Guest: Juliana Stancampiano

In this episode, Juliana Stancampiano shares her journey from learning and development to entrepreneurship on The Become an IDOL Podcast. 

Tune in to find out:

• Juliana Stancampiano's experience founding the U.S. office of Oxygen and eventually acquiring ownership of the company
• Oxygen's philosophy of experiential learning and how they design engaging learning experiences 
• Insights on how learning professionals can better understand business operations to better support organizational goals

Listen to this episode below: 

Subscribe to Become an IDOL Podcast: Apple Podcast | Spotify | Google Podcast 

Connect with Juliana on LinkedIn

Are you looking for a no-nonsense formula for creating engaging courses and training? Check out my new book, The Do It Messy Approach: A Step-by-Step Guide for Instructional Designers and Online Learners (IDOLs) on Amazon.

Enjoy the Episode Transcript below:   

 

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Welcome to Become an IDOL. I'm Dr. Robin Sargent, owner of IDOL courses. This is the place where newbies come to learn and veterans share their knowledge. I have here with me today, Juliana Stancampiano, and she is the owner and founder of Oxygen. Is it just Oxygen, or does it Oxygen?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, it's Oxygen Experience and I mean, it's an interesting thing, right? So we originally were Oxygen Learning, and I dropped the Learning because we started to do more work outside of the learning space and put Experiences at the end. But honestly, most of our clients just know us as Oxygen. So we use the moniker Oxygen, but we have a DBA for Oxygen Experiences. As you can imagine, the word oxygen is highly sought after by some very large companies. So.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, no. It's a great name, and I get it because even in my business, like it's IDOL courses or IDOL Academy or whatever, and we, we're just called IDOL. So I totally get it.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, everybody probably Yeah, refers to you as IDOL. Yeah.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yes, all the things, they're just, they're just IDOL things. Okay, so I actually met Juliana at the Badass Moms event that was hosted by actually one of my alumni, Mallory Steele. And whenever I met Juliana, I was just like, oh my gosh, such an inspiration for me, personally, to see another woman-owned business in this field that is successful and thriving, so that was part of why I wanted to bring you on, but also because you've been in learning and development and now you have such a different role and I just think that there's just so much that even people that are looking to get into instructional design can learn and take away from your story and just your career path. So Juliana, will you just start by doing a better job of introducing yourself. Just give us a little background of who you are.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, I appreciate that. And a big shout out to Mallory Steele. She is a wonderful entrepreneur herself, who it sounds like we've both been in contact with quite a bit, and she's doing some amazing work in the industry. I started out in the people space after college, thought I wanted to go to law school that quickly- I went into a law firm and worked there on the HR side and I was like, yep, don't want to be a lawyer, but I like these people. And started out in that space, ended up in Europe, very long story, but working at Microsoft, doing communications, but I was also in charge of the development for the leadership teams that I supported my boss supported, and that was really my first foray into learning and development. And at the time, it didn't exist to get an Instructional Designer Certification, or there was nothing really at that point in around 2004, 2005. And I graduated from college in 2000 so definitely nothing from that perspective. I graduated with a business degree, and so I went to some events. Oxygen was actually originally a UK based company. Went to some events that were put on by one of the founders that did work with in Microsoft, where I was at and I, I was really struck. It was highly experiential, very hands-on, you know, I thought I was going to this thing where, like, a lot of guys in business suits were going to talk at us with PowerPoint slides. And it ended up being really the exact opposite, where we did all sorts of interactive activities to learn about the business and about one another and connect with our colleagues that were across a lot of different countries. And I was enamored, really, from day one, and we started working together as a client. And a couple of years later, I left Microsoft and joined Oxygen with the intent of opening a US office. I just felt like everybody in the U.S. also deserved to have this kind of experience where instead of, you know, somebody speaking at you, you were actually figuring things out and learning them for yourself, which I realized for myself and from a learning perspective with how I learned you can tell me until you're blue in the face, but until I try it myself and fail. It typically doesn't like really sink into my being of what this thing is and so I did that, started the U.S. business in 2008. It was a terrible time to start a business, and the UK ended up closing and I kept the U.S. going, because we'd actually sold some really large deals to Microsoft at the time, and kind of just, you know, continued from there, and I all of a sudden, I, you know, I went from being kind of this person that was selling and doing the business side into a lot of I had learned a lot, and had a lot of expertise around the learning and a pretty strong point of view about what I felt like good learning looked like. And the reason why our clients were buying from us at a time when nobody was buying anything was because of the effective way in which we created in design learning, and we started getting hired to revamp a lot of things that weren't working during a time when businesses were really struggling to figure out what to do next. But that's more long-winded.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

No-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

I am where I am a business owner.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Okay, so you started doing this, but like, how did- so you actually started working for Oxygen before you ever took it over or so, how long-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

I did.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Did you work in Oxygen before you owned Oxygen, and tell us that story too.

  

Juliana Stancampiano 

I started in October of 2007 and then I opened the U.S. office. July 1, 2008. And then I ended up with ownership of the business on 2009 September 17th. I will never forget it, because I had the sale officially went through September 17th, my birthday is the 18th, and my first child was born on the 19th.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

It was meant to be. It was like divine [inaudible]. Well, how did that work out? I mean, I'm not gonna say nosy, but I'm gonna say curious. I am so curious. The curiosity comes like, did the owner approach you? Did you approach them? Like, what was like- how did that happen?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah so they actually ended up putting the business in the UK into what they call administration, which is our bankruptcy. So at the point, founded by two guys who are amazingly brilliant at what they did, but the business, you know, it's kind of the tale of time, story about an entrepreneur who is so good at what they do, but maybe not so focused on the financial side. And, you know, and also really big hearts, and wanted to keep people around, and everything was crashing all around them. And, you know, frankly, a lot of deals just got pulled at that time. I remember going back and forth quite a bit and thinking the UK during the 2008, 2009 timeline got hit way harder than the U.S. It was hard here, but there it was even more brutal, I would say. So a lot of canceled contracts. And ironically, the U.S., we had just sold three fairly large contracts, and so it made sense to keep that part of the business going, but not the rest of it. So I learned a lot. I learned a lot about running a business through like a crash course over that year.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And then they said, okay, so they put it in bankruptcy so then you're like, oh, does that-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

And I got the U.S. out of it.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

You got the U.S. out of the bankruptcy filing as that piece? And so does that just mean, like, the business transferred to you, or did you have to buy it, or-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Kind of-

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

How'd that work?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

No, I had to buy it, I had to put a bid in, and I had to pay for it. And it's, it's a timing thing. You know, they say this is when it's going up for sale. This is when we make our decision. All offer offers are final, put your best offer in, etc. It was an anxiety-ridden time. I had five employees myself in the U.S. and everybody was worried about where things were going, and there weren't a lot of job openings at the time, it was hard to find something. So put in my offer, and it was the bid that was accepted, and all of a sudden it all transferred to me. And on top of that, all of the liability for the ex UK employees transferred to me as well. And in the UK, they have up to a year to come back on a company for something. So it was mildly terrifying and I learned a lot of UK law at the time, and yet, for whatever reason, in my heart of hearts, I felt like it was the right thing to do for the people that I had on the ground here and for the clients that we had in the U.S. and so I just kind of ran with it as best I could, both having a baby a couple days later.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Did the previous owners approach you and say, Juliana, you might want to consider doing this, or what was the spark for you, like I know you wanted to protect your people, but going from an employee to buying and owning a business is a pretty big jump, and so what, what was that spark for you?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

It's so funny. There are so many details here, and it's a lot of really just business-related things. So I became a Director in the UK business when I came to the U.S. and opened the office here. When you become a Director in a UK business, you become liable for any debt. There was debt to the HMRC that I learned about, which is their IRS. If you are knowledgeable about it as a Director and officer of a company in the UK, you are personally liable for it unless you do the right thing by the business and the HMRC and so we jointly made the decision to put it into bankruptcy, because there was, there was no way out at that point.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, and then you said, I'll buy-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Finding out so much more than most do.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

These topics-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

I thought, I'll give it a shot, right? Like I'll see. I'll put a bid in and see if it works, and if it doesn't, then I'll go do something else and if it does, then we're gonna take the deals that we have and the people that I had, and we're gonna run forward with it. And it worked out.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

It sounds like it was just so casual. Like, I'll just put a bit and see what happens. And then, like, surprise, you now own Oxygen. You're now founder, CEO.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a huge company. I didn't know that. I if I had any competition, you know what I mean? Like, it's a services-based business. And what do you really buy in a services-based business? I bought the right to the contracts basically, that we had in place, and the MSA agreements that we had in place with clients, and that was pretty much it. Everybody always teases me that the other best thing is the name that I got out of it, because it's, it's a memorable name, and then, you know, I transferred over lots and lots and lots of files, but a lot of it was work that I'd been doing, you know, for a couple years and so it was a huge learning curve. I got an MBA in a year, doing-

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

A useful one.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Speaking to all the lawyers in the UK and going through an administration and a bankruptcy and buying in the U.S. and all the paperwork that you have to put in place. And one point, I was asked if I had intentionally done this because I wanted to buy the company, because I was a Director, you know, it's just, it's kind of insane. And I told the UK lawyer that was asking me. I said, if you can see me right now, you would know that my intention is not to buy a company. I'm like, seven months pregnant. I've been flying back and forth between the U.S. and the UK and the last thing I you know, the thing I want to be right now is an employee, and I'd love to have a maternity leave and frankly, that's not going to happen.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, oh my gosh. How incredible. So, alright, so you bought the business in 2009.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Nine.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

It's yours. You have this baby. You have these contracts. I'm curious what I know you said that oxygen did things differently, that they made it more experiential. What has kind of the philosophy of learning, or how you do things in learning and development, changed or evolved or expanded, or has it changed at all?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

I think that some of the fundamental things have not changed, frankly. The technology has changed around it, right? Anybody that's been in this business since then knows that was the beginning of the online learning. It was so terrible back then, and unfortunately, sometimes we still use it in the same way. But the technology all around us has changed. The in-person nature of things has shifted, and yet we followed a methodology called accelerated learning that was researched for K through 12 and adults many years ago, in the 70s by a researcher, and I believe it was in Serbia. I always get that wrong. I can look him up. Anyhow, we use that philosophy and everything that we do. And it is about teaching somebody something, giving them the opportunity to play with it and be bad at it, frankly, and then giving them coaching and thoughts and advice on how to be better. And I think anybody that's in our industry and creating things for people to learn something, we all know that a learning doesn't happen overnight. You don't go from novice to amazing because you went through an online learning or you even went to an in-person course, it's just not how it goes. It's much more of this like spiral that you go through as a human, where you learn some things, you try some out you're not very good at it, you maybe stop trying for a little bit. You then- it bubbles back up in your world. You go through something else, you try it a little bit more, and the more experience you have with it, the better you get. And so that's really the philosophy that we use in everything that we create.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

I love it. Our philosophies are deeply aligned. That is pretty much exactly how we run things in IDOL Academy as well so I love hearing you share that. What are some of the use cases or the company-like issues that you solve? Do they bring you in for leadership training, or what is it that they come to Oxygen for?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, it's always interesting. And we've primarily gotten clients for many, many years that are like, we think it could be better, but we don't know how, right? And so we'll be brought in to typically work on something that's going to be very high profile, whether it's, you know, the creating of a brand new university, or it is some leadership work or training all of the salespeople. We've done loads of sales enablement over the years, and I've been pretty heavily involved in that. I find sellers fascinating because they have to learn not just how you sell at your company, but they have to learn so much about their clients as well, and try to marry these two things together. So I find these customer-facing roles fascinating. We have delved into the customer service world as well and been able to do a lot of work around measurement in that space and to see the return on learning things like empathy and communications and resilience and some of these skills that were soft for so long that are very necessary and hard to measure, frankly, and we've had some clients that have been able to actually put numbers around the customer satisfaction, or numbers the baseline, and then watch it go up as people go through these experiences and really learn and take that in. So, kind of all across the board.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And so what does your team look like? Is it trainers because you do a lot of in person, or you said that you know, you're also solving for challenges that these companies have, or like, maybe some ugly training, or bad training, whatever you want to call it. So what does some of the people on your team look like? Do you have instructional designers? Do you have trainers? What? Who's on your team?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, we do. We have a decent amount of what we call experienced designers, right? So instructional designers is what the industry calls it. I think more about creating experiences, and I want people to be in that mindset of, how do I create an experience with this thing, even if it's green belt training, right? Like, let's make it an experience for somebody. I think that experiences are our currency today. People want to go through experiences. We learn through experience. Instructional designer, I think of as being a little bit antiquated and so, you know, we bring people in that have some of these different backgrounds, and really an eye for, how do I take this material and bring it to life for somebody else, and then let them take it and start to run with it themselves. So, yeah, we do have a decent amount in that space,

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah. So then you have experienced designers, and what does the team look like? It's mostly your experienced designers that are going in the trenches. Do they have, like, some type of leadership above them or do you-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, we've got engagement leads and project managers, and we have a whole studio that I created a few years ago. I also think that from like, an online perspective, that people in our companies deserve just as high fidelity of a program as our customers do from a marketing perspective. So I'm really big on the writing that we use and making it sound human and approachable and interesting. I can't stand the like, hey, welcome to this class, you're going to learn these four things. You know, I immediately am like, I'm not going to learn those four things, because I'm that person. You tell me I'm going to do something and I'm going to try to do the opposite. So how do we make our online materials enjoyable to go through, so that people go, oh, this is actually interesting. It's kind of captivating my attention, and I want to go through it. And so I have an internal studio of creative designers, writers, video, people doing video, etc. So a whole group there as well.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

I bet a lot of people are probably thinking, Juliana, they're thinking, well, what are the things that you look for when you hire your experienced designers and those people in the that are, you know, participating in developing the learning.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

We look a lot for- this is hard. It's really hard, frankly. We are in an industry where ADDIE took over forever and very traditional ways in my mind of, telling versus teaching has been the norm. I think K through 12 teachers are amazing at it, frankly. People used to walk into our in-person experiences and go am I in my kids Montessori classroom, because there'd be like, stuff up on the walls, and no chair, no tables, just chairs, you know and it was like, no, but you are going to have to get up and you're going to have to do your own work, and we expect you to do that. You're not going to sit here and listen to somebody say a bunch of smart things and then leave, because nobody's going to learn through that. And so that's kind of the same thing, it's when we look for people, we look at, can they take something and create it with that end person in mind? How do we have deep empathy for the person sitting in front of the screen, sitting in the classroom, on a virtual screen, going through this where we actually let them self discover, versus us just give, give, give. So we look at a lot of work that people have done in the past. We talked to them at nauseam, probably about this, and frankly, it's really difficult, and we end up bringing people in and I think you know the word you used earlier was curiosity is a huge part of what I think is important about somebody that's teaching somebody something else. It's like asking a lot of questions, not assuming that something is, you know, the face value that you're given. Asking if you can do it differently, what if I tried this? What do you think about that? Being collaborative about it. Find that the best designs are not somebody going away for six weeks and building something and coming back, you know. We get in a lot of trouble I find because then we feel like we've created something amazing, and if you get feedback, then you're immediately like, oh, I did, I did it wrong, instead of the curiosity kicking in and going, ok, tell me more about that and why. So, we talk a lot about iterative approach in design, getting early and often feedback so that we can make adjustments. And it's really a group effort. It's not an individual effort to make the whole thing come to life.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Do you look at their portfolios?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yes.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yes.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Of course.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And that's probably some of the things that you're looking for in their portfolio. Did they create a course in here that is just like, another way to say is, like, were you pushing information instead of pulling or did they actually give practice opportunities or was there anything-

  

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Of course.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah and was there creative, creative thought that went into it? Was there something that's kind of surprising or delightful? I think it's really easy to get into the like, oh, this thing works, and now I'm going to repeat it over and over again. And I think the things that we look at creating don't have any repetition of activities or experiences throughout. Everything's like a little bit different. So it's like, we're going to go through an animation here, we're going to hear from a peer here. We're going to do different activities around these things. It's not going to be I get my information. I'm told some stuff, I'm asked some questions. I did a multiple-choice activity, and now I move on to the next thing. I get some information. You know, it's like we all go through that. I mean, we do too, because we have to go through mandatory state training for different things, and that's a lot of what you get.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

So you've seen a lot of projects, a lot of companies, a lot of challenges, a lot of bad training that you had to redo and I am curious about your insights, Juliana, like, what are some of the things that you see? Like, if you're the future scape, right? Like, what are some of those things that, or even just tell us what the pulse is now that you are seeing a lot of companies or organizations focusing on with these, like, enablement programs and these learning pro- experiences that you are creating, yeah, what are some of these themes and whatever you can share that basically, oh-

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot, right? We're all, like, living in this world that AI is going to do something. We're not quite certain exactly what, but it's probably the hottest thing on everybody's lips. I think, from an instructional designer perspective, if you're not learning how to use AI, you're not going to have a job. Like the entry level, mid-level instructional designers are going to be working with AI, a lot. I think it can incredibly help our writing. I think that one of the things that we don't talk a lot about is that instructional designers are expected to write a lot, and nobody ever asks if somebody is a good writer when they think about an instructional designer, they're like, do you know adult learning theory? It's all about the learning aspect. But the writing, in my mind is probably 75% of what we go through is important. And so I think there's a lot of tools out there in AI right now that can help with writing. So I think learning that and understanding it and seeing how it can help make your work that much better, that much quicker, is great. There's a huge amount, though, around security for the different companies in AI that is going to be that's incredibly important. We're walking through some of this with one of our clients, because it is a question for these big companies of, what do you put in the AI, because you believe that's the right information or the right thing, because just like anything else you know, garbage in, you get garbage out, right? And so when you think about leadership development or specific role development, what you want somebody be doing? You know, there's 600 negotiation courses out there. Like, which one do you think is good? Like, what are the foundational aspects? I think that has to be answered from the company perspective. But the learning people are going to be expected to use it very quickly thereafter. So I think we need to be prepared for that. So it's just- I see a lot of learning people that don't understand the business side, and yet they're creating.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yes.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

They're creating a lot of learning for people that are in the business, whether it's engineering or in the accounting department, financial literacy, or if it's in sales or marketing, and so I think one of the biggest things you can do as a learning individual is to really deep dive into the business and understand how it works and what the expectations are in the people that you're supporting. I think it grows your empathy for them. The thing I hate the most talking to learning people is that, you know the well, they should be doing this and they should be doing that, and it's like, who's they, and like, what, why are we, you know, why should we- why are we saying should all over the place, like we're supposed to be helping them do these things. So what's our role in the fact that maybe these managers aren't doing it? Man, frontline, frontline managers, bless them, they do an incredible amount of work. And you know, I've heard from leaders and many companies, they're not organized, they don't know how to organize their time, all these things. And then when you go out and sit with frontline managers, and you look at the amount of planning that goes into their days that gets blown up by escalations. It's insane. These people are not they're not struggling with time management. They're struggling with escalations taking up the majority of their time, ergo they cannot do any of the other things that they would love to be doing in their job.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, like all those, let me talk to your manager situations.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

That's exactly right. So it's, how do we get to know our audience and help? Sometimes it's not a learning problem. I don't know how many times have been like, it's not a time management problem. This is an escalation issue. So let's resolve the escalation so that they can do the job that you want them to do. And that's a very different conversation than let's create some learning to make these people better at this thing.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Is that kind of how it became a natural expansion of what Oxygen does? Right, where it isn’t just learning anymore. Now you have other services that you perform and do you think it kind of came out of seeing that there were other issues in the business that you could solve that didn't require training.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yes, I would say yes. And you know, I've got some amazing people on my team that have expansive experience. And so as you bring people on that are just rock stars in their own right, you know, I have a lady on my team who helped start the sales enablement practice at Forrester Research. You know, we just so much depth of knowledge and experience there and talking to hundreds of CEOs on a regular basis, you know, that kind of insight you don't get everywhere. I have another person on my team who's done huge restructuring projects, so massive PMO type of projects and organizational development type of projects. So we've gotten into doing a lot of that work because, a lot- you know, it is when you start asking those questions and you're curious about something, because I believe that learning should always be measured. So when you're having a conversation and you know, your business stakeholders, like, I need you to create, need some negotiations training, you're like, don't just go, great, got it, I'm on it, you know, you go, why? What are you fixing? What's wrong? There's a pain somewhere there that they're trying to fix. And often, after you ask at least three or more questions about it, you're in a totally different zip code that has nothing to do with negotiations training anymore. It's like we're stuck at this point in our sales process, or we're trying to get these contracts over the line, and it's not working out, but it's something else, typically, that's actually the problem, and it's not their negotiation skills. You know? So when you start doing those conversations, you start getting into the organizational view and so we've done some work between like, M and A's happening and groups coming together, and also restructuring of enablement groups and learning groups based on just changes in the business.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

What are some of the, I mean, besides going- I want to go back to the part we talked about how learning people struggle to understand the business, and what are some of the things that you're thinking of. I know you gave an example, but I'm thinking, I'm thinking they want to know like, it's like, should I learn about business in general? Not. I know you mentioned empathy for the people, but I think it's even, I think to your point, I think it's even more broad than just not having empathy for people, I think, like they don't- some of them fail to understand just how business works in general, how talent is a huge driver for performance in a company, and just how important it is to solve performance gaps, and how it is about revenue and sales and margins and whatever. So, what would you say are some of the things that learning professionals could start to understand about business that would make them better at their jobs?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, I think, I think you kind of nailed that it's has nothing to do necessarily with people, even though our businesses have everything to do with people. But it's what are we driving as a business like? What are the leaders focused on for the business, because you in almost every company, it's so funny, like, I always say, the structure is pretty much the same. The culture is very wildly, right? So understand the culture you're in, understand what your CEO is trying to do, and figure out what your piece of that is. And I think exactly to your point as well, like, go and learn how a business runs. It's not beautiful, it's a lot of data and looking across, you know, your products and your pipelines and how many people you- I mean, there's so many different factors that go into it. It's looking at what you pay for health insurance, and that's all the outgoing things and all the incoming and where are we at and what are we trying to do and if we're publicly traded company, man, we're held to a standard every quarter, and we're just going to be driving that thing like nobody's business. And that is what that business is going to do. It's going to be on a quarterly basis, it's all about earnings. And if it doesn't help from an earnings perspective, then it's not even on your CEO's radar.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Right. So it's just, you know, knowing those things and how it actually operates. Because you hear a lot of like, well, they don't care about X or they don't care about Y, and it's we haven't done a very good job of explaining how X and Y ties into the thing that they're trying to achieve? Yeah, so if we could be better at tying in what it is we've been asked to do to the outcomes that the business is trying to drive my guess is that you get the budget and the head count and the things that you need to be able to do it in a proper way.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

That's correct.

  

Juliana Stancampiano 

It's hard.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

So you wrote a book. I mean, you talk your book is about building teams, right? So tell us a little bit about your book and kind of what contributed to what you wrote.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

It's about building teams and driving for business outcomes and making sure that everything that you do is aligned to those two things. I, as I kind of said earlier, I don't really believe in the lone hero. More than likely, we love to see a lone hero. You know, we're like, driven by it. We're like, oh, that person was so amazing, and they did all these things all by themselves. But typically, when somebody does something amazing, there are a bunch of people that were there with them. They're the main person out front sure, but rarely do we go it alone and do some really amazing feat. So I'm all about building teams that can collaborate together and work together, so that we can do things quickly and better than what we thought they could be, and then tying those things back to something that can be measured. I think all learning can be measured. We just- our structures currently are not set up to do that, and we need to start fixing that while we're flying the plane.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, so I want to take us to our final question, Juliana, and that is, what is your best and final advice for those who are entering our field and our industry today, and they want to be learning designers, experienced designers, instructional designers. What would you tell them?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Oh, man, it's such an- it's actually such a big question. But I would say, find somebody in the business that started on the same day you did, and be their buddy. We all have that on that first day and hear about the business from their perspective while you're doing the thing from your perspective because that's going to just help you understand what people need and have a different point of view than all the ones that you're surrounded by. Because I think we can get into some very much group think, like patting each other on the back, yes, you're right, versus going, yeah, but you know what? So and so who I started with on the first day, they were just explaining to me how their boss just came in and gave a mandate for X, Y and Z, and there's no way that they can take two days to go do this learning thing. And this is what they really need. You know and so you just bringing those different perspectives, I think will elevate you very quickly in your work and what you're capable of doing.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

I think that's great advice. Juliana, if people want to find you or connect with you, where should they go?

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, J Stancampiano, as well as X now, and those are the two main platforms, and then Oxygen Exp is on both those platforms as well.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Thank you so much for coming and sharing your story and your business and inspiring us all with just like your journey. So thank you again for coming on the Become an IDOL Podcast.

 

Juliana Stancampiano 

Thank you so much for having me, Robin.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes for this episode at idolcourses.com. If you like this podcast and you want to become an instructional designer and online learning developer, join me in the IDOL courses Academy, where you'll learn to build all the assets you need to land your first instructional design job, early access to this podcast, tutorials for how to use the e-learning authoring tools, templates for everything course building and paid instructional design experience opportunities go to idolcourses.com/academy and enroll or get on the wait list. Now, get out there and build transcendent courses.

 

---

If you are a new listener to Become an IDOL, we would love to hear from you.  Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today!

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. I'll be publishing a new episode every two weeks and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

Want more tips on how to become an IDOL? Get my free guide here

Join the Conversation!

We have a wonderful and friendly community of expert and novice IDOLs in the Become an IDOL Facebook Group. We would love to have you join us in the group or chat with IDOL courses on of our social media channels.