A serial entrepreneur, Devin Schain joined me to talk about his latest venture, Student Playbook, which helps place college alums in good jobs. In our conversation, Schain described the key opportunity for employers, colleges and universities, and alumni—and the unique solution his team is bringing to market. We also got to talk about one of my favorite non-profit projects of Schain’s, Shalom Learning. As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation, watch it below, or read the transcript.
Michael Horn: Welcome to The Future of Education where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And today, to help us think about aspects of that is a longtime friend, Devin Schain. He's the CEO and Founder of Student Playbook, and he's going to tell us all about that, but also about his journey in education and entrepreneurship, creating opportunities every step of the way for people to succeed in different parts of the student life cycle. Devin, first, great to see you. Thanks for being on The Future of Education.
Devin Schain: My pleasure, Michael. Thanks for having me.
Morning Warmup
Horn: You bet. So we're going to launch into our morning warmup, if you will. A little bit of a lightning round of questions. I'd love you to start talking about your background. I said you're a longtime entrepreneur in the lead-up here. You literally got your start of entrepreneurship in and around the world of higher ed, one might say the dirty underbelly of higher ed, but I'll let you tell why I chose that word, dirty, in a moment. But tell us your own story into entrepreneurship and education.
Schain: Sure. So I went to the University of Pennsylvania, and I played soccer there and I brought up a remnant for my cold linoleum floor dorm room and my teammates comment, "Where'd you get it from?" My dad was a builder, and I brought up a couple remnants and gave it to my teammates. But the following year, because a lot of people commented, during the year, I put 112 remnants in a 14-foot U-Haul. And in six hours, Michael, I set up in front of the freshman dorm, the quad, during move-in, and I sold out. I grossed $6,000. I netted $3,000. This is in 1986. So I'm dating myself, but to put things in perspective, I held two jobs that summer.
I was a waiter and a counselor and I made $1000. So you don't have to be a mathlete. 10 weeks, two jobs, 1,000. 6 hours, $3,000, and that was my start. My senior year, I was doing this on 21 campuses east of the Mississippi. I went down to the carpet mills in Dalton, Georgia, and I lived with nine guys who sold on college campuses for me. And they said, "Schain, you got a great carpet business, but really? You're going to go into being a carpet salesman?" And I said, "Nope, I'm going into the college market." And 38 years later, I'm still here.
Horn: Yeah. So I think it's just a great story because you never know where these journeys start and how you move into it. And we'll talk about some of this later, but you've incubated and built for-profits, you’ve built non-profits. You’ve built, as you like to joke, for-profits that don't make a profit. I think you use more elegant language when you say it, but your latest is you've created this company called Student Playbook, really focused on what you call this career shift focus. But give us the elevator pitch of what is Student Playbook, and we'll get into some of the details as we go down the journey.
Schain: And as I do say, when people ask my background, I said, "I've started multiple for-profits, I've started a couple not-for-profits, and I have a few no profits. That's euphemism. It didn't work out so well." Hopefully, this one falls into the first bucket. But Student Playbook really was created, we call it playbook advances, lifelong engagement and career success. Helping students and alumni do three things, navigate new career paths, connect with other alum and advance their careers.
Horn: Perfect. So that's the elevator pitch, if you will. Let's break that down a little bit. What does it look like and what's the big problem that you're solving for?
Schain: Sure. So first of all, I talk about you need three things, and you can already see I'm a big fan of list of threes when you start a business. One, is there a market? Will the dogs eat the dog food? And, clearly, there is. Two, do you have the skill sets to support the problem that you're trying to solve for? And then, three, do you have a competitive advantage or a moat associated with?
And I'll start there. Our competitive advantage, Michael, is working with the alumni office, which provides us their endorsement and access to their young alum, from 25 to 45. There's no cost to the alumni association or the young alum, the job seeker. And we have three attributes that differentiate us from job boards or LinkedIn, but ultimately, the value proposition is we help these students and young alum get jobs because every 2.8 years now, students and alum are changing jobs.
But the first part is we provide access to a live recruiter. We work with five national recruiting firms, so there's a high touch. The second is, shockingly, most people don't know this. I didn't a year ago when we got into this. Only 30% of jobs are socialized, which means 70% are not readily available. We have a platform called CareerShift, which we import jobs and internships into our database and our platform. In addition, alumni at the school will provide us unique job opportunities as well. So that's the second benefit.
And then the third, we provide services at no cost, such as assessments, webinars, access to resume review and LinkedIn evaluation. So the business model is the employer pays us to help place students that are looking for their second, third, or fourth job with experience. The employers are happy to pay for $75,000 to $150,000 call it second, third, fourth jobs. And what I really love about this opportunity and this business is I like to do good and do well as a company.
Work Cycle
Horn: So as I look in this and we shift into our second segment of the show, the work cycle, we dig a little deeper on this. It strikes me, if I understand it, that you're basically saying alumni after they leave college, they're in that first, second job, there's a challenge. They figured out their footing, how that professional world works, they're trying to find that next job. The alumni offices, it seems to me, of the colleges you're working with want to add a lot more value to their former students. And they're not just asking for gifts and they're giving a lot more through the work you're doing, making it much more tangible what this alumni network and connections really means. And then, third, the employers, you're obviously finding great talent for them with all this value added services that appears free for the students and the alumni associations or offices themselves of the colleges.
What I hadn't heard you say before, and I think it's really interesting as you think about it, is you connect that, and I think this comes from Julia Freeland Fisher's work around all these jobs are not being listed. And yet, so it really matters who you know, and a lot of these opportunities are through the alums themselves at other companies and so forth, or the companies themselves making it known to the alumni you're working with.
Tell us a little bit more about that because that seems actually pretty important. LinkedIn, you see a job opening. You're basically saying, "That job opening may never appear on the web. We're going to get you it before you even know about it." That seems like a unique value proposition, if I'm understanding it.
Schain: Yeah. Michael, can I take you on the road with me because you clearly get it? I've thought about copywriting the saying, "It's what you know and who you know." I'm a big fan of the genius of and, and the combination of the two. The term social capital is so important. And I'm going to elaborate on your last question and I'll roll into the other because I want to touch on the big problem.
And it really is stunning that over 50% of students that graduate from four-year colleges are underemployed, which means they make less than their market rate. In addition, the largest demographic graduating today is now first gen, and they don't have the prior experiences that we take for granted. Having a parent that has gone through the process and understands the importance of networking and the value of a college degree. Also, many graduates are under-resourced and underserved.
I think there's a misunderstanding that just because you graduate from college that you are not under-resourced, and that's not the case. So, lastly, everyone else normally doesn't know what they want to do in their first job. And again, as I mentioned earlier, they're changing almost every three years. We are helping young alumni with lifelong career support and professional development.
We're helping alumni associations build alum engagement with our services, which are so important. And our brand promise, which I'm really proud of, is to make every alum better off even if they don't get placed by our programs, but we have other services that they will benefit from. Let me stop there. There's obviously a lot to unpack, but I'll pause and get some of your questions and comment.
Horn: Yeah, no, and there's a lot of interesting things there, as you said, Devin, and one of them that strikes me is this point you made of the underemployment and then the demographics of these students and how they don't have this reservoir of social capital at their disposal. Talk to us a little bit more about who else is in this space, how are you different perhaps from what else is out there? Because on the one hand, I hear you saying these things and I'm like, "Well, every alumni office ought to be tapping their alums. It's an incredibly valuable resource in the employer market." And yet we know by and large them in the career offices are not doing these things. So why is what you're doing novel and who else is in the space?
Schain: So, obviously, an important consideration. So, first, we are leveraging the trusted relationship that schools have with their constituents to help students and alumni navigate the career journey and provide them with value-added career services while meeting the talent demand of employers, workforce development organizations, and staffing agencies.
I want to reference that my carpet business, it started as Campus Carpets, we've got you covered. I haven't used that line in a long time. And then I got into On Campus Marketing, which I'm proud to say is 35 years old. I sold it 20 years ago. And there are multiple programs, but I use the same model today that I did 35 years ago.
We get the endorsement, the affinity, the imprimatur of the university. We provide a frictionless, really, a work-free, no cost to the organization. In this case, it's the alumni association. And there's no cost to the young alum or the alumni themselves. So it's really a model that is somewhat unique because they don't have to pay on both sides, the university side and the job seeker side.
And we are increasing the level of engagement for the alumni association by, in essence, white labeling their service, and we're really creating opportunities for alumni that they're not getting, candidly, from either their alumni association or their career services. There's only one counselor per 1800 students. It's really difficult to place. So, again, let me stop there for a second. There's a lot more that I can talk about related, but I will turn it back to you, Michael.
Horn: Yeah, no, it's super interesting. And obviously the cost value prop is a big piece of this for the alumni offices. They don't have to pay anything. Alums don't have to pay anything. They get access to these services. How's it going so far? What have you learned along this journey of starting up the company?
Schain: Yeah, so you see my gray hair? Before I started, it wasn't nearly as salt and peppered and I've got a lot of scar tissues as well. But let me first, before I touch on what I've learned, let me elaborate a little more on the problem and the solution. We're in a very dynamic, as you know better than most, economic and education environment. And we want our graduates to be successful in the world of work.
More broadly, the country needs an educated workforce that gets a positive ROI from the investment in higher education. We believe we can make a positive impact by serving institutions and individuals in new ways by reducing friction in the connection between education and employment. In addition, there is tremendous concern that colleges and universities don't provide the level of resources to help students get good jobs. There are two places that generate revenue on college campuses, as you know. Enrollment on the front end and alumni on the back end.
Unfortunately, the career center, which reports into student affairs, doesn't generate any revenue, which is part of the problem, unfortunately. Alumni associations normally ask for two things from alum. Come to the reunion, which last week was my 35th. You can do the math. And, two, donate. Alum want career support and professional development and strong networking.
So our evidence is that the alumni associations are valuing this program, which is in a pilot stage right now, but also we're getting hundreds of job seekers from each school looking for recruiter support. We call this proof of concept and working on the different revenue streams such as getting paid by the employer to place students. So it's actually working really well. The alum association really values this turnkey, frictionless program. And the alum, or the job seekers, are raising their hand and saying, "We want to talk to a live recruiter. We want some unique job opportunities and we want some of these services at no cost."
And it's actually the proverbial win-win. So let me elaborate a little more on the lessons that we've learned on the journey. And a lot of people say when they have success, “We had a grand slam.” That's what a lot of people use. “It was a home run.” When things don't work out so well, it's either called a learning experience, which is euphemism for, “We learned a lot.” So with that, we started Student Playbook in February of 2020, Michael, two weeks before I realized Corona was not just a Mexican beer. We could not test and pilot for over a year because we could not get to schools. When we eventually got to schools, my original premise, which I haven't talked about yet, but I'm going to admit now, was Gen Z lack life skills for three reasons.
One, they spend 10 to 12 hours a day on screen time. Two, you have helicopter parents, which I resemble that comment sometimes, not always. And accreditations not based on soft skills, life skills, what I like to call success skills, they're based on the hard skills. So I thought I could use the same model, have the university allow me to offer this to parents this time for students transitioning from incoming freshmen to graduating seniors.
I missed two things, and that's why you test and pilot and you try not to fall in love with your own ideas. It doesn't matter what I think, Michael, it's what the market thinks. And two things did not support my original premise. One, schools do not want to outsource student development, which I should have realized that. So that was one. And the second, parents really don't value as much life skills as they value their child getting a job.
One is a nice to have. The other one is a need to have. So,, fortunately we did two things that really helped. One, we bought a company called CareerShift, which has over 200 relationships with career centers. It has a great technology platform, which I talked about. And the third thing, it has a terrific founder that's still with the organization. The second thing that we did last year was we started focusing on the alumni association and helping young alum get jobs, which again, is more of the need to have versus a nice to have of the life skills.
And finding a model where the employer who is willing to pay anyways, not for a first year grad because they don't have the experience, but they are willing to pay for second, third, and fourth jobs. So trying to change consumer behavior or trying to change a model is very difficult. If you can take something such as an employer who's willing to pay for placement and incorporate it a little differently, that's what we've done successfully. So we’ve learned a lot, we've had to pivot, and we continue to learn by listening to the different constituents. The alumni associations, their job seekers, the recruiters, and the employers. Again, I'll stop there.
Specials
Horn: No, super interesting, Devin, and something to follow. I want to shift to our third segment, Specials. And up front, you mentioned that you've founded a bunch of things. You've alluded to the for-profits, the non-profits, and the no profits. But I want to go into one of my favorites, which is I've had the privilege of being on the Advisory Board of which is a nonprofit, ShalomLearning. So as we start to wrap up here, maybe give us the problem that ShalomLearning was designed to tackle and how that's gone so far.
Schain: Yeah, thanks, Michael. And you were incredibly helpful in getting that started with a great book that I think is probably over 10 years old now, Blended, which was my original executive director's Bible, which is about as high a compliment as you can get. So I started the organization in 2011, wow, 12 years ago, because I hated Hebrew school and my children hated it as well. It's a really bad model.
And I’m generalizing, but the majority of people don’t like driving 15, 30 minutes for an hour and a half after school of six hours. And you have curriculum that's not well packaged, that's not compelling. And you have teachers, candidly, that only teach three hours a week. How good can you be? And most of them do it because they make $5 more than their day job. So being a ed tech entrepreneur and a serial entrepreneur, I thought there was a better way.
And I ended up creating ShalomLearning focused on three areas. One, creating an LMS, learning management system, because Gen Z, their community, although a lot of the synagogues didn't like this initially when I said, these students, they want to be online. And in-person is a value, but there're also many rural areas that don't even have the option. So, one, creating an LMS because that was a more compelling community for seven to 13-year olds. Two, we took curriculum and we curated best in class out there and we repackaged it.
And that was really valuable. And the third, quite frankly, I should have valued this more initially, but I do now 10 years later, it's teacher training, and really teach them how to be effective both online, in person, blended, in the classroom, as well as out of the classroom. And what I like to say is I took 19th century teaching as a modality with 20th century teachers and 21st century learners and closed the gap.
And I'm proud to say we started with seven students the first year. In 2019, we had 7,000 students and we were the beneficiary of COVID because the market came to us. When all the synagogues were closed, we had this successful platform and now we have over 22,000 students. We're in 11 countries, predominantly supporting military families whose children have nowhere to learn. It's basically an online Hebrew school, and we educate over 3000 teachers. So I'm really proud of the success and, most importantly, the efficacy for the student, for the teachers, and for the synagogues is better than the old model.
Closing Time
Horn: Phenomenal stuff. I will say, if my kid's temple tunes in, you all do a great job. You're the exception that proves, frankly, the rule that Devin started out with, which is that most of us, Hebrew school experience is not all that great. But tremendous thing that you've built. Last segment, as we wrap up here, it's Closing Time. And as a serial entrepreneur, I know you take seriously not only the ventures you start and the impact you make and the success you have and, as you say, doing well by doing good, but you also take seriously helping others start on their own entrepreneurial journey and solving meaty problems. And so I suspect there's a few ways you could take this, but for those tuning in who fit that profile, they want to start something, they want to solve a problem, give us some parting advice and words of wisdom.
Schain: Sure, thanks. So I'm going to give one anecdote and one best practice. But let me start at a high level. I love to learn, I love to teach, and I really value model the masters and best practices. And I actually like to solve problems, but candidly, I'd rather be a fast follower than a pioneer because pioneers get arrows in their back. But let me start first with a anecdote... Or I'm actually going to end with the anecdote. Let me start with a best practice.
So there is a great TED Talk on YouTube. It's by... I'm having a senior moment. Bill Gross, there we go. He talks about the five keys to a successful startup. And he uses empirical data to measure 100 of his startups with 100 of some of the best startups, from Airbnb and Uber and Yahoo. Well, Yahoo probably doesn't fit that category, but he really goes through and ranks, and I'm going to give the five most important in order, but I encourage you to... He does it more eloquently than I do.
But for the benefit of a quick lesson, in order of importance, one is timing. Two is team. Three is the actual idea. Four is the model. And five is cash. And a lot of people ask, "Why is cash last?" And the simple answer is, "If you have the first four, cash will follow." So that, I believe, is a best practice in terms of evaluating the importance of a startup. And you've heard about one of my for-profits, Campus Carpets, which turned into OCM. You've heard about one of my not-for-profits. I like the term for-profit. I don't like the term not-for-profit. I like to call it for purpose. There's only one difference between a for-profit and a for purpose, and that's tax status. They should be run very similarly. But one example of a no profit that I think you'll appreciate, Michael and your listeners, it's called Campus MD.
It was telemedicine for the college market, both behavioral health and if you had a physical injury that seven out of 10 can be addressed with telemedicine. I was 10 years and one pandemic too early. So I was not the beneficiary there unfortunately, but ShalomLearning was. So with that, my last anecdote or my last comment, when I speak about entrepreneurship, I tell the class or the group, "If you get one lesson from me, one takeaway, this is the most important." So there's a group of maybe 25, 100 students or employees in chairs. And I'll say to somebody in the front row, I'll say, "Michael, I'd like you to stand up and look under your chair."
And you'll stand up, look under your chair, and you'll pull out, I taped a dollar bill underneath. I probably should have for visual benefit, let's say, I have a dollar bill. So, Michael, you would be going like this. And I'd say, "Michael, do you know what that dollar bill represents as it relates to entrepreneurship?" And you'll say, “A bonus?” I'll say, “No.” You'll say, "Lunch money?" I'll say, "Maybe," which is a nice way of saying no. I say, "This is the most important lesson regarding entrepreneurship. That dollar represents you got to get off your behind to make a buck in this world. And ultimately that's the key to entrepreneurship."
Horn: Love it. Love it. I love that story. I've used it since you first told me. Credit you, of course. But Devin Schain, thank you so much for joining us on The Future of Education and the work that you are doing around helping people navigate this increasingly complex world of careers and, frankly, adding a lot more value to every step of that process. Thanks, Devin.
Schain: Michael, thank you.
Horn: And we’ll be back next time on The Future of Education.
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