Creative Learning

Rob Goodman:

While many of us have been home during the pandemic, a lot of people have been making big leaps in their life and career. Now being here at Wix, we've seen an incredible number of people start new businesses online, and when people make transitions, they need help. So what we're seeing is that the opportunity to learn online is huge.

Rob Goodman:

Hi everyone, and welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from Wix all about hypergrowth. I'm your host, Rob Goodman, Executive Producer for Content at Wix. In each episode, we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built Wix, as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization.

Rob Goodman:

Today on the podcast, we have Yossi Hayut, the Head of Wix Learn. Yossi and his team recently launched our online learning platform to make it possible for anyone, anywhere, to develop digital skills, all for free. I started out by asking Yossi about why we started a learning program at Wix and whether other high-growth companies should consider starting their own education programs. Here's Yossi.

Yossi Hayut:

I think the idea and the strategy behind the idea of Wix is it's not just a website builder anymore. It's such a robust solution and it has so much into it. We want to offer the users a way to discover what they can do with this, with Wix, and accompany them while they do it. And there is no better way to do it than learning.

Yossi Hayut:

So this is the strategy behind that. A user can start at one point and finish in another and we can offer them a full blown solution and we can offer them a full course that teaches them not just how to use our products, but also, what Wix says all the time, how to be successful online. Meaning that it's not just about using the product itself, but attaching to it the best practices and all the know-how that we have within Wix. For example, it's not enough to teach you about email marketing. It'd also be great to teach you about all the know-how that we have about email marketing, from our users, from the email marketing that we share and send ourselves, about how to draft the headline, how to design it and so on.

Rob Goodman:

So for businesses out there listening and thinking about building product adoption through education and empowering users to be more successful through learning, what advice do you have for startups and for even larger businesses that are starting to take the first steps in this direction?

Yossi Hayut:

So, first of all, I think that learning needs to be authentic. In the end you want to learn from a person that knows what they're talking about. If you'll explore a lot of the online learning platforms, you'll see that people want to learn from other people, and they want to learn from their knowledge, from their experience. And I think first of all, you need to get people that can be great instructors. And you need to have a team of pros. People need pros, and pros, they're the voice of your product. You need to have very, very good content in place and people that respect the other people, like I think that the content that we are doing now, it's first of all, it's entertaining. I think this is something that you're consuming, and you say, "Hey, this is great content."

Yossi Hayut:

But I think it's also great content, not just that it's entertaining, we respect our users. We treat you as a pro. I'm again talking about user education, because then when you say educated, it kind of feels like you are looking from above and learning. It's like more eye-to-eye level. We need to speak about learning and we need to give them learning opportunities. They will take it. You need to talk to people like a pro to a pro. This is something that is truly important to us within Wix and we kind of get it in the learning.

Yossi Hayut:

And the second I think is to have a great team of people. I think that I choose the people around me in my team in a way that I saw the stuff that they're doing. I had a content writer and the designer and all the other people within the team. I saw the stuff that they did and said, "Hey, I would love to learn from you how you did it. And based on that, I want you to train others how to do it as well." And having their tone of voice inside the platform, I think this is the great message we did.

Yossi Hayut:

And also the most important thing is if you are about to build something that will teach people, they need to have a learning state of mind. And I think that once we build it, we also need to have a learning state of mind, meaning that we don't know everything from the beginning. We need to explore, we need to be playful with it. We need to work at it. Like the courses that we did about a few months ago, it's getting better and better because we are learning all the time and getting better and evaluating what we're doing. And we need to be in this state of mind of continuous learning while doing stuff.

Yossi Hayut:

And I think this is something that our team is doing constantly. Wix used to work differently on creating learning materials. And we kind of said, "You know what? Maybe let's try and do it a little bit differently in order to retain velocity, in order to get more coverage of the product and so on." And we tried it, and see what works. Say, "Okay, you know what? This is worth it, let's keep it. This is not working, let's change it and make it better." And I think that now we're in the place where we're having good processes happening. And I think that we kind of did a lot of stuff and then we sat down and said, "Okay, that worked, that didn't." Gave feedback to each other and then created the process out of it.

Yossi Hayut:

So I think this is the best advice that I can give, first of all. Just keep the startup state of mind, just do things and then learn from it. And you don't know everything. Bring people in. For example, in the beginning we brought a person from Netflix because I really love explainers. And I thought that we need to take some of this tone of voice in the way that they do it and find the ways to use them in our learning materials. So we brought a person from it and he did a workshop for us. So it was also an opportunity for us to learn, not just to teach others. In order to teach others, you need to be willing to learn yourselves. I think this is the best advice.

Rob Goodman:

Hey everyone, this is Rob jumping in on our episode with a super quick message. If you've been enjoying Ready for Takeoff, it would mean so much to us if you could show your support by doing these three super fast things to show your love. First, leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Second, share the show with a friend or colleague you think would dig it. Third, hit follow or subscribe anywhere you're listening right now to get new episodes first. Okay, that's it. Thanks so much for listening and for supporting Ready for Takeoff. And now let's get back into it.

Rob Goodman:

So Yossi, we do this fun thing on the show where I ask a series of quick questions just to get to know you a little bit better and I would love to do this with you now. Are you ready?

Yossi Hayut:

Yeah. Sure.

Rob Goodman:

All right, let's do it. What music do you listen to while you're working?

Yossi Hayut:

Eddie Vedder.

Rob Goodman:

What's your favorite business book?

Yossi Hayut:

Leadership on the Line. It's about adaptive leadership from Martin Linsky and Ronald Heifetz. It's a great book about adaptive challenges and how you need to work with your team in order to build through leadership and make a change and impact.

Rob Goodman:

And since this episode is all about learning, I have to ask you, what's the best class you've ever taken?

Yossi Hayut:

The best class I have ever taken was in the university about social lawyering. It was so impactful that I actually left the work as a corporate lawyer and moved to the university working there and founded the legal clinic for the elderly and Holocaust survivors. This is what I did for four years.

Rob Goodman:

That's amazing. What's something that you really want to build or create that you haven't yet?

Yossi Hayut:

So the thing I do want to build that I never built, I actually started building it, is that I have an idea in my mind to build a community around the 17 UN sustainable development goals. And I want to build a tech community around that. People that want to solve or have some tech startup around it and build a community and call it Impact Nation. So it's got to be kind of a marketplace. I started building it in a hackathon that we had in Wix, but I kind of left it because I don't have the time. Maybe I will come back to it.

Rob Goodman:

Awesome. And what inspires you on a daily basis?

Yossi Hayut:

So I would have to say my daughters. I look at them and I see the way that they're learning stuff. We talk a lot about learning while doing stuff, learning while creating stuff. And I think when you look at them, this is something that is actually happening in their kindergarten, in their school. Project-based learning is something that I look at and then try to take back to the way that we learn so it won't be just a passive experience, but also an active experience. This is a true inspiration for me. And I think they're also smart and beautiful and everything that you can imagine, and that's about it.

Rob Goodman:

Wonderful. Yossi, thank you so much for joining the show. It's such a joy to speak with you and thanks for all the work that you're doing, both here at Wix and in the world.

Yossi Hayut:

Thank you so much.

Rob Goodman:

One of the great promises of the internet is how it makes almost anything possible, no matter who you are or what your background is. And we really believe that the internet has that potential to be that equalizing force. And learning is such an important part of that. You might remember from one of our earlier episodes with Wix VP of Product David Schwartz, that one of our biggest metrics at Wix is user success. Like Yossi said, a learning platform isn't just about helping our users be better at using our products, but helping them be more successful in whatever it is they're trying to accomplish, building their business, improving on industry specific skills or launching a passion project.

Rob Goodman:

So are you thinking of starting a learning program at your company? If you're considering it, you should definitely check out Wix Learn at wix.com/learn to see how we're approaching education. And we'd love to have a conversation with you and hear about your plans. So find us on social media at Wix and join the conversation there.

Rob Goodman:

Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by Wix. Now, if you don't know about Wix, we're the all-in-one platform for running your business online, trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With Wix you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO, no matter the kind of business you run or the size. With Wix, anything is possible. So visit wix.com to start building and growing your business today.

Rob Goodman:

Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website at wix.com/readyfortakeoff. Ready for Takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman at Wix, with production by Lindsay Jean Thomson at Wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Pake at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Muraki. Our Executive Producers from Wix are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman. We'll see you next time.