From Marketing to HR to L&D: Special Guest Bruce Chen of KochaSoft

Bruce Chen is a Marketer turned L&D Professional, and currently the CEO of Kochasoft's LMS Division. He also has his own podcast, The Makeshift CMO.

And what was interesting about our conversation was getting some insight from Bruce about L&D, that was pretty much an outsider's perspective. As a marketer first, he had some compelling analysis about L&D and how hit overlaps with marketing, and where the future of Learning and Development is headed.

Give this episode a listen, especially if you have some interest in marketing. Bruce has a solid vision, and you'll probably learn something new.

Luis Malbas  
Hey, everybody, welcome to the training learning and development community. Thanks for joining us today. Got a great guest we have Bruce Chen from Coach a soft in Ontario, you're in Ontario, Canada, right?

Bruce Chen  
Yes, I am in Ontario. So it, you wouldn't know unless you were here, but Toronto for those who commonly follow World Geography,

Luis Malbas  
right, which is not really me. But yeah, thanks for joining today I'm excited to talk to you about your role as a CEO of an of an LMS division. And and just sort of your passion for l&d and, and and how you got to where you are now. So let's just get into it. I've got a few questions that are set up. And just so that, folks know, Bruce had reached out to me to talk in TLD cast, just to sort of discuss his background, his his interest in l&d, and he has, he does have a really, really interesting background. In fact, one of the things I want to bring up is that you have your own podcast that you host, right?

Bruce Chen  
That's correct. It's called the makeshift cmo a bit of a different vibe from from this, but in case you are screamingly bored, Search it up on Amazon, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, but that's a totally different thing.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right. So, Mark, you were marketer? Now you're an l&d professional CEO of, of the LMS division of coaches soft. Tell us more about that. Like, how did that how did you even start your journey in learning and development?

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, that's a great question, how I started knowing nothing. Basically, I took a role at my previous company. We were doing HR tech. I think the I think the thing that burned inside of my belly, so to speak, that got me to that point was this idea that when I was younger, I didn't understand what on earth I wanted to do with my life at all. And so I wanted to join an HR tech company that help people get to a better career. Ultimately, at this company, we were designing an internal talent marketplace. So we were helping people who were in one role, also try out different roles in order for them to best develop and discover their passions. Which led me to coach a soft in the sense that I started heading up all their marketing, a little bit of their business development. And it just so happened that they were developing a cloud based LMS. And they were like, Hey, you, you kind of seem like the right person to lead some of these projects. One thing led to another, and now I'm here. All right,

Luis Malbas  
cool. So you were a marketer, and what was it? I think the company was called, was a paddle? Yes. Yes. And it was basically an HR product, right?

Bruce Chen  
You got it. Exactly.

Luis Malbas  
Right. Okay. So it was kind of talent development. Yeah,

Bruce Chen  
it was internal mobility, which was more, I don't know, if many of our audience have here, it's either internal mobility or talent mobility. But it's this, it's this idea that, let's say I work at, you know, a large company like Microsoft, and I start off as a, you know, a salesperson, I could get into theoretically another role like, like, you know, on the cloud team, or whatever. In practice, this, this practice, the practice of internal mobility does cause some, you know, political friction in large orgs. Because people want to keep their best people right where they are, but I got my, that was where I sort of really learned about the HR HR world in general, it's that like, this is a practice that isn't widely accepted, as are a lot of them in learning and development. Yet there are so many that if they were implemented, things would function so much better at organization. So So that's sort of what that experience taught

Luis Malbas  
me. And so you were basically kind of function working with HR professionals to form with this with this particular project. Was there anything about the HR function that that you learn that was particularly interesting as a mark, you know, as a marketer, was there anything that you that you took away from that that was particularly compelling and maybe even led you to the l&d side of things

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, I think I think one thing that is a marketer that I started self identifying with HR and l&d people is, you know, our software. You know, at both companies, I've been able to talk to a lot of them, because these people, because there's there's a lot of issues, and there's a lot of issues that need to get solved. And whether you're in talent, whether you're in learning, whether you're an HR VP, you have a very unique business problem that you want to solve, but it's one that usually those problems are ones that it's tricky to prove the ROI of these, of the solution of these problems, like very quickly, like if, like for marketing, if I want to spend $10,000, on paid ads, I almost have to prove that, well, they're going to generate $100,000 in revenue, which is possible, but difficult. It's also very difficult to say, hey, if you invest $1 million into the upskilling, and development of company x, that they're going to get $10 million worth of, you know, their stock price going up. that's a that's a very hard distinction to draw. So that's the, that's like one cynical common thing between marketing and l&d that I've done, I have found, and that's how I self identified with with those folks. So the self identifying and a common thread is that it's a difficult job. And it's a very difficult job. And I think it's a but it's a lot of smart people with you know, great hearts like you don't you don't get into a role where you're like, my my job is to help people learn and develop without inherently kind of caring about other people. And I found that that was the soft thread that bound me to, you know, the l&d prospects that I would be lucky enough to to chat with.

Luis Malbas  
That's interesting. So you basically you did kind of have to market to HR people market to l&d people, you have this really interesting perspective, now you're actually in the l&d space, running a company that the as a CEO, but was there do you think you have a unique perspective, coming as a marketer to to HR and l&d that gives you something a little different as a CEO for for coaches off?

Bruce Chen  
I sure hope it is. I sure I sure. Hope it does, I think. Yeah, that's a very interesting question. Based cancer, I sure hope it does. Because where I started was a place of understanding nothing, and just wanting to, to learn how this world worked. Yeah. And I was lucky enough to be recruited to coach a software company where the company does many things. But the very first meaningful commercial project we had, you know, however many years ago was in the corporate training space, and right now that's it was related to cloud SAP, and it upskilling. But it's just very funny that I went from one, you know, sort of talent mobility HR company, to going to one where the company started to try and train people how to use Microsoft Azure, or SAP, Hana, all of these technical things. So it's really just funny how it turns out that way.

Luis Malbas  
I guess maybe that that just that self identifying aspect of, you know, like, what you were just talking about, that's probably the most powerful thing. Having come with, like, sort of having a diverse background and then entering this space. It does seem like it's probably pretty unique for you to be able to look at it from that perspective, just from the outside Anyway, I'm different from somebody that started out in training, and then came up in his in his running a company, you get to see it from outside of it first. So So I do think that's, that's very cool. Do you still consider yourself a marketer at all?

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, absolutely. I would say, um, put it this way. Um, anybody who's done any type of stint in a marketing agency or has been a marketer, a startup, um, I could be 10 years down, down the road, and, you know, any type of entrepreneur or somebody doing things and I hope people would not be surprised when they say well I got my start as a marketer, that was my the first job I had in the in the tech world, because that's the way I think about things and operate, which is how I relate it to the learning and development market and, and how I how I try and work with l&d professionals. It seems like they're totally different things, but they're not. And at least in my mind, I'm biased. But how you think about marketing is always like, Who's your audience? What are you trying to say to them? What is the medium? And it's the l&d function of every large company. Not thought this way, but had a little sprinkling of that in there. I think things would, I think a learning uptake would be a lot better at at certain companies. And, and I feel like I if I could hazard a guess, for a lot of the people on this crowdcast if that thought process came from the top down. For a lot of companies that had an l&d department, your jobs would probably be a lot easier. And and you'd be, you'd be swimming, like every single day being like, Whoa, l&d is, is an easy job. Although I've already said before, like, I think it's, I think it's a it's a very challenging job and whoever is sort of passion of attack tackle that, that issue that comes from no place but but a desire to help other people.

Luis Malbas  
Right? We actually, um, I guess it was a couple years now we did a series on marketing and l&d on sort of the similarities and what you can take away from marketing to help you with your, you know, l&d initiatives, and, and all of that, and when I have a second, I'll try to pull that it's a playlist, I'll pull that playlist up, and I'll post it in chat so that people can check it out. But yeah, it's, um, I, I totally get it. But how about you now as the CEO of coca sauce LMS division? What does your marketing background bring to that role, especially since it's an l&d role, anything specific that you can point out?

Bruce Chen  
For sure, um, I would say the easiest way to connect those dots is the skill of like, early pain point and problem identification. So as CEO of, of a company that creates learning products, whether it's, you know, software, or whether it's the actual content. I always think about it, or my team, my team always thinks about it in the in the sense of like, well, what is this trying to solve? Okay, so we're creating, you know, a training program, about the cloud for this big company, or, you know, this client, what are we trying to solve? Why are we even in the room with these people? Why are they willing to spend the money to work with, you know, a motley crew like us to train their people? You know, what, you know, if they are, if I'm speaking to an l&d professional, you know, what initiative came down to them? What initiative came down to them, that made them say, like, Listen, so Bruce and team, were thinking of creating a program that does this. And you know, yeah, that's that's how that's how we do it. It's almost like a SWOT needs like analysis.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. Like a needs analysis. Yeah.

Bruce Chen  
It's Yeah, it's it's a top it's it's a top down thing. that's a that's a very roundabout way of saying that. It starts top down. We don't just build stuff and say, like, I hope people read this, or I hope people engage in this. That has proven to not work for many decades. So Right,

Luis Malbas  
right. So do you have any specifics that you can talk about with marketing and an l&d overlapping? Is there anything that that you've seen that is especially acute maybe that that you can bring up and just so everyone knows I posted the playlist? link in the chat if anybody wants to check that out? That's actually a really good, a really good series to look at. I'll probably, I could probably add this one to that playlist when we're done.

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll speak from a product marketing perspective. Nice. Now all rage and marketing. A while back was using push notifications and things of that nature to reengage people. Whether that's leads, or whether that's subscribers, you're starting to see a lot of those features being built within a learning platform. So whether it's us or competitors, because all the theme and rage in, in learning and 2020, and I know I'm preaching to the choir is, is gamification. Gone are the days where, you know, like, you'd be at HQ. And people would say, Hey, guys, here's compliance training, we're going to stuff you in a room with 300 other people, here's a, here's a printed out, you know, Handbook, and here's some stale sandwiches to make it through the seminar. That's, that doesn't work, for obvious reasons. And now there's all kinds of things you know, all LMS have things like quizzing, like announcement boards, like the ability to share courses and learnings and certifications through intranet. These are new things to the world of a relatively new to the thing to the world of learning. But these are sort of marketing and growth principles that have been applied in the early days of Silicon Valley for a while now. So I find it very, very interesting to see that level of crossover. And same disciplines used by completely different people.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right. Yeah, actually, this last Friday, we did. We had Jonathan rock on one of our one of our members in the showcase. And he was he kind of showed off a compliance thing he was building, but it was like a zombie game. That's awesome. Yeah. But it was a compliance thing that he was, he was building it, it was it was really, really cool. And, you know, he did mention some really interesting things about about how he does have some managers that are opposed to it, because they almost, you know, they sort of feel like compliance shouldn't be that fun. But, you know, it's it's it's the, you know, the people that are participating in our learning. So, you know, there's that it's really, it was it was very, very cool. How about personalization?

Bruce Chen  
For sure, I think personalization is something that has been it's it's a buzzword, but it's something that has become so incredibly. And sorry, that, that's, that's a great question, because that's another example that I basically neglected to answer my last question, personalization has been a thing that has become super prevalent in marketing in the early 2000s. And now for learning, it is becoming all the rage. If you're, if you have 10,000 employees that you are supposed to teach, there are, you know, maybe 1000 different ways to, to to segment them. I could give specific examples of how we do it, but it is pretty technical. But basically the way we do it, because our niches in it is we're segmenting people by like, SAP basis, SAP security. We're segmenting people by like, which cloud they want to learn whether it's Azure or GCP. So we have found, you know, that that is incredibly important. And, and really personalization, I think, is not only the key to creating a better learner experience, it is the key to something I alluded to earlier, which is prove the worth of of l&d, because more personalized content means people are going to be much more engaged with the content. And again, this is something that's been like, a thing and marketing for however long, and now it's, and now it's like, you know, something that people never even thought of for learning. And it's and it's, and it's all the rage, that's that's all it takes, you know, if without it, you can't create the most amazing content and without it, you cannot really get people engaged and really, really prove like, why is this Learning Initiative? so important? Because we're hitting the right people. We're gonna be engaged with the content.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. No, that's so interesting. Kim is saying one of the examples of crossover, I always think of is drip can campaigns, and she's hoping to include one in play now, and which for marketers that has just been around forever, so so it must be kind of nice for you because as a marketer, you're like, Oh, yeah, well, there's this thing that, you know, marketers do and you sort of can sneak it into, as, you know, as an as an l&d sort of, you know, product or whatever. Because, you know, you just have had experience with it for a while now, but maybe not so much in the l&d space, or it hasn't existed in the l&d space as much like, you know, the personalization piece and, and those types of things. So is that stuff that you regularly like, Hey, we do this on the marketing side? How come we don't do this over on the lnd? side? Do you ever ask you I mean, is that something that comes up on a regular basis for you?

Bruce Chen  
It is something that realistically, I should we've asked but something that it's a general reminder that we should ask this more and more like some of our projects I'm learning on the business side depend on people's engagement like we Erica, we literally get paid more than more people are engaged in like some of the IT training programs, we get paid more if people are more engaged with the LMS. So So for me, that's the challenge is to drip campaigns are a great example. Kim, dripping out regular cadences. It's like, you know, if person opens this email, you know, then you send them this content. If person clicks on set button, then you then you send them some other piece of content and if they haven't, and this in, you know, there's even the, the the vaunted, like breakup sequence, where if they don't respond for like, four emails, what do you do? Um, so that's a really great example. And I think, and I think it's, it's something that constantly needs to get pushed.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. So um, we talked a little bit last time we had a conversation, you talked a little bit about the future of l&d, and, and especially how you're pretty bullish about, you know, the the future of virtual learning. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? What do you see, especially as somebody that is, you know, has has worked with a lot of marketing technology and, and some of these systems like, what do you see the future of l&d to be like?

Bruce Chen  
Well, I think, I think the first thing that I will say, and it wouldn't be a 30 minute conversation about anything if we haven't talked about, you know, pandemic, but I don't know if anyone's heard, but it happened in 2020 seeped into 2021. However people feel about that. You know, it's it's tough to say, things haven't changed. Now, that being said, um, my personal belief in a in a bullish view, is that the pandemic will push l&d to be more of a strategic function in the HR and even beyond that world. Because if you think about it, like and, and this is my view of it from like a from like a 360 perspective, everyone says that, but if you think about the world's companies that are growing the absolute fastest, and I'm biased by saying tech companies, but that's true, if you were to look at the s&p 500, like what companies are literally growing the fastest tech companies, well, a lot of them have been virtual, and sort of like location agnostic. And, you know, let people do what they want, in terms of where they are, how they learn how they communicate for a while, before there was any mention of Coronavirus or vaccines or whatever. So it's something that's going to everybody's talking about how it's going to put, you know, virtual working to the, to the forefront. But by extension, it's going to put virtual learning to the forefront. You know, my favorite case studies are of companies like zoom, Asana, five trend, intercom, all of these companies have been focused on virtual learning for a very virtual communication and by extension learning for a very, very long time. And I'm not saying that's the reason why, you know, their stock will or you know, the big objectives of the company will be achieved, you know, so quickly quarter over quarter I'm just one guy that thinks that they're not unrelated.

Luis Malbas  
Nice, nice, you know, it's, um, I was just thinking about this. Before the pandemic, I remember reading an article, I think it was from Josh Burson from burst out talking about, you know, the training function, l&d should be the center strategically of the organization. And everything should, you know, should sort of branch off from there. And I wish I could give specifics on what what, you know, the context of that, and what surrounding it is, but everything that I remember reading about that article, I'm like, that all makes sense. Yeah, they should be like at the center, because that's the learning function, and everything is moving so fast. If that is strategically where you start, your organization can help it grow, because it's almost like you know, kind of like a tree, and you're just, you know, the knowledge is going to expand out and you're going to continue your organization is going to continue to kind of feed off that centerpiece, and, and grow larger and larger and larger. So, yeah, I just think that's interesting. And that, you know, and that as a, as a marketer, because I do think that you are definitely functioning as a marketer within like, as an l&d CEO. I think that is like a really, really key thing and, and, and, you know, pretty, you know, pretty heavy stuff, it's, it's, it's definitely got a lot of power to that, I would say,

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, one more example that I I really love is, and speaking of the future, is, I get Instagram ads right now as a tech professional for Shopify, saying, like, hey, come to Shopify University, we'll teach you, you know, for 3500, you know, hours, or whatever the case may be. And that just proves the large leading innovating companies commitment to, to learning that they're just saying, like, we're gonna skip University, Alright, we're just gonna skip this whole thing, where people come in with an arts degree, and then have to figure out what they want to do with us on this train with us for however many years, they'll be home grown, and we'll pay them. You know, we know companies like Facebook and Google would think of doing it, if it wasn't for, well, they probably thought of it, but you know, anti competition and things of that nature. But, but that's, that's a great example of like, how companies are thinking of learning in the future.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. And then the pandemic is probably push that even further into play, you know, simply just because we've had to function within these sort of isolated environments, and really, you know, start using our screens, more the online resources more to be able to learn and I know, for myself, I work for, for a learning technology company. And I know that, you know, we are doing incredibly well. And it's because, you know, we publish books on programming on all kinds of, you know, cloud stuff, like, you know, getting through certifications, all of that. And it's, it's just super high demand. So, yeah, I do, I do think that person is onto something with learning being at the central of an organization. Okay, last question that we got it, we're going to wrap it up, what kinds of things are you in coaches off doing? To accommodate like your vision? Your vision is the CEO of this LMS division? What are some things that you're doing right now that you can share with us?

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, absolutely. So our bread and butter has always been cloud in it. training. So that is the niche that we have always served, helping large companies, demystify the cloud and upskill and, you know, SAP and non SAP systems. But beyond that, as we created the learning management tool, the the intent was always to expand our capability of helping large orange solve the problem of not having enough IT skills. And one of the things that I wanted to mention earlier, one of the big problems is you can't just recruit your way to having to solving the IT skills gap, it's the numbers don't bear out, it's physically not possible. There is literally not enough it skill out there to serve all the large companies at the rate that they are growing. So training in it. And these like, sort of stamp skills is the only way to really do it. And, and if you're a large company, you should probably take that into your own hands. Um, one thing we're up to is, we're announcing partnership very soon, with one, hopefully two content providers. So you again, you can probably guess who they are. But you can those are platforms where consumers go on and learn learn content, but we are partnering with them to integrate with our LMS. So that we can bring the the engaging sort of content that all of these, like really large content providers have provided to consumers, but in the form of a nicely wrapped LMS to be sort of an all in one shop for large, large companies to upskill and, and get more comfortable in in their IT systems which are ever advancing and won't stop advancing.

Luis Malbas  
Are you are you finding or Are you challenging at all? Finding content?

Bruce Chen  
Ah, not anymore. Hopefully, with these, with these partnerships. We've always had a great staff when it comes to creating SAP and you know, cloud content, which is, again, our Nish that's how the company started. I work I'm still fortunately lucky to work with individuals whose background are in are in it and in training, and they you know, I've been lucky to have them still believe in this vision and remain on with with with my company. So the short answer is probably not but you know, yeah.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, there's just, I know, just personally, there is just such a huge, huge demand for content out there. So and I know Gosh, like, even on the l&d side, you know, on a regular basis in our private slack group constantly, like seeing, you know, job posts on there people looking for help center teams. It's, um, I think that it's, it's a busy time for for l&d and, and, and it sounds like it's, it's, it's good for coaches off right now.

Bruce Chen  
I sure hope so. We can only hope.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. Bruce, thank you so much for spending some time talking to the community today. I really appreciate you coming in. Once you put your Do you have like you want to share your LinkedIn profile or anything?

Bruce Chen  
Yeah, absolutely. Let me hop on here actually had

Luis Malbas  
it right in front of me. Let me let me let me drop that in there. Um, and then maybe you could drop the coaches off LinkedIn there. If anybody's interested in checking coaches soft out. And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and close out this this episode. Bruce, thanks again. I really appreciate you spending time with us.

Bruce Chen  
The pleasure and appreciation comes all the way from not sunny Ontario, not sunny Toronto. For those who may be on the East Coast, or Midwest of the US maybe may understand that but thank you so much, everyone. I really had a blast being on on the show. And Luis, thank you so much.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, absolutely. All right, everyone. We'll see. I think on Thursday, we've got Rubino helwani. Talking about onboarding and inclusion. That one is a really, that would be a good one to sit in on. Definitely. Try to tune into that one if you can on Thursday. And with that, we'll see everybody next time. Take care Bruce. Thanks again.

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