LaunchPod - Zach Heller
===

Zach: [00:00:00] We saw a completion jump from 73% to 92% learner satisfaction. Spiked grades went up. That was the moment that we realized, ignore all the bells and whistles, really invest in the core learning experience, and the results will follow. We're aiming [00:00:15] for 150,000 completions a year by 2029 when they can see.

Learners reporting to us that they actually are getting more out of what they're doing. We know that that's driving that number up towards 150,000. Welcome to Launch [00:00:30] Pod, the show from Log Rocket, where we sit down with top product and digital leaders. Today we're talking with Zach Heller, VP of Product at Penn Foster Group.

In this episode, we'll discuss how Penn Foster. Plans to literally fill a stadium with 150,000 graduates by 2029 doubling [00:00:45] completion rates to do it. Why they shifted focus from acquisition to graduation and how that's now driving over 50% of enrollments via word of mouth and how AI powered learning tools boosted course completions by 25% in just one year setting a new record for outcomes.

So [00:01:00] here's our episode with Zach Heller.

Jeff: Zach. What's up man? Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Zach: Thanks, Jeff. Great to be here.

Jeff: I'm, I'm excited for this one ' you started in marketing, so you started on the dark side and ended up over in product, through some various machinations. But the, the one thing I [00:01:15] really wanna focus on is. We were talking before, before we got in the air here, and you, what Penn Foster does is, is education and kind of post high school or, or other kind of online education. And you were ping this picture of like, you and a bunch of the team [00:01:30] were in the stadium for this big annual graduation that you guys do. And it was just. A ridiculous number of people. And, and someone mentioned looking at it, we could really fill this place. And that would be like well over a hundred thousand people I think, if I remember the, the [00:01:45] story, right.

And so like, talk us through that. 'cause you guys had this ridiculous goal that came of that, of basically let's, let's fill the stadium which is awesome of with graduates.

And I think that's, that's the big story here is like, how do you kind of really expand a product like that and, and take that on.

Zach: you're, [00:02:00] you're exactly right. We, we do an in-person graduation ceremony every year. Which for an online education company like Penn Foster Group is a chance to really meet everybody whose lives you're impacting face-to-face. And [00:02:15] me and a handful of members of the leadership team were watching people as they came in the front door, and it was a big crowd of people.

These are folks that are completing high school or a medical assistant certification program, and. They're coming with parents and friends [00:02:30] and we were just in awe of the sheer number of people walking through the door. And then when we look at this big stadium that at the time it can hold, close to a hundred thousand people, we said, boy, if we do our jobs right in time, we [00:02:45] can fill this place.

And that was the first real inkling of an idea of let's focus on completions and sort of everything else we'll follow.

Jeff: That's a lot of people. A hundred thousand people is, is a ridiculous number of people. That's so

cool. So you guys said, okay, we wanna fill the [00:03:00] stadium.

I, I think that's a, that's a awesome goal.

Let's educate more people. Let's complete the programs. Let's, let's fill a stadium. What did that actually mean though? 

Zach: Yeah. Penn Foster has a long and storied history over 125 years in fact. And so gone through many different iterations, [00:03:15] and today is a online training provider for people that are looking for economic opportunity and career advancement in a number of different industries. We have the largest credited online high school in the country, and then we have folks [00:03:30] working their way through various healthcare or veterinary.

Or skilled trades programs, really looking for that next job. Something that's more sustainable, that's higher paying, and that can set themselves up for a, a successful career. And [00:03:45] so when we. When we were looking at that stadium and thinking about what it would take to fill it, it was a moment where we knew that the culture and the approach to work really needed to change.

Historically, we've been focused on filling the [00:04:00] top of the funnel, right? Optimizing the marketing and the buyer journey, and doing a great job of getting more people to the starting line. But we were letting them down. Once the race started, we weren't helping them get to the finish line. If we're in the business [00:04:15] of economic mobility, then we have, we have to keep those promises that we were making in our marketing and, and help more people get to the end.

Jeff: I think some people may look at this and be like, education, most of our audience is, is tech and, and product leaders and building digital [00:04:30] experiences. But it is at heart, right? It's an acquisition story

and it's a churn story. It's the same thing as any other software product on Earth has.

How did you start to look at how are we going to do that? ' one theory would be just all right, acquisition to the moon. I think it was a [00:04:45] early HubSpot exec once famously said, more top of funnel basically covers a lot of sins downstream. But that's not, that's not necessarily the path you guys took.

Zach: Yeah, And and if

you imagine the funnel for us, [00:05:00] which starts the moment, somebody decides that they're going to enroll. And ends at the moment, somebody graduates and, and really gets that job that they're looking for. There were a lot of leaks in that funnel and we realized early on that simply growing, [00:05:15] the number of people we were enrolling was not gonna help us get to our goal.

This was around 20 22, 20 23, and we were completing about 75,000 people a year already. So, it was a big number. But we [00:05:30] had an idea that we could really double the completion rate.

We, we looked around at some of our programs and we compared those to others in our competitive set, and we knew we weren't doing a, a good enough job there,

and we hadn't [00:05:45] been focused on that.

So you're right. There were a lot of different ways that we could go about this. And I would say it started with just running a lot of experiments

to find out what were the levers that we could pull that would have the [00:06:00] biggest impact on retention. Reducing that churn.

Jeff: I'm gonna be honest, doubling completion rate, there is, there is optimizing

and then there is completely rethinking and like optimizing gets you 5, 10, [00:06:15] 15, 20%, but a hundred percent increase is, we're not talking. Let's make a button blue or red and see what works better here.

This is, this is real product experience optimization. So we're doubling completion rate. Experimentation is the name of the game. You said there's, there's kind of a mix [00:06:30] of 

academic programs here. Was there any focus on any one of them over others or, or how'd you kinda target it and work through the different personas and systems and stuff?

Zach: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a really good question. There was a moment where we realized that this wasn't just gonna [00:06:45] be a set of technical changes. This was a, a foundational change to the culture of the place. And I think it really started with mindset and with focus. We knew that we had a pretty broad portfolio of programs and we [00:07:00] weren't gonna be able to work on all of them at once.

If we tried to do that, we would do a lot of things and none of them we would do very well. In order to have the kind of impact that we were after, we had to narrow our focus on a set of top programs. Those [00:07:15] included our, our high school program, which is still today the largest in terms of revenue and enrollment across the portfolio.

A handful of healthcare programs, either things like dental assistant and medical coding and Medical [00:07:30] Assistant, and then our veterinary technician program, which is one of the largest in the country. And by focusing narrowly on those, we thought we could do more to impact results. We would learn a ton and we could apply those [00:07:45] learnings across the rest of the portfolio in time.

Jeff: \ if you have to do real substantive change to how you support people, probably each academic area is gonna have its own distinct needs.

So, where, where are the biggest clusters you can work on? Because I, I think also the important thing to think about and, and [00:08:00] for the listeners to understand is from a standpoint of how you guys get paid, there's

kinda two ends of it, right?

There's, there's the B2C end. Which people are subscribing month to month, and it's, it's a straight churn problem, right? Like the, the longer you keep people, the more they pay you. And the [00:08:15] longer they stay, they're more likely to complete.

But then on the B two, B side, for like companies trying to upskill workers through Penn Foster often you get paid to the end. So if they don't complete, you make nothing. So there's a really bad binary outcome there. So you're, you're super [00:08:30] incentivized to get to up completion rate. I think we would all, agree that furthering education is generally a good thing and you guys get to make more money while you do it is it's probably way better for margin than having to go out and acquire, people with a lower lifetime value.

Zach: And, and [00:08:45] that was huge for us. It was that recognition that what was good for our customers was actually good for our business. 

Jeff: It's so funny how that often aligns.

Zach: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We realized that continuing to spend money on acquisition and bringing people in who were gonna [00:09:00] churn was actually not sustainable long term.

It looked really good on the top line. And for a few years it really worked. But we, we had a situation where if we didn't pivot and start investing in the product, our brand was gonna [00:09:15] suffer. We would lose a lot of those partnerships that you mentioned. And so it was, it was a necessary change and I think a lot of people wanted that change.

If you went around to people across the company. The product organization was [00:09:30] still fairly new at that time, but there were ideas of plenty about how we could improve the learner experience. It's just that nobody had been asking that question before. 

Jeff: It's really interesting to see kinda across industries. We had a, a guy named Ken Houseman, who's VP of product over at

[00:09:45] Zuora, which is, they do subscription management and, and billing, stuff like that. And he, he actually talked about a very similar thing, was one of their big focuses for the past couple years has been, growth through retention,

also acquisition. Obviously you have to acquire to grow, but it's, it's, you can, [00:10:00] each user is so much more valuable that it actually is a positive feedback loop. That if you can get everyone to stay longer and pay more, you can spend more in acquisition and get more

people and like they, they feedback.

So it's really interesting to STI just across. Multiple verticals, 

Zach: yeah, A lot, a lot of people call it [00:10:15] product-led growth. There's a version of that certainly for us, and I think a lot of your listeners will understand this idea that there's a whole lot of potential benefit here in word of mouth. We know [00:10:30] from surveys of our learners, especially on the high school side, that roughly 50% of our enrollments come from somebody who heard about us through a friend or family member.

You're only gonna get that kind of benefit if you're actually delivering on the [00:10:45] promises that you're making.

Jeff: Word of mouth really suffers if you don't have a great

product. So, I mean, and, and not to put the, not to kind of ruin the story, so spoiler alert here, but, 20, 24, you guys have already seen

the highest completion rate that you've ever [00:11:00] seen. So like

it's, it's working already, which is fantastic. , and in 2025 is what you told me is looking even better

Zach: Yeah. 2024, we completed 84,000 roughly people across our portfolio and through June of this year, [00:11:15] we're pacing 14% ahead of that number. So the momentum is real and, and people can certainly see that. Y the next steps are really about continuing to focus. And, and not settling every single moment in the learner [00:11:30] lifecycle is an opportunity for us to think about new ways that we can engage them and rethink old practices that haven't worked.

And so we've had to encourage a lot more risk taking and, and make people know that [00:11:45] it's okay if you try something and it doesn't work. The real important thing is that we learn from every single effort and we apply those learnings to whatever we try next. 

Jeff: We have, obviously a growth team here and one of the things when I'm working with them is I kind of bring up you're gonna fail [00:12:00] so much more often than you succeed, especially in kind of digital growth stuff. The goal is don't fail the same way over

and over again.

That's bad, but you know, you can, you can fail and learn something. So if you fail and you learn and apply that to next thing, that's incredibly [00:12:15] valuable. But at the same time, and it sounds like this is something you guys did really well, is let's pick the right things to try at. So when they do work, they work really, really big. When they don't work, the cost is pretty low. And then how do we just go through as fast as we can and like as [00:12:30] fast as possible, prove the things that don't work. And then whenever you find a shred of goodness, just double down on it. Until you, there's no more juice to squeeze. And, and not only your graduation rates are up, but class scores are up.

Like actual grades are up. NPS is up, so like the [00:12:45] whole thing across the board seems to be working. So let's, how did you guys do this? I guess let's dive into like the, the actual

dirt about it, experimentation. What does that look like? How'd you pick experiments and maybe even some examples of, of things that worked.

And maybe if you're willing even, like what's one of two things that didn't [00:13:00] work?

Zach: It's exactly right that successes don't happen by accident. They're the result of constant experimentation and, and a long list of failures. Several years ago, one of the things that we started to test was. A version of, of human [00:13:15] led outreach to learners.

We, we call them success coaches, and this outreach was triggered by certain events. An example is a learner fails an exam. We want to reach out to that learner, make sure that they know it's okay, and then guide them [00:13:30] towards success on their makeup. The results of that experiment were actually quite promising.

The problem was we couldn't scale it. We didn't have the infrastructure or the tools to deliver that kind of support. For the large number of learners that we serve. So the lesson [00:13:45] there was good ideas will fail without the operational scaffolding that you need to make them work. And today, every pilot must include a plan to scale before it even starts.

You don't wanna find yourself in a situation where you try [00:14:00] something and it works and there's no way to scale it up.

Jeff: That would be so incredibly frustrating uh, just to be like, we know what we need to do. It just economically can't be done. It's interesting because not to, push back a little bit on, but like, it's [00:14:15] interesting 'cause our approach here tends to be when I've talked to that team and, and across the company, is let's find the things that

work. Don't worry about scale at the outset. \ do anything manual or anything crazy that you need to do to prove the thesis. And then [00:14:30] let's go about figuring out how do we make it scale? Is there. Maybe sometimes you, take a concession, it's, it's 80% as effective as the perfect way,

but you can scale it. That's it. I think human led, having to have humans in the loop on [00:14:45] that many people, there might just not be a way to scale that. But it's always interesting to hear everyone's like slightly different view on this and, and what works for each company.

Zach: And that's where new technology is making things possible that we weren't even thinking about at the time. AI obviously is a [00:15:00] buzzword, but it's not a gimmick. 

Jeff: It's a useful buzzword

Zach: exactly. Yeah. It's, it's a tool. And we have problems to solve, solve that AI lets us scale our impact.

A, a recent example that I'll, I'll share here is.

We have this [00:15:15] new high school writing coach.

Writing we know, and a lot of people in education know, is one of the most difficult subjects for learners of any age.

we partnered with a company called Learnosity and used their tool to provide real-time [00:15:30] feedback to learners on every writing assignment.

So before they ever have to submit it to an instructor to get graded, they're getting feedback and they have a chance to retry. As many times as they want. When we did that, we saw an increase [00:15:45] in engagement. People loved using the tool. We saw submissions go up and pass rates go up.

And so students are less afraid to try something when they know that there are supports there to help them succeed.

And that's a breakthrough that was only [00:16:00] possible at that scale with that type of technology.

Jeff: Yeah. And when the pain of failure or the, the risk of, of real failure is so much lower, you can experiment a little bit. You can, you can take the risk and you put yourself out there. 'cause also, it's probably a lot easier to have. A robot tell [00:16:15] you, oh, that's not great. Let's try again. Then like a teacher who, who's a human, I think we feel we all probably take it more personally when it's a human.

What was that tool called? Is that a tool you guys built or is that

Zach: It's a company we partner with called Ity. And they, they built this tool. It's, it's an ed tech company that works with [00:16:30] schools and it's mostly for instructors to help them with, with grading and, and giving feedback. And we actually took that and built a layer on top so that it could be learner facing.

Jeff: That sounds like an amazing tool that I'm surprised more places are not using. 'cause [00:16:45] also that realtime feedback is probably so much stronger for reinforcing how it works. Like you can apply micro lessons as you write a paper versus getting, a C minus back on a paper and having to figure out the, all the different things you did wrong across it.

Zach: , and

That's the [00:17:00] dream really. We, we talk about this concept of precision learning which is really an evolution of what we used to call personalized learning. We know that the right interventions at the right times are going to keep people engaged for longer,

[00:17:15] and a, a tool like that allows us to do that at scale.

Jeff: yeah. It's. Interesting. Again, back to like parallels across industries. log rocket at heart, we. Help you understand like how users are using your digital application. So same way, like a teacher helps you write, we help [00:17:30] you understand how to improve how people experience your digital application.

And the problem has always been we have, thousands of customers and obviously it's, we can have a human dedicated to, people who are paying us a lot of

money, but we have a ton of customers at, at the long tail who are paying us, a, a [00:17:45] medium amount and not enough that we can really justify having a person super, super involved constantly. We, we built an AI tool called Ask Galileo that basically able to watch sessions, pull insights out, but similarly, one of our customer success [00:18:00] people was using the tool and playing around and discovered that it was actually more powerful to when we realized she was able to start asking how different customers were using it, what were next steps they should be taking

to get more value.

And it was. At a customer to customer and [00:18:15] even user level getting really like down into the, this user did this, you should send them an email and say that if they did this, it would help them do that more automatically. Or if they wanna monitor that they could do, like it laid out several situations that were incredibly [00:18:30] accurate at the next thing they would want to do that they were

not doing. And we found that it has really helped with that kinda long tail of customer base.

Be able to improve their usage, . Same way like writers are gonna get way better when you can give them real time micro feedback on writing that paper.

Zach: [00:18:45] And so much, so much about what we do is, is trying to keep the programs affordable, right? Keeping, keeping the price down for the learner or for the partner and tools like that allow us to do it. But what you're talking about is reminding me [00:19:00] of. This idea that we've had for a long time that technology is finally making possible.

We, we have so much historical behavior data on our learners and what successful learners do that might be different than other [00:19:15] learners. And if we can train an algorithm on that and then use that to reinforce positive learning behaviors. For our learners as they go through the program. I think that could be a, a real ticket to success for a [00:19:30] lot more learners.

Jeff: And the good news is, right, you can probably do that more cheaply than having more humans involved to it,

potentially better education, lower price, and more accessible. You can, invest more in acquisition, bring on more people like this. This is a whole set of positive feedback loops that all kind of [00:19:45] help enhance themselves.

I I wanna take one second just real quick though to talk about. You talk about positive behaviors of learners if you are a positive behavior in podcast listeners is if you like the podcast and you're on [00:20:00] YouTube, give us a subscribe here. Write a review. Say hello.

If you are listening on Apple Podcast or Spotify, subscribe. Like it. Write us a review. That's how we get the word out and, and we can keep doing this content right here. So, 

what else did you guys do that worked? I mean, I think

we've, we've gotten like [00:20:15] clearly this idea of, of micro in real time feedback is a phenomenal tool. And as AI continues to get stronger and also cheaper, I, I can only imagine there's gonna be a lot more of that, that you guys can implement.

But I have to imagine that's not the only thing that's gonna work here.[00:20:30] 

Zach: No, it's not. And, and I probably skipped a beat a little bit because when we were first experimenting a couple years ago, what we discovered was the real needle mover. The, the real aha moment for 

us, 

Jeff: nice.

Zach: Focused [00:20:45] on the actual learning experience, the, the core of the product needed to change. We tried a lot of things that.

It's a cliche, but it was more like putting lipstick on a pig. It was taking bad learning experiences and make them look a little [00:21:00] better. One of the earliest pilots that was a real success for us was in our dental assistant program. We applied a new learning model that we call lads, which is an acronym that stands for learner-centered, active, authentic, [00:21:15] differentiated, and skill-based.

In plain English, it means that we built. Program for the learner. We understood who they were, what experiences they were bringing to the table, and so we could design more appropriately for them. And we created courses that were much more [00:21:30] active. They were learning by doing, they had opportunities to practice along the way as opposed to what we're all probably familiar with, with online programs is passive consumption reading audio.

And, and you didn't really get a chance to [00:21:45] try. And, and that's really what makes a difference. And when we piloted that new model, in one of our first courses, we saw a completion jump from 73% to 92% of learners actually getting through that course. Not only [00:22:00] that, but in that course, learner satisfaction, spiked grades went up.

And so that was the moment that we realized, ignore all the bells and whistles, really invest in the core learning experience, and the results will follow.

Jeff: Right, and it's again, back [00:22:15] to like core product theory and, and how. All these things tend to tend to, run together as convergent evolution, right? So often is what is the main thing that people are there for. Find your aha moment and then drive it home. And the more you can do that or the faster you can [00:22:30] get people there, the more efficiently you can get them the aha moment. And in this case, the aha moment is actually learning. So. I mean, we've got like real time reinforcement this focus on lads, I'm not even gonna try to say the acronym there. But, and then, but [00:22:45] you, you also desi, like you also found out that this kinda superficial just made things prettier,

didn't work. What else was key there? I mean, 'cause you guys have already had a lot of success.

Like, like you said, graduation rates up grades are up,

NPS is up. How did you look at [00:23:00] discerning which of these tests were worth doing or which ones weren't? Or like kind of take us through the process of like, how'd you kind of prioritize these things or how does that process work behind the scenes You.

Zach: Yeah, and, and it's so much about discovery which [00:23:15] for product managers is, is most of the job. Not only are we constantly discovering what problems we need to solve, but we're discovering different ways of solving those problems. And so we encourage our teams to take an outcomes [00:23:30] oriented approach.

Right? How is the work that you're doing going to affect that goal, which I, I don't think we ever put a number on. We're, we're aiming for 150,000 completions a year by 2029. That's our big audacious goal that we're [00:23:45] chasing and everybody. Knows that and is rallied around that. And so when they can measure things like learners progression from one course to the next when they can see learners reporting to us in [00:24:00] surveys or, or other feedback that they actually are getting more out of what they're doing, we know that that's driving that, that number up towards 150,000.

And so it's, it's really giving teams the space. To [00:24:15] test and learn along the way. One of the rituals that we implemented as a product organization that I think is really effective, we call it the product pulse. It's a quarterly meeting where we basically block the entire day [00:24:30] and every single product manager has a chance to present to leadership.

So they come in and they tell us what they're working on and why. Right? What are the learnings that led them that to think that's the problem to solve? And then what are they trying and, and what are [00:24:45] they learning along the way? It, it is a very loose atmosphere. It creates a lot of discussion, but the thing that it does most importantly is it keeps outcomes central to the conversation.

And, and that's, that's [00:25:00] been really effective for us. S.

Jeff: It's so easy to get stuck in looking through analytics every day and, and trying to solve the micro problems. It's always. It's interesting and glad to see you guys kinda take that time to step back and take a elongated period of time to look at what are the big problems that [00:25:15] strategically, like, are we working on the right stuff

, because I have this theory I keep coming back to, which is Moderately successful companies and, and hugely, exponentially successful companies. I, I really don't think is that exponentially successful companies succeed at [00:25:30] more tests.

I don't think that's what it is. I think it's that they're more discerning in picking the things that they're just going to absolutely knock outta the park and be world class at. And , they're able to kind of pick that and focus better and, and probably it's more of a focusing exercise. The difference [00:25:45] between. Maybe one, one standard deviation down

and excellence level than it is success rates or, or things like that. So, great to see kind of that, and I guess also curious to just get your, your take on that broadly from what you've seen over, 20 years of doing [00:26:00] this.

Zach: Yeah, it, it's true. And I think it comes back to that idea of focus. When you find something that works like we did with that dental assistant course, then we needed to solve a whole bunch of additional problems to and to scale that effect, [00:26:15] right? Because it's great if you can do it in one course. Even better if you could do it in a hundred courses.

And that's really what we're in the middle of now unlike some of the other technology organizations that you probably talk with, our product organization includes [00:26:30] learning designers, it includes faculty, and so it's a very collaborative effort to build out courses. At this speed and scale that we need while staying true to the [00:26:45] fundamental concepts that worked and we don't have it perfect, but that is constantly what we are focusing on across technology, product, learning, design, and, and our academic team.

It's continuing [00:27:00] to experiment within courses. We had to build new tools that let us measure the actual learning and the progress from course to course, and then to diagnose where there were issues. If we put a new course out and we see that not enough people are [00:27:15] completing it, that's fine, but we need to know why.

And so now we have better reporting tools that let us kind of dig in, listen to learners see where they're struggling, and then iterate over time.

Jeff: Right. I mean, right back to, I think you started talking about finding the [00:27:30] moments of. Time where people maybe drop

off like a failed test and stuff like that. But my bet is given the number of people you, you graduate and the number of people you work with some of the gains, not in generative ai, but in things like machine learning and the pattern recognition [00:27:45] there probably really helpful.

And I think almost any of us could go, oh yeah, reach out to someone when they fail a

test and, and help them there. Like that's, that's gonna be very useful. But there's probably tons more micro moments that are hard to recognize. We talked previously about employing [00:28:00] machine learning there to understand like what are those more hidden moments and how do you trigger the right outreach of the right involvement or the right, I guess, solution

there kind of in, in that, but further backs up your idea precision learning.

Zach: Exactly. And, and every learner is [00:28:15] different. So we should not pretend that a one size fits all model is going to get us to 150,000 completions a year. It, it's simply not. And so if we can take this information that we have based on years of doing this [00:28:30] for learners all over the country. We should be able to deliver the right message in the right moment.

That might be that little boost of motivation that somebody needs when they're going through a rough patch, a reminder [00:28:45] of the goals that they set for themselves when they started the program. That alone can be the kind of mindset shift that somebody needs to keep going when they're thinking about quitting.

Or it, it might be, Hey, it looks like you are [00:29:00] struggling here, and this is a tough subject. A lot of people struggle here. For some people, what really helps is scheduling time with your instructor or, reading this supplementary material, whatever it is. I think, the, the AI [00:29:15] algorithm is going to be much better at learning what messaging is going to have that effect on each learner.

Jeff: I'm curious, maybe this isn't something you guys do or, or maybe just included, but like, is there ever a thought to those [00:29:30] are potential paths to upsell or, or. Additional revenue. We're like, oh, hey, it looks like you're struggling. You should invest in some hourly tutoring.

Zach: Hmm. I, I, I won't lie and say that it hasn't come up in conversation, but [00:29:45] we are so dead set on doubling the completion rate

that if we think that there's an idea that has an impact on that number, we're going to test it and we're not gonna charge for it at this 

Jeff: That, that was my [00:30:00] question. Is, is more, is that, or is that just included in

like, clearly? Is it part of Yeah, I, I, and given the mission right, of, because I, I do think it's really tough to be inspired if like, oh, we're. We're trying to cash in on education

as much as we can, versus [00:30:15] we are trying to graduate 150,000 people in a year.

We're trying to double the graduation

rate. And we're trying to, bring economic mobility, like you said, to to more and more people. That's a inspiring guiding principle. And like you said, then you're gonna do whatever it takes to up that

number [00:30:30] versus like, yeah, you can nickel and dime people, but if the mission is let's, let's bring economic. Mobility through education right. And that's kinda why I asked. Like, I don't know which way that leans and, and how

Zach: I, I'm,

I'm certainly not here to throw shade on different kinds of 

pricing models because [00:30:45] there are a lot of other ways to do this that are just as effective. I'll put a number on it. Our high school diploma program in total costs about $1,500 for high school diploma.

Jeff: Yeah.

Zach: Our veterinary technician is an Associate's degree [00:31:00] program that people can graduate for about seven or $8,000 all in.

And so we strive to be the most affordable or one of the most affordable options for people, and we wouldn't be able to survive without that because the learners [00:31:15] that we serve can't afford to be up charged and nickel and dimed everywhere. They're coming here because they want what comes next. It's our job to get them there.

So the promises that we're making have to come at that price point.

Jeff: And [00:31:30] what I think is, is probably really helpful in making you guys successful here is I think neither of us are, are making any value judgment about, if another company does charge for tutoring or not. It's not a bad or a good thing, but it is, you know what your mission is. You know who you serve, you know [00:31:45] what they need, and you know what the mission is that brings

value to the customer and you're staying true to that.

And that overall it seems to be, what is driving all of this forward is like. There's a high minded, yes, open up economic mobility, but it's also like we serve that [00:32:00] group of

people. This is what they need. 

Zach: Yeah. And I, and I talked a little bit before about this cultural journey that we're on, and when you think about a product leader or product manager the job becomes a lot easier when you have [00:32:15] a singular goal, a north star that you can rally people around and that everybody believes in. And then we've built a set of principles underneath that.

And anytime we have a question or a debate comes up we can go back to [00:32:30] that goal and go back to those principles and usually the right answer becomes pretty clear

I used to think when I was early in my career that the people at the top of the organization were the people with all the answers. And I think we learn as we grow, [00:32:45] that they didn't have all of the answers, but they were listening. They were out there talking to people who did have the answers.

And what we've gotta do as product leaders is empower our teams and give them the space [00:33:00] to, we talked about experiment and explore and talk to customers and find those answers. And it's that much easier when everybody knows what the goal is. So everybody's out there on the same mission, and my job [00:33:15] is to really get out of the way and then clear the obstacles that are in the way of my team being successful.

Jeff: Right, I've talked to so many. People in, in leadership roles, and especially people who've transitioned recently into them who talk about, I just feel like I'm saying the same thing over and [00:33:30] over and over again.

Like I'm sure you have said, our goal is 150,000 completions. Our goal is to up graduation rates and completion rates. That's what our mission is, economic mobility through education. And at times at the leadership level, I feel like [00:33:45] I've said the same thing 20, 30, 40, 50 times. , we have an investor here who, who made a good point to us once, which was just as you start to get bored and sick and feel like you're gonna vomit, if you say those words one more time, you are [00:34:00] probably just starting to get to the point where like it is really sinking in across the org and across maybe, your prospect base and everything like that, because. No one, no one's gonna care as much as the founder does, or, or the CEO and the one [00:34:15] level down. Very few people are gonna care as much as, as the leadership level does because , it's just how that works. But it's also just you live and breathe that message so often that it's, you're gonna get bored of it.

But the, the goal part way is just keep communicating that so people know that. And [00:34:30] it's funny 'cause I've found, as I've done that I feel like I'm just repeating myself and people, as I talk more like, oh yeah, that it seems, that just UPS clarity, which is great. So that's one tip I've always kinda given people as they've moved into leadership now, is just keep saying the mission, just don't, [00:34:45] you're gonna feel like you're sick of it and

Zach: Yeah, 

Jeff: one else is.

Zach: and I think it, it's not just a leadership skill, it's a, it's a product management skill. Effective communication is so important, knowing [00:35:00] how to deliver that message to different audiences. Critical. So you might be repeating the same headline a hundred different times,

but depending on the setting and the people that you're talking to, you can find ways to [00:35:15] make it directly relate to their role and the work that they do every day.

We have people who are in our student service teams, they're on the front lines, and they're more often than not hearing from learners who are struggling or [00:35:30] who it isn't working for. And they even know what the goals are, but we've found ways to talk about it with them that connect to their day-to-day lived reality at Penn Foster.

They know that if they [00:35:45] can solve a learner's issue on the first call, that's a learner who's more likely to progress. Right? And so we can, we can connect it to goals that we set at individual team levels and individual levels. And those all scaffold up to [00:36:00] the overall 150,000 completions number.

Jeff: I think the other thing that's important here is the world itself is not static. Right. Especially, I mean, especially given the people you are, selling services

to and the market you're in and just, [00:36:15] regulatory environments change and, having that focus allows you to. Easily shift the MicroStrategy of like, okay, we're going to market maybe a little bit more or acquire more people in this kind of academic area or this skills-based area because funding, [00:36:30] has shifted more to more, or companies are focused more on growing this type of person. but you don't have to rethink. What is the macro goal for the company is just how do we get there or micro to, to medium

goals. Obviously right now the regulatory and funding environments [00:36:45] are, are changing very heavily. My wife works for an education nonprofit. I have a lot of friends in medicine

and there's changes there, but. You might see a little bit less investment in some of the, and I don't know if this is true or not, so you can correct me or not. You might see maybe a, a dip in [00:37:00] people investing in training for like medical assistant

roles, but I would, I would wager there's probably other areas where demand is going up as a result of these

Zach: Yeah. Yeah. And , the most recent tax and spending bill that was passed just this month it really changes the way we [00:37:15] think about healthcare. There's gonna be less funding. And we work with a lot of primary care associations across the country who serve communities that rely on Medicaid.

And if Medicaid funding goes [00:37:30] down, that's gonna impact decisions that they make. But the reality, as we think about the way AI is changing the nature of work right now it's radically reshaping white collar work. [00:37:45] We, we see more hands-on roles as protected and, and will continue to be in demand.

Things like electricians or veterinary technicians or dental assistance. An aging [00:38:00] population is driving the demand for healthcare hire regardless of the funding environment.

That's one reason why that is the fastest growing sector of the labor market today. In the skilled trades we know that for every 10 job openings [00:38:15] at best, there's usually one person with the skills required to do that job today.

So those aren't just talent pipeline problems. Those are real economic threats that we face. When hospitals can't hire enough workers or when you or I [00:38:30] can't find somebody to fix our AC in a heat wave that's not theoretical anymore, that becomes a real world failure. 

Jeff: What I love about how you guys are looking at this and, and to bring it all home, 

is that regardless of how these things change, right? AI is gonna affect what roles are open regulatory is going [00:38:45] to change over time. Both ways, every way. \ , but your guys kind of view on making sure people understand the mission, having a clear mission, making the ability to experiment open and having a clear way to [00:39:00] prioritize and understand what the biggest levers are, and having the data to back it all up enables you to, to focus on that goal through all these changes and is really a lesson that people should look at across every industry.

I mean, the results you've had in just a couple years. Huge. We'll have to have [00:39:15] you, back on after a little while because I, I want to, I wanna see when you guys hit That number. 

It seems like at the rate you're going, you're gonna be do it before 2029, so I hope so at least. But I mean, it's this framework that a lot of people should really take to heart because it work for all sorts of companies. And yeah, it's been great. Thank you so [00:39:30] much for taking the time to take us through this, both the ups and the downs, what worked and didn't. , I think it'd be a really valuable look at how do you drive real change at scale through, mission, communication and experimentation. But yeah, it's been a pleasure, man. If people [00:39:45] wanna ask you more or dig in more, or cover more than we were able to here is LinkedIn the best place to reach out? 

Zach: Absolutely they can find me uh, Zach Heller on LinkedIn, and if they wanna learn more about Penn Foster, they can go to Penn foster.edu.

Jeff: Awesome. And if you wanna keep hearing more of [00:40:00] this podcast or you, you like what you saw and you like Zach and you want to hear from more people like him on YouTube, give us a subscribe. Write a comment if you want. Give us a like, apple Podcast, Spotify. Subscribe to the podcast, write a review.

That's really important. It helps us get discover, helps people find us. [00:40:15] But tell your friends, tell a colleague. It helps us get the word out and it helps us keep doing this thing. So if you got value outta this, help us with our mission. But yeah. Zach, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on.

We'll have to stay in touch. But goodbye for now. Thank you.

Zach: Yeah. Thanks so much, Jeff. This was [00:40:30] fantastic. I.