The risk isn’t real — I kept putting off my decision to leave my comfy corporate career that I had worked so hard to progress in — I knew I wanted to build something more meaningful but honestly, I was quite scared and thought the risk was super high so I kept justifying delay by saying it wasn’t the right time etc but in reality there is never a good time and it is always going to feel scary to quit a secure job with very well defined trajectory for the unknown. Even if you fail completely, the skill set you get and the experience you gain is something like nothing else so the risk isn’t that real and you should just jump and work it out as you go.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Hirons — MyEdSpace.
Sean Hirons is the founder of online learning platform MyEdSpace, which was launched in 2022 with the aim of making access to top quality educational resources and tutoring available to all students across the UK.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I come from a family of educators — my mum is a teacher and my dad is a lecturer. So I grew up in an environment where education was always prioritised. That being said, I was going down the wrong path at my first school due to the difficult environment — I didn’t do very well in my GCSEs. Things changed massively for me when I moved schools and got access to some of the best teachers in the country. My life turned around at A-Levels where I achieved top grades, which got me into one of the best universities which then set up my corporate career.
This change of learning environment and getting access to the most talented teachers was a game changer for my life. Now I’m so proud to be able to give that same access and environment change for thousands of other kids around the country, no matter their postcode or family income. This is why I started MyEdSpace.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
I think the most interesting story or learning that I have since we started came in the form of one of our social media videos. In this video, we taught such a simple concept of “what is a %”. This video has gained over 20 million views now and the engagement on it shows how deep-routed the problems in education truly are. Clearly a problem around the world, people are not taught even the simple concepts and it causes them to be unconfident in their lives and stops them achieving their potential. A great teacher can clearly make such a difference proven by the fact that we can explain concepts in short-form content that changes peoples’ whole understanding in a couple of seconds. Obviously, I knew the issues in the schooling system were very real as I started MyEdSpace to combat this, but it was shocking to me to understand the education system was breaking at such simple concepts / building blocks and when I saw how large a knock-on effect it had on people’s wellbeing and day-to-day lives, it was truly shocking.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We’ve had some dangerous typos on ads (luckily caught before they went live but imagine changing a vowel in “Maths” and all of a sudden you could be advertising something very different!) so always triple proof things!
I think the main mistake that we made early-on was that we tried to hire people that had a playbook and a reputation. There is no playbook and people that have a reputation are always trying to defend that reputation so it can be difficult to work with. I think it is quite funny how undervalued graduates are in the startup ecosystem. I truly believe that with the right training they can become hugely valuable to your business very quickly. We have doubled down on this approach.
Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?
Within two years we have taught more than 7,500 kids. We have given them access to the best teachers in the country. We are reaching multiple times more pupils than any traditional school does, so we’ve really increased the volume of education. We also create and share a huge amount of free content on our social channels, generating hundreds of millions of views. I think we’ve made learning cool and raised awareness about the education system and how we can improve it. Reading the comments on TrustPilot shows how we are helping kids every day and it is how I start every morning.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
A recent Trustpilot review I read really hit home for me in terms of how much value we are providing and the difference we can make. “Learnt more in 3h than in 3 years” This really talks to me in terms of the quality we provide vs. the status quo — we are not providing something just 10x better but it is of incomparable value. “Honestly have given me so much confidence”. This really is the impact that MyEdSpace is making and how an incredible teacher can change someone’s life.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
There are definitely things that can be done. Governments tend to go for the most obvious answer to industry challenges, which for our problem is recruiting more people into the teaching profession. But that doesn’t address the problem at the core and is akin to adding more top-of-funnel when you have a leaky bucket — why are teachers leaving? We need to take a step back, consider how we can use technology to adapt ways of learning. In theory, technology can help us teach the whole country. We need a new idea rather than more of the same.
My top three things would be: 1. Put teachers on a pedestal in society and treat them as the important members that they are. 2. Pay them fairly for their expertise and talent. 3. Change our approach to teaching using technology in a classroom. We don’t have to remove the human elements, but we can utilise it more to enable learning for students. In the last 100 years, all that has changed in a classroom is the chalkboard turning into a whiteboard.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
To me, leadership is rallying a group of people around a common goal, inspiring them to be the best version of themselves, and coordinating that group to relentlessly work on pursuing that goal every day.
I was captain and coach for my basketball team in University, which taught me a lot about leading a team and getting the best out of people, informing my leadership style in the workplace. I treat my team like a basketball team: Everyone has been selected for their talents so they made it onto the team for a reason but they need to continuously work to get better and grow with the team so they keep their spot. They have to help each other out constantly but the moment will come when they need to put the team on their back and outperform. They need to be ready for that moment. Everyone needs to play at a high level to achieve the end-goal.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
- The risk isn’t real — I kept putting off my decision to leave my comfy corporate career that I had worked so hard to progress in — I knew I wanted to build something more meaningful but honestly, I was quite scared and thought the risk was super high so I kept justifying delay by saying it wasn’t the right time etc but in reality there is never a good time and it is always going to feel scary to quit a secure job with very well defined trajectory for the unknown. Even if you fail completely, the skill set you get and the experience you gain is something like nothing else so the risk isn’t that real and you should just jump and work it out as you go.
- When recruiting, do not shy away from saying your mission and values. At the start, we focused our job descriptions on us being a start-up and telling people mostly about the role / stage of the company etc all the standard things. Then when speaking to the people we hired at the start we realised a lot of them joined mostly because they believed in the mission and when speaking to us, really aligned with our values. People are increasingly wanting to do work that is meaningful in the world and if you are tackling a problem, you should shout about it and make it known.
- Find an emotional benefit of your brand. People tend to focus on functional benefits which are the obvious things to put into your marketing but to really understand your customers, you need to be crystal clear on your emotional benefits. Once we did our workshop to identify our emotional benefits — our marketing was far easier to scale and the whole team was moving in the same direction in terms of understanding the customer.
- Agencies / consultants aren’t always bad — I used to hate the idea of working with agencies / consultants but have since changed my mind. If used in the right way, you can extract a lot of value. Find the very best at what they do (e.g. Youtube video editing) — make sure to plug one of your internal team into their workstream and then use it as a short 1–3 month contract where your internal team can learn everything possible from them in terms of how they work and identify all the differences to your internal workflow. You are paying upfront for an increased learning curve.
- Being cheap isn’t always the right thing — at the start, I was so frugal that I didn’t even want to invest in things that I for sure should have e.g. monitors, notion, slack etc. There are certain things like infrastructure of the business that you should just pay out for and get the best to make you more efficient and productive
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I have chosen to personally pursue that movement already with MyEdSpace — I want to raise the standard of education across the country (and world) in a way that shapes the future generation, impacts the global economy and improves overall quality of life.
Can you please give us your favourite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I have a lot of quotes I refer back to but one that I frequently come back to is: “Never take solace in settling, attain or die exhausted in the endeavour.”
I never settle and am constantly trying to improve. I truly believe that hardwork beats out talent in nearly all settings so I truly work hard to be better.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Alex Homozi. He has taught me so much and my team joke that he is an idol to me. I’m inspired by his ability to break down concepts into such simple and easily consumable lessons that they feel obvious. I truly believe that if someone just follows his teachings exactly, they have a pretty good chance of success in creating an irresistible offer,and then being able to market and sell it.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
MyEdSpace: myedspace.co.uk/
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/seanhirons1/
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Sean Hirons of MyEdSpace Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.