Transcription
Adda Birnir:
What we learned very quickly is that women are not going out and searching, "I want to learn to code." Their motivation is not to learn to code, their motivation is to change their careers, and to make more money, and to have more creativity and flexibility.
Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, Certified Financial Planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup. And you know what? Being a grownup, especially when it comes to money, but it's okay. We're going to get there together. I'm going to bring you one money from a financial grownup, one lesson, and then, my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.
Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, friends, that was Adda Birnir. She is CEO of Skillcrush, which is a big and growing online tech education company. She's talking about a big revelation that they had, when they were trying to figure out, how to better appeal to women, something very few tech companies were even trying to do, and this was way back in 2012.
Bobbi Rebell:
More on that in a sec, but first, just a quick welcome to all of our new listeners, if you're joining us for the first time, welcome. And if you're returning, welcome back. We try to keep the shows short, because we value your time. But you can also, of course, binge and listen to a few of them, if you're commuting. Or, if you have more time, you can listen to more episodes, all in a row.
Bobbi Rebell:
The goal is to deliver a valuable money story that you can learn from, hopefully be entertained by, and a money tip, that you can put into action pretty much right away, and weave into your life. If you enjoy the show, please consider taking a minute, and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, and thank you so much, to all of you that have already done so.
Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, back to Adda, and her story. After being laid off from a digital ad agency, where she was an associate producer, she noticed that the technical people all had jobs. She wanted that security, and of course, who doesn't want the money that goes with that security?
Bobbi Rebell:
So she decided, also, because she talks about the fact that she had a lot of free time, that she would learn to code. And it turned out, it wasn't actually that hard. So fast forward to a side hustle, doing coding projects with a friend, and then, to a business venture that actually didn't work out, but it led to one that did, because of basically a chance meeting. Isn't it always that way? That's just the way it happens sometimes.
Bobbi Rebell:
Get ready for some drama here. This is a good story. Here is Skillcrush CEO Adda Birnir.
Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Adda Birnir, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.
Adda Birnir:
Thank you for having me.
Bobbi Rebell:
Congratulations on all of your success. You are the founder and CEO of Skillcrush, which is the country's largest online tech education company. Your mission, of course, to help women and minorities learning digital skills, and you've been touted in the media as, so, for all of these accomplishments, 20 Women To Watch In Media, by Columbia Journalism School. You're one of the 30 Most Important Women In Tech, by Business Insider.
Bobbi Rebell:
We could basically spend the whole podcast going over that stuff, but I'm just happy to have you here, and get a little bit of your time in your busy day, running your growing empire. So thank you for being here.
Adda Birnir:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Bobbi Rebell:
The money story that you're going to share with us has a lot to do with how Skillcrush was born.
Adda Birnir:
Yeah, so, this is 2012 now. This is kind of the heyday of the incubator. I mean, they still exist, but they were really big then, and we were interested in exploring, trying to create some sort of software product ourselves.We had been playing around with a couple different ideas, and like I said, Skillcrush, which was called something totally different at the time, it was called Digital Divas, was totally, just like, a fun side product.
Adda Birnir:
We had this Tablet publishing software, so it was basically, like, our goal was to make it easy for online publishers to publish to iPads. That was kind of the thing we thought was like an actual business.
Bobbi Rebell:
So it was a total business pivot.
Adda Birnir:
It wasn't even like, a pivot. It was like, an isolated example. We just threw one out, and we're like, "Oh, people think we're interested in this one." It was good. I mean, it was one of those examples that the market tells you what they're interested in. And basically, no one gave two bleeps about the Tablet publishing, and everyone was super interested in the Digital Diva thing.
Adda Birnir:
Then, at the same time, fortuitously, I did this program at CUNY, on the Journalism School. And there, I met a woman named Jennifer McFadden, who went on to become my cofounder at Skillcrush, and she had done a lot of research about the online education space.
Adda Birnir:
So it was sort of, one of those, sort of total kismet moments, where I had this education product, that I didn't have any sense for the business proposition, or the business opportunity, and she had all this deep knowledge about the education space. So that was what really started it.
Adda Birnir:
I will say, though, because we'd had this failed attempt at this Tablet publishing software, I was very, very cautious with Skillcrush. I didn't want to invest in it without validating the idea on some product.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what did you do? What are the steps you took to validate it?
Adda Birnir:
Basically, when you go through this process, what you want to do is, you want to figure out, what is your riskiest assumption? For us, because, at the time, there weren't as many online education players. But there was lynda.com. So we felt like, it's that aspect of it, will people pay for education online, was validated.
Adda Birnir:
That, to us, was not the riskiest assumption. The riskiest assumption for Skillcrush was whether women would pay for, or would be interested in, a technology learning platform. So we designed this experiment, which is that we started a newsletter, and basically, what the sort of offer was, that the newsletter offered, was, we would define a technical term, and find an interesting way. And we'd done a day for 30 days.
Adda Birnir:
We went to South By Southwest, and figured, what we'll do is, we'll pitch this to women at South By Southwest, and they will buy it, with their e-mail address. We considered that sort of like, a transaction, and we figured, if we can't convince women at South By Southwest to purchase this, with their e-mail address for free, obviously, then there's no hope for us.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what happens?
Adda Birnir:
So, I think we had set, fill that goal of having 2,000 signups, and we did not get that, because we were doing direct sales. But our hit rate was 90% of them. I mean, everyone we spoke to, we got to sign up for it, so that was kind of our first positive signal. Then we actually, through that process, happened to pitch a woman who happened to work for Mother Jones. So then, she wrote us up, and then, that gave us another 600 signups, or something.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wow!
Adda Birnir:
That basically ended up with about 1,000 people.
Bobbi Rebell:
So then, what happened from there?
Adda Birnir:
So, from there, we started doing the Term a Day newsletter, and it started to build momentum, and I think we probably signed up, like, 3,000 people. Which, again, just to put this in perspective, this is shortly after Code Academy had gone live, and they had gotten 200,000 people to sign up over a 24-hour period. So I was completely bereft and disappointed by the 2,000. We had applied for the start of incubator, and we got in, and that gave us $25,000 of funding.
Adda Birnir:
The thing that I guess I think about it, like, at the time, I really needed that validation. Looking back on it, I think what I got out of it, more than the $25,000 ... because, honestly, the $25,000 just paid for incorporation. I didn't really have a lot of money, but it really was validation from an external source, that this is a cool idea, and you should keep working on it, and I think at that moment, I really needed that. But I don't think, the money itself, do you know what I'm saying?
Bobbi Rebell:
Yes.
Adda Birnir:
I think about this a lot, and looking back on it, I didn't need that validation, and that validation really didn't mean anything. Because they weren't my target audience, right? They didn't know.
Bobbi Rebell:
But at the time ...
Adda Birnir:
But at the time ...
Bobbi Rebell:
At the time, that mattered. Yeah.
Adda Birnir:
Exactly. But I just think about that, when I hear about women saying, "You know, I can't get funded," and I'm like, "Well, just remember, you don't need that validation from something." The only person, the only people that you need to validate your business are your customers, and often, it's easier to get them to validate it, than it is to get a venture capitalist to validate it.
Adda Birnir:
But we did, also from that, we did get another $50,000 as a convertible note from my other investors. That did give us some money, and that sort of about paid us, probably for the next four months, to build out Version 0.2, or whatever, of the product.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from this?
Adda Birnir:
A lot of people get very attached to what is their solution, and there's kind of a thing in the startup community, which is that you got a solution in search of a problem. I think the most important thing that I can say to people is, you really have to start from the opposite end, right? You have to start with a problem, and then, come up with a solution for it.
Adda Birnir:
So I would just really encourage everyone, that if you have a business idea, chances are, you're onto something. But, before you kind of go all in on building out what you think is the best solution to this problem that you perceive, is to really talk to the people who are going to be paying for this solution, and really make sure that you understand their problem, and more deeply.
Adda Birnir:
That's sort of the case with Skillcrush. We had a lot of bumps in the road, especially in that first year and a half, and a lot of that was because it wasn't that we hadn't identified a legitimate problem. Because we had.
Adda Birnir:
There were women who could benefit from technical skills, but I will tell you, what we learned very quickly is that women are not going out and searching, "I want to learn to code." Their motivation is not to learn to code, their motivation is to change their careers, and to make more money, and to have more creativity and flexibility.
Adda Birnir:
They have some interest, in the sense that technical skills could be helpful. The big insight for us was like, you can't sell women the jobs report. That's not how they purchase that, right? They are looking at, "What is this gonna do for me? What changes will I be able to see in my life?"
Adda Birnir:
That was a fundamental insight that I really didn't have, until I started talking to my customers, and really understanding what their pain points were, and their problems were, and making sure that the solution I was providing really aligned with what problem they were trying to solve.
Bobbi Rebell:
So let's get to your every day money tip, because it's actually a business lesson that applies equally to our personal financial levels.
Adda Birnir:
Yes. One of the biggest kind of "Aha" moments for me with my first business, which I was running with my friend, and we were both freelancers. I remember, we got this big check. I think it was for $10,000, or something, and her impulse was that we should just split it, 50/50. My thought, "Why don't we just set our salaries? We're each going to get $4,000 a month, or something."
Adda Birnir:
I don't remember what it was, these are hypothetical numbers, but I was like, "How about, instead of just splitting every check that comes in 50/50, why don't we put the money in a bank, and take salary, and create the sort of situation you would have, in a normal situation, where you are getting paid, like, a steady salary, even if your actual income is kind of lumpy?
Adda Birnir:
It was really interesting, because this obviously was really helpful for us, just from a perspective of, when you're a freelancer, it's really hard, because your salary and your income is unpredictable. So we sort of artificially created this predictability for us, but it turned out to be a really, really important shift in perspective, in terms of thinking about the business as a third entity, and not sort of seeing it as something, where we were just like, 50/50, but it was like being ... we were like an entity unto itself, that we wanted to grow, and build up.
Adda Birnir:
I think that, in a lot of ways, this is something that is really applicable to anyone who's running a freelance business, even if they're just a one-person freelance shop ... That, to really to start think about your freelancing career as a business, and you want to grow that business, and make sure that business has a really solid foundation.
Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about Skillcrush. So much going on. Tell me the latest for summer of 2018.
Adda Birnir:
We are in the process of launching a couple of new blueprints, so when you come to Skllcrsuh, you have two options, in terms of how you want to learn. You can either take our sort of, shorter, more specific skill focus, Blueprints.
Adda Birnir:
Or you can sign up for what we call a Breaking Detect Blueprint, which is our all-inclusive program. You get access to everything that we have, and a lot of personalization. We work with you to set your career goals, and all those things, but we have a couple of new blueprints coming out, where it's going to be launching: a Web developer blueprint, we have a UX Designer blueprint coming out, which is really exciting.
Bobbi Rebell:
And where people can learn more about you, and Skillcrush, and follow you on social media, and all that good stuff?
Adda Birnir:
You just got to skillcrush.com, and sign up for our 10-day boot camp. It's the best way to get started. It's totally free, and you can follow us on Twitter. Just add skillcrush, and on Instagram, at skillcrush. I'm out of Bork on all the platforms, although I'm not the best at this, that you can get ...
Bobbi Rebell:
Wait. Spell that out, then.
Adda Birnir:
Oh. A-D-D-A, B-J-O-R-K. It's just, like Bjork the singer, but it also happens to be my middle name, so ...
Bobbi Rebell:
Love it, because you're from Iceland. Which is a cool, random fact.
Adda Birnir:
Yes, definitely.
Bobbi Rebell:
How old were you when you came to this country? You were like a baby, right?
Adda Birnir:
I was a tiny little baby, yeah, and I speak Icelandic, and ...
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, my gosh. Say something.
Adda Birnir:
[foreign language 00:13:01]?
Bobbi Rebell:
What does that mean?
Adda Birnir:
Just, "This really nice letter today."
Bobbi Rebell:
All right, on that note, we'll leave it there, thank you so much.
Adda Birnir:
Thanks for just having me.
Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, everyone. So here's my take. When Adda and I were talking before the interview, she confessed that she had been so intimidated, just by the concept of coding beforehand, that she was resisting it, until, of course, she learned about them money thing, and all that.
Bobbi Rebell:
But then, when she focused, and tried it, she found out, it actually wasn't that hard.
Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Tip Number One: don't be intimidated by coding, or any skill that can benefit your career. It's basically a language. It can be challenging, she says, but it will open opportunities, and is becoming a basic thing that we all need to know a little bit about, at least, the basic level.
Bobbi Rebell:
Even if you're not directly coding, you may be supervising someone who is coding, or have somebody on your team, or at your company, or a peer. Understanding the basics of what they're doing, is going to help you figure out and understand workflow and project management.
Bobbi Rebell:
For example, I learned even just basic HTML years ago, and I built a website, literally typing in the codee that's now generally automatically generated for you, I was actually typing in the different codes.
Bobbi Rebell:
So, pre-Wordpress, pre-Squares-based, the whole thing. Skillcrush does have a free 10-day boot camp. So you can do that. I'm going to leave a link in the notes. It's pretty much risk-free, and worth checking out.
Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Tip Number Two: the every day money tip that she was talking about was basically about creating buckets for different needs with your money. So that can be really useful in your personal finances, even though she did really for business.
Bobbi Rebell:
Paying yourself the same amount each, especially if you have a variable income, is really useful. And then, you can put everything extra, in a different bucket, for a specific purpose. It's a great way, if you have a big goal, especially a goal that's intimidating, like, saving for a house down payment or something. Put it in a separate bucket. It'll start to add up. You won't even noticing it, and it works.
Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you all for your support of the show. If you like it, please, just tell a friend. Be sure to follow us on social media, and share the promo video, if you like them. You can win one for your business, or even just for yourself. Share them. Whoever the most this month, I'm going to pick someone, and I will make them a promotional video for themselves, or their business.
Bobbi Rebell:
On Twitter, you can follow me @bobbirebell, on Instagram, @obbirebell1. On Facebook, my page is Bobbi Rebell, and to learn more about the show, go to bobbirebell.com/financial grown-up podcasts.
Bobbi Rebell:
All right, [Ada Bernier 00:15:47] learned to move out of a career that left her financially vulnerable. She built a business instead focusing on helping others follow the money. Always a good philosophy when it comes to business and career. So thank you, Adda, for sharing your story, and for getting us one step closer to being financial grownups.
Announcer:
Financial Grownup With Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve [Stuart 00:16:20], and is a BRK media production.
