• 46:44
  library of stuff. AI can do a lot to help you
• 46:50
  deliver, build and deliver training quickly.
• 46:54
  We have our own instructional design assistant and AI agent
• 46:57
  that's kind of helping give you tips on how to build better
• 47:00
  training. And then what I just described
• 47:04
  around AI anomaly detection and intervention.
• 47:08
  Our intention is to platform on two other systems like a point
• 47:13
  of sale system, a scheduling system, your secret shopper
• 47:17
  program, you, your insurance claims, you know, platform to be
• 47:23
  able to pull in that information when you need it, identify the
• 47:27
  issue automatically issue a targeted, you know,
• 47:33
  recommendation for you that you can deploy again using AI.
• 47:37
  So, and I want to mention this because there's also something,
• 47:42
  there's a whole other issue in these businesses and these
• 47:44
  issues kind of compound. Most of these businesses, multi
• 47:49
  unit operators in the United States have one, maybe 2
• 47:54
  trainers if they're lucky. These are not, these are 45600
• 48:00
  unit businesses. They don't have training teams
• 48:03
  like Walmart, you know where they've got like one trainer for
• 48:07
  every five locations. These are businesses that are
• 48:10
  big and emerging but are not increasing their training
• 48:14
  overhead as they scale. So if you just imagine, you know
• 48:22
  Lucy the trainer is really strapped for time.
• 48:25
  She doesn't have time to be thinking ahead.
• 48:29
  So you need to put Lucy in a position where she can, which is
• 48:32
  what AI can help support. Interesting.
• 48:36
  And so when you go into these multi unit groups like a like a
• 48:39
  restaurant, I'm going to assume it's the franchise war that
• 48:42
  becomes your client and they deploy it out.
• 48:45
  Is there ever like a a multi unit franchise owner who comes
• 48:50
  to you and says I want to put this in for my 50 McDonald's?
• 48:54
  Yeah, yeah. We, we work with large multi
• 48:57
  unit franchisees as well. We work with a a large Five Guys
• 49:00
  franchise called Five Guys or called out life's Food.
• 49:03
  Excuse me. It's the ones that are large
• 49:07
  enough that they're already kind of operating like their own
• 49:09
  multi unit business as well. But 95% of the time we're
• 49:14
  working directly with the franchisor that the reason for
• 49:18
  that is one of the most important components of
• 49:24
  franchising is brand standards. And what's the link between
• 49:29
  brand standards and execution training?
• 49:32
  So franchisors will that you know Opus and not just recommend
• 49:40
  it to franchisees, they will mandate it for their
• 49:42
  franchisees. So when we first started
• 49:45
  talking, it was clear to me, I think I'm correct on this, that
• 49:50
  you guys in the early days you were making all the training
• 49:52
  when it was about COVID or whatever else.
• 49:55
  Are you, you know, Fast forward several years and Opus is
• 49:58
  something very different today. Are you still producing all of
• 50:02
  the training content or do your clients help with that or do
• 50:04
  they do most of it? They do all of it and it's all
• 50:07
  with AI. The, I think long gone are the
• 50:16
  days of big libraries of content.
• 50:19
  Frankly, my view of the world is that I don't, I think modules,
• 50:24
  courses, lessons, that format will be gone in five years.
• 50:27
  The the way that people actually learn on the job is through
• 50:31
  conversation. So a lot of what we're evolving
• 50:36
  into is can a training manager develop content using our AI?
• 50:41
  Yes, they can. But sometimes training by simply
• 50:46
  chatting in a question, we have an AI agent as well chatting in
• 50:50
  a question and getting it answered in the moment quickly.
• 50:52
  So you can apply that information and keep moving.
• 50:56
  So that's kind of my long winded answer of of no, because it's
• 51:02
  not needed. And I think that's different
• 51:04
  than other platforms that are out there.
• 51:06
  We don't really make big bets on on big libraries.
• 51:09
  So when you say that your clients are developing all the
• 51:12
  training, they're doing it with AI, what does that look like
• 51:15
  specifically? I'm familiar with Chat GPTI go
• 51:18
  in and I ask questions, you know, different platform.
• 51:20
  I can make images, you know, now there's like short form video
• 51:24
  that I can create with AI tools like how are most of your
• 51:28
  clients actually doing? And they're saying, Hey, let me
• 51:30
  give you, you know, a paragraph on what our issue is and make a
• 51:36
  script. Is it making a video?
• 51:38
  Is it making a slideshow? What?
• 51:40
  What's it producing? It's producing whatever they'd
• 51:44
  like. The magic of this is that when
• 51:49
  you have all of these kind of libraries, none of that content
• 51:52
  is personalized to to the brand or to the needs of that specific
• 51:57
  use case. So in our case, a training
• 52:01
  manager can upload a, a standard operating procedure, for
• 52:06
  example, you know, forklift safety or what have you.
• 52:10
  She can give it a direction and say, you know, please focus on,
• 52:15
  you know, the first three steps of operating a forklift because
• 52:19
  maybe that's where the biggest issue is.
• 52:21
  She can tell it the length and the tone that she'd like.
• 52:24
  She can generate custom images specific to her brand.
• 52:28
  Maybe all of their forklifts are blue and maybe they operate them
• 52:31
  outside and not inside. She can adjust all of those
• 52:34
  images based on the needs. She can adjust the color.
• 52:39
  She can adjust the amount of quizzing.
• 52:41
  She can add a final exam. She can add a skill validation.
• 52:45
  Something that would normally take sometimes five weeks to
• 52:50
  develop can take 15 minutes now. It's mind blowing, yeah.
• 52:55
  And so it sounds like it's there's an audio track to it and
• 52:58
  there's images that go with it. Probably not so much video as
• 53:03
  most of the the video generated AI is still pretty pretty short.
• 53:07
  Better though, yeah, we're bullish on video now.
• 53:12
  I, I think you're right two years ago it was just not great.
• 53:17
  But I think we're we're already seeing the next generation of AI
• 53:25
  generated video is satisfactory to our standards to where we'll
• 53:30
  start to apply it in the coming months.
• 53:32
  So and the reason why that's important is you can deliver
• 53:38
  that kind of TikTok style learning experience.
• 53:40
  It can, you can turn it into a podcast style learning
• 53:43
  experience if you want, but video is helpful, especially if
• 53:49
  you're demonstrating something. I will say though, that most of
• 53:53
  the time we see trainers, managers, we'll just shoot a
• 53:56
  quick video on their phone and they'll upload it to Opus.
• 54:00
  You know, low production videos actually get higher view rates
• 54:04
  anyway. So our recommendation, it's most
• 54:08
  of the time like please don't hire a production company.
• 54:10
  Just like, use your phone, film it, get out there because your
• 54:14
  employees certainly don't care and you shouldn't be spending
• 54:16
  your money on that. No.
• 54:18
  OK, so I'm going to give you one of those shiny objects because
• 54:22
  I've got two boys ages 9 and 11, and like most kids their age,
• 54:27
  they don't like school. It's boring, but man, if you put
• 54:31
  a device in front of them, they'd love to, you know, watch
• 54:34
  videos and whether it's YouTube shorts or whatever.
• 54:39
  Any thoughts to take this and create?
• 54:42
  I mean, it, it's, it's just be a similar infrastructure, but it's
• 54:46
  a, you know, it's a different approach, different library,
• 54:49
  different use case, different audience.
• 54:52
  But selfishly, I want something like this for my kids.
• 54:55
  So when? When can we have it, Rachel?
• 54:59
  We've definitely thought about it, but we're not entering that
• 55:03
  territory anytime soon, unfortunately for you.
• 55:07
  But I can tell you that we will probably train your kids when
• 55:11
  they have their first job at baskin-robbins.
• 55:15
  You know, we hear this a lot. You know, 1/4 of our customers
• 55:19
  come from managers and and users referring us to a new employer,
• 55:27
  to a friend. We actually just the other day
• 55:30
  met a very large American company because the regional
• 55:36
  director's daughter is training on Opus at her first job right
• 55:42
  now. And she came home and said that
• 55:44
  she said, hey, dad, like look at this cool thing that we're doing
• 55:48
  at work to, you know, to learn how to, you know, you know,
• 55:52
  close the register or what have you.
• 55:54
  And he said I need this for my team.
• 55:57
  And his team is not a team of 16 and 17 year olds has is a team
• 56:01
  of 40 to 50 year olds who are sales managers out in the world.
• 56:06
  So for us, it's really we're, we're very focused on our
• 56:11
  mission of, of supporting working people because it for us
• 56:16
  it's really about creating a world where every frontline
• 56:18
  worker has a good job and a good job means you have more access
• 56:24
  to economic opportunity, whether that is getting a promotion or
• 56:30
  getting a raise or maybe moving on to your next job.
• 56:34
  So most of the story that we've heard so far today, Rachel, is
• 56:38
  progress up and to the right. Lots of big names that you've
• 56:41
  mentioned that you guys are getting to work with.
• 56:44
  And it's still a relatively young company.
• 56:48
  Not everything in life is all sun shines, rainbows and
• 56:51
  unicorns. What's a big challenge that
• 56:54
  you've had to overcome in your life, whether it's personal or
• 56:57
  professional? What did you learn going through
• 56:59
  that experience and how'd you get through it?
• 57:03
  Well, you know plenty, many of which I was talking about with a
• 57:10
  nice, you know, silver lining around it.
• 57:14
  But I think the one that really comes to mind is, and we didn't
• 57:19
  go too deep into this, was that losing my father?
• 57:24
  You know, that was a very sudden departure.
• 57:36
  My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer.
• 57:40
  I must have been in like April of 2013, passed away December of
• 57:46
  that year. And see when things happen that
• 57:51
  quickly, you don't even have time to to grieve while that
• 57:54
  person is sick. And I just, you know, would
• 58:01
  spend all of my money flying home to Kansas City on the
• 58:04
  weekends to, to be with him. And then I would come back to
• 58:06
  New York and, and work through the week to, to go to see him
• 58:09
  again. So I was very fortunate to be
• 58:12
  able to spend time with him in his final days.
• 58:15
  But and, and frankly, people will ask me sometimes, you know,
• 58:23
  that must have been so hard, but it was actually a really, I'm so
• 58:28
  grateful for that. I not everybody has that
• 58:33
  opportunity to spend time with a parent when they're sick.
• 58:40
  And, but I think the the real challenge was after losing him
• 58:46
  and realizing you have to kind of live all of these moments of
• 58:54
  your life without that person celebrating them with you.
• 58:57
  And so I in order to kind of grieve my father, I worked, I
• 59:03
  didn't go to therapy. I didn't do anything like that.
• 59:07
  I got, you know, an executive coach, which was kind of a form
• 59:11
  of therapy, but it was years of, of grieving and, and in many
• 59:21
  ways, like maybe not in the, the most, I mean, no grief, I think
• 59:29
  is the actual normal or kind of prescribed.
• 59:32
  It kind of depends on the person.
• 59:34
  But I still remember like I when I was working at ESL works, when
• 59:42
  I was building that business, and this is what I was telling
• 59:44
  you earlier, Anthony, that I some things, when you remember
• 59:49
  them, you don't remember what order they're coming in because
• 59:51
  they all come in at the same time.
• 59:53
  I'm just remembering now that when I first started ESL works
• 59:57
  that the kind of consulting side, I was still working full
• 1:00:00
  time in restaurants. So I was building both at the
• 1:00:03
  same time and I still remember I was so kind of immersed in ESL
• 1:00:07
  works and I was working full time opening restaurants.
• 1:00:11
  And I just remember and it was like 3 years after my dad had
• 1:00:14
  passed away, just kind of losing it one day and trying to explain
• 1:00:21
  to my boss that I was like grieving my father and him not
• 1:00:25
  really understanding. Even though it was three years
• 1:00:27
  later, it, it takes time and you have to, to live in that grief.
• 1:00:35
  And I just didn't allow that for myself.
• 1:00:37
  And I, I, you know, I'm obviously I'm out, I'm on the
• 1:00:41
  other side now, but it took a long time for me to live through
• 1:00:46
  that and to to kind of allow his death to be a part of my life.
• 1:00:53
  But I also think it's actually like that moment is a lot of
• 1:01:00
  what's like shaped my entrepreneurial spirit because I
• 1:01:04
  kind of had nothing else. I just had this thing that I was
• 1:01:07
  going to focus on and build so I could kind of zone out from,
• 1:01:13
  from this experience. So I, I think I didn't really
• 1:01:20
  let myself believe that I had it.
• 1:01:29
  I don't want to, I'm trying to be careful with my words, but I
• 1:01:35
  started out by talking about what a gift it was to like be
• 1:01:38
  able to spend time with my father.
• 1:01:39
  And so I never felt like I kind of deserved to grieve because I
• 1:01:49
  had this kind of very sweet final moment.
• 1:01:54
  You know, I was there the night my dad died.
• 1:01:56
  We were all around him, my whole family.
• 1:01:59
  You can't, I can't even just express how grateful I am for
• 1:02:04
  that. And so I left that thinking
• 1:02:07
  like, well, I got this. So I should just, you know,
• 1:02:10
  suffer through the rest. I'm not sure if that makes
• 1:02:15
  sense, but. Yeah, you're, I think what
• 1:02:18
  you're saying is you had this beautiful goodbye where you were
• 1:02:22
  with him when he took his last breath.
• 1:02:25
  And maybe that's all you could have really hoped for.
• 1:02:29
  And so now it's like back to life and suck it up.
• 1:02:33
  And, and and then, you know, you had all your work to kind of
• 1:02:37
  keep you distracted as you look back at that grieving and
• 1:02:43
  healing process. Knowing what you know now, would
• 1:02:47
  you have handled it any differently?
• 1:02:51
  Yeah, I don't, I don't think that I would have worked any
• 1:02:55
  less to be honest. But I think I would have
• 1:02:57
  prioritized therapy and talking about it because the the more
• 1:03:09
  you, the, the earlier you process it, the kind of richer
• 1:03:14
  the experience becomes. The smarter you get, the the
• 1:03:19
  wiser you get, the more connected you get with your
• 1:03:21
  family and, and friends. You know, I had no other friends
• 1:03:26
  who had lost a parent. So I had, so I felt like they
• 1:03:30
  didn't want to talk about it. You know, I was in my early 20s
• 1:03:33
  at that point. So, you know, and it wasn't
• 1:03:39
  like, oh, they don't understand grief.
• 1:03:41
  It was like, oh, they didn't lose a parent.
• 1:03:43
  And it's like a very different type of grief when you lose a
• 1:03:45
  parent, as I would imagine is when you lose, you know, a
• 1:03:50
  spouse or a child. Like these are all different
• 1:03:52
  feelings and emotions. So I think in retrospect, I
• 1:03:55
  would have trusted the relationships that I had to talk
• 1:04:00
  about it more. And I would have set aside time
• 1:04:04
  to to talk to a professional about it and and kind of walk
• 1:04:08
  through that grief with someone. Did you eventually go to
• 1:04:12
  therapy? No, but it took, you know, but
• 1:04:19
  here we are. My dad passed away in 2013.
• 1:04:23
  So 12 years later. Took a long time to get to this
• 1:04:28
  point. It's a lot of energy and emotion
• 1:04:35
  that I I spent to get to this place.
• 1:04:41
  So I think, and, and I'm like speaking to the entrepreneurs
• 1:04:44
  out there, our whole life is, you know, our whole work life
• 1:04:49
  and life life because I believe in work life integration.
• 1:04:51
  It is clocked on the kind of efficiencies that you can
• 1:04:56
  create. And sometimes you think of
• 1:04:59
  therapy as a, a waste of time or added time to your schedule, but
• 1:05:05
  actually it creates more efficiencies because you're able
• 1:05:09
  to kind of out with your thoughts and emotions and, and
• 1:05:13
  have somebody help you process that more quickly.
• 1:05:19
  We talked a little bit about some of the things that you're
• 1:05:23
  excited about for Opus coming up.
• 1:05:25
  We've got more video with AI you think is coming, not just kind
• 1:05:33
  of frontline lower waged folks using the platform like we were
• 1:05:37
  talking about in retail and QSR, but also, you know, sales
• 1:05:42
  people, you know, 40 year old men and women who are on the
• 1:05:47
  road doing their jobs. What else have we not spoken
• 1:05:51
  about today that you're really excited about for the future of
• 1:05:54
  Opus? We touched on in a little bit,
• 1:05:59
  but I what I'm really excited about regarding the future of
• 1:06:02
  Opus is #1 continuing on our mission of accessibility and
• 1:06:12
  meaningful elegant training. And two, the next word after
• 1:06:21
  accessibility is intervention. We are really obsessed with this
• 1:06:26
  concept of real time learning and we're, we've already
• 1:06:33
  pioneered this technology that can help detect the issues in
• 1:06:37
  your business and then intervene, right, But before
• 1:06:41
  that problem becomes a crisis. So I think that's really what
• 1:06:47
  the future holds for Opus and it's a lot of what we hear
• 1:06:51
  employers are thinking about right now.
• 1:06:53
  It's where can I kind of target my training to the biggest
• 1:06:56
  problem in the business and be able to correct it as quickly as
• 1:06:59
  possible. Now, do they still care about
• 1:07:02
  career development? Of course.
• 1:07:04
  Do we still offer it? Yes, But that all comes in
• 1:07:08
  parallel with having to prevent these other issues that are
• 1:07:12
  happening in the business in service of progress and
• 1:07:16
  performance and building a bench and helping people ramp more
• 1:07:21
  quickly so that they can develop in their careers.
• 1:07:26
  So that's a lot of what we're building right now for the next
• 1:07:30
  two years is, is injecting even more AI into the work that we're
• 1:07:34
  doing, connecting with more platforms, building more product
• 1:07:38
  so that we can be the central nervous system for these
• 1:07:42
  businesses. And being able to tie into these
• 1:07:44
  other products is part of how you intend to be able to detect
• 1:07:47
  the problems very early on. Yeah.
• 1:07:50
  And some of them we're going to build ourselves, but you know
• 1:07:53
  we're we're not going to be in the point of sale business.
• 1:07:55
  I don't want to be square, they do a great job, but but imagine
• 1:08:01
  if we can hook into your sales data, be able to identify that
• 1:08:06
  you know, sales are slightly down over last year.
• 1:08:10
  Pull in information from your scheduling system and identify,
• 1:08:13
  oh, you've had you have all new hires here in this location.
• 1:08:18
  You have no seasoned people who are training these individuals.
• 1:08:21
  Let's deploy a new training and let me send you a recommendation
• 1:08:24
  on better scheduling based on who is certified to teach these
• 1:08:28
  skills. So you see how it all starts to
• 1:08:30
  connect all of a sudden the things that used to take
• 1:08:33
  businesses months if not an entire fiscal year to identify
• 1:08:37
  the issue. We have a big vision of
• 1:08:41
  identifying those issues early before they become financial,
• 1:08:48
  you know, issues. Rachel, I've just got one more
• 1:08:53
  question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:08:56
  do three things. First of all, if anybody wants
• 1:08:59
  to get in touch with Rachel and Rachel, am I saying your last
• 1:09:02
  name correctly? Nemeth Nemeth, Rachel Nemeth
• 1:09:06
  NEMETH. You can find her on LinkedIn.
• 1:09:10
  You can also visit their website, which is opus dot SOOP
• 1:09:15
  USDOT, SO opus dot SO, and we'll have links to both of those in
• 1:09:20
  the show notes. And as a reminder, if you want
• 1:09:22
  to get more employees access to benefits that won't hurt them
• 1:09:26
  financially and carries a financial upside for the
• 1:09:29
  company, reach out to us at Add Back benefits.com.
• 1:09:32
  Finally, if you take just a moment to leave us a comment or
• 1:09:35
  review on your favorite podcast app, you will hold a special
• 1:09:38
  place in our hearts forever. So last question for you,
• 1:09:41
  Rachel. A year from now, what is
• 1:09:44
  something that you hope to be celebrating?
• 1:09:50
  A year from now, what is that, October 2026?
• 1:10:01
  Our 5 millionth training at Opus, we are really, I'm really
• 1:10:08
  excited about the year ahead. There's a moment in the business
• 1:10:12
  where you really can see and feel that you've caught the wave
• 1:10:19
  and we have. And I'm just really looking
• 1:10:23
  forward to the the kind of the level of impact that we can make
• 1:10:27
  over the next year. And I think we'll we'll be able
• 1:10:29
  to do it very quickly. So that's the win that I'm
• 1:10:32
  waiting for. Rachel Nemeth from Opus
• 1:10:36
  Training, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both
• 1:10:38
  your time and your story today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:10:41
  Thanks for having me. Folks, that's a wrap on another
• 1:10:44
  episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:10:46
  Thanks for learning with us today.