The Age of Independents: Rachel and Travis Gertz, Louder Than Ten

Today's show is about reinvention. Specifically how you take the core skills you have, combine them with your goals, add some insight into what your customers want, and come out with something totally new.

Rachel and Travis Gertz from Louder Than Ten, were running a successful design studio with happy clients. But they realized they wanted something different. Using their skills--an understanding of how to run successful teams, solve client problems and keep the trains running on time--they started developing a curriculum for teaching others how to do the same.

They started out slow, but have now totally reinvented their business around a real opportunity: training people to successfully manage creative projects and teams. While project managers are the lynchpin that keeps everything together, there have not been good options for learning those skills.

Rachel and Travis have designed their virtual apprenticeship program in an innovative and powerful way: allowing people to learn while working. In fact, the work you're doing becomes the subject matter that you learn from. That's a powerful model that could be applied to many situations.

As you'll hear in the conversation, this change was driven by a passionate conviction that they could do the work they wanted to do while helping people and organizations work smarter. In the process they reinvented their business and increased their impact.