As a leader, you have the power to inspire your team to achieve great things. Gary Weiss, the CEO of Career Certified, ignites his team to accompany him on a journey that pairs an exciting innovator mindset with insightful business acumen gained through decades of success. Gary knows the market and financial vernacular to ensure we continue with investments that, in turn, allow for continued platform innovation, brand awareness, M&A activity, and, ultimately, getting ahead of the customer needs. At his core, he radiates positivity and is energized by his family, which brings a balance to the culture.

One of the most critical ways Gary inspires and encourages his team is by supporting collaboration among team members. When people work together towards a common goal, they can achieve much more than they could individually. One of the key benefits of collaboration is the opportunity to share knowledge and experience. Everyone has unique strengths and perspectives; when they share them with others, they can learn and grow.

Career Certified’s most extraordinary ideas come from a collaboration between engineering, product, marketing, and sales colleagues coming together to understand the customers’ needs first. “We strongly encourage organic ideation and empower our teams to collaborate and prioritize initiatives,” says Gary. “Each functional department is responsible for how they will deliver on the established Main Things. That, and reminding people that they have a voice, no matter what level they are.”

The pioneering leader also believes collaboration can be advantageous. “When we contribute to someone else’s success, we feel a sense of accomplishment and pride. Encouraging your team members to celebrate each other’s successes and to support each other through challenges. When you create a culture of collaboration, everyone feels invested in the team’s success, which can lead to increased motivation and engagement,” adds Gary.

Becoming A Visionary

Gary pulls from a comprehensive source of inspiration. From his immigrant grandparents and the tenacity needed to establish themselves to the consistency and follow-through, he learned from sales leaders in his early career to diving deep into books and movies that inspired him to apply someone else’s challenges and solutions to his scenarios. Gary frequently cites a role model he once worked for in the past, an IBM Senior Executive named Greg Corgan, who has since passed away. “Greg defined class and integrity and treated everyone with respect. He was performance-based and while treating everyone the same, he drove a meritocracy culture, and the team responded to him,” as Gary explains. These are some of the traits Gary has emulated.

For Gary, success is relative. From early on in his career, he always had measurable goals assigned and planned his activities to overachieve those goals. Whether they were revenue goals or team goals, the CEO of Career Certified has been fortunate to have successfully executed most of the time. He firmly believes that visionary leaders take risks because they understand the challenges that may accompany change. “But the important aspect is to balance vision with execution. When I first arrived at Career Certified, we were a one-career online training business. We set a vision for the company and developed four main things to rally the company around so that when executed, we would achieve the mission,” explains Gary. “Here we are two years later, and now we support eight careers, doubled our Total Addressable Market, and are executing above-market growth rates.” Armed with a positive mindset, the visionary leader has taken the company to great heights.

Building A Great Company

Trusted by over 1.4 million students and 4,000+ affiliate and wholesale partners, the Career Certified family of brands provides a superior education journey to deliver career freedom. Career Certified serves the lifecycle of professions across myriad verticals by revolutionizing education for careers that require certification. Through industry-leading curricula and a time-saving process, they help students master the knowledge needed for Pre-Licensure, Licensure, and Continuing Education, as well as supplemental material to give our students a leg up.

The company offers coursework and professional development that serves a variety of industries requiring certification and continuing education, which includes real estate, mortgage, home inspection, and appraisal. Career Certified is the trusted source for multi-vertical education, using best-in-class technology that continues to be consistent, flexible, and affordable.

The mission at Career Certified is to ignite a learner’s full potential and continuously guide their career through innovative thinking, evolved technology, and valuable learning. All of that leads to the company’s vision to make purpose attainable.

Career Certified serves B2C and B2B audiences and affiliate and college partnerships. “From an individual level, I love the story of a man who became a home inspector to serve his community of the Jicarilla Apache Nation Reservation. His story can be found here,” elucidates Gary. “In real estate, many brokerages are looking for partnerships to ensure their agents and brokers have the best chance at success in the market as well as receive the most comprehensive, easy to understand, and consistent education from prelicensing to continuing ed. RIS Media interviewed Doug Adams at United Real Estatefor this very purpose. His story is here. There is an ever-expanding group of students looking for a way to enter the workforce sooner, but we also have colleges using our programs to expand their coursework options.”

In 2022, the company acquired three companies, expanding TAM and growing revenue by 222%. Growth through acquisition is challenging and stimulating, but with Gary’s guidance, he helped steer the company through complicated and layered opportunities, ensure the company had the right team evaluating the right decision factors, and help ground the company and create a foundation of trust that is undoubtedly needed with that level of transaction. Gary has also helped the company achieve a unified, scalable platform—an engineering gold mine and source of infinite stability for future M&A activity.

Career Certified is now launching ProPath – a professional development tool unlike anything on the market to help propel and encircle the entire real estate industry, including home inspection, in a swift and easy-to-digest set of coursework that allows one to choose their adventure in learning. ProPath customers can learn skills quicker than weeks, months, and years from trial and error in the field, giving them a leg up on the competition and impacting income potential. Additionally, Gary and his team will continue to build upon their Amber Book, called a Score Report Calculator, which was launched recently. It’s an interactive tool that provides aspiring architects attempting to pass the ARE 5.0® greater insight into how they performed on the exam and identify areas that need improvement, increasing their likelihood of success on subsequent attempts. “Many more innovations in ‘24 will continue to change the industry in real estate, mortgage loan origination, appraisal, home inspections, securities, insurance, and architecture,” states Gary. “Career Certified is poised to continue its position as the leading multi-vertical education company, supporting the entire lifecycle and management of the careers we serve. Our continued success is rooted in our Core Values and how we make them actionable in our day-to-day work in all company positions.”