And so that, the iron yard was really successful for a couple of years grew and unfortunately did not make it beyond, you know, I think it was, they went, we’ve made it for like four years or something along those lines, but had a lot of success in the Durham area and this area, I think, because not only the Tech community, but also, you know, we’ve got a ecosystem of education in this area. People are used to saving money for education, going and seeking professional education.

And so there’s something about that combination here locally that really worked. So when the iron yard closed, I actually, I went and told many people in person who had hired from us and had supported us over the year. And Doug Kaufman, who was at the time CEO of Transloc, I went in his office and told him it was like, Hey, just so you know, you know, thank you for being a hiring partner, but this isn’t going to make it. And he looked at me and smiled and he was like, so what are you doing next? You know, like, I, I, in, in insinuated, you’ve got to carry on the torch.

And so he helped inspire us to move forward. And we pulled together a small team coming out of that experience. And that’s how Momentum was founded. And, and we saw the opportunity of what, well, we want to continue moving forward with this code education. We want to make sure that’s in our community, but in addition to that, we saw a lot of other opportunities in ways, like how are we going to make this work? And then in another iteration, when the business model here, you know, it didn’t make it.

Trevor: That’s what I was going to ask you, you know, was there concerns or, or how did you think about that when you just came out of a business that didn’t quite make it and kind of in the same space and now you’re jumping into the same, same pool for lack of a better word. How did you kind of address that and how did you overcome those, those concerns?

Jessica: Yeah. Well, I think first of all, we’re all optimistic, the folks that come into, came into this, and and we did see that we had a strong local ecosystem here, and we knew that if you broke down, you know, the economics of what was working, this was a great model.

This local ecosystem and supporting code education had had a good foundation to it. So we knew that we would start with a good foundation. We saw the opportunity to do more and more work with companies and organizations. I come from talent acquisition and from a people background early in my career, and I know what companies need to do to stay competitive and to make investments.

And I saw that growth opportunity here and well beyond. and so we, we kind of turned the lights off on one company and turn the lights on and kept the bread and butter of what was working, moving forward, it’s what we knew, and then have been seeking ways to get into different spaces, college partnerships we’ve gone into, and then also working more directly with companies and having companies fund the training.

Trevor: So it sounds like you have a diverse kind of range of students as, as who’s coming to Momentum. And it sounds like, you know, it really appealed to me when you talk about having a multi-generational classroom, cause you really don’t get that anywhere else. And it’s such an opportunity to, to kind of learn from your peers who are not necessarily your age peers. That’s why I think that’s fantastic.

But tell me a little bit about that. So imagine, you know, hypothetically, you’ve got an attorney who doesn’t want to practice law anymore and really wants to get into tech. How does momentum help them?

Jessica: Yeah, we’ve we worked with a lot of paralegals that make the transition actually. So our program, we have a four month intensive program that’s full-time, it’s the main course. We also offer a part-time course, but we’re in the process of getting a different collaboration going with the part-time format. So our core format, right is a four month program, and it’s full time. So it, unlike other forms of education, it models a professional workplace.

You’re with us nine to five, Monday through Friday, you’ve got deadlines and we are actually you’re you’re coding day one. And so it’s, it’s actually, it’s 640 hours of education. And a lot of folks compare, they’re like, well, Why would I do this when there’s a computer science degree that I could go seek at a four-year institution or, we commonly hear from hiring managers as well.

I like to hire comp sci majors, right? How are, how are your students going to have as much experience? I’m like, well, if you look at the, just the hours, they spend 640 hours is a lot more than you’re getting in one specific area within a four year degree. So it’s, it’s very, very focused and it’s broken into four phases of coursework, two phases that are your, your fundamentals, everything you need to know about full stack engineering, the third phase, you choose your own major.

Students choose their own track to focus on either advanced topics in backend engineering or advanced topics in front end. And then we have a four week final project and that’s kind of like a capstone, if you will, from a more traditional education. And that’s where they’re really, they’re building something real world on a team and that models the professional workplace.

Trevor: I was gonna say, so it sounds like they’ve got that opportunity not only to code for themselves, but like you said to code on a team, which is a whole different thing.

Jessica: Yeah. That’s, we really focus on all of those, you know, people we’ll call them soft skills, but making sure that people can work on a team, they understand agile development. They understand also how to like give feedback. So we, something that I took from my red hat days is as we sit down, we talk about like situation behavior impact models, like the SBI model of giving feedback and receiving feedback and going through that.

So we’re filling in a lot of gaps for folks to, from how to be a professional and how to be effective professional. And our students are coming out with a, just a lot to offer an employer.

Trevor: Now do your students have backgrounds in tech to begin with? Do you see people coming in and completely,

Jessica: Most of them are completely green. We get a lot of people that, so a little about 60% of our students have formal education, a bachelor’s degree. On top of that, I think we have, we’re about to release our annual outcomes report that has all this data. So some of it I can tease out, which is coming out in the next couple of weeks. But it’s like 15% have like higher education master’s degrees, PhDs, and when I’ve done code education in the past at a national scale, that’s unique to this region.

And then everybody else does not have they have non-traditional background. And so no most, most people are pretty green. And when it comes to tech on occasion, we’ll work with people. We see a lot of folks that were in like marketing or sales within a tech company that want to make the transition.

And they have some context there of the industry, but most people don’t even have the industry contexts are leaving from nursing or education or other fields.

Trevor: And do they find it daunting to get started? I mean, how do you overcome that kind of fear of this is something completely new?

Jessica: Absolutely. I think everybody finds it daunting. When we had our location down here at American Underground, we had a big quote on the wall it’s by Francis E Willard that reads the world is wide and I will not waste my life in friction when it can be turned into momentum, and to me, you know, when you were doing your intro and were talking about how your clients inspire you, to me, that’s what the, the ecosystem of startup founders have. And that’s also a trait that our students have.

They’re hitting some point they’re career changers. They have life experience. A lot of them have families that they have to take care of. They’re sitting there in a point of friction doing whatever it is they’re doing, and they just decided to turn that into momentum. And that actually that quote is one of the reasons we named the company. Yes. Yeah. Amy, who’s our director of engineering and instruction found that quote. And we just felt like it really embodied what folks do.

So yeah, it is absolutely daunting for people to take this leap of faith and to another career at whatever stage of life they are, and but how we support them as that is one, we have a lot of success stories. We like to connect our prospective students with people that have done this. And that’s a big help when you can see somebody similar to you that has the same background. You know, we actually, this past week, we have somebody coming with from a music background and we have a music teacher in our current class who’s doing apparently well and we connected them.

And so, we’re very big on your, your network is how you get work, sustain, work, and stay and, and, you know, grow a career. So we build those networks for our students early on and we make those connections. I think that helps, but yes, otherwise it’s, it’s a big leap of faith or folks have a lot of courage.

Trevor: Well, it’s amazing to, you know, to people want to do this and then to make that commitment, because like you said, it’s, it’s a lot that they’re going to commit themselves to doing, but yeah, it’s amazing that people are kind of taking that step. I wanted to ask you, you know, historically tech has not really been the poster child for diversity and inclusivity, and there’s really the stereotype of coding being a male dominated area. And I’m wondering, do you feel Momentum has a role in changing this or kind of helping to alleviate that?

Jessica: Absolutely. I think really too, for the moment that we’re in, you know, one of the reasons that it is such a male dominated field is if you look at the generation that’s working right now, they came out of a time where there was advertising and very direct targeting towards young men at the time to get into computers and computer science.

Whereas if you look, you know, predating that there are a lot of women in early computing stages, and, you know, as, as times change and cultures change, that changed. So where we are right now and in the time and space, the more men got into this field at an earlier age. And what momentum can do we provide, we work within the existing workforce.

We work with career changers. There is that pipeline problem to address with young folks. That’s not what we’re addressing, we’re addressing right now, what’s happening in the existing workforce. And so as a result actually all, all of our instructor team right now, all of our full-time instructors are women. We also, we work with awesome part-time instructors that not that teams a more diverse, but all of our full-time instructors and our instructor leadership is all women.

And I think that makes a big difference as far as. Having women be able to see themselves and say, oh, okay. I can come into this industry and, you know, have that entry way point that’s really welcome. So we definitely can have a big impact with organizations and, and we’re working with companies, companies are coming to us and saying, okay, instead of hiring onesy, twosy from Momentum, we have to be really strategic. You know, we have a hiring need where we’re going to need 20 new associate software engineers every quarter, or, you know, every part of, you know, part of the year.

And we say, okay, cool. So let’s sit and work with you. And what are your DEI goals specifically for your organization and how can we align your goals with what we can recruit for source for, and train for. And I think it’s really, it’s been really exciting, especially over the pandemic to see companies starting to be more strategic and companies in our area also realizing there’s a lot of pressure on talent right now in this area.

Yeah, the announcement of Google and apple kind of lit everybody up and said, okay, we’ve got to be really smart about how were gonna attract talent and then retain it. Right. One of our points to companies is, we know now 72% of momentum graduates stay with their organization for two more, two or more years.

So that is actually higher from a retention standpoint than a lot of folks in the industry in specifically in software engineering. So when you invest in somebody and you help them gain a skill, and then they come and join you and work for you, you’ve, you’ve got a loyal employee.

Trevor: So when you’re working with these hiring partners, are you first looking to kind of train up within that organization or are you, they tell you what they need and you go out into the community and try to find?

Jessica: A mix of both, and sometimes it’s both at the same time, right? Because companies want to retain folks on, on their existing team. You know, for example, we, we spoke with a major airline. Last year who said, Hey, we have a great diverse work force. They’re all in the airports, and when you get to our corporate office is when it doesn’t.

So we want to find opportunities for people to gain training. And so they’re looking internally, where can we find the talent? And then there’s some companies that are coming to us and saying, Hey, we’re on such a rapid growth trajectory. We need to bring talent and elsewhere. And in that case, we do work with partners and work with our own pipeline of interested people and source talent for them.

Trevor: So tell me a little bit about some of the early challenges for the company as you were first getting started, you know, what were some of the hiccups that you faced?

Jessica: I, our biggest challenge was making a shift from a business model that was already in existence here and under a different brand, and thinking that we could just kind of take that and move it forward.

And what I learned is brand has a big impact on consumer choice and it takes a while to establish a trusted brand. That was, you know, I thought just did by the people that were behind the brand, you know, folks would, would the name, you know, having a different name and a different brand and a different company wouldn’t really matter.

But it turns out, you know, if people are making a big choice and making a, you know, putting money into what we do. Having a reputation really mattered, so we had to build that we did couldn’t make a big, you know, switch, like we thought we could. So that was one challenge. And the other challenge is we have a lot of competition.

A friend of mine, I, you know, coming out of the talent acquisition space said, you know, the coding bootcamp, coding education space reminded her of the recruiting agency space and like the eighties and nineties, there’s just a lot of folks that can get into the model. There’s, you know, low barrier entry is it’s, it is a regulated industry, but not everybody goes to that path.

And so we, all of a sudden had a lot more competition and, and universities are starting to white label programs and get into the space too. And obviously they’ve got fantastic brands. We had to get really scrappy. And we, for our first couple of years put in a refund policy, whereas if we did not get you a job, we would refund your tuition.

So we did things like that to build trust knowing that we were a young brand and we needed to establish ourselves. And even though the people working on the company, really, we knew what we were doing. And we had, we had learned through failure and success. Right. We had to really establish that trust with the community.

Trevor: Yeah. It raises an interesting question too, because as I think about it, you know, I think it was Elon Musk who mentioned like, if anybody has an internet connection that can learn to do just about anything through YouTube or through the internet in general. And so there are all these coding resources that are out there, you know, free online courses.

How do you. I mean to me, it seems obvious, but how do you compete with the kind of just that general availability of information?

Jessica: So education is a personal choice and people have to choose something that’s going to work for them. Most Momentum students have started with an online resource that was low cost or free.

And we really encourage it. It’s a good pipeline to make sure that people are interested. We’d like to tell our applicants that if you’re interested in this, you’ll be good at it. If you’re not interested in this, don’t move forward, you’re going to be miserable. How do you find out interests? You tinker and you do a lot of online resources, but what we hear from people is I want some structure.

I want to, you know, life is busy, I’ve got kids, I’ve got all this going on. I want a structure in place. And I want that ability to learn from another human where I can have that dialogue and they want peer learning environments and they want something to reflect the job. Right.

And that’s the most important thing is you’re not going to be coding in isolation when you get into the field, you’ll be on a team with a company. And so we mirror that environment and we help give that focus and, and similar to anything. We also curate really well, what is good, and what’s not good. That’s out there on the internet for our students to have that kind of support or our learners to have that support.

So, yeah, I think it’s a personal choice. Our, our folks want a career. They want a new job. And so they’re buying into not only the education and getting the hard skill, but they’re also buying into the network and the support that we provide to get them that job. And that’s, you’re not going to find with online education.

Trevor: You touched on it, but I think that’s one thing that stood out to me as I was looking through your website is, you know, momentum really emphasizing this fact that this is really a stepping stone to a career and a job, and it focuses on placement.

And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that, about that emphasis and then kind of about the relationships that you have to build as a company then to have this pipeline for your graduates to be able to work?

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. We have two customers. We always have our learners, our students coming in the career changers and then the companies and, that we have to start with the companies because if we’re not training to what they need, then the learners have no reason to come seek us.

So we are very, very active. We’re constantly talking to hiring managers, making sure that we understand what’s going on with job postings. That job has shifted during the pandemic because now we are more nationally focused. Okay. Instead of just specific here with local relationships by product of, as soon as we went virtual, we have people signing up from all over the country and they want to stay usually in their area.

We also do get the people that are really eager to move to Raleigh-Durham and they just see it as like an up and coming city. And so that, that’s why they choose us. but yeah, we, we, we, it’s a daily practice for us to stay involved with the hiring community.

Trevor: So you did shift to kind of online learning during the pandemic. How was that kind of as a transition for you and the company?

Jessica: Well, it wasn’t a planned one, as you can imagine everybody went through this, I remember we had, we had a group of students going into final project. That week, which was like this week coming up on two years ago. And, I kind of had my head down and wasn’t really paying attention to the pandemic and my staff certainly was, and we had that notification of what we’re going to go on a two week lock down. So we did the whole clean out the fridge, so it doesn’t smell it when you get that. Amy, who’s had an instruction in engineering, looked at me and she was like, I don’t think we’re going to see each other for awhile.

And so overnight we, we made the change and we found a lot of benefits to it. Right. And a lot of assumptions that we had that we had feared going to virtual education, which we had certainly spoken about before turned out to really not be true. And I think part of it was folks were so resilient and they wanted to keep going.

But then we also learned that, okay, well, the industry is going to look like this for awhile, right? In fact, in our data that we are about to post our annual outcomes report, 80% of our graduates are working virtual and out of them over 50% are know that they’re going to stay in a virtual or hybrid hybrid environment.

So one of the reasons we were in American Underground before is we wanted people to have that experience of what is it like to be working in this industry and rubbing shoulders with people that are doing this. And now what the industry looks like is virtual, then working from home and zoom. So we’re going to keep the education to match what people are going to experience in the professional world.

Trevor: Say, and then I also think of, imagine as you have kind of a more national platform now that you can do virtual class. Yeah. Does it make it harder to have kind of those job opportunities then? Because if you have a coder in, I dunno, Seattle or in Maine, they may not have the necessarily the same channels to job opportunities that they would if they were here in the triangle.

Jessica: Yeah. Right now the whole industry is operating virtually and it was just kind of like, there’s no walls. And there’s just so much job opportunity that it really doesn’t matter where you are. We certainly have employers now that are coming, like I spoke with a west coast employer last week, really eager to have a team in Raleigh Durham and part of that is there’s an assumption that the cost of living is a little bit lower. That’s going to balance itself out. And we’re seeing salaries, you know, compete with New York and the west coast right now.

But we are seeing employers nationally also come to us because we have a strong hold in this region, but then we talked to them about our candidates and other places they’re like, oh, that’s fine because we’re virtual.

Trevor: Well, I mean, it kind of ties into it, what do you see as some of the challenges facing just the general tech ecosystem and specifically here in the triangle? Cause I mean, we talk to clients all the time. It’s just like we can’t hire coders. We don’t, we don’t have the people, we can do it.

Jessica: So yeah, scale. I mean, we’re going to have, and you know, momentum really, truly, we could be doing 10 times the amount that we’re doing and still have local local folks say we still need more people.

And so I spent a lot of time talking to senior leaders in engineering and senior leaders and HR. And right now the positions in HR, chief people, officer chief, head of talent aquisition, Are playing musical chairs. Everybody’s rotating. You know, our contact at one company is now at a different company and another different company.

And part of that is because there’s every organization is how do we think differently about talent, how we thought about it two years ago is not it’s out the door, right? We need a different strategy. We need fresh eyes and there’s a focus on how are we going to get the people to get our goals achieved. And so there’s a lot of like, I think, especially right now coming out of the pandemic, a lot of poaching action happening and you know, a lot of companies just kind of borrowing talent or stealing talent from other places, and those that the musical chairs is being played.

And so retention is a big issue for a senior leadership. And that’s where we’re kind of coming in and saying, Hey, Let’s think differently. Let’s get out of the talent war. That’s the, this is not working and think more long-term how are you going to build talent that’s going to stay with you for a long time. That’s also going to hit your, your DE&I goals, and how do you build the team that you want? And that’s going to be with you and be sticky, and you’ve got to think about investing in talent in different way, instead of just throwing recruiting resources at it and having them just play this game that everybody’s playing.

Yeah. And I think for our region, we need that and, and we’ve got a strong start. We’ve got a lot of edge. We’ve got a lot of great education providers. We’re working on a couple of local university collaborations. We can re looking forward to announcing this year. So I think if we come together as a region we can solve this problem. Right. But talent and scale, it’s going, gonna be, you know, and then housing and all the things that come with it. Lifestyle.

Trevor: The dominos just kind of trickle out from there. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, one of the things that you mentioned is the people aspect of this. And it seems like from looking at faculty your career, that’s been a big emphasis kind of at the different jobs that you’ve you’ve had.

And I guess as I was thinking about Momentum, I think of it as, as kind of a tech coding training space. But as I listen to you talk about it, there’s also, this is a huge HR aspect to it. So I’m wondering if you could just kind of talk about how your past experience has influenced what you’re doing and that allows you to speak into these companies a little bit differently than you would otherwise.

Jessica: Yeah, I, I’ve definitely always been on the people side of the industry and love, love people, love seeing, you know, those lights go off. And I tell people I want to work with people that have their lights on when they come to work and, and are really jazzed and ready to make a change and are ready to make, you know, take risks and believe in themselves, or find that belief in themselves over time.

So I’ve certainly, that’s been the thread of my career and I believe it also comes from my, my parents are executive coaches and they’ve run a business where they’ve done coaching leadership, you know, starting in the nineties when I was a kid. And and so I’ve always seen that side of the business and I majored in religious studies in college.

And, and so much of that was just a sincere interest in people and how the world goes around, goes around and cultures. I, that is kind of where I spend a lot of time thinking. And so I love the people side of the business and it can be challenging. You know, people, obviously it’s not as easy as pulling a widget and saying like, this is what the product does and it does these things and we can, it can print money overnight. I mean, people are not that. So it comes with its challenges for sure.

Trevor: But I’ll just say, cause I mean, I think in some respects it’s a service industry. And you know, as, as, as the legal field and there are certain challenges associated with that, that you don’t constantly have to meet that those people’s demands and kind of continue to meet them where they are, but also think about it for, for you.

You’ve got two aspects of the people’s side, cause you’re running a company and then you’ve got your, your students that are coming in and you got to manage kind of both of those. Are there, are they different challenges? Are they all related?

Jessica: They are certainly related. I mean, our, our team, because we focus on to your point, you know, there’s a lot of ways you can learn to code online. Why you choose us is because we’re gonna work with you and we’re going to have those one-on-one conversations and we’re going to encourage you. And we’re going to help figure out a way to make this work for each individual learner. So that takes a lot out of our instructors. Our instructors are software engineers for a reason.

Right, they pour their heart and soul into their job every day. And at the end of the day, they’re their guests, you know, they’re, they’re done. And so finding a way to get everything that we need to get done to continue to move the company forward, but also acknowledge that were all having face-to-face or zoom to zoom conversations and in pouring a lot into every person that comes through it, it takes a tremendous amount of energy and understanding and, so in, in some ways, you know, the team and the students are similar in that is we’re all just putting it, everything into it.

And we’re very much feel what the students are feeling, and we take that responsibility seriously. You know, we know that these people’s lives. Ever since we’ve gone virtually we know their cats, you know, their pets, you know, like everybody else, we, we see, you know, the life that they have behind them on that screen.

And we want to make sure that they have the same outcome as other folks. And we actually the report that we’re about to publish. I’m still teasing it out, but we have, we see a 41% increase in people’s salaries, pre momentum to post Momentum. So we know that this is life-changing and we really believe in it. And so part of our job is to be that cheerleader for our students. And as a result, we’ve gotta be, I’ve got to be a cheerleader for the team, like, you know, and make sure that we’re still going.

Trevor: Well, maybe you could share a, I wonder if, do you have any kind of examples or anecdotes that you think of, of success stories of some of your students that come through?

Jessica: So many. I will say, cause we, it is we’re coming off of women’s history month, but I know that we’re coming off of this is, we have so many women that make this career change that are kind of coming, transitioning from taking care of young ones to, I need to get back into the workforce, right.

And, or have gone through some sort of life experience. And one of the women that have came through recently, or actually she didn’t come through recently, but we talked to her recently, came through our program. Single mom had just gone through a separation, two kids young at the time. Was a preschool teacher before.

And just like, I’m not going to be able to sustain my family off of my income as a preschool teacher, nor does that give me any flexibility to take care of my own kids. Cause I’m taking care of other, other kids all day and she had a knack and an interest for tech and she had some support from the community to go through the program.

And during the pandemic she bought, she bought a house for her kids and called us and said, you know, I bought a house for my kids and she worked so hard. She is one of the only students we had that got from the CEO, a job offer on the spot coming out of her interview. And because she had to make it work.

That’s the, you know what I’m so impressed with, with the moms that come through our program specifically. They have to make this work. And so they’re so like, I mean, their eyes are popping out of their head they’re so dedicated. And she did a really great job presenting are getting ready for an interview.

I went and presented a product that she built in the code and the CEO of the company wrote a number on and slid it across the table. I’ve never seen that happen. I thought that only happened in movies. Yeah, I am really, and she got the job and she was with that company for over two years and then took another job with an organization that recruited her.

And she bought a house for her kids and her and, you know, and so that kind of transformation and that that’s one of, you know, hundreds of those stories we have.

Trevor: But I imagine that’s got to help with you talk, going back to the energizing the team and staying focused and like, Those types of stories and, you know, some, some jobs it’s tough to get up in the morning and say, why am I doing this? But it sounds like you’ve got a lot of, lot of that inspiration.

Jessica: Yeah. The report that we’re putting out has the salary ranges of our students that started with us in 2018 and they’re all over making over 90. And so we saw like, we know that they make a 40% increase in their salary before, and then after momentum, we’re seeing it’s, I think 35.8% increase that goes down from there. So it, I mean, it’s, it’s, life-changing for people and it’s it’s and it’s positively impacting the industry that we care and love about to.

Trevor: That’s great. Yeah. Just so, so good. And, and I wanted to go back to one of the things that you’re talking about, you’re talking about how you’re working with universities now.

And I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Cause you know, we have so many great universities in the area. And I was wondering, are you competitive with universities? Are you collaborative? How does that work out?

Jessica: Yeah, it’s a mix of both, for sure. We’re going to, we’re taking the approach of how can we collaborate. The challenge that universities have and the whole reason that the coding bootcamp space exists is universities are fantastic and they’ve been around for forever.

And, but part of their issue, like so many institutions that are getting challenged by the tech industry is that they’ve been around forever. And so they have a system in a way of doing, and to get a curriculum passed or changed in university, it takes, could take years, right? And the tech industry is moving way faster than that.

And so we have the advantage of being really nimble and we are certainly, we are regulated by the state. We are regulated under the community college board. So we do have some regulation, but it is nowhere near what a university has to go through and all the bureaucracy there to change and get a new class up and running, or, you know, get a curriculum change, hire a professor that probably is not working full-time in the industry, all of those things.

So what we’re seeing is universities have been approaching us and saying, Hey, we need this thing, that industry saying they need, can you bring it in? Can we plug it in either through a white labeled or a collaborative program. And so that’s what we’re, we’re getting ready to launch two partnerships this year that we’re really, really excited about. And so again, this is another tease, you know, not right, ready to go public with it quite yet, but hell helping universities fill that gap. And then also fill that gap for continued education.

Trevor: Okay. We get a lot of little, little tidbits here, exciting things to come from Momentum, but that leads into, so what do you see as some of the challenges that you face kind of in the next few years, as you continue to grow?

Jessica: We have been in this model, this business model, that’s more B to C focused, business to consumer focused, and we’re really going towards another direction where we want the income coming into the business, the revenue coming into the business to be more from industry. And we will still be providing those life-changing services to individuals, but that industry needs to be kind of footing the bill. And we’re seeing that the talent acquisition space right now is so competitive that it makes sense for industry to do that. And to not assume that people are gonna go out, pay for themselves to get qualifications, but instead work with their companies on getting those qualifications.

Trevor: like a MBA type process where,

Jessica: Yes, except even with an MBA, you know, the company’s paying,

Trevor: Yeah, companies pat to get people into these executive training programs.

Jessica: Yeah. And I think for any company that’s ever tried to make that transition from B2C to B2B, it’s a challenging one because we have you know, our existing product that’s running. Right. So I think, you know, that it’s gonna, it’s gonna be a big lift and we’re gonna be looking at who do we have on the team that’s going to be able to do work with companies and there’s a different level of expectation there. So that’s, that is our challenge that we’re facing moving forward.

Trevor: And do you see, like a Momentum Austin or a Momentum, some other places in the country, or like being based here in the Triangle. Do you have enough of a footprint that you can reach where you need to?

Jessica: Yeah, I actually think the, the pandemic had a lot of silver linings for the business and one of our instructors right now it just is not local and she lives out in St. Louis. And we will be able to hire and expand our reach as the clients or the customer needs, pretty easily. And because we were doing a lot of virtual training, it doesn’t really matter to the companies so much where, the talent sits. So we kind of gained more of a national strategy kind of overnight, like everybody.

Trevor: So when you found momentum, you said it was right here in the American Underground, right. Can you talk a little bit about that, your partnership with AU and that experience?

Jessica: Yeah. AU has been, you know, always it’s like coming home every time you come here, I think they’ve done such an excellent job pulling together a incredible amount of drive and entrepreneurship and resources for entrepreneurs. And so we, we were founded here in the basement of American tobacco actually, which is the original AU location, spent a lot of years in the basement, as did so many people, but I being able to walk up and down the hallways and run into people that were having similar experiences and trying to get a company off the ground. And people that have done it before, like Chris Hively and, Dave Neil and, and being around investors that work with a lot of different companies and all of that, it’s just the energy of this ecosystem, I think, is so critical.

And if you’re starting a company, I would highly recommend getting into one of these ecosystems. And I think American Underground has done it the best.

Trevor: Yeah, I think they’ve done a great job. And it’s an interesting question, cause you know, as we’ve talked about with COVID being remote and people moving kind of into that, I’m just in my basement and I’m just working here, you lose out on that rubbing shoulders opportunities. And I just wonder, I guess, as you see your students kind of preparing for their workplace and as you talk to recruiters, I guess, how do we replicate that? Or are we just going to bide our time until we can get back to in-person?

Jessica: Yeah, I think it’s really important to have this kind of space and, and one of what was really attractive when I left Red Hat to come into this type of ecosystem is when you leave a big company, you are leaving a lot of like the happy hours and the, you know, red hat always does this thing around Halloween, which you all probably have seen downtown, you know, where all the executives dress up and do it like, you know, skit and all that kind of cultural component of working at a company that brings people together, or, you know, the fitness challenges or the, you know, holiday parties.

So when you come back to a small company, you don’t lose that when you’re in a space like this. Yeah, they still do all those things and you get to then meet people across other organizations. And I think that collaboration is really key and, and fun, and it makes it a little bit easier to stomach going into it and starting a company.

Trevor: Yes, for sure. Well, so we are the founder shares podcasts. So I always like to ask all of our guests, you know, if there was one piece of advice that you wanted to share for somebody else who was thinking about starting a company what piece of advice would that be?

Jessica: For anybody, especially in this ecosystem, there’s so many people that are generous with their time and advice, and there’s so many people around you that have done it that want to help. And so my biggest advice would be start having conversations with people and then to like anything in life. Like you might never feel ready, but you’re going to learn so much by actually just going after it and making the full on commitment.

Trevor: Now, can you think back to your experiences, like people who have been there for the advice and like, how did you approach those people and kind of get that encouragement?

Jessica: Yeah. Oh, so much of it just happened through, again, like being in a space like this, where you’re having those daily conversations and water cooler conversations if you will. And telling people what you’re interested in, what you want to do. And then, you know, people are, I always try to be really generous to my time to other founders and entrepreneurs, because I had that experience where people, you know, everything, even from our, our recent investment to the, our initial investment to get the company off the ground.

All of that happened through connections and, and pretty much through the AAU network, saying oh, Hey, you need to meet this person. You need to meet this person, and that’s how it developed. And so, I think you just have to let people know what you’re thinking and what you want to do, and be willing to go to a lot of coffee meetings. And I think it happens organically and an ecosystem like ours, where people are generous with their time.

Trevor: It’s amazing to me, how, how true that is. Just letting people know what you’re doing, because I think a lot of people really are anxious to help anxious. You know, useful. And so they can’t do that if they don’t know what you’re doing or what you need or what you’re interested in. So it is having that opportunity to kind of just put that out there.

Jessica: Yeah. I think it’s a different, I’ve traveled the country for the last job. And I think that’s something really special about our ecosystem that I want to keep is you go other places and people are like, oh, well you signed a non-compete or like, I don’t want to tell you my idea.

And it’s like, your idea is still early stage. Like, you know, you have such a hill to climb, tell people what you’re doing.

Trevor Schmidt:That was Jessica Mitsch Homes, co-founder and CEO of Momentum, which you can find at MomentumLearn.com.  And if you want to see my interview with Jessica live and in-studio, you can find it on the Earfluence Youtube channel.