“Our speakers are not information gypsies or mentors”
— Why did you get into the educational product?
— In 2017
The meetings were held in Barnaul, Stavropol,Khabarovsk, Petrozavodsk, Kaliningrad, Pyatigorsk. On average, several thousand entrepreneurs came to master classes. Then we asked the participants what it was for them. They answered that they receive knowledge through real entrepreneurs who have grown a business, get acquainted with modern tools for development. During the day, they integrated into the business community, which helped them find new customers and partners.
Sergey Tabolin — Marketing Directorbusiness segment of Rostelecom Business. More than 18 years of experience in telecommunications marketing, specializing in working with corporate clients.
How did you decide to develop this project further?
— In 2020, we realized that the Academy has twodirections of development. It was possible to do these events almost every week, but we could not become "Tender May". This pushed us to go to big cities, to the format when we gather Yubileiny in St. Petersburg - this is 5 thousand participants with an online broadcast.
Therefore, we decided to scale the project throughonline training, where we can give not courses, but tools. This contributed to the creation of an entrepreneurial digital environment where businessmen share life hacks. The industrial component has its own specifics and it is important to know the know-how that is applied in other regions.
Sergey Tabolin
And all this is about knowledge and experience: we needed to create highly specialized courses and content that help entrepreneurs feel confident in an ever-changing world. Therefore, it was important to invite non-infogypsies or, as they are called, professional mentors as speakers. Entrepreneurs want to receive information from colleagues who can share their experience in a structured, succinct and simple language.
It turned out that there is a “blue ocean”, to whichneither the state nor the major system players reach it. And small players, due to money and the distribution model, cannot convey information about their digital technologies, knowledge and experience.
But why did you go into education? A business community can be built without it.
- This is an integrated approach: one pulls the other.Business problems are very clear: Entrepreneurs don't know how technology will help them do their business. Therefore, you can give the entrepreneur educational content and he will “probe” it in the try and buy format or courses. Nothing better, from the point of view of information transfer, has yet been invented.
“There are problems with content for entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized cities”
What problems do businessmen have? And how do you find out about them?
— Entrepreneurs themselves talk about the difficulties.They have three main problems. The first is the lack of basic and technological knowledge. Second, there is no structured knowledge about successful experiences. Moreover, these should be examples of businesses that were created in the outback and spread to the territory of the region, covering several subjects of the country, and then, possibly, the entire Russian-speaking space. The third problem is that there is no extra time. These are the three pillars on which the "Business Drive Academy" was created.
Project courses
We conduct in-depth research among ourcurrent and potential client base, where we ask direct questions related to doing business. For example, one of the problems for projects that are 4-5 years old is how to retain a team in a small business. Or for the youngest: how to choose a mission, start promoting yourself effectively and choose a sales system.
There are also other tasks:how to find financing, invest correctly, work with the tax authorities, introduce new payment technologies. We create content for the problems and challenges faced in small and medium-sized cities in Russia.
— But how did you understand that course A is more important than course B? Also the needs of the audience?
— They asked them a question: “What worries you now?”" They were given a choice of 25 different topics on which they could receive content. And, naturally, the number one request is relevant promotion tools in Russia. This became important after Meta* services were blocked, and self-employed people used them (*Meta company was declared extremist in Russia, and its services were blocked - ed.)
The second question is how to work with a team ina crisis. This is also understandable: in difficult moments, employees begin to migrate to medium and large businesses, where it is easier to wait out the crisis. There were requests for how to work with finances; this also needs to be learned again during changes. Therefore, they immediately launched four anti-crisis courses, which are wildly popular. Almost all entrepreneurs who come to courses today primarily study these four topics.
Anti-crisis courses of the project
— Obviously, the online project can be scaled to the whole country. Do you specifically avoid cities with a population of over a million?
We don't avoid.Systemic players involved in educational projects, and even information gypsies, mainly work in Moscow and St. Petersburg. To a lesser extent - in millionaires. But there are already professional educational institutions for businessmen.
And in small and medium-sized cities there are problems withcontent for entrepreneurs. Therefore, our main task is to develop the digital economy and help entrepreneurs in the regions. According to SPARK, approximately 50% of the 7 million businessmen operate in small and medium-sized cities. And this is the "blue ocean" for such projects.
— How do you select experts and course authors?
— We only call existing entrepreneurs,who are engaged in business in an operational or strategic format. These are specialists who have experience in solving problems at the regional and federal levels, and people who built their company from scratch - 80% of our speakers are exactly like that. We also have employees from vocational educational institutions with a background of working in large companies, where they teach entrepreneurship: from Skolkovo to Plekhanov Academy.
"You can always study - even in the subway, even in a traffic jam"
- In addition to courses, you make collections of podcasts, books and other materials for entrepreneurs. For what?
- We created not an educational platform - notwe want to fight head-on with other players who are sharpened for such activities. "Academy" gives free knowledge about digital technologies, but we have content that is also generated by users. For example, our website has a corporate messenger where you can create a digital community, where entrepreneurs share their experience.
Our courses cover the needs of the audiencesequentially, these are seasons with basic needs and digital technologies. There is a season when a business enters the area of new construction, when it grows from small to medium. We are not fixated on how it is worth taking these courses, we can only suggest based on the digital checkup at the start of training. You can refuse it and take courses as and when it is convenient.
The largest publishing houses are represented in the library:starting with Alpina Digital and ending with Mann, Ivanov and Ferber. We take Russian authors-entrepreneurs there, who share their experience, and structure the library.
— In most educational projects, users start but drop out. It's even worse with free courses. Have you experienced this?
— We were afraid that users would notcomplete the courses in full. But at the same time, they knew that 80% of all people who came to the “Business Drive” master classes stayed until the end. Agree, not everyone can sit through an event from 9 am to 6 pm.
We are constantly studying what is happening in the marketeducation. Therefore, we immediately determined that we would do a lot of experiments with content. Our courses are based on several ideas - we provide content short and concise, you can learn at any moment, even in the subway or traffic jam. It is written in simple language, we do not need to google terms and wade through the scientific or stationery style, which is what other educational projects sin.
We make content about the most important, selecta specific person, given his current state and the place where he wants to be. Moreover, all the information is built in very short blocks: we give 5-10 minutes to read the text, the timing of the video is also no more than 5-10 minutes. Each target group can find something interesting for themselves.
Youth and students watch summaries andinfographics, the older generation - full videos, those who are 50-60 years old - read texts and download checklists. The level of training and immersion of our users is 89%, we have achieved it since the start of our project. And we have a large number of entrepreneurs who come up with one issue, and then start looking for answers from other speakers on other issues. That is, the average level of immersion is 3.5 courses, which is a lot.
This is how the lectures at the Business Drive Academy look like
— Despite the fact that you have a simple service, there are users who are not so well versed in technology. Do you have a support system for such people?
— Yes, it is divided into two levels.The first one is operational, we have a corporate messenger where several administrators sit and answer questions or accept suggestions. The second is video instructions for beginners on how to use Business Drive Academy.
— Do you have stories about specific users who came to you with problems and solved them with the help of your courses?
- We evaluate the platform from the point of view of users once a quarter. We ask them how convenient it is to use the application, what they got for themselves, how they apply knowledge, and so on.
This way we received a lot of useful feedback.We received success stories from retail trade, online stores, beauty salons, manufacturing companies that are having a particularly hard time today, IT companies, and advertising agencies. This is a very wide range of industries that expressed their respect to us and told us how they overcame problems with the help of the Business Drive Academy. A variety of stories, from reputation and work on social networks before applying and updating the business model.
— How do you see the service in a few years?
— If we talk from big to small, weWe are going to launch an entrepreneur digitalization index. The user will undergo digital scoring, where, in addition to training, he will receive a personal track with the possibility of expert business support.
We interact with colleagues from the Ministryeconomic development, with which we discuss the benefits for those who will take a personal training track. The third project is the development of new channels with relevant content in different formats. These are podcasts, interactions of successful entrepreneurs with novice colleagues.
By the end of the year, we will launch more than 40 courses.Now 15 thousand entrepreneurs are connected to our platform, 250 users join us daily. All our content is for their improvement, development of digital technologies and support of small and medium-sized businesses in our country.
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