Meet Johnathan Reynolds, CEO of Learned Live

My name’s Johnathan Reynolds (Jo) and I’m an entertainer and CEO of Learned.Live. I’ve spent my whole life touring the world as a fire-breather and magician, and for the last 10 years, I have been running my own agency for other performers.

I’ve performed for every major Fortune 500 company and toured the world with David Guetta, but when lockdown restrictions devastated the entertainment industry I lost all of my work overnight. Out of work and looking for ways to share my passion, I spent the last year launching the UK’s first live and interactive skill-sharing platform for adults.

What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?

When my income dried up I started teaching online, something I always said I’d never do. My mum’s a teacher, and she encouraged me to start teaching magic classes. Within one month I was teaching children across the globe and was finally making an income sharing my passion again.

Eventually, I started teaching more lessons about how to start a business and manage finances effectively, which is when parents started asking me if I could run these classes for adults. That’s when I had my lightbulb moment - I couldn’t find any other site offering live and interactive classes on everything from professional development to wellbeing, music and dance, so I used all the money I had left to start Learned.Live.

I want to help people by providing access to the resources and support they need to learn any skill or subject they’re passionate about or interested in.

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

We’re the first platform in the UK to offer live and interactive online classes for adults. So much of learning is social, which is why our live classes let students ask teachers questions and receive instant feedback instead of learning from a pre-recorded lesson. I learnt everything there is to know about fire-breathing through interactions I had with other performers, and wanted to take the same approach to online learning.

We’re also among the first to let skilled people without formal qualifications teach on our platform. Anybody who has a hobby, skill or story to share can register and create their own course. We have a strict vetting process which means our students are only taught by high quality, inspiring and reliable people, from hobbyists to professionals.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

To be an entrepreneur you need an unwavering faith that everything will be alright. It’s easy to tell yourself ‘never give up’, but what that really means is having trust in your ability and your team to overcome future challenges.

That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with people who aren’t afraid to provide constructive criticism and who are smarter than you. Do everything you can to work with people who bring fresh ideas and the confidence to take on new challenges. They’re the people who will help you grow and adapt, especially when things get difficult.

Do you have a morning routine or ritual to get your day started on the right foot?

One of the joys of being your own boss is that you can schedule your day to maximise the time that your mind is working best. I’m not a morning person, so I teach all my classes from seven o’clock at night until midnight because that’s when I’m the most productive.

Spending time outside and doing things I enjoy also helps reduce stress and keeps me full of energy. I like to get outdoors as much as possible - I enjoy everything from metal detecting and paddleboarding to extreme sports.

What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?

Write your ideas down and research them meticulously. Analysing what others are doing will let you develop and improve your own ideas. What seems to be working for other people? What isn’t working? Letting your ideas be influenced by these findings will often leave you with a better product, and help you identify where your idea beats the competition.

How do you believe the evolution of tech will affect your industry over the next 10 years?

As a digital brand, we plan to make the most of emerging technologies. I’d love to incorporate virtual reality (VR) into the courses we teach. Imagine logging in to your computer and visiting the pyramids, or the bottom of the ocean to learn more about subjects you’re passionate about. This would make learning so much more exciting and accessible.

How did you fund the launch of your business and what creative strategies did you use to execute a minimal cash flow?

The first thing I did when I started the business was recruit friends and past connections. I knew I needed the best talent on board, so revisited my connections from the entertainment industry and cherry-picked the best team I could find. I gave them a job description and said this will probably change a lot in the next 10 months, but I’m building the dream team and I want you in it. Doing that saved us time and money that would have been spent recruiting, and let me hire people I already knew I could trust and who had the skills to do a variety of jobs.

I also had to make sure they would be paid properly, so I used the last money I had to pay them out of my own pocket. Although I knew the first 6 months would be tough, I didn’t want them receiving peanuts because they’ve worked so hard since the beginning.

How did you conquer those moments of doubt that so often affect entrepreneurs or stop many with great ideas – what pushes you through?

Every startup is going to have bad days. Whether you’re trying to break into an existing industry or start something completely new, there will be challenges and naysayers to make you have second-thoughts. In those moments of doubt, it’s important to remind yourself that you need to work hard to achieve anything big. If it was easy, somebody else would have done it already. When you’ve reached your next milestone, you’ll appreciate the dark days.

Any moments where you thought you’ve bitten off more than you can chew?

I’ve never felt overwhelmed, but I’m very aware that when you’re building something totally new it’s a race to the finish line. When I first started this project I called it ‘the race to the Moon’, because I knew if I didn’t get this off the ground now somebody else would beat me to it. There are a lot of people out there who are smarter than me, and the conditions have been just right to launch a project such as Learned.Live.

Being in the middle of all of that is daunting, and it’s a race to find talent and investment. Having the relationships and capital to kickstart the project on my own was a huge blessing, and helped me hit the ground running.

What social media channel would you say has worked the best for your business and why?

Facebook has been a great tool for us to get our message out there organically and helps us reach prospective teachers and students. We’ve been able to join different special interest communities so we can help people share and monetise their interests through our platform. As a community-driven business, we try to integrate two-way conversations into everything we do from our classrooms to our social presence.