July 28, 2025 • 33 mins
In this episode of EdUp Learning and Development, host Holly Owens interviews Fred Thompson, founder of Thirst.io. They discuss the intersection of technology, innovation, and learning, exploring the challenges faced by L&D professionals, the importance of personalization in learning, and how AI is transforming the educational landscape. Fred shares insights on building effective teams, the future of learning, and offers valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Guest Contact Information:
___________________________________
Episode Sponsor: iSpring Solutions
🎙️ Huge thanks to our friends at iSpring Solutions for sponsoring this episode of the EdUp L&D podcast! 🙌
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the iSpring Learning Exchange Community — a vibrant space for creators, educators, and L&D pros to connect and grow.
Grateful for the support and excited to see what our community creates 💡
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi everyone, and welcome back toanother episode of Edup Learning
and Development. I'm your host, Holly Owens, and
today we're diving into the intersection of technology,
innovation, and learning with a truly inspirational guest, Fred
Thompson, founder of Thirst dot IO.
Fred's journey from software development to the world of
(00:22):
learning and development is not only fascinating, it's packed
with powerful lessons. In this episode, we explore the
real challenges L&D professionals face today, why
personalization matters more than ever, and how AI is rapidly
reshaping the educational landscape.
(00:42):
Fred also gives us a behind the scenes look at how thirst is
tackling these challenges head on.
And if you're an aspiring entrepreneur entrepreneur,
you'll definitely want to tune into the part where he talks
about building teams, trusting talent, and leading with vision.
So whether you're an L&D Ed techor just curious about the future
(01:05):
of learning, this conversation is for you.
Let's get into it. Hi, we're ispring, an
international team of e-learningenthusiasts who help more than
60,000 clients across the globe succeed with better online
learning. Our two flagship solutions are
ispring Suite and ispring Learn LMS.
(01:28):
Ispring Suite is an intuitive, all in one authoring tool for
creating engaging e-learning content, and ispringlearn is an
innovative online training platform for onboarding,
upskilling, and certifying your teams.
We also provide tons of free resources for aspiring and
experienced e-learning professionals, conduct weekly
(01:49):
webinars with top industry experts, and organize annual
e-learning conferences, challenges, and championships.
We'd be happy to get to know youand pick a solution that fits
your needs best. Go to www.icebringsolutions.com
to learn more about us, downloadour resources and connect.
(02:11):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another fabulous episode of Ed
Up Learning and Development. My name is Holly Owens and I'm
your host and I'm super excited today because I have Fred
Thompson here. I'm going to let him talk about
himself. So, Fred, welcome on into the
show. Yeah, Thanks for having me here,
Holly. Really excited about today.
(02:32):
It's always strange when you're sort of prompted to to talk
about yourself a little bit. You never know quite where to
start. Yeah.
So tell us your story. How did you get into like
thirst, all the different thingsthat you're doing?
Give us the low down. Yeah, I mean, it's always
strange. You look back as well and think,
how do you get here? And you're never quite sure my
background and history. Sort of we're going back, you
(02:53):
know, a couple of decades, whichis worrying, isn't it, when we
think about it. Yeah, I know when we when we
think about it out loud, software development has always
been my thing. The background is my, I'm a
programmer by by the nature and by trade.
But ultimately that's where I started building out and sort of
fell into L and DA little bit interms of building out Macromedia
Flash courses and things in all the way back in the day.
(03:16):
This was before the Adobe sort of bought it and then building
into learning management systems, etcetera.
And then just really branching from there.
And over time, as we've progressed, it's been a case of,
well, I'm not as good at the programme as I once was or I
like to think I was started bringing in people to help me
around, around and about as the businesses kind of grew and
(03:38):
said, OK, we've got more to do here.
And then as a result of that, we've sort of been done over 2
decades in the L&D space really assisting businesses to put
together learning, but using technology to effectively
deliver that. So anything training, anything
sort of learning management system connected or learning
platform connected, but we're talking about anything it
(04:00):
connects to like API systems, external talking about the
strategies around that. And yeah, we we focus, we are
primarily sort of you know tech focused as a business, but with
the background knowledge really of the space of knowing, but
probably most things there are to know now in L&D really.
(04:24):
I mean, it's so it's, it's so nice to hear of a journey like
you started out like in history,like a lot of us started in
different places. Like I was a high school teacher
and then you kind of found like where your passion, where your
niche was and you just went for it because you're not just the
founder of Thirst. And if you haven't seen Thirst,
you're, you're probably not on LinkedIn a lot because their
marketing is amazing. And you've, you've definitely
(04:47):
seen Barry post a lot of stuff out there.
He's their marketing director. And if you haven't heard of
thirst, you need to go hear of thirst now.
You need to go out to their site.
So being as that, you know, the journey has been one that's been
of different opportunities, different things for you.
When you think about the L&D space, what do you think are
(05:08):
some of the, the greatest challenges for us?
And like how it currently is like the things happening with
AI and, and all those things that are kind of impacting our
industry. I think it's kind of the same
across many industries and not just L&D.
And I think L&D has typically been a little bit historically
behind in terms of just trying to make sure it moves forward.
(05:29):
And you know, I touched upon MacMedia Flash there, but I mean
we're still sort of using SCORM courses and things like that and
the, the early standards and we didn't even move forward into
the X API things really that that well.
So we've always been a little bit backward thinking as a, as a
sector, but you know, with this new technologies that are
current, you know, we talk aboutAI loads, we've done quite a lot
of that, but it's, it's so fast moving.
(05:52):
You can't quite even even if you're not thinking about L&D
and you're just trying to keep up with the news, the latest
sort of technology enhancements there, you can't really do that.
I went to an Amazon Web Servicesconference where they would, I
think the guys Anthropic were there who was one of the AI
providers and they were talking about a new standard that they
got. And they said, oh, this, this
(06:13):
standard's actually changed since last time we presented it.
And I think I went in, I don't know, it was like April and they
said we last presented it in February.
Within like 45 days. It was completely different.
So you sort of roll that into what we're doing at L&D Space
and try to keep up with that. It's mind boggling.
I think though, in regards to that, the the the greatest
(06:34):
challenges we have are around getting learning to the people
and the places they are and how they want to inter operate with
it. So, you know, if you're using a
lot of the AI tool in note, it'salmost become a conversational
kind of piece where you're not browsing the web for pages
anymore. You're not going to find that
learning content in the same way.
(06:54):
It's either being surfaced to you or it's kind of answering
direct questions or giving you guidance and personalized advice
around that. So it's how do we restructure
how training and learning is presented back to the learner in
a way that kind of matches what effectively this this future of
kind of connected technologies look like.
(07:16):
It's going to be fun. It's going to be, it's going to
be rough, I think for a while. Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
So tell us about thirst. Like what it, what is thirst?
What do you do? How do you help people in the
L&D space and tell us all about it.
Tell us what it what you're up to.
Yeah, no problem. Well, when we built first we
sort of spotted the gap in the market for trying to use some of
(07:39):
these technologies to start. We're trying to.
So we baked in personalisation right from all the way through
the product. So everything you do in there
is, is surfacing the right latest information that's
relevant to you and we're sort of accounting for everything
that you do. So every sort of interaction
like comment, share, if you're certain authors or certain
content types where we're forming that opinion of what
content and then that gets surfaced to at the right point.
(08:02):
We also baked in skills completely from the ground up,
which again, depending whether you know you're learning
platforms or not, you know you, they tended to be an
afterthought. And a lot of the more kind of
previous incarnations of learning platforms tacked on the
end. We reversed that and said we're
going to start there, which meant we sort of was forward
thinking from the get go in terms of what the future of L&D
(08:24):
looks like, the future of just business really on how it's
going to train and hire people. And then obviously we sort of
rolled that way from the AI sideas well, which is made that
we've put some really nice features and functionality in
there as well. But one of our core method
messages really is just making the platform that we started off
with a messaging which was a platform you want to use because
(08:47):
we found a lot of learning platforms.
You almost need a training program to use the platform.
It's too difficult, you know, you couldn't quite training.
Programs like. This is it.
Intermediate Advanced. Yeah.
And nothing felt intuitive either.
You'd sort of go off and the administration area was
somewhere else and it looked very different.
And, and that was, we came at itcompletely fresh and said, OK,
we're going to build these latest technologies and tools in
(09:08):
there. We're going to come from
schools, from the from the ground up.
And we're also going to make it very usable.
And then we also lay it in like a social learning piece as well.
So there's a lot around tacit knowledge sharing.
By default, everybody in first can actually create content and
service it to their colleagues in the business as well.
So that means you're getting, especially for your sort of SME
(09:28):
size of business, it's brilliantbecause you've got smaller L&D
teams or sometimes non existent teams.
And it means that other people in the business can effectively
still facilitate training with the organization, get the right
knowledge to the right people without it sort of being
bottlenecked by, you know, a smaller team size or whatever
that it might be. So yeah, that's the other
(09:49):
problems we're solving, and solving them pretty nicely at
the moment. That's good.
You know, I love it. Like I said, I love your
marketing. I love what you're doing.
And you know, I think that one of the things that's come out of
like AI is this more personalized learning experience
instead of like just everybody does the same thing through the
(10:09):
whole semester, the whole training or things like that.
Like you're meeting people wherethey're at in terms like, I
wouldn't want to sit through a training where it talks about
instructional design, theories and methodologies.
I already know all this stuff. I want to sit there training
where it's something that's instant application.
I can instantly use it. So what do you think about the
(10:30):
more personalized learning experience in house?
There's kind of implementing that.
I think it's critical, I think Imean, I don't have to study
percentages to hand, but there'ssome great studies which show
effect about the effectiveness of personalized learning and how
that sort of impacts people's retention and ability to kind of
learn. I think it's funny again and you
what you started to kind of kindof podcast around the questions
(10:52):
around how technology sort of shaping that.
And I sort of remember it was probably only four years ago or
so. So where they were basically we
couldn't quite I think was filtered, the company filtered.
We're trying to actually sort ofpersonalize the the content and
trying to establish and understand the content and map
that to skill levels and certaintypes of skills.
(11:12):
And they were having real challenges with that at that
point and trying to trying to make it work really, really
well. And then obviously the AI side
came into that and all of a sudden it just sort of replaced
that problem with just a solution straight away.
Just there you go, we can do that now, which is formidable.
And when you then team up with the personalisation side, that
automatic mapping of content, basically if you can get that
(11:34):
established level of skill levelas well of that content, then it
just changes it again. And so yeah, personalized
learning journeys, like personalized journey through.
And we're taking into account, we're trying to take into
account everything. So it can even be, you know,
what content source it's coming from, if there's a certain
author within your organization who you kind of follow or aspire
(11:55):
to kind of look towards for a career pathway that can also do
that. But it's also factoring in, you
know, the more basic elements like what skills you're seeking
and things like that. All that combined, you get a lot
more just impact of the deliveryof the of the training really.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just thinking it back,
like, remember how much time we would spend on doing things like
(12:15):
descriptions and building out content now?
Tagging, Tagging content, yeah, yes.
And tagging content it I just, it just literally like shifted
overnight. I love it though, because I feel
like, you know, AI and some, some other tools have really
allowed us to be instructional designers or LMD professionals
(12:36):
and jump into the creative space.
Now like we get, we get really like caught up in some of the
administrative tasks that take like they're very time
consuming. They might be small tasks, but
they become very time consuming.And I'm thinking of like when
you're building a coursing or you're building a workshop or
something and you have to outline everything and then you
(12:56):
have to design it and then you got to deploy it and all that
stuff. But really like pieces of that
have have changed because of AI.And I feel like I can really sit
in a creative space now and think about other things I could
do during the live workshop thatare going to impact the learner,
engage them or offer pieces of advice or scenarios during that
(13:19):
training. Yeah.
It's part of the. Yeah, it's part of the L&D
Unleashed event that we were talking about before.
Can I ask? About.
That yeah, it's we did. I trusted myself in a live demo
of how to use AI as your copilot, which is always quite
dangerous. It worked all right, actually
largely speaking. But what we were doing is we
(13:39):
were just giving it information and using some of the sort of
reasoning models that are there now and saying can you kind of
give me the job roles that this business?
And we would name the business and give it some, some pointers
on the web, you know, to a website and it would go off and
try and bring back the list of probable job roles.
And it would look at the job positions that are on its
(14:00):
careers page and trying to map them back.
And then we extended that out and said, well, can you give me
the skills of these job roles? Then can you give me the tiers
of the job roles and how the tiers mapped?
And we basically built skills, matrices and frameworks out of
it by just pointing it to the direction of business
information and sort of asking questions.
And then even took that further and said, OK, where's the skill
gaps that we need? And also can you give me some
titles? Can you give me a strategy to
(14:22):
teach that skill gap to sort of to close that gap?
You know, we're not going as faras creating all the content
here. And part of the talk as well was
this doesn't replace, you know, instructors, design or L&D kind
of professionals. A piece of it, yeah.
People are so nervous about that, Fred.
They're so they're, they're likenervous to a point where it's
like it's, it's really negatively impacting their view
(14:45):
of the tool and how to use it. Yeah, almost a bit scared that
it's going to replace their jobs.
So they're kind of trying to ignore it.
Yeah, we know kind of the human connection in L&D is so
important anyway and there's a lot of that side of it that
really still matters. But you can't simply replace
that knowledge either. And we are sort of saying it's
more of accelerant. It's kind of like it's what you
talked about there, which is that kind of yet stuck in the
(15:07):
mundane, in the kind of administrative side.
Well, all of a sudden you can just clear a lot of that and
actually really focus on where the added value is.
And that's really exciting. I think it's going to be
challenging to make sure everybody understands how to use
it because it's a brand new skill, prompt engineering,
etcetera. And then also having the
businesses and organisations approve its use because there's
(15:28):
data protection elements to that.
But I think I've referenced thisa few times.
I think it's like when everybodywas moving to the cloud sort of
whatever it was 10 years ago andeveryone's really scared of it
and it was like we can't do it. And you know, it's there's
problems with security and safety and then we're just all
there now and it sort of went away.
And I kind of feel that's where we're at.
(15:49):
We're at that early stage, only a few years into this journey on
on that new tech side. I think in sort of Fast forward
in the five years, it'll become so ubiquitous.
We never understood how we. Won't even notice.
It's just gonna be there. Yeah.
Like it's, it's just a part of everything that we do.
Absolutely. I think that's 100% going to
happen. And whether people like it or
not, like these technologies, like the cloud and stuff,
(16:10):
that's, that's the norm, that becomes the norm for everything.
That's what you should be using to save your stuff on.
And my grandparents are in their, their mid 80s.
They're like, where is this cloud?
And I'm like, it's not a cloud. It's not a cloud in the sky.
It's, it's out on a server somewhere.
So you know. I do have sympathy though, a
(16:31):
little bit with. With I mean.
Yeah, I'm, I'm certainly gettingolder.
I mean, as we all are, we don't go backwards.
But I mean, we've lived through quite a, a generational kind of
shift in terms of technology. But you kind of imagine, you
know, our parents and what they've had to kind of come from
from almost not having, you know, you know, televisions and
microwaves would just be coming out as a as a thing that even
existed. And then to suddenly dealing
(16:51):
with AI, the shift in their lifestyle lifetime.
Is it incredible, isn't it, to try and understand?
It really is. But they have me, so they're
fine. I mean, they have.
IPads, they have smart. TV's, every time I go there, my
grandfather has a list of technologies he with things he
wants to learn. So they're fine.
They can operate, you know, better than some some other
people I know. But yeah, I really do have the
(17:11):
the empathy for for the process.Like when I was growing up, the
Internet was just coming out andchat rooms were like the big
thing. Like I remember we got our first
computer. It was a Gateway computer in the
United States. And if you know gateway, it's
like you rent those computers and we just sat there, couldn't
use the phone when you're on theInternet.
You know, we've been through that stuff, which is really cool
(17:34):
because I, I think it sets like the foundation of what we know,
like kind of learning long division before, you know, short
division. So it really gives you that
perspective. And like these kids nowadays,
these, these, these young UNS, as we say in the South, they
have no idea, no idea what it was like to like not have a cell
(17:56):
phone with you all the time, like coming home when the
streets St. lights turn on. They have no idea.
Yeah, I know. Yeah.
I mean, I'm, I'm not going to make a judgement wholly on your
age, but I, I feel like we grew up in a very similar time
because these are my memories aswell.
But we do. Too, which is awesome.
Yeah, it's good. There are always challenges.
I I think there's a certain element of retro as well that
(18:17):
people are heading back towards that.
I, I hear that latest Gen. Z are actually seeking out kind
of like landline phones again because they kind of want to get
disconnected. So it's, it's interesting.
It goes full, full circle, yeah.I love their brains on the way
that they think and the way they're changing the work
culture as well. You know, we're having a
conversation recently about likeGen.
Z, they're saying like Gen. Z didn't want to work.
(18:38):
Well, that's not the case. They work differently.
So we're not used to, you know, working the 9:00 to 5:00, which
is an archaic, outdated process anyways.
So it's really cool to to tap into their brains and their
minds and see how they're going to, they're going to change the
game for sure. Yeah, I think so.
I mean there's they are a different approach.
(19:00):
They have a different approach, I think to they're almost more
demanding of kind of excellence almost to some degree, right.
It's kind of like the boundariesthat we should have set and
expectations we should have set.We didn't do so they're doing
it. Yeah, a little bit like we, we
can't get it, you know, in the same way why we built first is
because it's kind of like the the, the market is.
(19:22):
You wouldn't, you couldn't put an old learning platform to the
Gen. Z audience because they just
simply wouldn't accept it. It would be the more demanding
of what the quality of everything that gets delivered
to them, the quality of the businesses they interoperate
with, you know, in terms of likethe sustainability, all the
pledges, all the kind of the B Corp elements, all these, these
parts. They've got more demands and
expectations on it, which I think is is only a good thing
(19:43):
realistically. So it drives everybody forward.
Absolutely. So what are you excited about
for the future? Like the future of learning and
development, Like with all this AI stuff coming in, what are you
excited about? So we're trying to go to this
kind of the same ground, but kind of like, but my, my
thoughts is about what we can dofaster and what we can
(20:05):
understand that we either a couldn't understand before or B
took too long to understand. So a a great example is the data
analysis part of L&D. You know, historically we talked
about SCORM, SCORM one point whatever 1 and 1.1 and 1.2,
etcetera was all focused on did you complete it?
And if so, did you pass and maybe it stretched?
(20:28):
How long did it take? And we brought in, you know, so
many other metrics that you could do with objectives and
everything else, but it was, it was almost too difficult to set
up and interpret. And now you've got a scenario
where you can track every singledata point, you know, every kind
of eyeball click, movement, etcetera.
And you can establish patterns and pathways and data points on
(20:52):
that and that can inform the thestrategy.
So I mean a really simple level and this is, this is nowhere
near as far as it is going and can go and can go.
But we are spotting gaps in content that's not available for
certain skills that people are seeking in the business because
they've we're using all the datapoints about what they're
searching and what skills they have versus how many users we
(21:13):
have. And we can map that back to
saying, well, the content is notmatching the requirements there.
That was even that sounding simplistic was relatively
difficult to do previously because you had to have so much
data and sort of transpose that.And now it's just in systems,
it's in platforms to do that. And that's exciting to me all
the time. What else can we discover that
(21:36):
we didn't discover? And I'm also a weird advocate,
sort of leaning away from the AIside a second.
I'm a weird advocate of how marketing can be used really
well psychologically to kind of engage you on the L&D side as
well. And we've talked about this
before on, on one of the presentations I've previously
done, but it was around you can build scarcity, you can do FOMO,
(21:59):
you can do these elements of arereally popular in things like
social media. They really draw you in, they
draw you back and you open up the app every day.
You want to see what's happeningand they work across the board.
It doesn't really matter that it's L&D, but I think we're just
getting smarter with how to engage and, and build that kind
of interaction with our learnersthat I don't think we had
before. So these things are where I like
(22:21):
how we're heading and where we're going to.
Yeah, me too. And I think that anybody that's
thinking about getting an L&D orthinking about getting into
marketing or whatever they're trying to do, you need to take a
psychology course for sure. And kind of learned some of
those tactics. Like, I didn't realize how much
psychology is, is an L&D and is a marked mean, like you said,
the FOMO stuff. And you're really getting deep
(22:43):
into the psyche of like, you know, why do people sit on
TikTok like myself at bed and scroll for hours and hours a
night? What's what's there?
What's doing that? That's like become an addiction,
you know, just coming. Back I've got a really simple
kind of example that kind of there's a real world example
which it shows how, how well this works and then how you can
(23:03):
apply that to L&D, which is we always want to be kind of herd
mentalities as humans. That's kind of how we operate.
And the hotels, we've found it more successful if they want to
save on the amount of laundry they're doing on the, on the
towel washing, they'll put a sign in the, in the bedroom to
say, you know, to tell people todo that.
But they would have more successif they would put a statistic on
(23:25):
there that says, join your otherfellow guests and 70% of them
reuse their towel or whatever the status.
And basically it, it makes everybody else think, oh, if
everybody else is doing it, I'm doing it.
And then suddenly you get betteruptake of it.
Now it incredible. It's really simple.
Just the messaging on the sign changes that behaviour.
If you apply that to L&D, you could have that.
At Disney, Fred, they do that atDisney.
(23:48):
This is there you go the Disney conversation.
We'll not go on Disney. We'll we'll be brunching off in
Disney conversations and then we'll come back.
But at the L&D side, I mean, if you want them to your learners
to do a certain course and then follow up with a second course,
for instance, you can say, well,70% of the people who've
completed this course go on to do this course or take the skill
next or whatever. And just that simple nudge and,
(24:09):
and wording can change the engagement and how they're kind
of appeal towards it can just just completely switches.
So I love it. I think it's great if we get
really small with this. I think we can have much more
engagement impact, which is number one challenge all day,
every day in L&D, everywhere, everyone you speak to 1. 100% So
there's a lot of people in our audience who are transitioning
(24:30):
into different roles or we have a lot of transitioning teachers,
L&D professionals. You've, you've, you've done tons
of stuff. You're, you're successful in
more ways than, than I can say or words that I have for.
So for people who are listening,what are like 3 pieces of advice
you could give to them? If they're maybe looking to be
(24:50):
an entrepreneur, they're maybe looking to get L&D into L&D,
what should they do? It's a great question.
I'm going to going to start withsaying the American attitude is
always a little bit more embellished with the idea of
shouting about your own kind of achievements and things.
And I find it difficult enough to call myself an entrepreneur,
(25:12):
never mind a Syrian or entrepreneur for quite a while.
But that's the British way. We're going a bit more reserved
in that respect. We should shake more.
We should, definitely should. But yeah, we have done quite a
while, done quite a bit. I tell you what, my kind of kind
of key things from the founder side, I think that were the most
surprising 1 is probably the risk of starting something that
(25:35):
is even like your own business or even a jump to a different
role is generally a lot lower than you think it is.
And it, it feels scarier becausethere's a, a, you know, mortgage
sort of loan, you know, money onthe line.
But the, a lot of people who aredoing this are generally the
people who are very skilled and skilled already and know the
(25:55):
likeliness of what, what their ability is and, you know, where
they can apply it. And ultimately, if it doesn't
work, in many cases you can, youcan get back into another job
and another role again quite fast in many cases because then
you're a skilled professional. So I, I found that it, there's
not as many people who want to take the risk that I take to go
and start the businesses I've done.
But I think if you kind of frameit differently, I think it
(26:18):
becomes less of a challenge to do So I think you can think,
well, worst case, we can run this for three months, six
months and it doesn't work. We go get that job again, we
will be able to get a job. We're pretty confident of that.
We've moved. We've done so successfully so
far. So removing that fear I think is
1 huge fear there. For people.
Really, really hard and I get itbecause it, you know, that's
ultimately why you don't have everybody being, having their
(26:41):
own company and doing it. And it wouldn't work if
everybody did as well because, you know, there'd just be lots
of companies with one, one person in them.
But equally, that's why I think it's a good stepping stone.
And that can apply even if you're not starting a company
and you're just moving a job, whatever or you start a new
career. I think it's a similar sort of
thing. The risk I don't think is as big
as what you perceive it to be. Secondly, I would just probably
(27:05):
say you you have got to probablygenuinely spend the time outside
of your day-to-day a little bit extra time to explore.
And it can be anything. It can be take that course on
Udemy or it can be, you know, just sign up to that that event
and go and attend it or it can be read about a new project.
I mean you could just start somenew software and start trying to
(27:27):
use that. I think if you just explore it,
you learn a lot more, a lot quicker about what's possible.
And this is feedback into the AIconversation.
You're not going to get there without actually just typing
things in and seeing what it does in many regards.
And then lastly, I think on my experience has always been, and
this is very kind of founder focused kind of knowledge, but
(27:50):
just aim at trusting people and employing people or having, you
know, people in your business who are better than you, who
can. Don't be afraid of being the the
worst one in the room, the guys who and girls that you've got
who can be better at it because as long as you get their
incentives right and the reasonswhy they're doing it, the whole
business and everything you're doing.
And again, this is just me as a founder book applies in
(28:12):
everything else. It's I wouldn't be afraid of the
people who are smarter and I would trust the people and just
if you get everybody's sort of direction kind of aligned, you
can you achieve so much more with the right people.
So yeah, it's nice kind of tidbits.
I think of the founder experience.
Yeah, that that goes beyond founder mentality as well as
like you're eliminating the fear, making sure you're
professionally developing or learning and exploring more,
(28:35):
researching. That's something that we should
be doing naturally. And then, you know, hire people
smarter than you. Yeah, trust them.
Trust them to do the job. Like, trust them and give them
the tools and the support they need to do the job.
So absolutely, those are three very great pieces of advice.
Yeah. One of my first kind of
realizations of this, and again,this is going back probably 20
(28:55):
years or so, but was kind of ourfirst employee that we had at
the business. And I was used to being a
freelance developer basically. So I was worked for hire.
I was paid per per hour, which always changes your mentality,
by the way. I would, I would advise a lot of
people if they could work per hour for the money they work.
It changes how you perceive yourworking time and you, you
deliver things differently. It's very strange, but I went
(29:17):
away on vacation and, and we were still developing pieces and
shipping that to our customers and raising invoices and
receiving money in. And I thought, hang on, this is
fantastic. I'd only been used to knowing
what I knew and what I could do.And then suddenly you trust the
people and you can go away and say, well, I think we'll deliver
that. And you suddenly realise there's
a lot more scope to, to do a lotmore with, you know, by just
(29:41):
just kind of getting the right people in place.
So that was one of my first realisations of it.
And that helped me kind of perceive and take the risk
because evidence is a risk realistically, but especially so
when you're in hiring, in business, it's there's a lot of
people's lives on the line that you will look after and try and
pay for. So yeah, I think that's always
pushed me forward though to takethe risk because you kind of
know if you get the right peopleand kind of kind of incentivize
(30:04):
and right, then you can get somegreat, great work and kind of
like and enjoy. A lot as a founder, you can kind
of see things in the future if you put the right pieces into
place. Yeah, I think so.
There's a little bit about, I think everything is a risk, sort
of every decision you make, I think.
Nothing's a guarantee. Nothing's a guarantee, but I, I
think if it's like that buildingblock approach, if you kind of
(30:25):
come at it with, well, that kindof makes sense and we'll do that
and that makes sense. You'll look back in a few years
and sort of everything will havebeen based upon not one
decision. It'll be based upon the
combination of the, the hundredsyou've made.
So you can't really get too concerned if one's wrong, as
long as you're doing kind of theright things generally.
Absolutely, Fred. We had so much fun.
(30:46):
We're at the end of the episode now.
So fast. Yeah, it it goes, it does go
really fast when you're having fun.
So tell people where they can find you.
We're obviously going to includeeverything in the show notes
about thirst, about you, where to connect.
So tell us where we can find you.
What's the best way for people to connect with you or learn
more about thirst? Yeah, no problem.
Generally, LinkedIn is always the place where we put a point.
(31:07):
Somebody too, now, doesn't it? But so I'm on LinkedIn.
Fred Thompson You should be ableto find a relatively simple URL,
but we'll post it in the show notes and then first is first
dot IO as well if you want to find out more about the the
platform that we produce. Fantastic.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Really appreciated to hear your perspective and I love the
(31:28):
reference you made to the American culture about how we
boast about our. I'm one of the more reserved
ones. I don't boast about it.
I feel very like weird when people say like you're.
An. Influencer you're this, you're
that. And I'm like, no, I'm not.
I'm just a person. I love it.
I just wish kind of, you know, as a, as a nationality, as a
nation, we would embrace it a little bit more.
We're not too. Good.
(31:48):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Well, we'll see what happens in the future.
So thank you so much. And I can't wait for people to
hear this episode. Thanks for spending a few
minutes with Holly. She knows your podcast queue is
packed. If today's episode sparked an
idea or gave you that extra nudge of confidence, tap, follow
(32:10):
or subscribe in your favorite app so you never miss an episode
of Ed Up L&D. Dropping a quick rating or
review helps more educators and learning pros discover the show,
too. Want to keep the conversation
going? Connect with Holly on LinkedIn
and share your biggest take away.
She reads every message. Until next time, keep learning,
keep leading, and keep believingin your own story.
(32:32):
Talk soon. Hi, we're Ice Spring, an
international team of e-learningenthusiasts who help more than
60,000 clients across the globe succeed with better online
learning. Our two flagship solutions are
Ice Spring Suite and Ice Spring Learn LMS.
Ice Spring Suite is an intuitiveall in We'd be happy to get to
(33:00):
know you and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.icepringsolutions.com to learn more about us and
connect.
Hi everyone, and welcome back toanother episode of Edup Learning
and Development. I'm your host, Holly Owens, and
today we're diving into the intersection of technology,
innovation, and learning with a truly inspirational guest, Fred
Thompson, founder of Thirst dot IO.
Fred's journey from software development to the world of
(00:22):
learning and development is not only fascinating, it's packed
with powerful lessons. In this episode, we explore the
real challenges L&D professionals face today, why
personalization matters more than ever, and how AI is rapidly
reshaping the educational landscape.
(00:42):
Fred also gives us a behind the scenes look at how thirst is
tackling these challenges head on.
And if you're an aspiring entrepreneur entrepreneur,
you'll definitely want to tune into the part where he talks
about building teams, trusting talent, and leading with vision.
So whether you're an L&D Ed techor just curious about the future
(01:05):
of learning, this conversation is for you.
Let's get into it. Hi, we're ispring, an
international team of e-learningenthusiasts who help more than
60,000 clients across the globe succeed with better online
learning. Our two flagship solutions are
ispring Suite and ispring Learn LMS.
(01:28):
Ispring Suite is an intuitive, all in one authoring tool for
creating engaging e-learning content, and ispringlearn is an
innovative online training platform for onboarding,
upskilling, and certifying your teams.
We also provide tons of free resources for aspiring and
experienced e-learning professionals, conduct weekly
(01:49):
webinars with top industry experts, and organize annual
e-learning conferences, challenges, and championships.
We'd be happy to get to know youand pick a solution that fits
your needs best. Go to www.icebringsolutions.com
to learn more about us, downloadour resources and connect.
(02:11):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another fabulous episode of Ed
Up Learning and Development. My name is Holly Owens and I'm
your host and I'm super excited today because I have Fred
Thompson here. I'm going to let him talk about
himself. So, Fred, welcome on into the
show. Yeah, Thanks for having me here,
Holly. Really excited about today.
(02:32):
It's always strange when you're sort of prompted to to talk
about yourself a little bit. You never know quite where to
start. Yeah.
So tell us your story. How did you get into like
thirst, all the different thingsthat you're doing?
Give us the low down. Yeah, I mean, it's always
strange. You look back as well and think,
how do you get here? And you're never quite sure my
background and history. Sort of we're going back, you
(02:53):
know, a couple of decades, whichis worrying, isn't it, when we
think about it. Yeah, I know when we when we
think about it out loud, software development has always
been my thing. The background is my, I'm a
programmer by by the nature and by trade.
But ultimately that's where I started building out and sort of
fell into L and DA little bit interms of building out Macromedia
Flash courses and things in all the way back in the day.
(03:16):
This was before the Adobe sort of bought it and then building
into learning management systems, etcetera.
And then just really branching from there.
And over time, as we've progressed, it's been a case of,
well, I'm not as good at the programme as I once was or I
like to think I was started bringing in people to help me
around, around and about as the businesses kind of grew and
(03:38):
said, OK, we've got more to do here.
And then as a result of that, we've sort of been done over 2
decades in the L&D space really assisting businesses to put
together learning, but using technology to effectively
deliver that. So anything training, anything
sort of learning management system connected or learning
platform connected, but we're talking about anything it
(04:00):
connects to like API systems, external talking about the
strategies around that. And yeah, we we focus, we are
primarily sort of you know tech focused as a business, but with
the background knowledge really of the space of knowing, but
probably most things there are to know now in L&D really.
(04:24):
I mean, it's so it's, it's so nice to hear of a journey like
you started out like in history,like a lot of us started in
different places. Like I was a high school teacher
and then you kind of found like where your passion, where your
niche was and you just went for it because you're not just the
founder of Thirst. And if you haven't seen Thirst,
you're, you're probably not on LinkedIn a lot because their
marketing is amazing. And you've, you've definitely
(04:47):
seen Barry post a lot of stuff out there.
He's their marketing director. And if you haven't heard of
thirst, you need to go hear of thirst now.
You need to go out to their site.
So being as that, you know, the journey has been one that's been
of different opportunities, different things for you.
When you think about the L&D space, what do you think are
(05:08):
some of the, the greatest challenges for us?
And like how it currently is like the things happening with
AI and, and all those things that are kind of impacting our
industry. I think it's kind of the same
across many industries and not just L&D.
And I think L&D has typically been a little bit historically
behind in terms of just trying to make sure it moves forward.
(05:29):
And you know, I touched upon MacMedia Flash there, but I mean
we're still sort of using SCORM courses and things like that and
the, the early standards and we didn't even move forward into
the X API things really that that well.
So we've always been a little bit backward thinking as a, as a
sector, but you know, with this new technologies that are
current, you know, we talk aboutAI loads, we've done quite a lot
of that, but it's, it's so fast moving.
(05:52):
You can't quite even even if you're not thinking about L&D
and you're just trying to keep up with the news, the latest
sort of technology enhancements there, you can't really do that.
I went to an Amazon Web Servicesconference where they would, I
think the guys Anthropic were there who was one of the AI
providers and they were talking about a new standard that they
got. And they said, oh, this, this
(06:13):
standard's actually changed since last time we presented it.
And I think I went in, I don't know, it was like April and they
said we last presented it in February.
Within like 45 days. It was completely different.
So you sort of roll that into what we're doing at L&D Space
and try to keep up with that. It's mind boggling.
I think though, in regards to that, the the the greatest
(06:34):
challenges we have are around getting learning to the people
and the places they are and how they want to inter operate with
it. So, you know, if you're using a
lot of the AI tool in note, it'salmost become a conversational
kind of piece where you're not browsing the web for pages
anymore. You're not going to find that
learning content in the same way.
(06:54):
It's either being surfaced to you or it's kind of answering
direct questions or giving you guidance and personalized advice
around that. So it's how do we restructure
how training and learning is presented back to the learner in
a way that kind of matches what effectively this this future of
kind of connected technologies look like.
(07:16):
It's going to be fun. It's going to be, it's going to
be rough, I think for a while. Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
So tell us about thirst. Like what it, what is thirst?
What do you do? How do you help people in the
L&D space and tell us all about it.
Tell us what it what you're up to.
Yeah, no problem. Well, when we built first we
sort of spotted the gap in the market for trying to use some of
(07:39):
these technologies to start. We're trying to.
So we baked in personalisation right from all the way through
the product. So everything you do in there
is, is surfacing the right latest information that's
relevant to you and we're sort of accounting for everything
that you do. So every sort of interaction
like comment, share, if you're certain authors or certain
content types where we're forming that opinion of what
content and then that gets surfaced to at the right point.
(08:02):
We also baked in skills completely from the ground up,
which again, depending whether you know you're learning
platforms or not, you know you, they tended to be an
afterthought. And a lot of the more kind of
previous incarnations of learning platforms tacked on the
end. We reversed that and said we're
going to start there, which meant we sort of was forward
thinking from the get go in terms of what the future of L&D
(08:24):
looks like, the future of just business really on how it's
going to train and hire people. And then obviously we sort of
rolled that way from the AI sideas well, which is made that
we've put some really nice features and functionality in
there as well. But one of our core method
messages really is just making the platform that we started off
with a messaging which was a platform you want to use because
(08:47):
we found a lot of learning platforms.
You almost need a training program to use the platform.
It's too difficult, you know, you couldn't quite training.
Programs like. This is it.
Intermediate Advanced. Yeah.
And nothing felt intuitive either.
You'd sort of go off and the administration area was
somewhere else and it looked very different.
And, and that was, we came at itcompletely fresh and said, OK,
we're going to build these latest technologies and tools in
(09:08):
there. We're going to come from
schools, from the from the ground up.
And we're also going to make it very usable.
And then we also lay it in like a social learning piece as well.
So there's a lot around tacit knowledge sharing.
By default, everybody in first can actually create content and
service it to their colleagues in the business as well.
So that means you're getting, especially for your sort of SME
(09:28):
size of business, it's brilliantbecause you've got smaller L&D
teams or sometimes non existent teams.
And it means that other people in the business can effectively
still facilitate training with the organization, get the right
knowledge to the right people without it sort of being
bottlenecked by, you know, a smaller team size or whatever
that it might be. So yeah, that's the other
(09:49):
problems we're solving, and solving them pretty nicely at
the moment. That's good.
You know, I love it. Like I said, I love your
marketing. I love what you're doing.
And you know, I think that one of the things that's come out of
like AI is this more personalized learning experience
instead of like just everybody does the same thing through the
(10:09):
whole semester, the whole training or things like that.
Like you're meeting people wherethey're at in terms like, I
wouldn't want to sit through a training where it talks about
instructional design, theories and methodologies.
I already know all this stuff. I want to sit there training
where it's something that's instant application.
I can instantly use it. So what do you think about the
(10:30):
more personalized learning experience in house?
There's kind of implementing that.
I think it's critical, I think Imean, I don't have to study
percentages to hand, but there'ssome great studies which show
effect about the effectiveness of personalized learning and how
that sort of impacts people's retention and ability to kind of
learn. I think it's funny again and you
what you started to kind of kindof podcast around the questions
(10:52):
around how technology sort of shaping that.
And I sort of remember it was probably only four years ago or
so. So where they were basically we
couldn't quite I think was filtered, the company filtered.
We're trying to actually sort ofpersonalize the the content and
trying to establish and understand the content and map
that to skill levels and certaintypes of skills.
(11:12):
And they were having real challenges with that at that
point and trying to trying to make it work really, really
well. And then obviously the AI side
came into that and all of a sudden it just sort of replaced
that problem with just a solution straight away.
Just there you go, we can do that now, which is formidable.
And when you then team up with the personalisation side, that
automatic mapping of content, basically if you can get that
(11:34):
established level of skill levelas well of that content, then it
just changes it again. And so yeah, personalized
learning journeys, like personalized journey through.
And we're taking into account, we're trying to take into
account everything. So it can even be, you know,
what content source it's coming from, if there's a certain
author within your organization who you kind of follow or aspire
(11:55):
to kind of look towards for a career pathway that can also do
that. But it's also factoring in, you
know, the more basic elements like what skills you're seeking
and things like that. All that combined, you get a lot
more just impact of the deliveryof the of the training really.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just thinking it back,
like, remember how much time we would spend on doing things like
(12:15):
descriptions and building out content now?
Tagging, Tagging content, yeah, yes.
And tagging content it I just, it just literally like shifted
overnight. I love it though, because I feel
like, you know, AI and some, some other tools have really
allowed us to be instructional designers or LMD professionals
(12:36):
and jump into the creative space.
Now like we get, we get really like caught up in some of the
administrative tasks that take like they're very time
consuming. They might be small tasks, but
they become very time consuming.And I'm thinking of like when
you're building a coursing or you're building a workshop or
something and you have to outline everything and then you
(12:56):
have to design it and then you got to deploy it and all that
stuff. But really like pieces of that
have have changed because of AI.And I feel like I can really sit
in a creative space now and think about other things I could
do during the live workshop thatare going to impact the learner,
engage them or offer pieces of advice or scenarios during that
(13:19):
training. Yeah.
It's part of the. Yeah, it's part of the L&D
Unleashed event that we were talking about before.
Can I ask? About.
That yeah, it's we did. I trusted myself in a live demo
of how to use AI as your copilot, which is always quite
dangerous. It worked all right, actually
largely speaking. But what we were doing is we
(13:39):
were just giving it information and using some of the sort of
reasoning models that are there now and saying can you kind of
give me the job roles that this business?
And we would name the business and give it some, some pointers
on the web, you know, to a website and it would go off and
try and bring back the list of probable job roles.
And it would look at the job positions that are on its
(14:00):
careers page and trying to map them back.
And then we extended that out and said, well, can you give me
the skills of these job roles? Then can you give me the tiers
of the job roles and how the tiers mapped?
And we basically built skills, matrices and frameworks out of
it by just pointing it to the direction of business
information and sort of asking questions.
And then even took that further and said, OK, where's the skill
gaps that we need? And also can you give me some
titles? Can you give me a strategy to
(14:22):
teach that skill gap to sort of to close that gap?
You know, we're not going as faras creating all the content
here. And part of the talk as well was
this doesn't replace, you know, instructors, design or L&D kind
of professionals. A piece of it, yeah.
People are so nervous about that, Fred.
They're so they're, they're likenervous to a point where it's
like it's, it's really negatively impacting their view
(14:45):
of the tool and how to use it. Yeah, almost a bit scared that
it's going to replace their jobs.
So they're kind of trying to ignore it.
Yeah, we know kind of the human connection in L&D is so
important anyway and there's a lot of that side of it that
really still matters. But you can't simply replace
that knowledge either. And we are sort of saying it's
more of accelerant. It's kind of like it's what you
talked about there, which is that kind of yet stuck in the
(15:07):
mundane, in the kind of administrative side.
Well, all of a sudden you can just clear a lot of that and
actually really focus on where the added value is.
And that's really exciting. I think it's going to be
challenging to make sure everybody understands how to use
it because it's a brand new skill, prompt engineering,
etcetera. And then also having the
businesses and organisations approve its use because there's
(15:28):
data protection elements to that.
But I think I've referenced thisa few times.
I think it's like when everybodywas moving to the cloud sort of
whatever it was 10 years ago andeveryone's really scared of it
and it was like we can't do it. And you know, it's there's
problems with security and safety and then we're just all
there now and it sort of went away.
And I kind of feel that's where we're at.
(15:49):
We're at that early stage, only a few years into this journey on
on that new tech side. I think in sort of Fast forward
in the five years, it'll become so ubiquitous.
We never understood how we. Won't even notice.
It's just gonna be there. Yeah.
Like it's, it's just a part of everything that we do.
Absolutely. I think that's 100% going to
happen. And whether people like it or
not, like these technologies, like the cloud and stuff,
(16:10):
that's, that's the norm, that becomes the norm for everything.
That's what you should be using to save your stuff on.
And my grandparents are in their, their mid 80s.
They're like, where is this cloud?
And I'm like, it's not a cloud. It's not a cloud in the sky.
It's, it's out on a server somewhere.
So you know. I do have sympathy though, a
(16:31):
little bit with. With I mean.
Yeah, I'm, I'm certainly gettingolder.
I mean, as we all are, we don't go backwards.
But I mean, we've lived through quite a, a generational kind of
shift in terms of technology. But you kind of imagine, you
know, our parents and what they've had to kind of come from
from almost not having, you know, you know, televisions and
microwaves would just be coming out as a as a thing that even
existed. And then to suddenly dealing
(16:51):
with AI, the shift in their lifestyle lifetime.
Is it incredible, isn't it, to try and understand?
It really is. But they have me, so they're
fine. I mean, they have.
IPads, they have smart. TV's, every time I go there, my
grandfather has a list of technologies he with things he
wants to learn. So they're fine.
They can operate, you know, better than some some other
people I know. But yeah, I really do have the
(17:11):
the empathy for for the process.Like when I was growing up, the
Internet was just coming out andchat rooms were like the big
thing. Like I remember we got our first
computer. It was a Gateway computer in the
United States. And if you know gateway, it's
like you rent those computers and we just sat there, couldn't
use the phone when you're on theInternet.
You know, we've been through that stuff, which is really cool
(17:34):
because I, I think it sets like the foundation of what we know,
like kind of learning long division before, you know, short
division. So it really gives you that
perspective. And like these kids nowadays,
these, these, these young UNS, as we say in the South, they
have no idea, no idea what it was like to like not have a cell
(17:56):
phone with you all the time, like coming home when the
streets St. lights turn on. They have no idea.
Yeah, I know. Yeah.
I mean, I'm, I'm not going to make a judgement wholly on your
age, but I, I feel like we grew up in a very similar time
because these are my memories aswell.
But we do. Too, which is awesome.
Yeah, it's good. There are always challenges.
I I think there's a certain element of retro as well that
(18:17):
people are heading back towards that.
I, I hear that latest Gen. Z are actually seeking out kind
of like landline phones again because they kind of want to get
disconnected. So it's, it's interesting.
It goes full, full circle, yeah.I love their brains on the way
that they think and the way they're changing the work
culture as well. You know, we're having a
conversation recently about likeGen.
Z, they're saying like Gen. Z didn't want to work.
(18:38):
Well, that's not the case. They work differently.
So we're not used to, you know, working the 9:00 to 5:00, which
is an archaic, outdated process anyways.
So it's really cool to to tap into their brains and their
minds and see how they're going to, they're going to change the
game for sure. Yeah, I think so.
I mean there's they are a different approach.
(19:00):
They have a different approach, I think to they're almost more
demanding of kind of excellence almost to some degree, right.
It's kind of like the boundariesthat we should have set and
expectations we should have set.We didn't do so they're doing
it. Yeah, a little bit like we, we
can't get it, you know, in the same way why we built first is
because it's kind of like the the, the market is.
(19:22):
You wouldn't, you couldn't put an old learning platform to the
Gen. Z audience because they just
simply wouldn't accept it. It would be the more demanding
of what the quality of everything that gets delivered
to them, the quality of the businesses they interoperate
with, you know, in terms of likethe sustainability, all the
pledges, all the kind of the B Corp elements, all these, these
parts. They've got more demands and
expectations on it, which I think is is only a good thing
(19:43):
realistically. So it drives everybody forward.
Absolutely. So what are you excited about
for the future? Like the future of learning and
development, Like with all this AI stuff coming in, what are you
excited about? So we're trying to go to this
kind of the same ground, but kind of like, but my, my
thoughts is about what we can dofaster and what we can
(20:05):
understand that we either a couldn't understand before or B
took too long to understand. So a a great example is the data
analysis part of L&D. You know, historically we talked
about SCORM, SCORM one point whatever 1 and 1.1 and 1.2,
etcetera was all focused on did you complete it?
And if so, did you pass and maybe it stretched?
(20:28):
How long did it take? And we brought in, you know, so
many other metrics that you could do with objectives and
everything else, but it was, it was almost too difficult to set
up and interpret. And now you've got a scenario
where you can track every singledata point, you know, every kind
of eyeball click, movement, etcetera.
And you can establish patterns and pathways and data points on
(20:52):
that and that can inform the thestrategy.
So I mean a really simple level and this is, this is nowhere
near as far as it is going and can go and can go.
But we are spotting gaps in content that's not available for
certain skills that people are seeking in the business because
they've we're using all the datapoints about what they're
searching and what skills they have versus how many users we
(21:13):
have. And we can map that back to
saying, well, the content is notmatching the requirements there.
That was even that sounding simplistic was relatively
difficult to do previously because you had to have so much
data and sort of transpose that.And now it's just in systems,
it's in platforms to do that. And that's exciting to me all
the time. What else can we discover that
(21:36):
we didn't discover? And I'm also a weird advocate,
sort of leaning away from the AIside a second.
I'm a weird advocate of how marketing can be used really
well psychologically to kind of engage you on the L&D side as
well. And we've talked about this
before on, on one of the presentations I've previously
done, but it was around you can build scarcity, you can do FOMO,
(21:59):
you can do these elements of arereally popular in things like
social media. They really draw you in, they
draw you back and you open up the app every day.
You want to see what's happeningand they work across the board.
It doesn't really matter that it's L&D, but I think we're just
getting smarter with how to engage and, and build that kind
of interaction with our learnersthat I don't think we had
before. So these things are where I like
(22:21):
how we're heading and where we're going to.
Yeah, me too. And I think that anybody that's
thinking about getting an L&D orthinking about getting into
marketing or whatever they're trying to do, you need to take a
psychology course for sure. And kind of learned some of
those tactics. Like, I didn't realize how much
psychology is, is an L&D and is a marked mean, like you said,
the FOMO stuff. And you're really getting deep
(22:43):
into the psyche of like, you know, why do people sit on
TikTok like myself at bed and scroll for hours and hours a
night? What's what's there?
What's doing that? That's like become an addiction,
you know, just coming. Back I've got a really simple
kind of example that kind of there's a real world example
which it shows how, how well this works and then how you can
(23:03):
apply that to L&D, which is we always want to be kind of herd
mentalities as humans. That's kind of how we operate.
And the hotels, we've found it more successful if they want to
save on the amount of laundry they're doing on the, on the
towel washing, they'll put a sign in the, in the bedroom to
say, you know, to tell people todo that.
But they would have more successif they would put a statistic on
(23:25):
there that says, join your otherfellow guests and 70% of them
reuse their towel or whatever the status.
And basically it, it makes everybody else think, oh, if
everybody else is doing it, I'm doing it.
And then suddenly you get betteruptake of it.
Now it incredible. It's really simple.
Just the messaging on the sign changes that behaviour.
If you apply that to L&D, you could have that.
At Disney, Fred, they do that atDisney.
(23:48):
This is there you go the Disney conversation.
We'll not go on Disney. We'll we'll be brunching off in
Disney conversations and then we'll come back.
But at the L&D side, I mean, if you want them to your learners
to do a certain course and then follow up with a second course,
for instance, you can say, well,70% of the people who've
completed this course go on to do this course or take the skill
next or whatever. And just that simple nudge and,
(24:09):
and wording can change the engagement and how they're kind
of appeal towards it can just just completely switches.
So I love it. I think it's great if we get
really small with this. I think we can have much more
engagement impact, which is number one challenge all day,
every day in L&D, everywhere, everyone you speak to 1. 100% So
there's a lot of people in our audience who are transitioning
(24:30):
into different roles or we have a lot of transitioning teachers,
L&D professionals. You've, you've, you've done tons
of stuff. You're, you're successful in
more ways than, than I can say or words that I have for.
So for people who are listening,what are like 3 pieces of advice
you could give to them? If they're maybe looking to be
(24:50):
an entrepreneur, they're maybe looking to get L&D into L&D,
what should they do? It's a great question.
I'm going to going to start withsaying the American attitude is
always a little bit more embellished with the idea of
shouting about your own kind of achievements and things.
And I find it difficult enough to call myself an entrepreneur,
(25:12):
never mind a Syrian or entrepreneur for quite a while.
But that's the British way. We're going a bit more reserved
in that respect. We should shake more.
We should, definitely should. But yeah, we have done quite a
while, done quite a bit. I tell you what, my kind of kind
of key things from the founder side, I think that were the most
surprising 1 is probably the risk of starting something that
(25:35):
is even like your own business or even a jump to a different
role is generally a lot lower than you think it is.
And it, it feels scarier becausethere's a, a, you know, mortgage
sort of loan, you know, money onthe line.
But the, a lot of people who aredoing this are generally the
people who are very skilled and skilled already and know the
(25:55):
likeliness of what, what their ability is and, you know, where
they can apply it. And ultimately, if it doesn't
work, in many cases you can, youcan get back into another job
and another role again quite fast in many cases because then
you're a skilled professional. So I, I found that it, there's
not as many people who want to take the risk that I take to go
and start the businesses I've done.
But I think if you kind of frameit differently, I think it
(26:18):
becomes less of a challenge to do So I think you can think,
well, worst case, we can run this for three months, six
months and it doesn't work. We go get that job again, we
will be able to get a job. We're pretty confident of that.
We've moved. We've done so successfully so
far. So removing that fear I think is
1 huge fear there. For people.
Really, really hard and I get itbecause it, you know, that's
ultimately why you don't have everybody being, having their
(26:41):
own company and doing it. And it wouldn't work if
everybody did as well because, you know, there'd just be lots
of companies with one, one person in them.
But equally, that's why I think it's a good stepping stone.
And that can apply even if you're not starting a company
and you're just moving a job, whatever or you start a new
career. I think it's a similar sort of
thing. The risk I don't think is as big
as what you perceive it to be. Secondly, I would just probably
(27:05):
say you you have got to probablygenuinely spend the time outside
of your day-to-day a little bit extra time to explore.
And it can be anything. It can be take that course on
Udemy or it can be, you know, just sign up to that that event
and go and attend it or it can be read about a new project.
I mean you could just start somenew software and start trying to
(27:27):
use that. I think if you just explore it,
you learn a lot more, a lot quicker about what's possible.
And this is feedback into the AIconversation.
You're not going to get there without actually just typing
things in and seeing what it does in many regards.
And then lastly, I think on my experience has always been, and
this is very kind of founder focused kind of knowledge, but
(27:50):
just aim at trusting people and employing people or having, you
know, people in your business who are better than you, who
can. Don't be afraid of being the the
worst one in the room, the guys who and girls that you've got
who can be better at it because as long as you get their
incentives right and the reasonswhy they're doing it, the whole
business and everything you're doing.
And again, this is just me as a founder book applies in
(28:12):
everything else. It's I wouldn't be afraid of the
people who are smarter and I would trust the people and just
if you get everybody's sort of direction kind of aligned, you
can you achieve so much more with the right people.
So yeah, it's nice kind of tidbits.
I think of the founder experience.
Yeah, that that goes beyond founder mentality as well as
like you're eliminating the fear, making sure you're
professionally developing or learning and exploring more,
(28:35):
researching. That's something that we should
be doing naturally. And then, you know, hire people
smarter than you. Yeah, trust them.
Trust them to do the job. Like, trust them and give them
the tools and the support they need to do the job.
So absolutely, those are three very great pieces of advice.
Yeah. One of my first kind of
realizations of this, and again,this is going back probably 20
(28:55):
years or so, but was kind of ourfirst employee that we had at
the business. And I was used to being a
freelance developer basically. So I was worked for hire.
I was paid per per hour, which always changes your mentality,
by the way. I would, I would advise a lot of
people if they could work per hour for the money they work.
It changes how you perceive yourworking time and you, you
deliver things differently. It's very strange, but I went
(29:17):
away on vacation and, and we were still developing pieces and
shipping that to our customers and raising invoices and
receiving money in. And I thought, hang on, this is
fantastic. I'd only been used to knowing
what I knew and what I could do.And then suddenly you trust the
people and you can go away and say, well, I think we'll deliver
that. And you suddenly realise there's
a lot more scope to, to do a lotmore with, you know, by just
(29:41):
just kind of getting the right people in place.
So that was one of my first realisations of it.
And that helped me kind of perceive and take the risk
because evidence is a risk realistically, but especially so
when you're in hiring, in business, it's there's a lot of
people's lives on the line that you will look after and try and
pay for. So yeah, I think that's always
pushed me forward though to takethe risk because you kind of
know if you get the right peopleand kind of kind of incentivize
(30:04):
and right, then you can get somegreat, great work and kind of
like and enjoy. A lot as a founder, you can kind
of see things in the future if you put the right pieces into
place. Yeah, I think so.
There's a little bit about, I think everything is a risk, sort
of every decision you make, I think.
Nothing's a guarantee. Nothing's a guarantee, but I, I
think if it's like that buildingblock approach, if you kind of
(30:25):
come at it with, well, that kindof makes sense and we'll do that
and that makes sense. You'll look back in a few years
and sort of everything will havebeen based upon not one
decision. It'll be based upon the
combination of the, the hundredsyou've made.
So you can't really get too concerned if one's wrong, as
long as you're doing kind of theright things generally.
Absolutely, Fred. We had so much fun.
(30:46):
We're at the end of the episode now.
So fast. Yeah, it it goes, it does go
really fast when you're having fun.
So tell people where they can find you.
We're obviously going to includeeverything in the show notes
about thirst, about you, where to connect.
So tell us where we can find you.
What's the best way for people to connect with you or learn
more about thirst? Yeah, no problem.
Generally, LinkedIn is always the place where we put a point.
(31:07):
Somebody too, now, doesn't it? But so I'm on LinkedIn.
Fred Thompson You should be ableto find a relatively simple URL,
but we'll post it in the show notes and then first is first
dot IO as well if you want to find out more about the the
platform that we produce. Fantastic.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Really appreciated to hear your perspective and I love the
(31:28):
reference you made to the American culture about how we
boast about our. I'm one of the more reserved
ones. I don't boast about it.
I feel very like weird when people say like you're.
An. Influencer you're this, you're
that. And I'm like, no, I'm not.
I'm just a person. I love it.
I just wish kind of, you know, as a, as a nationality, as a
nation, we would embrace it a little bit more.
We're not too. Good.
(31:48):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Well, we'll see what happens in the future.
So thank you so much. And I can't wait for people to
hear this episode. Thanks for spending a few
minutes with Holly. She knows your podcast queue is
packed. If today's episode sparked an
idea or gave you that extra nudge of confidence, tap, follow
(32:10):
or subscribe in your favorite app so you never miss an episode
of Ed Up L&D. Dropping a quick rating or
review helps more educators and learning pros discover the show,
too. Want to keep the conversation
going? Connect with Holly on LinkedIn
and share your biggest take away.
She reads every message. Until next time, keep learning,
keep leading, and keep believingin your own story.
(32:32):
Talk soon. Hi, we're Ice Spring, an
international team of e-learningenthusiasts who help more than
60,000 clients across the globe succeed with better online
learning. Our two flagship solutions are
Ice Spring Suite and Ice Spring Learn LMS.
Ice Spring Suite is an intuitiveall in We'd be happy to get to
(33:00):
know you and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.icepringsolutions.com to learn more about us and
connect.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!