Grow A Small Business Podcast Aged 24 he grew the team from 4 FTE in 2014 to now 11, sales from $50k to $2.3M AUD per annum with an online 6-month professional boot camp for young people. Participants have climbed from 14 in the first year to now 100+ annually (Cameron Sorsby)
In this episode, I interview Cameron Sorsby, the CEO at Discover Praxis, an online career boot camp business that offers content, weekly meetups, mentoring, and project-based learning to entrepreneurial young professionals that Cameron started in 2014. Starting off with 14 participants, the boot camp has always focused on soft skills and mindset (not education for any specific role or industry) that expose them to most corners of the business so they can find and then hone their professional passion. At the end of the course, they're placed in fast-growing companies seeking talented young people with what they have coined as "Forward tilt" (Young professionals who want to add real value, have initiative, and a sense of urgency)
At age 24, Cameron helped found the business, growing it from 4 full-time employees to 11 full-time employees within 6 years. With $12,000 for the 6-Month course, first-year revenue grew from $30,000 to around $1.5 Million in 2020. Since 2017, they've had over 100 participants a year and maintained a 90% graduation rate. The next stage of growth for them is ramping up their marketing while maintaining higher product quality aiming at reaching the 500 participants a year mark. Their funding was from bootstrapping for the first year and a half after which they took on $500,000 in investment in 2015. Cameron believes the hardest thing in growing a small business is persistence; the longer you go, the more likely you will survive and thrive. The advice he would give himself on day one is, practice patience. Stay tuned for more of his business growth insights.
This Cast Covers:
- Helping young professionals become ninjas in their workplaces.
- The skills and mindsets that enable participants to become entrepreneurial employees.
- Working with companies that are willing to take a chance on young talent.
- Their multimodal course structure and delivering it online, through an alumni network and meetups.
- The number of fees they charge per participant and where the original idea for Discover Praxis came from.
- From 14 participants in year one to 100+ participants in 2017, and a projected 500 participants in 2020.
- Fine-tuning their offering and maintaining the quality while building on their marketing and sales.
- The importance of having the right talent and strategies for the business stage one is in.
- Focusing more on learning so they can have a tighter game plan.
- Constantly looking for the next challenge instead of getting caught up on the level of success.
- Falling in love with the day to day processes of everything and the great outcomes that can come from that.
- Getting a $500,000 seed round funding from small family offices.
- Dialing in on their customer service to create more value for participants.
- The most stressful point in his small business growth journey.
- Cameron's biggest mindset shift and how it helped him grow the business exponentially.
- The value in a small business owner having strong team management skills.
- Valuing and pursuing professional development.
Additional Resources:
Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/