Enterprenuer
Panos is co-founder and CEO at LearnWorlds. This all-in-one platform allows you to create, sell & market online courses, provide training for customers, partners, employees, other users, and much more.
LearnWorlds is more than a business. The passion of Panos, Fanis, and George, three educators and scientists who have created numerous eLearning projects over the past decade.
LearnWorlds allows online educators, trainers, and businesses to create interactive and social learning experiences.
This one-stop solution is perfect for every business and course creator.
LearnWorlds, unlike an on-premise LMS system, is 100% cloud-based and always up to date.
There are no updates. School owners can now focus on the most important to their business: teaching and passing on knowledge.
Panos holds a Ph.D. from the University of Education Technology.
He has been designing and researching e-learning apps for more than 20 years.
Panos has extensive experience as a computer science teacher, software engineer, manager, and e-learning researcher in numerous EU-funded research programs.
Before starting LearnWorlds, he was a policy advisor for research and innovation at the European Parliament.
Panos enjoys mountaineering and photography. Panos is happy to work in multi-national environments under extreme pressure.
What is the story of LearnWorlds?
My co-founders’ passion was to develop cutting-edge learning tools for teachers and foster better relationships with students.
We started this idea by going back to our Ph.D. study period, our research university days.
This was when we studied state-of-the-art learning. We noticed a disconnect between theory and practice as we explored the best ways to use education to learn and teach.
The tools people had access to were far less than those we used in academia.
LearnWorlds was born. It is a lightweight cloud-based LMS that can be customized and white-labeled.
This allows educators of all kinds to share their knowledge interactively and powerfully.
How do you stay productive?
It can be hard to stay productive when so many things happen every day.
The thing that makes the most difference is hard work.
My typical day starts with getting up at 6:30 and sending my daughter to school.
I arrive at work at 7:20. Then, I deal with many emails and stay organized by following the tasks.
Next, I have a brief meeting with my co-founders. From there, it’s on to many discussions with my team and coworkers and customers and investors.
It is also great to find some quiet time and dive into more significant problems we might face each week.
How do you bring ideas to life?
It’s an interesting question. This will depend on where you are at the moment as an entrepreneur and a business owner.
For example, I used to prefer to create prototypes when I first started to develop ideas.
We would think of something and make a prototype to see how it worked.
Then we would try to improve it. We were hands-on researchers and always created educational tools.
With a larger team, ideas can often be brought to life by others much more effectively than I could on my own.
I communicate accurately and give the information necessary to get people to sign up.
This way, it’s not just a concept that no one can implement or an idea they don’t believe is possible.
Although it is more complex than doing it yourself, you can still achieve outstanding results by hiring professionals who will help you bring your idea to life.
What’s your favorite trend?
The digitization of learning is a trend that excites me. It is the fact that learning itself is becoming digital.
Our lives are becoming more connected. This includes how we work (remote workers and digital nomads are on the rise) and how we socialize (everyone with internet access can communicate with anyone around the globe).
It was only natural for it to revolutionize the learning industry and drive exponential growth in e-learning.
We are not here to take over traditional schools or universities as a business. We are educated and strongly believe in formal education.
The best part about e-learning is its actual benefit: It gives billions of students, professionals, and learners around the globe quick access to information that will help them improve their skills and situation.
We also know that e-learning can be incredibly efficient and effective on a large scale. We believe we are in a position now to see it happening all around us.
What habits make you productive?
The most important thing is to find time to study a topic and not have to attend meetings.
By doing this, I can spend time researching and ensure that we think before we act.
It’s challenging to keep these hours clear with today’s work environment constantly interrupted by email, social media, and Zoom.
Once you do your research and dig into a topic, you begin to see the bigger picture.
Instead of just completing tasks and banging about, think more, prioritize, and see the essentials of what you are trying to achieve.
What’s your advice for the Noob?
This is unfortunately not possible. I am glad about that because you can only learn from your mistakes.
It’s almost like children playing with fire. Sometimes, the best lesson is to get slightly burnt, not scorched.
It is okay to get a minor burn when involved in entrepreneurship.
I would advise being more ambitious early in my career, especially in business.
Think larger, be more ambitious about our capabilities as a team and as a product, and strive for more significant goals.
Ambition? I think that’s it.
What is one thing we can all agree on?
I believe humans possess at least one superpower: The ability to learn any subject we set our minds to.
What do you recommend as an entrepreneur?
As much as possible, I recommend measuring and setting clear goals.
It’s never easy to be at your best. However, having clear, quantifiable objectives and KPIs and being able and willing to follow them is essential.
You can improve something if you measure it. You need to ensure that you follow the correct metrics and take action on the numbers to influence the situation.
We suspected this, and it was something we did early on. However, as the business grows and the team grows, so does the ability for the team to do more activities.
This is when it becomes more important to improve those metrics.
What’s your rich strategy?
Education is a critical factor in improving our business, which we also noticed.
This is not just about learning about new developments, trends, and deals out there, but also about teaching others.
Education can be a powerful form of marketing. It can be subtle and very effective, which we realized early.
It’s informative, so people get value from it. It isn’t salesy or pushy. It fits in better with our business mentality.
We provide value and share the knowledge we gain.
We always make it a point to share what we have learned from our most successful customers to the community through webinars, ebooks, and other free resources.
People appreciate this and feel more connected to our brand and its offers.
How do you overcome Failure?
One of the blind spots we had when we first started our entrepreneurial journey was that we didn’t listen enough to customers.
We had no customers when we started.
So we moved forward only knowing what science said about the most important steps people should take in e-learning.
We spent a good part of two years building the platform we envisioned.
After using the platform, we didn’t take enough time to reach out to actual customers.
This was more of a research project. We wanted to make the best platform possible.
However, our final vision was very different from others.
Once we realized this, it was a matter of urgency to listen to our customers.
We started showing the platform to them and then adding or removing features based on their feedback.
Our customers became co-creators of our platform. You must be careful about filtering and selecting the correct feedback.
We see amazing lessons learned from this information about improving a product or a company.
By listening to them, customers can provide valuable insights into future trends and the market’s direction.
Can you share a business idea?
I will share the one idea I have with many of my friends: starting your online school is a great way to create something meaningful.
Think about the things you are most knowledgeable about and what you could share with others.
Then, see if that knowledge can be turned into a business or even a value to your primary business.
This could be as simple as offering courses for free. Still, it can help you grow your influence in society or elevate your entrepreneur, professional, or expert status.
We live in an age of the knowledge economy. Expertise and knowledge are constantly in demand.
Although it might not be a large business, it can add significant value to any company.
Someone wants to learn everything that you are passionate about and know well.
You can start a digital business without capital, hardware, logistics, or factories.
All you need is your intellectual capital and perhaps a laptop.
It can just be there, bring you income, and allow you to live your life as you choose.
What’s your recent best buy?
Personal expense: I purchased a pair of bone conduction headphones.
They are incredible. Although I was familiar with the idea, I was shocked at how effective they were.
You can run, bike, cycle, or do other activities while listening to music or exciting podcasts.
This is one small way technology can transform your daily life.
What are your favorite Softwares or Apps?
Zapier, an incredible piece of software, is something we have come to depend on throughout our business and personally.
Our platform has helped many of our customers create unique automation.
Zapier, an agent automation wizard and elf by your side, connects various applications on the Internet and helps automate tasks and save you tons of time.
This service is beneficial for digital entrepreneurs.
Which book would you recommend?
Although I don’t know how unique that would make me, I wouldn’t mind recommending a business book.
My favorite book is “The Humorous Science FictioPanos Siozos Co-Founder of LearnWorldsn Book.”
Science fiction, in general, and this book specifically, is a great way to open your mind to divergent thinking.
This book challenges almost every common concept and opens your mind to new perspectives on what you take for granted.
Each entrepreneur is a tiny revolutionary. This book will teach you to filter information and see reality differently, question what you see, and think in divergent ways.
This book can help you to connect disparate ideas and be creative.
This book is an excellent example of how to flip reality upside down.
Even if this book doesn’t help, and you don’t get the next great entrepreneurial idea from it, it will give you a few hours of enjoyment.
What’s your favorite quote?
My favorite quote is “Getting Better Every Day.”
We have done this with our business, which has had a tremendous impact.
It’s sometimes called compounding growth in business terms.
Over time, you can achieve extraordinary growth by improving your habits, such as walking more or getting one more lead per day on the business side of things.
You can think about the most important and make it better each day.
You’ll be amazed at the difference this will make in your efforts to achieve your goals in a few months.
Key Learnings:
- Passion can drive a business. LearnWorlds is a case study of how three educators passionate about education created an intuitive, yet powerful white-labeled LMS that was eCommerce ready. It has advanced features that allow customers to educate, sell, or train their employees.
- Spend some time without interruptions, and find free time to research a topic. When you’re able to research and dive into a subject, you can start to see what is really important for your company.
- In the beginning, be more ambitious about your business. Be more ambitious, confident in your abilities, and strive to achieve greater goals.
- Consider what is most important to your life and take a step forward every day. You’ll be amazed at the difference this will make in your efforts to achieve your goals in a few months.
