Dean Pichee’s business once had shelves. Actual shelves, holding cataloged VHS tapes and DVDs that smaller companies could borrow and exchange. Business Training Library was a name with a pleasing lack of metaphor. An employer needed a training video; the library supplied one. You could put your hand on the product. You could also put it back on the shelf, which has always been one of the difficulties with training.
Pichee founded the company in 1996. Thirty years later, BizLibrary still calls itself a library, although the delivery system has traveled a considerable distance from the lending counter. Its founder has stayed with a deceptively ordinary problem: helping employers prepare people for their jobs. Along the way, the business has had to contend with a stubborn distinction. Watching something, remembering it, and using it at work are three separate accomplishments.
That distinction gives his career its shape. There are acquisitions and investment announcements in the story, certainly. But the more revealing moments involve a phone, a follow-up lesson, a supervisor who needs preparation, or an administrator trying to find the right material without sacrificing the afternoon.
A banker’s classroom, then a wider audience
Before BizLibrary, Pichee worked in a narrower training market. He served as vice president at Bankers Training, then founded Capital Training Company, which provided training solutions for banks and financial institutions. He subsequently sold that business. His business degree came from Washington University in St. Louis; his professional education continued in the business of explaining work to people who had to perform it.
The sequence matters. BizLibrary came after experience with an industry in which training has a practical audience and concrete obligations. Pichee moved from serving financial institutions to supplying small and midsize organizations across industries. The founding proposition was access to affordable, good-quality material. A smaller employer could need capable managers and well-prepared employees without having the resources of a large corporate training department.
The physical library made that proposition tangible. Employers could borrow and exchange material instead of assembling everything themselves. BizLibrary’s historical account describes the cataloged shelves, followed by the move toward web-based courses and, later, short streaming videos. The company’s name outlived the furniture. It is a useful detail in a founder’s story: the original purpose remained recognizable while the machinery delivering it kept changing.
The classroom goes into a pocket
In September 2013, BizLibrary launched an app for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, providing access to nearly 4,000 video courses. Mobile access became a standard part of its offering for current customers. Pichee’s explanation began with a simple observation: employees were already using their own devices to find work information. Training should be easy to reach there, too.
That decision brought the company closer to the moment when someone needed an answer. The app also gave people access to supporting materials, including PDFs, manuals, and program guides. A course could travel with the employee rather than depend entirely on the desktop where it had been assigned. The announcement came during ALIGN, the company’s client conference, putting a delivery decision in front of the people responsible for making training happen.
His appearance on the Modern Learner episode of The BizLibrary Podcast returned to similar concerns. The discussion emphasized familiar learning experiences, accessible material, and brevity. These are modest-sounding requirements until you imagine the alternative: an employee with a question and a system determined to turn finding the answer into a second job. Pichee’s business had already moved beyond the shelf. It also had to move beyond the idea that availability alone was sufficient.
Buying the day after
The next problem was less visible than a screen. In November 2015, BizLibrary acquired AKLearning, adding hundreds of interactive lessons, more than 90 video courses, and the BoosterLearn reinforcement platform. The deal included customers, intellectual property, and products. For Pichee, it joined a larger catalog to a way of following up after the initial learning experience.
BoosterLearn delivered targeted material at intervals. The acquired interactive videos included questions, polls, and opportunities to reflect. BizLibrary also said it would review the incoming courses before adding them to its collection. The details suggest a business trying to take responsibility for more of the learning process: choosing material, presenting it, and giving employees another opportunity to work with it.
There is an understated commercial point here. A training supplier can sell access to a finished piece of content. Reinforcement makes the relationship longer. The useful question becomes whether that content comes back at a helpful time. A library that keeps lending the same idea, in a different form, is dealing with a rather more demanding customer than a library that merely counts the checkout.
By December 2018, when Primus Capital announced a growth investment, BizLibrary’s collection contained more than 7,000 titles and material from over 45 producer partners. Management would remain involved in daily operations and growth strategy. Pichee described further investment in learning resources and technology. The founder was continuing with the business as it gained financial backing for its next expansion.
Three hundred people with questions
At ALIGN in August 2019, more than 300 HR and learning professionals attended a conference that Pichee opened with product announcements. A customizable learner homepage would let administrators bring relevant material forward. Quick Reports would give them easier access to frequently viewed data. Custom content tools and learning paths addressed other parts of their workload.
One detail makes the event more revealing than a list of features: Pichee said clients had requested the homepage changes. A learner might need a lesson urgently; the administrator needed a way to put that lesson where it could be found. The announcement connected a request from the people operating training programs to an alteration in the software.
The same event introduced a partnership with The John Maxwell Company. That fits a recurring feature of Pichee’s approach: BizLibrary assembles expertise as well as producing content. Its international reach also grew through partners, including the India-based UpsideLMS in 2018. A founder who began in bank training was building a business that could distribute other specialists’ instruction through different platforms and into different workplaces.
The next manager might already work here
Pichee’s interest in developing people also appears in an example attributed to him after a BambooHR virtual summit. The employer faced two connected difficulties: frontline productivity needed attention, and supervisory vacancies were hard to fill through outside recruitment. The response began by identifying what existing employees needed to learn.
The gaps were specific: spreadsheet and other technical skills, project management, communicating expectations, feedback, coaching, and interviewing. Leadership video playlists were made available to managers and interested employees. The account reported more internal promotions and a clearer succession plan. Its appeal lies in the sequence. First identify the work and the gaps; then choose learning that might help people take on the responsibility.
He carried this concern beyond office roles. In 2021, BizLibrary added five specialist manufacturing libraries through Tooling U-SME and Vector Solutions. Pichee described asking manufacturing clients about their difficulties, which included skill gaps, retention, and preparing new managers. Training for machining or electrical maintenance required expertise beyond a general business-skills catalog. Serving a company meant paying attention to the different people inside it.
Public recommendations from colleagues add a personal dimension, while remaining their assessments. Jessica Petry describes his openness and concern for employees and clients. Ben Swoboda recalls a leader who encouraged his team to make decisions while challenging their thinking. Both accounts describe development as something that happened within the organization. The founder’s product and his colleagues’ descriptions of his management meet on familiar ground: people need room to become more capable.
A faster lesson still needs an editor
In a March 2024 conversation with learning analyst Craig Weiss, Pichee emphasized four practices: spacing, retrieval, combining words with visuals, and explaining ideas. He acknowledged their difficulty. His interest in AI coaching sat alongside a reservation about courses generated entirely by AI: people still had work to do in design, editing, and publishing. He ended with advice that sounded more like a traveling companion than a futurist.
“My advice to newcomers is to buckle up!”
Dean Pichee, 2024
In March 2025, BizLibrary announced the upcoming release of BizCreate. Administrators could supply a script or webpage to generate a video lesson with narration and supporting imagery, then publish and assign it through BizLMS. Chief product officer Erin Pinkowski described the tool’s usefulness for organization-specific material. Pichee connected it to making workplace learning more accessible and easier to deliver.
The pairing is instructive. His earlier caution about human contributions and the later authoring announcement can be read together. Faster production gives administrators another tool; choices about relevance and the finished lesson still matter. A company can make more material available while its founder continues to ask what someone will actually learn.
The work beyond the ice
In October 2025, BizLibrary announced a partnership with the St. Louis Blues. Its role concerned the employees around the hockey organization: sales, guest experience, public safety, and new managers among them. Full-time employees would receive access, with specialized training for union staff. Compliance, onboarding, leadership development, and reporting all figured in the arrangement.
The hometown connection gave Pichee’s long-running business a recognizable local setting. It also offered a compact illustration of the problem he had been working on since 1996. One organization contains many kinds of work. A useful lesson for one employee may have little to offer another. The training provider has to understand that difference before pressing play.
Pichee remains BizLibrary’s founder and CEO. The shelves have given way to software, and software now helps produce the lessons as well as deliver them. His story keeps returning to the person at the other end: someone expected to handle a task, lead a team, or learn a new responsibility. Eventually the video stops. The next conversation, decision, or shift is where the training has to earn its place.