Bant Breen:
Derek is the President and CEO of LifeGuides. LifeGuides is a transformative platform for conscious leaders and value-driven organization cultures. Tell me a little bit more about LifeGuides, it seems to be a very innovative model in the career coaching space.
Derek Lundsten:
It’s career coaching, but also emotional and mental health and well-being. It kind of falls in that in that combination. You mentioned it’s a platform for transformative cultures and leaders. What we saw a few years ago was that our responsibility as leaders to take care of our people take care of our communities and invest in them is increasing, and the expectations from the new generation within the workforce are higher. The standards by which were measured as leaders are higher and there are new opportunities and new products that exist to do that. That was the persona, the profile that we saw around leadership, and the fact that companies are embracing that philosophy. Then the product itself was about tapping into another trend, which was how we use technology to reconnect people and the idea that everyone goes through life, we experience challenges, and we have opportunities for growth. The idea is that for someone who’s on that path, someone else has already walked and experienced those lessons ahead of us. We can use the technology to match them. They can receive peer-to-peer support from trained guides on how to work through the challenge of navigating the opportunity, more successfully better resources with greater health and vitality, and ultimately enrich their lives and the organizations that they work for. We brought that combination of business as a force for good conscious leadership, technology disruption, and personal development. We merged them all together. That was the thesis before the pandemic. Then what happened over the last year is that that’s brought everything to the forefront all at the same time. So the entire world is now aware of, hey, we have emotional needs, we have psychological needs. We have new challenges around remote work and remote schooling stressors that we’d never anticipated. How do we handle this? It’s been a window that has brought awareness to the collective consciousness of the world on how do we do business differently? How do we do coaching and, and peer mentorship differently?
Bant Breen:
How is this playing into some of these trends? I feel like millennials and Gen Y are more open to this. Is that fair to say?
Derek Lundsten:
I would say so. I think we look at it in the sense that we fill a gap and this says for that exact reason, right? If you look at traditional offerings that existed or like EAP, for example, I think probably it started out with noble intentions, but it’s become more of a risk mitigation tool than anything. When you look at where Millennials are and Gen Z, they are using Talkspace. They are using other mental health visual therapy apps, they are open to seeking support and counsel. We’re seeing the over the last decade growth in that space, right, but they’re also quite expensive. Then it’s not accessible to everybody, especially for that population where they’re still early in their career. They don’t have necessarily the finances that they should or that are investing in that. We come in and fill this gap where we say, “Hey, organizations can provide an outlet and a model that addresses not the crises, but the day-to-day stressors, the day-to-day emotional needs, and coaching needs of this population.” It goes beyond the next generation because the people that have learned these lessons are now having a vested interest in coaching that next generation, and it’s showing the commonality that exists.
Bant Breen:
Derek, thank you so much for being on UNCAGED today and we look forward to having you back.
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