Thought Leaders in Online Education: Blake Garrett, CEO of Aceable (Part 1)

Blake discusses a unique area of online education: training for licenses of various kinds of vehicles, etc. using mobile apps.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and Aceable.

Blake Garrett: I’m the Founder of Aceable. Aceable is focused on licensure and certification training. We created a mobile-first platform that allows people to take licensure and certification training every year. We want to be the platform that they go through for that training to help advance their careers. We started with a very niche area of driver’s education.

Now, we are moving into real estate education and then beyond that, you could look at things like accountants, doctors, nurses, teachers, and firefighters. Countless occupations require a license. The education to get those licenses is pretty antiquated. We want to provide a better outcome and a better educational experience for those individuals.

Sramana Mitra: What, specifically, is the angle of how you pursue this market?

Blake Garrett: A lot of these professional careers require that they have a license or a certificate. We believe that, to date, most of that education has really just met baseline user experience needs. It’s gotten them the outcome that they needed to as far as just checking the boxes. However, it doesn’t actually make them better at what they want to do.

For instance in real estate, there’s currently an 80% annual churn rate for agents because they’re educated enough to get a license but they’re not educated to excel once they have that license. We’re really blending both to not just meet a requirement but also get them the information and teach in a way that lets them excel once they’re in that new occupation or new area of life.

Sramana Mitra: What is specific to the app that you are doing differently?

Blake Garrett: No one else offers this type of education through a mobile app. We don’t just do it because mobile apps are the fun, new, sexy thing. We do it because education needs to be accessible and it needs to be available to that student where they learn best and when they learn best. That’s what mobile allows us to do.

From there, we differentiate through creating content that’s engaging and also designed with backwards learning in mind. Lastly, a lot of these types of education operate in areas that are very cumbersome from a process standpoint. Getting a driver’s license in Texas takes at least 11 different steps working with the government. We aim to make that as simple as possible and also make it enjoyable.

Sramana Mitra: How do you go to market? Do you sell directly to consumers or are you selling through any other channel?

Blake Garrett: Our courses get approved by regulatory agencies. Once they’re approved, we sell direct to consumer. The future has some B2B opportunities working with hospital networks for nurses. We can also push down the continuing education path for nurses and doctors. For now, we just go direct to consumer.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Blake Garrett, CEO of Aceable
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