Leaving the Classroom: A Transitioning Teacher Podcast

Leaving the Classroom 43: Matt Gjertsen-ID Hiring Manager 

In this episode, Matt Gjertsen, former Air Force pilot and owner of Better Every Day Studios, shares advice for transitioning teachers looking to become instructional designers.  

Tune in to hear: 

• Advice for interviewing successfully and highlighting one's skills in a resume 
• Tips for standing out in a competitive job market and creating an effective portfolio 
• How to ask the right questions in an interview to determine career growth opportunities 

 Listen to the episode here:

Connect with Kristi on LinkedIn

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn

This podcast is sponsored by IDOL Courses and is the only authorized vocational school and implementation program of its kind that not only shows you exactly how to create your job application assets and build a portfolio from scratch, but also includes credentials, mentorship, expert coaching, and paid experience opportunities in corporate instructional design and online learning for life! Learn more about the program here.

 

Enjoy the podcast transcription:

Kristi Oliva 

Welcome to Leaving the Classroom. This is a podcast for teachers who are ready to transition out of the classroom and into a new career. Each week, I'll share stories about what I've learned moving from education to the corporate world. I'll answer the most common questions and share my best tips to help you get started. If you are considering leaving the classroom, this show is for you.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Leaving the Classroom. I'm Kristi Oliva. I'm so glad you're here. Today I'm talking to Matt Gjertsen, former Air Force pilot and owner of Better Every Day Studios. Welcome, Matt.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Hey, Kristi, how's it going today?

 

Kristi Oliva 

Pretty good. You know, it's been a busy week, and I'm just excited to talk to you. You're my first hiring manager I've had on the show and so I'm so excited to give some clarity to my audience on what hiring managers are looking for. What are they even thinking? That's what you're here for.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, and it's exciting. I'm excited too, because even though, you know, like you said, I'm a former pilot, so I'm not quite a teacher, but I was an instructor pilot. And so my... you know, so I did do a lot of formal education, even though it was flying education. My lessons learned, my transition, was probably very similar in the sense that I came from this formal education environment into the corporate L&D space. And so yeah, hopefully, that'll help lead to some some good nuggets for your listeners.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Yeah, I think so. I want to start off, though, with just a question I have is, how similar do you think like military education and training is to public education? Like, are those comparable?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

It depends. I mean, I definitely went to plenty of schools in the military that were very much like a formal education, and public education, where you're spending a good amount of time in classroom and doing classroom activities and then you have some other stuff that you go for. It's much more akin to, yeah, going to a university or something like that. The exact stuff that I did was much more specific, because everything's hands on, right? You know. So... because we're teaching people how to fly planes. There was still a classroom component, and, you know, a computer based training component and then lots of coaching and stuff happening in the airplane. So there were definitely similarities but I think the biggest... the most similar thing that I would imagine is happening for teachers, whether, you know, teachers coming from public education, and from the background that I had, moving into the corporate environment is that in these other educational environments, you as the teacher, are the one that has the knowledge. And it's primarily your job to take your knowledge and transfer it to your students, which in most cases, is very, very different than what you see in corporate learning and development, where very often the skill is not the knowledge that you have on the subject. The skill is your ability to take knowledge from somebody else or just from the world and distill it down into something that people can consume and learn from.

 

Kristi Oliva 

That's so true and I wonder if that... I'm thinking back to my experience. I wonder if that causes some of the hesitation for transitioning teachers of like, well, I don't know anything about that stuff. I do remember thinking that, like, oh, I don't have to learn everything there is to know about this subject, and then make the course. No, I have somebody who's going to be my point of contact there and I can keep referring to them as my source. I think that's really important to bring up, for sure. Because teachers are... they are their own such subject matter expert, their own POC, their own everything.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Exactly. It's a whole new skill set that I don't think we talk enough about that you have to develop is, one of the most important skill sets as a learning development practitioner in companies is your ability to build connections and manage stakeholders. That's the name of the game, because what you're creating can only be as good as the information that you get and if you don't have good relationships with those people, then it's just not going to be as good. I think it's a mistake that I made, that lots of people make early on, is you just default back to what you did before and kind of tried to make yourself the expert so that you can do it all yourself. Though that can lead to some short term successes, in some cases long term, it's just not a strategy that will work.

 

Kristi Oliva 

So true. Alright, let's transition into that hiring manager stuff that I really want to get into but let's just start with like the climate right now of the instructional design industry. I really want to get your take on that. I'm not sure how it's affecting your business in general but I know there's a lot of people trying to get jobs, there's been a ton of layoffs. I'd just love to get your read on that.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, there's a lot... Yeah, there's a lot of churn going on. I think my read of the big picture economy as a business owner is that there's just lots of uncertainty in people's minds. People are trying to do stuff but just their time horizons are very short. I see very few people operate on like six or 12 month timelines, you know? It's all quarterly timelines. Everything's short term projects, things they want to do right now. Especially for learning initiatives which... especially internal learning initiatives, are often very long term things, you know? This year we're trying to achieve this thing. That's definitely having some effects. Yeah, like you. I know a lot of people who are like really experienced with really impressive backgrounds who have not only been laid off, but are struggling to find work. So there is no doubt that it is a challenging space but I also know people were finding jobs, you know? So, it is a tricky environment. The way I'm seeing it as... I think we are in a place where there is lots of opportunity but it takes hustle to find it, you know? You just always got to be looking and searching and open to interesting opportunities. So, it's an interesting time.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Yeah. So let's just give you a scenario here. Let's pretend you're hiring and I think a lot of these questions are going to apply too. Let's just pretend you're hiring a new instructional designer, getting a massive amount of applicants. So, what stands out to you? How can somebody stand out? What are the base qualities you're looking for? What are the ones that are like, wow, I really need that on my team, in that sea of pretty well qualified candidates that come in?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah. Yeah and it's funny, so two years ago... Yeah, about two years ago, when I hired my first Instructional Designer for Better Every Day Studios. I'd done a bunch of hiring when I was at SpaceX and other companies but when I was hiring my first designer here, I had Heidi Kirby, on LinkedIn, do kind of a shout out for me of like, hey, looking for a job? I think I had 84 applications within about 48 hours. It was a lot. It was a lot. And so I remember, you know, going through them all. Things I think are different. So, one thing to set the stage for a lot of people that I know gets... you know, I think Tim Slate brings this up a lot is... very, very likely the person who is hiring you, the person that's interviewing you, certainly the person looking at your early resume is not an instructional designer. They might not even be in L&D, right? You're getting.. the recruiter is doing the review and L&D teams are so small that they're not used to handling L&D people. So, they don't really know what to look for. So, that's one frame to keep in mind. And then I think the other important frame that I would say to everybody looking for a job, this applies to whatever job you're searching for, as a hiring manager, I can tell you, hiring managers don't want to hire. Like they don't want to do the process, is what I mean. Like the process... like they have a job of doing stuff and hiring people is taking them away from that. And so they desperately want to say yes to you. They want someone to come in, and just not give them a reason to say no. Right? Just like they just...

 

Kristi Oliva 

They just want to be done.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

They want to be done. If you can give them the easy solution and it's not necessarily easy to find that, but if you can just give them the easy way to say yes to you, they desperately want to do that, because they want to be done with the hiring and interviewing process. It takes a long time. So I always like to point that out. Of all the hiring managers I've talked to, almost all of them are just like, man, I just wish I could stop doing all these interviews. Or man, I have more phone screens, oh my gosh. Don't get me wrong. They're really excited to bring people on their team but just remember, like, you have that bit of leverage, right? Like because it's just something to keep in the back of your mind that they want to say yes to you, they want to be done with this. So those are a few things that I would lay out there. So getting into specifically, back when you know, when I was doing this recruiting, a few things stood out to me. Was if somebody didn't have something for me to look at easily, you know, a website, some things that they've done before. Again, like 84 submissions, I'm just not going to dig deeper if a third of them have just like a one click Oh, I can go see some content that you've made and two thirds don't. Well, although I still have you know, 30 people there for me to go look at. That's a lot of stuff. And so, that's one of those, quote unquote easy things I would say. I know it's not easy, because it takes time to build some kind of portfolio but try to do it in the easiest way possible. And it doesn't need to be... And the website example, even though I said website, do not feel like you need to build a website, right? All I want to do is have a thing that I can click that will show me something that you did. It does not need to be a website.

 

Kristi Oliva 

It could be a Google Drive, or...

 

Matt Gjertsen 

It could be a Google Drive. It could be... if you want to get really fancy, then watch a couple YouTubes on how to use AWS S3. It's free for a year and then even after that, I think I pay like a penny a month, or something. And you can just drop SCORM files into an S3 bucket and have your full SCORM packages just that people can play with and are completely open and accessible.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Well you're leaving out an important thing of you're not showing that you can simplify a really difficult concept. And that's what instructional designers do not taking something we already know how to do every day and turning it into a course. That's a good point.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Oh, wow.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

So you didn't build a whole website. You didn't create your own LMS or anything, it's just sitting there. And now you take that link, and you put it in your resume and on the PDF and it makes it really easy for people to go see stuff. So having something for people to go look at is really, really important. And what that thing is, I will say something that stood out to me is thinking about the companies or industry that you're going into, and I would highly recommend making example content that you imagine would be helpful for them. Because what I think we often do, and I again, I know why this is happening, I know because it's, you got to start somewhere, but having a course on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or you know, like things like that, that are just like in your day to day life. It's a great place to start but for me as a hiring manager, it's an immediate signal kind of, of this is like your first round doing this thing, right? And maybe...

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Exactly, exactly. And so examples of this are, you know, if you're looking at, you know, any kind of construction or manufacturing industry, there's a million awful OSHA videos online, that you could go watch, and make a way better version of, right? Like, a million times better. So think about what they're going to be interested in and making something like that. Or doing a, you know, I would never recommend this to use as an official course because it's you know, but you know, you could... if you're doing something that's more HR related or soft skills related, take your favorite Brene Brown book or something like that, and come up with a five minute micro lesson about something like that.

 

Kristi Oliva 

I did that actually, in my portfolio for a Patrick Lencioni concept.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Exactly, exactly. There you go. So something that's going to resonate with people. So I think that's kind of the first pass, I would say, of, you know, having something that I can just go look at really quickly.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Can I stop you right there. So, you mentioned, like, if a third had the link and two thirds didn't, did that number just come into your head? Or is that reality? Do you think that if you included something to look at that it does immediately make you rise to 1/3, the top one half.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

It was at least the top half, I would say.

 

Kristi Oliva 

I mean that's something.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

It's at least the top half. Now again, because given the way that the shout out that I got, that might have been skewed, right? I wasn't a company, like a big company looking for stuff and having you know, resumes submitted I was... I had gotten a shout out to an audience that was a lot of newly transitioning people. So, that might be an artificial number but certainly in my case that was true. Other things, so having the content, having the content be relevant to the audience that you're speaking to. And then there's a lot of small things that you can do in the content to make it standout as well. The moment someone did voiceover for their content, immediately shoots them to like the top 25, top 10% maybe. Because it's a lot... and I get it, there's that fear, there's that hesitation. But really all of these things are is like the more points of friction that you are willing to go through, the higher up you're gonna go. And so by doing a voiceover that you then you know, maybe you have an animation or even if it's just slides that you're clicking through with a couple things coming in and there's voiceover to it. It just tells me lots of... Oh, I can now see that you have experience with audio editing. You feel comfortable sitting down in front of a microphone because a lot of teams out there that are doing... you know we're doing all our own voiceover work. I, you know, that's where a lot of companies are and so it shows me a lot of that.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Okay, so somebody gets in the role, then. Let's talk about that structure that I know we mentioned we wanted to talk about of like, what are the different types of companies and teams that an instructional designer can expect to come into, because I know it can range from, your their very first instructional designer, and you're just given all of these PowerPoints and, and work doc folders, just full of a ton of stuff, all the way to your their 500th hire, and they've got an entire team, like give us that range. Like why does that happen? And what can people expect?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways that teams are... that learning is set up inside organizations. I think the most basic way to look at it is centralized or decentralized. And then, is that intentional or unintentional? Because I think both centralized and decentralized can work as long as it's intentional, but I think a lot of organizations are decentralized, unintentionally. And so some implications of that, and what it means for you, if it's decentralized, then what I mean by that is, you're on a training team that's out in the production department. You know, it's like HR has some folks that handle leadership training, production handles production training, the sales team has a sales enablement team, right? Like, that's decentralized. It can be amazing because it can really bring you very close to the business. It means you're going to be working very closely with stakeholders. So that's really good. The negative that it can have is that there can then be friction between those teams. Because you know, maybe the HR team isn't getting the same support as the production team. The production team wants leadership training, and the HR team isn't providing it because they don't have the... they're not getting any funding. So then the production team is like, Oh, well, we'll just handle it ourselves. Right?

 

Kristi Oliva 

HR is mad, because it's like, wait, but we own that.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Exactly.

 

Kristi Oliva 

I fee like I've been there before.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Right? That never happens. Then you have two different leadership camps that are going on simultaneously. No, never happens. So I think the things to ask are, you know, where is this team located inside the company? That might already be understandable, just from kind of the job rec. And then I think, if you are... so, if you're looking at a centralized situation, where everybody's kind of on one team together, I think the questions to ask are, how does this team work with the business? How do you find stakeholders? How do you manage priorities? That kind of thing, to get a sense of just how things work. If you're decentralized, I would recommend asking questions about like, how do the different teams work together? What's the relationship like? How do we make sure we're not stepping on each other's toes? Right?

 

Kristi Oliva 

So you're suggesting they ask that an interview process? Correct?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Potentially, yeah. I think it would be really good because I mean... I'll be honest with you, like I was hired into a role where I was... I swear to you, when I was hired, I'm pretty sure at least three different people in three different departments were hired for the same role. We all with the same pitch of like, nobody at this company has done it before, you're going to be the first one you're getting hired here but you can go to grow the role, like do this for the whole company. There were three people at the same exact time that were hired with that kind of like pitch. And so of course, you get in there, and it's like this, it's just, we're all competing, and yeah and mad at one another, and it's just, there's all this conflict, it's just a bad situation to be in. So try to make sure you don't land in one of those situations is always good.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Yeah, I like that. So is there a certain... I mean, do you have a preference? I know that I have experienced... I've only experienced where they have a pretty large team. So I've never experienced myself being like the only one. But sometimes I encourage my teacher mentees to go for that role, because you really get to make it your own. At least that's my perception. I've never been in that. Like I said, but I don't know. I'd love your opinion on that.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, I've been in kind of the opposite setting where almost always I've been in relatively small teams or it started as a small team, and then I got to build it. I think one thing to realize is that if you are in a team of less than five, you are going to be doing a little bit of everything, right? I was just talking to somebody yesterday, Jennifer Sutherland, she was talking about the four different basic kind of roles on an L&D team. You have instructional designer meant in the broadest sense possible, like just like the kind of people who make courses. Facilitators, the support people, LMS admins, you know, training coordinators, all that kind of stuff and then kind of the leadership strategy role. Those are like kind of the four main roles. If you're on a team of less than five, you're going to be doing at least two probably three of those almost all the time.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Sometimes in the larger teams too, though I gotta be honest. I usually was in charge of LMS work and I know a lot of instructional designers that are hired on and they are in charge of facilitation as well. You're right.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, and I think... I would say facilitation is probably... I would assume that's less, but yeah, definitely, if you are going to be an instructional designer, you need to be comfortable with Excel. Like, just expect you're going to be doing a lot of Excel work, because if you're in charge of the LMS, you're doing a lot of report extracts and all kinds of stuff. So it's just par for the course. I do think I agree with you. I loved the fact that I started on a team of three, and had to do absolutely everything. So I got to know all the different parts of the business that it was really, really cool. I would caution people to be the first... because and this is just speaking from experience... and maybe this is a good thing. I mean, it made me who I am. But I took over the training team at SpaceX with very little understanding of corporate L&D. You know, I was a contractor for a year doing corporate L&D at SpaceX and then became the manager of the team. And thinking back on it, oh, man, there are so many mistakes I made, so many things I would have done differently and that's always the case. But it wasn't until I went to my next role where I got to work under an extremely experienced L&D leader, that that really opened my mind of like, oh, this is a good way to do things. These are some best practices. Oh, my gosh, this is awesome. So if you get the opportunity to join a small team, that isn't just you, like where there is somebody else with some more experience, I think that's going to be the best of both worlds, because then you get to experiment but you don't only learn from your mistakes. You get to learn from their mistakes as well.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Yeah, definitely. What should somebody look for if they... so I've encountered this in my mentees where they want to know if there's growth opportunity, because teachers don't get growth opportunity. So that's really important to a lot of transitioning teachers is to know they can excel in the company and keep growing. And I've encountered both where an ID was basically told that's it for them. And somewhere, like the role I'm in where, you know, the sky's the limit at a big corporation. So what kinds of questions could somebody ask to kind of get that out and not make it sound like all they want to do is hop to the next level?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Totally. Yeah. And that is really important, because I do think, especially these days, managers are kind of keen on watching for that, or hiring managers are keen on watching for that, because there's just a trope of it's like, okay, somebody shows up, and three months later, it's like, hey, when's my next promotion? You know, it's like, hold on now. So I do think you want to be careful of that. But I mean, all the things that we've already talked about of like understanding the team size, the relationship with the business, that kind of stuff are all indicating factors, I would say, of what's going on. And then some things, you know, questions that I was very keen on, when I got picked up at a company that was growing is just kind of questions like, is there a long term plan for the team? You know, how much do you foresee the team growing? What kind of responsibilities do we have? That kind of stuff. I think the times where it's tough to grow, are on teams that are, I would say, the stereotypical L&D team. Where they're off, they're kind of siloed, they're not super connected to the business, they're not really respected for things. So then they're just over there. Nobody really pays them any mind. Whereas if you are able to show impact on the company, it's just natural that you're gonna get growth opportunities out of that. Obviously, smaller teams will have less opportunity. There's plenty of teams, I would say probably most small companies certainly don't have good like job bands or job levels or anything like that. So it can be tricky in smaller teams or newer teams to have internal growth opportunities, just because there's not a lot of other stuff. But that's where maybe it's, you know, you do some job hopping sometimes.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Yeah, definitely. Are there any things that you would tell transitioning teachers, but anybody interviewing for an ID role, like what are some things to just stay away from on your topics or common mistakes you've seen, just kind of like the taboo no nos.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

I think I have very few taboos. So, I think it's... so many of these things are kind of pretty specific to the role, you know? Obviously, the one... I will say one thing that especially when I was at SpaceX, that really stood out to me, is people who could clearly talk about the work that they did. That's probably the number one thing that you are trying to figure out as a hiring manager is of all these things on this resume and all the things you said you've done. What did you physically do as a part of this? And probably... this was true for me, this is true for a lot of people, I have trouble saying, I. I always say we. We did this, we made this course, we made this thing. And so if there is a taboo or a thing to stay away from, I would say, stay away from the word we, or at least have a really good answer to be at key moments. Explain your specific role because there are plenty of people who are.... you know, and this is where being a transitioning teacher could probably be a huge asset, is that I imagine most of you, it was you. Like whatever happened, it was you and your... you might be going up against a more experienced instructional designer who's coming from a company where they had a bigger budget. And the way they did things was the ID was almost more of a project manager, where they hired a voiceover person, and they hired a graphic artist. And they were just kind of like putting those things together. And especially on... this is probably true everywhere, but especially on smaller teams they want to know that you recorded and edited that audio, that you edited the video, that you did that animation. And so making sure you're highlighting the things that you did is really important.

 

Kristi Oliva 

That's a good point and I think I give people a lot of advice on making sure you're telling a story instead of speaking in the hypothetical. A lot of companies are getting better at asking behavioral interview questions, which forces you to tell a story, but I encourage everybody that even if they asked you a hypothetical question, tell the story anyway, because like you said, it's proving you already are in that setting and know how to handle it instead of... I mean, the way I tell it is, of course, you're gonna say that you did the best thing if it's a hypothetical. You came out smelling like roses. Of course, yes, I communicated with everybody, I completed it on time. I did the best. I did everything perfectly. But when you tell a story, you're not only telling, you know, all the things that you thought about when that project or whatever it was was going on. But you also get to tell about what you learned and how you're going to do an even better job next time. And you're painting a picture for them. Storytelling is so powerful, I think, as we all know, and if you don't know, it is so powerful, because it puts people in a different state in their brain, literally. And so, I think we need to use that definitely in our interviewing, but in your resume as well. You need to be telling a story.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think it's definitely really clear. And I guess there is one other... this is even before the interview, this is in the resume, one of the... I guess this was a taboo that I have because I kind of rejected somebody just because of this. Since we're in the design space, there can be a desire to get really creative. I remember very clearly getting a resume once. And I didn't even know what was going on looking at the resume, like I just wasn't sure where to look for anything.

 

Kristi Oliva 

I mean that shows that they're not a good instructional designer immediately, right? Because you're like...

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yes, yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there was no intuitiveness to this design at all. And like, I get that you're trying to stand out, but you're standing out in a bad way.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Oh no, that's true. I think people think because it's instructional design that they need to show that but I encourage people to stay away from that. Again, you don't know if they're gonna exactly like the choices you've made there. But I've seen the same thing when I was hiring for my team on my first job. And they... We would get these applications and I was like, Oh my gosh, like they're not even spelling things correctly. The formatting is not great. I'm like, I can't trust them to make a course when... so it's so important to look at those details. So that's a good call out. All right. Is there anything else you want to mention as a hiring manager for transitioning teachers specifically?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yeah, one final thing I will mention. I know this comes up. You just kind of mentioned this. Unless you are hiring a larger company where they're like hiring for an eLearning Developer. As much as I talked about, you need to have a portfolio to kind of like pass that first thing, Storyline, Captivate, whatever the design part of it, is probably going to be less than half of your job. And so making sure when you're telling those stories, when you're crafting a resume, that you're highlighting those other pieces as well because yay, you completed 55 different certification courses and have all of this amazing material of how you can make these amazing things but if you can't talk to stakeholders and can't manage projects, then you're not as useful to me, potentially.

 

Kristi Oliva 

I mean, would you agree that the A and the E of ADDIE are almost like, what you should be talking about the most? How you prepped and how you evaluated. The in between will work itself out if you do those two things correctly. If you don't do those two things, the middle is going to not look good. It's going to take too long. All those things. Yeah.

 

Kristi Oliva 

We can do a whole episode on that. I swear, and we should.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Again, yeah and to bring that point, like many things that really needs to be a circle. The A and E should basically be the same thing, right? Where you're figuring out all the things that you're going to evaluate in the analysis process. You can't analyze unless you figure out... and you know, that's the whole thing of how are we... probably the biggest thing in L&D right now is, how do we get closer to the business? How do we deliver for the business? How do we have business results? And so keeping that evaluation front of mind of what's the point of all of this, you know, using your analysis to figure out the point of it all, 100%. If you don't have those two things, the middle doesn't matter.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Absolutely.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Well, we are running out of time, but I am so thankful to have you here today, Matt. Thank you for joining us. I think this is gonna help a lot of the transitioning teachers, even if it's just to like, take that deep breath and be like, okay, now I at least have some moving steps to go forward. So thank you for that. I appreciate you being here.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Absolutely Kristi. I'm so happy to be here.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Is there a website where people can find you? Or how can people reach you if they're interested in Better Every Day or whatever?

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Please reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there. So make sure... so look me up and say hello, bettereverydaystudios.com.

 

Kristi Oliva 

And you have a podcast too.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Yep, we have a podcast called Making Better. So, I love to talk to folks. Making Better we talk about a lot of this kind of stuff of how to you know, level yourself up in terms of how to make other people better. Yeah. And when you do land that job, you get into a team and they're like, hey, we have all these giant projects. We don't have enough people. What are we going to do, then, hey, give give me a call because that's what we do at Every Day Studios.

 

Kristi Oliva 

I love that.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

We provide that augmentation for your team so you can get the things done that you want to get done.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it.

 

Matt Gjertsen 

Thanks, Kristi.

 

Kristi Oliva 

Do you want to leave the classroom but you're not sure where to start? Take the free leaving the classroom career quiz at idolcourses.com/leavingtheclassroom. It's time to take control and make the career change that will change your life. It changed mine. See you next time.

 

Kristi Oliva 

That's all for this episode, but you can find more at idolcourses.com or subscribe to the podcast. And if you are ready to leave the classroom, use my code classroom100 And get $100 off enrollment to IDOL courses Academy.

 

Send your stories or questions to [email protected] or share them with me on Instagram @leavingtheclassroom.