As many of you know who are clients or frequently visit my website, I have a rants and raves section where I do just that, I rant or rave about something that ignites my passion or fuels my flames. When I meet other business owners, I’m always interested in their story and what fuels them. A few years ago, I met Ron Slee and started to follow his education vision through Learning Without Scars and their development of curriculum-based education for business development.

A Little Bit of Background

I was in the business development consulting and training business for 25 years with my last company Jerkins Creative Consulting or JCC, as we called it. We provided a range of services for organizational development. Every year we helped hundreds of businesses with various financial, operations, and employee development opportunities and issues. I know first-hand what it takes to develop talented people.

Question: Why don’t OEMs and training companies offer a curriculum-based education model similar to what you find at a local college or university?

Answer: It is a major project to get started with costs and vision. Many also don’t have the depth of operational insights required to design and deliver this kind of training.

When we started to offer curriculum-based courses, some in our group thought I was crazy. What business owner would enroll an employee into a 2 or 3-year course with multiple classes each year? As I stated for years, innovate or die, so the journey began. The JCC Campus enrolled hundreds per year. It was organically growing enrollments and prestige in the market. The next few phases involved more online and video instruction. The vision and future plans were broad.

The Sale of JCC

After much consideration and strategic planning, I decided to sell the company and pursue another path in my life. The original JCC Campus has been plagiarized by some who cannot capture the vision, and others tried but never got it off the ground because it’s a massive undertaking of vision and resources. It certainly was a passion of mine for many years. I still get emails and calls from graduate students sharing their success stories. These mean more to me than any amount of money.

The educational model and use of tools known in the academic world that we utilized seem to be lost again in the market, until a couple of years ago, when I started talking to Ron Slee.

A Champions Spirit

You can’t take a class and become more effective if the teacher or the class material isn’t relevant. It takes real experience and a proven background of success to design and deliver training material. Ron Slee and Learning Without Scars has been successfully coaching and developing leaders and businesses for 50 years. His expertise and competencies are impressive. I am excited for anyone who gets involved because I think what he is offering is at the perfect time and place. I am eager to watch this grow and encourage you to give it a try.

Education Creates Predictability

When Ron and I started talking, our background similarities were amazing, but it was the passion to serve dealers and dealership personnel that got me excited.

Ron has developed a holistic curriculum pathway for dealership personnel that measures learning. It is all online and includes instructional videos, so it’s current and relevant. I don’t see this type of “behavioral education” anywhere in the industry.

Here are just a few benefits that Learning Without Scars offers:

• Online Learning: Classes like this that include video instruction is a win-win learning model. Students can access information 24/7-365, so anytime, anywhere they can learn when they are ready.
• Accreditation: Ron and his team are finalizing this process with the IACET. These courses will then qualify for “continuing education units” (CEU) with colleges and universities.
• Holistic Curriculum: The curriculum allows a dealership team to be taught the same methodology vs. sending your people to various classes that often require you to undo some of what’s taught to match your dealership.
• Proven Curriculum: It provides career pathing key roles in the dealership. The content contains concepts and applications that are verified; it isn’t guesswork. Ron is a well-known educator for years, and his passion is contagious.
• Pre & Post Testing to Validate Learning: Students are pre-tested before attending a class, so you know if they are in the right class and the proper instruction level. Then they are post-tested after a class, so you know that learning has taken place.
• Oversight and Feedback: A manager oversees their student’s personal development and knows the test scores to evaluate performance, so there isn’t any guesswork if the learner has learned something or not.
• Impressive ROI: It is very cost-effective to be involved, so the ROI is impressive.

It’s not about how much it costs to be involved; it’s more about how committed are you to developing your organization’s talent.