Fifteen years in eLearning, two businesses built on it, and one very stubborn belief that learning can change how people feel about their jobs and themselves.
I fell into eLearning fifteen years ago. I was responsible for growing the eMedia line at a publishing company that had a mountain of content, expertise, and connections, and sold only books and magazines. I started by launching weekly paid webinars under the Writer's Digest brand, bringing in experts our audience couldn't wait to hear from. That grew into courses, video subscription sites, and eventually a whole family of learning products. By the time I left, that line had brought in more than $30MM. Somewhere in there I fell in love with the work.
The years since have taken me through nearly every part of this industry. I've built and run learning businesses that sold to consumers and ones that sold to other companies. I've authored courses, set up and configured learning platforms, and worked inside an LMS company itself, helping its customers get their learning businesses off the ground. Seeing this industry from every one of those angles is what shaped how I work today. It's also what made me want to stop working for just one company and go out on my own. Clients who signed with me years ago are still with me today, and I love that I now feel part of their teams.
Fifteen years in and I still love watching the lightbulb go on. Like when someone is partway through a module, a concept finally lands, and they get excited about trying it out tomorrow. Learning like that can give a person confidence, show them how far they've come, or simply make their day a little easier. That's the power of eLearning when it's done well. A lot of people think eLearning doesn't work. I think it works wonders when it's built for the person taking it.
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AI is reshaping a lot of industries right now, and eLearning is squarely one of them. It's also a polarizing topic, which is exactly why I'd rather tell you where I stand than leave you guessing.
In the book Fair Game, Rob Collie talks about how companies can use AI in one of two ways: to make their teams more efficient, or to make them more effective. I couldn't agree more. There is learning that AI can build well on its own, like process-driven customer education, and if that's what you need, use it! Don't pay someone like me. Learning built for human development is a different animal. It has to be nuanced and it has to be creative, and on its own, AI is neither. Left to itself, what it produces falls flat next to what a learning designer would make. And yet, if you took AI away from me tomorrow, I'd feel like I was building with one arm tied behind my back.
Where it comes alive is in the pairing. I bring the judgment, the story, and the feel for how people actually learn; AI gives me more range and a tireless second set of hands. I use it in nearly everything I do, and the goal is never to finish faster. It's to hand my clients something better and more valuable than what I or AI could have created on our own.
