John Immel

I've returned to my roots. 

I started my IT career almost 30 years ago.  I did everything from help desk to the Director of IT.  IT was good to me, and for a hot minute, I  thought I would become a CTO. 

But I’m a recidivist entrepreneur with a drive to build my own thing.  

I was introduced to “Organizational Digital Adoption”  in 2015 and soon realized that getting people to use a new software platform had nothing to do with teaching a few classes.  

No amount of feature function tutorials was ever going to inspire 15,000 people to use what the IT Department rolled out. 

Inspiring usage required a very different project strategy and educational practices. 

Digital Adaption is all the rage now, but in 2015 people didn't utter those words together. For three years I developed from whole cloth an IT training methodology that focused on workflow.

I then refined the training to leverage cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology.  The result: Insight Design ™ 

In 2019 Brianformative was born. 

Since I had applied my methods to IT training, leadership development, nurse preceptor training, change management, and a host of other disciplines, I made the very rookie mistake of thinking Brainformative should be all things to all men. 

The methodology is content agnostic. So why not have everyone as a client?  

Those of you who have built businesses know that is a terrible idea. 

Then Covid hit and brick-n-mortar training vanished as everyone scrambled to deliver their training online . . .  and have never looked back.

This is a problem because, (as pretty much everyone knows but won’t admit) online training is awful because someone talking on camera is merely a lecture. 

It doesn’t matter how “dynamic the speaker” or the flashy nature of “production value” a "lecture" in a class room is still  . . . a "lecture" on camera. 

The brain science is clear: There is a reason we all sleep through lectures. 

I tried to adapt my methods to the online reality but the technology did not exist that fit my vision. 

Almost 6 years later technology is finally catching up (it still has a ways to go but it's getting closer) so delivering a learning experience in accord with how the brain really learns in a "virtual" space is doable.  

(And I intend to develop the remaining technology)

So now, a little older and a little wiser, (and still a recidivist entrepreneur) I’ve learned that the riches are in the niches.

Insight Design ™ is still content agonistic, but my forte has always been digital adoption. 

SaaS onboarding is a very effective niche because free trial churn rates are really high ~85% and it is glaringly apparent that yet one more Youtube University "masterclass" is not the solution.  

Quick question for you SaaS owners: What would a 10% improvement on your free trial conversion and annual renewals look like for your bottom line?  

I already know the answer and that is why I've returned to my roots.

Welcome to SaaSy Brainformative.