Storytelling in Leadership Development

The Challenge

MasterClass was trying to ramp up sales to businesses, but was struggling to gain traction in the market. They had previously had some success selling bulk consumer subscriptions to companies that distributed those subscriptions to employees as a perk - but Perks and Benefits budgets were inconsistent and often cut.

The next phase was to sell MasterClass at Work as a Learning and Development solution, but the consumer classes were not packaged in a way that worked for corporate learning. To increase sales and find a fit as an L&D solution, we needed to re-architect the classes without shooting a lot of net-new content, to manage costs effectively.

The Approach

Many in the company doubted that the single-instructor classes could be refactored into skill-first, multi-instructor learning paths without spending on new production. But I edited together a proof-of-concept that demonstrated we could indeed build engaging, skill-focused learning that met the MasterClass bar for content quality.

Based on insights from market research, feedback from the sales team, and content we had in our library, I set out to build learning paths for key topics across each layer of management and leadership within an organization.

The Build

Programs packaged premium, cinematically produced instructor content into structured, outcome-oriented learning paths aimed at business results - a bridge between MasterClass’s consumer craft and the enterprise buyer’s need for measurable development.

I led a product team to make several small tweaks to an existing course experience, a team of editors to build out the content experience, the sales enablement team to put together resources for our sellers, and the brand and marketing team to come up with fresh branding to bring the new learning programs to market.

Single-instructor classes refactored into skill-first, multi-instructor paths - with fresh branding to bring Programs to market.

The Impact

The new “Paths” programs were an instant success in the market, quickly gaining traction among existing customers while unlocking large new enterprise deals.

Paths wove together engaging stories from renowned leaders and thinkers with explicit skill instruction from experts and practitioners. They became the flagship programming in our L&D solution, and were embedded in every sales demo for prospective customers.

The Paths received numerous mentions in the press, including a feature in Forbes, and were presented at industry conferences.

Featured in Forbes - a Kevin Hart Program.

Quoted in Forbes on storytelling in learning.