L&D Strategies for Remote Teams

[00:00:00] Fill in the blank, Lavinia. Fill in the blank here. The Academy Award for blank goes to Lavinia. Most undecisive person. No, that's my wife. My wife already has that title, Lavinia. Sorry. I'm sorry. Hey everyone. Ever since COVID, the learning industry transformed. In addition to online learning courses, L& D teams at big companies have started to look for ways to use new technology to enhance team productivity and innovation within their organizations.

[00:00:32] My guest today has taken all these conversations around L& D and given them a fresh, actionable twist. Let's dive into the conversation with Lavinia from Offbeat. All right, today I'm with Lavinia Mehedintseou. And Lavinia just introduced me to a wonderful artist called Jessie J. I don't know if anybody listens to it, but the song that she introduced to me was excellent.

[00:00:53] I'm going to go back and jam out to Jessie J right after this conversation. Lavinia, how are you doing today? I'm fine. Thank you. A bit of a cold, but otherwise all good. Okay. Well, for the audience here, can you kind of give just a brief background about what you do and where you, where you came from? Of course.

[00:01:10] So I've been, I live in Bucharest, Romania. I've been here for a couple of years now, more than a decade, actually. Uh, I've been in the HR space for, for quite a few years, and then I moved to learning and development. And that gave me an amazing intro to what I'm doing right now. I'm a founder of OffBeat, a learning space dedicated to L& D professionals.

[00:01:35] Yeah. Yeah. This is really, really cool. So we're going to get into your startup. But when you were a kid, did you ever do anything entrepreneurial? Do you, if so, what was it? I don't think so. Actually, I think I grew up in, in a space where entrepreneurship wasn't necessarily something that you would do just because it was so risky.

[00:01:53] I think the closest that I got to, to. Like doing something, something at least related to money was being like the, I think it was the chef of the class, something like that, like you would be in charge of things that were happening in your classroom and also raising money for different things. So, yeah, I think that was the closest that I got to it.

[00:02:17] Okay. Okay. And what's something about you that most people don't know? They're not going to see this on your LinkedIn profile, Lavinia. That I'm, I'm hugely passionate about Formula One. Okay. You know, the, the last race was in Vegas and it was, I came down to the very end for second place. Did you see that?

[00:02:35] Yeah. It was the most exciting race of the season. I have to say, yeah, yeah, it was pretty exciting. I was catching the highlight on YouTube. Very, very good. Cool. Have you ever seen a race live? Yes. Yes, I have. We're at Hungary, Budapest. Okay. Okay. I I've seen one live. It was in Austin, Texas when they built the speedway.

[00:02:54] And so we just took a road trip and my dad's been going every year, ever since they launched it. And there's nothing like the sound of those cars. Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. I, I dig a lot of the performance side of it. I think it's, it's special both for teams and for drivers. So yeah, I, I'm a huge fan.

[00:03:13] Yeah. Were you a fan before the Netflix show or were you a fan after? Yes, I was. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. All right. Now every startup has, you know, a unique beginning. Now what's the story behind Offbeat? Uh, Offbeat works to be exact. And how did the idea come to life? Well, So it was March of 2020, I was in house because, well, I wasn't allowed to go outside my apartment and I was extremely bored and I said, okay, I have to do something with my time.

[00:03:45] And there was a lot of conversation back then in DL& D industry about how to, how will we shift from, you know, doing all the in person things that we were doing to the digital space. And I felt that we were missing, like, very important conversations just because we were focusing so much on that. And they posted a list of resources that I have found, uh, beforehand.

[00:04:08] And that post got a lot of traction. So it was an incentive for me to keep on posting. And then someone suggested in the comments, Hey, I'm losing all these resources, I would like to get them in my email, would it be okay if you would turn this into a newsletter? And I did so, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

[00:04:29] And then, yeah, it's, it's insane. Meanwhile, you're working though. You're working at EMAG. That's correct. I was still working at EMAG. Yeah. I had the full time job. I was the L& D manager of a team of 12 people. So I have to say they were taking a lot of my time. And yeah, I decided to do this on, on the side and I was doing it during weekends, which was the worst idea ever.

[00:04:53] So I'm, I'm still sending the newsletter on Sundays for me and my personal life. It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't ideal, but I've been sending it for 178 weeks now. Almost apart from like some breaks during Christmas, I've been sending it every week. So it's been crazy. But the idea is that this opened up to having conversations and like open doors for me to having conversations with LNDs from all over the world.

[00:05:21] And when I. So that everyone is struggling with similar challenges and everyone is applying like different solutions. I said, okay, well, it would be really cool to bring these people together and to facilitate this, you know, knowledge sharing. So this is what we've been doing for, for the past year and a half.

[00:05:40] Okay. Now I worked for pretty large companies back in the States, maybe not too large, but I'm talking three, four, 500 employees. And I don't ever recall a department called learning and development. So is this maybe something else in other companies or other places? Is it, is it like, does it fall under the HR umbrella?

[00:05:58] Yes, it does. It's usually falls under the HR umbrella. And I would say. It's quite a new thing for smaller companies to have L& D professionals. So early on startups usually employ L& D professionals at around 150 people. And the first issue they have on their hands is leadership development, just because usually companies like startups grow so fast and they end up.

[00:06:26] Promoting people that have no leadership skills. So usually an L and D comes in to help the company solve that problem. But I would say it, it was not a typical thing to do in the past to hire L and D. So early on. Okay. Okay. Now you mentioned that with COVID happened, everybody's working remote. Now, are there any specific L and D approaches that are particularly effective for remote teams that you would recommend?

[00:06:53] Yes. I would say. Like for LNGs facilitating knowledge sharing is hugely important. And I would say async knowledge sharing, not necessarily bringing everyone in a, you know, zoom meeting or Microsoft teams meeting and so on, because what we've seen is that people do struggle a lot with paying attention and keeping engaged for a very long time during those sessions.

[00:07:18] So combining like fewer of those with again, acing knowledge sharing on Slack, on Teams, you know, chats, that's a great opportunity as well as doing, you know, mentoring. I think that that's also, that also helps a lot just because it's on. Everyone's time, like you don't, you don't have a set time that you need to be there, but rather you agree with your mentor when, when you should meet.

[00:07:43] So I think everything that's about social learning, it's a great opportunity in the remote work just because it's also very needed, right? Because we, we stopped being connected to each other as much as we were, uh, before, before COVID and before remote was such a huge thing. So, yeah, I think it's a, it's a great opportunity for companies and for L& D professionals.

[00:08:03] For companies, specifically the, the small businesses that have limited resources, uh, what are some things that they can do that are cost effective, but also have an impactful learning program for, for their teams? It's funny because I'm going to go back to social learning, you know, because when you don't have the, you know, the money usually to, to employ outside vendors, you are forced to look inside and see what are the, what's the knowledge that's already within the company and that could be spreaded to, you know, other teams or more junior employees and so on.

[00:08:42] So. Yeah. I would say again, that social learning mentoring programs, it's, it's the best thing that they, they can do as well as keeping a very, very close eye on leadership development because leaders tend to end up being the ones that facilitate learning for employees. So they need to have the proper resources to do so.

[00:09:04] Okay. So you're at EMAG and for those who don't know, EMAG is sort of like, I would say like the Amazon of Europe or at least Romania, right? More or less pretty exciting, fast growing company. You have a team. It sounds like you enjoy what you're doing. Why did you leave? What was that? What was that moment you decided, okay, I'm going to leave my, my job that I love and, and go and start this, this company.

[00:09:25] I think I didn't know exactly what I was doing, to be honest, I think ever since I joined EMAG, just because, just like you said, it was a fast growing company. The entrepreneurial spirit was there. We were always encouraged to come up with ideas, to solve problems, to look at data. So all of these things that you actually, yeah, do a lot when you're an entrepreneur.

[00:09:47] I, I got to see very early on and the leadership there. I am a huge fan of Julian Stein to the former CEO of EMAG. He was a big inspiration for me. And I think I, when I decided to do this, first of all, I'm getting older. So I don't think that I have much time to do so. I think at least in, in my view of, of how life is going to be for me at some point, being an entrepreneur might not be, you know, an option just because I have other priorities I would like to have, you know, to focus on my partner and my family and so on.

[00:10:21] So I think I was still young enough to do so. And then I, I just had this nudge. Like I, I. Couldn't stop thinking about this problem that we're trying to solve. And I think it was something that I needed to do for myself to see if I can do this, if I can build the company I was, I was dreaming to build and solve the problem I was dreaming to solve.

[00:10:42] Okay. First of all, you look like you're in your early twenties. So I don't know what you mean by I'm getting younger. Okay. I'm in my late twenties. I'm in my late twenties actually. Oh my God. Oh my God. You're getting up there Lavinia. Okay. Okay. Now, from my understanding Offbeat, you guys provide mentoring programs and can match people with L& D mentors.

[00:11:03] Can you share a little bit about what services you guys offer? Yes, of course. So we have, we are a membership subscription based company. We offer three pricing plans to L& D professionals to support their learning and development needs. The first plan is a basic one offering access to learning sessions, async knowledge sharing, all sorts of resources, our premium newsletter, and so on.

[00:11:29] Then the second plan is exactly what you mentioned. We partner with really cool mentors from all around the world, and we match them with LNDs that need support, that personalize support in their, in their learning journey, and then the third plan, we are offering cohort based programs. So basically we.

[00:11:47] You know, take five or six weeks out of people's time to focus on a very particular job to be done of L and D professionals and to support them in being more impactful in, in their roles and that specific job to be done. Okay. Who are these programs really good for? I'm assuming other L and D professionals, maybe just getting started in their career, but any other professions?

[00:12:09] Yes. So I would say the first, the ideal customer profile is learning and development professionals, three to five years of experience, or maybe that have recently moved to another role or another company, or even that they took a new project they'd never done before, but also for. HR professionals that don't have a learning and development pro in their team, and they have to, you know, do the job of a learning and development professional, usually part, part time, and they need to, to learn how to do this.

[00:12:42] They need to become more efficient in doing that, that specific role in those specific tasks. I'm a little bit impressed here because three years ago, you had no idea that you were going to be an entrepreneur. You send out, you do this post and it gets a lot of traction and you're thinking, okay, let me, let me continue posting here, people are asking, create a newsletter.

[00:13:02] Within six months, can you just tell us, like, how many people did you get on that newsletter? Do you remember, more or less? I think it was a bit below 1, 000 people. Okay. That's, that's quite impressive. And it was everybody in your ICP, mostly L& D professionals? Yes. Yes. Okay. And when did you, did you realize that, okay, this is the type of business model that I want to create where I have this platform and people can get one to one or different group based mentorship.

[00:13:30] Like what, when did that light bulb moment happen? I think it was a little over a year and a half into running the newsletter. Again, I still had my full time job. I loved it. I loved my team. So I had a lot of focus there. But as time went by and my team became more stabilized and they didn't need me as much, which was a big struggle as well, I started thinking more about Offbeat and I think I also, something that, that triggered me was also seeing similar business models in, in other.

[00:14:02] Or for other types of professionals, Reforge is a big us company that has raised also a lot of money to solve the same problem for growth professionals or product professionals, growth tribe in Europe. So just keeping in touch with, or seeing these people doing the same. I think I said, okay, this, this definitely is something that we can replicate and again, seeing a lot of.

[00:14:29] engagement with something so little that we were doing. It was just a newsletter and people were reading it. They were, they were replying to, to the newsletter with their own ideas, their own questions. So I, I realized the problem is definitely there. Okay. So if the newsletter was like step number one, what was step number two in this journey?

[00:14:50] Yeah. Step number two was the community. So just bringing people together in a very basic format and just seeing if they are also willing to pay for it, because this is also not an easy thing to do, getting people to, to pay for a service that. It's usually also done like for free to, to, yeah, to them. And then, yeah, this, yeah, this was the next step, community bringing people together.

[00:15:18] What did you bring those people together? Like on Slack or somewhere else? Yes, yes. It was on Slack. Yeah, it is on Slack actually. And then how many members did you have like a year ago when you started? Well, I think about 50 members, paying members. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And just, if you don't want to share this, you don't have to, but what were they paying per per month or per year?

[00:15:39] It was per year. Yeah. We're always geared towards long term investment just because we also know that learning is a long term investment and they, like people do need the, the long term support to actually see some results from whatever they're learning. Yeah. So at this time, I'm assuming you, you didn't, you didn't need any sort of like.

[00:16:00] You didn't have to fundraise. Are you still bootstrapping all of this yourself? Yes. Yes. Oh, we are bootstrapping. We are not necessarily planning on fundraising. Like even now we have about 200 members in the community paying for our different services. We don't have a big team or a team of two. So our costs are very low.

[00:16:19] Our runaway is, is decent. So we don't feel that need. We, we will probably just do some experimentation with pitching here and there just to see what their response is. Okay. So this is like a community based business model. All right. Well, all right. All right. And what was step three before you got to the platform the way it is right now where people can actually choose mentorship one to one was there a step three before that?

[00:16:46] Yes, it was the next step was seeing if mentoring could be an option for us as a service. And we run an experiment just with a very small cohort of people that needed mentors for their careers. And then we decided to bring this as a, as part of another plan that we're offering to offbeat. The people in the community, are they from all over the globe or are mostly like in one region?

[00:17:10] Yes. Yes. They are from the U S Europe, Australia, South America. Yeah. All over the world. All right. This is awesome. Okay. Any unexpected challenges that you face during this journey living? Yeah, I don't think we have the time to, well, I think the first. Challenge was personal, I would say, and just figuring out how I can adapt to how Offbeat is transforming and what it needs from me as a, as a co founder to, yeah, just make the, make the best product that we can, we can run.

[00:17:48] So it was a lot of. Yeah, mental health challenges, burnout, depression, everything that you see out there, it's real. I've, I've gone through it. Yeah. I would say that was the biggest challenge and something that I, I didn't necessarily expect because I don't think that People talk a lot about that. I think there's a lot of chatter about success in the entrepreneurship journey, but not necessarily about these, these things that are not so positive.

[00:18:16] Okay. Anything that you do to help you with your mental health? Yes. I, I go to a therapist. I've been doing so for seven years now. And also I make sure that I surround myself with, with people that, you know, are, are challenging enough for me to keep my, my feet on the ground, but are also supporting me and yeah, reminding me of the good things that I'm doing.

[00:18:39] You recently went to Germany and I think you held a, a workshop, a live workshop. And I think you had met some of the members in your community. What was that experience like? And are there going to be more, uh, traveling the globe and meeting with, in person with members? Like what, what is, what is this? Is it more just, just deepening those relationships or is there something else that you guys are providing?

[00:19:00] It was scary. Let's start with that. So we, we have done the same event in Bucharest and it went really, really great. But. Truth be told, we did have a bit of a network, a bigger network here in Bucharest because we're based here. And then we decided, okay, what city would be next to see? Yeah. If, if this could be something people would like and Berlin was next on our list, just because we do have a decent network there as well.

[00:19:28] So we're running this lightning talks. That's the format, the combination of lightning talks with, with networking. And after me being scared and like going through all the anxiety that you can go through and doing this, things went amazing. Like we, we got people in the event, they, they wouldn't leave at some points before like, okay, we need to close the doors now.

[00:19:53] Like people need to go home. So it was a very good, yeah, a very good session and yes, we are doing. Something similar in 2024, going back to Berlin, doing the same in Bucharest, and then going to London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Cluj here in Romania as well, and hopefully also Paris. All right. All right. This is very, very exciting for her.

[00:20:17] I, I, I was going to ask you, what are you excited about the next 12 months? But I think you just said it. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's definitely it. All right. If you had last question before we get into the rapid fire ones, if you had a magic wand, the magic wand, and wanted to overcome a big challenge you guys are facing, what would you do, Lavinia?

[00:20:34] Wow. I think I would put offbeat on everyone's Laptops as a screen saver. That's pretty good. That is pretty good. Yeah. Create that awareness out of, out of nothing. Yeah. I've got me and my little daughter and a go kart for my screen saver. So if she were to see off, she would be like, daddy, what's that? And of course, you know, she, she would be.

[00:21:02] Like, what the heck is that? Who's replacing me? Yeah. Yeah. That's maybe only telling professionals not to, not to spam everyone, but yeah, that's what I would do. Okay. Rapid fire time. First question for you. Fill in the blank, Lavinia. Fill in the blank here. The Academy Award for blank goes to Lavinia. Most undecisive person.

[00:21:26] No, that's my wife. My wife already has that title of India. Sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Next question for you. Blink is an unusual food I consume. French fries with ice cream. Hey, now you're talking. Now you're talking there's this place in in in Texas called Dairy Queen and they have these oh man I forgot the name, but it's like it's hard to explain.

[00:21:52] But anyway, you get the french fries and you dip it in there It's so delicious. So good. So it's really I was like at first I was like, what the hell is this like sweet with Yeah, so to go, but I love it. Yeah. Oh god. It's called. Oh my god. I can't remember the name I've been gone for almost a year and a half and I forgot the name of this this thing.

[00:22:10] Can you believe that? Okay. Uh, next question. Blank is how I want to be remembered. Kind. Okay. And last one for you. Blank is a crazy thing I did in college. Oh, do you really want to get into that? It has to be something that's okay. Something professional, not something personal would be like sleeping for only three hours a night for like.

[00:22:37] Two years out of college. Okay. Man, that's a lot of partying, Lavinia. Yes. Yeah. Partying, working, let's put it like, let's. Let's, let's not damage the image that I have. Okay. Okay. All right. There you have it, folks. Lavinia from Offbeat Works. I will put links to her LinkedIn profile and the website in the show notes.

[00:22:58] Lavinia, thank you for joining me on Innovators Can Laugh. Thank you for having me. Yeah, la revedere for everybody listening until next week where we will interview another Fresh face from the European tech and startup scene. Ciao. Hey there want to thank you for listening And if you are new here, I interview founders from the European tech and startup scene Lavinia She's a bit of an outlier.

[00:23:22] She never really anticipated starting her own company but if you heard it all started from a post on LinkedIn that really captured attention and began to grow an audience for her a It goes to show you that just by getting your ideas out there, you never know what could come from it. Links to her and Offbeat are in the ICO website and newsletter, and if you enjoy this, please tell others about it and hit that subscribe button.