Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn and welcome to listeners in more than 100 countries. Who'd thought? If you want to get every new episode as they drop, remember to subscribe or follow and you'll get them as soon as they are released. And we'd love you to share episodes that you love. So today's guest is Sam Samarasinghe from Delenta. Hello Sam. Hello Claire, how are you? Good, good, thank you. So you're not a coach but you're in the coaching industry.
I know how ironic is that. I like that. I like that. I just thought it'd be nice to have someone who's in the coaching industry who's not a coach. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Yeah, it's wonderful to have this chat. So where in the world are you? I'm in sunny Berkshire, you know, in the UK. So sunny as expected, but you know, limited. So yeah, dark, gloomy, more or less, yeah.
so tell us a little bit about you and what got you into this intersection with the coaching profession and then we'll find all about your blingy toys. I love it. Yeah. Okay. So a very quick background to myself. I'm originally from Sri Lanka. I moved to UK early 2000 to study and I love the weather here and thought I wouldn't settle. Why would you go to sunny beaches and tropical climate when you have such a gloomy weather here?
So I thought, know what, so I did my further studies and you know, end up working in a large corporates, know, for 20 years almost, know, in digital transformation, you know, did a lot of things in IT technology, involved in the, you know, projects like London 2012 Olympics, et cetera. So there's a huge amount of, you know, exposure I got from technology. But then again, I was not, I was not very fulfilled person, you know, coming to my late thirties.
So I thought maybe there's another way, not the corporate world, start something purposeful. So that's where Delenta came together, the company that I'm running at the moment and knew for, hopefully discussed a little bit more about the Glimmy toy. And yeah, so here we are. after over a couple of decades, who knew that we end up in the UK and running a coaching tech business. Amazing. So tell us about your coaching tech business, Yeah, sure.
basically, back in 2018, this was, know, sort of I had a bit of a, you know, again, like I said, I was not very fulfilled person. I kind of left my corporate life. I was doing a little bit of traveling and I found the knowledge and experience actually made a huge difference in your life. So, you know, especially when you look at the emerging world, there is a lack of exposure. And then you have developed, there's so much research done, of talent and knowledge is there.
So I was going to start something more like a platform for people to share knowledge and experience with each other. The idea was simply, Claire, you are a coach yourself and you have lot of experience. What if you donate your couple of hours every month in my platform to share knowledge and experience with somebody else? So somebody else can book that time and have a session with you for free. And it was a charity, it was a social enterprise, social experiment almost to start with.
And it took off really well coming to us COVID, during COVID time especially. So we start 2018, we kind of build entire sort of infrastructure for people to have a session and a discovery, I mean, like a video conferencing call within the platform instantly with people anywhere in Like it doesn't matter where they come from. It's open to everyone. So almost like democratizing knowledge sharing kind of thing. So that's how we started. 2020 pandemic happened.
A lot of people who use our product was coaches and mentors. And that's how I ended up in coaching industry because a lot of these users, they said, I need this platform under my branding. Can you do that for us? So they requested us to create our platform or turn our platform into more sort of a coaching tech with their own white label branding. So we started the process with the community of coaches around, I think at the time around 10 plus countries.
Then we quite quickly, we grew into 22 countries, 25 countries. everybody wanted to sort of use a white label digital platform for their coaching businesses. This is coming to 2021. And again, I'm still not a coach myself. None of us are. We are a bunch of techies. We love to change the world for better. And coaching we found is something profoundly impactful. So we wanted to keep going, keep going, keep going and build things that our coaches want us to build.
We blindly built it like Claire, we didn't even ask question. You want to group coaching? Okay, how it works? All right, this is how it works. Okay, we build it. you need to have a, you don't want a course platform. yeah, you want a course platform. Okay, I'll build a course platform. Right, let's build a course platform. You want to run coaching session? Let's build that one. So, you you're dead, we'll build that.
So, because I'm coming from digital transformation background, all of these requests made sense. these are workflows of these, you know, these coaching businesses. And this is how they are navigating the normal physical world, but how can we turn that into a digital world? So that's how we started. That's how now we've been scaling the business for a while and since 2021. So we have done what 25,000 coaching sessions on our platform.
yeah, so many, so much of impact we are making through our vehicle infrastructure. So a lot of coaches from different parts of the world coming in to provide coaching through our platform. And what else? We work with the smallest, earliest coach to largest coaching companies, like hundreds of coaches. Wow. So it's been really emergent. Yes, exactly. yeah, it's keep going.
I mean, I don't know where we end up, but we want to keep go with this and enable coaches to make that impact that they're looking to make in their businesses. So what have been some of the good news stories from the coaches who use your platform? What are they saying is great. Yeah, I mean, I tell you, like one of the, I never forget this in my life.
I mean, after working for corporate life and, know, like a lot of corporates and all that, when you start a tech startup and, you know, with a building, this is something I never forget. So one of my colleagues actually called me, you know, was out, you know, somewhere and she said, you know what, you won't believe I added a demo. I said, okay. I mean, you normally do demos, right? Like, what do you mean? No, this person said, I can't see my screen. Sorry, what do mean? I shared my screen.
went through the demo, but this person actually can't see the see my screen. I said, like something wrong with your screen. What's going on? No, that coach is a blind coach. He can't see. I was like, what? So so Kevin, I still remember his name. And I said, what do you mean? Like, how does that work? He said he can't see, but he can hear me and the way I'm navigating, he can almost understand how we have designed the platform.
And he said he tried our platform using a blind software or something like that they're using. And it works really well than any other platform he used. So he loved to basically learn more. That's how we connected. and then I connected to Kevin and said, Kevin, I'm really interested in learning about your story and how you're making the impact.
And he basically gave me an entire life story about him and how he basically sort of became a certified coach and started coaching the people with the visual impairment and coming from difficult backgrounds because he had a very difficult background himself. So we were like so, I mean, like there are ADHD coaches, you saw platform and they say amazing stories about how they have changed people's lives.
Some people, I remember somebody mentioned about how she helped a what you call a lady who was going to suicide because of her relationship and how she basically able to. So we were also looking at how we can help these individuals who use or consume coaching to make it easier for them as well as coaches.
So at the beginning it was like a tool set for coaches, but then soon realized who actually for us to give a better service to our coaches or coaching businesses, we need to have a technology that can really work easily for those individual coaches who consume this coaching. So we did a lot of testing, how we can use this to the different devices, mobile devices. And you won't believe Claire, have coaches actually do not have a smartphone. wow. They don't use smartphones.
Basically, they say no, they can't. They don't want to use smartphones. So they sometimes connect to analog phones, like Nokia old phones. And they dial in to connect to those coaching sessions. So yeah, so it's very interesting when you look at how impactful coaching is. And yeah, I'm very, very fortunate that we came across this. So, so there's something there for everybody.
really interested to know so if I'm a I mean I run a coaching business we don't use your platform haha So what's in it for us? Yeah. This isn't a sales call, everybody who's listening. This is just an, for example, question. But what would be in it for us if we used a platform like yours? Yeah, I mean, okay, so I want to give a context before I answer that question directly, because again, this is when I came cross coaching back in 2020 during the pandemic.
People used to meet at, you know, I don't know, they said, we used to have sessions at a local library or go in the coffee shop. We go to corporates and meet these people and they... you almost can see the body language, et cetera, et cetera. And they have a notebook, beautiful notebook, they write everything down and all that. So they have date, times, diary management, everything is there.
So suddenly when pandemic happened, everybody went remote and everybody start using Zoom, different booking systems and all that, note system, resource management, emails and all that. And the life actually became a little bit more complex of running a business. than how it used to be. I mean, it's supposed to be easier, but you know, but more and more what I heard from them was that, you know, I use this software, I use this software, I use this software.
And I don't know even why I'm using that software, but I'm still using or paying for that software. So what I realized is actually, this should be very simple. These individual or coaching organizations running a very interesting, very human centered business. should be easy and should be like fun. Like, you know, it should be more impactful. When you finish a session, you'll feel like, yeah, let's go to the next one. Right.
And for some reason, most of users, I mean, when we met this, I hate admin. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I need a VA. I need that person. This person. I was like, okay, okay, okay. Listen. So what our vision was to bring all of that into one interface, one tab, one browser tab. where they can see the booking system, you can see your custom information, you can see, you know, the action goals, your financials, how you grow your business, what needs to happen, everything under one tab.
That was my, you initial thinking, like, you how can we make it happen? So, for you today is more like simplifying the technology, simplifying your business. And also, like I said earlier, you should not forget about your customers. as a way of how they consume your services. Like today if you say I'm a coach with a booking calendar and a website and etc etc. Everybody can do that.
I mean, you have to think about whether is that the best experience that you're offering for your coachee or potential person who wants to interact with you? And would you like to give a very unified experience for them with your branding, know, like welcoming them? You know, what is the journey when you purchase a service? OK, OK, they purchase six sessions, a package. What happened next? Like, how do you make sure they feel like, You know, I'm working with Claire.
feel I'm excited for my first session. Entire journey can be digitalized in that sense, because we are in a digital world, right? Most of the time, we don't get out of house much, and we try to sort of interact with people or link in others. And this is how this is going to work for next, I think, whatever the years to come.
So what we want to do is we want to map out that human journey on a system where onboarding can happen, how they can interact with you, how they can see their goals, how they can, how you can add give rewards to certain things that they basically positive behaviors and how can basically build a habit to a digital system like this. All of these are very important. I'm just throwing things out there because I'm sure people who listening understand how hard the coaching is.
First thing is providing a delivered like how complex, how skillful it should be, but everything else should be simple in my view. everything underneath should be, know, seemingly easier, right? And that's what we want to make. If you have not completed the session, you know how many remaining sessions there. We have that information. When you complete the entire package, Kochi knows that they have completed the entire package. They can rebook sessions if needed.
They can see our booking availability. They can see the goals that they are progressing every day. You can get the feedback on the same system. you should be able to see if you have multiple coaches, how many, which one is better, who's busiest, are they making money for me? Like what do they do like on the platform? Are there any cancellations, no shows, any complaints? All of these come to a central location, central system. And if a coach leaves, what happened to the customers?
Can you assign them back to another coach? So without you had to think about, right? How do you value your branding? How do you want to position yourself? Are you competing with Ezra or other technology platforms? Can you have your own cloud platform? And that's where we're coming to play. So there's a lot to think about. I'm sorry if I'm confusing anyone because I love this. I'm passionate about this. can see you love it!
So there's something about simplifying the back-office business processes but you're also almost talking about gamification. Right. that right? Yeah, some in some places, I would not say that we have nailed the gamification, to be honest, to the level that we want to gamify, because I'm a bit worried when somebody call about like gamification, these kind of words. I don't want to be the person say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're doing it amazingly.
And but we look at areas that we can how we can gamify, for example, of course, you know, that we someone build on the platform, how we can do it feedback. how someone rewards something to someone, how we can get reminders, for example, birthdays, or maybe promotional days, anniversaries, like how they can work with these customers really well and how we can store this information into a database like Delenta and interact with their customers to the best of your abilities.
But we are working on the gamification side. We have that in the horizon that you're talking about, maybe Claire. Yeah, yeah. So some of our listeners are soul traders. One coach, 10 people they work with, one laptop. Others, other people who listen have quite big companies. You know, we have quite a big company. So, so what's in it for the soul trader? Yeah, okay.
Soul Trader probably use multiple systems and based on who they work with from the marketing sales background, they might even complicate it little bit more. Spend, have to spend a little bit more money on other areas. So what we want to do is we want to simplify it very beginning. Like say, okay, what do you want first? You need to have a way of people come and find your information. book a session with you.
They should be able to sign up with you of maybe initial pro bono sessions, free sessions. They won't experience your coaching. They won't to get reminders for the sessions because they also can be busy people. They will track their progress and all that. And all of these customer engagement that if you look at, you can simply bring into Delanta, right? And then your operations start. They start like saying, okay, this person interested, they want to buy my service.
Amazing within two seconds you got everything sorted how many sessions what is is a subscription is a full payment is it a membership whatever you want we can create that information now you can see exactly in your money section in your financial section how that you know nicely working and then you can see the progress are they paying you money regularly how many sessions are remaining at a given time when did you last contacted them when do you want to next contact them
CRM, all that information. If you want to create a group workshop for free, if you want to create an LMS, like a course for free, you can do that. Everything is in one place. And now you don't need anything else, to be honest. And people have closed down their websites. You can bring entire website to us if needed. It is not a full blown website, but it's a platform provide you very clear understanding for your target market, who you are, why would they talk to you?
and they can interact with you in one single place. And you can see all that information in a single place as well. So I think it's simplified a lot of activities for them. I'll give an example. Say for example, if you're a solopreneur, like that individual coach, and you want to maybe set up a workshop group, workshop or event, right? Now, most of the people will think, going to do it. I don't know. I need to call VA. I need to call a web developer and get a landing page and all that.
In Delenta, it's just two minutes. You've got the group, you know, workshop set up, put it out there on social media or somewhere else. Get people to sign up because they can sign up. They all create it in the client portal. I mean, you know, they're on our system and they all see your messages. They can live chat with you. They can create a mini community on the platform. And you can do group workshops with them and then convert them to customers, right?
Because they consume your content and they think, I want to work with you long-term. I love that workshop that you did for free for us. So you can create like something called coach funnel within the platform for them to upsell cross-sell services to their customers. So yeah, here we go, right? Like there's a lot, but I hope that will give you kind of idea. I mean, there's lot. don't want sort of... confuse you or your listeners, but there's a lot.
And you can scale your business to maybe a of number of coaches if you want. So your business is going really well. You're maybe winning a corporate business now. So you need to know how many coaches you need to maybe coach maybe hundred middle managers or employees. Now you can bring entire coach team that you think you can trust with. to the platform and you can then match them with all these members, know, sort of coaches that you want to coach.
And you can tell the HR managers L and D that I got a platform. I am a scalable business. You give me a hundred coaches. I will sort that out. I'll give you data. I'll give you reporting, all that I can share with you as well. So also we are building a dashboard for HR managers now. So soon you can give that access also to your HR or customers. to see their information on your system. it easier for them to commission them. Exactly, exactly all that. it goes clear.
I'm not a coach again, like you said, we listen to our customers because they are very nice people. really, I never work in industry where people are genuinely nice and they think about their customers and they also be respectful and quite intelligent people. So when they say something, we just say, yeah, I think you're right most of the time. or you go and build that for you. I love that responsiveness in responding to feedback from your customers about how you can make it even more bespoke.
So what's your dream then, Sam? I'm a very simple person to be honest. know again, we are not a funded company. We are more like a community-driven business. And we want to really scale the business to a level where everyone who afford coaching can have a coaching session or platform. Today we look at The way, mean, every year we look at how many coaching sessions conducted on our platform and we've become proud about ourselves.
Like, you hey, we were part of that impact that these people are making and we are genuinely, you know, thrilled to see that. And what we also want to do is how we can help the technology even further, coaching communities. Like, I know there are discussion about AI, technology, how we can be a partner for these organizations. So they will feel little at ease. They know that there's a partner they can trust. They can sort of get some feedback about what's happening in the world.
And it's more like a genuinely having a conversation rather than you having a conversation with the private fund that company saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, buy more, buy more, you know, that's how you're gonna, you know, whatever, right? So we want to be that partner for most companies in this space. yeah, well maybe we'll come and have a conversation with you. You never know. No, absolutely. Everything starts the conversation, isn't it? Yeah, it does. Absolutely.
Everything starts with a conversation. So Sam, as we begin to round up, what do you want our listeners to know? What's the one thing you want them to take away from this call? Yeah, I mean, if you're a coach and if you are an organization, coaching organization, and if you're hopefully you started your coaching business with the impact in mind. And I think you should really congratulate yourselves of doing that, what you're doing. It's such a profoundly impactful thing.
And I know because I was on the other side of the coaching sessions myself. And I think, you know, whatever we can do together to help, let's do it. But you should really congratulate yourself in whatever the difficult situation that you are in. It's such a great space and we want to really help people to basically be a sustainable business.
So hopefully these people continue to do these great things and really take time and congratulate themselves for the hard work that you are putting to help these businesses or individuals. thank you. And I think there's something, everyone who's listening, you know, we all need good back office support. And for some of you, it will be a platform, for some of you, will be something else.
But there's something about making sure that our back office is good enough that it really facilitates the face-to-face work that we do with the people who have coaching from. Absolutely. And also it's a digital world player and we have to be a little bit, you know, understand about who have access to your data, where these data resides and how these basically are going to be managed. And you know, that's where the cybersecurity compliance are there now.
I think ICF starting to talk about ISO 27001, one of the cybersecurity compliance. It took us for one year to get that compliance established in our business. So we invested a lot. on those sort of things. And we have annual pen test, internal audits, all of these things. So be conscious, because it is the important thing in this stage, in this age of running a business digitally. You need to be a little bit savvy on that as well. Indeed.
And you have to be savvy on things you don't know about yet. And that's the tricky thing, isn't it? says a partnership comes in. So Sam, how do people contact you if they want to find more about Delanta? Yeah, mean, DELENTA.com D as in D as in Delta E as in E. Hopefully there's some information here. Okay. My name as well, if you're watching DELENTA.com DELENTA.com is a website and of course you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Sam Samarasinghe Hey, I'm founder and CEO of DELENTA.
So yeah. Brilliant. So thank you, Sam, for coming to the Coaching Inn. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I hope this has challenged you about your back office. Whatever you decide to do with it, it's worth having an extra look to make sure you've got everything in place. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.