Rebecca Taylor With GoCoach

Intro: [00:00:04] We’ll come back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Lee Kantor are here. Another episode of Startup Showdown, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Rebecca Taylor with GoCoach. Welcome, Rebecca.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:00:47] Hi, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Go Coach. How are you serving folks?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:00:54] Yeah, so we’re a learning platform. We work with companies to help them bring access to education and learning opportunities for all their employees within their organization. And it’s nice because we’re also working in the higher ed space. So we’re introducing students to the ability to develop their soft skills through our learning platform to while they’re still in school.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] So the name Go Coach, is it. So it goes beyond coaching.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:01:16] It does go beyond coaching. So it starts with coaching. When we actually first founded the company, we started with seven coaches and a couple of spreadsheets, and our idea was kind of, let’s make it really easy for companies to find coaches and for people to find the right coaches to work with within their companies provided structure. And then it’s really kind of grown in the last few years because for us, coaching is always sort of the beginning of where people start to learn and it’s really branched into more of a platform that supports all types of learning with the root of it being coaching, whether it’s team coaching, group coaching, one on one coaching or anything along those lines.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:52] So what’s your background? How did you get involved in just this kind of thought process in terms of adding coaching as a as a career and building a platform around that?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:02:04] Yeah. So it’s actually kind of funny. I when I was in college, I was an English major, majored in creative and professional writing, thought I was going to work for The New Yorker and that I was going to spend my days making art. And I actually ended up falling into h.r. When I got out of college and it was actually a really cool opportunity. I was working in the learning and development team at lord and taylor fifth Avenue, rest in peace. And so I spent a lot of time kind of developing training programs for people at all different levels of the company. And that kind of got me started on my HR path. So I sort of did the typical HR stint where I did some time as an external recruiter and then as a head of talent acquisition at a company where I actually ended up meeting my co-founder and CEO, Christy McCann. And so when we were there, we were really working on building out different learning and development programs specifically to help their different employees better retain their staff and to create those career paths that every company really is looking for, for their employees. And so we had this there’s got to be a better way kind of moment when we were really working on finding the right coaches for the right people to kind of serve them where they need to. And so we sort of had this we had a really great exit. The company was acquired for just over $1,000,000,000. And we had this sort of what do we do now? Conversation. And that was really where the idea for Go Coach started.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:03:27] And over the course of a couple of years, I actually took a job as a head of people and culture at a series a startup in New York. While Christie was really kind of laying the foundation for what was going to become go coach. And so we realized that there was a lot of opportunity to help companies address the different gaps that they had with their talent. So there were so many companies that were hiring all these people and they were losing all these people because they would let them go when they were reaching sort of their plateau. And there was sort of this culture within these organizations, especially in the tech space and in the startup space where people weren’t expected to stay at a company for very long. And so we really looked at that as something that was a problem that was worth solving because people would leave companies when they were losing the ability to to grow and the ability to learn. And companies were losing really great talent after spending all this money to hire them. And so we launched Go Coach with really this core of seven coaches and a spreadsheet. And it grew into something that we’ve really evolved to understand the different needs of the different companies that we work with. And so leaning into our HR backgrounds has really been a really strong sort of vision navigation point for how we’re deciding what our next steps are. Because at the end of the day, our ultimate goal is here to support companies and to support employees to unlock their potential together.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:49] Now, do you find that coaching has evolved from back in the day where like a coach was only for the, you know, the highest performers or the the highest executives? And now it seems to be trickling down throughout the organization. And to use coaching and learning almost interchangeably. Like you, you have a coach, sometimes you need help and sometimes you need a helper, right? Like learning can happen in a lot of ways. And a coach is a great way to expedite some, you know, to get the best out of somebody that a lot of organizations want. But, you know, maybe historically haven’t invested in them that way.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:05:28] Yeah. Yeah. So it definitely has changed when, you know, when you first think about coaching, everyone kind of thinks of the original coaching kind of. Except where you had one person who’d be flown in to coach the executives at an organization and either spend all day with them once a month rotating their meetings between these different executives, or someone who would just sort of be there and only support a few members, a very few very high up members of an organization. And it was very much based on being in person. It was very it was very elitist. It was very much catered to supporting CEOs and executives. And what we’ve seen, especially over the last probably seven or eight years or so, is that the evolution of technology has really allowed the coaching industry to become a lot more democratized. It’s a lot easier to access coaches and it’s a lot easier to access coaches all over the world where the cost becomes a lot more effective for the coaches to work with a wide variety of people because they don’t have to spend all this time and money traveling because technology and virtual coaching especially can kind of allow them to cast a wider net. And when we work with companies, it’s really been interesting to see kind of how people evaluate whether or not someone is sort of a viable candidate for coaching it.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:06:43] Like I mentioned, it always kind of had started with executives, then it sort of segued into managers, directors a little bit lower than executives, but still those that were kind of in a higher powered position within the company. And what we’ve seen during COVID really kind of starting when when the pandemic started, was employees are demanding the opportunity to learn and they’re demanding the ability to increase their skills and to access different opportunities. And so as a result of that demand, companies are investing in coaching solutions that are actually available to all employees from entry level to executive level. And yes, the things that people work on in those coaching sessions will be different. Someone entry level might have what some might think to be simple things to work on, but for that person meeting them where they are, these are big challenges that they’re looking to work through and we’re really looking to create is a culture where everybody has a coach from day one. You know, when you’re a kid, you’re going through school and you always have teachers, guides and mentors, and then all of a sudden you graduate and you’re on your own. And we’re really looking at just sort of creating cultures that continue that element of nurture and continuous learning even throughout our entire careers.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:53] Now, is that when did you kind of get the sense that you’re getting traction with that idea? Because that’s a leap for a lot of organizations. I remember interviewing somebody in HR for a while ago and they said, You know, when people talk about training and learning and coaching and things like that, they’re like, What if we invest all this resources onto this person and they leave and and then somebody said, Well, what if you don’t and they stay?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:08:22] Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:24] You know, are you seeing a change in that thinking is we have to invest in our people, in their learning because we want them to stay a little longer. It’s hard to get people. And why are we always thinking the new person is better than the person we already have?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:08:40] Yeah. Yeah. So it has been an interesting shift because the great resignation is definitely influencing this because you’re seeing people leave organizations regardless of whether they’re getting invested in or not. Right. And the different reasons that people are leaving, organizations come down to things like salary. You know, that is kind of something that is always going to be a good reason for people to leave a company if they can get paid much better somewhere else. And their current employer can’t match that. I mean, that’s hard to argue with. Right. But what’s interesting is that when you’re seeing the data around why people are leaving their organizations now in mass, it has more to do with their work culture, their potential to grow. And so it’s really kind of creating this environment where there’s a lot of data from the actual employees that’s showing that they would stay in organizations if if more organizations were investing in them and the historical way that people would invest, where people would look at, you know, I’m going to put all this money into my high potentials and we’re just going to hope that if they’re invested and they’re going to stay. But what’s really kind of influencing this democratized element of it is if you put money into all of your people in your organization to develop, those who do stay will perform better because they’re more mentally connected to the company, they’re more engaged in their role, but they’re actually seeing their own skills grow and develop as a result of what the company is providing to them.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:10:01] So they’re more likely to stay on because they’re seeing themselves grow and be successful within their role and they don’t feel the need to look elsewhere. And so it’s also the concept of sort of skills or currency, right? So employees know that the skills that they have are very, very valuable. And I always say this to organizations, to the skills that you have within your organization are the most valuable piece of your talent. It’s not who has those skills, it’s how strong those skills are within your organization. So if you’re not continuously investing in the skills of your organization, then the value of your talent goes down. So it’s really about kind of shifting the narrative from looking at. As individual person to collective group of skills and using that as a way to empower both learners and employers.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:44] So what is kind of the conversation you’re having with your prospective clients or your clients? Like what’s the pain they’re having? Where Go Coach is the solution?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:10:54] Yeah, so it’s a few different things that actually kind of map to the employee life cycle, which is interesting. Know every organization has their own sort of unique challenges, right? But what we can really see is that it buckles down to kind of the basic things like employee retention, talent attraction and talent acquisition, succession planning. So what happens when people do leave? How do we have sort of our next batch of of leaders or people being able to step into those roles as well as things like burnout, change, management, die? These are sort of the main challenges that companies are facing in mass. And so we really work with them to address the different components that are influencing this. And we map it to how it influences the employee life cycle of attracting talent, retaining talent, developing talent, because that’s really where you’re going to see a lot of value in what you’re doing from a people perspective.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] So what are some of the clues that your prospect has a problem that go coach can help them with.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:11:52] Bleeding people and having a lot of open jobs is a really good indication of that. They might need some help. So when you see that there’s a company that has a lot of people exiting and a lot of open jobs, you can imagine that they’re losing people at a rate faster than they can acquire them. And so there’s two different challenges to meet there. There’s one, the employee retention side. So how do we stop the bleeding? And then two, how do we use learning as a way to attract more talent so we can hire people and really fill the top of that funnel? So that’s really been the biggest theme that people are seeing now, and it’s probably our biggest sort of call when we get onto a call with a customer and they’re just like, everyone’s having sort of this universal problem. And so what’s nice is that they don’t have to explain their situation, they don’t have to explain that they’re losing people and that they can’t hire. It used to be a very taboo thing to say in HR. You never wanted to say that you couldn’t keep your people and you couldn’t hire people. But what’s nice is that there is sort of this universal narrative that there is everybody reshuffling. And so you can get a very, very frank perspective. And we’ve got a really sort of nice way to solve this problem regardless of their industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:00] So has been as being a founder of a startup, has it been as you thought it would be?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:13:09] I don’t even know if I knew what I thought it was going to be, to be honest. I had I’d say yes and no. I mean, yes in the sense that it really is sort of empowering to see that you’re doing something that companies think is valuable enough to spend money on and that they continue to spend money on on this thing that you created. Right. Seeing the impact that you can make on people who are working with a coach who without without this company would not have been able to access that coach. You know, that is sort of something that I wasn’t expecting as a founder to feel as personally gratified by, to be honest. But then it was also the things that are expected or, you know, it’s tough out there, right? Like, it’s it’s hard to it’s it’s hard to be a founder because there’s a lot of there’s a lot of weight on your shoulders. You know, you’re at the end of the day, the buck stops with you when you’re you want your company to be successful, your teammates really look to you. And that level of responsibility is something that if you’re going into entrepreneurship, you can’t take lightly. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, and so I think it was always inevitable that I’d sort of be here. But I think what’s really cool is that, you know, it’s going to be hard. You know, it’s always nice to kind of be able to choose your own destiny a little bit more and to kind of set a meaningful vision. But it really is cool when you can look back and see, oh, you know, all the hard work that we’re doing. And this idea that we had is actually something that’s truly benefiting people’s lives. And I know every founder says this, but actually changing the world and changing the way companies hire people and the relationship that they have to their employees. So that’s been really cool.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:40] So what compelled you to get involved with Startup Showdown and Panoramic?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:14:47] Yeah, so we were really looking for an opportunity to partner with investors who would be partners to us, and so we’d been bootstrapped for a long time by choice. We really didn’t want to take money from organizations that didn’t support our vision and our mission. And so we done a lot of research in about panoramic and the team that was the team that’s there. And we saw that they were going to be a group or we assumed and thought that they were going to be a group that we would want to partner with and work with. And so that was the thing that we said, Hey, let’s do this startup showdown, see if we can get a chance to meet with them and then see where it takes us. And so I think the piece of it that was really cool was just kind of the level of visibility that we had, but who we were able to meet in the process from other founders that were going through the same showdown process and really seeing who else is building cool stuff out there. And we’ve loved working with the panoramic team. I mean, they’ve really kind of felt like an extension of our team, and it’s the kind of partnership that you want from an investor. As much as it’s nice to say, you know, I’ll take a check and then we can just sort of move on with our lives. We were really looking for groups that wanted to be part of the vision and the mission with us, and we really found that here.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:54] Now, any advice for startup founders out there that maybe are going along the same path as you bootstrapping it first and then then reaching out to partners afterwards, as there are some do’s and don’ts that you would if you could, if looking back at the journey so far.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:16:13] Yeah. So do take every conversation. You know, getting funding and getting investment is something it’s very much like sales. I mean, it is sales, right? So you want to have a huge pipeline so that you have opportunity and you have options. So take every call and try to make as many connections as humanly possible with other founders, but don’t necessarily rely on other founders to refer you to investors before you try to go and approach these investors yourself. So definitely take sort of that self driven yet community support community partnership element to it. And you know, do look at competitions like the startup showdown, look at accelerators, look at these types of resources because they’re not only a good way to get funding, but they’re a really good way to get education, too, and a good way to kind of get that support that you really need to understand how to be a founder, because being a founder is a totally different job for every type of company. And so really finding that support from that community is really big. The biggest don’t that I have though is don’t give up. I know it’s probably really cheesy, but you’re going to hear so many no’s and you have to believe in your vision and your product and your idea and your self and your team more than anybody else does. And you know, there is the opportunity to take constructive feedback. But don’t let it don’t let it set you off. Right, because companies that are looking for funding are looking to disrupt something. They’re looking to do something differently than it’s ever been done before. And you’re always going to be measured around who’s done something similar or what might have been done in the past. And you have to remain convicted that the whole point is that we’re doing it differently and there might not be a proven path that shows how this is going to work. But I know that we’re going to be the ones to set it. That’s the thing to remember when every moment of defeat hits you.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:03] Now, any advice for female founders, both you and your co-founder of female? Is there anything that you would advise a young female founder to going through the process that again, do’s and don’ts from that standpoint, is there is there groups that you found that were useful for you, that were supportive? Or is this something that you’ve done just kind of on your own where you’re just like kind of carving the path but within your own team?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:18:36] Yeah. So I’d say, I mean, the female founder question is always one that kind of comes with a little bit of a little bit of, I guess an asterisk. So we found a lot of support in the Female Founders Association. They’ve been really, really great. But I think it’s important for any founder to sort of find a diverse network and community so that you can find other people who are like you, but also people who can challenge you in a really good way and who you can really kind of grow and evolve your yourself and your idea through. So female founders has been a really great association, but and I know that this sounds like a plug, but the best thing that any founder can really do on this path is to get a coach. So if you’re a female founder and you’re looking for funding, expect it to be different. Expect every conversation to be different than you anticipate. But if you work with a coach, I think that was what was really powerful with Panoramic two is there was a lot of practice sessions going into the startup showdown. You know, we had a lot of support to prepare and to present ourselves in a really strong way. If you’re working with if you’re working with a coach or a mentor or an advisor, you know, let them prep you. Let them help you understand how to tell your story in the best way. And, you know, that’s probably the piece that’s going to be the most important because it’s really hard to tell the story of your startup in a way that makes other people care about it the way that you do, because no one’s going to care about your company the way that you do. And so taking advice from people who can say this is what’s interesting, this is what’s going to catch people’s attention, it’s definitely an important way to to govern all of these types of conversations. And the best way to really hone that is to work with a coach.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:15] Now, has there been a point anywhere in the journey thus far that was kind of a make or break where you’re like, I don’t know if this is going to if we’re going to make this, and then if so, how did you kind of get through it?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:20:28] I’d say COVID was definitely a big one. So when when the world shut down in early 2020. We were a company that was just over a year old, so we were still brand new in the grand scheme of things. We were still bootstrapped, we were selling into H.R. and all of a sudden all these companies started laying all these people off and we had the world shutting down. No one had any idea. I remember just sort of the ambiguity when COVID started and what was going to happen. So Kristy and I had this conversation where we were like, What if this is it? What if this is the thing that kills the company? And so we sort of were like, Well, we have all these trainings, we have all of this information, all these things that we are offering to companies. If this is what’s going to bring the company down, let’s let’s go down swinging. Let’s offer all of our stuff out there for free. Let’s give people free coaching. Let’s give people free training. Anyone who’s lost their job, any company that doesn’t know what to do, you know, register for our webinars. Let’s get through all this together. And it was actually pretty amazing. We we trained over 1000 people for free over the course of six months, just working with huge companies, too. And it was a lot of people who just didn’t really know what else to do. And we coach hundreds of people back into their jobs for free. We were actually able to secure sponsorship from a company to actually pay our coaches who had initially volunteered their time.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:21:53] But we were able to get a grant to actually pay them for their time since they were coaching people back into into the workforce. And so it was actually pretty cool because it was sort of that moment where when you’re at your most desperate, you find out who you are. And when Christie and I were sort of at our most like, if this is it, you know, let’s just try to help as many people as we can along the way. It really became that moment where we realized the type of leaders who we were and honestly the type of leader who she is, because she’s made me in a lot of ways. Like I said, I’ve known her for eight years now, I think. And so it’s been really, really cool to see how that continues to give back to us. I mean, we’ve gotten it turned out to be a really great marketing campaign because once, you know, once people got over some of the humps and they started to have some money to spend, we were starting to convert a lot of these free trainees into paid customers, like through their big companies. And so it’s kind of like when you’re at that moment where you think everything’s going to kick it go down swinging because you never know what can come out of it. And it’s put us in a really good spot.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:52] And when you have a good true North or a good Y, then it makes the things a lot easier because if your mission is to coach people, then getting paid or not getting paid, you should still want to coach people.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:23:07] Yeah, right, exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:08] Because the why didn’t change, you know, the money might have changed, but the why didn’t change.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:23:13] Yeah, the how changed a little bit, but the Y definitely didn’t then. The Y was all we had at that point and it was actually kind of cool because we were expecting our clients to cancel their contracts. We were just like, Oh no, what’s going to happen? And a lot of our core clients were like, okay, we need you now more than ever. We had to cut our recruitment budget. So now we’ve got money that’s already been budgeted. Let’s do more training, let’s do more coaching. And it was pretty cool. It was pretty cool to see because I think we’ve done a good job at partnering with really good clients who are really forward thinking too. So it turned out to be it turned out to be a good Y on all ends.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:45] So what’s next?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:23:48] Yeah. So we’ve got big plans. We’re actually going to launch, we’re going to start to kick off our series A Fundraise later on in the spring. So we’re really pumped about that and we’re really looking at ways that we can continue to partner with some, not just really interesting enterprise clients and B2B clients, but really carve out our space and higher education. We’ve been working with a lot of really great institutions to offer coaching to their alumni, their students, their staff. And so really continuing to grow our presence and our offering within the higher education space is going to be huge for us. We’re also partnering with some really great nonprofits to focus on upskilling, to get people out of impoverished neighborhoods, the skills that they need to work in jobs within their cities. So really kind of continuing to hone in on that Y while continuing to sort of fundraise and evolve our platform into this really, really nice, slick, inclusive learning ecosystem. Those are the big sort of things and it’s on to continue to change the world.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:50] So what do you need more of right now?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:24:53] So I mean, in terms of I think in terms of people, we always need more. We always need more people. I think every time we hire someone new to the team, we get a really, really great story and perspective. So we are looking to hire some folks, especially on the entry level side into sales. It’s about to be prime hiring season for folks who are graduating. So we’re looking at bringing on some more people and we’re obviously always looking for more customers, right? So anyone who’s really looking at how they can change the way that they develop their employees within their organizations, where we’d love to talk to you, we’d love to. We’d love to figure something out and make it work.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:31] Well, if somebody wanted to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, is there a website?

Rebecca Taylor: [00:25:37] Yeah. So they can go to go coach, go or you can email me at Rebecca at Go Coach, Go.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:44] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Rebecca Taylor: [00:25:50] Thanks, Lee. Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:52] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Startup Showdown.

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