The website I work for, GenoNow.com, is a training site for working professionals. I have posted about it before. We are excited about some new content that is focused on the Wal-Mart Vendor community specifically. We have partnered with 8th & Walton, a vendor-training company located in Bentonville, AR to provide learning objects for professionals selling to Wal-Mart.

One of the latest developments coming out of Bentonville is Wal-Mart’s target customer segments moving on from here. Wal-Mart has identified three customer groups that are key to its success going forward; Price Value Shoppers, Brand Aspirationals, and Price Sensitive Affluents. Knowing who these shoppers are and how Wal-Mart defines them is key knowledge for vendors moving forward.

Our newest piece of content from 8th & Walton addresses that in great detail. This is important information that everyone who has a vendor relationship needs to be successful.

It’s also exciting for us because it marks a new strategic tack for GenoNow.com. We have always had training content that is targeted towards a wide audience. Now, we are starting to also bring focus on vertical markets. The first vertical market for us is the vendor community in Bentonville. This was borne out mainly because of where our company is located. It is a market that is immediately available to us, but we are looking for others.

Finding good training that is affordable and convenient to use is hard to find, and that is what GenoNow.com offers.

We are looking for trainers and content owners who are looking for a distribution channel for their training content. If this sounds like you, please contact me at mwilliams (((AT))) sviworld (((DOT))) com.

I am down in Little Rock about to embark on three fun-filled days recording segments for the corporate training site GenoNow.  I will be making product training episodes for Dillard’s Department Store.  These segments will be in their “walled garden”, and not for public consumption, but the exciting part is that it give Dillard’s a way to push this high-level product training all the way down to its employees.

Communication is always a tough thing in a large organization, anyone who has played the game Phone Booth can tell you that.  Not only do messages get tangled in translation, but it also costs a lot.  GenoNow answers that problem by making these videos to all interested a la YouTube.  Companies can put their private content in their own private area, and corporate trainers who are interested in a wider audience can put content on the site where it is visible by all visitors.

GenoNow has public facing content also.  With subjects ranging from Dressing for Success for women in the work place to managing change in an organization.  There is some free content available so you can see how it works, but we believe it can be a real life saver for the human resource manager looking for a cost-effective way to train an ever-spreading and diverse workforce.

If you are interested in what I am up to these days, you can check out our site.  It’s pretty exciting.  Who knew that there would ever be an Internet start-up in Arkansas, not exactly a hotbed for technology, but here we are.

The Strengths of Being Small

There seems to be an almost universal drive in business to grow and become big. It seems like a laudable goal, but growing large just for growing large’s sake could be a recipe for disaster for your organization.

There will always be a need for large organizations. But, there is also a need for small, nimble organizations that can turn on a dime and affect change quickly. In fact, large organizations, which have long since lost the ability to move quickly, need smaller organizations to reach important side goals.

The Leadership of companies need to look long and hard at whether becoming large is a goal that is in the best interest of their organization. The fact that your company is fast on its feet may be the most marketable product you have to offer. Growing to the size of your competitors could thrust you into a market where you are no longer noteworthy.

There is a reason that the military has small special forces units. They are quick, mobile and easy to deploy. That is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s actually a point of pride.

If You Are Big, Be Big

The biggest danger in this conversation is when organizations forget their identity and try to act outside of their nature. If you are a part of a large company, embrace it. There are advantages to being big. Leverage those advantages and outsource those quick moving goals to organizations or teams that can move quickly.

If you are part of a smaller company, leverage your strengths. You can move fast and meet the dynamic needs of your clients better than anyone else. This is competitive advantage that will make you money. In other words, if you are in a bass boat, be careful of trying to land a whale whose needs could pull your boat under and destroy your business altogether.

I’m not saying that growing to be the biggest fish in the pond isn’t a great and desirable goal. What I am saying is, be careful of what you wish for. You may find yourself in the middle of a large organization that has morphed into something that is completely different from your original vision.

Look at the problem or need that your organization addresses. Is that need better addressed by a large infantry or a small specialized force? If the answer is special forces, set your sights on becoming the most nimble specialized force out there.

I want to let my circle of friends know what I am up to in my new job. A big part of it is filming, editing and rendering videos and other “learning objects” for a brand new website on the Internet. It is a site called www.genonow.com. Our hopes is that this site will become the go to place for corporate training.

Initially, it is small because it is brand new. It is still in alpha. Technically, it isn’t open to the public, but go by and kick the tires. We are waiting to get our 30th learning object. Once we get there, we will pronounce it open to the public. Until then, other than this blog post we are keeping it a secret.

Once we are fully up and running, we will be adding new functionality like search, tagging, user-ratings and more. Our hope is to build a community around the content.

Why GenoNow

So, you may be asking, “Why are you building this site?” That’s a great question, let me answer it like this. Let’s say you are the head of Human Resources in a company, and it’s your job to train your work force in their areas of deficiency. Before www.genonow.com, you had to rely in broadcast training. Here is what I mean. Let’s say that 20% of your people have real time-management problems. So, in order to address that problem, you fly in a time-management guru, and spend $20,000 to address a problem that only 20% of your people really suffer from.

What if you could train your staff in a way that is much more granular and focused? That is where GenoNow comes in. You could take that same $20,000 you invested in the time-management seminar and put that into credits for your whole staff. That way the 20% with time management problems could focus on learning objects devoted to effective time managment. The remaining 80% of your staff could seek training in their area of deficiency. That is a much more effective way to spend your training dollar.

Better Training for Less Money For Your Organization

Not to mention that, but we partner with companies to host their training objects. Through the partnership, companies have an easy effective way to broadcast their message to all their employees without having to invest in a distance learning environment. We do all the hard work.

Trainers Needed

We need trainers! We need people who can teach to offer up their training in return for the chance to make some money. The revenue sharing with content creators is very simple. If you sell your content for $20 on GenoNow then you will make $10. GenoNow splits the revenue 50-50 in return for hosting and marketing learning environment object.

Our long term goal is to be a long tail provider of corporate training. That means that you may be surprised at what we would deem as appropriate for the site. Another goal is to allow content owners and trainers to be able to upload and manage their own content. That is coming, but isn’t available yet. Our development team is hard at work creating the product. (Remember you are seeing it in an early stage, there is a lot more to come as far as functionality is concerned.)

If you are a trainer, or if you know a trainer, I want to talk to you. My email is mwilliams (at) sviworld (dot) com. (Please excuse the way I had to publish my email address, I am trying to avoid unwanted emails.)