Once you bring new employees onto your team, you need an efficient way to train them. Many solutions in this space focus on enterprise training and onboarding. But Trainual focuses specifically on small businesses. Read about the solution in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Provides training and onboarding software solutions for businesses.
Founder Chris Ronzio told Small Business Trends, “Trainual helps 8,000+ small businesses across 183 countries document every process, policy, and SOP for every role and responsibility in one place.”
Business Niche
Serving small businesses instead of large enterprises.
Ronzio says, “Many of our competitors cater more toward enterprise-sized companies and follow a traditional learning management system model, which offers courses and other tools geared towards larger companies.”
How the Business Got Started
Creating a system for clients at another job.
Ronzio explains, “I started Organize Chaos in 2013 where I was an operations consultant. I needed my own way to document my client’s policies and procedures to get everything in one place. Trainual was essentially born out of that need. I say that once my clients wanted to use Trainual more than they wanted my services, I knew I had something. My brother Jonathan (Co-founder and CMO of Trainual) came to Arizona for 2 months to get Trainual off the ground – and we haven’t looked back since.”
Biggest Win
Taking the business seriously.
Ronzio says, “It was my brother Jonathan moving to Arizona for two months because that’s what forced me to take the project seriously. It could’ve easily been a project that I did on the side, but Jonathan committing to temporarily living in AZ forced me to free up time. I told all my clients that I wouldn’t be doing their work anymore. In a sense, I burned the ships so I couldn’t go back. To me, I think that was the biggest win for the business. If we didn’t dedicate that time, I’m not sure Trainual would be what it is today.”
Biggest Risk
Removing the credit card requirement for free trials.
Ronzio adds, “For the first couple of years, we had required companies to put in a credit card to start their trial. And after 7 days, it would charge the card. We had a 70% conversion rate because people would forget to cancel it. So it was paying back all of our ad spend and allowing us to grow the business. However, it wasn’t healthy growth! It was a huge risk to remove the credit card from our trials and we knew we could lose millions of dollars. But, it was an important risk because it gave us a chance to figure out what it costs for us to get healthy customers. And we ended up improving retention a lot.”
Lesson Learned
Focus on product development and improvement.
Ronzio says, “In the first couple of years, we were focused on growing marketing and our product was in its infancy. Now, we’ve had to play a lot of catch-up to invest in infrastructure and things we could’ve done differently in the beginning. Knowing what I know now, I would’ve made some of those investments earlier so we could be focused on building new things at this point.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Events and experiences.
Ronzio says, “As a hybrid company, we want to invest in our people and put together cool, in-person experiences. Maybe we’d bring in a celebrity artist or upgrade tickets or hotels during an event. Or, maybe we’d try another experimental partnership with a celebrity.”
Fun Team Fact
They had 12 people sign up for and complete an IRONMAN race.
Ronzio adds, “I think that’s a pretty unique stat that most businesses don’t have. We are a super competitive bunch!”
Favorite Quote
“I want to make a life, but I want to live there too.” – Andrew McMahon
Ronzio says, “This resonates with me because people work so hard to build something valuable in their business. I think a lot of entrepreneurs that I know don’t actually embrace or enjoy success. They are always in build mode or chasing after something. It’s an important reminder for me to work really hard to create something special, but also enjoy it. Enjoy the milestones, events, family, and friends along the way instead of leaving them behind.”
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Image: Trainual, Chris Ronzio
This article, "Spotlight: Trainual Eliminates Confusion for New Employees" was first published on Small Business Trends
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