Kathy Walker, StartUp Sherpas

In this episode, Sarah sits down with Kathy Walker, Co-Founder and CEO of StartUp Sherpas, an edtech company delivering remote work experience and career readiness programmes through their own digital platform.

Kathy shares how StartUp Sherpas is helping to bridge the gap between the skills young people learn in school and the skills employers need in the modern workplace. She explains why the traditional education system struggles to keep pace with the rapid changes in the world of work, and how Start Up Sherpas uses innovation and entrepreneurship as vehicles to prepare young people for future careers.

Sarah and Kathy discuss the importance of scalability in education, the power of technology to reach more learners, and how nurturing entrepreneurial thinking can open up new pathways for young people across all industries.

We hope you enjoy this episode. If you have a topic you'd like us to discuss or you would like to be considered as a guest please get in touch at hello@samtaler.co.uk.

Transcript

ST Podcast - Start Up Sherpas 

[00:00:00] Sarah Stone: Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Social Value. Today I'm here with Kathy Walker, who is co-founder and CEO of Startup Sherp, which is an ed tech company who deliver remote work experience and career readiness programs through their own digital platform. Hello, Kathy. Thank you very much for joining me. 

[00:00:28] Kathy Walker: Thank you very much for having me. [00:00:30] I'm very excited 'cause you know that I'm a massive fan of your platform and what you do and I think it's really special and I haven't seen anything else quite like it. I also think it has the potential be really impactful. So I'm really excited to be able to ask you lots of questions about it and share that with other people. 

[00:00:44] Really. Can I just start off by, 'cause obviously this is a podcast so people can't see the platform, but what is it that you do?
 
Kathy Walker:  So we really focus on bridging that gap between the skills that young people are learning at [00:01:00] school and the skills that they will need in the workplace. And the reason that we have decided to bridge that gap and use a tech platform to solve that problem is that we want to deliver it at scale. 

[00:01:16] So there's loads of great skills development programs out there, and lots of them do that face-to-face, and they're very powerful, but they tend to be limited by the number of young people that they can reach. So our programs are about scale. So we built [00:01:30] the platform. We probably did the complete opposite to what a startup should do, and we built the platform first because we were really, really driven by scale. 

[00:01:39] We want to make sure that we are working with. Thousands of young people across the uk. So the platform helps us do that and helps get those skills to those young people. And so what is the problem that you are solving? I mean, you touched a little bit on it about young people not having the skills needed for work, but can you expand on that a bit?[00:02:00]  

[00:02:00] So we talk to a lot of employers across lots of different industries and lots of different sectors, and I think the problem that we find is that the world of work is just changing so rapidly. So the skills that young people need are also changing at pace, and those skills are not being taught as much as we need them to be by education. 

[00:02:23] So changing a curriculum. Is a really hard thing to do. So that takes decades to [00:02:30] really change a curriculum in the education system. So we need It's too slow. 
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah, too slow. But that's the reality. You know, schools are working really hard, teachers are doing a great job, but the world of work is such a pace that the skills. 

[00:02:44] Needs are changing all the time. So you need companies like ours to help kind of fill those gaps. And the skills we were really focused on initially were innovation and entrepreneurship skills. Those are skills that we were hearing [00:03:00] from lots of different industries as the skills that they need in their future workforces. 

[00:03:04] So we really focused on those skills. And what's really great about innovation and entrepreneurship is it's also a really great vehicle for introducing young people to new industries. So innovation is essentially, you know, the skill of bringing ideas to life. So you can base any program, any industry can have a program that is looking for new ideas. 

[00:03:27] So essentially that is what our programs are based on. [00:03:30] 
 
Sarah Stone: And is that why you called it startup Sheers then? Because I've often wondered about why it's called that. 

Kathy Walker: Yeah. Initially we were really focused on the entrepreneurial journey, so trying to get more young entrepreneurs out there. 'cause it's not something that's talked about in careers provision that much. 

[00:03:45] You know, you're not being told at school, oh, you should go and start your own business. So we were really focused initially on that entrepreneurship program and then we've expanded that out to cover innovation as well. 
 
Sarah Stone: And are they still the two main skills that [00:04:00] you focus on or do you look at teaching others as well? 

[00:04:02] Kathy Walker:  So within the program, there's a load of different skills that they're being taught probably without them knowing it. Skills development by stealth is what we talk about a lot. Yeah. So. They'll be developing skills like critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, as well as just like really simple work readiness skills. 

[00:04:23] Like how to write an email, how to communicate on Slack or teams, you know, how to ask a good [00:04:30] question. I had, um, a testimonial come through yesterday from a student and they said one of the skills that they learned was how important is to ask the right question. So, you know, these are all kind of work readiness skills as well. 

[00:04:43] Yeah. That they're learning. They're also things that can take you years to learn in the workplace. So actually it's amazing to be able to learn that at a really young age. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that employers assume people know when they enter the workforce. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, I don't really want to ask, how do I raise an [00:05:00] invoice? 

[00:05:00] Like, you know, or what is an invoice? You know, it's sometimes the really simple things that you need to just. Explain to young people and make sure that they feel confident in that world. 
 
Sarah Stone: And what inspired you? Like what's the story behind Sherpa? So who's behind it? You and have you got partners and how long ago did you create it and what's your stories? 

[00:05:18] What inspired you to be so passionate about it? 
 
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah, so there's three co-founders, myself, Dan, and Hugo. We've all worked together before. We all come from a startup and innovation background, mainly in [00:05:30] the consulting space. So I think we started to get really frustrated with having to consult into these large organizations and have to retrofit all of these skills that they were eating. 

[00:05:42] So I used to spend a lot of my time going into large insurers or large FMCG and trying to retrofit innovation skills because their workforces don't have them. That is quite a hard job because adults are pretty stubborn and [00:06:00] don't want to be innovative, and large organizations are also very good at saying no to new ideas. 

[00:06:07] So, you know, that frustration, I think, made us realize that we needed to get those skills into young people. 'cause young people are awesome in that they don't put any barriers in the way of their ideas. They may not have confidence initially to come up with ideas, but once they know that skill, they don't shut off ideas. 

[00:06:27] They don't, you know, say, oh, you know, my boss isn't gonna [00:06:30] like that, or, the business is never gonna agree to this. They just let those ideas flow. So I think it was really important for us to start skilling up young people with those key skills. 
 
Sarah Stone: Yeah. And how does work experience come into this? So what content is currently available on the platform? 

[00:06:49] Is there just one program? I know you and I are working on a, on another program together that we can't talk about. Well, um, yeah, because it's a secret at the moment, but yeah. What [00:07:00] does the platform do? What features does it have? How does it work? 
 
Kathy Walker: So, I mean, our flagship program is called the Super Squad, which is a paid work experience program. 

[00:07:09] It is six weeks, four hours a week. It's completed outside of school. And just in case you missed it, it is paid. So incentivizing young people I think is a really important part of all of this. You know, we pay the young people because they are doing real work. So this [00:07:30] work experience that they come onto is real work. 

[00:07:32] It's a real business challenge that they've been set and they're coming up with ideas to answer that challenge. So they deserve to be paid. And the other reason we pay them is because we want to attract really hard to reach young people. So there's lots of young people who don't think that these type of programs for them, so may think, oh, you know. 

[00:07:54] I'm not gonna bother going to even try to get onto that program. So money is a [00:08:00] really good lever to get them to look at the program and then to actually apply to it. So yeah, it's all managed on our platform. So we've spent. A lot of time structuring a program that works for young people. So young people are always front of mind when we're building our programs. 

[00:08:20] So we have a platform that we call an e doing platform, so it is a tech platform. They do log onto the [00:08:30] platform to pick up their instructions. But it's not an e-learning, it's not a passive exercise with these young people. We set 'em tasks in the form of missions. Each of those missions takes 25 minutes to complete, and they can be really varied. 

[00:08:45] So it could be go and talk to someone and ask their opinion, or it could be walk around your local area and spot some problems. So it's very action orientated, task orientated. And it's really [00:09:00] important though, that we also get feedback from the students, so they have to upload their work. So that's how we know that they're completing the work. 

[00:09:07] So at the end of every mission, they have to upload a piece of work to the journal, which we then receive, and we have thousands of pieces of work by the end of a project. Well, I'm thinking about the data as well, the data set that you could, so just to come back to a few things. You said they get paid. 

[00:09:25] Sarah Stone: How much do they get paid, if you don't mind me asking? 

Kathy Walker: So they get paid the minimum wage for an apprentice. [00:09:30] So our flagship program, the super squad, they receive, I just had a payday recently, so they receive 155 pounds. Because actually, actually if you're a young person, not an amount to be sniffed at. 

[00:09:42] And how Oh no. It's always an exciting day when they're being paid. Yeah. Well, it's paid day. They already have a list of what they're gonna spend it on. 
 
Sarah Stone: How long do they have to work for that? How many hours is the program? 

Kathy Walker: They work 21 hours. In total, which is broken down into 42 [00:10:00] missions. So they're doing a considerable piece of work and it takes 'em through that innovation process. 

[00:10:05] So. At the start of the program, they're introduced to the challenge, which might be something that they've never worked on before, and it may be something really quite complex. You know, we don't avoid complex topics, so we've done programs on climate change and tax, and we've done things around green jobs and you know, new insurance products. 

[00:10:29] We can do very [00:10:30] complex work with them, but they go from learning a new area. All the way through to coming up with hundreds of ideas, and then they narrow that down to a single idea that they work on and submit at the end of the program. 
 
Sarah Stone: Can the program be tailored? You know, you talked about the 21 hours and the missions. 

[00:10:50] Are they fixed and who pays the young person? Is it an employer or how does that work? Kathy Walker:  So probably around 85% of the program is [00:11:00] standardized, and it doesn't matter which industry we're working with because it's following an innovation process. It's, you know, tried and tested and delivered by innovation consultants all around the world. 

[00:11:11] That 15% can be tailored to a specific employer or industry. And so part of the process is the funding partner, who is ultimately the person that's paying the students. We work with them initially to make sure that the challenge that is set is a real business challenge. [00:11:30] So they're gonna get value from that as well. 

[00:11:31] So, well, something they genuinely want to know the answer to. Yeah, exactly. So you know, let's have that value. Change there. You may be struggling to attract young people to your industry. Let's set that as a challenge because you are gonna get value back from that. So there's a real process we go through and and making sure we're getting the right question initially for the students. 

[00:11:54] And then we work as well in just making sure we have the right content that explains [00:12:00] that theme. And the right mental models that get them thinking about that problem in the right way. So yeah, it can all be tailored, but there's a lot of kind of repeated structure to the program as well. Are there kind of minimum maximum numbers? 

[00:12:15] Ideally, we have a hundred young people working together on a super squad. That is our kind of sweet spot. We can work with numbers as low as 30, but as I said, this is about scale. This is about getting impact to as many young people as possible. So [00:12:30] we always push our funding partners to fund a hundred. 

[00:12:33] It means that we get some really great benefits. That maybe other programs don't. So one of the things that we can do is we can have young people from across the UK working together. So young people are very small worlds. You know, there's their mates, there's their school, there's their village or town. 

[00:12:50] You know, it's quite a small world that young people live in. So it's really exciting for them to have to work with someone that they don't know that lives, you know, in a completely different part of [00:13:00] the country that has really different. Maybe life than they do. So that's exciting for those young people. 

[00:13:05] So with a hundred young people, we can really target different parts of the UK and bring a squad together. I'm also thinking if you are a company and you've got a particular challenge, yeah. You want to understand the motivations of young people for something. It's quite an affordable way of getting a really good data set. 

[00:13:22] I know that's not the purpose of it, right? But No, no, no. But it's a really great byproduct. You know, I, underneath all of this, we're a great [00:13:30] insight and research business. You know, there's a huge amount of data that we flow across to the employer at the end of the project. So you receive a database of ideas that's got thousands of ideas in it. 

[00:13:44] You get a catalog of the best ideas, that's more detail on those ideas. You get lots of data and insights that are sent across and you get an impact report. 'cause ultimately we exist to make sure we're having the biggest impact possible on young people. 
 
Sarah Stone: And what kind of an impact does it [00:14:00] have? So what are the outcomes? 

[00:14:01] What kind of the changes to young people tell you that they experience. 
 
Kathy Walker: So mainly confidence. So if you say to them, like, how do you feel at the end of this program? They always talk about confidence, and we see that in the questions that they ask us at the end of the program versus the beginning. So the beginning of the program, they may question why an employer wants to work with them. 

[00:14:24] Why does an employer want my ideas? You know, they've got better ideas than I do. The confidence is really [00:14:30] low. And at the end of the program, they're asking who has the IP rights to their ideas. So it's a really big transition on confidence, but we also measure confidence and how well they feel around certain skills. 

[00:14:43] And we'll ask that at the start of the program versus at the end of the program so we can track the change in that skillset. So we track how confident they feel in critical thinking, creativity, et cetera, et cetera. And those. Skills have been shown by lots of [00:15:00] research to lead to higher wage premiums. So what we do essentially is we track the change in those skills and then we apply a wage premium in terms of how much impact we are having on those young people. 

[00:15:13] So we can put a monetary figure on it. Yeah, I mean, how long have you been operating? Have you got enough data to see what the longer term outcomes are? And have you been able to stay in touch with participants? Yeah, so we've been going around three years in terms of delivering the super squads. So we have, [00:15:30] um, had a number of students who have been on a number of programs with us, and it's really great to see their development. 

[00:15:37] Sarah Stone:  They do more than one then, do they? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, oh, wow. Okay. 

Kathy Walker: We have our own internal development program for young people, so you join a squad, if you've done a couple of squads, you can become a squad leader, which means you take. Operational role within our business, and you support 10 people on a program. 

[00:15:54] So that's learning leadership skills and team building skills. And then the next progression is [00:16:00] to be an intern for us. And then some of those young people do get employed by us as well. So we are very early, but we are trying to track that longer term impact. Now, ideally, I'm looking for. Funding partners that are keen to do that longer term pieces of work because we believe there are wider benefits out there from our program. 

[00:16:24] So we would like to do 10 year studies where we're taking young people from the age of [00:16:30] 13 all the way up to 23 and seeing how it really does. Impact their employment. You know, things like antisocial behavior. All of those things I think are trackable. We're just a bit too young at the moment to do that. 

[00:16:44] We've got so much data that we can do that. That's like one of the fantastic things about it being a platform based business. Is, we've got buckets of data, so much data, I dunno what to do with it. You know, I need more data analysts in the business looking at, unless there's anyone listening [00:17:00] that wants to help you. 

[00:17:00] Sarah Stone: So do you know roughly how many thousands of people have gone through it? 

Kathy Walker: I mean, yeah, so about 4,000 young people have been on our program so far. We have paid around 370,000 pounds into what we call the teenage economy. So that's how much teenagers have earned. On our program. So it's amazing. Quite a lot of money has gone into the economy, which we think is another great benefit of benefit. 

[00:17:25] Sarah Stone: And also for some of 'em, I imagine it's might be their first jobs. Yeah. 
 
Kathy Walker:  So is there an age limit to being on the [00:17:30] squad? Yeah. So you have to be 13 because of child employment law. So you cannot earn money before the age of 13 down child employment. No. So the paid work experiences are from. 13 to 19 generally. 

[00:17:45] And I think one of the important things is that we make sure we are targeting young people from more socially deprived backgrounds. So one of the rules of our targeting, a client can come in and say, you know, I want to do a project in Peterborough [00:18:00] and Hull, and that's fine. But one of the things that we will always say is that we have to over index on young people on free school meals. 

[00:18:07] So that we are hitting those groups of students and that the money really makes a difference to them. Yeah. Yeah, I bet it does. Well, you get these stories. We always ask them what they're going to do with their money, and a lot of the children from, you know, poorer backgrounds will give money to their family or they. 

[00:18:26] You know, treat their family to a takeaway. It does [00:18:30] make an impact to these young people. 
 
Sarah Stone: Yeah. I was gonna ask how you find the young people. So you mentioned free school meals, do you select?  

Kathy Walker: Yeah, so we do select in terms of operationally, how we connect with those young people we work with. Schools. So we work with careers leads. 

[00:18:46] So when we have an opportunity, we'll contact careers leads and say, can you get this opportunity in front of your young people? And then it's on the young people to apply. They have to do it off their own back, you know, they can't really be pushed into it. We need to see [00:19:00] them, you know? Driven to actually go for the opportunity. 

[00:19:03] I kind of interpreted your question of how do you find them in terms of like what's it like working with young people, what are they like? And they're awesome. So, you know, I will kick off a program and I kind of feel like I've got. A hundred new colleagues for six weeks and that's how I treat them. I treat them like colleagues and they act as colleagues, I would say. 

[00:19:25] They don't act like children. They are [00:19:30] professional. They turn up, they. Work hard. They ask lots of questions. They show enthusiasm, um, they communicate well. I think of the 4,000 people we've had on the program, we've only had one person that we've ever had to remove from the program. So, you know, generally they're an absolute delight to work with. 

[00:19:48] And I think that goes against maybe some of the narrative that you hear around young people. That, you know, they're not gonna show up for work. We don't see that on the program. You know, they're an absolute delight to work with, [00:20:00] is my, how I find them.  

Sarah Stone: Do they all like try and connect with you on LinkedIn afterwards and try and stay a friend? 

[00:20:06] Kathy Walker: You know, LinkedIn again has got a 16 plus. So it's really quite difficult for young people in the networking space. But yeah, I do have a lot of people on LinkedIn, young people that I'm connected with, and it's really great to see them go on a journey. You know, we've had, one of our interns recently has. 

[00:20:25] Done an internship at the Financial Times. Amazing. So that was, you [00:20:30] know, fantastic to see because we knew that she was interested in journalism. We, you know, have the FT as one of our partners so we could, you know, do some introductions as well. So yeah, it's fantastic to see where they're going. So, yeah. 

[00:20:43] Sarah Stone: So if you are an employer and you maybe have, I don't know, apprenticeship opportunities or programs that you want young people to apply for, can they send you details of those and have you put them out to your alumni if you like it? Or is that only for your partners? 
 
Kathy Walker:  Generally it's for our partners. I mean, I think there's, for.[00:21:00]  

[00:21:00] One of the things as a small business you have to be really focused on is doing the job that you do really well. Yeah, and we write and deliver really good programs for young people. One of the things I would say is that employers are not great at thinking about early career pathways. So almost that's their job to do and if we can connect into them, then fantastic. 

[00:21:24] But you know, my job is not to kind of dictate to them how they do those [00:21:30] pathways. Now where it does work and you have an employer that is really proactive in that space, it works beautifully. 'cause we can line it up perfectly that as soon as a program is finished and then maybe an opportunity for an apprenticeship opens, we can, you know, funnel those. 

[00:21:46] Young people directly in is they can build your program into their early careers. Exactly, exactly. That's where it works really, really well, where there's kind of a bit of strategic thought on how do we link these [00:22:00] things together? That's where it works perfectly. I can see that working really well. And what kind of involvement does an employer need to have, apart from obviously providing the funding and obviously the inspiration and getting involved in shaping of the missions or the initial challenge? 

[00:22:14] Sarah Stone:  Do they need to send volunteers to turn up for sessions or record videos or what? 
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah, so we try and make it as low touch as possible. 'cause I think more than anything, they want it to be really, really easy. So what we say to them is, we need a little kind of [00:22:30] brainstorming session with you in advance so we can set the challenge correctly. 

[00:22:33] Then we do the really most of the heavy lifting in terms of the operational stuff and the program design. But one of the things that we have built in, which is kind of a favorite amongst the young people is in week three we have a q and a session with the employer. So they come in as an expert in that theme and essentially get grilled by a hundred young people. 

[00:22:56] Oh, cool. So it's brilliant. No pressure. Yeah. [00:23:00] What's fantastic is they're learning a lot 'cause they're asking those questions of an expert. You know, I'm not gonna be able to answer questions on tax law or clean energy, or whatever it is. You know, you need an expert to come in and answer those questions. 

[00:23:14] But the other benefit is that. We ask them to talk about the route that they have taken to get to that job. 'cause young people don't understand that, you know, they don't understand the wiggly line that most of us have taken to get to the job that we're in now. They [00:23:30] believe that they have to like point themselves in a certain direction and, you know, follow that line and they'll be successful and they stress about that. 

[00:23:38] So it's actually really important to show them that actually you can do this really wiggly line, and that's what most people do. So don't put yourself under so much pressure at 14, 15, 16 because it doesn't matter if you change your direction at some point. Yeah, you can still be successful. So those calls and those stories are super important for [00:24:00] young people. 

[00:24:00] Sarah Stone: Such a good point. I mean, I'm really guilty of it. Now that I've got teenage kids and I say to their friends, do you know what you want to do after you finish your array levels or whatever it is? And I hear myself and I think, what are you doing? You didn't have, I mean, I still don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. 

[00:24:15] You know? Like you just don't do you. And yet we insist. It's the questions that people ask of us. So we didn't have a clue to, and then we kind of repeat it. I think you are absolutely right. 
 
Kathy Walker: Young people have got so much information about everything, and that's not. [00:24:30] Ideal. You know, they then have a load more worries than we ever did when we were teenagers. 

[00:24:36] So I think we need to be realistic with young people, you know, and tell them that, okay, your career may look a bit wiggly, but also you may start your career and you do the grunt work. You know, I think there's a little bit of being realistic and saying. If you're going into an entry level role, you may have to do tasks that you will, you will have to, you'll even, [00:25:00] you will have to, even now, we all have to do things that are Exactly, yeah. 

[00:25:04] You just have to, 'cause it's part of working life that you just have to roll your sleeves up and you know. Exactly. I think there's a lot of, one of the problems with social media and how roles are represented on social media is obviously all the good stuff is being shown. And then what's the reality is, you know, maybe something completely different. 

[00:25:23] So there are some very boring parts of our paid work experience program. You know, there are [00:25:30] boring missions that they have to do. Not all of them are super exciting, but they have to do them. 
 
Sarah Stone: Yeah. You know, because that is working life, right? You have. Days, which are a bit boring, which absolutely awesome. 

[00:25:40] And you have days that you have to do some, you know, grunt work on a spreadsheet. Yeah. That is the way it is. Cleaning mailing list. Oh God. I hate that job. And I know, I suppose I should use AI for it. I'm a big fan of the platform and yeah, I'm really excited by it. Particularly. I wish we could talk about the project we're working on. 

[00:25:58] We're tweaking it, aren't we? And we're [00:26:00] tailoring it. Do you have other people like me that you are working with who've used the platform in other ways? So you've got the Super squads. Have you got any other programs that you can talk about where it's slightly different? 
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah, yeah. So we have our entrepreneurship program, future founders program. 

[00:26:14] So that is where young people are exploring their own startup ideas. So it's not paid, obviously, if they build a business that's making money. That's the incentive for them. There is a monetary gain at the end of [00:26:30] it. So future founders, we have had clients ask us to do hybrid deliveries so that there is more face-to-face. 

[00:26:39] Now, we don't have a massive team. There's only a handful of us. So in those circumstances. We train volunteers to go and deliver a sessions. So to go and deliver a workshop or do an hour with the students in school. So that's the model that we use when people want to do more of a hybrid model. And would the [00:27:00] volunteers be from the employer's workforce? 

[00:27:01] So their members of staff?   
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah. We've done one recently where. Volunteers were using their volunteer days. So they had three volunteer days and we structured a program that they were going into schools once every month for six months. You know, they did a lot of work in schools. 
 
Sarah Stone:Oh wow. Did you give them the content? 

[00:27:20] 'cause that's half the problem. It's not getting someone to go into the school. It's having them find the time to know what to say, prepare the materials, and then also. The confidence 'cause it's a bit daunting standing in front of those experience, [00:27:30] isn't it? 
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah, so we give them a training session in advance and that is how to facilitate with a room full of teenagers. 

[00:27:36] 'cause as you say, teenagers are a pretty tough crowd. It's really interesting because you see these very seasoned professionals and you know, they've got decades of experience and then they go in front of a group of teenagers and they get really nervous. And I can understand why, because they are intimidating. 

[00:27:54] They are loud. And so our training is to support them with that so that they can [00:28:00] do a really good job of working with teenagers. And to be honest, it's just about being authentic. Teenagers just want you to be really authentic and be yourself, so it's just about kind of giving them the confidence to, to do that. 

[00:28:13] Then we structure each of the sessions very carefully. Again, very much like our missions. Every step is kind of outlined so that they don't have to worry about that side of thing. We want them to connect with the young people. We don't want them to be overly focused on the content, so we [00:28:30] manage the content quite a lot for them so that they can then build those connections with young people. 

[00:28:35] Sarah Stone: Amazing. And if the program is remote, what I'm trying to work out is if you are going into schools to speak to a class of people, right? There will be people in that class that are not on the program. Is that right? Or do you only go and speak to classes where they're all on the program?  
 

Kathy Walker: No, we only talk to the young people who are on the program. 

[00:28:52] So. They may go in to promote the program, right, where you're talking to a whole year group. But once we have decided who [00:29:00] is actually completing the program, the volunteers would just be working with that smaller cohort. Yeah, it's quite a really not, so you could really target your support to a whole school if you wanted. 

[00:29:09] Not a whole school, obviously, but to a specific school if you wanted to. Yeah, exactly. That's where I think one of the things that's great about our programs is that they can be very flexible. So if you want to do a UK wide program and you want to like hit young people all over the uk, brilliant, we can do that. 

[00:29:28] If you are really [00:29:30] focused on two or three schools and you really want to support them, then again, we can flex our programs to be able to do that, and in those circumstances, that's where a volunteer model running alongside works really well. Yeah. 'cause you're working with the same school and the same students. 

[00:29:46] Yeah, I can match that. Would And what kind of feedback do you get from educators? I mean, I know you and I, we are working on a program in a particular. Region with a particular local authority. And we've had, I've been really surprised actually, how amazing the feedback from them has [00:30:00] been and how transformational they seem to feel this is going to be. 

[00:30:04] Sarah Stone: Is that a common reaction that you get from educators? 
 
Kathy Walker: Yeah, I think they love the focus on innovation and entrepreneurship and they give us a lot of feedback around that confidence piece. So. Often we will get feedback from schools about certain individual students who may not be doing brilliantly at school academically, but do brilliantly on our programs, you know? 

[00:30:28] Oh, really? They don't necessarily match [00:30:30] up, you know, being an entrepreneur. It doesn't mean you necessarily have to be academically strong. Yeah. You need to understand how to take risks. You need to know how to talk to people, persuade people, pitch to people. And those skills are, you know, slightly different. 

[00:30:44] So we do get feedback from schools about. Young people who really connect with the program, really understand the skills that we're talking about and really thrive in that space.
 
Sarah Stone:  But that's, do they see a difference then? Do they tell you, oh, Sarah's done [00:31:00] that program and she's normally, yeah, not doing very well, but actually I can see a real difference in her. 

[00:31:04] Kathy Walker:  Yeah. Yeah, because we focus a lot on communication as well. 'cause one of the pieces of feedback we get from employers all the time is that there's a bit of a kind of generational communication gap in the workplace. So we work a lot with young people on having an idea, but having an idea on itself is not enough. 

[00:31:21] You need to be able to articulate that idea. So we do a lot of work, maybe even up to about 10 missions that is around. [00:31:30] Articulating your idea, being able to communicate it to different people and in different ways. And I think that gives a real confidence boost to young people. To be able to have an idea is one thing, but then to get people on board with your idea, you know, that's a big confidence boost. 

[00:31:47] Okay, keep going all day. 'cause I just find it so fascinating. And the other thing as well is the platform. The thing I find quite interesting is teachers can log in, can't they? And they can see students work. Yeah, exactly. So we have different kind of admin settings on the [00:32:00] platform. So if you're an educator, you have a number of students on the program, you can then go in and you can see the work. 

[00:32:07] So yeah, it's very open source in that sense that there's. For other people. The functionality is quite sophisticated, I think, compared to other remote work experience and platforms that I have have seen. It's definitely one of the best. Did we say you're gonna do a demo? Like a demo video so people can, we're talking about the platform. 

[00:32:24] I've seen it, people listening and thinking, what does it look like? Well, yeah, this is the thing. It is like. There's [00:32:30] always an aha moment when people see the platform. They're like, oh, I get what you mean now. Yeah. That happened to me when I saw it. I went, oh, yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So I'm gonna record a demo and I think you're gonna put a link to it so that people can actually go and see what we are talking about. 

[00:32:47] I think the thing with the platform is that we've built it from scratch, so we have. Kind of full control over it. So where we see a need, we just develop a new part of the platform to kind of do that functionality. The key point as [00:33:00] well is it's fully safeguarded. You know, we are working with quite young children on this program, so it is completely safeguarded our tech. 

[00:33:08] So that means that young people can work together, but in a safeguarded environment. 
 
Sarah Stone: I was really impressed with that as well if people are interested. So how can people find you? What's your website? Where are you? How do they connect with you? 
 
Kathy Walker: I'm on LinkedIn, but I've got a very common name. So Catherine Walker on LinkedIn hopefully. 

[00:33:24] And our website is probably the best place to go. So it's startup sheers.org [00:33:30] and then you can get in contact with me or one of the team and we can start the conversation. 
 
Sarah Stone: Amazing. So please do. I would really highly recommend people to have a look at it. I, I love it. My final question for you is, and I say this 'cause you picked me up on this quite a lot. 

[00:33:43] I keep calling it a virtual work experience program, and you keep telling me, no, it's not Sarah, it's remote. Remind everybody why that is. There's a really good reason every time you pick me up on it. I think virtual makes it feel a bit one directional.  

Kathy Walker: So a bit like e-learning platform. So you are kind of just talking at the student and that [00:34:00] student is absorbing information maybe or maybe not, you don't know. 

[00:34:05] Whereas actually a remote work experience is much more two-way. So, you know, they have to work in teams. They have to come on video calls, they have to upload their work. They have to share their work. It's like, you know, the way that we all work nowadays, the modern world of work is that we're all at a desk, but we're all all over the place, remotely working. 

[00:34:27] We're having to interact with our colleagues. We're having to [00:34:30] deliver work. So what we're really trying to do is replicate that environment. So that's why I am a bit of a stickler for saying it's a remote work experience rather than a, a virtual one. 
 
Sarah Stone: You are absolutely right. And I think it's a really, really good way to end on it. 

[00:34:44] 'cause that's what made it so exciting for me when I realized that, I was like, oh, this is exactly what. Lots of young people need and, and I'm quite excited to watch it grow. Thank you very much for joining me and explaining about it. Yeah, it was awesome.
 
 Kathy Walker: Thanks for having me. 
 
Sarah Stone: I'm Sarah Stone, and you've been listening to Let's [00:35:00] Talk Social Value. 

[00:35:00] You can find all our previous episodes on our website or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you found this useful, then please do share the episode with your networks and consider leaving us a review. I'd love to know what you think of that episode, so please reach out to me and let me know. 

[00:35:15] You can find me on LinkedIn or contact me on our website. Site, www.samara.co uk. See you next time.