Training based in neuroscience, events made to inspire

Matthew Day

Staff

January 20, 2025

EAU CLAIRE – Winston Churchill once quipped, “I am always ready to learn – although I do not always like being taught.” 

Sarah Welsh said she’s devoted her career to closing such a gap, fascinated by the art of teaching and the science of learning. 

Beginning with her time as a music teacher and carrying through her career as a software training and development manager, Welsh said she’s devoted 15 years to understanding the very process of understanding. 

Since mid-2024, she said she’s been sharing her wisdom and strategies by leading training sessions and hosting workshops via her independent venture, Learn Better. 

“Learn Better is a training and development company where we work with different businesses to help them create custom trainings,” Welsh said. “The idea is that a company might come to us and say, ‘Hey, we’re having this type of trouble,’ or ‘we need to implement a new piece of software’ or ‘we need some type of learning experience developed, but we don’t necessarily have a training and development team.’” 

In other cases, she said, companies have an in-house training, development and/or HR team, but these teams are often overloaded and spread too thin with compliance, regulations and onboarding responsibilities to effectively impart new knowledge. 

Welsh said Learn Better also hosts private and public “micro-learning” workshops. 

“Those workshops are really working through tools and frameworks I built over several years,” she said. “They can be useful in any business setting, so it could be something like functional creativity or presentation skills… It’s really about giving tangible tools that people can use in practice.” 

From full-on, customized training programs to single-day workshops, Welsh said neuroscience – which is defined by Merriam-Webster as the study of “anatomy, physiology, biochemistry or molecular biology of nerves and nervous tissue and especially with their relation to behavior and learning” – is at the root of everything in the Learn Better process.

“Throughout (my career), I became just increasingly obsessed with the neuroscience of learning,” she said. “Everything that I employ in the process and the training framework itself sits on a foundation of neuroscience.” 

The betterment begins 

Amid her 11 years teaching general music and choir for public schools, Welsh said her rapidly increasing interest in neuroscience led her to collaborate with Mickey Kolis, a university professor, and Benjamin H. Kolis, an actor and theater devisor. 

Together, the three co-authored “Brainball: Teaching Inquiry Music as a Team Sport,” a book Welsh said is essentially “about learning, writing and music.” 

“Then I also got my master’s degree in educational leadership,” she said. “So, when I went to (work as a training and development manager), I was kind of using all that (neuroscience research), but in a corporate context.” 

Welsh said an example of her project-based work would be teaching her company new technology pertaining to a newly acquired company. 

“Build content, organize it in a way where people can learn it in a meaningful way – I got a chance to really figure that stuff out on a scale fairly globally,” she said. 

From the experience, Welsh said she gained the ability to create trainings, videos and activities from scratch, breaking down complex topics into digestible and engaging formats. 

One such project, she said, would ultimately lead to Learn Better. 

“I started to build out this digital course for people in training who have never built training, or who didn’t have any education background,” she said. “Similar to how people are promoted to be managers, a lot of people who know a lot about a topic are asked to train others on it. The problem is they don’t understand, necessarily, the science behind how people learn.” 

Looking back on her creation of the 13-video course, Welsh said she recognizes “that was kind of the genesis of my company.” 

“(I thought,) ‘Okay, I’m going to wrap some consulting services around this, I’ll have the course, companies can buy the course and then I can go in and help them build trainings,’” she said. “And then I kind of realized, ‘I think I’m starting a business.’” 

Learning to fly 

Though Welsh initially hoped to run Learn Better in addition to her full-time position, in time she said she chose to focus solely on the former, finding the two professional roles too great a burden – particularly in light of her familial roles as a wife and a mother of two. 

She said the Eau Claire location of The Coven, a co-working franchise, has proven an ideal launchpad for Learn Better, providing her much-needed resources and encouragement as a first-time founder/CEO.

Welsh said her recent independence still requires her to wear many new and unfamiliar proverbial hats 

“(Starting the business) has been a lot of asking for help, and it’s been a lot of doing things before I’m totally ready, because sometimes you just need to put it out there and not wait for it to be this perfect video or whatnot,” she said.  

Still, she said, creating and leading the training sessions has already proved to be a rewarding challenge. 

“What I’ve learned is I truly love being able to help businesses with some of these hard problems, because getting adults to do things differently is very hard,” Welsh laughed. “Seeing when people are given a chance to learn something, it feels very empowering. Nobody likes to not know what to do, so to be part of that journey – to help these people figure out (improvements) and equipping and empowering them to do their jobs better – that’s a really cool feeling.” 

Programs and workshops 

Per Learn Better’s website (learnbetterllc.com), options for training include: 

• The Training Champion program – which covers everything from developing training manuals and instructor guides to mastering slide deck best practices, facilitation techniques and assessment methods 
• The Training Team Elevation program – which includes workshops on content organization and learning outcomes, providing tools and techniques for collaborating with subject matter experts 
• An onboarding program – which includes workshops on effective training design guided by principles of neuroscience; implementation workdays to develop any missing learning experiences; best practices for documentation, ensuring clarity and consistency; and the creation of a sustainability plan, providing a repeatable framework for ongoing onboarding success 
• Digital programs from the Learn Better Digital Library – which includes topics titled Engage and Educate in the Workplace; Ready, Set, Pivot; Setting the Tone and Learning Modalities 

Another option – the one Welsh said most companies choose – is a custom training program. 

“Every business has its own unique challenges, and the Learn Better process allows us to extract what those are (and) what’s the skill deficit,” she said. “Then we use our magic to create the learning experience.” 

Creating a custom program starts with a lot of conversation and coffee, Welsh said, as problems – such as inefficiency, disconnect, low sales or poor retention – are identified. 

“We sit in a space of continuous learning (with Learn Better),” she said. “Customizing the training is really what sets us apart from other businesses.” 

Welsh said solutions can span a mix of new trainings, standard operating procedures (SOPs), tools and software. 

“If you can align your (business’s) strategy with your learning and developing goals, you’re going to be so much more successful,” Welsh said. “If you want to increase your sales, do you have ways that your sales team is continuing to develop their skills? Or if your retention is decreasing and your churn is increasing, what are some of those learning pieces that would help to promote growth in an organization, that would keep employees longer? All of it should be tied to a strategy.” 

Retention is one thing, she said, but her trainings are truly about development, which also saves companies on recruitment costs. 

“A lot of businesses will promote people because they’re really good at their job – but they don’t necessarily know how to be a leader,” Welsh said. “You can create a learning program where you say, ‘Hey, you’re really good at knowing your content, you’re a great worker – (let’s) elevate your skills to be a great leader.’ When you do that from within, it allows you to invest in your people and retain great people… It’s just a different way to promote growth within your organization by nurturing your people.” 

For more practical organizational matters, Welsh said Learn Better offers a variety of “off-the-shelf” workshops, including: 

• Stages of Community and Verbal Skills – which focuses on improving language and communication skills and, in turn, problem-solving, conflict management and collaboration 
• Using Creativity to Solve Problems 
• Find Your Flow, Increase Your Productivity 
• Writing Effective Documentation and SOPs 
• Dynamic Strategic Planning 

Welsh said Learn Better’s training sessions and workshops are suitable for virtually any business – “we’re not settled in one industry.” 

By collaborating with companies and their subject matter experts, she said she’s able to tailor solutions for organizations (primarily small- to medium-sized businesses) from transportation and logistics to health care and nonprofits. 

“The process allows us to extract the information that we need to then be able to deliver on something, because you can’t boil the ocean, right?” she said. “You need to figure out specific skills that need the development and work.” 

Neuroscience 

The development, Welsh said, is where neuroscience shines. 

“The neuroscience of learning tells us that you can’t just touch something one time and truly learn it,” she said. “It takes practice, and you have to build all these different pathways, and you have to fail. If it’s a tooling adoption, or something like that, it takes a while.” 

However, Welsh said balance is key, as science and her experience have helped her recognize “the sweet spot” between knowledge retention and cognitive overload. 

In what she would consider ineffective training sessions, Welsh said she’s discovered trainers can include “two to three times too much” information, which has influenced her calibration with Learn Better. 

“We’re using these strategies… learning engagement activities, I call them,” she said. “There are ones that, when you do them, help to make the learning stick longer, and there are ones that make the learning stick shorter. So, we look at what is the strategy that, according to neuroscience, will help these people remember, retain, apply and then embody (that learning) to eventually become a habit in the future.” 

Events, plans 

Welsh said Learn Better also presents workshops as public events, teaching skills for attendees to develop firsthand and practice on their own. 

“It gives people an experience into what Learn Better is and how our learning experiences are really different from your standard corporate training – because those definitely aren’t as fun, traditionally,” she said.

An upcoming event Welsh said she’s especially excited about is Evolve – a one-day retreat that blends professional and personal growth; empowers women to dive deeply into alignment, authenticity and self-investigation; and offers powerful tools for creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving.

“(The event encourages) women to focus on doing what’s good for you, and (on) issues that, I think, are more specific to women (as we) step into the next, most excellent version of ourselves,” she said. 

Evolve takes place Feb. 20 at the Pablo Center, and Welsh said, much to her surprise and delight, registration for the event is full. 

“That was kind of a shocker to me,” she said. “That goes beyond what I expected. It’s just such a cool way to be able to help.” 

Whether it’s planning more events, adding members to her team at Learn Better or continuing her own personal and professional development, Welsh said her initial progress has more than justified the risk she’s taken. 

“From a very practical standpoint, I’m just so thrilled that my process – that I’ve worked on for 15 years – works so well for all lines of business,” she said. “Starting (my career) over was something I knew I had to do, but not necessarily something I wanted to do in the moment, so that was interesting. It still is really interesting.” 

Reflecting on Learn Better, Welsh said “this is where I fit the best” – though her greatest satisfaction is what she’s bringing to others. 

“Sometimes we expect employees to be able to just do something, and we forget that we need to teach them,” she said. 

Even though it might seem obvious, Welsh said it’s better to provide the learning experience, even at the corporate level, especially if things aren’t going right.

“I often tell people ‘You could just leave it the way it is, or you could start a learning experience to help develop those skills,’” she said. “It is a little bit of a mindset shift… There’s something really beautiful about learning when you bring it into the corporate space and you allow people to grow, not only professionally, but also growing personally as a part of the brand as well.”