Meet Brian Washburn | Co-founder & CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brian Washburn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Brian, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Honestly, I never really wanted to start my own business. There’s definitely something safe and secure about working for an employer and never worrying about whether there will be money in the bank at the end of the month to pay myself.

But back in 2012, I had an idea and I mentioned it to a friend of mine from my undergrad days of college. We were both so excited about this idea – a software tool that could help people put together better training workshops, faster. For a year we played with this idea and by 2015, we decided to launch Endurance Learning and make a go of the business. By then, the idea had blossomed for solely focusing on the software tool, to also providing training design and facilitation services.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Endurace Learning is a training design company that creates custom learning programs for clients that range in size from small nonprofit to global NGO to Fortune 500 manufacturing firms. We always say that we’re “content agnostic” – as long as a client has subject matter experts and materials, we can partner with them to create classroom training, virtual training or elearning that their employees and learners will *want* to take.

Sometimes companies will need to decide whether they want to just bring in a freelance instructional designer or elearning developer, or if they’d like to go with a small firm like ours. In these instances, the thing that sets us apart is that we have more than one person thinking about, working on and being creative to come up with unique ideas that will solve our client’s challenges. We also have in-house graphic design expertise and QA staff. An individual freelancer may do *some* things well, but they can’t do all of these things well, on-time and on-budget. When it comes to setting ourselves apart from other training design firms, our clients have said that it’s the way we listen and serve as a partner as opposed to a vendor working in a transactional relationship that sets us apart from other organizations they’ve worked with.

Growing from a 2-person partnership into a 7-person firm (with a variety of specialized contractors we can call in based on the needs of our projects) has not been a smooth climb, but rather it’s felt a little like what I imagine it feels like to ride on the back of a tiger. Fun, unique, exhilerating… and yet it hasn’t gone in a straight line and I really don’t ever want to fall off! We’ve made mistakes, we’ve whiffed on a few of our efforts, and from time to time we’ve had clients scale back unexpectedly which impacted our projections for where we thought we’d be. Though some of these lessons have been painful, the way we responded taught us a lot about ourselves and our company. It’s how we grow.

The thing the world needs to know about Endurance Learning’s story is that, when it comes to finding the right way(s) to help employees build skills through learning, training and development, there are plenty of options of companies that can do this cheaper, plenty of options that can do it slicker, and plenty of options out there that can do it faster. We haven’t found anyone out there who can do all three (competitive pricing, high quality and effective training, done on time), and do all three well. And while this may sound like a big, bold, brash brag, we do have a lot of customer testimonials that make the same point.

We have a lot of fun with what we do, and I think that makes what we do really good.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I live in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the most beautiful areas on the planet – and if someone eventually tires of the views of the mountains or water from our neighborhood in Seattle, then all we need to do is drive 45 minutes in any direction and we’ll actually be *in* the mountains hiking through shaded forests or *in* the water, searching for pods of orcas.

But perhaps I’d drag my friend out of bed to start our days with an early morning walk around Green Lake, a little lake a few blocks from my house that has a 2.8 miles walking (or running) path around its circumference. If it were summer, we’d come back here as the day grew warm and pull out a pair of paddleboards and enjoy a sunny day on the lake. Perhaps we’d even spy Ken Jennings out for a run (though I haven’t seen him running around the lake recently… he may have moved since taking on the full-time hosting duties on Jeopardy). Close to our home is the best pizza place outside of Italy (or so claims my wife, who lived in Italy for 6 years) called Cornutto, and we’d absolutely need to have dinner there at least once. It’s a place where the bartender knows us and knows our order, including all the modifications we make to the standard items on the menu.

Once we’d exhausted the more popular spots like the Space Needle, Pike’s Place Market, the Fremont Troll, and the various waterfront spots, we’d certainly have to venture outside Seattle. Perhaps this would include a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island or a day trip to Mt. Rainier. Or perhaps we’d venture a little further beyond, crossing the border and exploring Vancouver to the north, or if they forgot their passport, then a 3-hour train ride to the south to experience the quirkiness that is Portland, while grabbing a Voodoo donut.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There is no way that Endurance Learning would have survived through its infancy (nor grown to what it is today) had I been a solo entrepreneur. My business partner, Tim Waxenfelter, has been there since the first conversation about this software tool that might some day change the entire training industry. When my ideas get a little too big and crazy, he’s there as a reality check. When my ideas are a swing and a miss, he’s there to pick me up and help me shrug it off. When we have a big win, he’s there to help celebrate, and when we have our low moments, he’s right there to make sure we can find a way to keep going.

Website: https://endurancelearning.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianwashburn/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/flipchartguy