CEO Jeff Zigman, “The Business Engineer,” Trusted Someone and Got a Lopsided Contract

<p>Episode page and links: <a href="https://markgraban.com/mistake163">https://markgraban.com/mistake163</a></p> <p>My guest for Episode #163 of the <a href="http://myfavoritemistakepodcast.com/">My Favorite Mistake podcast</a> i<a href="https://www.joeallen.org/">s </a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffzigman/">Jeff Zigman</a>, known as “The Business Engineer,” and the founder and CEO of <a href="https://skillbuilder.academy/">SkillBuilder</a>.</p> <p>He’s been a tech entrepreneur 10 years, having led and built 25+ software projects from idea to Live, including multimillion-dollar enterprise software, with an engineering background, ten years as a Business Analyst, and eight years as a Chief Technology Officer.</p> <p>He’s married with two little kids and, during COVID, he created a software platform that incorporates the learning principles that he’s gained from 20 years of martial arts into a remote learning system that he’s been able to prove to be more effective for virtual training than most in-person training, with higher absorption and better retention.</p> <p>In this episode, Jeff shares his “favorite mistake” story about trusting somebody he was working to build a software company with — working for 1.5 years on a trust basis, how did Jeff end up saddled with a “lopsided contract”? What problems did that cause and why was it “a real nightmare”? We talk about that and the lessons that Jeff learned through this experience.</p> <p>We also talk about questions and topics including:</p> <ul> <li>Were there red flags?</li> <li>Should he have gotten a lawyer to review it?</li> <li>How has he focused on not preventing this mistake?</li> <li>Why is training thousands of employees so difficult?</li> <li>Lessons from martial arts?</li> <li>4 things that are required?</li> <li>What is Process-Oriented Learning?</li> <li>Knowledge (information or theory) vs. Skills (ability)?</li> <li>How do we confirm that the learning has sunk in… that the skills can be applied effectively? Closing the loop?</