51Talk is China’s leading online English education platform. Learn from James and Robyn. James is the North American Marketing Manager at 51Talk. Robyn is the Senior Editor at 51Talk, and a LinkedIn-Thought Leader featured with Influencers.

This podcast originally appeared on the China Business Cast. China Business Cast is a podcast featuring experienced entrepreneurs and business people making things happen in China. If you want to learn how business gets done in China, and what it’s like to work in America for a publicly-traded Chinese company, then this is the right podcast for you.

Listen to the episode here or subscribe.

About 51Talk

51Talk is China’s leading online English education platform. The company’s mission is to make quality education accessible and affordable, and through their online platform, they enable millions of students across China to take live, one-on-one interactive English lessons with North American teachers.

About James: James Stewart is the North American Marketing Manager at 51Talk. Before his work at 51Talk, James worked at several fintech companies and was most recently based in San Francisco where he ran the business development segment of his previous company. He is now based in New York City, where he focuses on growing 51Talk’s operations and teacher community in the west.

About Robyn: Robyn Shulman is a Senior Editor at 51talk, an official LinkedIn thought-leader featured with Influencers in the education sector, and an education reporter. She also writes for Forbes and Huffington Post.

About the Episode:

• Robyn talks about her first responsibilities in 51Talk and a bit about her background
• Robyn and James talk about their positions at 51Talk, the qualities necessary for such roles, and what one has to bring to the table in order to make worthwhile contributions
• How was 51Talk started?
• Question from China Business Cast audience (James): How did 51Talk start prior to funding?
• What was the strategy back then considering there were giants in the industry such as English First?
  
• How 51Talk does things differently from their competitors.
• James talks about how he connects with students and teachers and how he engages with them. He gives an example of one thing that worked really well and something that was a total failure
• Question from Nicholas, a listener from the WeChat group: How did you manage to reach 8,000 – 10,000 teachers?
• (Robyn) As a LinkedIn Thought-Leader featured with Influencers-She reaches a very large crowd, and what does this role really mean within the LinkedIn platform and how is this position attained?
• Robyn and James recommend two books that they recently read.
• How people can get in touch with Robyn and James.

You may also like the following articles about 51Talk:
How this Teacher Found True Joy in Her Profession
Teaching from Home and Still Making a Difference
Passionate about Second Language Acquisition