Lay off costly corporate conferences: Jewell Unlimited touts mobile-first microlearning in minutes

A learning agency funded by William Jewell College is bringing a fresh approach to professional development, hoping to curate the “unregulated mess” of digital information into mobile-first microlearning modules that will empower workers and help them advance their careers.

“Every single thing throughout human history that has ever been learned and codified, it’s already available right here on your phone for free,” said Glen Martin, client success manager at Jewell Unlimited. “This is an unregulated world. … We can take all of that search and all of that uncurated, unregulated mess, and we can put it into a five-and-a-half minute module on your phone.”

Glen Martin, Jewell Unlimited, speaks during a Northland Coffee Connect event Wednesday morning at iWerx Pavilion in North Kansas City

Martin and Conner Hazelrigg, executive director for Jewell Unlimited, shared how the startup — which operates independently from the university — plans to reimagine professional training and development during a Northland Coffee Connect event Wednesday morning at iWerx Pavilion in North Kansas City.

In contrast to traditional professional development seminars — which Martin said can be expensive, time-consuming and unproductive — Jewell Unlimited adopts a “fast and focused” approach to its library of 1,900 microlearning modules, which can be accessed anytime through the company’s learning management system.

“It’s not that hard to take a couple learning objectives and waste 50 minutes of your time,” Martin said. “What we do is take those learning objectives and create single learning objective focused, microlearning modules that take anywhere from four-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half minutes to complete. They’re on your phone, and you can do them anytime you want.”

The single learning objective focus and short length are important, Martin said, because they allow employees the flexibility to complete modules within the course of a normal day.

“When you have that window in your day where, ‘I’ve got a meeting in 10 minutes. I can’t do anything meaningful in 10 minutes. I’m not gonna start another task. I’m just gonna scroll through cat videos on Facebook,’” Martin said. “In that 10-minute period of time, you can knock out a six-and–a-half minute long microlearning. … This fits into the flow of your workday in a way that doesn’t disrupt what you’re doing.”

In the startup phase

Jewell Unlimited was founded in January 2021 as a way to help William Jewell College generate revenue streams outside of tuition and alumni donations, according to Hazelrigg, an accomplished entrepreneur and inventor who began working with her alma mater in October 2019.

The private university recognized the need to diversify revenue, Hazelrigg said, in order to “fight for [its] right to stay alive,” a sentiment which Martin also expressed starkly.

“William Jewell College has sat on that hill for nearly 175 years, and if it wants to sit on that hill for another 175 years, it’s got to figure out how to generate revenue outside of the traditional revenue streams of begging alumni for money and taking tuition from students,” Martin said. “None of us are entitled to continue to exist — not communities, not towns, not colleges, not businesses, not anything.”

Initially, Hazelrigg and university officials engaged in an ideation phase to determine what gaps existed in education and business, she said.

“I saw that there was a gap in the professional development world,” Hazelrigg said. “Everything was antiquated. Everything was expensive. Everything took way too much time. Going to a workshop … sometimes people come back and they’re like, ‘I learned two or three really great things,’ and you just spent $1,500 to learn two or three great things.”

“Our whole value proposition is, ‘What if we take those two or three really great things and turn them into microlearnings, and you can learn those in 15 minutes instead of an entire day that costs $1,500,’” Hazelrigg continued.

After running Jewell Unlimited on her own for more than a year, Hazelrigg noted that the company hired Martin in February 2022 and has since added Dr. Auburn Ellis and Deb Puett, who each bring years of experience in education.

Hazelrigg’s entrepreneurial background has dictated much of Jewell Unlimited’s approach, she said, noting she’s always asking questions and “challenging everything” in order to solve problems more efficiently.

“My entrepreneurial experience has, I feel like, led to us having a team that starts to think more entrepreneurially about our product, about our solution,” Hazelrigg said. “We have to be lean. We are truly in that startup phase, from the college’s standpoint, to getting this off the ground. We’re always trying to find a way to grow.”

Glen Martin and Conner Hazelrigg, Jewell Unlimited, lead a discussion during a Northland Coffee Connect event Wednesday morning at iWerx Pavilion in North Kansas City

Learning new expertise

Although microlearning remains “the heart of our business,” Martin said, part of the startup’s growth so far has been incorporating in-person, bespoke workshops into the business model.

“One of the things we couldn’t have predicted a year ago about our business is that we have continued to see traction in the workshop space,” Martin said. “We’re doing more live events than we expected we would do. That’s been rewarding for us, and we weren’t expecting that.”

Notably, Jewell Unlimited held a full day of live workshops for 1,500 general managers of McDonald’s locations throughout the western United States last fall in Las Vegas.

That experience, along with other in-person workshops, has helped the startup continue learning more about itself, its clients, and problems it could help solve, Martin added.

“We’re a learning agency that’s a ‘learning’ agency,” he said. “We’re taking on new expertise all the time, every time we take on a new client. Anytime you have a business problem that can be solved by having the people who work for you know something different, do something different, feel something different, or understand something differently, we can deliver that change into your organization.”

The ultimate goal for Jewell Unlimited, according to Martin, is to shift corporate learning from a necessary evil into a positive experience for all parties.

“[Many people] have a somewhat negative attitude when they hear words like corporate learning and online training,” he said. “Jewell Unlimited wants to make that a little bit different.”

“Learning doesn’t have to be painful; learning doesn’t have to be boring; learning should feel empowering,” Martin added. “And at the end of that experience, I’m more equipped to serve my employer well, I’m more equipped to serve my own career well, and most importantly, more equipped to serve my clients better because I had that learning experience.”