Shawn Boom
Clint Betts
Shawn, thank you so much for coming on. You're the CEO of Labster, a very interesting company focusing on a really interesting problem that became pronounced during COVID-19, almost like a nursing shortage, right? I remember hearing that, for the first time, we don't have enough nurses. And you were focused in that type of space. So tell us about Labster, how you became CEO, and what the company does.
Shawn Boom
Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me. Labster is an incredible organization. I started in January here as the CEO. This is my second time as a CEO. And I took over with two founders who had built the organization up. And as you had mentioned during COVID, like a lot of businesses, everything was disrupted, and education was no different. And there was a really big difficulty at the time when students could not get into science labs. That goes through the workforce, where those students in STEM programs ultimately move into healthcare, and they struggle with getting hands-on practice and application, trying to take theory from the books and lectures and be able to apply it into reality. And so enter Labster. We have virtual simulations for college and high school biology, chemistry, and STEM programs.
If you think back, Clint, when we were learning, we were opening up textbooks and looking at diagrams and reading paragraphs. And students sometimes read their books nowadays, but we want to make that a really immersive and interactive experience. So we started really focusing heavily on how we could help students get embedded in the learning and be player one in that journey.
Clint Betts
Yeah. What do you think the future of education is? You mentioned that we used to do workbooks, read from actual books, and do all these types of things. There was no such thing as iPads in our classroom, nor was there a computer lab that had three or four computers, and you've got to reserve a time. It's a completely different world. So, what is the future of education?
Shawn Boom
I think the future of education is immersive. It's personalized. It recognizes that there is a diverse set of learners that come from different backgrounds and have different barriers and different strengths. The future of education really brings all of that together and makes sure that we can meet the learners in the moment with the kind of modality that best speaks to them so they can be successful. So it's all about learning outcomes, but we don't all learn the same way or have access to the same kind of resources. I think that bringing accessibility to diverse groups of learners is the most important thing.
Clint Betts
So does Labster work with universities and colleges and things like that to get your software in there? How does that piece work?
Shawn Boom
Yeah. We're a global organization, and we'll work anywhere from high school to college. So I'll give you a good example. In college chemistry or biology, you might be trying to learn a concept. And in a book, that concept might be something like DNA. And so, if you want to learn about DNA, you can read about it or immerse yourself in it. So, one of the things we'll do is build a scenario around DNA. So we can drop a student at a crime scene, and they can go collect the evidence and then bring it back to the lab to discover the whodunit. So we really drop the learner into the environment. Especially if you're a visual learner and want to be hands-on, this gives you the opportunity to really practice what you've learned in the lecture or in the book.
If you take that all the way through to the nursing program and the platform that we have, we know that there will be a million nurse shortages in the next couple of years. We've got an aging population in the United States, and really across the globe, it's a workforce issue. So getting nurses both trained and then feeling confident when they get out into practice and into the healthcare setting that they've had enough hands-on experience with various scenarios is really important. And so what we'll do there is we'll actually allow in a virtual reality setting the nurse to put the headset on, and they can get in and interact with patients, and it gives them a lot of practice, so not just the book smarts, but the opportunity to really apply that theory.
Clint Betts
Do you have a sense of why there's a nursing shortage and why that's going to continue to be a problem for the next few years? Is there a particular reason why? Is it just the aging population?
Shawn Boom
Yeah. The aging population and then nursing is a... Healthcare, in general, and nursing specifically, are really high-demand, high-stress careers for people to choose from. And especially after the pandemic, there was a lot of burnout in that space. So it's a culmination of all of these things. And we can't solve it overnight. So we really need to think back into the education pipeline and get more students interested in STEM because ultimately, the STEM-educated students become the next students that choose healthcare. So, thinking about the overall pipeline of where students are coming from and how we can make them successful at every step of the journey is really important to us.
Clint Betts
How is AI changing your company?
Shawn Boom
Yeah. In my opinion, AI is not a differentiator specifically for any tech organization. However, I think it can enable differentiation in a really unique way. We're thinking about it in a couple of ways. From an industry perspective, first of all, we think it gives the opportunity to create a much more immersive personalized experience. So, we intend to use it in that way to have a learning architecture where a student enters into a learning objective and can follow a pathway that best serves them and the way that they learn. When I think about operating within the organization, I want it to show up on the backend, driving cost efficiency and speed. That's the most important thing. Speed of delivering in our roadmap out to the market so we can put more features out more quickly. So I think it'll take 80% of the content costs out of the organization or allow us to accelerate content generation by 80% when we're complete with a lot of the platform work that we're doing.
The other place that it needs to show up is in the hands of the learners themselves. So, we're focusing first on the backend efficiency side because that infrastructure will ultimately build a deep capability for personalized branching of different learning styles. And then, ultimately, when that shows up on a platform, the learner can have a much more personalized experience. When we think about capital allocation, one of the things that I really think about first is what's going on with the macroeconomics. So, macroeconomics would dictate tech organizations that used to think about growth at all costs to think about moving towards profitability. And so we want to make sure that we're using our resources in a sustainable way so that we've got the dry powder to invest in innovation. And so, that sustainable opportunity with AI is right on our doorstep. And then I think the next thing is how that shows up in the market to drive innovation. So, we'll continue using the dry powder against that innovation.
Clint Betts
Tell us about this research you launched in October. October 1, I believe.
Shawn Boom
Yeah. We talked to thousands of nurses. What we want to understand is when they get into the workforce, how ready they are to practice, and what tools they used along their educational journey to get out there and feel confident. And what we learned is a couple of things. Of those who are using VR and immersive technology, 90% of them are saying that they feel way more ready to be out there in practice. So it's driving a lot, not just competence in the content that they need to learn, but confidence in applying it is really important.
The other thing we realized is just how stressful nursing is, especially in your first or second year in practice. Well, over 40% are saying that in the first couple of years, they've been thinking about leaving the field. And they just put all this time and money into getting trained. And it's because when you get out into the field, the nurses are telling us that they weren't ready for the high acuity, high stakes situations. Therefore, being prepared with not only the hard, concrete technical skills necessary to be a nurse but also the soft skills of dealing with patients in stressful environments and family members really shows up as a stressor for them. So what we want to do is allow for tools where they can practice those soft skills along the learning journey to make them feel just a little bit more equipped once they get out there and practice.
Clint Betts
So, get back to the AI thing really quickly. How do you think that changes healthcare overall? What are you thinking... Because as we look, it's going to change every industry. It's going to change everything. And it's going to be... Like you said, it's not necessarily a differentiator because everybody's going to have it. But what do you think... In particular, as I've been reading about changes in AI, it seems like healthcare may come up the most as [inaudible 00:08:48].
Shawn Boom
Yeah. I think it really does. So I think it'll show up in a lot of ways, some that we can forecast and others that we can't. I think back to the learning concept that I mentioned before: personalization will show up a lot more in the healthcare space, and so it'll be really fascinating to see how tech providers and owners of IP and content come together and really wrap that around the best patient care possible. Obviously, patient outcomes are the most important thing when we think about healthcare. So I expect that we'll see a lot of innovation focus there. And that's really if you think about where we're working, and that's what we want to do is provide the best learning outcomes for the nurses that are coming in because, ultimately, an equipped and ready nurse is going to provide a much better patient outcome. And I think you can apply that paradigm across all of healthcare.
So personalization is certainly one place it'll show up. I think my hope is it would show up on driving cost efficiency for the organizations, hospitals and post-acute, home health providers and others to be able to lower their cost basis. Hopefully. It'd be nice if we could see that show up in the cost of healthcare as well.
Clint Betts
What does a typical day look like for you?
Shawn Boom
Personally, as I wake up, I spend some good time on self-reflection. I make sure that I get a workout in. That gets my brain really sharp and moving. And then we are a global organization. We've got staff all over the world. So, I tend to spend the early part of my morning after my routine with the team, where I am a blocker on things that are going on, making sure that I'm helping the team connect culture, strategy, and mission all come together. Then, at the end of my day, I really focus on my deep work time. So I'll block time off a couple of times a week to really go deep and make sure that I'm focusing on a company strategy, whether that's individually with different stakeholders like our investors or with the executive team or team members.
Clint Betts
What do you read? What reading recommendations would you have for us?
Shawn Boom
Yeah. I consume as much as I can. So books and podcasts like yours, of course. I love the HBR articles, so I stay on top of all of those. One of the books that I've been really fascinated with lately is a little bit of an older one, but it's by a gentleman named Michael Singer, and it's called The Untethered Soul. And there's a subsequent version called The Surrender Experiment. And it's a bit philosophical and maybe spiritual in nature. And what I've personally found lately is I'm grappling as an executive with the difference between striving and surrendering. And so, on the striving side, we oftentimes sit in our seats, set high goals for ourselves and for our team members, and do anything it takes to get there. And that's how I'm wired.
At some point in our career, I'm in my mid-40s, and you realize that joy oftentimes comes from the moments where you're able to let go and surrender. And so, I am trying to really be intentional about when I put my striving hat on and when I'm going to step back and reflect on the moment and find joy in those special moments, whether it's with my team or with my family.
Clint Betts
You mentioned before that this is your second time as CEO. What have you learned about leadership and what it takes to be a good leader?
Shawn Boom
I think our role as leaders is to create value, first of all. And so if you step back and think about that, inherent in value creation means we've got to cause change. And so you want to, I want to inspire the people that are around me to have a positive impact by driving positive change. So, we need to motivate people with a purpose and a mission. We need to teach them how to drive change management and get people to come along on the journey because the work we do as leaders just doesn't happen because of the work we do personally. It is about getting our teams motivated and organized around something that's the greater good and then driving all the resources that are necessary to get there.
And the times I've found that I put that striving hat on and say, "I can go do anything," I typically fall short. I typically would fall short. And it's when you step back, and you're really intentional about mobilizing an entire team, and that that team is organized around a business system where inputs drive outputs, and you're really able to control those inputs helps you drive to a better output.
Clint Betts
Yeah. Yeah. How are you thinking about 2025 as you look at... We're post an election now, so the uncertainty of that is wrapped up. How are you looking at 2025 from a fiscal perspective and just the overall environment?
Shawn Boom
Yeah. We shored up our expenses in the past couple of years, and I think cash is really king. We want to make sure that we've got a good runway. We, as an organization, certainly have a lot of runway. And so I think right now, the focus is on making sure that everybody understands the vision and that the resources are organized. And for us, 2025 is a year of execution. We can pay attention to what's happening in the macro, but I think for us, the opportunity is no different than it was in the past. We've got a market that needs the technology that we're building. We're organized around a purpose that motivates our team. And our customers really are telling us that when we partner in the right way together, they're seeking and finding a lot of value.
So for us, it's about peer execution, not just on 2025, but of course, every leader at this time of the year is setting a budget for next year, and as we record this, we're in November, but you also want to have a multi-year plan. And so we're pretty excited about where our industry is going in the next few years and how we can organize our strategic roadmap to get there.
Clint Betts
Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. I mean, sometimes the macro doesn't even matter, right? It's more just like focusing on what's in front of you and continuing to grow your customer base and what they need. Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Shawn Boom
Yeah. One name that comes to mind is a woman named Sally Edwards. When I graduated from college, I had to do an internship. My undergraduate degree was in kinesiology and physiology. So, I spent a lot of time in the sciences lab and the human performance lab. I thought I was going to go train Olympic athletes. This is a woman who invented the Heart Zones Training system, was an Ironman triathlete in the Hall of Fame, and was hanging out with all these top professional athletes. I knocked on her door until she said yes to bringing me on for an internship. And so I moved to California. That internship turned into a job. She wasn't going to teach me how to train Olympic athletes, but she handed me a bunch of business tasks back in 2000: build a website, figure out book distribution, and set up events. She also taught me how to think about running a P&L.
And that set the course for my career, how to match things that I really cared about, so my deep passion as a leader with business and commercial outcomes. And so, for the next 25 years, I've been on that journey of following my passion, specifically in education technology and working with some incredible investors along the way. So, people like her at every step of my journey have given me such gracious opportunities to mentor me, to make me think differently about business, and to really think about how I bring value to my team. So, hopefully, I show up that way as well for the team and people that I work with.
Clint Betts
Awesome. Shawn, seriously, thank you so much for everything you do. What an incredible company you're running! Thanks for joining us. Really appreciate-
Shawn Boom
Thanks, Clint, for having me. It was really nice to meet you.
Edited for readability.