We're Building a School

Three years ago, I was talking to a handsome plumbing company owner named John Wilson.

We’d done a few podcasts together.

I asked how they trained new technicians.

“Oh yeah, we have an external training provider—we just send people to their classes, and they come back ready to go.”

That idea stuck with me: a long-term external training partner that plugs directly into your business.

Fast forward to six months ago.

We’d run a bunch of solid one-off Sagan University sessions…but there wasn’t a real system.

No consistency.

No predictable outcomes.

We saw massive demand in a few areas and realized we needed to treat this like its own product line.

The goal I gave Brian Wilson, our Head of Knowledge and Automation (and former Marine Corps training school lead):

Make our education offering well worth the price of membership—even if a member never makes a hire.

I think he’s done that.

We’re building Sagan into a long-term education provider for global talent and for the companies that hire them.

Here’s what we’ve already done:

• Just wrapped a 12-week Management & Leadership 101 track. One hour, every week. Delegation, firing people, accountability - all the good stuff. (120 registrants per session)

• I just ran six weekly lectures on Practical AI & Automation(250 registrants per session). We talked prompts, tools, voice, implementation, you name it.

• Starting next month: 12 weeks of Getting Organized—my favorite topic. Inbox Zero, Getting Things Done, all the hits.

These run every other month.

They’re free, live, and open to anyone (who is associated with a Sagan member): global or local, whether we hired them or not.

Here’s what June looks like.

My favorite two here are:

1) Office Hours with our head of recruitment Sofia. Got a question about a role or hire? She can weigh in before you even put in the request.

2) Office Hours with Usama: Our Omani full stack developer. Bring your broken code, vibe-coded workflows, half-baked automations—he’ll help untangle them.

And here is what is coming soon…

Four Core Tracks

Each one runs 101 and 201 versions:

• Founder & Executive
  Strategy, operations, financial systems, and global hiring at scale.

• Team Leader
  People leadership, process, accountability, AI-supported management.

• Skilled Specialist
  Communication, productivity, collaboration, and ownership in remote teams.

• Executive Assistant
  Calendar control, comms flow, stakeholder coordination, and AI tooling.

Core 101 Courses

• Leadership & Management Excellence – Motivation, delegation, and performance systems

• AI & Automation Basics – Prompting, tool selection, and workflows

• Modern Knowledge Worker Organization – GTD, task management, AI tools

• Global Talent 101 – 5-day onboarding for remote hires. How to work with American teams, tech, and expectations

201-Level Track Classes

• Founder 201 – Vision, financial models, hiring strategy, AI leverage

• Team Leader 201 – Cross-functional management, ownership, process design

• Specialist 201 – Advanced productivity, proactive problem-solving

• EA 201 – Running point on calendars, workflows, and exec alignment

Skill Sprint Series (4-week intensives)

• Company Wiki Sprint – Build a living SOP system

• Project Management Tool Sprint – Finally start using Click, Asana, and Notion like you should be.

• AI Crash Course – Learn the latest and greatest

• Automation Sprint – Automate the boring stuff

• Content Sprint – Build a content system that doesn’t suck

• Onboarding Sprint – Make new hire onboarding plug-and-play

• Customer Experience Sprint – Fix your customer journey

• Remote Team Leadership Sprint – Manage distributed teams with clarity

The short version:

Sagan is not just a place to hire talent (although we are really good at that).

It’s a place to train them…and your team… on how to actually make it all work.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon