Community Showcase: Jonathan Rock

Luis Malbas  
Good morning, everybody, welcome to The Training, Learning, and Development Community. Thanks for joining us happy Friday. To all of you. We've got a member showcase a very special member showcase ahead of us here today with Jonathan Rock, aka J Rock, who many of you that are in the audience know of. And so we've got about 30 minutes, it looks like currently there are 12 questions that we have for Jonathan to go over. And really all we're going to be doing is talking asking Jonathan about his background as an instructional designer, maybe some of the tools he uses. We'll probably be all over the place with this one. But yeah, thanks for joining us. And thanks. Thanks for being here. JIRA.

Jonathan Rock  
Yeah, good to be here. And thanks, Kim. I see you're appreciating my Halloween decor. Yeah, the bat skeleton makes more sense than some of the other ones. I got this guy. Spider skeleton, which if you think about it, spiders already have their skeleton on the outside. So I'm not sure what that's all about.

Luis Malbas  
But love it. All right, here we go. So, J Rock, your instructional design journey. Let's talk about where that all started. Can you can you give us give us the lowdown? When did that begin? How did it How did you figure out that there was such a such a thing as l&d.

Jonathan Rock  
Alright, so it's kind of like a story of Jonah in the whale. I don't know if you guys have ever read the Bible or not. But there's like this guy who's been told he should do something and he tries to get away from it. And then God, like not so subtly gets him back into it. I went to college, I got a secondary education English degree, I was going to be high school English teacher, and then got to my internship and hated it. So I went into the corporate world, and I was working records management, hmm. And kind of got nudged back into this whole training role. Like it started there was there was one meeting where my boss had, you know, all the, all the managers, when they did meetings, they had to open with safety. And so they took a turn, each person had to do the safety presentation, when we call my boss got sick. He was like, can you do safety presentation for me. So I got up, I told a little story, and then you know, kind of explaining why it's important. And then I delivered the slide. And when he got back, he was like, man, everybody loved that you're like, you're you're, you're setting the bar for other people, besides managers to be able to do this, which at the time, I realized why he was so happy, because it meant he didn't have to do it again. But so that was like the first hint. And then they did like a power lift, like a ergonomic how to pick things up without hurting your back training. And they brought in a guy from Iowa, and he trained the trainers. And then we were supposed to train our units. And he left and every all the trainers were like, well, let's do a session just for each other for so we get comfortable and roll it out. I was like I don't need that give me the materials ago and I trained my whole unit. Well, none of the other trainers did theirs. And they had to bring him back to train certain units because they just didn't do it. So those were kind of like two little signposts along the way, like maybe this is what you're supposed to be doing. Maybe you are a teacher, maybe you are a trainer. And so then when this job came available for zoetis, about nine years ago, GMP Training Specialist, I threw my hat in the ring. And I don't know why they picked me Luis, I was going up against a guy who had 10 years of experience doing it for the company that was at before he was the walk on favorite. All I can say is I sold my face off on the cover letter I put, you know, I was like the guy has been doing it for 10 years. So I put I'm your low cost option. And at the end of the interview, I was the only advantage I had with a guy. At the end of the interview I thought I'd blown it because I got super excited. I was shaking their hands, you know, as the hiring manager and one of her professionals. I was shaking her hand and I like got overcome and like squeezed her hand and I was like I really want this job. I want you to give it to me. And they both burst out laughing kind of like you're doing now and I was like oh you idiot you nerd Why did you nerd out at the end like that you probably blew it. But then I got the job. So I don't know if it was because like, you know in sales, you're supposed to ask for the sale or if just they saw passion or what but they took a chance on me and so I kind of got the duties before I had the skills. Right? I think a lot of people in this industry. You know, there's that book by Kenny being called the accidental instructional designer. I think I think there's nowadays I think there's a lot more people intentionally going into it like especially from education, saying how do I get the skills? How do I transfer what I already know and learn what the new playing field is. But I did have one mentor at the old company who gave me a book Nice to glary but telling me training, um, you know, back, this is an old school, it still says astd instead of a TD. But that was kind of my, my first foray into instructional designers reading that book and just realizing, okay, I'm green is a stick of gum. I've got all my secondary education stuff, you know, I got the pedagogy from in my distant past, but some of that's perishable, like if you're not using it, right? But like, what is the difference between what a school wants? And what a corporation once, and it feels like in education? And in higher ed, they're a lot more about the research? And like, what, how can you prove that these concepts work based on people's research? And in the business, it's all about? Um, you know, we don't care about the pink and fluffy stuff, what's going to hit the bottom line? How are you going to get my people up to speed quick? Or if it's compliance training, which is a lot of what I do? How do we get to a compliance state, you know, with the least impact to efficiency, or, you know, whatever, we got to be able to check all the boxes, and also make sure people aren't spending their whole day off training when they need to get back and keep the lines running. Hmm,

Luis Malbas  
interesting. So how about but how about your passion for eLearning? Because, you know, I sort of when I think of you, I think of you like, kind of doing the PowerPoint stuff and articulate 360 stuff. When did that come along?

Jonathan Rock  
The passion for eLearning? Well, I mean, I've been a gamer my whole life, I really enjoy video games. I like creating puzzles. And I What, what's a good description for games? I think the the art of playing a game is solving a puzzle that that is non essential, right? Like you're using your brain power to solve a puzzle or solve a problem that doesn't matter in the world. But so I normally, you know, when you say elearning, designer, developer, people are like, Oh, so you're Satan, right? Like, remember that mandatory compliance training you had to take, I'm the guy that built that. And then you just watch their eyes glaze over, and they decide not to respect you. But I saw a couple examples early on, that really kind of lit me up to what's possible. And one of them was Kathy Moore, who wrote the book mapit, she worked with the army, the United States Army to develop an encounter with Haji Kemal. And that looks like a comic book and plays like a game. And it doesn't start off with just telling you a bunch of stuff. It's it's designed for soldiers in Afghanistan, and how to deal with soft skills, cross cultural things. And the way they do it, instead of just telling you, you know, info dumping a bunch of, you know, vomiting much of factoids on you and bullet point lists. What they do is, they say, Alright, here's the scenario, you're going to be advising this brand new Lieutenant who's never been in Afghanistan before. And he's gonna have to go and have this encounter with a regional leader. And you need to help him through the process by giving him advice on the decisions he needs to make. And he's got two sergeants that are both ones men in Iraq, one has been in Afghanistan, and they'll give you input as you go, but it's up to you to tell him what to do. And that that format drew me in. And I played it multiple times. And here's why that's important what he says because normally compliance training, we over explain the crap out of it, right? And then we quiz you. And then if you got the question, right, usually there's like a big paragraph of why you got it right. What do you think the percentage of people that read the why you got it right? I don't care. I got it. Right. I'm going on. Right? And why do we put that in there? Why do we put the explanation of why you got it? Right? Well, it's because we're scared like, Oh, well, maybe they just click next through the info and just guessed and happened to get it right. And so we want to make sure we cover our butt by over explaining again, why that was right. And the result is nobody reads it. But the difference for me with Haji Kumar was I played that thing multiple times. I went back to the data again and again because I wanted to see all the outcome it became fun It became a game and so I got to see all the outcomes because I was enjoying it. I did naturally on my own as a human the thing that the other trainer wanted me to do is revisit the material and make sure I understood it. In the first case, I was like nah, this insults my intelligence. I'm out of here. In the second case, I was like Ooh, that's fun. That's cool. I wonder how bad I can screw up can we get kicked off the guy's property? So that like kind of started me on this journey where I'm like, Okay, what elements from games? Can we bring to elearning that especially for me, I mean it's it's different if you've got you know, okay, we're gonna do a video series to train somebody how to do Something and it's up to them, if they want to take it, like they'll pay for it, and they'll watch it. That's one thing, mine, I've got a captive audience. I have people that are, you know, we get audited by the Food and Drug Administration. And so they have to meet certain criteria to be considered qualified for their job. So if I put it on their curriculum, it's going to stay on there until they do it or go overdue. And then they have to talk to their manager. So hey, I have the dream of a captive audience. And also, you know, they need to be able to get in on the break or lunch or whenever they have time to do their training, they need to do it and go back to work. Yeah, so I'm like, from a corporate perspective, that's fine for compliance training. As long as you can check the box here, we covered our butts. We showed them every slide. they clicked, I read and understood here, right? But from the human side of it, as someone who has to take that kind of training to him, like what are the things I can do to surprise? What are the things I can do to delight, and maybe maybe they're not going to be laughing their heads off for the whole elearning but maybe there's parts that I can catch them off guard, and I can capture that attention? So that's where kind of that approach with the gamey type stuff comes into it? Where little things Can I throw at it?

Luis Malbas  
And I don't know how common that is for like somebody like you to actually care. You're like, willing to like, okay, is interesting, because

Jonathan Rock  
that is that though, right? Your people are gonna hate this. I care. Publish. Now. Yeah, walk down every slide to I think it's given enough time for them to have read the whole screen. Right? Right. No. Button becomes available.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, no, I think it's wonderful. Just the fact that you're willing, you know, that you think that you're thinking about these people are captive? I've got them. And yeah, I want to make this a great experience. Because I think that, more often than not, that's not really at the top of, that's not the top priority for a lot of people that build this stuff. So it's great to hear that. Now. For some reason. I also do you have a theater background or something? I first I don't know if we talked about that before, but just kind of curious about that.

Jonathan Rock  
Like as a hobby, um, in, in high school, I was in marching band, and then I went up for drum major. And because I was a trumpet, I got beat by a clarinet because they only had a few of us need a million of the clarinets and so I couldn't be drummed with you. And I was bummed about it. And I was like, fine. And so I went in the theater and and I got the crazy parts I never got like the lead I got like the crazy I was almost like the Kramer character, right? Oh, come on stage, do something ridiculous, steal the spotlight for just a second, make people laugh, and then get back off stage and let the the real actors do their thing. So I never pursued it. But in college, I did do some student theater. I tried my hand at stand up comedy, which is absolutely terrifying. Which is what makes it the best. But yeah, that was I think freshman sophomore year was theater was my thing. And then I kind of drifted away from it and found other hobbies and stuff. So But yeah, I do have a little bit in the background. Yeah, well, I

Luis Malbas  
mean, I think it kind of speaks to, to how effective you are what you do, I think that people that do sort of have that in their background. And in fact, I was just talking about this yesterday in another showcase, the having a little bit of that theater in there really does kind of help to be a trainer. And yeah, and I kind of get that a little bit from you. So I'm glad that we at least had a conversation about it. So typical day in the life of Jonathan rock, can you give us a little bit of that your work? Yes.

Jonathan Rock  
Yeah. Okay, work life. Um, so lately, it's been, you know, we, we get audited, and we audit ourselves on our quality program, and we try and see where we're doing okay, and where we're falling down, or where we could not fall down, but where we can make things better. And so I'm in charge of the whole training, you know, compliance program. So I have to make sure that we, you know, I'm an LMS administrator, I have to make sure that all of our curricula, which is, you know, if you're not familiar with that word, it's like a Think of it as a bucket of items. And if, if you want to be considered qualified to do a job, then you have to complete all of the items in that bucket before you are assigned to do the work independently without anyone overseeing you. So it's like slps, standard operating procedures. Sorry, I'm acronym ng, on the job training, which has like three phases where you, as you're training somebody, you demonstrate for them what you want them to do, then there's a section where they get to practice with your help. And then there's a section where you back off and say, all right, show me you can do this on your own without any help. And then once they prove that, then you sign them off as like this guy can work all by himself on it. And so you sign off on the different ones. So those are like the document parts. Then there's video and elearning which is something thing I like because it's asynchronous, I don't have to, you know, come in on a third shift and train somebody on a video or an elearning. They can take it whenever they want to. But it's not as personal as being in front of a class. And you know, making people laugh, or what I like to do is make them cry. And then, so part of it is designing that stuff, way too little of it is actually designing those learning experiences. Most of it is okay, corporate rolled out this quality standard in these global procedures, and we need to make sure everybody's enrolled in them. And so it's just creating items in the learning zone, which is our LMS, creating curricula, putting the items on the curriculum, putting the curriculum on the people to make sure they have it, and then getting all of the email from saying this won't work. Or why did I get this, you know, so most of my days responding to email, and fixing elearning, that either they took it in, it didn't give them credit, or they don't have access to it, and that kind of stuff. And then there's these little bright spots and stuff I get to work on. Like, right now we're revamping our new employee orientation program. And that's another one that I'm passionate about. Because I feel like we spend all this time and energy and money trying to recruit people, like especially nowadays, we want to get the best folks in our company. And we stop recruiting them just because they walked in the door. And so I see the new employee orientation or induction for our friends across the pond. I see you, Joe. I see that as a continuation of the recruiting process, because studies show we have a six week period where somebody hires on and they usually it takes them six weeks to decide, is this my new home? Or is this a stepping stone? Hmm. If you bungle that original onboarding, and if you do not have a good new employee orientation that helps them see the vision of not only is the company going to be successful, but like, Am I going to be a success here is just a place I can grow with the company. If you don't spend the time on that, you can lose them. They can take in like, I'm just going to be your friend until I get a better opportunity. But if you show him like, here's what I said. So I was very specific about putting a cultural piece into our new employee orientation. I have people that work at the company, one of them who's been here since the beginning, and another one who's a recent addition. And I have them talk, tell, Tell, tell them about what the culture is like here? How do we choose to treat each other? How do we make sure we're not having a caustic environment? Is this a place where leadership listens and wants to hear you, and we have those kind of conversations because I'm like, this is my chance to let them know, you know, kind of what they signed on for and hopefully,

impact that whether they're going to get the buyer's remorse or whether they're going to like start to see not only because I tell him, maybe maybe what you're doing right now is perfect for right now. But also look around at other people in the company and see what they're doing, and get time with them and say, Hey, if I wanted to do this a couple years down the road, are there any classes i'd need to take, are there any experiences i'd need to have. And just kind of get that buy in, this is a place where they can grow and move on. So that's why it's kind of fun to do new employee orientation. And in our new employee orientation, we started off with a full week, and then it does not look like what it started off now, because of COVID. Like, early pandemic we were looking at, we had to do everything virtual, and I was like, people are not going to sit for three straight days of eight hours of zoom. Right? So we we pivoted and we made it, you know, different and then like when the mask thing came on, and Okay, now we can have them in the room as long as you're socially distanced. And so there's been a bunch of compromises and stuff. And I wanted to really take it back to we're we're looking at all this stuff from the point of view of the business and what works for them and for the managers, and when can I have my people? And I said, Let's, let's start back with that user, the person who's going to be sitting there and coming to this experience, what would be the best choice for them? Because right now, it's most efficient to do one straight day for day one, where they get all their compliance and safety and culture and everything. It's like drinking from the firehose. Yeah. Oh, and they just sit through it at the end of it, they're probably eyes are all unfocused, and they're just shaking, like, super like, what if we broke it back into a full week, but we did half days where they get the morning with us, and then the afternoon they go to their, their, you know, where they're going to be working and get some context for some of the other stuff we're talking about. So I guess that's commonality between the E learning part and the in class one is, yeah, there's, you're gonna have to make compromises for the business. But if we start with what would be ideal for the learner, I feel like you're still gonna have to make them but you can get closer to that ideal. If you aim for that. Then if you start by saying, well, this won't work because it had and this won't, this will get in the way like push for push for the ideal and then you'll wind up closer. So that's, that's the new point. Part of it. The other part is this, the where I get to have my super fun with elearning is we have an annual GMP refresher like part of the good manufacturing practices are, you got to get them early when they first get there, you need to teach him some of the good manufacturing principles. If anything happens, you need to train on he no deviations or incidents that happen. But then once a year, you want to refresh them on some of the topics. So that's compliance training, everybody has to take it, but I have leeway to make that more fun. So like that was one of the projects I'm most proud of was I did one based on Stranger Things called stronger gmps.

Luis Malbas  
I remember that was great. You did you did a broadcast with us on that. That was Yep, yeah. tastic.

Jonathan Rock  
And so I just went whole hog with it. As far as like, I put story in there, I put art and animation. And I was like, every quiz is a monster fight. And if you get it wrong, I'm gonna kill your character. And you have to start over. My boss was a little squeamish on that one. But I'm like, that's the opposite of what we normally do. Like how do we normally create an elearning it's like a click speed simulator where you just, you know, jam on the next button as fast as you're humanly able to, and then guess your way through and easy quiz. And even if the quiz isn't easy, oftentimes you get to take the questions as many times as you want, right? So I'm like the, that's the reason people take that approach is because that's the most efficient way through, like, that's what I would do if I was taking some boring elearning. Click, click, click, click, click, I know the answer. I know the answer anyway, 100%, you know, don't take it, it's a bribe. I would report that to my manager 100%. So I thought, well, if you kill them when they get it wrong, and they have to start over then the most efficient ways for them to actually learn the content and be able to pass the quiz. So I didn't make a that that course was very instructional for me, because I had two opposite reactions. Some people said, I love that they they'd stopped me in the hallway in gush and be like, why can't they be like that? That was so much fun. I was not expecting it. I thought it was going to be boring. And then I was surprised. And like, I love hearing that. This is really good for my ego. But the opposite reaction also came down. I know what you're doing. Don't ever do that, again. I'm trying to get these people trained and back on the floor working on their equipment, and they had to start over and over because you killed the players. And you know, all that stuff is cute, but it doesn't help. Right, right? Wow. So to end it, nobody was mad about it. They either loved it, or they were like, Oh, this stinking guy and his nerdy crap. Right. So like, how do you take that on and iterate for the next one? Yeah. What do you think? What would you How would you solve that?

Luis Malbas  
Well, that's a tough one. I mean, I have actually no clue how to solve that one. But I'm wondering, is it is it is that is that is that training programs still in play? Is it still active now? Or

Jonathan Rock  
is it that you had to take it? Yeah, no. I've got the power.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Rock  
So here's, here's how I'm taking it for the next one. Um, because the other thing you got, like, I put music into that I put sound effects. You know, I went whole hog. Well, some of the people are taking it out on a noisy production floor where the music and sound effects are wasted. Right? So I was thinking about, like, how do you do this, if you still want to have the fun for people that that have the time and energy and want to do extra? Can I still provide that without making it a nightmare for people who just need to do the training and get back to work? And I thought about the movie, the matrix? And the red pill and the blue pill? Hmm. And I was like, What if right up front? You just, I mean, it's the same content, but you design it twice. You make a normal standard click next year that has all the slides in the quiz. And then you have you the other one that has the same material, but it's presented in the more fun way and you give them the option upfront, you know, like you have a guy walk on screen and like on the on behalf of the audience is like, Oh, no, is this another one of those john rock trainings? I don't have time for this Bs and then give them two options, you know, you know, they can take the blue pill is I just want to take a normal training and lead them down that way. And they'll get Click, click, click, click quiz, quiz quiz. They're good. Yeah. And then if they click the red pill, they get to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Luis Malbas  
And is that what you actually is that what you have gone now?

Jonathan Rock  
That I that I'm working on that? Yeah, yeah, I just saw I'm like, I'm gonna I'm gonna make the boring one first. So I have all the content. And then what do you want to see what I'm kind of doing for the next one? Like the gaming wise stuff? Do we have time for that? Yeah,

Luis Malbas  
yeah, really quick. Looks like we've got some yeses in the All right, yeah. Okay.

Jonathan Rock  
Let me see you. Cheers. screen.

Luis Malbas  
What a treat what a Friday treat.

Jonathan Rock  
All right, so yeah, you guys are getting like a peek behind the curtain this is this is I'm not finished by any means this is I'm still, you know, coming up with this, but I found the I found this website that had these little print in play individual games for one player and I found this one called escape of the dead. It's a mini game. And so basically, you just need four six sided dice, and you know, print off these markers and cut them out. And it starts off where zombies get spawned in, and you're at a camp and you've got a broken down truck, and you got to try and fix the truck and escape is how you win. But there's barricades, and when the zombies come out of the woods, they're going to start smashing on the barricades, right? So you needed to figure out how are you going to allocate your dice, you got four, six sided dice, you can put, you know, all of them, or any number of them on fixing the fences. So when the zombies start smashing the fences, you can fix them back up to keep them at bay. Because if the if the zombies break through the fences, then your lunch they come get you when you lose, you can also spend some of the the dice on shooting you got on the lawn, and you could shoot the zombies. And so if there's less zombies, then your barricades will last longer. And then of course, you always want to spend some on trying to fix the truck because that's the Wednesday Wednesday. So you get a five or six, you get to fix 10% of the truck. If you're building barricades, it's you know, 5050 Well, actually, three are better. So you know, two thirds chance that you'll fix a barricade if you spend your your resources there. Or, if you shoot zombies, it's the same to third chance to kill a zombie. But the problem is, the more of your car that gets fixed. Once you get to 40% fixed now you're spawning two zombies each turn, and then three zombies in 7080, and then 90 and 100 for zombies. So the game ramps up in difficulty. So I thought, How can I? How can I blend those elements into a learning experience? Because I mean, that's the problem, I have a passion for bringing the fun, cool game stuff to the elearning. But they don't always the affordances of a game don't always line up with what you're trying to do training wise. So it's not like I can just make Mario and put a quiz at the end, you know what I mean? Like it has him. So to build it, I've I went to Kenny, and they've got these asset packs, you can either buy or some of them are free. You know, I've got my main game. And then this is kind of a screen of what I built for the you know, here's the camp, here's the barricade, here's the truck you got to work on. And then I found some zombie sprites on on one of the one of the websites that has free game elements, right? So I'm here, I'll close that down. Here's so here's, here's my storyline file. I've got a, I've got a layer that lets me allocate resources. I've got all my little animations. And you know, obviously it's not working yet. I'm still building this sucker. But I love it. Oh, you do? Okay, good. I never know if I'm like, just way off out on a limb with this stuff. Or if it actually makes a, you know, has a good application. But so here's my little animated zombies coming into attack. And when they get to the barricade, they have like, I haven't put it in there. But they'll have animations where they're smacking the barricade, and then here's your dice are actually characters, right? So here she is, I'm gonna put her on fixing the fence, I'm gonna put him on fixing the car, you know, or you can also put them on, you know, shooting zombies. And so the thing with compliance training, it's a refresher, it's not bringing them new knowledge. So I wanted to give them a chance to either like opt out, like, like take an upfront quiz and just prove that they don't need to take it or go through the material if they need the refresher or whatever. So it's figuring, you know, they can either, you know, take the blue pill and just do a normal click next, or they can try the game and I was thinking to two modes for the game number one, they jump straight into the game, and then they allocate their resources. But before they can roll the dice, they have to answer a quiz question about some of the topics, you know, like pest management, how do we protect our product from insects and other kinds of contaminants and

if they get it right, then it rolls the dice either to success or fail. Or they can say I'm going to do a quick refresher on this topic. And I'll give them maybe an upgraded character like maybe the if they started from fret, you know, from fresh to rolling D fours, instead of D sixes. So it's a little harder. But if they go through the material, then they get a D six character who has better chances. And, and they can get through it quicker. But it kind of takes the fun of strategy and resource allocation and just kind of puts that layer of compliance information into it to where it could be something that would be replayable, for fun on its own. But as you're playing it, you're getting reinforced on all the concepts we want to refresh on. So that's kind of where my head's at. Again, to kind of developing it as I go, yeah,

Luis Malbas  
I get there's like, that's some great research to write, you know, like, depending upon who took the red pill and the blue pill, how effective the training is, and sort of like what, what the results were, I mean, the engagement, obviously, is going to be, you know, way too far heavier on one than the other. So I yeah, that is really, really interesting. Thank you for sharing that,

Jonathan Rock  
for sure. And like if you start putting stuff like, you know, x API into it, you can even start getting some stats on like, how many people pick the blue pill? How many people just try for the game? And how many people like say, yeah, I'm willing to to sit through some of this material, because it gives me a power up in the game, like you're adding motivation to do this stuff that might not have been there for the game, weren't there? Yeah, that's powerful stuff. And Kim, I don't remember off the top of my head where I got that one page, I will look that up in and send that to you on LinkedIn, where that little resource was for those because those are just fun on their own. Right, you know, yeah, I

Luis Malbas  
actually wrote that down, because that's something my seven year old who is like crazy about games right now. would absolutely love to play. So I'm gonna have to try to find that because to show him tonight, but, but that's great.

Jonathan Rock  
I'll email it to you. I sent a craft.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. So um, let's see, we're already past our half an hour, but let me let me ask you just a couple more questions if that's cool. Okay. Okay, let's see here. Um, if you can go back 10 years, tell yourself like, okay, you're starting out in this career. You know, this is something you need to know like, Is there any advice you'd give yourself 10 years for your? Yeah,

Jonathan Rock  
I got loads of advice. First of all, and this isn't something where it's like I screwed it up and that's how I learned the hard way but it's something I figured out pretty quickly but one of the best things is make sure in as far as it's possible for you if you're in a corporate setting, have a good relationship with your boss. Um, I've gone through a couple times where my you know, my boss switched out and so you got a new boss coming in and typically what a lot of people will do in that case is they'll sit back and fold their arms and be like, how's this new person going to screw it up isn't going to be as good as what we had and they're kind of they can they can be really cold reception to the new boss coming in, you know, like they feel a need to prove themselves even more than other people getting having a new new role. And so I say why not do the opposite? Why not roll out the red carpet? Let them know that you know, because I mean a lot of people will they'll want to be resistant to change because they're like all this new guy's going to do something new. Say What do you know what are your biggest headache headaches coming into this is there anything I can make go away for you make it easier, establish that trust because in many ways your boss is your gatekeeper for your future. Like even if you leave the company and go somewhere else. Guess who your new boss is probably going to call to ask about you. Right? So all that to say and I'm not saying you know you need to change who you are brown nose or kiss up or anything like that. I'm just saying it's not just up to leadership or management to make sure how good your life goes. So in as far as you are capable, have a good relationship with your manager. Um, another piece of advice I give myself is you don't have to be everything. It helps to know people who are something but like I feel like for people starting off in this industry, we can get really overwhelmed with all the stuff we feel like we need to know you know, you've got all the instructional design principles. You know, whenever Am I gonna learn how to captivate or storyline or you know, Domino or what, and then you see all these people on LinkedIn doing really cool stuff, like AR and VR, and stuff that you'll probably never need in your current role. So just focus on like, it's okay to be where you are. If all you can do is the bog standard, they have asked for it and being an order taker. And create an elearning. That's click next and everything that they want, that's okay. Maybe just change one little thing and make it better. Like if it's all linear. And there's like chunks of it, maybe put in one screen where the user gets to decide what order they take it in. And that's all you did. But you made it that much better because you made it something that they had more control over. It's not okay to stay where you are, you want to be getting better. But I feel like a lot of times, when we're starting off, we can get really intimidated with don't do clicky clicky, bling bling. I mean, I don't know what those kinds of people would say about what I just showed you guys, cuz that's like I wallow in the clicky, bling bling. I'm like a pig in the mud with that stuff, right? Because you are your first audience and you need to do this stuff that's going to make it exciting and fun for you to keep growing in it. If you just sit kid down at the table, and say, Alright, we're going to go over the rules of etiquette of eating a meal, and here's all your forks in the napkin in your lap and there's no food there. That sounds like a dull experience. Like if you give them a banquet and say all right now here's where we use this fork and stuff and they get to enjoy it as they're going. I feel like that's a better approach.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay, Jay rock. Last question. If you weren't in learning and development what kind of what do you think you were your career be?

Jonathan Rock  
I would be a penniless novelist. I'd be writing science fiction novels that aren't very good and not getting recognized for it.

Luis Malbas  
Oh man, that is awesome. I mean, English Lit degree here too. So at one point I was going to try to be a teacher but mostly it was I was focused on just trying to please my parents and you know lead them off the trail that I actually wanted to be a rock a rock and roll star.

Jonathan Rock  
Oh yeah, man.

Luis Malbas  
And play the rock music All right.

Jonathan Rock  
Any other questions? Oh, no. I was afraid of that. Who do you think you are and what gives you

Luis Malbas  
the right well let you answer that one.

Jonathan Rock  
What are you going to do when they all find out what a phony you are? Looks like my subconscious has been running rampant in the Ask a Question is okay, we skip over those I really gets to open.

Luis Malbas  
I'll let you I'll let you I'll let you skip over those and we're at anyway but hey, Jay rock thank you so much for doing this I always love being able to talk to you it's always just such an incredibly rewarding experience I feel like you're somebody that should be interviewed more like on Conan or something then then here on on on little old to trtc But thanks for sharing with us excited about that product. I wish that I mean the your project, I wish that I could take that compliance training at some point. So

Jonathan Rock  
all right, well, here's a tip when you're making stuff like that, do it in tandem. Do one for your company and one for yourself. Because what you always hear people saying well, I need I know I need to build a portfolio but all the stuff I've built is proprietary. Yeah. So just do do a little extra work and make one for yourself that's not related at all. And that way you'll have the you know, the examples and stuff. But the other thing I'd be remiss I know we're way over but I would be remiss if I didn't say Luis like the reason I'm a member here in in, you know, one of the things you would tell yourself going back to DC has been so seminal, for getting me to where I am, I started off I was the only one doing what I was doing at my workplace. I was looking for mentors and like, awesome people like you. And Karen north and jack Hutchinson, like people that make awesome things and share wisdom for free just rock. And I have grown so much from this and from the people that I've met here and the way they've built into my life and that kind of stuff. So you know, it was a no brainer to become a member, I would encourage all of you to this is one of the best, most awesome, like when I was starting off there was this and then there was like other webinars that you would go to. And it was just like setting you up for a sales call where an LMS was gonna call you and try to get you to buy it and like this was like, I'm getting pure gold. Like, I'm seeing door's unlocked that I've been trying to pick the lock to for free. And nobody's selling me anything. And so yeah, this this place has been amazing for my personal growth and I really appreciate what you've done Luis.

Luis Malbas  
Thanks. I never know how to how to take the compliments but yeah, it's just um, yeah, no, I,

Jonathan Rock  
I don't know if you ever get a compliment. Like, here's how you take it. You say yeah, but I can't really make a souffle. So.

Luis Malbas  
And with that, wrap it up. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great weekend everyone and we've got a couple broadcasts next week, no showcases next week. We've got a couple of topic oriented ones with I think Rubina, and I think it's Bruce Chen from coaches off. So hopefully we'll see you next week. And thanks again, Jay rock. We'll see everybody next time. Bye everybody.

Unknown Speaker  
Bye

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