Lucy Standing is the founder of Neu Train.
Neutrain is a novel new way to disseminate training materials amongst the Learning and Development Industry.
Lucy and I made contact in the very first few months of my launching People Discovery. We chatted on the phone about our respective dreams and goals. Lucy’s idea really sparked my curiosity because her concept really was about making a valuable contribution, where making a profit simply did not come into the equation. Lucy was keen to harness all that information out there in a way which simply I had never seen before. So when I saw Lucy’s first press release about her new company neuTrain I contacted her immediately to find out more and invited her to come and tell our readers more about her exciting new venture. Here’s what Lucy had to say about neuTrain.
How did neuTrain come into being?
Most of my ideas come to me in the bath, but the idea behind neuTrain came to me as I was stirring risotto! As a freelance Occupational Psychologist, I often get asked to deliver classroom based training courses. I may have materials I could adapt, but in most cases I was starting from scratch. Whilst interesting, is very time consuming to do and expensive for the client. Whilst I’d love to say I create amazing work which is brand new and highly innovative, the truth is that when it comes to soft skill training there is a lot of established best practice already in the public domain. If a client wants a course on leadership skills, I’d lose a fair amount of credibility if I went against established wisdom and announced that to lead and influence people we need to shout, belittle and ridicule them! Due to this established best practice in many of the areas we work, it is often the case that materials are re-used and re-branded. Yes, we may say they are completely bespoke, and yes there is still a lot of work which does go into tailoring content, but in the main, the core of what is being said is very similar: have you ever seen an interview skills training course which has told you not to ask open questions, not to build rapport, not to take notes? The internet is an amazing tool for facilitating the bringing together of lots of different experts separated by geography, but not by interest, so that is what I’ve done. Rather than waste time reinventing materials which no doubt exist in thousands of iterations sitting on hard drives around the world I thought it would be much better if we could just share what we have. I’ve convinced a small number of trainers (although, this number is growing slowly but surely) to share their content on line. Not just their slides, hand-outs or exercises, but all their knowledge too – tips and guidance on how to deliver the course they’ve uploaded. You may say there are already companies out there who sell materials. You are right – there are, but there are none who openly share them – for free. neuTrain doesn’t even ask you to log in to view content. You can spend 2 hours on the site, looking at someone else’s slides, reading their notes on how to run the course and we don’t even know your email address.
Who or what is your inspiration?
I love the internet. I do try to be a good mother, but I have been labelled iPad mum by my children! The sites which have inspired me are Wikipedia, You Tube, Trip Advisor, eBay (always as a buyer – my guilty secret) and John Lewis. The thing in common amongst them all is the fact I don’t have to log in to see anything. I don’t really understand why, in a world where instant access & lack of time feature heavily, some organisations run their websites like some sort of private members club which no one can use without jumping over a huge ‘sign in’ hurdle. It may work for some, but not for me. I also read a lot and books like ‘Free’ by Chris Anderson made me appreciate that currently, information is doubling on the web so quickly that as a commodity, information or ‘knowledge’, like any abundant product, will eventually move towards a price of zero. I have to say I agree. With so much information already on the web, our struggle now isn’t that it isn’t there – the issue is the time it takes to wade through it all. I also like Dan Ariely. In his book ‘Predictably irrational’, he describes experiments where he proves people over-value their own work. People often don’t share materials because once they’ve invested time developing them they attribute greater value to them. However – ask someone who hasn’t invented the work what they’d pay for it and they will always offer less than what the author would desire. This book made me feel more confident that my belief that knowledge isn’t really that valuable was correct. I’ve seen brilliantly clever people fall flat on their face delivering a training course because it isn’t the knowledge which makes the content valuable: it is the skill and experience of a trainer. Sharing materials on line doesn’t undermine that trainer. Think of Andy Murray: if he wrote a book on how he swings his racquet to make certain shots, it wouldn’t make him a less successful tennis player.
What do you hope to achieve by launching neuTrain?
I hope to achieve 3 things.
1. I want the training world to be more accessible.
For many people the costs of materials or trainers is prohibitive. By making access to the site free, people can use ideas from other courses and develop their own without spending a penny. If what they see on line is exactly what they want, they can download & use it straightaway. Authors can charge what they want for downloads, but most range from being free to being £150.
2. I want the training world to become more efficient.
Wheel reinvention isn’t that clever. I’d love to see us move to a model where we build on others experiences: a shared and social learning model. The trainer who has authored content benefits from having a group of experts using their work and offering feedback and we all benefit from having a free library of training materials.
3. I want to raise the profiles of smaller organisations.
Larger organisations can pay large sums to ‘search engine optimisation’ experts and Google advertising, but smaller (and in many cases brilliant training organisations) are crowded off pages 1,2 or 3. I believe if we all work on one site together, we make it collectively easier for people to find us. I want to promote small businesses and help them out by giving them more exposure – which will hopefully lead to more work. I do promise the former as that is within my control. The latter is really down to the trainer. Upload poor content and there isn’t much I can do. Upload great content and it’s much more likely it will sell itself.
Who will benefit from using neuTrain?
The main beneficiaries are:
L&D professionals:
When negotiating with training companies, clients can now challenge them: “if I can see 80% of this material on line for free where is your value add for charging me X for this development”?
Professional trainers:
It takes a good 2-3 days to design a course from scratch researching, reading the same books as others to end up with a similar product. Now they can tailor something which has already been developed and save themselves the time.
The trainers who load up content:
The site is however a free shop window. If a trainer has content, it costs nothing to load up. They become a published author, they have neutrain link to their website (which helps their SEO), their name, bio and logo are clearly visible. If people want to read more about that trainer or their company, they click straight through to their website or linked in profile which may end up with them being asked to do work.
I charge nothing for any of this – for those open minded to share, this is a good, safe, credible and free alternative marketing route.
What services and products do you offer/intend to offer?
I offer my energy, time, passion and enthusiasm. I’d like to be clear: this is social entrepreneurialism.
The site is not for profit and is intended to benefit the community it serves. I make very little money out of the site – my only intention is to try and cover my costs.
You’ll see no adverts, I’m not list building, I don’t sell information to third parties. Even if I do get to a point where my costs are covered, then any profits will go to J-PAL: a charity I greatly admire. They conduct large scale empirical trials so that when they implement a large scale training programme, it is only when there is clear and strong evidence to show it will work. They are an admirable organisation.
Thanks Lucy, here at The Extra MILE, we think you’re onto a winner.
