But you’re the one setting up all of the work, then it won’t be long before you get stuck.

The good news, there IS a better way. And that’s what we’re going to talk about to do.

So buckle up and listen to how you can use transformational leadership to build your team and build your business.

Watch it Here

Listen Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:05.3 Tyler: Welcome to the next episode of “The Teacher Zone” with Chris and Tyler. I’m here with Chris Bates. How are you, sir? 

0:00:12.6 Chris: I’m epic. How are you, Ty? 

0:00:16.0 Tyler: I’m feeling a little raw today, it’s been a raw week. I’m gonna tell you that right now. Chris and I have been through a lot. We haven’t talked to you guys in a little while, but we have a new coach, right, Chris? So we’ve got this amazing new coach life business, they help software owners around the world, just scale their businesses, leadership, scorecards, all sorts of things, and something’s come to our attention, right, Chris? 

0:00:48.1 Chris: Yeah, the reason that… Listen, all of us as business owners every week has its challenges and stuff like that, but what feels extra raw for Tyler and I this week is that our coach, he’s named Dan Martell, Dan… We took a class recently, and he sort of woke us up to the fact that a lot of the challenges that we all face, we’ll just own our own, are Tyler and I’s fault with our own businesses. We’re basically not…

0:01:19.7 Tyler: Chris, we’ve told people this already before. We know how to own it, we know that if something breaks down in the business, we are extreme ownership gospel spreaders.

0:01:31.1 Chris: Right. We drink that Kool-Aid a long time ago.

0:01:34.1 Tyler: But there are some nuances we’ve recently discovered that we’ve just been doing it wrong. And you know how you know when it’s wrong, finally, Chris? 

[laughter]

0:01:46.9 Tyler: It feels gross inside.

0:01:48.7 Chris: Right.

0:01:48.7 Tyler: It can hurt inside. It can be like, “Why?” It can manifest in stress, not sleeping, but with me, I kind of sleep like a rock anyways, but it’s while I’m awake, the uneasiness has been growing in certain parts of what we’ve been doing with our businesses. We’re gonna be talking about that today.

0:02:12.1 Chris: So it’s funny ’cause our topic today, we’ll just go ahead and say the topic. The topic is: You build your people, and your people build your business.

0:02:24.9 Tyler: Right.

0:02:27.0 Chris: Okay, and the reason that’s the topic is today we’re gonna talk about leadership. We’re talking about you, so if you’re an owner or director or in any leadership position with your lesson or class business, then this is for you. Because at the end of the day, we as leaders tend to think that the business…

Basically, Tyler, you and I tease sometimes… Do you feel… If you’re listening to this, do you feel sometimes like you’re the garbage filter? Every challenge that arises, right? We all think of leadership as providing guidance amongst the biggest problems.

0:03:08.5 Tyler: Right. Well, I will say this, I do feel as if people that I’m proud of, hires that we’ve hired, people we’ve known for years, and it’s my own fault, our own fault… ’cause if you’re a new listener, welcome. Chris and I own our businesses together, we’re partners with both businesses. I feel that some of these hires, colleagues, they don’t… As amazing as they are, they don’t think for themselves in ways that… And it’s not their fault. We set it up to where I sit over an operations team with you that are doing daily tasks, and some of them are just… You don’t have to ask them what to do, but many of them, I have to poke the next button and literally tell them what’s next.

[overlapping conversation]

0:04:08.2 Chris: Yeah, do you guys feel like that? That starts off this conversation perfectly, because it really comes down to two types of leadership. What Tyler and I just learned is that people have termed it. And if you’ve heard this before, bravo, but to Tyler and I, this concept, it’s a new one really.

What it really comes down to is there’s two types of leadership.

There is transactional leadership, which is what Tyler was just speaking of. And there’s transformational leadership.

And so today we’re gonna talk about how if you build, and I’m gonna read it ’cause I wrote it down, if you build your people, they build your business, but that can only come from transformational leadership, not transactional.

0:04:52.9 Tyler: Let’s break down transactional really quick, can I? 

0:04:56.3 Chris: Let’s start there. That is exactly…

[overlapping conversation]

0:04:57.6 Tyler: ‘Cause I was already doing it. Alright. “Chris, please send out… Please send out the marketing email and I need the subject line to say this, and then work with this, here’s this one liner for the body, you do the rest.” Cool, then step two, I go back and check and see if it happened. Cool, and then I tell Chris, “Hey, alright, it’s Thursday now. Can you please do this next email?” because we have another something to do that we’re reacting to, or something. Definitely not a system, and you might make an amazing email, but I’m literally telling you to do it every single time instead of growing my business.

0:05:45.4 Chris: Right? Yeah, basically, it’s do. There’s three parts to transactional, which is what almost all of you listening are, it’s what we are, it’s what we as humans tend to default to. And I’ll tell you the reason why, but let me tell you the three.

The three: Do, so you tell someone to do something like Tyler just said, do this email, right?

Then you Check, make sure it’s done, right?

This is like Management 101, and then you go to the next task.

And so this is the way we’re all taught, that you’re supposed to be a leader, right? 

0:06:21.1 Tyler: How many employees under a certain person doing this method of transactional leadership, not transformational, how many till it starts to break down, Chris? How many is it where it’s not…

0:06:35.0 Chris: So typically the most you can handle is seven or eight, but 12 is the max, so if you have more than seven or eight employees, and some of you I know have 30, 40, 50, 60, or more if you have a bunch of locations, and you’re still behaving this way. And we actually have a customer, by the way, that’s massive, that behaves this way. And to us it’s apparent. But to them they just… No matter even though we’re friends, we tell them all the time, they just don’t get it. Because they’re so in the habit of behaving this way that they’re bottlenecking their own business. So just understand this: If you’ve got it now, if everybody in the company’s gotta wait for each leadership team to check before they can do again, you just created a bottleneck in your business.

0:07:22.3 Tyler: And by the way, that is the antithesis of Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership book in the details and the fine print, as you read through it. We need to re-read it. His fire teams practice transformational leadership because they have to go out and do their own thing without him. Period.

0:07:44.5 Chris: Well that’s an important distinction between Special Forces and the regular military. Because the regular military is why this problem exists in the first place. The regular military is what our schools are based off of. The regular military is how our society was built. It’s how the Industrial Revolution was mirrored after. It is exactly the whole hierarchical structure of a General on top, right? And all these people reporting up, reporting up all the way down to the bottom.

0:08:12.2 Tyler: Right. That’s where… Where do you think the term red tape comes from? 

0:08:16.7 Chris: Where actually? 

0:08:19.0 Tyler: It has to be that. You have to get through red tape. You cannot pass go unless you check in. You can’t go past Go.

0:08:28.4 Chris: Right. I see. I never thought about the red tape that way.

0:08:29.4 Tyler: There’s the bureaucratic red tape.

0:08:32.0 Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s so funny, I never thought…

0:08:36.4 Tyler: Yes. Stop. Stop… Yeah, no. And imagine red tape everywhere, like crime scenes, like murders happened all over the place. That’s what it basically is. Sorry.

[laughter]

0:08:46.0 Chris: No, it makes sense though, right? Because that’s the bottleneck. There’s a constant bottleneck. Now in the military and formal structures where you’re actually talking about implementing whatever strategic vision the military is trying to implement, maybe it works, who knows? We’re not gonna go there. But what we do know is that in a modern world, especially a modern world where people are educated like they’ve never been, and people have access to everything. I mean, thanks to YouTube, five-year-olds have access to everything, and all the other resources out there. There’s really no more excuse to act like you’re the sage on the stage, and everyone else has to listen to you. That’s not applicable anymore. And you’re bottlenecking your entire business. So that’s transactional. Do, check. Next action. Do, check, next. Do, check, next. Now, what is transformational? That’s three things too.

0:09:43.7 Tyler: Well, let’s stop, Chris. What’s happening? Let’s give them one example, and I know we give the example. What is the by-product of me staying on top of my seven people constantly as a founder owner, what… Okay, you already heard the annoying part like, yes, do, check, next. Do, check, next. What is the repercussion? What is the consequence? Let’s discuss that for a second. It’s not fun and dandy dandelions and rainbows.

0:10:12.0 Chris: So if I’m the person that you’re telling that to, right? For you, and it actually… I don’t know if he’s listening, but Spencer Hayden, what’s up man? So Spencer does a lot of our marketing. So Spencer, if you’re listening to this podcast, just so you know, please listen to the end, because we’re also telling you that stop waiting for us, because the reality is, is that this type of leadership has got to go.

0:10:35.4 Tyler: Right. And…

0:10:35.6 Chris: Yeah, go ahead.

0:10:37.0 Tyler: The other thing is, Chris, if we’re bottlenecking in that way and trying to tell Spencer and multiple operations staff what to do at every moment, plus you gotta add in unplanned work anyways because there will be unplanned work that a founder might have to handle depending on where your business is at, we’re not growing the business.

0:11:01.0 Chris: Right, because the bottleneck…

0:11:03.9 Tyler: How many hours a day if I am being reactive and transactional, how am I going to be this next step? 

0:11:11.8 Chris: We’re waiting for your next order. We’re waiting for your next order. So if Spencer, as our example, we love you, Spencer. If Spencer for instance, and Spencer is very proactive, and we’re getting better and better at basically giving him that power, because it’s something that as leaders or directors, it’s very important that we make that part of the culture throughout the entire organization where everybody feels empowered to be a leader. Because this is all of our organization. Any business it needs to be owned by all, not by just one demanding things.

0:11:43.6 Tyler: Right.

0:11:44.0 Chris: That’s not a place people wanna work. So if Spencer, as an example, is riding on the next…

0:11:49.0 Tyler: People don’t quit because of companies.

0:11:52.0 Chris: Right. Why do they quit Tyler? 

0:11:53.8 Tyler: They quit because of bosses. Straight up, it makes sense. So what Chris is just describing… It’s so funny that it’s coming at a funny… The last 90 days, we’ve been talking with Spencer, and your name keeps coming up buddy, and he’s gonna watch this ’cause he pulls pieces from this and posts it.

[laughter]

0:12:11.0 Tyler: So hi. But we have been trying to, “Hey, don’t wait around for us. Don’t wait around for us.” And then all of a sudden, we were introduced to a transactional leadership versus transformational actual framework and study. And it just blew up. We were already feeling the pain and trying to execute things, but it was kind of on a transactional basis.

0:12:32.5 Chris: 100%. We’re still transactional. 100%.

0:12:36.5 Tyler: Yeah, even though we’re trying to change it.

[laughter]

0:12:39.1 Chris: No, we see ourselves as these great coaches and mentors, but at the end of the day, Tyler and I are two extroverted bowls. And we want to just get stuff done quickly. Here’s the problem for a lot of you, if you’re like us, okay. And a lot of you that are business owners are like us, because it’s usually a similar personality type that is wacky enough to get into owning a business. But the thing is, is that we are so high energy that we are afraid that if we don’t just get it done quickly now because that it’s gonna take too long. But actually we’re delaying it further, because if Spencer’s waiting for an answer, Spencer doesn’t just…

0:13:22.0 Tyler: Fact of the matter is we’re a year behind on even content creation, and implementing some other super top secret stuff we’re gonna be implementing, because of the slow bottleneck flow, bottom line. So now, you guys get it. The consequence of…

0:13:41.6 Chris: We think we’re…

[overlapping conversation]

0:13:41.9 Tyler: Go ahead.

0:13:42.5 Chris: I’m sorry to cut you off, but that’s an important distinction because I know for myself Tyler, and you and I are very similar, he and I test the same personality type it’s hilarious, but the reality is, is that we both… I know I can speak for myself, I feel like I’m pushing along faster because I’m involved. And it’s just wrong. I’m delaying, like you said, by a year, possibly.

0:14:05.2 Tyler: I actually don’t feel that way. I feel like I’m in a bad dream, stuck in the mud, and I don’t have vocal cords. And I’m going… But it’s my own fault. That’s the worst dream. It’s not even the mud, it’s me. And we joke, you gotta… You know what? 

0:14:23.1 Chris: You’re holding your own hand to the… [laughter]

0:14:26.1 Tyler: Yeah. Life is short. We’ve gotta learn to laugh at this stuff a while, but the most important part is we’re learning. So you just… Chris, correct me if I’m wrong. We just gave the consequences of transactional, we also gave the by-products of how people respond to it and get used to it as employees. And it’s just… And then we talked about time suck. Now, on the flip side, the contrast. What are the three things that are the gospel today? What are those three items that are gonna change everyone’s lives, including ours? 

0:14:58.8 Chris: Transformation… So for those of you, the word transformation itself, we all just love, because it’s this idea that you’re becoming a better you, or you’re becoming a better business, or you’re becoming… The ideas are growing. Transformation, you just think about the butterfly emerging. And so this idea of transformational leadership is the idea that you are number one, helping your staff, every person on the staff, and it doesn’t have to be you helping, but everybody on staff is helping each other in each role defining the outcome.

0:15:30.3 Tyler: So that’s people. That’s people.

0:15:32.9 Chris: But they’re defining an… The transformational has three things. Oh, what you’re saying is some will…

0:15:38.9 Tyler: Yes. So let’s talk… Right before you get into that, freeze. Go to the three things that is our job. So we saw the consequences. Real quick…

0:15:49.4 Chris: Okay. So we’re gonna teach you more on the transformational, but the… What Tyler’s talking about is that for any person that’s… So for you owners out there and you top of the food chain people that have all the burden and stress on your shoulders, okay, stop it. That is not your job. Your job is not the garbage filter. Your job is three things, and that’s it. And you could take this all the way up into multi-billion dollar companies like Elon Musk and all those names, Steve Jobs, who we all consider to, obviously, be a transformational leader, and others. What is it that they all do different? And it’s they focus on three things. Vision, money, people. That’s it. There is no job that a leader actually has, except to protect those three elements. So you’re protecting the vision. That’s your most important job. And that’s where transformational leadership, I think that’s why you wanted to say this first, because it leads into that.

0:16:54.2 Tyler: Yes. Thank you.

0:16:55.1 Chris: Yeah. Vision is your most important job, and vision is really… If that’s the only thing we all did all day was tout our vision, we’d probably be a lot more successful than we are now, because you can just look at someone like Richard Branson or someone like Elon Musk or someone like Steve Jobs or someone that… And think about it. They’re like broken records. They re-tout their vision over and over and over. But what they’re really trying to do, it’s very calculated. They’re trying to create alignment with their people, ’cause that’s the other part of their job. And then, of course, the money part is also equated to resources. It’s not just money, but it’s like you’re in charge of basically what’s gonna be deployed or fiscal responsibilities, making sure money’s not just going to the wrong places.

0:17:45.5 Tyler: It’s the miracle grow, man. It’s the fertilizer. It’s how everything keeps living, so…

0:17:51.6 Chris: It’s this cycle of, yeah, the vision, money, people, vision, money, people. So vision is the most important part of this whole aspect because that’s your true job to your staff. Now, let’s go into transformational leadership, three things, and then we can explore that. So, Tyler, do you know those things, or you want me to say them? 

0:18:09.7 Tyler: Yeah, no, I’d love to. So Chris was just about to say, and I’m glad the vision part was huge, because if we aren’t sharing our vision with our people, then we’re gonna be transactional for life. It’s just over. Put a pin in it, and it turns into those old office movies where it’s all fluorescent lighting, short sleeve, white shirts, pocket protectors and cubicles is what I see transactional leadership in my head. You know what I mean? Remember Joe Versus the Volcano, that really bad movie from a long time ago in the beginning? That that. That’s now what I see it as. It’s not good for me, you or them. So, transformational, number one, is outcome, if you’re writing this down. Number two is a way to measure. Measuring the outcome. And number three, coaching. So let’s start with outcome, Chris.

0:19:09.0 Chris: So outcome. So, okay, so let’s just take two… Let’s just take a situation, Tyler, and let’s take the… Let’s take your first example of the email, since we already used it. So, Spencer, you’re gonna send a marketing email in a transactional way. We’re gonna say, We need you to send this marketing email. Then we’re gonna say, When you write the draft, let me check it out really quick, and then we’re gonna say Great, send it, and it’s sent, and then Spencer’s gonna wait around for the next order. Okay? Now let’s look at a transformational way of doing it. Instead, we’re gonna say, Hey, Spencer, here’s the deal. We’re trying to impact as many students as we can in our area. It’s your job, as part of our marketing team, to help us with that outreach.

0:20:06.2 Chris: How can you help us impact more people through email, as an example? Would you do me a favor and would you come up with a way, or rather, a plan and something that we can measure each week that will tell us if we’re actually increasing our impact? And then the last part of that is, Spencer goes, Well, I don’t know what you mean. So let’s role play that. So, Hey, Spencer, we wanna impact more people in our community, because it’s our goal to have as many students as possible impacted. So you and I talked about emails last week. I’d love for you to talk to me about how many emails you think we need to send a week, and what types of emails to create that outcome? Would you mind putting together that plan for me? 

0:21:00.0 Tyler: What do you mean, exactly? 

0:21:01.3 Chris: Okay, guys, that’s where the last part of this comes in. Coaching, see? So a transactional leader, which Tyler and I have been all these years, would be like, Here’s what I mean, dude. I want four emails a week sent out. I wanna send out to this, I want this, I wanna have a community one, I want someone sent to the schools, I want one sent to this, I want… That’s transactional. You’re not letting your staff think for themselves. You’re not letting them own the role for the outcome. Instead, Oh, you don’t know what I mean. Okay. So let’s start back with our outcomes. So, what do you think our goal is with these emails, Ty? 

0:21:39.4 Tyler: We need to have X amount of incoming contacts and tours scheduled. We should have a report, screenshot of how many people open them, maybe. Some sort of scorecard, that we could see…

[overlapping conversation]

0:22:01.3 Chris: No, you’re right. That’s the measurement part. But, Ty, let me ask you a question. What is the outcome? What are we going for here? What’s the result we’re looking at… For in these emails? 

0:22:12.5 Tyler: With our emails? And I’m still playing Spencer, right? Okay. We want more people to know about the school.

0:22:19.7 Chris: Bingo. Brilliant. Love it. So with your staff, you agree with them, ’cause now they’ve… Now they’re aligned with the outcome. Brilliant. You’re exactly right. So how can we measure… First of all, come up with a plan, and then let me know how we can measure it. Now, here’s the important part that stressed a lot of us out when we all learned about this framework, is we’re like, Yeah, but while we’re sitting there, sometimes they brain freeze, they’re not used to thinking about it. Chunk it down, guys. Keep it simple. So then I might say, if Tyler’s like, I don’t even know where to start, I would say, Brilliant. So how about this? How many days do you need to do some research? Three? Four? 

0:23:05.2 Tyler: I could… A couple.

0:23:07.1 Chris: Okay. So let’s do this. It happens to be a Thursday today. Let’s go ahead and why don’t we talk Monday, and that’ll give you a couple days to sort of think about it, and then on Monday, we can start to create an action plan. Does that make sense? 

0:23:21.1 Tyler: How many things do you want me to come up with? 

0:23:24.5 Chris: That’s a whole another framework we’ll get into, but… [laughter] I actually…

0:23:29.7 Tyler: No, but what’s funny is, depending on the age of your… The person working with you, either… How seasoned they are in the industry, you might be… All they know so far, especially if you’re transitioning out of transactional into transformational is what you have had them do and made them do. That’s their baseline. So they don’t… They might not have had to think about that before, because guess what? As an entrepreneur, you and me and Chris, we’re different than anyone else on our whole team and our whole organization. And that’s okay. So if you ask a question…

0:24:10.9 Chris: Yeah. If you’re listening to this…

0:24:12.7 Tyler: They might not know what to say.

0:24:15.1 Chris: Yeah. If you’re listening to this, then you’ve probably been answering people’s problems for a long time. Okay? And we get that. Your staff doesn’t know how yet. That’s the hard part of this framework, and it’s why Tyler and I feel so beat up this week, because now that we know, we can’t hide again, because they’re old habits.

0:24:33.3 Tyler: The lights have been turned on. And the bottom line is this too, is how we show up as founders is how the team shows up. Period. So if we show up and we’re all transactional, the whole culture is. And that’s where you get weird shit like, excuse my French, That’s not my job. Or something. You might have heard things along the road of different employee…

0:25:03.3 Chris: How many of you are afraid to ask somebody to do something or whatever, ’cause you’re afraid you’re gonna get that response from your teachers or from some certain people? So what we’re positing here is, from everyone on your staff, and for most of us, that means teachers, mostly… Most of our staff members are teachers for a lot of you. Basically, the way to think about this differently with our teachers is to think about the fact that as the leader, it’s our job to come up with the vision. It’s our job then to let everybody know what the heck it is, ’cause they gotta know where they’re headed, man. Maybe you got ’em heading in the wrong direction because they think the vision’s something different than what you think. So once you’re able to convey that clearly to everyone, now you can incrementally and slowly, it doesn’t have to be instant, train everybody lovingly to basically be transformational in themselves. They have to wanna be better. They have to wanna be a better instructor. They have to wanna make a greater impact. They have to wanna push your vision forward. If they do not, what happens, Tyler? 

0:26:09.4 Tyler: Then it’s just right back to transactional, and it’s going to be mundane, and you’re not going to get growth out of them. They will not grow as a person.

0:26:16.2 Chris: And at some point with this framework, what’s going to happen is… Let’s just pretend like you have 15 on staff, and Tyler, 12 of them transform beautifully, and so every month, all of them are kind of getting a little bit better. They’re getting a little more deep in the culture and vision. They’re assuming more responsibility in alignment with that, there are more team players for everybody, right? What happens with the three eventually that you notice are stagnating or even going backwards? 

0:26:47.8 Tyler: Well, there’s a science to it at that point. Either they don’t fit, and then they can’t follow through, because here’s the thing, if you go into transformational leadership and coaching, there’s three ways you can look at it. You sit them down, let’s say you’re just starting, and you go over the principle. Like, “Look, check this out. I would like you to be able to truly be creative with this one thing a week, every week, to where I never have to do anything. And I see these as content coming out of you on your own.” And then another way is do a story, a case study, and be like, “Look, so when I started doing this, because that used to be my job, I would sit down and I wouldn’t know what to write. It was my first year or two years making the company, and I had two teachers and I did everything. And I would sit down, and I’d write out an email and I’d get stuck, and then all of a sudden, I’d go to someone else’s website and get an idea,” or something. You tell a story of something that worked, an anecdote that real time worked for this particular principle that you just brought up. Then after that, you give them that and then ask them, “What did you take away from what I just went over, in regards to what I’d like you to do? And what are you going to commit to moving forward?” Then the key is, is don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t go over 16 things at once. Let them take a few swings at that next week.

0:28:24.4 Chris: Right.

0:28:24.7 Tyler: Let just start basic.

0:28:25.5 Chris: So what Tyler is talking about right now is he’s… You actually got it into the coaching part of it, which is the important part and aspect of this, is growing people’s ability to be able to actually make their own decisions and not wait for you, okay? 

0:28:40.3 Tyler: Right.

0:28:40.8 Chris: What I was saying with that other thing, Tyler, what I was trying to bait you with is that, and a lot of people don’t wanna think about, you’re gonna have to fire some people.

0:28:49.9 Tyler: And that’s what I meant by science. If they don’t fit, they don’t fit.

0:28:53.6 Chris: That’s the part of this, you guys, that you can’t even say today to us who it is you would fire until you practice transformational leadership long enough. And I don’t know if it’s a year, two or three, four, five… I don’t know, man. Some of you have really healthy operations and everybody’s working so great that maybe you are so close to transformational, it’s easier for you. And for those of us that aren’t, maybe it takes us three or four years. Point is at some point, everyone gets so aligned and everyone is so in the boat that those that aren’t in the boat become really clear.

0:29:27.7 Tyler: That’s true.

0:29:28.3 Chris: They stealth vet. But what Tyler just said about coaching is the process along the way that eventually will ferret that out, right? We’re not just saying jump to being, “They’re being a big contributor or I’m letting them go.” That’s still transactional. You’re still saying, “If, then,” right? 

0:29:45.9 Tyler: You wanna empower them. So the idea of this whole method is that they see that you care about the vision and that intrinsically, we really want them to, also. And by the way, here’s how. But then you’re actually having them tell you how.

0:30:09.0 Chris: For those of you that have seen our transformation webinar for transformation, transforming your business, we talk about something at the beginning. We talk about Change or Die book. And Tyler, I was blown away as you and I were learning all this stuff because you know I’m almost through that book. And that’s the book. It’s literally… Now, granted, our coach recommended it, so it makes sense that it aligns, but the book… Okay, so I’m gonna give the example. There’s many, but I’ll give one of the main ones that just blows me away. So we all know that… If you’re American, we all know that the justice system in America… It’s tough. And in fact, I studied this in college a little bit. It goes back… Really since human-recorded history, we’ve struggled with how to rehabilitate people because people don’t change. And so when people act a certain way, it’s really hard to rehabilitate them. So we don’t know what to do, so we cage them up like an animal.

0:31:09.7 Chris: Well, they tried something different in San Francisco, and this… She’s in her 70s now, and I’m forgetting her name, but she grew up as an immigrant in a Jewish neighborhood in New York, and she has two PhDs, one from Berkeley and one from a university structure in Paris… University. So she’s a smart lady. And it came to the idea to her that she could run a jail better than the jails were being run, so she’s started one in San Francisco. And this jail… And I’ll put it in the liner notes ’cause I have to look it up, but the results are transformational in that the people are actually rehabilitating, when these are the same people that are not rehabilitating. They’re coming out of normal prison and 70% of them are going back. In hers, 70% are actually having amazing lives, so the exact opposite of the results of the infrastructure, and if you look at it, what’s really interesting is that the typical jail system is very transactional. Eat your dinner. Do this. Work out. And if you’re doing a work program, you do your work, then you go back to your cell. Then it’s very… Tell you what to do. Why is her program so different? Her program is so different because it creates transformational pods. Those pods are 8 to 10 people, and by the way, that’s a magic number.

0:32:40.2 Chris: They’ve shown that all those corporate leaders that we look at, like Elon Musk or Richard Branson or those guys, they… You only have… Those guys only have seven people that report to them, that’s it. And then those seven create other pods on down, and the point being is that they’ve shown that sort of Fibonacci is actually, the Fibonacci sequence in those numbers tend to work pretty good as well for grouping, but the bottom line is that somewhere in that seven to 10 range, seven to 12 range is the perfect number for a group, and so… Or 13, [chuckle] if you unzip Fibonacci. And so when you have the group, they become accountable to themselves, so you no longer have an inmate, you have a pod, and so I’m not… I won’t beleaguer this issue, I want you guys to maybe look up this book, if you care. It’s called Change or Die, and it is… I’ll look up the author, but it is incredible because every anecdote in this book speaks over and over again about insane results from people that normally don’t have results, just because they belong to something with a bigger vision, and that the requirement is of their participation, not of them to sit around a wait for an order. And that’s the important part of transformation, is that you’re giving people permission to have stake in the vision of your company.

0:34:09.7 Tyler: Right. And at the same time, you’re finding out who actually fit and wants to care and believes what you believe, so that will root out those folks that don’t… The stuff that we have fear about is like, “Well, what if so and so doesn’t fit the mold, Chris? What if Employee B is just… ” And that’s the fear, and that’s why we don’t do anything, but I’m sick of telling people constantly what to do, and I get it, they’re… People are probably like, “You know what, that’s not my job. I don’t get paid enough, whatever,” and shame on us for not layering the playbook and stacking the deck and having this transformational leadership in the first place, so it’s gonna be some change coming up very soon at our [0:34:55.8] ____.

0:34:56.1 Chris: Because a lot of us have to learn that. So if you have a lot of staffers that are… Which is pretty much all of us, all of us have grown around the framework of transactional leadership so much that pretty much it’s easier to just wait around for orders. And so what you’re gonna find is that… So even in the jail in San Francisco, okay? The first thing she has to do is get them sober ’cause almost everybody are drug addicts and they’ve been drug addicts often since they were like five, but they get sober. 70% to 80% of them not only get sober, but they do what I said, transform into society but what happens to that other 10% to 20%? A lot of them end up wanting to go back to jail because they don’t like that they have to actually be accountable. They don’t like, they don’t want, so what the pod says to these folks, first thing is in our pod, Tyler, we don’t use.

0:36:04.0 Chris: And because we’re a team and we’re just one big team, it’s not a big deal. We’re not gonna talk about… We don’t need to, whatever, we’ll get you whatever you need. So for some people, they have to be hospitalized for a week or whatever. We’re gonna get you what you need, but you can’t use anymore, that’s just number one in our pod, period. But what’s so special is because they have the support of 10 people, or whatever the number is, seven to 12. Because they have the support of those people, everybody gets sober quickly. There’s not a struggle because you have all that support just like the program…

0:36:32.5 Tyler: You’re not alone.

0:36:35.3 Chris: You’re not alone. You’re not alone and so it works the same in our companies, that once we get everybody aligned, at first you’re gonna get the pushback, you’re gonna get the people that just like that she does that wanna go back to jail ’cause they’re like, “Screw this, I actually wanna be told what to do, that’s not my job.” But once that kind of works itself out…

0:36:52.9 Tyler: Imagine… Imagine what could happen.

0:36:53.8 Chris: The sky’s the limit.

0:36:56.8 Tyler: More people will be connected, they’ll be more fun, there will be less unknowns because on a weekly basis, whatever, whoever reports to whoever is reporting basic things, such as, “Are there certain students not in this part of our program on your roster, yes or no? Cool. Why? And do you think they might be soon… And do you have an idea how to get them there? Awesome, when are you gonna implement that? Awesome, see you later.” Imagine if all the low, like whoever the instructors are, if it’s your school had that basic thing? I’ll tell you right now, we have things in place at our company, we’re not dolts. We didn’t get Los Rios Rock School to be one of the top performance academies on Earth, without some neat things in place, but I’m telling you, it’s missing this framework.

0:37:51.0 Chris: We don’t own it across the board.

0:37:51.0 Tyler: In a lot of places.

0:37:53.0 Chris: Yeah, what we do is we have lots of this sort of thing going on. But it’s not… It’s going on amongst transactional actions, so in other words, we’ll have a functional pod that’s working real well together and all that, but they’re still waiting around and bottlenecking and waiting for one of our directors or somebody to tell them what to do, and the bottom line is that once you get high-functioning teams and you get a high-functioning company that where everyone’s transformational, it becomes infectious, and now people can’t wait to level up each other and they’re owning their role bigger and better than they ever have. So I…

0:38:33.9 Tyler: Transformational leadership, Chris, can also be done on a very simple and basic level. It doesn’t have to be overly complex. If anybody’s listening to all this, and they feel confused at all, just know it’s a three-part framework: Outcomes, measurements and coaching, and you let them take some swings for a week, and then you revisit. The problem is, we talk to business owners all over the place. Guess how often they’re revisiting one-on-one? Hardly.

0:39:07.6 Chris: Never.

0:39:08.6 Tyler: Every few months maybe.

0:39:10.0 Chris: And we’ll say it, we have all done this, right? You come up with this bright idea and then you don’t follow up, and when you start getting people owning their own outcomes, then it’s easy. The reason we don’t follow up, I think, half the time is because we’re stressed and we’re like, “Ugh, that’s more work for me.” And you guys, this is about getting work off your plate so you can focus on vision, money, and people. And so what we wanna do is let’s go ahead and role-play this really quick, okay? Let’s take it, since most of the people listening are gonna have instructors as their main employees. What would be a common challenge? Or rather, what would be something that you might want from your teacher that you’re… Normally you’re gonna get pushback or like you might ask, and then they’re gonna wait for the next ask, and then they’re gonna wait for the next ask… What, Tyler, might be something that we can explore? 

0:40:03.2 Tyler: I don’t know. Maybe just basic roster reviews? How’s everybody doing? Maybe there’s a red, a yellow, and a green tag, that green is seriously these… 75% of my roster is always great. But is there a way we can know if someone’s not and not have to ask two months from now, when we do our roster reviews? We even have quarterly roster reviews as part of our accreditation and things like that, that we stay in tune and know what these kiddos are missing or not missing, and whatever. But that’s every 90 days. What if there was a really easy way, part of the job description, that the teachers could send it up to the scorecard, and you don’t have to meet with all 12? 

0:40:51.5 Chris: That’s a really interesting thing to explore. So let’s look at that. So roster reviews, what you’re saying is that typically at our organization, as an example, we do it quarterly, and it’s very transactional and it’s very, “Hey guys, we need all roster reviews done by X date.”

0:41:07.8 Tyler: Guess what? I didn’t even have anybody tag any. We have them all to go read. Nobody tag… If there was a red flag in there, we didn’t even have them tag them and say, “Send those to us. If there’s any reds, send them right now.” They were done three weeks ago.

0:41:23.5 Chris: Let me ask you a question. Why did none of our instructors, by default, say, “Oh my gosh, guys. In that roster review, it really scared me. Three of my students… Help.”

0:41:36.0 Tyler: Right, but A, because we didn’t tell them to, and make it clear on why in the vision and whatever, so that’s our fault. But number two…

0:41:43.7 Chris: No, no, no. Stop. I’m sorry. That’s brilliant. Guys, do you hear what he just said? We didn’t tell them to, so we’re bottlenecking our own instructors, right? 

0:41:53.3 Tyler: We’re getting in our own way. We’re getting in our own way.

0:41:55.1 Chris: Because they aren’t taking the initiative, because we didn’t train them to be their own transformational leaders with their own rosters.

0:42:03.2 Tyler: Chris and I have a desire, and they have a lot of great desires, too, to change kids’ lives. Our staff loves to make an impact. We already know that about them. They wouldn’t have made it on the team otherwise, but Chris and I have desires inside that they don’t know about yet, or something. They might come up in a staff… We have staff meetings every month, and it’s kind of a group get together, see each other’s faces, the whole thing, and talk about what’s coming up and whatever, but there isn’t… Maybe one or two staff have ever heard that we would like to know who… How many weeks has gone by without this particular student being in this nether part of our program that we know leads to life-changing results for children. Why has seven weeks gone by, and this kid is nowhere near those two other parts of our program that changes kids’ lives? We don’t have…

0:42:58.3 Chris: So the reason… So again, the reason that this isn’t happening at our own organization with regard to getting kids into our performance program or roster reviews without… Is because we have created a system that we’ve been doing for years, that our staff is diligently following. They’re doing awesome. This is not berating the staff, by the way. Tyler and I, we’re basically…

0:43:23.1 Tyler: It’s not their fault.

0:43:24.5 Chris: What do you call it? We’re basically saying, “We’re the problem,” okay? Because we created this…

0:43:32.7 Tyler: Was that you whipping yourself, like a…

0:43:34.4 Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re basically whipping ourselves, right? We’re seeing we’re the problem. Our staff…

0:43:39.0 Tyler: For those of you watching who saw that, if you weren’t watching…

0:43:41.9 Chris: Oh, I forgot. Yeah. [laughter]

0:43:43.8 Tyler: Yeah. Anyways, but go on. So we’re punishing ourselves.

0:43:48.1 Chris: We’re punishing ourselves in this talk right now, and that’s why you and I are feeling beat up this week, because we realize that we are the problem. I’m afraid in this talk, we might have pretended like our staff is a problem. That is not what we mean.

What we mean is that by us not training and coaching up our staff to our vision and getting them to be self-empowered and to get them to always wanna better themselves, and instead forcing them to wait around for our next order, we’ve trained them to be mediocre. We’ve trained them to basically just sort of tread water in place based on the standards that we set, not try and push the bar higher on their own. We’ve not given them permission.

0:44:37.6 Tyler: And we set that. So do they do amazing things? Is our school… Where they… Were we Grammy contenders last year? Yes, all that stuff still happens. But it’s reaction-based project management. It’s all neat stuff, and everybody comes up with great ideas, ’cause the staff is unreal, and then inside, one-on-one miracles are happening, but we have no scorecards. All we have is we play 100 songs every four months. Parents aren’t calling us pissed. And maybe only a couple problems… That’s our scorecard, Chris. Our only scorecard is that.

0:45:15.0 Chris: We’ve lessened our problems like many of you have by creating better systems, sanding the edges, and all the things that Tyler and I always talk about with systems, so we definitely have done that okay.

But what we’re not doing well that we really realize this week is we are not basically giving permission to all of our staff to be their own leadership team to align with the company’s vision.

Number one, not clear enough about the vision day-to-day. It needs to be reiterated again and again and again and again and again. When you get sick of it, trust me, everyone else isn’t, because it just lets them know what direction we’re all headed in.

Once they know that, and they know they have the freedom to dance around in that direction, as long as it creates forward momentum, then you start to see explosive things happen. So like Tyler said, we have explosive moments all the time because our staff is extraordinary, just like many of yours. But we’re talking about… Well, a lot of us can’t even imagine, and that’s a business maybe…

0:46:21.5 Tyler: We know our business can be next level. We’re worried…

0:46:24.5 Chris: It could be 4x where it is now. What is your business right now? Could your lesson business or your class business be right now. Could it be 10x right now? ‘Cause ours could easily. Right.

0:46:35.5 Tyler: Right. We are not next level, we are on year 11 and hovering at that million gross area and it’s been hovering there. And we have 8000 square feet and we could have 245 students and we all… Our record was a 198 one hour students. So that is…

0:47:01.0 Chris: So for a lot of you that will be… We’re almost 400 students basically, ’cause we are running one hour. We only do 60 minutes. We don’t do anything else.

0:47:06.5 Tyler: But my point is Chris is, why has it topped out? Why is this here? 

0:47:14.0 Chris: Us.

0:47:14.1 Tyler: Because we… It’s us. We bottlenecked it. If I’m spending X amount of hours doing a certain item, being transactional, the growth stuff. For instance, how hard would it be for people like Chris and myself to go and meet with all the parochial schools in our area in South Orange County? We could probably have them all at lunch in no time, but we’re too busy reacting.

0:47:41.8 Chris: You… We hear it from you guys. Okay, so just so you know, over the last six years or so globally, we’ve talked to tens of… Over 10000, let’s just say, different conversations, different connections, different customers, different things throughout the world. So our staff and us have talked to so many folks and what we hear over and over is, “I don’t have time.”

If you’re staying up late, if you’re getting up early and burning that 11, 12, whatever it is, day, all the time, and you’re stressed out and you still feel like you’re running in place, you’re not alone. That is what we all do to ourselves, ’cause we think that’s the way to lead. What we’re saying is, there’s a much better way, and we don’t even know. We can’t even tell you guys yet. Tyler, I have mentioned it before…

0:48:38.6 Tyler: This is the beginning you guys. You gonna see some more episodes about this and we’ll check in, or maybe we’ll do a little transformational win, check in 10-minute little increment, or 5-minute increment.

0:48:51.6 Chris: We need to do part two, Tyler, on the 131. So we’ll do that, that’s on how you solve challenges.

0:48:55.8 Tyler: We’ll do part two on the 131, but we’re also gonna check back in and let you know how we’ve been able to win with actual case studies and instances and successes. And we challenge you guys to go out there and try to do this. And if you have any questions or comments for the next episode, email us tyler@teacherzone.com or chris@teacherzone.com. And we’d love to hear from you guys.

0:49:22.1 Chris: Actually, hello@teacherzone.com goes to all of us.

0:49:25.6 Tyler: Okay. Hello@teacherzone.com.

0:49:29.5 Chris: Tyler, I wanted to say one thing to this, okay? We are drinking our own Kool-Aid on this and we’re in the middle of the pool ’cause we’ve been analyzing all this, that’s why he and I are kind of stunned this week. ‘Cause as we analyze how much we’re in the way, it’s actually embarrassing to both of us. We’re our own bottlenecks, so what we’re asking of all of you…

0:49:51.5 Tyler: It’s exciting at the same time. I love that…

0:49:54.2 Chris: I got so excited, I don’t… You’re gonna go through emotions on this, guys. I got so excited that I was bursting out of my skin. I dreamt about it. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I even had a dream…

0:50:05.7 Tyler: Well, it’s gonna consist… There’s gonna be some work just like any change.

0:50:07.9 Chris: Yeah. I even had a dream that I told Tyler that I…

0:50:09.8 Tyler: You’re gonna have to write down your dreams. You’re gonna have to list skill sets. You might even go into, what is my dream program director? What would their skill set be in a perfect world? What does mine have now? How does it fit? And then how can we empower? You’re gonna have to go through each person and just take a look. You don’t have to talk to him yet. Take a look. Have a fun with it, experience.

0:50:33.8 Chris: Well. Okay. So two things. One, I always… The number one, you guys… The first action step that you all have to take is get your vision together. Period. Get your vision together, because if you don’t have a good vision of where you’re headed, you can’t lead. So that’s first. The number two, what Tyler said is start going through each staff member and say, “In alignment with this vision, how can I get all my staff to level up?” Now with your teachers you might chunk ’em. You might say roles, teacher, director, administrators. You might take different roles and that might be the easiest way to look at it. But the first step, vision and identify how everyone could be more empowered to help take that vision to the next level.

0:51:25.0 Tyler: Right. And then also Chris, make an itemization. Itemize what you’re constantly having to tell certain people every week. That’s probably your easiest cheat sheet. Where are you spending most of the transactional time of your owner/founder life? 

0:51:40.3 Chris: That’s a good one. That’s a great one. That’s right.

0:51:42.1 Tyler: And then you can kinda work backwards and go, “Okay, there’s the first three employees that we could definitely have fun working on and then we could [0:51:49.4] ____.”

0:51:49.4 Chris: Right. Where is the biggest bottlenecks right now that you’re feeling the most stress each day? Because that stress is probably related to the fact that you’re being a terrible leader. And what I was gonna say earlier about the dreams that I had is that I had a dream, when I was thinking about all of this was, I had a dream that I revisited a lot of my key employees over the years, and it’s funny, [chuckle] ’cause I woke up, I called Tyler and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” It was so funny, I actually… It was almost like a movie where you go back in time. And I was having to revisit my style and I was like, “Oh, I wish I could do over.” So don’t beat yourself up.

0:52:27.5 Tyler: Yeah. I wish I did that in a dream. Usually it’s real time in my own head and I go… And then nobody… And my wife’s like, “What?” And I’m like, “Nothing.” [chuckle]

0:52:37.7 Chris: Yeah, that book by the way, Alan Deutschman you guys, Change Or Die, Alan Deutschman is the book I was talking about, with the jail, but there’s lots of other cool examples of transformational leadership. Bottom line, guys, is that it takes a village. We started this saying, “If you build your people, they build your business.” So I want you guys to… I won’t go into the whole…

0:53:01.4 Tyler: How many people that you have are actually building your business right now? Do you even, have you ever… Do you even consider any of them building your business? 

0:53:11.5 Chris: Take your marketing people, ’cause a lot of you have some people that help out with marketing. Are they waiting around for your orders? Are they actively exploring? Take your staff, are they trying to make the student experience better? I mean, truly? Not just be great teachers. Listen, we understand that all of you are very discerning and many of you have extraordinary staff. We’re not saying that they’re not good teachers. What we’re saying is are they actually…

0:53:38.9 Tyler: Most of your teachers do their own thing, and they’re wild… It’s the wild west because you do trust them and they’re unique, and you want them to have their superpowers in your building, but are you providing the students… Are they your employees or part of your team or not? Because they’re… You can’t have your cake and eat it too in that regard. You can’t have your vision be all-encompassing, and a beautiful thing everybody’s in synergy with, and then let four or five of your teachers castle by themselves inside their offices and you don’t know what’s going on.

0:54:11.8 Chris: Yeah, I hear so many of you that say, “Wow, that would be so nice, but my teachers just won’t do that.” I’m like, “Excuse me?” For the simplest things like take attendance or monitoring what they’re assigning or… Guys, listen, I don’t care if you’ve got contractors or employees. Ultimately…

0:54:28.1 Tyler: What would happen to you if you said that at Disneyland as an employee? 

0:54:33.1 Chris: Right. Well, when it…

0:54:33.3 Tyler: I’m just saying, guys, and this is not stupid…

[overlapping conversation]

0:54:37.3 Chris: You know what, Tyler, here’s what we’re going to hear from a lot of you that have contractors, “But I’m not allowed to.” You know what? Knock it off. You are creating the vision for your business. Now, if you have a legion…

0:54:51.5 Tyler: And you’re taking all the risk, you’re bringing in, many times, adolescents into the building and working with, hopefully live scan fingerprinted people that are all of a sudden, don’t even wanna take attendance and some sort of metrics tracking system, because that’s not what they do? Guys, that’s a weird place to be.

0:55:10.7 Chris: You’re allowed to have contractors if you want to, and you’re… And with that, you’re allowed to have contractor agreements that articulate your vision, so it doesn’t matter what employee type you have, contractor, and… You still should have a vision. You still should…

0:55:25.4 Tyler: Right. And they don’t have to sign that by the way. They cannot work there.

0:55:29.6 Chris: Correct.

0:55:32.2 Tyler: That’s okay.

0:55:33.1 Chris: But when they know where you’re headed, then they have to align. It’s that simple. If you’re… If I’m I’m gonna hire, to give you an example, if you’re gonna do a remodel on your house for instance, like Tyler and I have some contractor friends that have built out our school. We don’t trust anyone more than them, they’re amazing, we love them to death, but they’re aligned with us. You don’t want to have people, even though they’re not our employees, they’re still people that we want in our lives and that we’re going to continue to empower as we have needs. Same thing with your business. Make sure that they’re in the… They have… That they’re on same bus as you, ’cause if they’re going a different direction than you are, that’s probably part of your stress.

0:56:15.2 Tyler: Now, hey, everybody, if none of this applies to you and you feel happy, and all your teachers give you a rosy feeling inside your tummy, then this is… Then that teacher’s fine, no matter what’s going on. If you feel like something’s not right and you’re stressed and you’re burned out, and it’s coming from all directions to where you aren’t easily identifying it even, you need to look around, just look around, write down some goals, write down what’s taking most of your time up every day, the transactional things, and that is always having to be repeated…

0:56:51.3 Chris: Yeah, so Tyler, good example. Right now, you guys, we’re accredited and also when there’s parent issues, Tyler’s our principal. So with our accreditation department and with parent issues, Tyler still handles those deals. So we’re not saying that you don’t have roles in the company. What we’re saying is stop making everything in the company your role because you’re the problem. What we’re saying is define what your roles will be, and in fact, Tyler and I were even talking today about how we can eventually take those exact duties and get them to a place that we can actually train some of our other directors to handle them as well. And so the point is, is that if you’ve got certain jobs that you… They’re your jobs right now, that’s fine. But as a leader, understand, you don’t have to have a job. That’s not your role as a leader. Your role is vision, people, finances. That’s it.

0:57:43.0 Tyler: Chris always talks about working in the business versus working on the business. So you’ve heard this before, working on the business is transformational, working in it is transactional. And so at some point we’re trying to, like many of you used to teach and now you don’t, and that’s your biggest win, like a certain time into the business, you’re like, “I taught, I don’t anymore.” Put your little graduation cap on. I remember that day for myself, and then all I realize now, five years after that, is that was like Step 1.0. [laughter] That was just…

0:58:22.8 Chris: Well, cause then…

0:58:24.9 Tyler: Not even the beginning.

0:58:25.6 Chris: You fired yourself as a teacher and then hired yourself into 11 other roles.

0:58:30.4 Tyler: Yeah. Well, I had those jobs before. I interviewed those…

0:58:33.2 Chris: That’s true, you were doing it all! 

0:58:34.2 Tyler: Five, four years prior to that.

0:58:35.1 Chris: Like a lot of you are. So here’s, I wanna end, Tyler, with this visual. Our coach talked about vector leadership, and he was saying that guys like Elon Musk as an example, are vector leaders. And so what they try to do is that you can imagine a point, so if you imagine a point and you imagine two lines meeting at that point, like a corner, like a 90-degree angle. And so you’re imagining this point. That point, the more you can get that point sharp and everyone aligned into the point, the more the company can actually push forward into all sorts of amazing action items, amazing growth, amazing community impact. The less aligned you are, the less, so if one teacher is going one way, or one staff is going another way, and then you’re trying to constantly wrangle everybody back into a point, that’s probably why you’re not growing, it’s probably why you have a lot of stress.

0:59:31.1 Chris: If you can just think about the fact that your job, instead, is to constantly coach your staff so they feel empowered to actually implement the vision that you’ve spelled out, then people can start to align to a point, they’ll be focused, they’ll be pointed, as the saying goes.

0:59:54.8 Tyler: I like it.

0:59:56.4 Chris: They’ll have laser focus, there’s another metaphor, because they’ll know where they’re headed and they’ll know that they have permission to do the actions that keep us headed in that direction.

1:00:07.3 Tyler: And just remember everybody, be patient as you think through this. Take a breath, give them a chance to learn, ’cause you’re literally coaching them on how to learn now.

1:00:21.5 Chris: That’s a big one, that will be our next couple. We’re going to keep going with this, guys. We wanted to get this out there, in all fairness to you guys, we’re basically like Gandhi. Mom comes to Gandhi, she says, “Tell my kid not to eat sugar.” He says, “Come back in a week.” She comes back in the week, kid comes in front of him, Gandhi goes, “Don’t eat sugar.” The mom goes, “That’s it? We waited a week for you to just say that?” And he goes, “Well, a week ago, I ate sugar.” [laughter]

1:00:52.0 Tyler: That one gets to me.

1:00:52.6 Chris: Well, Tyler and I are simply telling you not to eat sugar and we’re still eating sugar, so just know that we are still transactional leaders, we are still fighting our own demons.

1:01:01.0 Tyler: We want to grow and we want you guys to grow, that’s all. Can we make an… We love making impacts with students, staff, everyone. I think you’ve noticed that about us so far, and right now, we wanna make an impact in our own lives and yours, so if you wanna grow, take a look and we’ll see you next time on this topic, we’ll check back in, but again, have some courage, take a look. If this spoke to you, you know what to do next. If it didn’t, we’ll see you at the next podcast either way. So again, everybody. Chris, thank you so much for the talk today.

1:01:38.2 Chris: Thanks, brother.

1:01:39.3 Tyler: And I thank you for tuning in to Teacher Zone and visit teacherzone.com if you wanna know more about us and find other podcast episodes as well. And we’ll see you next time.

It’s a strategic step that can truly boost your business.

It ​​also gives your students more ways to use and apply what they’re learning every single week. 

Today we interviewed a special guest, Elizabeth Oberreiter from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. 

We​​​ talked through both why you should get accredited as well as how to do it. That way you can have all your questions answered! 

This is a fantastic step to take with your own business. 

Take a listen and if you’re interested, reach out to Elizabeth to see how YOU can get accredited this year.

Watch it Here

Listen to it Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:05.3 Tyler Marolf: Welcome to the next episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. I’m Tyler Marolf, the co-host, along with Chris Bates. Chris, how are you today?

0:00:15.9 Chris Bates: Well, I am amazing. We have a very special guest today. Tyler, why don’t you introduce our guest?

0:00:22.2 TM: So we wanna say a big hello and thank you for coming on the show, it’s Liz Obbereiter, who is the Senior Director at WASC. What is WASC? It’s an acronym like everything else, right? She is the Senior Director at Western Association of Schools and Colleges. I always get that wrong, but I’m gonna say it again, Western Association of Schools and Colleges. And just so happens to be one of our partners with our lesson business, Los Rios Rock School. So, Chris we got accredited with WASC about, I think four years ago. Well, we have our walk-through coming, so does that mean five years is coming up?

0:01:06.8 Liz Obbereiter: Six.

0:01:07.7 TM: Yes. So Liz say hi to everyone…

0:01:08.5 CB: Six. Oh, wow.

0:01:11.2 LO: Yeah, hi everyone. Thanks for allowing me to be part of your podcast, I’m super excited to be here and share anything and everything that you need to know about what I do and why we do it, and why WASC is so important to not only schools but supplementary education programs, such as Los Rios Rock is.

0:01:32.0 TM: Yep. So check this out on top of that, she says, “The why”, she says, “The where”. We’re also gonna kinda get into, “The how”, because a lot of people listening right now maybe like, “Okay, what does this mean? What am I listening to?” Well, being a supplemental accredited learning school, so we call them SEPs right Liz?

0:01:54.7 LO: Yes, yes we do.

0:01:57.6 TM: Supplemental Education Program. Well, what are we supplementing? ’cause WASC also accredits K through 12 schools, junior colleges, colleges, Chapman University, I believe, St. Marys, and so on and so forth. So it’s a big organization of accreditation, but today…

0:02:14.2 CB: Is it… Over 5000 or something like that, but…

0:02:19.0 LO: Okay, so there’s three divisions, there’s the Senior WASC, then there’s a Junior WASC, and then there’s the Accrediting Commission Schools, our WASC that is K through 12. So we have over 5000 schools, worldwide, schools and supplemental programs as well.

0:02:36.3 CB: Very cool.

0:02:36.4 TM: Got it. And we’re gonna get into what a supplemental program is, especially our fan base, the listeners who listen to the Teacher Zone are usually, and we briefed Liz on this. Our lesson business owners or educators or both all over the world that are trying to grow and create an extraordinary lesson business experience for the people they’re teaching. So we’re talking once in a lifetime moments, unbelievable relationships with their teachers, awesome ops, everything inside of these schools. So a lot of our listeners, we’re talking to you, that’s who you’re, so if you’re not accredited… Well, let’s talk about what that means.

0:03:22.0 CB: Yeah.

0:03:23.3 TM: So… Let’s expand Liz supplemental education? Well, I’ll give one example, and then you could give me some other examples, Los Rios Rock School, we sign transcripts for AP Theory for some students that could not either, A: Access it at their school period, their high school didn’t have it. The arts are being taken away and things like that, so it just wasn’t there, or their counselors getting them ready for college, and that AP Theory course couldn’t fit in the GE load or something. So what did we do? We’re an SEP. We found, we organized, got the curriculum ready, Dr. Haycraft taught the SEP AP Theory class, and then they went and tested.

0:04:15.0 TM: In this case, they tested off-site at an Irvine School, we found the one that would approve it, they all showed up, took their tests, they all passed, and we signed their accreditation, they were done. So that’s the way we’ve used it, besides the fact that you guys have strengthened our goals in the last six years. So that’s another thing we’ll get into later. You all through your walk-throughs and the updates with your PhDs have allowed us to improve our goals from little obvious things like escape routes in a fire, or attendance taking, do we know where everybody was and will be. So we are so… I just wanna say thank you for that. We wouldn’t have had that structure to get us clean cut, and we’ve always thought about that, but you helped us get there, so that’s our Los Rios experience everybody. I’m gonna let Liz and Chris have some fun with this and let’s see how this might help others around the world who are listening right now. So what are your thoughts Liz, can you dive into SEP a little more for us?

0:05:23.0 LO: Of course, thanks Tyler. So SEPs, like you indicated Tyler have come into the existence many, many more places now because schools are, one or the other, are unable to offer a specific course because there aren’t that many teachers that could teach a specific course. Let’s just say hypothetically. Mandarin.

0:05:50.7 TM: Okay.

0:05:52.1 LO: Mandarin. It’s hard to find a good Mandarin teacher, and if you just have one class, a high school is not gonna hire a part-time Mandarin teacher for one class, and then this poor Mandarin teacher has to look for other places to go work. So that is where a supplementary education program, a Mandarin school would open up. So also, like you had indicated, there are students that have severely, and I used that word because I always hear severely impacted schedules because they want to take 10 AP courses, they want to be involved in activities, they’re on the football team, they’re in band, but they want this class, they need this class, and so this is where those supplementary education programs, SEPs are able to offer these classes with a memorandum of understanding with the school, with their home school, their traditional [0:06:50.1] ____ school that they will take those credits.

0:06:55.9 LO: And so we go from SEP’s that are language schools, that are music schools, that are dance schools, and also your tutoring places, those places that students go to for that extra help because their parents don’t know what to do. They’re falling through the cracks at their local school. Nobody’s paying attention to the student because the student is very quiet, but they’re getting D’s and F’s. So then they take them to these programs and they get that extra help. At the same time, the programs work with the schools to come up with a plan of action. So this is a very big growing area for us, and we don’t only have SEP’s here in California, they’re across the world, they’re across the United States. And again, it’s growing, and we’re seeing a variety right now. And we’re seeing a lot of Hebrew language schools as well, which is kind of exciting as well.

0:08:02.5 CB: That is cool. Well, it seems like today, I don’t know if I… Like you said, you’re seeing a lot of growth, doesn’t it seem like today there’s much more opportunity for learning just about anything you want. It seems to me like the access today is just incredible with all the different things that everything from the arts, to language, to the athletics, to different STEM tutoring programs and stuff like that, it just seems like there’s more access today. Do you think that’s true?

0:08:36.3 LO: I think there’s more access not only in person, but virtually. And the virtual world, even though people think that it started with COVID, and it really didn’t. It started a while back, and those of us that were in the virtual world prior to this madness in the world, we saw that it can work. You can teach virtually, and it could be just as enriching as it would be if you’re there in person. So we’re seeing a lot of growth in that. And we’re seeing a lot of growth because, just like you had indicated, Tyler, some of the schools cannot offer these visual performing arts, they’re cutting those programs, teachers are retiring, there aren’t enough teachers, and so some of these teachers that have retired go into these supplementary education programs and teach these classes once or twice a week.

0:09:33.0 TM: Right. So that’s changing the marketplace completely for staffing in general, not just… When we think school, we think school districts, and that’s the foundation of everything. And it used to be, everything was public schools, and parochial schools were the minority. And now it’s charter, parochial, public, it’s just turned into… Because we have access, like we were saying. So quick question, things such as these over-impacted kids, these super ultra go-getters with the super tiger moms and all of this and that, and they are club ice hockey and soccer varsity, and 4.4 average, grade point average, and all this stuff. Well, they’re doing a ton of stuff, so can places like… If somebody’s at an athletic supplemental program that does jujitsu, karate as an active part of that and they have metrics and measuring systems, can athletics get involved as well to supplement, because those kids need that AP English class and that calculus class, and they can’t… And in order to make it in time, they can’t take that PE hour. And if the school allows it, and I don’t… I’m sure some states are different, they probably make you and things like that, there’s probably different rules in different states, but could that also help a lesson business that is more on the athletic side? Can it…

0:11:05.1 LO: Absolutely, a 100%. As long as they have that curriculum set, they have a means of measuring how the student has learned, which is the component of assessment, and they meet all of the WASC guidelines of really, like what I said, curriculum assessment instruction, and you have that qualified instructor. It just can’t be anybody who likes to do it but isn’t qualified to do it. So they’ve gotta have that qualified instructor to do that.

0:11:34.5 TM: Gotcha, and then…

0:11:35.9 CB: How do you determine… How do you determine the qualification of the instructor?

0:11:41.0 LO: That is up to the supplemental program. That is up to the SEP on how they hire, and so we go and we vet them, and then we look at them and say, “Why is this math teacher teaching AP English?” “Oh, they like teaching AP English.” You go, “No, no, no. You need to have an English teacher that’s trained to teach AP,” or have a masters in English, I guess.

0:12:06.3 CB: Does… So it seems to me… By the way, if you wanna read more about WASC, you can go to the… The website is A-C-S-W-A-S-C.org, so acswasc.org. And I’m curious, it seems like WASC… It’s like you’re not only holding everybody accountable, but you’re also trying to level everybody up. Is that true?

0:12:32.3 LO: Yeah. We’re not some… And I get this all the time, especially from some of the schools and SEP’s that are outside our country, outside the US, thinking that we’re like the police, we’re the auditors. Some of these folks call us the auditors. I go, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re all about continuous improvement.” How can we help you improve your program for that academic journey that they are having at your supplemental program? So we’re all about continuous improvement, and we’re not there to check off the boxes, that we’re there to have conversations with the schools, and not just during our WASC visit, but it’s all the time. We’re a phone call away. And I know that sounds kind of crazy but we are. We’re kinda hokey there, we’re there all the time. So if a school wants a sounding board of a new program they wanna offer, they call us.

0:13:38.6 TM: So I’m sitting in the gym of a school that my kid went to and they had a WASC banner in the gym, for example, as a parent, because what’s really great is all of us that run these programs and on these programs, we have that desire to be better but is that what the… What should that have meant to me when I saw the WASC on that educational facility? What would make that facility different than another school?

0:14:08.9 LO: A worldwide organization that has schools around the world has validated your program in order to ensure that your students have a high quality program that will lead them to the next steps, whatever those steps are. If it’s a high school, what’s next? It could be college or career. So it’s that validation of a worldwide accrediting agency.

0:14:36.5 TM: I love it. I will add this. So when we approached you guys to get accredited, I didn’t know what was gonna happen, and I didn’t think that you are caring… I don’t know why I thought this, this is like a stigma, I think.

0:14:54.6 CB: ‘Cause you thought they were the police. [laughter]

0:14:55.9 TM: I don’t… Not, no, I thought…

0:14:58.4 CB: But you know I get that feeling a little bit like, “Oh-oh, they’re gonna be looking up at everything.”

0:15:04.3 TM: More like a bureaucratic red tape, period. You know what, I’m not scared of the IRS, you just gotta follow the rules and not let them take advantage of you. You know what I mean? So what I did… My point is, I didn’t feel from the surface level, ’cause I was new, I knew nothing about it, that you guys were gonna care enough to help us level up, didn’t know that. I guess I… In my old-wise years am 45 now, I should know that, but this was when I was 39, so there’s… Oh that’s probably the answer. [chuckle] But I didn’t get that, and then the results, for those of you listening, we have improved our program almost through osmosis in a way, because we have to follow a certain template and it’s not what you think. Los Rios Rock School, go to our website. No one tells us what to do, no one. Chris, what happens when people try to tell you and me what to do? It doesn’t go up, that’s why we…

0:16:11.2 CB: You are very polite. Last night… Excuse me. Last night, I actually brought up WASC with a potential family, because the student is super interested in theory, and so the student wants to really go deep with her supplemental education, and so it was a really great conversation because the parents were actually very impressed that we had taken the time to work with WASC.

0:16:34.5 TM: Right. Some people get it, but guys, whoever is listening out there, if you want that, ’cause when you’re approved, you get to… And we still have to do it. We need the graphic, we need to put it on our website. We need a sticker for the door. Do you guys have swag?

0:16:49.1 LO: I’m sorry. We don’t have any swag. I’ve been asking. No swag, no swag, sorry, not even a mug.

0:16:56.0 CB: Really? Okay.

0:16:58.0 TM: WASC accredited sticker to put on the front door would be amazing.

[laughter]

0:17:03.4 TM: And it’s not a deal breaker, but anyways, my point being is that if you’re listening out there, we’re gonna get into the how a little bit, but now you’ve kind of heard the who. We’ve heard who can do this a little bit, and we’ve also talked to who can help you. Here she is. Her team will help you. Chris gave you the website. So the question is, how can you get accredited. We already know a little bit of the why, but how is it gonna help you?

0:17:37.6 CB: And… Yeah.

0:17:39.1 TM: Is it the right way to help your business grow, become more extraordinary. And I don’t know, have that little extra clout, maybe it’ll only help with seven out of your two hundred kids a year get signed transcripts, but you know what? For… I think it’s $1100 a year is what we pay, I believe, for our SEP, is that correct Liz?

0:18:01.7 LO: I don’t know, that’s a different department. I’m sorry. I’m not the money person.

0:18:06.1 TM: So there is a cost…

0:18:06.7 LO: But it’s right around there. Yes, because we’re membership-driven. We’re membership-driven so it’s an annual cost.

0:18:14.2 CB: Tyler, let’s start… Hold on, ’cause you’ve got a lot to unpack with her so…

0:18:19.0 TM: Yeah. I’m unpacking a lot, Chris.

0:18:22.3 CB: So, let’s start with the how. So, let’s start with the how. So you, Tyler, you talked about how nerve-racking it was, and so let’s start from day one, what we have, some sort of program that we’re interested in being called an SEP, and having the accreditation and having that cache, like something that will help us level up and be better, what’s Step One, and what Tyler said earlier, would you speak to fears that people might have about making that first call.

0:18:52.0 LO: Okay, so we’ve rebranded some of the areas to be a little more modern, and so now, if an SEP is desiring to start the process, they just go to our website or they can go to our website and then go under “Beginning the process” and then they can kind of look at how to fill out the application, etcetera, etcetera, everything is online. So as soon as we get an interest in that, then somebody in the office calls me, or I look at our website… Or I look at our portal and say, “Oh, so-and-so school is interested in… They’ve filled out this application.” So I now vet it, so now we’re expecting the supplemental programs to have a website, so I vet it through the website, then I do a quick email.

0:19:55.4 CB: What if you don’t have a website? [chuckle]

0:19:57.0 LO: Yeah, the website, it’s really important because a lot of these don’t have websites, especially if it’s a… And.

0:20:03.0 CB: Like small…

0:20:03.4 LO: And if it’s mom-and-pop tutoring program. So then if not, I make the call and then we talk things out, and my first question is… Because we’re… Yes, we do need to make money ’cause we do need to stay afloat, but we also want to ensure… I always ask them, “Why do you want accreditation?” And I know that sounds crazy, but that’s my very first question that I ask them, “Why do you wanna be accredited?” And many of them say, “Because our parents are asking if we are WASC accredited,” that’s a big thing nowadays, the parents are now asking. So then as soon as we do that, then they pay their application fee, and then we start conversations and I look at who’s gonna do the visit, and it’s usually one of my directors down in Southern California that does the SEPs and along with myself, and then we start the conversation. Now, it’s very different, Tyler, than when you started. When you started, you were just given this template to fill out, etcetera, etcetera. We don’t do that anymore. We send out the template, then we work with the school and the SEP, and the SEP sends us sections of the template as they’re filling it out. So we give them feedback.

0:21:24.7 TM: Because what we’re doing right now for [0:21:27.3] ____ walk through.

0:21:28.1 LO: That’s what you’re gonna be doing.

0:21:28.2 TM: So she’s… I can attest to this. The whole thing, I was sitting there going, “Ah, we’re here again, argh.” Calling Dr. Haycraft, “Hey, get ready. We’ve got this. We’re updating everything. They’re gonna walk through again.” And the whole format was different. It was really… There was a… Correct me if I’m wrong, a true growth and impact feeling to it more than before. Am I right, is that kind of the difference of the [0:21:56.0] ____.

0:21:56.0 LO: Excellent. We’ve now streamlined the process to make it much more understandable for an SEP because it used to… The format used to look more like a school, and it was very difficult for SEPs to understand many of those sections because they did not relate to them. So now we’ve even used more business language and instead of saying administration, we use leadership or management, etcetera, etcetera. So we’ve streamlined that process, we’ve made it much more focused into those specific areas and not so generalized as a school. So then okay, so then as the SEP is going through the initial template, then… And we’re working with them, we then ask for a date.

0:22:44.3 LO: So right now, as we’re doing a lot of stuff virtually, things are virtual, so we come up with a virtual visit and it can be spread out within a day, within a couple of days, as we’ve now coined it or my boss has coined it a progressive visit, so we have meetings a few days here, a few days there, in order to ensure that we are meeting with all stakeholders. So we talk to teachers, we talk to leadership, we talk to students, we talk to families, and we say… Our conversations with them are all about improvement. What’s one really great thing about this SEP, and what do you think this specific SEP, this specific program can do to improve itself, to improve not only that academic journey for your student, but for the future students that are coming.

0:23:34.4 CB: That right there, that one question, it’s like… So many of us, especially as small business owners, are running with our hair on fire, and we aren’t taking the time to ask that important question. Because pushing ourselves to be better, not just our students is a big part of that.

0:23:55.7 TM: And very successful companies are paying marketing departments to routinely ask those questions, and so it’s awesome that you guys go deep with the families. And by the way, guys, back up before the visits she just mentioned, when you’re doing the templates, it’s in sections, and…

0:24:16.2 CB: Like she said, they give feedback.

0:24:18.9 TM: Liz and… Yeah, you do a section at a time and send it in, and if you’re a little, like maybe no fault of your own, you answered a certain way, and Liz is like, “Oh, you are looking at that a little differently. This is what we meant.” They will help guide you through the sections so you don’t have to… We’re business owners, we have a lot going on, so that this change aspect, change can seem scary. And not scary in a way like I’m scared it’s gonna hurt my business, more like, “How am I gonna fit this in? How will I even do this with Liz? I can’t get everything else I need done done.” She and her team help you throughout it, so please know that.

0:25:00.0 CB: You guys… Would it be right to call you… Because I heard you use the term partner, but it’s also advocate. You guys are really an advocate for all of us.

0:25:09.2 TM: Right.

0:25:09.4 LO: We want… We’re all about school improvement, we’re all about program improvement. And again, and it’s just not what you’re offering to the students, but it’s how are you improving the professional development aspect of your own instructors, how are you helping them become better teachers for your students. So there was one other area, and I think I just forgot what I was gonna say, but of this whole continuous improvement process… Oh, the template, that’s what I was gonna say. The template that… And the self-study, which, Tyler, you guys are filling out now. It’s a little different because now you have to answer some other types of questions, but that template for the initial, or even the self-study, is your story. So that’s the important part, that you’re telling your story within this template. So whoever reads this, we want you to be able to tell your story to an outsider and they will totally understand what you guys offer, or what any SEP offers and…

0:26:17.7 CB: It’s clarity. You’re helping with clarity.

0:26:19.4 LO: Absolutely, absolutely.

0:26:22.5 CB: It’s so hard because we all tend to see ourselves differently than our students and parents often, and so it’s so hard to define when you know too much, right? You know, well, we teach these gazillion things, so a lot of programs are defining themselves too broad, and you guys actually are helping clarify. That’s brilliant.

0:26:45.4 LO: Well, and then at the end of your story, you have these areas that you’re gonna work on for the next go around. When we were at Los Rios, five or six years ago, there was a certain amount of goals of recommendations that were left for you to work on for the next six years, and those are called action item plans so for your action plan, and your action… Okay, so your initial description report is your story. So when where you start, your self-study is your story, your action plan is what takes you to the future. So what are these areas that you want to improve on, academically and for professional growth through your own instructors for the next go around, and you’re gonna be working with those… We’re not… Other accrediting agencies are all about checking off the boxes. Okay, you’re compliant here, you’re complaint there, you’re compliant here. They don’t look at this narrative, they don’t look at the full story. And that’s all about continuous improvement.

0:27:52.4 CB: Mmm, well, you’re speaking about [0:27:53.4] ____. We’re big… So there’s two things that I wanna enhance there. Number one, continuous improvement, Tyler and I’ve talked about it before. I don’t know if you remember, Tony Robbins used to talk about CANI C-A-N-I, constant and never-ending improvement? And it’s such a cool concept that if you’re in education, you have to embody that. I personally… Tyler and I are big on culture, we’re big on growing your engagement, so I wanted to… For those of you out there, you’ve heard us talk about CANI, it sounds like you guys are, as an organization, really taking that to heart and making that… It’s like you said, not just checking boxes. The other thing that I really wanted to impart is that we are working with mostly your larger entity, so with teachers on we help SEPs all over the world that really often will have multiple instructors. I’m curious, though a lot of the programs don’t necessarily have brick and mortar, so how do you handle the virtual and/or off-site programs when it comes to scheduling the site visit, and their vision and their story and all that kind of stuff. Is it different or…

0:29:05.0 LO: It’s the same process, it’s just, with the visit, it’s virtual. So they get the same template, they get the same everything, it’s just different. Just like… I was asked this by a school in Denver, a very large school in Denver. They called me and they said, “Oh, this student is taking this class in San Francisco area, it’s one of your supplemental programs.” Okay, so she’s like, is… This was a really great question, this district person asked. “Is it any different… Is a supplementary education program accreditation any different than a school accreditation?” It is not. They’ve gotta follow our guidelines, the template is different because obviously, you offer different things, and it’s not a K-12 site, but it’s the same process. We expect high caliber. But if it’s not high caliber, it’s okay. That’s where this continuous improvement comes in. But the expectations are the same, and that’s really important for everyone to know.

0:30:18.1 CB: That’s major because I think, Liz, one of the biggest things that… I think Tyler might have spoke to some of our fear initially when we contacted WASC, what’s funny is a lot of us that are in this SEP type… If you’re doing any sort of extracurricular or after school or supplementary education, a lot of us are actually doing deeper work, right. The supplementary is real because we’re actually going really deep with these students in these different… Whether it’s language or the arts or what have you…

0:30:52.2 TM: Most places that are popular, Chris, now are not as linear anymore, very project-based, very culture-based, very social… You know, collab, collab, collab, collab, and then, with still getting measured results on an individual group basis, and then all of a sudden everybody’s like, “I wanna go there till I go to college.” That’s… I’m sorry…

0:31:14.6 CB: And what’s interesting is the public knows it, the students know…

0:31:18.1 TM: My school, my alumni is not doing that, where I graduated from. There are certain leaders inside that school that are still making impacts. But overall, out of 3000 kids and X amount of teachers, very drop in the bucket for the leadership affecting everyone, because teachers are all different…

0:31:42.6 CB: Well, a lot of schools don’t have enough time to go into depth, is I think the big point…

0:31:48.8 TM: That’s true.

0:31:50.2 CB: And the fact that you guys are considering the SEPs at the same level, to me, is super exciting. ‘Cause we actually, Tyler and I are biased, we think the SEPs are actually stronger in a lot of areas, just because of the extra time that we’re able to take with students. So it’s really…

0:32:04.3 LO: I’ve gotta share with you, there is one SEP, and this is one of the very first ones I did several years ago from the office. There was a… It is also a music school, and they’re also virtual all over the world, and one of the students wanted… I was interviewing the student during the visit, and the student had prepared a special… A song for me that he had created. So he actually played the song, I don’t even know what town it was in Israel, but the father was next to him and he said he wrote this especially for this WASC visit. And it was so beautiful, it was just so beautiful.

0:32:48.5 CB: That’s amazing.

0:32:49.4 LO: And he was like nine or 10 years old, and it was just… And he was so proud of himself, and I was like, “Wow, I wish I have that talent.” But, yeah…

0:33:00.7 CB: The tenacity and want… There’s so many elements that will give that child success in the future. That’s amazing.

0:33:05.4 LO: Absolutely. We’ve got several, now, language programs that are offering language classes to a lot of charter schools throughout the United States, but they’re also offering the same language courses in Australia. So we’ve got language teachers that are offering language classes here in the States, but they’re actually… Part of the really cool thing is, these are some of the Spanish language supplemental programs we have. These teachers are actually in Colombia, Peru, Spain, all over, and they’re teaching not only the language, but they’re actually engaging the students in that cultural aspect of it, which you cannot get in the brick and mortar.

0:33:55.6 CB: That’s major, that’s amazing, that really is. So now… Okay, so that’s… You’ve gotten us to… Now, Tyler, I think the second part that you were talking about was having… The benefit of having WASC as a partner long-term. So in other words, what does it actually mean? It sounds like the scariest part, which is just going to the website and starting the process, once you’ve done that and you’ve you worked on your story…

0:34:25.4 TM: You and I don’t need to have reluctance to do that, by the way. Let us just tell you, we’ve already been there, so just get that out of your mind and just go. So go on, Chris.

0:34:34.9 CB: When you know you wanna be better anyways, it’s like the adage when people say, “I don’t wanna go back to school, I’m gonna be a certain age.” It’s like, well, you’re gonna be that age anyway, so you might as well… Well, you know, you wanna be better anyways, so make the call or go to the website. But once they’ve done that and they’ve gone through the process and approval is granted, what are some ways that you’ve seen the SEPs being able to successfully utilize WASC to their school’s benefit?

0:35:05.9 LO: They use it on their website, they use it on their letterhead, they use it on anything and everything that work with that they are allowed to use it in. And it’s that seal of approval, it’s that golden Willy Wonka ticket that really, really shows that validation of the program. A lot of the music…

0:35:30.9 CB: It legitimizes in a lot of ways.

0:35:32.5 LO: Absolutely.

0:35:35.3 TM: Liz, I still talk, I’m still one of the first points of contact to brand new parents who have heard about us and… But the picture is so dense. We have to speak it or create some new marketing to just describe the three pillars of success inside our tuition monthly, right. And you know what, Chris, I believe if we just pop that WASC stamp on, I can save my breath, at least half of it. Why have we not done that yet? We’ve been accredited for almost six years and we’ve not put your graphic anywhere, and that’s our fault. So really, I think from that sales upfront storytelling perspective, people still might have assumptions of what it means, but they know you earned it. That’s not fake.

0:36:25.4 CB: Right, that was what the dad said last night. And he goes, “Well, you guys aren’t messing around.” I said, “No, sir, we’re not.” So, it’s a… Because with a lot of programs over the years… Well, let’s face it, what makes a small business owner typically is they saw a need. And so a lot of educators and a lot of folks that started their own education program, it’s because they felt a certain, maybe, more in-depth need wasn’t being met. And so that’s typically, how businesses begin, they solve a challenge. And so it’s like coming full circle, ’cause a lot of… I know a lot of our customers, Tyler, started off at a more traditional educational environment and then became entrepreneurs. We actually call it from chaos to culture, so they really went from pulling their hair out to actually having a great culture. And so WASC can be a great part of having that culture…

0:37:21.7 TM: Great tool.

0:37:21.8 CB: Now that they’ve gone through that journey. That’s cool.

0:37:24.4 TM: Let’s talk about… Let’s get to the nitty-gritty. So about 1100 a year’s the cost, that’s a nitty-gritty thing. That’s the money, where everybody like there’s nothing’s for free.

0:37:32.3 CB: Things change only if you might be listen to this later, ’cause I know, Liz, that’s what you meant, is that the pricing is on the website. So go to the website and see current pricing.

0:37:42.4 TM: Either way, you’re paying your dues. That’s how they stay alive, you understand this, you own a business. So we have that. Now, let’s talk about who wouldn’t qualify? And remember, it’s case by case. So they’re gonna… You fill it out, she’s gonna look, Liz’ll look, her team will look, they’ll give you a call. And we’re also gonna talk about, straight up, how TeacherZone helped us with our accreditation. So teacherzone.com is Chris and our software, and when WASC came in and they were like… They came in… I can’t remember the doctor that came in. You knew him, you said his name the other day, just a happy go-lucky guy, made us feel calm… Yeah, and…

0:38:29.2 TM: But he was all business behind that smile, no joke, and when we showed him and explained, even though it was already in our goals and whatever, the software that we created and put in place that every soul is accounted for, that all curriculums are monitored, that updates and check-ins and accountability, were all in one spot, it reflects back to when I was in high school, and they would… Which is a billion years ago, but they’d fill a Scantron out of who is there or not… Boom, and every single class, not just so the teachers could get paid and the district would pay them and… That you’re negligent if you don’t do that, you’re in the Wild West with someone’s child. And so when we showed WASC that we meant business and we created this thing… And, by the way, you don’t have to create your own. Just use ours.

0:39:26.1 TM: They were like, “Okay. Well, that checks off all of the technical stuff,” you know what I mean, that’s great. And the one thing we didn’t have set up, which WASC helped us know we needed, was our own Department of Justice code. So we always had people getting live scan fingerprinted, always, but we were having them bring us theirs, which technically is not the right step to do. And so, that was one of our goals, which you’ll find in…

0:39:51.4 CB: That was really helpful. That was a really… Just a little stuff like that…

0:39:55.8 TM: Well, I slept better at night. I always wondered, “Is that all the way right?” And so, that was one of our action goals that we set and we met within six months after that visit, by the way. And, oh man, everything just started to glue together. So TeacherZone helped us just by having the software in place, the teachers taking attendance, the reporting going back to all times past and moving forward, chats and group chats all monitored by parents and students, can’t be deleted, etcetera. They took us seriously. That little section of our story, WASC was like, “Kudos, okay.” That’s not all of it, that’s not everything we need, but that’s freaking good. And so that… Go ahead.

0:40:43.5 CB: Well, it was good just to support you on that. We actually started really getting granular about the same time that we were meeting with WASC. So it was kind of that moment, we were in transition too. So for those of you, if you’re not doing it, I can tell you, for our families… As a parent, while Tyler was talking, I quickly pulled in TeacherZone my oldest son who’s getting ready to go… He’s getting ready to go to Kansas University, he’s going to be a Jayhawk. So that he… I just pulled him at our school and he’s had… Guess how many hours in the last five years, Tyler?

0:41:21.5 TM: I don’t know.

0:41:23.4 CB: 595.5 hours of instruction at our school. For supplemental, that’s incredible.

0:41:34.3 LO: That’s huge, yeah.

0:41:35.8 CB: That’s a lot of learning. And we have… And I won’t go into it, but obviously, you could get granular with all that learning. And so it’s not only important to have accountability for your staff to get better, but the families relish it. As a parent, it just warmed my heart to see that. I was like, “Wow, he’s getting a lot of great instruction.”

0:41:53.4 TM: Oh, a shameless plug. Liz, if somebody called you and they already had TeacherZone working and implemented, teachers in, student accounts in, attendance being taken, curriculum being assigned, would that be a help in getting qualified for WASC?

0:42:11.0 LO: Yes, it would be a huge help because we’re looking at that accountability aspect of it. That’s huge. And your WASC here who came last time, did notice that. And then, I mean, there are… It’s that accountability piece. And we wanna make sure that the biggest component as an SEP starts the process and goes to that initial visit is, is there capacity to grow a sustainability? Can the program sustain itself? Can the program actually pay that membership fee along with everything else? Because it’s great that we do get… We often get supplemental programs, you only have to have six students minimum…

0:42:58.2 TM: Oh, wow.

0:42:58.3 LO: Six students minimum.

0:42:58.4 TM: Oh, wow.

0:42:58.4 LO: Yeah, it used to be 12, now it’s six. But, I always go to them and say, “Well, where are you going to get the rest of them?” “Well, we need this to attract parents. So as soon as… ” But they don’t understand that there’s that accountability aspect of it, and then we look at everything else. We don’t just look at the business component, but we also look at you what kind of instruction are you giving, do you have qualified people to be teaching these courses, etcetera, etcetera. So it’s all of that that impacts that initial visit. And I’ve got to say that…

0:43:34.3 CB: So the more ducks in a row, the less they have to clean up right then?

0:43:38.3 LO: Absolutely. I’ve had supplemental programs, even schools say, “Oh, we wanna get WASC accredited.” I go, “That is fantastic. How many students do you have?” “Oh, we don’t have any yet.” “Well, where are you looking?” “Oh no, we’re thinking we need WASC accreditation in order to open.” I said, “No, no, no, no, no. You’ve gotta be open at least six months… At least six months for us to come and do a visit because we’ve gotta have some data.”

0:44:06.6 TM: Six months, six students.

0:44:11.5 LO: Yes.

0:44:13.4 CB: Well, Tyler and I, we actually tried to help everyone initially, so similar to what you’re saying. Because essentially while it’s our software, it’s not, it takes a village. And we’re so blessed that we have an amazing community globally, where all of us lock arms and are constantly trying to make our businesses, and the software that supports us, better. So what we found, it’s similar to what you’re saying, the really… When you’re just starting out, then what you can do is you can know that TeacherZone, WASC, these support systems are in place as you start to gain traction. But ultimately, Tyler and I found that it was so much easier for all of us to support one another when you already have some… In our case, we like programs to have at least, ideally, three or more instructors. We worked with some that are mom and pop single programs, but overall, the more instructors you get, obviously, the better your systems have to be just to manage that. And so…

0:45:20.8 TM: Right, and to give you an idea, our software’s set up to run… Have super admin accounts over multiple locations and divisions of one entity. So if those are… We have accounts with over 200 teachers and six locations, and 2000 students and whatever. So the software handles all that, but we understand that just like kids are being born all the time, those are all of our customers, those are the people that are gonna make an impact 20 years from now. Businesses are being born, and so that’s kind of how we filter, just like you guys do with the six students, six months. And by the way, entrepreneurs out there, six months in an entrepreneur life is like a weekend. Six months goes by in two seconds.

0:46:10.9 CB: When I spoke to a new customer yesterday, who is currently the only instructor at this school, and which is how we all start, and we were talking about a lot of different things, and what was really clear at the end of the call, and he was like, “Wow”, is he has worked so hard in this curriculum, it’s amazing. But it really brought to the forefront of the… He needs to start hiring and staffing up, because by keeping it just him, he’s not creating the systems that are necessary to give the students more and more value. And the more value they get, the bigger your program can get and the more people talk about you, the more growth, because then now you have all these amazing stories of growth and experience.

0:47:00.2 TM: And that’s where we share the synergy with WASC. So Liz… And those action items. So cool, how are you gonna get there? It’s you and seven students. Well, here’s what we’ve seen work in the past, Mr SEP, and there so you guys, I really love the synergy. Liz, it has been… We’re just very grateful you came on, we did a podcast about accreditation like four years ago, and…

0:47:25.0 CB: Oh we did, you’re right.

0:47:26.0 TM: Yeah, yeah, and so we’ve gotta send this to Dr. Haycraft too because he was on, talking about his experience the old version of getting into WASC. So that’s kind of a fun episode, if you go back in time. What have we not covered today, Liz, that you feel like is important to discuss at the very end, any after thoughts?

0:47:45.8 LO: Well, if we’re looking at six years ago, we had non-staff people doing the visits, so they weren’t hands-on, we would just assign somebody to go and do the visits. So now, we’ve really… What we’ve done is we’ve really honed in and focused in on how we can assist and grow this SEP world within WASC. Tyler you and I chatted, I don’t know, two months ago, and you had no idea that we have SEPs outside of California.

0:48:23.6 TM: No, I was…

0:48:24.5 LO: So I’ve been marketing, and marketing and marketing for the past, I would say, three or four years since I became a director and now senior director, but I’ve been able to market, I’ve been able to bring in with my team some more SEPs across the United States, and then there are different people who do the international, but I’ve been brought into the conversations because of my SEP experience. So this is a growing market, and I think that the important part of WASC and that SEP component is that validation, and it’s that continuous improvement, is how can we improve ourselves? Not just for the Better Business Bureau, but how can we improve the academic value of our business for our clients, for our students, for our families, to ensure that whatever they’re paying outside of pocket because it is an extra cost to take a class outside of the public school, or if they’re at a school, a private school that’s costing $54,000.

0:49:33.9 LO: And yes, there are schools out there like that. And so why am I paying $54,000? Why isn’t my kid taking a class there? Well, they don’t offer it there, we do. So as an SEP. I think it’s that value of having, again, that outsider come in that has that worldwide stamp of approval and understanding that we’re just not here as auditors or the police, or we’re going to fix a problem for you, but we’re going to help you improve yourselves and your organization.

0:50:10.9 CB: You know your language sounds like mentoring and coaching.

0:50:15.6 LO: Absolutely, and that’s what we always do, and we’re doing a lot more of that we’re much more hands-on with mentoring and coaching. When Tyler had mentioned that he’s gonna be sending me sections of the report, we didn’t do that, not even three years ago, we just started that two years ago because I was looking at these report saying, “Whoa”. Okay, then when we do the visit, we’re seeing two totally different pictures here, or two different types of programs. So we want to ensure that when you do the report and we ask those questions during the visit, that they triangulate, that they go together.

0:50:56.6 TM: Got it.

0:50:57.2 CB: Love it. So I hope that everyone listening, and by the way, for all of our teachers on Tribe out there, you all are already amazing. ‘Cause you guys already have super successful programs, so…

0:51:12.1 TM: There’s hundreds of you out there. Go to the website, call Liz.

0:51:17.0 CB: Yeah, go to the website and do that now, because you guys are ready. If you aren’t with us currently, then obviously, you could go to our website and reach out for a demo so we can show you that site too, so you can start this process of leveling up your business, which is all that we think about. Every day, it’s like, how can we just lay one brick better, if we get a little bit better each day before we know it, we have a wall, before you know it, you’ve created some really neat things.

0:51:43.6 TM: Liz, let me spell our website out there one more time. So it’s A-C-S-W-A-S-C.org.

0:51:52.4 LO: Yes.

0:51:52.6 TM: A-C-S-W-A-S-C.org. And real quick, why don’t we just… What’s your email, Liz? Can we give them that?

0:52:01.4 LO: Of course, and actually… And my cell number, you can give my cell number, because we want all of these SEPs to be accredited. So my email is E-O-B-E-R-R-E-I-T-E-R@A-C-S-WASC, so it’s W-A-S-C.org.

0:52:28.8 TM: Perfect.

0:52:29.2 LO: And then, my everything number is area code 626-290-2126. And I look forward to whoever’s gonna be out there.

0:52:45.0 CB: You’re amazing.

0:52:47.2 TM: Fun fact, Chris. We were one of the first 20 SEPs with WASC. Did you know that? And since then, they’re beyond, I think 200-300 of them, and I had no clue about that. Meanwhile, I’m all scared…

[vocalization]

0:53:03.4 TM: And they’re probably like scared too. [laughter]

0:53:08.4 LO: Yeah. We’re growing like crazy. It’s fantastic because again, SEPs such as yours are offering classes that schools cannot offer because they can’t afford the teachers or they just… They can’t offer because of scheduling. And/or students schedules are impacted. And SEPs like yours are also becoming vendors to charter schools that are independent studies, or…

0:53:41.0 TM: Very popular.

0:53:43.4 LO: The type of homeschool, so…

0:53:44.2 CB: We are.

0:53:45.4 LO: That’s another area that’s growing as well.

0:53:48.8 TM: And I can’t wait for the charter rules to stop paying in arrears. And if they could figure that out for these businesses that are mom-and-pops, or growing businesses, to pay a month after services, that’s a whole different podcast. We might need to get a couple of the professionals from the charter world, and we know the big ones, on the podcast, Chris, and say, “What is going on? How can we work?” because…

0:54:16.0 CB: Yeah. It’s funny they don’t quite get it with regard to mom-and-pops, yeah.

0:54:20.1 TM: It’s like, sorry. For instance, Liz, we don’t use charters at Los Rios because they’re…

0:54:26.0 CB: Because they make you front payroll before they pay you.

0:54:28.6 TM: Right.

0:54:29.0 CB: And so, a lot of schools unfortunately have to bear that burden before they’re able to get remunerated. So, I mean, that’s a whole other topic…

0:54:39.9 TM: Yeah…

0:54:41.7 CB: But we have a lot…

0:54:42.3 TM: [0:54:42.3] ____ universe right now and we’re gonna get some guests on so they can talk about it with us. And then they can let everybody know like, “Don’t worry, it’s fine, you’re doing it wrong,” hopefully, or we can change it. So Liz, you were awesome. Maybe we can have you on in a year again and see how everybody’s doing or something.

0:55:00.4 CB: Absolutely, yeah. Well, and after you have…

0:55:01.3 LO: Yeah, that would be great.

0:55:01.7 CB: Hundreds of our folks reach out to you, then we’d love to hear a bunch of success stories and stuff. I wanted to just reiterate that if you teach anything, reach out because you…

0:55:17.6 TM: Except bartending school. Unless that somehow applies to home Ec. But I don’t think they’re gonna really be able to connect…

0:55:23.1 CB: No. Yeah, there might be some things, and you know if you are in that, right.

0:55:27.4 TM: The moment [0:55:28.3] ____ that are bartending all day at home, I don’t know if that’s the right business from 10:00 to 12:00, so… But no, like Chris said, don’t be afraid. Send it in. If you’re a lesson business making an impact, having people grow athletically…

0:55:42.4 CB: Coaching programs, martial arts, anything because those could be PE, supplementary PE programs. And so for those of you… Also, you’d mentioned, I just wanted to throw that out there, some of the expeditions, the academic expeditions. And so there’s so many learning programs out there that do all sorts of exploratory, expeditionary learning, and so if you have that kind of program… Just know that it’s not limited to the arts, this is open to other supplementary arts and language, I should say.

0:56:14.2 TM: What’s missing? At the school, and does your lesson business fill it? That would be the first question. It’s what’s missing. And don’t and pigeon-hole it, call, ask. Liz just gave you all of her credentials, everything. Liz is now… You have access. So our members, our listeners have access to the one of the main directors at WASC, use it. And Liz and Chris…

0:56:40.8 CB: It’s like Christmas.

0:56:43.8 LO: In July.

0:56:44.5 TM: Congratulation. Win everybody. Again, everybody, Liz, thank you. Chris, thank you. Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in, this was The TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler sponsored of course by Teacherzone.com. And please go get our e-book if you haven’t yet, teacherzone.com/chaos. And that’s the Chaos to Culture, five stages of growth that we all grow through. That e-book is free for you. Head out there. And again, hit Liz up. It was awesome having you, guys. And we’ll see you all next time.

0:57:16.6 LO: Thanks. Bye, bye bye.

0:57:17.8 CB: Bye everybody.

Believe us….we feel it big time too.

So instead of avoiding it, or feeling guilty about it, we decided to talk through it. We explore the topics and tips that we’re learning ourselves in order to stay focused in our lessons-business.

FOCUS – that’s what this episode is all about!

Watch it here

Listen to it here

Or Scan the show notes below

0:00:05.0 Tyler Marolf: Welcome to the next episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. I’m Tyler Marolf, your co-host, here with Chris Bates, and today, we’re gonna focus on an important topic for business owners just like you. And the topic is focus.

0:00:22.0 Chris Bates: Focus. [chuckle]

0:00:24.0 TM: Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

0:00:27.3 CB: I do that… Okay… [chuckle] So the laser analogy… I wanna start with that, Tyler, ’cause you and I talked about this recently. That there’s a really cool analogy about a laser.

0:00:40.0 TM: Let’s back up. Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. What? Was that a laser sound? Could you do that again?

0:00:46.6 CB: That was a laser, good. That was a good… Pew pew. Oh there, that’s a little better.

[vocalization]

0:00:52.6 TM: That’s a lispy laser, but it’s definitely a laser [chuckle]

0:00:57.9 CB: Yeah. I’ll work on my laser, but I might need help focusing. So the concept is this, laser intent. You hear about that. Laser-focus, you hear about that. What do we mean by that? We mean condensed. So the metaphor is this. If you… And someone said this recently, and they said you could take 50 watts of energy of photons of light, and you can warmly be in the room. A diffused, unfocused 50 watts lights the room. A focused condensed five watts can cut steel, right? So a laser, when we say laser-focus, is a condensed light. So when we talk about laser-focus, that’s what we mean. We mean not all over the place, not scattered. We mean pointed, right? That you hear the term pointed, focused. And so think about that, think about cutting steal with five watts of energy versus just lighting the room with 50. It’s pretty intense. It’s so much more can get done, and you can get laser-focus.

0:02:12.4 TM: Exactly, and email us in if you think we should get soundboard lasers and sound effects or if Chris should keep doing them. It’s hello@teacherzone.com, let us know.

[vocalization]

0:02:28.4 TM: So today we’re gonna focus on… There’s gonna be a couple aspects. So we’re business owners, right? Or business leaders, or leaders in our companies, or directors or something, right? That’s usually who our listeners are and our customers are at teacherzone.com. So today we’re gonna be discussing things such as team focus. System… Byproducts of systems in place, allowing people through our leadership and systems being built, so they can focus. We’re gonna discuss owner focus, like, that top echelon of focus where the ship is literally being added to, cargo being put on it, shifted to a different destination altogether. Like we’re steering from the top. That takes focus. Otherwise, there’s a huge oil spill coming your way, and then you’re screwed. And that, we’ll call the oil spill unplanned work. So the third thing we’ll get into at some point, or maybe in the middle, are we setting ourselves up to not focus?

0:03:32.5 CB: Yeah, I think a lot of us really are. A lot of us have created an environment of where they see themselves and their staff as firefighters, and the problem with that is then you’ve just created chaos. So everyday you’re just waiting for a new challenge versus being focused and proactive.

0:03:50.2 TM: Right.

0:03:50.5 CB: And so, the cool thing, Tyler, is that all of us, if you’re listening to this, it’s likely that you’re in an education learning lesson space. So you actually… You have a business that does some sort of teaching. And think how important it is for learning with regard to focus, right? The younger the students you have, if you’re teaching little, little ones, five minutes, sit. And then you gotta be like, “Okay, everyone, stand up. Okay.” You gotta constantly re-invigorate the focus.

0:04:19.5 TM: Ten jumping jacks. Ten jumping jacks. Actually, Chris and I do a 10 jumping jack method too, so that’s not just focus.

0:04:24.7 CB: He and I are still five. And by the way, I know a lot of you suffer with ADD, okay? Just know this, you’re not alone. They actually call entrepreneurism the ADD disease. Because actually… I’m sorry. Did I say that right? My ADD got the best of me. No, the ADD… What is the phrase I always say? I’m not saying it how I normally say it. But basically, entrepreneurs are drawn to being an entrepreneur, usually, if your brain works really fast, and that’s what that means. So for a lot of us, your brain works so fast that you found a normal job just something you couldn’t do. So you chose…

0:05:14.9 TM: Oil and water, something you maybe it was a great job, but you’re like, “Something’s wrong.” This is just not me. It’s not your identity. It’s not how you’re built, ’cause people are built different ways, absolutely.

0:05:29.5 CB: Yeah, so it really is important that you understand that we actually value the fact that your brain works fast And so in focusing, we’re not trying to get you to be someone you’re not. We’re trying to get you to use that intelligence to be more impactful, to have more laser-focus to it. So what was the first thing you talked about? And let’s kinda get into that, ’cause I know systems…

0:05:54.3 TM: It’s more or less team focus. So if we’ve already built something, so let’s say you’ve got a few instructors at your school, maybe some administrators, and you have protocols, you got a policy in place, and there’s a lot of moving parts. Couple hundred students, maybe you’ve got 10 groups of popular yoga classes coming in and they’re full. Whatever it is, now you’ve got this bowl full of activity, personalities, delegations, responsibilities, there’s a lot in that bowl once there’s a few 100 people involved. You’re even 50. Team focus, if I can’t have team focus, I’m not sleeping at night as an owner, first of all. A couple of things could happen, right, Chris, I could either be putting out all the fires cause the team focus is screwed up. Then who’s putting out the fires, are they, is it me? Someone’s gotta do it.

0:06:52.3 CB: It typically goes upstream, as the owners we’re typically the ones taking all of the icky jobs, it’s like, “Oh, I’ll just do it, go ahead, I got this. Oh, I’ll just do it, I got this”. And you’re constantly diminishing your ability to help your team, which then hurts the team focus.

0:07:09.5 TM: Right, right, right. And they’re gonna feel more successful if they know they’re focused, but they aren’t there. Maybe they’re not the systems administrator, lead, developer, position guy. That’s us usually. If you’re a small business under two million, a lot of the time it’s still us, it really is.

0:07:30.6 CB: You’re still the janitor from time to time, you’re still the maintenance person, you’re everything.

0:07:37.0 TM: The 600K a year janitor while you’re growing your company. Anyway, the point being is that that team focus, they’re relying on us to be successful. They came to work probably for your company because you told them how much you love it, or your team loves it, and that we have a place for you.

0:07:56.8 CB: The number one component for team focus is structure. We all to have structure in our lesson businesses with regard to time. We typically all have… And if you don’t have… If you’re skewing, honestly, Tyler and I do have a viewpoint that recurring classes and lessons are ideal. You don’t always, right. All of us have tons of one-off and stuff, but recurring is ideal because the more consistency you can employ in your business, you’re gonna make more consistent revenue, you’re gonna have happier staff and their focus is gonna be better because they’re doing the same thing every week. They have a scheduled class, a scheduled event, a scheduled whatever it is and so, it’s super important to look at having systems and actually having your structure, as I said, in place.

0:08:49.0 TM: Right.

0:08:49.2 CB: So make sure you have structure.

0:08:50.4 TM: So, you have to wonder am I paying this person right, were there people there, did they show up, was the teacher even there, it’s payroll. There’s a lot of things if you don’t have it in place and streamline it, that you can’t delegate it to someone to watch it. “Oh my gosh, yeah, hey, hey Johnny, we’d love to hire you. You seem super smart. You’re highly recommended, get in here. By the way, see that pile of burning trash over in the corner, that’s your job. How’s that sound?” That’s what some people do.

0:09:23.1 CB: I made the embarrassing… In fact, I admitted Tyler, the other day I had dinner with some of my old buddies, I used to be in a business group, and I had dinner with those guys recently. And I actually… They all cracked up, ’cause they remembered. I said, “Guys, do you remember”, and they were like, “Chris, that was like nine years ago.” And I’m like,” Yeah.” I’m like, “Do you remember that meeting we had where I came in and I said… ” ’cause at the time, I had like 40 on staff, and I said, we were all talking about staff training. And I said, “I’m just not a fan. I think people that we hire the talent from the beginning, they shouldn’t need to be trained.” And I brought that to everybody the other night, I said, “I just wanna apologize, I was wrong.”

0:10:06.3 TM: Nine years later.

0:10:08.6 CB: I said I was way wrong.

0:10:10.9 TM: Did any of them not remember that? Or did they…

0:10:12.7 CB: No, they start cracking up and then Lawrence, when everybody started cracking up and he goes, “Bates, I can’t believe you’re apologize, that’s hilarious.” And I go, “Oh man.” I go, “I’m way wrong.” Because not only do we need to provide structure for everyone, we all need to, could be leveling up, it’s something that has to be built into our businesses, a constant structure of getting better. If you don’t have structure for your teams, then step number one of focus in your business is to really work with your teams on structure. And that can be a lot of things, we won’t go down that rabbit hole, but what’s the second thing?

0:10:50.0 TM: Well, if you’re a new listener and you do want a little mini bible on the subject of that, just go to teacherzone.com/chaos and grab the… It’s called Chaos to Culture the five stages of growth, that can really help sort through a lot of that stuff. If you’re new and you haven’t heard about that, go there, there’s structure sides in there and a lot of other great stuff. The other thing we talked about, Chris, the second item was once the team focus is there, great, that’s perfect world. Everyone’s focused. We have our leadership focus, if we’re not putting out fires, what are we doing every day to move the needle? If our monthly recurring revenue is not somehow increasing, are we not focused? I don’t know, I suppose that could depend on markets and things like that and whatever, but I think the majority of us type A entrepreneurs, ADD folks, the only reason the needle is not moving is because of us.

0:11:57.3 CB: 100%. Here’s the thing, you can accomplish in one year, and we’ve embarrassingly seen a lot of other folks do that. They call a unicorn often for some of these tech companies and stuff like that, a similar concept. You can actually accomplish more in one year than some people will accomplish in 50.

0:12:20.8 TM: If you focus.

0:12:24.9 CB: A lot of times predicated on your focus.

0:12:25.1 TM: Right, and in a lot of decisions and different pillars of success, but either way, that’s why our minds work so fast. We have to capture that. It’s like the movie, The Matrix, reading all that data dripping down the screen, you gotta be able to look at everything at once, it’s like a big battle field. And if you’re gonna win, you have to focus and know what’s going to happen, a forecast and whatever, but the point is, if you don’t have a plan you’re done.

0:12:54.3 CB: And so, that’s a perfect tee-off for the concept of working on versus in. And a lot of you have read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, it talks about that, but it’s important to say that. So if number one is structure in your business, number two is a leader to get focused, you need to start focusing on working not in your business, working on your business. So what’s the difference? In your business is what we talked about with regard to fires, you’re gonna work in your business anyways, guys, it’s sot something you have to ask to do, right?

0:13:29.0 TM: Right, it’s gonna happen.

0:13:30.9 CB: I don’t have to ask Tyler to call that horrified parent because something weird happened, right? He’s gonna do it no matter what. Because it’s something that just has to be taken care of, we need to make sure that student’s okay, okay? That’s gonna happen. That’s a in-your-business, must-work-on deal. The problem is…

0:13:52.8 TM: It’s also called unplanned work, you’re already gonna have some of that, and some people call them fires, some people call it whatever, but the point is it has nothing to do with your list of amazing growth items that you wanna put in place. Maybe it’s a new marketing plan, maybe it’s a meeting with a new person that’s gonna help clarify your story, brand your messaging, and finally get your website, whatever it is, these are all…

0:14:19.3 CB: This is another thing, maybe it’s just running a stupid ad, like social media ad for like two bucks a day. ‘Cause some of you aren’t running ads and it’s like, all of us need to get better at marketing, all of us need to get better at our growth machines, all of us need to be able to create those. Right, and so in working on your business, it’s planned versus what Tyler said, unplanned work, which is in your business, so in your business…

0:14:43.5 TM: And there’s so many fun ideas here, we’ll get into Shiny Object Syndrome in a second, ’cause this is a shiny object. Post-pandemic, a yoga instructor can take their email list, and literally create a webinar on a topic of health and everything, and then invite them all and have a conversation for 12 minutes and get 20 new customers. There’s a ton of ways to grow that you could put on your list that isn’t unplanned work. So this kind of…

0:15:13.2 CB: Oh, I’ll give you an example for us, you and I did a podcast on this several years ago, I still haven’t taken in the time… Tyler used to be really good about going down and being a part of our… We have an awesome local community, and being a part of our awesome community and getting involved, and so he and I’ve been so busy. We haven’t been doing that. So we talked about it. That’s something that honestly I should be doing, I should be going to those Friday meetings with the whole town, I should be taking the time, I should be pressing palms with some business owners in town every day, that way when they think about… We happen to have a Performance Academy downtown. When they think about music lessons and Performance Academy, they’re like, “Oh yeah, Chris Bates or Tyler Marolf, call them.” They’re not thinking about it ’cause I didn’t take the time currently, necessarily, to do that, and so all your business starts to allow you to be more proactive, so that pro-activity and that planned work is another. So we’ll call it structure, we’ll call it planned work. And what’s the third one you have?

0:16:16.5 TM: Well, basically, once the owner focus is achieved, it’s kind of like I just wanted to get into a little bit of a workshop format with you, what is the opposite of owner focus? Let’s give him, you just gave him an example, we thought of three years ago at Nam, did a live podcast about how if we went out to five of the most amazing business leaders in San Juan Capistrano, California, and there’s 32,000 people, really neat town. And just did something, it would be amazing. And we didn’t do it. So I’d like you to expand on Shiny Object Syndrome, first of all, because that is the antithesis of focus, it can be. To an entrepreneur, I’d like to get into that, but also what are owners doing to set themselves up to not be focused, was the workshop. What are we doing? I’ll tell you right now, what am I doing to not be focused? I am not… If I’m not making a list and putting one, two or three things into a category of what I could accomplish that day, no matter what that would make Chris in my life better. If that list, let’s say I even do make that list…

0:17:26.7 TM: “Oh, good job.” Pat myself on the back, I had a cup of coffee and made a list, and four days later, that list is sitting there covered in pens and nothing happened. What happened? A death in the family? Like what happened?

0:17:42.1 CB: It’s typically not… We call it procrastination. I think it’s distraction more than procrastination. I think for a lot of us, we’ve lived enough life that we’re not necessarily putting it off, we’re just distracted, and the number one distraction are these devices. Let’s face it, our phones are horrible when it comes to focus.

0:18:05.2 TM: If you don’t believe me, turn on that thing that tracks your… It’s right, it’s like you just select “Yes” on your new iPhone and it tracks your… Which app you’re on the most, it shows you a graph and a pie chart of what you’re on. You’ll be surprised, you… There’s people I know, and I’m not the best at it, but that are on social media for eight hours a day on those little charts, and they don’t even realize it. So there’s that…

0:18:32.3 CB: Yeah and I skew on mine. Mine skews email. And my kids think that’s so weird, but it actually… That’s not necessarily good either, because now I’m going down the email rabbit hole, so this idea of Shiny Object Syndrome and what is the antidote to Shiny Object Syndrome? I think number one and two can really go a long way with structure and planned work, because what you’re basically saying is, “I’m not gonna let this really exciting… ” Okay, so what will happen that we’re an entrepreneur and Tyler will come up with a really cool idea, and immediately he has to tell me.

0:19:12.2 TM: Or Chris reads another book, like one day later after the other book, that we in our staff meeting, we are getting this huge colorful summary in 90 seconds of what… How awesome this book is. And then he tells me, not on audio, and I’m like, “Oh man, I can’t read it then.” Or something like, those are shiny objects, even though Chris is the best at downloading valuable information, too much information isn’t good either. You have to [0:19:41.9] ____.

0:19:43.0 CB: That’s a good point. So I use… I don’t know if some of you are like me, but I personally, because I love learning, I didn’t have to teach someone fast, and it’s usually Tyler.

[laughter]

0:19:56.8 CB: I have to teach him one fast or I’m gonna forget what I learned. So for me, my shining object…

0:20:03.1 TM: And subconsciously, he’s throwing a little fish hook out in the water to see if that shining object is worth having. So I’m like validating it, and if I perk up and go, “Dude”, and then all of a sudden he’s got double power on it, maybe the list and maybe…

0:20:18.2 CB: It doesn’t make it… Yeah. And so it can be powerful, but I think that what we’re saying is that that doesn’t make it any better, guys. Just because it’s something you like, like I like learning, doesn’t mean that it’s better that I just cut into Tyler’s focus time right now to tell him about this cool thing I just read, like…

0:20:37.2 TM: Hold on. Chris isn’t reading. That’s not good either. And I’ll make a point of that right now. Is Chris telling me about these awesome things that we… And then we don’t implement any? There might be a little value there because Chris is bettering himself. He’s trying to grow, so as long as we don’t pivot our company and ruin things by pivoting into shiny objects that don’t work… It’s not a detriment. Meanwhile, let’s value these two: Chris getting five new amazing ideas and we never implement them, or Tyler reading fantasy books that have nothing to do it with our business at all.

0:21:17.4 CB: Same difference.

0:21:17.8 TM: There’s no difference, I might as well be on a boat, listening to a…

0:21:22.2 CB: But you lie to yourself. You lie to yourself and you’re like… Because I was cleaning the bathroom, because I was reading a business book, because I was talking to this parent of one of my students, because I was doing whatever you’re lying to yourself about, you tell yourself that you’re doing planned or at least what you’re supposed to be doing. And I would argue that that’s unplanned work, and just don’t lie to yourself about it, and it’s okay to plan unplanned work.

0:21:54.6 CB: I actually have in my afternoon, because Tyler and I are early risers, in my afternoon, between 3:00 PM and 4:30 PM, I’m off the grid. I don’t plan anything, I don’t answer my phone, I don’t look at anything, I am just off the grid. I need that downtime everyday. That’s usually when I read and relax and maybe do a 20-minute power nap. And that’s my time to just sort of unplug for a second. So it’s plan unplanned. It’s like, I don’t know if I’m gonna be laying out on my hammock, I don’t know if I’m gonna be chilling and go to my bedroom. I don’t know if I’m on my couch. I don’t know if I’m even at our Rock School and sitting in one of the live rooms working on something that I enjoy. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care. It’s just, I know during that time…

0:22:44.7 TM: That’s directly related to balance. So the thing about all this guys like, Okay, so we’ve talked about all the crazy stuff. We wanted to kinda just let you into our lives a little bit that we’re not a lot much different than you. You might do different stuff, different businesses or whatever, but we’re the same. We have a lot going on in our heads. We’re passionate. We’re excited. We know we should be at point B. This point B looks like this and we know it. We’re not there yet. And all these feelings, emotions and thoughts, but here’s the deal, we also need to recharge just like Chris said. But here’s the deal: If you… If we… Not you, I’m gonna stop saying you. If we can get our team focus and systems and delegations on point, at least an A minus, right? Good. Where they’re happy, we’re happy. And then we get our owner focus, because if they’re happy, it’s really easy to say, “You know what, let’s go golf,” or something. You know what I mean?

0:23:45.0 CB: You can give yourself that gift. And so here’s what I think in closing.

0:23:50.0 TM: But you could plan those gifts too is what I was gonna say. Well, the gifts… If you’re planning now and if you’re focused, you can be like, “You know what, if I stay focused, which is actually the easier softer way than chaos, and it took a little work to get there: Team focused, delegation focused, my lists are actually moving the needle, then I can plan a three-day weekend. I can focus on…

0:24:19.0 CB: My old business partner used to annoy me to know him because I’m a seven day a week, 12-hour day, in theory is how I always have my work. I’ve changed now, and I’ll tell you guys about that, but he used to go off the grid and he was our CTO. And this is a software company. And he was the guy that was the smartest guy out of all of us, and he knew what was going on. And he’d literally… Tyler knows him well. He’s a total engineer, total nerd…

0:24:50.4 TM: Scientist.

0:24:52.1 CB: Scientist. Super smart. So smart that he would plan his time so perfectly that when he was done on Friday, and it could be at like 10:00 AM on Friday. When he was done, tup… Everything’s off. He’s gone. He’s disappeared. He’s gone. And so one time our servers crashed.

[laughter]

0:25:10.7 CB: I used to roust him all the time, “I’m answering to people on weekend,” and he’s like, “That’s your problem, that’s not mine.” Like in other words, I wasn’t figuring out how to have this… To let people know that we don’t answer on weekends, whatever it is. He’s like, “I plan mine. This is my deal.” So I show up on a Saturday. “Dude, the servers are down, I’ve tried… The team and I’ve tried. We can’t get anything back, we need your brilliance.” And I’m standing in his front door and he’s eating something, he’s all, “Alright.” And I’m like… And then I’m frustrated, and I go, “See, this is why you need to be on the grid”. And he goes, “No, it isn’t?” And I go, “What do you mean?” And he goes, “You just proved my point”. And he goes, “You found me. Didn’t you?”

[laughter]

0:25:54.8 TM: That’s good… Let’s just agree, you just told me that before, but that hit home even more now.

0:26:02.8 CB: So it’s like, hey, you know what, he’s right, he plans to be off, and he’s like, “If it’s bad enough, they’re gonna find me.” [laughter] It has to be solved that bad. Which honestly, we were partners about 10 years, that was the only moment that it ever happened, once in 10 years, so why would he be on the grid for 10 years straight when there was only one moment where he was truly needed.

0:26:24.2 TM: What a perspective and enlightening story that is a perspective-based, it’s how you look at it, and maybe his scientist ways are why he was so methodical and smart to be able to know that ’cause a lot of us are like… What is it? Right brain. Is it right? The right side brain that’s engineer’s left. No, no, no, opposite.

0:26:50.3 CB: Yeah, yeah, it’s opposite. So, yeah, yeah, so… The left brain is your engineer, scientist. Right brain is your creator.

0:26:58.2 TM: Okay, and then Jimi Hendrix with full right brain. That was that how I always remember it.

0:27:03.9 CB: So Tyler?

0:27:04.9 TM: And we didn’t learn until how many years later that we should be like that? 15.

[laughter]

0:27:10.9 CB: I know, he was a slow learners man, we’re all slow learners. So guys, to get back on topic as we end, let’s end on focus. So we’ve talked about structure, we talked about planned work, we talked about not letting this shiny object syndrome, take you somewhere. So let’s give you a tactic, okay. And so here’s the tactic that I think would be helpful, since the attention span of the human goes somewhere between five to 20 minutes, 20 minutes is considered like a mature adult’s attention span, they have a thing that some of you utilize called the Pomodoro, and what that is, Pomodoro in Italian means tomato. And so, Pomodoro timers are like tomato timers, and they say that ’cause I think they used to go to 20 minutes, but it’s basically the concept is get a little plastic timer on your desk for 20 minutes, and you’re telling yourself like, seriously, focus work for this 20 minutes.

0:28:04.0 TM: Or just, “Hey, Siri, set the timer for 20 minutes.”

0:28:06.3 CB: Right. That’s the modern Pomodoro. Hey, Siri, set a Pomodoro timer for 20 minutes.

0:28:15.5 TM: Aren’t people buying little cool…

[background conversation]

0:28:19.1 TM: Isn’t it a kind of a big movement right now though, the way people are buying cool little timers and making that part of their lives, is that the thing.

0:28:28.3 CB: Yeah, did you Google it? There’s timers, There’s journals, there’s all sorts of journals, so what you could do is you dictate it, if I do… I’m sorry, I used to have a success coach, so I wanna end on the Pomodoro, which is a 20 minutes or less focus, and then number two on what are your most important things for the day with those two things.

0:28:46.9 TM: Okay, okay.

0:28:47.3 CB: Those are good tactics for us personally, your most important things of the day, lots of people espouse to it. I don’t remember if it was the Carnegie, Dale Carnegie or one of those guys, but they used to talk about how the most successful people in the world would do the… Some people say seven. Some people say five. Some people say three, do what feels good to you.

0:29:10.6 TM: Items, right?

0:29:10.7 CB: We’ll call them five. What are the five things? The tasks, if I only do those today, and I didn’t do anything else, so the first hour of the day, I did all five of those. Let’s say, okay, and I didn’t do anything else that I’d feel good about. And those should be planned proactive work. And so for some of you, if you just wanna dip your toe, then do one thing, start with one, I don’t care, it’s we’re all making it up anyways, make it up good.

0:29:39.6 TM: That’s your homework.

0:29:41.7 CB: So, that’s your homework, do one a day. So every day, what’s the one thing I have to-do today. Tyler and I do this in our to do list. So we create a to-do list, and…

0:29:50.4 TM: By the way, if one of your items is payroll, that doesn’t count.

0:29:55.2 CB: Right, it’s not a to-do… It’s not a task list, that’s what we’re saying.

0:29:58.2 TM: That’s already planned. It’s already planned. I’m not saying don’t have that list, don’t forget payroll or whatever you guys do for that, so you’ve got your list but what…

0:30:09.5 CB: This is a proactive, focus list.

0:30:14.3 TM: The needle that are gonna grow and maybe it creates a new list, because you initiated a new relationship you needed to get your goal for number one done, and then all of a sudden it’s a new goal the next day because you’ve gotta talk to another guy or whatever it is.

0:30:28.8 CB: Which is great…

0:30:29.4 TM: You grow those…

0:30:30.9 CB: That’s a huge point, major, because what Tyler just said, if you listen to what he just said, the corrects of what he just said is that things like payroll that every single one of us would deem super high importance, it’s still sort of in that unplanned work category, meaning it’s gonna get done regardless. It has to. It’s like a fire that needs water, it’s gonna happen. So you don’t put those things. You don’t put those things that you’re gonna do…

0:30:58.7 TM: Right. Chris, if I don’t care if you are the owner, and you still are doing payroll, I’m not… I will not call that owner-focus mentality, that’s not… If I’m focused on that…

0:31:09.0 CB: It’s not something you have to do is not what we’re talking about because everyone can focus when they have to. We’re talking about forced focus, laser-focus on things that you feel that you want to do to drive the business to the next level, it’s proactive, planned work to help you push your staff, your team, your structure, your systems, everything to another level. So, A, come up with the list, one to seven things that you must get done today, that’s proactive every day. Now, for me, to be honest, I am only proactive. Alright, I’m gonna spill the beans here. [laughter] I’ve now changed. Okay. And this stage of my life, I am proactive four days a week. I’m only proactive Monday through Thursday, purposefully. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I still get some work done, but I actually consider it fun. ‘Cause I’ll just make a floaty list of like fun work things that I know I should do, and I knock those out, like while we’re at maybe at the beach or whatever. I’m sitting there with a laptop or my notepad or book or whatever.

0:32:22.4 CB: Like last weekend, Tyler, I was working on that extreme growth book, and I was kinda going through your nice product focus and stuff like that. But that was fun work. I literally was sitting on a beach, like literally. Mercy and I are sitting there, she’s napping, and I’m sitting there reading a book, right. Taking notes, having fun, but I consider that part of my off time, so what I’m saying is that I am only using this technique Monday through Thursday. And so what I do is I plan the things I have to do that day. For me, it’s typically five, and so I’ll do five things that I have to do, and then sometimes some of those things, some take longer than others, and that’s where that Pomodoro comes in. Don’t give yourself more than 20 minutes on the clock. Get up, stretch. Get a glass of water. Maybe take care of a couple of fires, check your email.

0:33:03.6 TM: Do not look at your phone while you’re on the 20-minute task.

0:33:08.3 CB: That’s the goal. You don’t do anything during the 20 minutes that you’re on. And then when you take a break, if you gotta look at an email, If you gotta call someone back, so be it, but once you get back on that 20 minutes, and if it’s too much for you start with five or ten. But once you get back on it, you just do that. I mean, leave your phone in the other room if you can’t handle it.

0:33:31.3 TM: And we know that you all probably have been to time management seminars or read the books, and that you can block your gym time and your checking voicemails time. I only check voicemails between 9 AM and 9:15 AM, and then I itemize them into most important to least important. Yes, time blocking is huge, but you need to place your 20-minute blocks in that are coinciding with the list Chris is talking about. Just ’cause you’re managing the rest of your day and you think you’re on top of stuff, but if you’re not doing what Chris just mentioned to move the business forward, those 20 minutes better be a block somehow too. Even if you don’t know what you’re gonna do in them.

0:34:16.3 CB: Yeah, and then guys, I look at my week like this: I look at my week personally, Mondays, I usually work like 15-hour days, Mondays are my nutty day, that is my most proactive day of the week.

0:34:29.2 TM: Monday and Tuesday just blend together. I’m sorry.

0:34:31.5 CB: Yeah, they kind of do.

0:34:32.5 TM: Yesterday [0:34:38.4] ____.

0:34:38.5 CB: Tyler and I, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he and I crush it, right? And those are like our days to just like crush it, then Thursday, he and I do about half effort. And it’s because, “Hey, we killed it, we crushed the beginning of the week” and so Thursday is like, we’re weaning off of it. By Friday, we’ll still do stuff, but at that point, it’s whatever’s left over, and it’s less its not really planned, it’s like, Okay, we’ll just kinda make sure. But then we start again on Monday.

0:35:05.5 TM: Friday, sometimes as an emergency to fill in the blanks of getting something done, ’cause you don’t know what the… And it might be kind of unplanned work situation. But…

0:35:11.4 CB: Tyler and I will do a marketing meeting or something, we have to do on a Friday.

0:35:14.5 TM: But it’s like… It doesn’t feel compressed with everything else on each side of it, like bookends so it’s actually kind of fun. Like, “Hey, what’s up, man, we got two hours. Let’s hang out. Let’s get this off.”

0:35:29.9 CB: Right. And then as long as you don’t flake on Monday through… In our case, Monday through Wednesday, really ’cause Thursday we’re starting to slow down. Monday through Wednesday, as long as he and I don’t flake and we haven’t for a very long time, Monday through Wednesday, we’re literally doing probably more in those three days than some of you are doing in three months. And that’s just the reality. And then we look at other people’s business, even Tyler and I. There’s businesses that he and I are friends with and scripts we’re in that blow us out, they make us look like nats. And when we look at the activities of the owners, they make us look lazy in there, and they also are so laser-focused and they’re… At this point, their delegation is so Jedi, they’re super heroes that they’re actually on a whole another level. Just know that this isn’t like a “Oh, Once I get the process”. It’s a game. We’re just paying a game, so keep leveling up.

0:36:27.3 TM: It’s the focus game. Can you stay focused or you’re gonna set yourself up to not focus. And then throw a little balance in there, make sure you have your batteries recharged, but you always should have that leader-based top of the chain focus system in place. If you don’t have one and you’re just spitballing and jazz improving, I don’t think that is the most successful route unless you’ve already got $10 mil in the bank, then do whatever you want. But for those of you trying to grow to that ultimate amazing level so that money start accruing, wealth starts to happen, you’re gonna need a top level focus task list system. Period. And then you just start checking stuff off.

0:37:18.4 CB: You can’t… You’ve heard the term growth stacking, you can’t growth stack without being super proactive, and that doesn’t mean you have to be the one by the way. As leaders, it is not by the way. Let’s end on this, okay. If you own… And I’m assuming a lot of you are owners listening to this, if you own your business, okay, are you the worst boss ever to yourself? Because your job is not to do all the work. That is not… As an owner, we don’t have a job, do you realize that? Technically as an owner, you can move to Aruba and never show up again, and it should have zero bearing on the business.

0:38:01.5 TM: I did not hire me. I just [0:38:05.3] ____.

0:38:05.8 CB: Right, and then you were a terrible boss to yourself. And that’s what ends up happening. You’re wearing like 50 hats. So…

0:38:15.3 TM: And that’s how it is in the beginning, guys, you’re a technician first, you roll, you hire first couple of people, but down the road, if your goal is to stay a technician, because maybe you are the chef that has the family secret and you won’t give it to anybody, ’cause you’re stubborn. Sure, fine, work in the kitchen till you die, whatever you want. That’s not what we’re doing here. This podcast is not about that, it’s about life, friendships, relationships, growth, impact on people’s lives, learning and joy.

0:38:46.7 CB: Now to your point, Tyler, one of our customers and dear friends, owns six locations and still works in the business, so just so you know, if you enjoy being the chef, go for it, just be very proactive in your delegation, be very proactive.

0:39:05.1 TM: And make it on your effort, be the chef that chills. And if you wanna keep teaching, teach that epic, the Friday morning at 10:00 AM yoga class, that’s like the most crowded, where all your fans go, and there’s a waiting list, do that… Cultivate the tribe, you know what I mean? Have fun with it, don’t just grind for 12 hours every day, seven days of the week.

0:39:31.2 CB: There’s a… I was gonna look him up, there’s a company called WP Engine, and I got to meet with Jason Cohen, and I got to meet with Jason in Austin and with their business group some years back, and giant company, back then they were 50 million, they’re probably 150 million now, and so Jason walks in and has a total blast with us, we had lunch with him and stuff, he was just hilarious, but he fired himself, it was so hilarious. A guy with a business that big fired himself from being the leader, and he’s like, “It’s my third giant business,” so obviously, he’s super talented, but he goes, “I’m terrible at it.” And we all start laughing, like.

0:40:08.8 CB: “If you are terrible, then we’re really terrible.” He goes, “No,” he goes, “What I mean by that,” he goes, “Clearly, I pulled it off.” He goes, “But I’m miserable,” he goes, “I’m a nerd, man. I’m only happy when I’m in the code.” He goes, “So,” he had fired himself, I don’t know how much earlier before we arrived, but he had hired a new CEO and he’d fired himself and made himself just one of the tech managers. He’s like, “So now my job, literally, is just to go hang out with the team doing what I love.” So the point…

0:40:41.7 TM: Oh my gosh. None of that makes sense to me, but I like… I’m happy for him.

0:40:41.8 CB: It’s brilliant. Yeah I know. He’s obviously a total unicorn, just a super weirdo, amazing. But the thing is that Jason was smart enough to say, “You know what, I can’t keep being proactive in this role, I’m better off serving in this role and I’m gonna hire other proactive folks to do it,” so just know that, delegation, as you grow, is an important part of keeping your sanity, but it’s also important part of keeping that laser-focus that we keep talking about. So if you’re bigger, then just translate some of the stuff we’ve said, to delegation.

0:41:20.8 TM: So, goals, one to seven things that you want to write down and accomplish, Check off. Put them into 20-minute increments where nothing else disturbs you, but the third thing, I want you guys to envision, because of all these stories we just told, where you would like to see yourself, if you can imagine that you’ve gotten this focused and you’ve been able to do… Even accomplish a third of what you dreamed of. And what does that look like? Does it mean like you’re from WP Engine? Does it mean that you focus long enough to where there’s $130,000-$200,000 budget to get someone to do that, so he could be a coder and have fun. The focus can get you to your dreams, you have to know what those look like. So you need to have fun and look at what that lifestyle would be like if you could focus enough, team focus, leader focus, accomplish growth items, check things off, and a year from now, what does that look like to you? More work in the business in a different aspect? Less work in the business? Living in Spain during the winter? I don’t know what it is, but you need to write that down too, that’s part of your homework also. What will the focus get you if you pulled it off. Chris, this was an awesome one man. Thank you for all your insight again.

0:42:44.7 CB: Likewise, focus, guys, Is really hard. We know, we know that you’re doing a lot. We know that there’s a lot of pressure and the weight of the world on your shoulders and your staff needs you, and your family needs you, and everybody needs you, and so because of that, it’s important that we work on our focus, that we work on that structure and those planned events, and we make sure that each day we’re doing those one to seven proactive things, and so, good luck, man. Good luck everybody, ’cause it’s a journey each day.

0:43:17.1 TM: Well, we’re doing it too, we practice what we preach. And we’ll see you on the next episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. Have a great week, everybody. See you later.

In this episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler, they discuss how practicing gratitude is one fundamental way to keep yourself grounded amidst the chaos of owning and running a business.

Ready for it? Enjoy!

Watch it Here

Listen to it Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:06.4 Tyler Marolf: Welcome to the next episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. My name is Tyler Marolf, I’m the co-founder of Teacher Zone along with my partner here, Chris Bates, and wonderful and beautiful co-host. How are you, sir? 

0:00:19.5 Chris Bates: I’m awesome. What’s up! 

0:00:24.3 TM: Hey man, I just wanna… Before we start, I wanna say I’m grateful for you.

0:00:26.5 CB: You know what, I wanna say I’m grateful for you.

0:00:30.4 TM: Okay.

0:00:30.5 CB: So yeah, so if you guys haven’t figured it out this cheesy episode, no. This episode, we’re gonna talk about gratitude and how important it is in all of our lives. And so the reason we thought about this, or one of the reasons, is, number one, doing what we do is super hard. Running a business, it’s not easy.

0:00:55.4 TM: Ebbs and flows, it really does.

0:00:58.9 CB: You’ll have four busy, great days in a row where you’re moving the needle, and then the next week is like two days of trauma and you, and the outside world… Yeah, and the outside world, it’s so interesting whether it’s our staff or whether it’s friends and family, if you don’t own a business, you can’t relate, you just don’t get it. You don’t get how many balls were actually bouncing. So we had an experience, and Tyler, you can tell that story. Tyler and I are in… We’re in an elite coaching group for software owners, and it’s one of our tribes. And so in this tribe, we were doing a huge intensive and we were all learning about a bunch of stuff, and then a really humbling moment happened and Tyler, why don’t you tell that story and that’ll tee this off.

0:01:55.8 TM: So maybe some of you have done these intensives or summits before, and you know you’ve got a big workbook, there’s a bunch of curriculum in place, and this one happened to be on customer success, all facets of it, two eight-hour days. Amazing. And there is 400 plus software owners and founders on this thing globally, Italy, France, it was just really, really great, we love this group very much. And so, then they have Q&As, and they’ve got the moderators handling the Q&As through this ultimate Zoom, they have the ultimate set up for this, it’s just fantastic. And during these Q&As for the whole two days until the very end, there are very good questions, stock questions, business-related questions, not the most vulnerable, a little bit of vulnerability because, hey, we’re failing, and we need help with this, our business, our customer success avenue is failing here, but then we all… We related, we related, but it wasn’t what happened at the end. So we have the very last Q&A, we’re done after this, and people raise their hands, there’s a line of people and a couple of people go first, and then this young man, this founder comes on, and I won’t say his name, but he touched all of us at once, and I gotta admit, I was taken back for a second, Chris. He started to talk about how he has been listening and receiving all the information from the intensive, and it’s just been…

0:03:34.3 TM: He started to well up. Like when they took the break, he was in tears in his small group that broke off, he couldn’t function for a sec because everything was so overwhelming, and he just wanted to let everybody know that he knows it’s part of it, but he also wanted to throw himself out there, and along with letting everyone know that if they’re feeling this way, that we understood. And I thought it was so brave, vulnerable and gracious, and also traumatic at the same time. It was a lot of feelings at once that he was brave enough to come forth in front of everybody in that world.

0:04:16.1 CB: In that… Yeah.

0:04:18.7 TM: We’re talking multi million dollar businesses across the board, and this guy, who you could tell was successful, was not feeling successful.

0:04:27.9 CB: And vulnerability is one of the most powerful tools. So if you’re struggling with your leadership a little bit, I’m not talking about playing the victim, ’cause that’s a difference. Honestly, I have zero patience for victims. Anybody out there in my family, friends or whatever, I stay away from you if you’re a victim person, just so you know. That’s not how…

0:04:49.7 TM: Now we’re not talking about real victims, we know who you are.

0:04:53.3 CB: No, no, no, I’m talking about poor me, why always me, why always me? You know what, it’s hard for everyone.

0:04:58.8 TM: Victory loves company and we don’t [0:05:00.4] ____. Birds of a feather, flock together.

0:05:02.0 CB: That’s a power play, yeah. So that’s a power play, this is not that. What this is, is this is true vulnerability, and people can tell the difference because true vulnerability is saying I’m a strong person, but I don’t always feel strong, and I’m gonna let you guys know that right now I’m not feeling strong. And that’s why it really touched us because my first reaction was, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe he’s sharing this.”

0:05:25.0 TM: I couldn’t believe he was saying it.

0:05:25.1 CB: Oh, yeah, yeah those… Both of us was like, I can’t believe he’s sharing this.

0:05:26.3 TM: I was like, honestly, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see my hand gestures. I was like, “Wait, wait, are you gonna do it? Oh he’s doing it.” Like I was watching it unfold. Not that I’ve never done that before, but you know, 400 people of that caliber, that’s the first time I’ve seen it happen in that scope like it was wild.

0:05:49.5 CB: Yeah, there’s a difference honest, heartfelt, vulnerability. And so I want you all to know that if you’re feeling that way, first of all, let us know because we are a community, and we do all care about each other. You’re not alone, and that vulnerability also really takes this to this place is why we chose gratitude is because what gratitude is at its core is gratitude is saying, I’m not gonna wait until a certain finish line or a certain event or certain goal happens, gratitude says I’m gonna let myself, even though there’s a lot of stress and things going on, I’m gonna be okay right now. I’m gonna let myself be okay. I’m gonna say, “You know what, everything right now that I have going on,” of course, I’ve not achieved whatever milestones you’re going for yet. That’s part of the journey, that’s the adventure, and were so proud of that guy that he had actually been vulnerable, that the community opened up and expressed gratitude. The chat blew up. It was because… Yeah.

0:06:54.5 TM: Unbelievable, and it also shows a willingness, Chris. There’s a lot of principles that come into play to get gratitude. And we all have the choice to pull the lever, right? Whether it’s your while you’re shaving, looking in the mirror, and you can choose to go, “Wow, yesterday sucked, and it’s not done.” Or you can take a breath and then the willingness comes in, so his willingness to be vulnerable made an impact on us to where we wanted to do a not as much business-related podcast and do a little bit more foofy one because, you know what, Chris and I are that way anyways. If you didn’t know that yet, it is about time we did this episode, but the willingness for that man to come on and be willing to say “I am not an island” in the first place…

0:07:46.3 CB: I’m overwhelmed right now was the gist. It was that, you know what, I’ve got so many things I can do for my business, I don’t freaking know where to start, and I feel totally overwhelmed, and that’s… We were all so grateful to him, and then afterwards he expressed gratitude back for the support to just allow him to be vulnerable for a minute. And the big thing that Tyler and I took away from that, obviously, vulnerability is important, and if you’re not vulnerable with your staff, then they probably aren’t relating to you maybe as much as they could, but it is about vulnerability…

0:08:22.8 TM: And we’ll define that as [0:08:24.8] ____ to you guys, if this is all new to you and you haven’t had a chance to really dive into understanding or deepening your understanding of leadership, being vulnerable doesn’t mean, like Chris said, walking around being victim, letting them know that you don’t feel good that day or something like that, please don’t think that that’s what we’re talking about.

0:08:42.9 CB: Tyler and I, we’re warriors, right? So we’re fighters, and we absolutely love the idea of practicing strength and working on ourselves and working on getting stronger, but you know what, we’re all human and throughout every day, Tyler and I have weakness, throughout every day, Tyler and I strength wanes and isn’t at its peak because our energy levels throughout the day are obviously always fluctuating, and so a lot of time your strength is based on your energy level, your diet, all the balls that you’re bouncing. And so…

0:09:21.4 TM: Hydration.

0:09:22.8 CB: Yeah. Drink water, if you’re not drinking water, drink lots of water.

0:09:26.2 TM: Yes, drink lots of water. It helps a lot.

[laughter]

0:09:27.7 CB: Yeah, I’ve got my water right here.

0:09:29.9 TM: I’ve got mine too.

0:09:34.0 CB: But the big thing that we connect to the gratitude and the vulnerability part, if you’ve not ever done that before, it’s actually pretty interesting to think about. So in entrepreneurs organization, we had a practice to create vulnerability instantly, but what it really does is create trust instantly. And what we would do is the very first meeting we would have together, you’d spend five minutes a person and you share something that you’re ashamed to share. And oh my gosh, tears start flowing immediately, it doesn’t matter who they are, I’ve dealt with some very big as far as successful humans, but then in two seconds, we’re all just children again because we all just feel so vulnerable, sharing those things. And so vulnerability creates trust instantly, if you’re authentic.

0:10:23.2 TM: Good point.

0:10:24.2 CB: That guy now we all have a deeper trust for one another, and anytime someone’s willing to be vulnerable, it connects humans, ’cause it says, you know what, we’re not robots.

0:10:36.9 TM: Which in turn the by-product is, is now that tribe, that little circle of people that experienced that impact, they also now know they have permission to approach maybe just one person that was there, or maybe a group situation, whatever, but maybe they had no permission to be vulnerable prior to that. So it opens up a willingness in groups, and it grows, which Chris, you’re bringing up staff, if you’re vulnerable with your staff, and remember, don’t take that the wrong way, it goes down to appreciating them, being grateful for them, letting them know that you know what, maybe if you’re not venting down too far, but your ops team might need to know, “Hey, it’s gonna be a tough week, but I’m trusting you guys that we’re gonna pull this off together,” like, “Here’s what’s going on.” If they know you’re a human and not a machine, that you’re just cracking the whip, man the trust builds just like you mentioned.

0:11:34.7 CB: Well, emotions aren’t… Emotions aren’t a state of being, obviously. And so I think that vulnerability… And let’s get totally into gratitude now. So vulnerability, I think is a prerequisite for gratitude. So you can’t be grateful for what you have, I believe, if you don’t soften yourself up a little bit, you’re right? And sort of just be like wow. Kind of like watching… If you have kids like watching your… When your kids are… My kids are getting older now, but when they were little, I remember like, I remember pushing Zella on the swing… Well I used to. Zella’s still little but… I still push Zella on the swing [0:12:16.9] ____ still.

0:12:17.0 CB: A picture came up the other day of my 15-year-old, Hudson, and Tyler knew Huddy since he was born, and he had a big old red fro when he was like four and [chuckle] so… And I was pushing him on the swing it was just…

0:12:29.9 TM: I still have video of the poop and diarrhea song he wrote in the back of the minivan Randy, you named that minivan, Randy. And he was like six or something, oh my gosh. Those were the things…

0:12:43.8 CB: It’s a classic. It’s a classic.

0:12:46.6 TM: We forget all about that stuff. Right now, Chris is laughing, he forgot what he was talking about.

0:12:50.9 CB: ‘Cause I’m remembering that, yeah.

0:12:53.8 TM: Yes, but in reality, that never went away even in our darkest moments, those things are the things that matter, and we think that the audit coming up is going to destroy everyone and my kids will melt in front of me and no one will be alive or… We get that real doomsday feeling sometimes, that intense and as we grow, get a little older, get a little more experience under our belts, it’s not as intense, those peaks and valleys, but the bottomline is, is gratitude is not being self-centered, so if we get out of ourselves for just half a second, and just have an exercise that pulls [0:13:34.9] ____, “What am I grateful for today?”

0:13:38.1 CB: Yeah, if you’re an ego-maniac, which, listen, we’re all leaders in some sort, and there’s moments of trying to feel stronger, and we’ve all gone through that as you get older, but if you’re an ego-maniac, it’s very likely that you have a hard time being vulnerable. You just do, because when our ego is involved, we’re selfish, like you said, and we… Out of selfishness, we’re trying to protect ourselves.

0:14:00.2 TM: Scared.

0:14:01.0 CB: So there’s a lot of…

0:14:01.7 TM: Well, fear.

0:14:02.1 CB: There’s a lot of fear, yeah, fear, a lot of fear.

0:14:03.9 TM: ‘Cause we don’t wanna… We put our walls up, and because if we think we have a belief system in place, and in some occasions, being strong and the optics in front of certain people or deals that are gonna be done, absolutely, but your core, your homebase, your family, your op staff that knows everything that’s going on in the business, that core that is your family, they don’t need those walls to be so thick and cracked and hard, like there’s a time and a place, it’s just…

0:14:36.2 CB: Well, I’ve noticed an observation, Tyler, we work with folks all over the world and they’re different entrepreneurs of different sizes, and I’ve noticed the bigger the entrepreneur… Now, I want you to listen to this, especially if you’re newer to business, the bigger the business, the bigger the entrepreneur, typically, the more vulnerable they’re willing to be. I’ve just noticed that, right, Tyler? I mean, think about all of our interactions with our largest customers, they’re amazing, and it’s like, we absolutely just throw it out there like, “Oh yeah. Today is a rough one.” Whatever, when I talk to the little guys, so it’s like, “Doing great, everything is awesome.” And it’s like, “Come on.”

0:15:21.6 TM: Yeah, I don’t… You know, I appreciate you telling me that, but can we just move on to something else that matters right now? 

0:15:28.2 CB: We know you’re just putting on a shiny front, yeah, a shiny front. So that brings us to gratitude. So here’s the deal, okay, I’m one of the most optimistic persons ever. I always have been since I was young. So I’m blessed that I was born with that sort of attitude, but gosh, we get… There’s so much stuff thrown at us that Tyler could attest, ’cause he and I are like a married couple, I go through my lack of optimism plenty throughout the week, and so we have to practice it. That’s what I’m trying to get at, is that the gratitude…

0:16:03.2 TM: Chris is smart though, Chris takes it out on me, and then sometimes my family is cannon fodder, like, “Why don’t I just take it out back on you and save my family?” I’m doing it wrong.

0:16:15.2 CB: Oh yeah, I speak to my family, yeah, that’s it. I know you can handle it. [laughter] So what gratitude does, guys, okay, if I just sit here right now and I just tingle like it’s Christmas, right, and you can actually see if you’re watching on the YouTube, you can see us start to glow when you start to feel gratitude, you can’t feel gratitude… You feel gratitude from the inside out, other people can actually feel that. Selfishness and control and lack of vulnerability, you start to suck in, that’s what you get…

0:16:45.5 TM: Your brow furrows.

0:16:47.7 CB: Yeah, you’re sucking in, and when you suck in, you’re more selfish, and then what you’re doing is you’re severing connections, so you’re getting less help, which makes you more scared, which makes you more selfish, and that’s the ego.

0:17:00.0 TM: And you’re unapproachable, and everybody’s like, “Well, I guess I’ll wait till he’s done doing that shit.” Excuse me, “Because I don’t think he wants help right now.” Or something like that, it’s this… Assumptions come into play…

0:17:13.2 CB: The idea of closing versus opening. And they’ve actually shown… There’s this exercise that I used to practice with the kids, Tyler, you know this, when my kids were younger, and they would be broody, I would use this technique I learned from Tony Robbins years ago, where I’d make them stand up, and if you’re listening to this, do this, stand up right now, and I want you to look up to the ceiling, and I want you to stand as tall as you possibly can with your shoulders back, pretend like you have a cape on, okay? And I want you to smile and put your hands on your hips like Superman, so now you’re like a superhero looking up, and you’re smiling, okay? And now from that position, I want you to feel sad without changing your physiology, and you can’t.

0:18:02.1 TM: You can’t, you can’t do it.

0:18:04.2 CB: You literally have to droop your shoulders.

0:18:05.7 TM: ‘Cause you’re already standing like a ding-dong anyway, so you’re laughing at yourself, and it’s great by then, ’cause now you’re laughing and it’s over. And you’ve already…

0:18:13.6 CB: So your physiology…

0:18:15.2 TM: Yeah, go to the science on that. We have endorphins, serotonin, all those…

0:18:22.0 CB: So yeah, so the two things that I like to or I’ve heard a lot, and Tyler and I aren’t experts on this, but from what we’ve read and stuff like that, you’ve got the two with the cortisol and the oxytocin. So cortisol is what our bodies release to make us more alert, but it’s a stress hormone, so you really don’t wanna release cortisol a lot. Well, guess what, you’re an entrepreneur, so you’re releasing cortisol constantly, because you have another fire, another…

0:18:46.1 TM: In the middle of the night, in the shower, and then three years later, your wife says, “You know, you’re not that great of a listener, lately.” Or something like that. That’s all cortisol related because you’re just like grinding. You’re kinda sore, sore, sore.

0:19:04.2 CB: So cortisol, yes, so what it does, it makes us more aware because it’s basically the fight or flight hormone, it’s that, “Oh my gosh, there’s a tiger that’s gonna eat me. What do I do?” And so that is… And the more you put yourself in that state, and I say put yourself, notice, because I do believe that we have control of this and habits are everything, so the more you put yourself in that state, you’re creating a habit of being in stress, of having more cortisol. And Tyler and I, over the last 11 years together, we have had our own journey of… There’s been moments where I’m like super cortisol-infused and there’s moments where Tyler’s super cortisol-infused, and the coolest thing is by daily working on it, he and I are getting to a place, Tyler, where I think we’re more oxytocin than cortisol at this point which…

0:19:54.4 CB: Or as in from someone’s cortisol, we have really learned how to lead with each other, too, to where I’m not cortisol all the time. I just had a sandwich and I… Maybe I got into gratitude for a second ’cause my wife and I actually get to work near each other. So I can go take so does Chris, so I can get out of reality for a second and go enjoy my marriage for 11 seconds or minutes or whatever, and then Chris is like different time zone, right? Two hour difference, and he’s not at lunch and he’s tripping, and we can let each other know it’s okay too. So the cortisol, I can let it get mine going, if it’s like that that bad, maybe it does scare me. Maybe it’s a shitty problem and I’m like, no! And now we’re both doubled up.

0:20:41.4 CB: Now we’re both in it.

0:20:42.3 TM: Yeah, yeah and then all of a sudden also it’s like 8 PM and we’re like argh! Oh my gosh.

0:20:47.2 CB: Here’s a secret. Here’s a secret. Here’s a secret. We’ll do an ASMR moment.

0:20:54.8 TM: Here’s a secret.

0:20:55.9 CB: ASMR. I’m sorry. Secret is…

0:21:00.0 TM: That stands for Active Sound Modulation Expertise Module.

0:21:05.3 CB: Amazing.

0:21:06.5 TM: I don’t think that it stands for…

0:21:08.7 CB: If you get yourself in gratitude, you actually solve problems better than when you’re in stress and in fear.

0:21:17.0 TM: Yep, that’s right.

0:21:18.6 CB: So that’s the irony, is that if you are actually… And part of that is what we just did, if you get quiet for a second, it’s getting still. It’s letting your eyes not move around and dart around. It’s bringing yourself back to the room. If you got pets, go play with them for a second, because they can bring you back to ahh. Or if you got kids go push them on the swing or take a walk, there’s a million things. People think that what we’re talking about right now…

0:21:46.1 TM: Nature is a big one.

0:21:47.3 CB: And there’s people out there maybe, probably not listeners to this, but maybe there are, that think that what we’re talking about right now is worthless and it’s not their thing. Do you know what? I’m gonna say that there are different belief systems, types of people, tribes, engineer mindset first, creative or mixed or whatever, and there’s a lot of different things, but you know what? What everybody has in common? What we’re talking about right now, everyone has access to, I don’t care what your beliefs are. Every human has this. So anybody thinking that what we’re talking about is like a waste of time, fair enough. We have no control over what you think. But it’s real.

0:22:29.9 CB: Well, okay, so let’s pretend like they’re really analytical, like, let’s get to that. So Forbes did a study that shows that businesses that practice and promote gratitude from the staff, so in other words, the staff isn’t feeling like, okay guys, once we achieve this milestone, then we’ll be happy. No, we’re happy and grateful for the business and the…

0:22:49.0 TM: You already are. Yeah, we’re super happy you’re here. We went through a lot to hire you. Why would you forget that you’re awesome, like four months later and not talk to you anymore? [0:23:02.5] ____.

0:23:04.3 CB: You don’t wait for a seminal event to celebrate each other. The more we can do it today…

0:23:08.3 TM: It’s called jail-house religion, too. You don’t wait for the crap to hit the fan to go, hey, hey. Hey Johnny, how are we gonna fix this and he hasn’t seen you in two months or something, you know what I mean? It’s just not the right approach. The analytical mind is what you’re approaching right now.

0:23:25.5 CB: Ideally, yes. So the analytical mind might say, I don’t need this mumbo-jumbo in my business, and studies have shown that you’ll actually have a 10% increase in revenue and productivity or more just from promoting these principles of letting people know that you actually appreciate them. Of feeling grateful for one another, so that there’s deeper connection and camaraderie. You’ll notice what Tyler said earlier about selfishness accompanying the lack of vulnerability and gratitude. They’re literally flip sides of the coin. So what’s the other side? Oxytocin. So when you’re grateful, you actually emit… They call it the happiness drug, you emit oxytocin, and you can actually fake it. You could do what I said earlier, you could stand tall. I can just feel so good about everything, I could feel like Superman, and all of a sudden my body will start admitting it, and if you think about it, remember when you were a little kid and you wanted that thing and Christmas morning perhaps, or something like a birthday or something for you that was… Take yourself to a super exciting childhood moment, and you’ll realize you were surging with oxytocin, you have that gratitude, happiness, drive going through you. If you put yourself in that moment all the time like it’s Christmas, you start to get goosebumps.

0:24:42.8 TM: And it’s not fleeting either, it’s not like you can… Unless you need to be medicated, I suppose. I don’t know, we’re not doctors. But it doesn’t just go away. It doesn’t just end. You don’t just fall off a cliff after you feel that way after you’ve taken the chance and choice cognitively to change your mindset for a second, it doesn’t just go away. It would take a lot for you to just 20 minutes later be [0:25:13.3] ____.

0:25:13.8 CB: There’s a residual echo every time you practice it. That’s a great point. Yeah, yeah, no, you’re right. So there’s a residual echo every time you practice it, and the more you practice throughout the day every day, the more it becomes habit. And the one thing that I think will really help a lot of you, especially as owners, is when you wake up in the morning, and I have to practice this too. Every morning when I wake up, I have to go, I wanna grab my phone because I know that I’m getting lit up like early morning first thing. We have customers in different time zones. All sorts of stuff is going on. So I have to not grab my phone or have it in a different room. I happen to have it next to my bed, but I don’t grab it. What I do is I spend five minutes and just lay there in gratitude and just make my body feel ready for the day. Please, practice even 60 seconds of that, and I guarantee you’ll start your day a little brighter than starting your day with worry or with stress. Start it with oxytocin, don’t start it with cortisol. Don’t let that stress.

0:26:17.7 TM: If you’re gonna say, tomorrow is the first day you’re gonna try it, or maybe right now, you could try it right now, and let’s say it’s day one, that you really haven’t in the last few years, been able to really practice something like that. Some people are crazy. They do yoga in the morning, meditate for 30 minutes in silence, that’s intense. We’re not saying that even though that’s high level stuff.

0:26:37.8 CB: That’s another talk ’cause we both… Tyler and I both have some morning routines but…

0:26:42.1 TM: Quieting your mind. Can you even imagine the two of us with a quiet mind? Well, we’ve been there, Chris, more than me. But that first little 60 seconds Chris just talked about, and then you do it again tomorrow. What I do is I wake up and instead of just grabbing that, let’s face it, I’m scuffling across from my bed through the kitchen, use the restroom, and my whole mind is just such an espresso addict. So it’s literally thinking coffee. You know what I mean? And that’s cool, I enjoy it, I love it and whatever. But you know what I do before I drink the coffee? Because coffee’s intense on your tummy, right? Full glass of cold water. I drink that first, it wakes me up, I can fill it on an empty slept on stomach, it circles around in there, and then boom.

0:27:33.9 CB: ‘Cause your body gets dehydrated while you’re sleeping. It’s just one of the best things you could do when you wake up.

0:27:38.3 TM: Hey Chris, right after I drink the coffee is when I calm myself… Excuse me, the water… And the coffee’s brewing, that’s my little moment where I’m like, I look out at the window and nothing matters for a second. I might not… Maybe the kids aren’t even up. I haven’t thought about them yet. I’m just quiet for a second. So that’s…

0:28:00.1 CB: Oh, that’s… No, that’s terrific. That’s a great practice so have that throughout the day. I will say, I heard on a podcast recently that, this is from a doctor who said that they’ve actually shown that your sleep cycles, by going outside, and Tyler does a lot of chores outside, I do some, but some of the mornings I have force myself, like first thing. If you’ll go outside first thing with that first cup of coffee rather than watching the news or something horrible, if you’ll go outside first thing…

[laughter]

0:28:29.3 TM: Something horrible.

0:28:31.8 CB: Right? Don’t feed yourself poison. Go outside. If you’ll go outside and get a little bit of sun, I think it’s… I don’t know if it’s 10 minutes or five minutes, but it’s a very short period of time, your circadian rhythm actually resets its clock, so your body will be better ready for sleep at the end of the day, just from activating it by some exterior sun, and so even if it’s cloudy out, they said your body has the same reaction, it sort of… It turns it on going, “Ah, it’s daylight.” So calmness, activating yourself for the day, using nature to get yourself in gratitude. You know, Tyler, I did something the other day. My mom has had… She’s doing great, but she’s had a lot of health issues. And we were all sitting outside last weekend after a barbecue. And I literally… ‘Cause you and I’ve been talking about this a lot lately. I literally sat there while they were all having a fun conversation, and I just sat for probably 15 minutes without saying a word, just listening to everybody laughing and being in gratitude.

0:29:37.0 CB: Just celebrating them, just internally. Just internally going, “You guys are so awesome.” I’m so lucky for this moment that I get with the family members that were present. And so it’s important to not… Don’t wait. Here’s the gist of this whole talk, guys, and this is the takeaway that I personally hope that one gets, Tyler, is don’t wait for it to happen to you, don’t wait for an exterior moment to make you feel gratitude like, “Oh, woohoo, we got the big customer,” Or “Woohoo, we signed up 10 new students,” or whatever it is. Don’t wait for that. Because if you wait for that, then what you’re doing is you’re basically, feeding yourself with the stress poison for possibly months on end, and only celebrating wins every now and then. So celebrate your wins throughout the day, all day. And here’s the irony of that practice. Number one, it gets easier and easier. Number two, stress dissipates. Stress can’t live in gratitude. Gratitude kills… It’s the stress killer.

0:30:49.3 TM: Right. Right. Well, I know…

0:30:51.8 CB: All stress is, is a made-up… Stress is a made… What do they say? It’s praying for what you don’t want? It’s a made-up prayer for what you don’t want, that’s what stress is.

0:31:01.4 CB: Right, and it’s also you’re probably reasoning about a bunch of stuff that isn’t even gonna happen in the first place, so. And hey, when all else fails guys, this has been a great talk, but stressed spelled backwards is desserts. So if all else fails, literally go find a quiet spot. It won’t stay quiet in your mind for too long ’cause a hot fudge sundae has a lot of sugar. So that’s gonna…

[laughter]

0:31:25.2 TM: [0:31:25.2] ____ in your body. But it’s not a bad thing, and if you gotta do that, you gotta do it. But for real folks, Chris is right.

0:31:34.5 CB: But it’s good ’cause you’re at least breaking that cycle. I’d be grateful for that amazing sundae…

0:31:42.0 TM: Right. And when you’re done with it, you roll out of your chair and you go for a walk. But no, for real guys, don’t let circumstances dictate my day. That’s what somebody taught me years ago in business. And I was young, I was in my 20s, and I guess I was… I must have been at… It was private mortgage banking, VP of the West Coast at Wells Fargo. And I’m sitting across from his desk, and I had been a decent producer for a while, and something happened and it wasn’t good and production was down. And I must have said a bunch of excuses or something, I don’t know, I was 24, 23, and he was so nice. And he’s like, “Tyler, he is like you know something I learned?” ‘Cause he said, and this is beautiful, he said this as well. He didn’t say it to me, he said, “You know what someone told me once, Tyler, and I practice, is to not let the circumstances dictate my day.” So I segue that every time if I feel like it’s a thing, I then also know that this principle is true too, and that’s the spirit of this podcast, is that at any moment of any day, I can start the day over.

0:32:57.5 TM: Time is weird, guys. The past we hold so much on to the value of the past, and a lot of it can be good; accolades and successes that motivate and say, “I could repeat that, I’m gonna build a the system around that and I can repeat this thing,” but there’s things in the past, that they do not matter as long as you’ve learned from them, if they’re bad, but there’s things that maybe weren’t even your fault that are bad in the past, that don’t matter. That’s not… Why are we worried about it? It didn’t, wasn’t even… So the point is, is moving forward, this second, now this second, now this second, that’s all we have, yeah.

0:33:37.7 CB: All there is. By the way, if you’re one of those victim people that sticks in the past a lot, ’cause you’ll notice only victim people stay in the past. Optimists are actually more future thinkers which can be a trap too, ’cause like you said, present is all there is. So whether you’re an optimist future thinker or whether you’re more of a pessimist victim past thinker, okay? I’m sorry, but it’s just true.

0:34:00.1 TM: Did you make all that up? Optimist future thinker? Optimist…

0:34:06.3 CB: It’s the way I look at it. Now it… I love to debate, by the way. If you guys think I’m wrong, tell me, let’s talk about it, but I personally look at it that way. I think it’s true because I think that everyone I know that are pessimist, they’re always, they’re the ones that post, repost that one success they had like 100 times on social media. Because they’re such negative people that they’ll always wallowing in the past, good and bad, like they’re never going to where they’re headed or in the moment, they’re always wallowing in the past. So if that’s you, just know it’s a habit, you just created a the habit, it’s okay. We all have them, we have habits of however we behave. So what this habit is trying to do is bringing you now, not future, not past, it’s trying to say right now, I’m good.

0:34:57.2 TM: Yup, and there’s something out there, guys, that everybody has it. There’s something bigger and stronger that we all respect in our lives, every individual can be different. It can be God, it can be the ocean, I don’t care what your belief system is, I have mine, but I try to harness that spiritual power that’s bigger than me first when I sit down and just say, thanks, I’m like standing here drinking coffee, breathing, and then I made kids, I made two humans, that’s kind of cool.

0:35:33.7 CB: Yeah.

0:35:35.1 TM: By the way, Chris, they’re looking at me all the time, and I’m a type A, got a lot to say, and boy, our business is stressful, this week. What are my kiddos doing? What good’s gonna come out of that? So I get grateful first because that’s the only way I can make them amazing later.

0:35:55.2 CB: And it’s still in the way that you actually listen to them. Because if you’re stressed or worried about the future or feeling guilty about the past, you’re not in the now and they can feel that. And so here’s the funniest part, there’s a two things in closing that I’d like to impart. One, there was a therapy years ago, I read about the Morita therapy and it’s a Japanese therapy, and what they would do is if you were struggling, they would have you sit down and write down all the things you’re grateful for and make lists. And all the things, of all of the contributions that had happened to you, and you do this over a period of time, and I think the lists are pretty long, and I did it back then, and it’s incredible when you start doing it, ’cause you start running out of the things you’re grateful for.

0:36:45.0 CB: So you’ll be like, Tyler, I’m grateful for you, I’m grateful for my dog, I’m grateful for my passions, I’m grateful for my kids, I’m grateful for you should go through it all. Now you’re like, “Oh, I’m running out of a thing… Oh wait, I’m grateful for the HOA. Oh wait, I’m grateful for my hardware store guy that just answered that question. Oh wait, I’m grateful for that really nice person that just helped me at this place. Oh wait, I’m grateful for I did the… ” All of a sudden you start realizing, there isn’t anything you have that you did. Everything that we have and are, is in connection or conjunction with something or somebody else, an external. In other words, how could we not be grateful? Everything… This shirt, the roof over our heads. You know how many thousands of years, humans messed up on roofs before we could have these roofs that we have over head right now? 

0:37:35.3 TM: There’s a lot of flat humans that didn’t make it.

0:37:38.9 CB: Right. And so there’s just so much that’s happened. So I think that that’s important is to do that, and then lastly, I’ll say, if you wanna make an easy way to do that, this is… And a lot of you might or may not have heard this, it’s called The Five Minute Journal. And it’s by intelligentchange.com, The Five Minute Journal. I have my kids doing it, I do it, and basically every morning, you just say, I’m grateful for… And you say the three things you’re grateful for. You say, what would make today great after that, okay? And then you say an affirmation of what you are, and at the end of the day, you do an unplug. So it’s a very simple way to start with three things that you’re grateful for, and if you do that every day, guys, it’s gonna start to wear off on you and it’s gonna become more and more. And I even find myself before I walk in our school, in my car, I turn off the radio for a second, I even usually talking to Tyler, so I say, “Tyler I gotta go,” and then I whew. And I put myself in gratitude for a second, and then I walk in. You know why? Because Tyler and I teach children. We’ve got students all over the place, and so I don’t wanna walk in with that negative energy.

0:38:52.0 TM: “Who’s that big angry guy storming through the building?”

0:38:55.1 CB: And I have. We all have, right? But I don’t wanna do that anymore, so I’ve really been trying to make a conscious effort before I enter our operation to make sure I enter from gratitude because people can feel that and they feel your connection.

0:39:09.6 TM: Right, that’s huge. Well, You know what, this is our gratitude episode, we’ve been wanting to do this. And that young man, that business owner really shook, Chris and I made an impact in, and so we wanted to just bring a little bit back to you. And guys, you gotta realize, Chris and I talking about this, we get to grow from it. So when two people are together and they’re conversing and they’re sharing gratitude back and forth, whether it’s about their friendship or maybe a topic like we’re doing, it’s cathartic. It renews our mind by doing this podcast and helps Chris, even though we’re trying to help you, and it helps me, even though we’re trying to…

0:39:51.8 CB: Mm-hmm. 100%.

0:39:52.5 TM: So, we’re glad we got to do that with you today, Chris.

0:39:54.8 CB: Well, you know what is so funny is we talked earlier about how you can’t be selfish if you’re in that great state of gratitude, but it’s ironic because selfishly, you’re better off. So by sharing it, by discussing it, by thinking about it, it is serving you too, it’s just not a self-centered serving, it’s more of an interconnected…

0:40:19.1 TM: Well, we could do a whole thing on service, by the way, but if you wanna help others, which entrepreneurs, that’s what we’re doing, we wanna help our teams make money, feed their families, we wanna solve a world problem of some sort, a business problem or whatever, and so we wanna serve, right? Serve. Serve. Serve. How do we help? How do we help? How do we help? If our cup is on fumes, if our cup… If Tyler’s cup is an eighth full, and then I’m trying to help people and I’m throwing the last drops that I have to try to help someone, what’s my motivation there? My own cup, and Chris called it like being selfish and concentrating on ourselves and finding a gratitude so that our cup of appreciation and selflessness starts to fill up when it hits the brim, we can dump our service out on people.

0:41:11.1 CB: That’s Right.

0:41:11.5 TM: Like we’re actually worth something at that point, so it does takes a bit of work. If you’re finding that this is hitting home hard right now because maybe your cup is a little empty, email us, you know, just email.

0:41:26.1 CB: Yeah. Well, yeah, and if you have practices that work for you, also let’s share it amongst our community, and, you know, Tyler, what you just said is so important, I like to look at us… Basically, our battery… Like is an easy way for me to think about it metaphorically, is that I’m powering our staff, each other, my family, inside out, so in other words, when I’m in the presence… Let me just take you like you as an example, I want to power Tyler, I wanna give you more, and as soon as I do that, it’s a gratitude state because I’m coming outside of myself. Any time you’re worried or you’re stressed or your cortisol, like we said, you’re sucking energy in. Dandapani, he’s a business guru, he calls it being an energy vampire, and so you’re an energy vampire, you’re sucking it in, he’s like to stay away from energy vampires, and so you want to not be that, you wanna be a power pack, and living in gratitude makes you an energy power pack, I believe, right? 

0:42:29.8 TM: And it’s infectious, and it will spread, and synergy will happen. And if you’re in a gratitude hole right now at your company with your teams, you’re not gonna get out of it overnight, they might think you’re full of crap the first week, the second week, and then finally like month three and a half, I have this personal experience, by the way, about three and a half months later, all of a sudden, they’re like, “Dude, this guy is not changing, he’s like this now,” I’m telling you, it never goes back. It would take a catastrophe to bring it back to where our teams… What I’m speaking of would get back to where it was through that growth. It would sound believable. So if you’re in that hole you can start digging out now.

0:43:17.5 CB: You just brought up a memory that I’ve been using lately is my great-grandfather, and my late great-grandfather was the happiest man I’ve ever known. He would laugh with his whole soul, and he was a big man, and I just remember his entire body shaking all the time from laughter, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Just he had that big huge laugh all the time. I remember one time, I was like 13, I was being broody. And he’s like, “Son what are you something… What’s going on?” And I’m like, “You know, life stinks.” And he’s like, “What? Life’s amazing!” And then he just starts laughing and he’s telling jokes all the time, and he’s always, and so I realized, now I bring him up because I realize now that it was a habit, he had created that habit in himself, or he was just always grateful.

0:44:09.7 CB: So, let’s all create that habit, let’s worked for it every day, just a little bit and know you’re not alone. And if you’re having a bad day, cool, start again tomorrow, or start again right now.

0:44:18.5 TM: No! Start again now and it’s right at the end of your fingertips. You have more power than you realize. Just flip the switch. So, Chris, thanks for talking about gratitude with me today and, hey, to all of you viewers, remember this podcast is fueled by teacherzone.com, if you don’t know who we are, go there, check it out. Get our e-books. There’s a couple of them there. You can see that at teacherzone.com/chaos, and just be part of the community. Email us, stay in touch, and we’ll see you next time.

Today, we’ll finish things up with the final 5-8 automations you need in your lesson business to create more time and make more money.

Here are the final 4 things we cover:

5: Automate Your Payroll
6: Automate Your Regular Notifications & Reminders
7: Create Evergreen Curriculum
8: Automate Keeping Track of Student Progress

If you can automate and systematize these things in your business, you’ll be able to focus more on the students.

Instead of draining your brain trying to keep track of everything, you’ll be able to engage and empower your learners...which is really what you’re all about.

Watch it Here

Listen to it Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:04.6 Chris: Welcome to another episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler, and we will be continuing our talk on the eight things you should automate right now in your lesson businesses to create more time and more money. So, Chris, we’re on part two. Last week, we went over registration, tuition and payments, scheduling, rescheduling, all those automations, also attendance check-ins and how to free up time there. Tell us what we’re starting with on the four we’re gonna cover today.

0:00:38.2 Tyler: So part two of automations we all need in our class and lesson business. The first one we started with here is payroll, and here’s why. I don’t know if you have independent contractors or employees, and quite frankly, they’re different business models; however you run it it’s cool. And I don’t know if you have someone that does your payroll. Right? We do. You can hire fractional CFOs, you can hire bookkeepers, there’s software, there’s all sorts of stuff.

0:01:08.0 Tyler: But to make payroll easy, you need to have some sort of automation that allows you to keep track. We found the easiest way is to utilize the attendance, because then you’re not only… You’re tracking the student’s learning journey, as well as tracking how many hours your teachers are actually doing their job. So we started with payroll because for a lot of you this is a really stressful thing. Tyler, why don’t you explain how we did payroll at our school eight years ago? 

0:01:44.7 Chris: [chuckle] Okay. At our school, eight years ago…

0:01:48.6 Tyler: We would say, “Hey, everybody!”

0:01:50.0 Chris: No. Well, it was Google calendar. We lived off Google Calendar back then. So in the very, very top from midnight to 4:00 AM were tuitions, monthly tuitions, where we docked them, like where their tuitions are due. And it would just fill up with green. And then during lesson times after school, we had everybody… Every teacher had a shared calendar, I made them get a Google calendar, many of them didn’t, and they had their schedule filled out. And we would add them to it, we’d have the master calendar. And then I would say, “Alright, it’s payroll. Everybody invoice me.” Even though they were W-2 employees, I was like, “Invoice me.” I didn’t know the right term to use, right, but I needed something for them to make sure to say, “Thumbs up, this is what I worked.” And then I’d go, “Cool, thumbs up, I agree.” And then I literally would send those numbers and… Well, actually before that, I was… No payroll…

0:02:51.8 Tyler: But the big one, the big one is, is you didn’t actually know who showed up or not.

0:02:56.0 Chris: No, no, no, no, no, zero awareness.

0:02:57.1 Tyler: That’s where I was going with that. It’s like, share the fact that when we first started, we had no clue. We were fully dependent on the honesty of our instructors, which is fine. That’s cool and all, but you’re giving them a lot of work, number one, having to invoice you. And when you can just keep it simple. And so by having…

0:03:16.7 Chris: I didn’t even care about their work, man. Do you know how hard it is on your hand to write 14 checks out, hand-written? That sucked! I was getting to that part, guys. I did not like that at all. So anyways, the automating payroll part has made everybody’s life easier on all aspects. So yeah, Chris, you’re right. I don’t know what they did. I’m waiting for them to get it in, payroll’s due on a certain date, there’s two teachers that haven’t sent the thing yet, they’re not awake yet. We happen to be a music academy. They gigged the night before, I don’t know, and all of a sudden payroll’s almost due, and I don’t have verification yet from them. And technically I didn’t hire them to do that, at all, not once, not ever. It was like this aftermath, after-thought by-product that, “Hey, by the way, I need to know how much you work, and I guess we should make up a way that we figure that out.” That’s all it was. It was horrible.

0:04:13.9 Tyler: Regular time clock in lesson class business, I don’t think it’s as effective, because you wanna tie it back to actual performance. Let’s face it, the more students are showing up, the more engaged they are, and the more engaged they are, the longer they stay, and the longer they stay, the more they learn, and then the more impact you have in the world. So I know we’re all going for great impact in our learning businesses. And so, if you’re going for great impact, the first step as we had in part one was attendance, as part of the automation, and then that actually rolls into automated payroll. So we can just click a button right now, and it pulls all the numbers on all our instructors automatically, and then that allows us, and we happen to use Teacher Zone but there’s other softwares. And so basically it allows us to click a button, give it to our bookkeeper, move on. That’s it. It’s literally just like one click. True automation, it’s not this whole drama like Tyler said, “Uh-oh, now I gotta wake them up, and I wanna get this done, and I know they need to get paid.” Too much. Automate it. Payroll.

0:05:13.5 Chris: That’s all unplanned work, by the way. If you’re waiting on weird things like that… Like we mentioned the big dogs last episode, they’ve probably… They don’t wait for that stuff anymore. When you figure it out… That is unplanned work. All of a sudden you have these amazing things you wanna do to make your academy better, and you’re not only stressed that you can’t find this one person to get this task done, that’s called unplanned work. You didn’t plan that, period, and you don’t want unplanned work. Unplanned work already comes anyways, don’t add it to your plate.

0:05:51.9 Tyler: Yeah. We wanna reduce the fires. Covey talked about that a long time ago in the Seven Habits, basically saying that… I forget what it was, but it was basically, “You want to… Before the storm comes, you wanna make sure the boat doesn’t have any leaks.” So like you’re already fixing things beforehand. Well, the more you plan your work, the more pre-challenge you can actually plan for all the things that could go wrong. If you’re just putting out fires constantly, basically, number one, you’re the worst boss ever, which happens to a lot of us as entrepreneurs. And number two, your staff is gonna feel the tension, and that tension is gonna then translate to the students. So the more automated you get, the less stress, everyone feels it, that more happiness. So, right? We’re trying to promote more happiness. Alright.

0:06:46.1 Chris: So speaking of promoting happiness, [chuckle] notification.

0:06:50.6 Tyler: So number five is payroll, number six is notifications, of things you should automate. What are notifications? So what do we mean by that, Tyler? 

0:07:00.0 Chris: Well notifications, well, we all know what they are day-to-day in our regular lives, let’s take the business side out of it. You get an email from your wife, you get a text message, you get a Facebook notification, “Hey, I posted something today. I hope somebody liked it.” I don’t know, whatever it is, those notifications are part of our life. So, that means that in a academy studio situation, that if you have notifications: [A], they can let people know about the fun things, the good things, things that are coming, whether a chat’s available. So custom notifications that you can create, which is how Teacher Zone works, that’s what we do, there’s 62 of them, you can make them say whatever you want, that they’re from your company, and they allow people to know about the fun stuff, but also know about “Uh-oh, lesson’s cancelled, the teacher’s sick.” And immediately, everyone’s notified automatically, administrators, parents, students and teachers all at once. And I…

0:08:07.0 Tyler: Yeah, so you have a good point. So we also utilize apps and stuff, so you’ve got banner notifications, you’ve got SMS, and you’ve got email. Those are the three most common currently. We also have things like those, then three can tie into other… Let’s say you chat a student about something, then those notifications would kick in where it could text them, or a banner would pop up. But what’s so cool about automating this process is that it makes your team surrogate to technology. In other words, they don’t have to actually manually email out about something, they don’t have to manually text about something, what they’re basically doing is utilizing the notification process to be a surrogate of their behavior. So SMS, email, banner, it’s basically a surrogate of their behavior. Right, Tyler? 

0:09:02.2 Chris: That’s it. Exactly, that is exactly it. So Chris, is there another way with notifications that, for instance, if you’re more of in a culture-building, tribe-building type place to make that impact that Chris was talking about, there’s notifications that you can go a little deeper on. The ones we talked about at first are very business-orientated, like hey, if and then, very transactional, your lesson’s cancelled, cool, convenient, you look professional, it’s solid. But if you wanna go a layer deeper and you’re doing some special stuff inside your academy from your group leaders, the leadership that’s under the leadership, they can also capitalize on these notifications by getting kids more engaged, or students.

0:09:52.8 Tyler: By the way, I have to point out, you just got really distracted, and the reason you got really distracted is because your phone notified you. [chuckle]

0:10:01.9 Chris: I don’t have a phone. I don’t even have a phone.

0:10:02.5 Tyler: Right? So the cool part… Yeah. So that was probably a live notification, but the point being is that with notifications it’s a part of our modern life. And so everyone’s so used to it, why are you feeling like you have to be manual and not automated? So the automated stuff is really what allows us to get our freedom back and allows us to have our time back.

0:10:29.7 Chris: Hey, it was a good idea us planning that little schtick to put in there, to give that example.

[chuckle]

0:10:35.8 Tyler: Exactly. Good job.

0:10:37.1 Chris: Chris had that idea, he’s like, “Hey man, pretend a notification comes in and get distracted.” That’s good. No, anyways…

0:10:44.7 Tyler: So yeah, so that’s a good to do, so that’s our sixth one. So Tyler, what’s number seven as far as things to automate? 

0:10:51.6 Chris: Well, this is a big one, especially if you have school, academy, lesson business of any sort, and you are curating curriculum. So if you have a way that you do things that you love, and you wanna… Whether it’s curriculum on how to be a member at your academy, what’s it like, what are you gonna do here, or whether it’s down and where the boots hit the ground, this is how you learn this kata in karate or whatever, or whatever it is, you can… There’s ways to automate and not even have to use YouTube and get your thought process of how your students learn curated into a system so that it’s there forever. And so if you didn’t know that, it’s out there and it’s not as daunting as it sounds, believe it or not, you just gotta do it.

0:11:44.0 Tyler: The term evergreen comes up, and I like that term because evergreen, you hear about evergreen marketing, evergreen communication, evergreen curriculum in this case, it basically means that it is… You can create a class once and then you can… It’s evergreen, you can use it over and over and over. So let’s say you teach the same thing, and I know you all do, you teach the same thing over and over to a beginner student or a beginner class, you could actually put in… And so, I was having a dialogue actually with a large customer back east yesterday, and we were talking about how their staff was starting to do some of this, and how powerful it was that… It’s like, okay, so you take three Saturdays, and you just… It only takes an hour each. So with three hours of you just recording your brain and actually getting it down, you’re gonna save yourself the next 10 years of having to keep remaking that assignment. You can just assign that course over and over. So curriculum’s a really big thing to get automated, because it’s gonna save you that emotional brain damage every week.

0:12:55.0 Chris: It doesn’t just… See, and that’s the selfish version, Chris. So you just said the selfish business owner version, definitely saves us time, definitely makes the teacher able to assign something easier. The unselfish part, the part where we’re trying to make a big impact, who’s on the receiving end of this content? Who’s getting the curriculum? And if it’s laid out in a way that you think is great for your brand and your school and all of a sudden, it just populates in their hand, like that’s the other side of it. There’s two sides…

0:13:29.8 Tyler: Well, it’s like they get to bring their instructor with them in their pocket.

0:13:33.2 Chris: Right.

0:13:34.6 Tyler: Right. It’s like your instructor is now a part of you.

0:13:37.2 Chris: I don’t know. We can’t talk anymore about this. If you don’t get that yet, there’s nothing, there’s no other words that we can use to articulate the importance of both sides of that win.

0:13:50.1 Tyler: Well, you know what’s really funny, is in the lesson business, a lot of teachers are like, “I just don’t have time,” and you know what it really is? We know that there’s an emotional high not automating curriculum, right? We know that basically doing it as we call on-the-fly because now you and your student were discussing something, that’s okay, there’s gonna be that and that is fun, and we know for a lot of teachers, there’s actually a rush you get when you go, “Oh, I’m gonna show you this,” in the lesson or in the class. Totally get that, and we think that’s valid. So do on-the-fly assignments when that arises, but…

0:14:24.7 Chris: Those are custom ones.

0:14:27.2 Tyler: Yeah, those are custom. But if for the most part, the things that you repetitively do again… Again, that’s the key theme with automation, it’s things that you do over and over again. If you get that in as a curriculum, then as an instructor, it’s gonna make your life so much less stressful because there’s consistency in your teachings, and your students are getting the same lessons. We actually did it for our audition requirements. We actually went in and we recorded. We basically have beginner, intermediate and advanced, which we have our own terms for those, but it’s basically what they are. And so we actually created, Tyler, for five different lessons that we teach, so five different instruments in our case, we did five instruments, three types. So we did 15 different audition courses. And from those 15 different audition courses, I think what it… I did most of the recordings myself. I just told the teacher, “Hey, show up, and I’m gonna record you.” [chuckle] And what’s great about those is we’ve been re-assigning those, I think for going on over three years now with those particular ones, and it’s just the gift that keeps on giving.

0:15:35.5 Chris: Right. What would our staff… We have 13 teachers. We do one-hour lessons. And out of our couple hundred students, there are about 70… Anywhere from 73 to 80% of the students are in our concert performance program. Okay. Cool. Well, guess what? They’re all picking one song, on average, and then five people are being assigned parts to those songs. So now we’re like at 500 parts. And then to get some people into that, we need them qualified, they have to be qualified. So our teachers already are doing that. That is the onslaught. That is a big endeavor. And they break it down, they do it so well, but we don’t wanna add to who’s gonna be… Can you imagine throwing the wrong kid into the wrong group? You know what I mean? When all that’s going on. It’s not good. It’s bad for the kids. It’s the opposite impact you want. It’s an impact that might last a lifetime.

0:16:42.6 Tyler: Yeah, to give perspective, we do trials three times a year at our particular… And all that curriculum is automated, all that curriculum is evergreen. So basically, every time, every four months, trials come up again and the instructors can just have already pre-assigned that stuff four months previous, so their students are ready by the time the auditions come. So automation is key with regard to curriculum. We like multimedia because in our modern world, it just speaks to the students. They’re used to it. They’re doing it in their traditional schools. So why not also do it in their after-school programs, in their talent-building, in their sports, in their arts, all that. So, awesome. What is, drum roll please, the eighth automation, Tyler? 

0:17:32.1 Chris: So the eighth automation comes… It goes well with curriculum. It’s called progress. Like can we automate progress? Not their progress, but the metrics of their progress. Can we somehow automate that in our favor as a business to measure growth and whatever? So there’s the selfish side again. I’m gonna call it [0:17:56.8] ____. But the business perspective of the individual from net promoter scores, we always like… We wanna know what those are, right? If we drilled all the way down to the individual impact, if we could find out the measurement on their progress easily, would that benefit our business? 

0:18:19.0 Chris: Then there’s the other side we can talk about. Okay. Gamification, badges, and auto point acquiring. So where, inside the system, the students are automatically getting triggered for things they’re accomplishing, such as practice time every evening, perfect attendance and many things like that. What if, just think about this, just hypothetically, what if your students just showed up and there was four attributes automatically being counted by a system and putting them on leaderboards over the school-wide, so all the kids could see school-wide people’s progress, or roster-wide, or just their own progress? And then on top of that, imagine if there was badges added, custom by teachers. Imagine that world. What would that look like if even if you didn’t do anything by hand, your leaderboards were growing and moving based on accolades the kids were week to week achieving? Wouldn’t that being amazing? 

0:19:30.5 Tyler: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what’s great is, is that not requiring humans to track all that is huge, because then you’re actually… So it’s almost like what if you could sneak in your student’s house and take their temperature, right? How much they’re studying or what they’re up to? 

0:19:44.7 Chris: That’s super weird, way worse than me getting distracted earlier.

[chuckle]

0:19:50.6 Tyler: Well, what’s great is that now with progress automation, you can sneak in their house, but you’re doing it digitally, so it’s less creepy.

0:20:00.1 Chris: Yeah, there’s that. Hey, if you haven’t figured out yet, Chris and I, we’re just human beings, just like you, and we say stupid crap sometimes. It was a great analogy, we all got it, but I just have to laugh at us sometimes. Do we have fun…

0:20:18.7 Tyler: Well, the reality is that you’re gonna be a stalker if you keep going into your students’ houses with a clipboard. Stop that.

[chuckle]

0:20:31.1 Chris: So go back to the walkie-talkie method. So let’s pretend, let’s take this down a notch. Your student has a walkie-talkie and you have a walkie-talkie, and you’re 10 miles away. There, how’s that? Is that better? 

0:20:42.5 Tyler: Less creepy. Yeah. Than knocking on their window and saying, “Hey, psst, are you practicing right now?”

0:20:49.8 Chris: Yep, so we digress, we digress. But here’s the deal, guys, this does exist. Bottom line is teacherzone.com actually has this and it will be releasing next week. So there’s a little thing, we threw it in at the end. It’s a dream of ours to somehow enhance, enrich, and make an impact in students’ lives to get them more engaged with their teachers. That’s it. Like that was our goal, that’s our mission. How many people can we affect with the things we love to teach? How can our business somehow… And you saw how that grew. Then Chris and I, we made Teacher Zone and now we’re affecting even more kiddos and adults around the world, but how can we do that in an automated fashion that makes it fun and competitive, right? There’s a little competitiveness. It’s a leaderboard. It’s not a loser-board.

0:21:41.2 Tyler: Yeah, we’ve been automating progress for years. We got… Yeah, we’ve been tracking practice, we’ve been tracking attendance, tracking things like that, but what’s great is that when you turn it into a game, then… So we’ve just upped it. So bottom line is you have to figure out how to automate some of your progress. Teacher Zone’s one way to do it. If you have other ideas, let us know, but what we’ve automated in our system is basically four metrics. One is engagement on logging in; so, how often are they actually accessing all of their assignments and things that you put in there? 

0:22:18.1 Chris: And boom, points acquired, and you get to decide how much that is. Number two? 

0:22:23.1 Tyler: Is basically how much, if they’re using the practice timer, regardless of what they’re learning, the practice timer can be a super help for the instructor and also your team to be able to understand how much the students’ spending time outside of your classes or lessons, working on their craft. And then what are the other two? The other two are engagement with assignments. So when they’ve finished an assignment, it actually… As soon as they mark “Done,” it actually tracks, so that way it goes into those leaderboards. And we’ve had lots of reporting and stuff over the years, but being able to track it a little bit more automated is so cool. And then…

0:23:01.3 Chris: And the other one is just showing up. Like, showing up. If you don’t show up to work, if you don’t show up to your projects, if you don’t show up to school, if you don’t show up, nothing’s happening, your willingness wasn’t there or what… I don’t care what the circumstances, you didn’t show up. So when you do, you get points, automatically, teacher doesn’t have to do a thing. And those add up and the leaderboards move, and it’s… We’re so excited about this. It is gonna be a game changer.

0:23:30.5 Tyler: Yeah, we’re gonna have to do a podcast just on gamification. But at the end of the day, automating your progress of some sort is very important, especially in the learning space, so… And if you’re listening to this, I assume you have multiple teachers, then trying to keep track of what they’re teaching and how the students are actually doing is always a challenge for us, and so we’re now getting that to where we can have that automated. So what a gift.

0:23:53.9 Chris: Right.

0:23:55.3 Tyler: So hopefully those things are helpful, those are only eight. We’ll keep coming up with more, and more, and more that we can automate. And Tyler, you wanna just…

0:24:02.5 Chris: And get into the Facebook group. Accelerating… [chuckle]

0:24:07.2 Tyler: Stop looking it up. It’s Accelerating Studios Academies and Schools.

0:24:11.1 Chris: Wait, I always forget the order of the three. So it’s Studios, Academies…

0:24:18.5 Tyler: Accelerating Studios, Academies and Schools. SAS, S-A-S.

0:24:18.6 Chris: We should have put it in alphabetical order. [chuckle]

0:24:19.9 Tyler: Studios Academies and Schools.

0:24:21.3 Chris: Facebook group, go there, comment if we’ve missed anything that we have to automate. We’d love to hear from you guys in there, or you can also email us at hello@teacherzone.com. We’d love to hear from you there. And again, if you haven’t gotten our e-book yet, teacherzone.com/chaos, five stages of growth in your business from chaos to culture. That’s there for you as well. We love giving you guys things. Can you tell? Right, Chris? 

[laughter]

0:24:50.4 Tyler: Well, Tyler and I, you guys, we’re one of you, so we’re always trying to get better, but we’re also learning from all of you around the world every day, so it’s really cool ’cause it’s our goal then to try and take that and just sort of, Tyler and I, be… Reflect it back to you guys, all the stuff that we’re learning.

0:25:08.7 Chris: We’re conduits.

0:25:08.7 Tyler: Yeah, not only in our own businesses, but all the amazing business owners out there that we learn from daily. Thank you guys for your…

0:25:15.6 Chris: Chris, like your son said at his graduation last week, “If I can graduate, so can you.” If we can get seven-figure-gross lesson businesses established, so can you. That’s why you’re here. So don’t forget that. We’re serious, I know we laugh a lot, but we are 100% serious. If we can do it, you can do it. So again, thank you, Chris, for being here. Love co-hosting with you, and thank you all for tuning in. We’ll see you at the next episode on the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. Thanks. Sayonara.

In this two-part series, we dive neck deep into the 8 things you should automate right now to create more time and make more money.

In Part 1 we talk about:

1. Automate with Online Registration
2. Automate Payments
3. Automate Scheduling & Rescheduling
4. Automate Taking Attendance / Class Check-In

Ready to save some time and make some money? Let’s go!

Watch it Here

Listen to it Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:04.5 Tyler: Welcome to another episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. Chris, tell everybody what today’s topic is.

0:00:13.5 Chris: Today we’re gonna be talking about the eight things that you, that’s right you, should automate right now in your lesson or class business so you can create more time and make more money. And so let’s remember, money is not bad. Money is a metaphor for providing good in the world. So the more people you help, the more money you make, the more resources you have, so you can help more people. It’s just this cycle, right. So eight things you should automate right now. So Tyler, you and I just talked about it. We’re gonna do this in two parts. So the first part… So basically, there’s eight things, so guess how we’re gonna split it up, Tyler? Should we do four? 

0:00:54.0 Tyler: Four…

0:00:54.9 Chris: Yeah, I think we should.

0:00:58.1 Tyler: Four. And we’re coming in hot off of recording a bunch of DigiNotes to help you all with some other stuff we do with the software. And they are related, so we’re on fire right now. Ready to go. And I think the first one is registrations in your business. Like for instance, let’s say… I don’t know, whatever industry you’re in, maybe you have a summer deal going on at your jujitsu academy and an ad just really… Just kicked in and you have 103 people that wanna come to your academy, that’s a lot. And your administrator or maybe you, or some of your instructors might be in charge of this… But either way, 103, how are you gonna sift through that efficiently? Well, registration in an automated fashion can clear all of that up, right Chris? 

0:01:56.7 Chris: Yeah. By automating it, what we mean is, is that you can have different ways that others can access your online registration. So it’s basically first implementing online registration. So if you haven’t implemented online registration, you really need to. And so… Because obviously there’s a myriad of services out there, but by putting it online, what you’re now saying is that when I’m sleeping, someone can register. Right. They don’t have to wake you up, “Hey Tyler, wake up I wanna register for that class or that… “

0:02:30.8 Tyler: So that’s… We’ll call that one access. So access from anywhere. That’s I think what you’re getting at. Whether you’re sleeping, whether your admin’s on the phone, whether an emergency happened, you’ve now delegated this automated registration, widget, link, whatever it is you’ve chosen to use. Teacherzone.com has a great one. That’s now… Everybody has access. Whether it’s Facebook ads. It could be anything. Now there’s access.

0:02:58.5 Chris: Well, and what’s great about that too, is instead of the old school, like having to manually do it where people are calling in and drowning your admins, now what’s cool about doing it online is that… As Tyler said, you can have all sorts of things embedded in your website. So literally from your ads, it lands straight on the landing page for registration. So when we say automation, we mean that a human doesn’t need to be involved in that beginning part of the process. So there’s lots of options, but for instance, a waitlist.

0:03:27.7 Chris: If you have groups, what’s great is that you can even have the software that you use, have caps on the groups, and then put people on a waitlist after they’re over a certain number too. So automating registrations, putting them online is massive. It’ll save your admins alot of time, it’ll gather better data, and most importantly, it gathers… If you do it properly, then upon registration, they’re either paying or at least you’re capturing their payment info, so they’re ready to go.

0:04:00.9 Tyler: Right, and not to mention the last little thing that… And payments… Hello, that pops them right into your payments, that’s done. But sorting and qualifying your customers. So a good registration software automation, you can pre-program indicator questions to help sort them into groups. Because otherwise your admin may not have the mindset that you have to place and connect and get your tribe in the right spots. These registrations can automate your mind and the way you think to make sure that they land where they’re supposed to land as customers. So that… I wanted to bring that up as well.

0:04:41.5 Chris: So qualifying questions are important, and your staff may not be trained or may not be consistent in asking those questions. I know some of you are using… You have still… We did for years. You still have the pen and paper questions that you ask folks. That is a system, but it’s not accessible any time anywhere, 24 hours a day globally. So your customers could literally be signing up for private or group classes while laying on the beach in the South of France.

0:05:08.6 Tyler: Speaking of laying on the beach in the South of France, Chris, the next bullet point we’re gonna go over for today’s four out of the eight things you should automate right now is tuition payments. It’s perfect. It’s a perfect segue. Registration, awesome. Anywhere access, filtered, qualified. And then that leads to, well payments should be automated as well, whether they’re recurring or maybe right off the registration to get in. And if you have a really great software, you can not only register, right Chris? But it can be a one-time registration or set up for recurring billing or semester billing or whatever, so you’re literally done.

0:05:48.1 Chris: Yeah, what’s cool… I heard it mentioned years ago, and I’ve said it… Wake up money. Because you didn’t die in your sleep, right? Today, you’ll wake up to a deposit. I know it’s morbid, but it’s a fun term to think about because it doesn’t require any effort. Basically, you can be laying on a beach, you can be anywhere and that money is still gonna be collected, it’s still gonna go into your bank account. So if you want wake up money, right? I woke up today, so that means there’s money in my bank, I didn’t have to put any effort out. That’s what automated tuitions are.

0:06:25.2 Tyler: All joking aside. And we love having fun on this podcast, you guys know this. You also know that we’re preaching to the choir. Many of our listeners have been automated for years and have automated many systems, and so we’re bringing these up just to recap. If there’s some listeners out there that are still in the wilderness, you’re gonna be hearing this for the first time, you need to get off your butts and start now. And those of you that… The choir, if you can hear our wonderful voices again, hey, thanks for listening, right Chris? 

0:06:57.0 Chris: Well, it’s kinda like we had the podcast with Robbie about delegation. If you haven’t listened to that, go look for delegation on the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. And that one, he had to be in a hospital before he delegated. So he knew about it from three years ago when we talked about it. So if you’ve not done one of these eight automations yet, we’re trying to re-point them out, so it just reminds you. ‘Cause we all need reminders. And it’s a never-ending battle in business to always try and get better.

0:07:26.2 Tyler: And Chris, doesn’t it make it easier to delegate if you’ve delegated many of your repeated actions? If actions are being repeated every day anyways, and then you delegate that into a system then isn’t it easier to lead humans at that point to run it? 

0:07:45.7 Chris: Yeah, so there’s an interesting fact, guys, is that when they do the maze tests with mice, as an example, their brains, when that first time they go look for the cheese, especially their prefrontal cortex, which is focus and… Just lights up. Their brain… In fact, the whole brain lights up because they’re literally confused and they’re trying to make sense of this whole where… And then it takes them a while, and then they finally find the cheese. And then Tyler, the second time the brain lights up a little less. After a while, it becomes a habit. In other words, automated. Once it becomes automated, their brain doesn’t even light up anymore. You literally drop the mouse and it runs right for the cheese. And so that’s what automation can do for your staff, because it means their brains don’t have to light up in stress…

0:08:35.6 Tyler: Exactly.

0:08:37.1 Chris: Trying to constantly feel like they’re solving problems. They can actually focus on the more important things. Automation, which Tyler said, any repetitive task is perfect to try and consider automation. So feel free also to let us know in our private groups or anything, we’d love to hear from you if there’s automations that we haven’t included in this list. So tuition payments are one. We talked about registration. With tuition payments, the one last thing I would say with that, Tyler, is that some of you have half way done it. And you said, “Well, in my market, people still wanna pay by check… ” Or… They wanna pay when they want to. I’m sorry, but you need to be stronger than that. They don’t get to decide. Your job as a leader is to protect your staff and protect your business from things that can weaken it, and not collecting payments will weaken your business. We did it, right? 

0:09:31.4 Tyler: Yup. And you’ve heard it here before, $4,000 behind, $2,000 behind. Even if it’s only for five or six days. Okay, cool. Let’s flip it around. That customer who’s dictating your life on how you should run your business and whatever, what if all of a sudden they couldn’t go to your school anymore, how bad of a detriment would that be to their lives? It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t harm them at all. If all of a sudden they had to stop paying you… Do you see the side of the street it is. So why are we worried about that anyways. We add value with them other ways. That’s not one of the ways we choose to do it. And I suggest you don’t either. We choose to value our employees and our…

0:10:15.1 Chris: Yeah, you know what that’s a great. That’s a great point. Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. That’s a great point. Like we add value in other ways. Why are you trying to add value on the payments side? You’re a business, you’re not a charity. Now, some of you are a charity, but even those have to be run well.

0:10:29.8 Tyler: You know what we mean by that. [laughter]

0:10:31.4 Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Okay. Number three. So number three on the things you should automate.

0:10:36.9 Tyler: ‘Cause some of you are a charity.

0:10:39.4 Chris: Yeah. But you need to run it soundly or either your board of directors is not gonna be happy.

0:10:44.2 Tyler: I hope you forget to edit this out.

[laughter]

0:10:48.2 Tyler: That was just funny. Maybe it’s just me. So anyways, great point, Chris, great point. What’s our next one after automated payments? 

0:10:55.8 Chris: But again, even if you’re a charity, your point sounds true. In other words, part of your unique selling proposition isn’t necessarily giving away the service. You’re still having it funded, you still need to be organized, you still need to automate it. So the number three is scheduling. So this idea…

0:11:15.8 Tyler: And re-scheduling.

0:11:18.2 Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s so much aspects… Let’s face it, we’re in a busy world, people are so frenetic. You hear all the time… It’s so funny, because now that we’re a global society, we hear from our partners and friends around the world all the time, “Well in my area… Well in my area.” It’s like, well, in a modern world that is homogenized so much more than it ever has been, everyone’s busy, everyone wants to re-schedule or cancel or what have you because of their million and one commitments. It’s just part of the global society right now…

[overlapping conversation]

0:11:55.0 Tyler: And what else are we finding out though, Chris? 

0:11:56.0 Chris: We’re also finding out that more often than not, the customers, they don’t even have time to re-schedule.

0:12:05.5 Tyler: Like… That’s like, yes, they want what they’re owed and they want their value, but they’re like, “Shoot, where are we gonna put it?” It’s just… Their schedules are insane.

0:12:17.2 Chris: So we have other podcasts on that topic, but one of the things that we often suggest is you could provide value for the lesson or class without allowing re-schedules. But if you are gonna allow re-schedules then at least don’t burden your staff with it. So you can use software for rescheduling. Obviously, TeacherZone does that, but there’s lots out there. Automation is the main point of this, is that you allow people to access a cloud-based schedule so they can see what’s going on, and then they can make changes. In other words based on your rules; cancellation, drop into a class, reschedule, reschedule old lessons, like bank lessons or credits. So what’s really cool is that scheduling nowadays from a cloud-based perspective, allows your customers to have freedom all over the world.

0:13:05.2 Tyler: Right. You can also sync to your calendar. So the personal calendar that your wife and you share or whatever. And all of a sudden you’re part of this new entity or something as a customer, and they come to your school. Boom, sync it. If you’ve got the software sync it and all of a sudden those one or two items a week, which aren’t a huge deal to them, but it’s one of your million that you have going on, all of a sudden, boop, it’s just populated. And I mean, one of our bullet points later is notifications as well. Some softwares will also notify you ahead of time that, “Hey, are you coming? Are you coming in?” Are you coming in to get…

0:13:43.4 Chris: Well, so actually I have a share on that. So last week we had our senior… Dax graduated high school. And so he had an insane week, graduation week. And so he got the notification about his lesson coming up, and he literally went in, canceled his lesson put in there, “I’m graduating.” And then I got the notification and asked him, “Hey, did you cancel your lesson?’ And he goes, “Oh yeah.” And in other words, it was so nice because the student who’s… In this case… In other words, both… I’m involved as a parent too. I didn’t have to do it.

0:14:23.7 Chris: So what’s really great is that in the circumstance that you have a responsible enough student, it takes the burden off everyone. It’s so easy and so seamless.

0:14:35.5 Tyler: Cool.

0:14:35.6 Chris: Yeah. So that’s an automation. And then the last one in this episode is attendance or checking in. And we think that that should be automated as much as possible. And if you don’t know who’s with teaching with whom or who’s in your buildings, then I would say in a modern world that’s probably not safe. It’s probably not a good idea, culturally. It’s probably not a good idea for you to not be keeping track. Attendance is an imperative aspect in today’s day and age. And Tyler tell them how we automate attendance or, how we do it, and I know there’s some other softwares do it.

0:15:16.7 Tyler: Well, first of all, the automated side of it is our students can actually check in. So within a 30-minute period, they show up and then… Let’s say they’re part of a big group and there’s 14 kids. The director is getting ready to handle all this, he can just say, “Hey guys, pull out the app and check in.” And then double check it when he’s ready to get going and see who didn’t check in, and then check there. And it saves a little time there. So the kids or our students at our school are kind of automating that for our directors, ’cause they’re so busy anyways, herding cats, right.

0:15:56.0 Tyler: But also for private lessons. So they’re just showing up for whatever they’re there for on their own, let alone the group. And they can do the same thing as well. So that’s kind of how we’ve automated that. The teachers can still take attendance if they want, but it’s allowing that extra layer. Kind of like going to a gym and then hitting your scan code… Boom, they know you’re there, you’re paid and whatever. So that’s how we’ve added it to our actual lesson academy and performance academy.

0:16:25.6 Chris: Yeah, so regardless of whether you’re doing group or private, allowing the students to check in will take a big burden off your teacher. And then all they have to do… So let’s say you have a group class and you have 20 and you’re like, “Okay, everybody… ” If they haven’t yet… If you don’t have a front desk. Everybody check in right now. Pull out your phones and check in. And then four of them are like, “I don’t have mine.” Well, you can just quickly mark that for them, but you’re only having to do four not 20. So you can take the burden off an instructor greatly. And then it also allows… That way for roll call, you know who attended that actual class, in the example I just gave. So huge for automation.

0:17:00.9 Tyler: Right. And I’m gonna add one more thing here too. So those businesses that are already in our community with the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler, that are already very, very successful, we’re talking in the millions gross lesson academies. They already know that there is no gray area when it comes to knowing when and where someone was at all times.

0:17:28.2 Tyler: Today, it’s just with technology and the cloud and everything, there’s just no excuse. And so the… We’ll call them the big dogs. The big dogs, they already know. They’ve got their Department of Justice… If they teach minors, they got their Department of Justice code, they’ve got their live scans codes and all that kind of stuff. They have these things in place. So what I wanna say right now is to the people that wanna get there. Do you have the vision and growth in your mind? I mean, I think you do, you’re listening to this. If you’re listening to to this ’cause we’re some sort of Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, I know we’re extremely funny and we’re two of the funniest guys ever in podcast. But otherwise, you’re probably listening to this for growth, for something bigger.

0:18:11.6 Tyler: Bigger than you are by yourself. And that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’ve grown. So, if you’re listening to this and you’re not up at a million a year gross or something like that, know that you can be, but you’re gonna have to start paying attention to these little details, lock arms with people who’ve already done it and get there. And these little things matter. For people who say, “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Sure, entrepreneurs say that sometimes because we don’t have the time to get there ’cause we’re building sill. But know that it has to come. Eventually, you’re gonna have to pay the piper on these little things and get them set up and sooner…

0:18:46.9 Chris: Well, and… You made me think about one of the things that’s… Scheduling automations that we think is important is the no-show.

0:18:57.9 Tyler: Ah, yeah. Right.

0:19:00.9 Chris: Because if you are not making sure you that your students are safe… Your families, especially if you’re dealing with kids…

0:19:07.2 Tyler: And that’s just one thing.

0:19:07.8 Chris: Will really appreciate that.

0:19:11.0 Tyler: No-show… Safety, no-show, red alert, are we gonna lose a family and potentially $5,000 a year for the business, and is that gonna affect my employees and my family and everything like that. No-show… There’s a lot of things tied into the metrics of something tracking where everybody is at all times. And if there’s a way that makes it a no-brainer on every person involved, then why aren’t you doing it yet? So that’s for those of you that haven’t automated yet.

0:19:41.5 Chris: Yeah. Automating like the no-show alert. So for instance, if a student doesn’t show up and they didn’t notify you first or cancel first, as we talked about, then are they okay? And so what’s great about the no-show alert is that you can actually… There are services out there, or in TeacherZone, you can actually enable… It’s almost like an Amber alert. And our families just love this because they’ll call and be like, “No, she’s fine. I’m so sorry. I… ” You know? 

0:20:09.4 Chris: And Tyler, we’ve had a couple that, “Wait, I dropped them off.” And so then it’s like, “Okay, let’s make sure that that… ” Oh, you know, I remember one time, “Oh now, now she’s back in the building,” but the teacher had already marked “No-show.” So it’s super important that you know that. And then also it’s super important that you have transparency overall. So as a parent, I just pulled up my son that I spoke about earlier. And I just looked at… So we’ve been using TeacherZone for a number of years. So for the five years that we’ve been using TeacherZone, he has had… He’s attended 188 hours of private lessons and 221 group lessons. How cool is that? 

0:20:56.8 Tyler: It’s insane.

0:20:57.6 Chris: So I can actually tell, as a parent, all of the lessons that my son has had. And I just looked it up Tyler, guess how many hours of lessons Dax has had since we’ve been keeping track at our school.

0:21:12.4 Tyler: How many? 

0:21:15.9 Chris: 590.5 hours of instruction.

0:21:19.8 Tyler: That’s a lot of his life. And this is a little sneak peek to the continuing episode for these eight things we’re going over. That’s a lot of progress. I’ll say that. That’s your little foreshadowing. That’s a lot of progress. So, you’re gonna have to stay tuned for the next episode to see how progress can be automated and change the lives of your teachers, students, families, and the owners and everything. So I think we covered a lot today, Chris. Like this is… We’ve got repeat listeners that already have this in place. Hey, you guys, you need to get folks into the know, okay.

0:22:02.3 Tyler: So our veterans out there that have been friends with us for years and have already been automating, there’s nothing like giving back. And so if you want people that you know to get involved, we have a new Facebook group for non-TeacherZone customers, Okay? Get them over to it. Invite it… If you’re not in it, get in it as well. And it is called Accelerating Studios, Academies & Schools.

0:22:29.0 Tyler: So it’s all those words. Just search Accelerating Studios, comma… Academies &… Ampersand sign… Schools. Accelerating Studios, Academies & Schools. Have them answer the questions, jump in. It’s a very active group, and there’s a lot to learn in there. So don’t leave them hanging out there on their own. We don’t need to be alone anymore, and we appreciate all of our listeners. And Chris I think we’re gonna have a fun follow-up to the other of the eight things in the next episode.

0:23:00.5 Chris: So, yes, that’s your first four, so… Thank you Tyler. I think that as we start to systematize our businesses… As Tyler kinda mentioned early on, it’s directly correlated to your revenue growth. And as we said at the beginning, the more money you make, the more people you help. It’s that simple.

0:23:20.5 Tyler: That’s right. So… And that’s it. So we’re gonna conclude today’s episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. We appreciate everyone coming out to listen, and we’ll see you on the flip side for the following eight things coming up on the eight things you need to automate now! Now! We love you guys. We’ll see you soon. Sayonara. Bye Chris.

0:23:44.0 Chris: Bye.

Watch it Here

Listen Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:04 S1: Welcome to the next episode of the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. Chris Bates, how are you? Can you please introduce our guest?

0:00:13 S2: I’m excellent, and I just wanna say we are so grateful to have Robby Schechter on from Musical Life Denver. And Robby, you aren’t at your office, you aren’t at your school, and you’re also not at home. Where are you? We’re so grateful, by the way, that you’re healthy and good. But you’re not in the normal place. You’re somewhere very different. Where are you right now?

0:00:39 S3: I am at a skilled nursing facility, AKA, a nursing home.

0:00:46 S1: Are you training to become a nurse? What are you doing there? How did you get there?

0:00:52 S3: I am convalescing in room 127, waiting for my bones to heal for another three weeks, so I can start acute inpatient rehab, and heal from a motorcycle accident that happened on the 30th of April.

0:01:09 S2: So if you’re watching this on YouTube, Robby, hold up your arms right now.

0:01:13 S1: Yeah, in all seriousness, we…

0:01:14 S2: Oh my gosh.

0:01:15 S1: We knew all about this, and we are so grateful that he’s even here on planet earth right now. So we’ve all been through scary stuff, but Robby’s got some other things that happened that he’s gonna talk about today. And Chris, I want you to start all this. This is pretty cool.

0:01:33 S2: Just to segue, so today’s topic is not about convalescent homes.

0:01:38 S1: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, and how to start a convalescent home, how to grow it. No, no, this has nothing to do with that.

0:01:45 S2: I actually know some about that, so maybe we can do that for those that care at another time.

0:01:51 S1: Yeah, tell us if that’s what you want. We’re here to please.

0:01:55 S2: So it’s actually a great investment. In fact, in Denver, there’s quite a few of them, which is where you’re at. But the reason we wanted to get together so quickly is that Tyler and I both talked to Robby after this happened, and it’s a very scary moment in life. But Robby, you had kind of an epiphany, which really made us go, “Oh my gosh, let’s jump on a podcast,” and it was about delegation. So today’s topic is gonna be about delegating. And Robby, go ahead and take the floor for a bit and tell us what happened. And tell us why this was important to your delegation. Tyler, what’s up?

0:02:34 S1: This is all I’ve gotta say first, we gotta open with how Chris and I even found out about this. So I am loading… This is… When was this, Robby? What day was this? Two weeks ago?

0:02:46 S3: Yeah, the accident was the 30th. I reached out probably the first week of May.

0:02:51 S1: Okay, so first week of May, I am, for the first time, putting a livestock trailer onto my truck and loading horses to go help work cows, and move cows with horses. It was a big day for the Marolf family. We’ve never done anything like it. And I get a call, and I’m like, “Robby, what’s up, man? It’s Sunday.” [chuckle] It’s the first thing I said. “Is this an emergency?” In my head, was like, “It has to be. He didn’t forget what day it was.” And he said, “Tyler, I have just been in a… I just broke both arms and my collar bone in a motorcycle accident. And my music school, Musical Life Denver’s big concert, first one since the pandemic happened, is going down in like four days.” And I was like… And I’m literally… There’s livestock attached to stuff, and I’m like… And this is Chris, “This is where we’ll do a podcast on partnerships one day.” Because… Thank God you’re my partner because I literally had to send him to Chris. So then you called Chris, I’m guessing, right after that. Is that how it went down?

0:04:02 S3: Within a day or two, we connected.

0:04:05 S1: Okay, got it. So I just want everybody in the audience to know that that was the initial phase into reality for our side of it. But little to be known by us, Robby had already been in the thick of it. So Robby, back to what Chris said, start to explain what went down.

0:04:25 S3: Alright, well, I guess I’ll try to make it quick. I’ll start with the accident, and then what I had to do after that. So April 30th, riding my motorcycle in the mountain canyons, like I always do to relax, sunny day, and I coming around a curve, and I’m wearing all my gear, and there’s this car doing an illegal U-turn in the middle of a curve. So it was a blind spot, and there was no shoulders on the road. It was a construction zone. And so I see this obstacle appear, and I’m like, “Okay, can I evade? No. No shoulders. I can go into the canyon wall, a thousand-foot high sheer rock wall, I can go off a cliff, or I can hit my breaks and basically run into the car.” And so that took me a minute or two to make, or a second or two. It felt like an eternity.

0:05:11 S3: So I apply my brakes. I open my eyes and I’m lying on the ground, and I’m like, “Was that a dream?” I’m like, “No.” And instantly, someone’s helping me. And very quickly, it’s like, “That happened. I’m now on the ground. I don’t know where I am. I must have hit the car.” I found out later on, I hit the car and flew 8 feet in front of the car. I have no memory of the impact. So the paramedics thankfully were there within five minutes. I was in shock. By the time I got in the paramedics, the pain kicked in. They gave me drugs. They got me back to the hospital. And then, So it was… Basically, I wrecked my arms, my shoulders, my wrist, everything. My arms are titanium scaffolding. They did an operation that night, let me rest. And it wasn’t my collar bone, it was actually my pelvis. So front and back of the pelvis was broken, and other injuries I’m not gonna mention on the podcast.

0:06:06 S2: So you couldn’t stand.

0:06:07 S1: That’s worse… That is 100,000 times worse than…

0:06:11 S3: Right, that was the one where they were worried about bleeding, so then I had a second surgery for that. So this process of surgery, rest, surgery, rest. About four or five days in, I was totally… I’m just in a bed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything, eat, drink, go to the bathroom. I didn’t eat for like five or six days, just sipping water.

0:06:32 S1: My mom came out. I was pretty… I was helpless. Well, so it was like one week away, and so I call… I don’t know what I’m gonna do. The show must go on, so I call you guys…

0:06:44 S2: Okay, so for a lot of you out there, with whatever type of lesson business you have, you have a big showcase, a performance, in this case, a concert. And so you’ve planned for it, everybody’s excited. But this is a really tragic life moment. And again, I wanna reiterate, Robby, both Tyler and I, as we told you before this, we’re so grateful you’re okay, man, I mean, as far as, at least your brain, and yourself, and that you’re here with us.

0:07:17 S3: Well, it’s also very impressive that you had tools in your tool belt. And through the thick of it, you were like, “Okay, I need to solve this.” And some people, they don’t have tools, and they’re done. They’re sitting there, they have no help or they’re finding the help for the first time ever. Whatever that means.

0:07:34 S2: So out of curiosity, did you consider canceling the show?

0:07:39 S1: No, never crossed my mind. The show must go on. I don’t have a family. I’m 31. I don’t have a family. I’m lucky as all hell. My mom came, flew from St. Louis, to be there with me, to help with the medical side. And so I was able… My only problem was the concert. Another thing is, I’ve been with TeacherZone, what, three years now? So we have… All the office stuff is really streamlined. So it’s just a matter of time doing it. We have a checklist for our teachers to do to do things on TeacherZone, and we have a couple other spreadsheets. So I was already on the tools. We already had the Zoom, TeacherZone, Trello, ActiveCampaign. I was already, at that point, teachers as employees, payroll company. So if I didn’t have all that in line, I would have canceled. But since business was gonna run as usual… Yeah, I got in the accident and 100 payments were automatically done the next day, and I didn’t have to worry about a damn thing since they’re on auto-pay.

0:08:42 S2: It’s funny because the biggest part with delegation is we think we need to keep inflating ourselves. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll just keep taking on every possible thing.” And what you’re actually doing is minimizing your impact, and you’re making it harder on staff, and you’re making it harder on the students, and you’re taking… You’re actually starting to take away from folks. The longer you wait to have systems, the longer you wait to delegate. So the fact that you already did the work ’cause it’s not easy. Let’s not pretend like getting systems and automations in your business is simple. It takes a desire to say, “You know what? Enough’s enough. I need to have systems and I’m gonna go through the short-term pain to implement systems, so that I can enjoy the long-term benefit of things like not having to be there. So continue on.

0:09:32 S3: Right. I don’t know if he can enjoy this one.

0:09:36 S2: No, you won’t. In fact…

0:09:37 S3: But it’s nice to know.

[laughter]

0:09:38 S2: The biker in you still haven’t.

0:09:39 S3: There’s more enjoyable versions of this, Robby, I’m just gonna say, without catastrophic accidents and internal bleeding. So hopefully, your next venture into life is not as tragic and down in Costa Rica where you like to be in the sun and have fun.

0:09:57 S2: Well, and you said something that made us really wanna do this podcast. And you said the last piece to your automation systems was starting to delegate this aspect of the business. And you were hesitant because you love doing it, and you’ve always been so involved, and it’s how you got started in the business. So naturally, it’s the last thing we wanna give up. Because you love doing it, number one. But number two, also, I suspect some of our identity is tied up in what we love and what we love about our business. And so it’s really hard to give that up. It feels like you’re giving yourself up. So you said to me on our call, “Chris, it took a damn accident for me to delegate.” And I’m like, “Wow!” That is so heavy because that is such an insane metaphor for all of us, that I still struggle to this day, I’ve been preaching delegation for 15 plus years. I still struggle every day with it. So Robby, take the floor, brother.

0:10:56 S1: Yeah, well, a couple of points there… Let me keep going on the timeline, then I’ll get to the funny…

0:11:04 S2: Cool. Sure. Go for it.

0:11:05 S1: The blessing in disguise moment. So yeah, show’s coming up So I call… So first off, there was a TeacherZone podcast, about two years ago, I was listening to. And I remember where I was. I was on a flight ’cause I listened to it twice in a row. And that’s where you talked about systems and delegating. And Tyler goes into the story about, “Oh man, I’m laying in bed the first concert that I wasn’t doing, and the staff packed up the U-Haul, and I’m just anxiety-ridden in bed, just didn’t know what to do with myself, and the show was gonna go on, and it ended up being the best show ever.” Well, so that was me now. So we were fives day out. And I used to doing it at all. I am…

0:11:42 S3: Hey, hey, I’m still insulted that it was the best show ever, and the first one I wasn’t at. So anyway… No, I’m just kidding. I’m absolutely flattered.

0:11:50 S1: No you’re not. It was the happiest moment in your life. Okay, so anyway, same with me. So I have to now… Now, I have a drum teacher who’s been doing more and more office work. And after this whole thing, we know he’s gonna be my general manager and we’re gonna really… We’ll get there. So I’m having meetings with the staff. We have to do this. So now, I’m forced to plan on paper, with documents and folders in grueling detail, everything that’s gonna happen, from the gear, to the day of, who’s gonna MC, notes about specific students. All the things that I just did, I’ve been doing for five years that I shouldn’t have been, and it was stupid and I winged it.

0:12:27 S3: Was it all in your head and you had to finally dump it into Trello or Google Docs or whatever?

0:12:35 S1: Yeah, and I did some Google Sheets, some operations manual-type stuff. So we had a folder for the concert on Google Drives. Here’s our concert, here’s the packing list, here’s the tech list, here’s my guitar teacher who needs to go to my house to pick up the Mac mini that I bought, so we could multi-track, and get my Mac mini set up with a monitor, and he’s responsible for making sure this runs. And this teacher needs to liaison, this one needs to do merch, and basically every facet I had to plan out. And then

0:13:05 S1: so timeline… Just everything. Responsibilities, timeline, procedures, tech procedures, MC notes, everything you could imagine. So this is all done. So the show’s Friday. And we sent out a message to the whole school, like, “Hey, I’m in the hospital, the show will go on. We’re all here for each other,” yada yada.

0:13:25 S1: And so here comes Friday and we’re gonna have a debriefing. I give my staff and all the volunteers two hours to pack up. Thirty minutes into their two-hour allotted time, they say, “Robby, we’re done. We’re just hanging at the studio.” I said, “Alright, here’s my credit card. Order a pizza and just hang.” And I say, “Alright, guys, here’s my debriefing.” And I sit, and I go, “I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing else to say. What am I gonna do? Reiterate what I’ve already said? Everyone knows what they need to do. Everyone’s got their stuff printed out. Nick, you’ve got this. Kelvin, you’ve got this.” And I was just kinda, I was like, “I don’t know what to say, but thank you. I’m grateful. I’m emotional. I’m stunned.” Sorry, not a good time, guys. Come back. “I’m totally stunned,” blah, blah, blah, “and I just, I’m grateful. I love you guys. You guys got this. And I’ll tell you what? I am so exhausted from working 10, 12-hour days in a hospital. My phone’s available for an emergency, but try to not call. Try to do everything yourselves. If a student texts, I’m not gonna respond. I’m gonna turn off my phone.” And I went to sleep.

0:14:27 S2: Was that hard for you to say that?

0:14:30 S2: No, it wasn’t because after the planning and seeing how amazing people were and how to support that, I had done it. And really, I was so tired. My body said, “Screw this.” So it was like 2:00 PM, I fielded one more call. I fell asleep. I woke up at 9:30 PM. So I slept straight from 2:00 to 9:30, and the show’s gonna end at 10:00.

[laughter]

0:14:53 S2: Wait, you were asleep?

0:14:55 S3: So that’s delegation.

0:14:56 S2: You were asleep during the show, except for the last 30 minutes?

0:15:01 S1: Yeah, because my body had done everything. And plus, obviously, I’m on painkillers and stuff. And so there’s no anxiety, there’s nothing, there’s no feelings. And my body was just like, “Alright, dude, you did everything. You knocked it out.” Of course, I’m emotional. I called my mom, I’m crying. I’m like, “I don’t know how to feel. I’m proud. I finally dotted my T’s and crossed my I’s. I didn’t do the bare minimum. I’m used to skating by and improvising ’cause I’m a musician. How do I allow myself to be proud and not feel like… I’m so used to feeling like I could have done better.” It was the weirdest feeling. Plus, I’ve been working with these people personally since February. This is the first show we’ve done since… August, we did a show. Our show in December got canceled. That was like a hero story. Our neighbors came and had the right square footage. We made videos in a decor shop. It’s been the year of curve balls. And I wanna be there.

0:16:00 S3: And if you’re listening to this later on, ’cause I don’t know when someone’s listening to this, we just went through COVID, so you’ll remember that year. [chuckle]

0:16:08 S2: Right. Right. Right. So that’s the year he’s talking about, and this is May 2021 right now. So all of this timeline is very colorful, to say the least. Robby, I gotta chime in really quick, and then I want you to finish up. I am so proud of you. Because Chris came in when we partnered up, and my wife is going through some heavy brain surgery stuff that flipped our lives upside-down when my daughter was two weeks old, and it was the same day that that was the day I quit teaching. That was year five. That was the thing, where I had my last 11 students or something, and that was the end. Never taught since. It was like, even I was holding on to the last second and hadn’t done it until some catastrophe happened. And thank God, Chris was there and whatever.

0:17:00 S2: So first of all, I wanna say I relate to that. Number two, you practiced extreme ownership. I’m getting choked up because what you did to trust your fire teams, your team, because you identified that they were amazing, and the only reason they weren’t all the way amazing is ’cause you were standing in your own way and siloing with all the freaking nuclear codes and everything by yourself. No one had any access to the life strings of the business. You had them all in a box, and then one day, you just gave them the box. Now, you had to write a bunch of stuff down [laughter] and put it together. But, dude, kudos. That process is insane, unbelievable.

0:17:56 S3: I agree. Bravo. It’s blowing us away that not only did you do it, but you did like A plus, knock it out of the park, home run. Man, that’s amazing. And the fact that you slept is actually very telling, like you said, ’cause it shows that you were like, “Ha.” You got it all off, and now your shoulders, it was like that weight was lifted off your shoulders, and your body probably had a lot of tension because you’d been stressed from the accident about what you had to take care of. So I would imagine that was all very related, and I wanna say, I’ve been saying for years that humans, we all fight change, and we only change in trauma.

0:18:41 S2: Yeah.

0:18:41 S3: But I didn’t mean getting in a horrible accident.

[laughter]

0:18:46 S3: But sometimes, like you said, with Melissa, Tyler, or with this accident, or sometimes it’s a different kind of life trauma or change in your life. Either way, we’re so glad that you did it, but we also want everybody to use this as a metaphor, because you can push yourself to delegate. You can push yourself to get out of your own way and not require something this traumatic. You can have that…

0:19:13 S1: Chris, perfect

0:19:15 S1: point.

0:19:15 S2: I know.

0:19:15 S1: Just pretend. Just pretend you got in an accident. Call your staff be like, “Bro, I’m in an accident. No, don’t come visit me. It’s Covid, can’t come in.” And then go through everything and then, “Surprise I wasn’t in an accident but you guys did great.” Now, that’s probably not a good idea but…

0:19:30 S3: So what would you… That’s like… That’s a good…

0:19:32 S1: It’s that there’s no difference in doing what Robby did without a motorcycle accident. If that’s what you really want and see Robby didn’t know that that’s what he wanted yet. Did you? Robby describe that. Go back a little bit. Where was your head? Did you want the freedom of this delegation? And you don’t even know what this means yet ’cause you’re still in a home right now waiting to get back on your feet. So when you’re back on your feet and now you can choose whether you’re gonna teach again or not or build the business in a different direction is this what you wanted to do eventually and you got here faster or did you not wanna be here yet?

0:20:14 S2: No, I’ve wanted to be here since I heard your podcast two years ago and I’m like, “Oh wait, systems. That’s a thing. Writing things down, checklist.” But I’m doing it all on my own. I don’t have Chris who’s got all this experience with business and delegation. I just got a couple podcasts Danny Thompson, Dave Simon, a couple of the podcasts that folks are aware of and I tried multiple times. I tried hiring this girl into [0:20:41] ____, and she wasn’t the right fit and I was like, “Gosh, that was tough.” And then I hired another person who I thought was gonna be great and then Covid hit and that ruined that. So I’ve had about called my experiments with delegation. I had two that kind of were not traumatic but was like, “Screw this, it’s just gonna be easier if I… “

0:21:01 S1: Yeah, it wasn’t like a home run where you’re just like, “Oh great.” It wasn’t instant, this was a process.

0:21:07 S2: No, it’s trying. “Okay, you’re not the right fit.” Trying, “You could’ve been the right fit, COVID happened, everything changed, I don’t know what’s going on, now I gotta stay lean. My brother’s my accountant, he’s a hard work, he works 18-hour days like, “Just do it all yourself bro, just do it all yourself. Just teach more. Make money.” And I’m like, “Well, you’re not like, yeah, okay so I’ll try to stay lean. I don’t wanna be lazy but it was that balance of it was getting in my way but yeah.” So I’d tried. This has been something I deep down wanted and how to get out of coaching the bands. I got out of teaching privately a year and a half ago. I said no more private students. But I had this idea in my head that I have to coach. People love how I coach and no one can do it the way I can and I’ve tried. I tried to delegate that.

0:21:53 S2: I’ve tried to have other people do that and I didn’t know how to train and it’s the Extreme Ownership. I’d bring them in, I’d give them a week of training and then I just like, “Ugh, they suck,” and I end up taking it back over and they’re good people and it’s just a matter of mindset and experience and learning. I need to change my mindset. I can’t look at my staff as problems I have to be there for them and get excited. Well, I asked Chris, I said, “How do you say excited about challenges?” But now my whole CPU in my brain goes into like, “How can I help you as a teacher?” I save my positivity for supporting teachers now and I can tell now when I talk to a business owner within two seconds if they’re a business owner or they just work for themselves because if you go, “Ugh, employees.” I’m like, “I don’t need that energy.” I’m like, “Yay, employees, ugh, customers.” I’m like, “Yeah, cu… ” Obviously, I get mad at petty things and I have a bad attitude sometimes but then I don’t have that around the staff and it’s all… Took me three years to find good staff. Three fucking years to finally find…

0:22:58 S1: I don’t know if you dealt with this but I know I struggle with the word “leader” and only in the last several years and don’t kid yourself even though I have some experience in the past it sat on Tyler and I everyday. I’m so grateful for Tyler kicking me in the butt and keeping me on it and we all need each other. And the one thing though that I struggle with is that word because what does leader mean? It actually means to lead, it actually means to provide the leadership that it takes. It doesn’t mean to do and that transition from doing to actually leading is a big difference because basically you can go from being a super size individual where who you’re like, “I’m super man and I do 500 things.” Like you said was it your brother or brother-in-law? The accountant?

0:23:44 S2: Yeah, my brother.

0:23:45 S3: Yeah, that’s the old kind of stoic mentality of like, “I don’t just work… I work 27 hours a day.” It’s like, “Really? Why is that something to brag about?” And so the modern thing really in leading is that we’re… If we’re not leading. then we’re almost like stealing the opportunity away from our staff to actually do what they’re great at and do their superpowers and actually be appreciated for their special qualities and their abilities. It’s like we’re trying to steal a spotlight in every task and I know we don’t see it that way we think we’re just trying to help but ultimately, I think that’s what it’s doing. Yeah Ty.

0:24:23 S1: Chris, you’re exactly right and then on the flip side sometimes we’re so in the thick of it sometimes you just gotta back up and go, “Whoa.” Every great entity that’s ever been has had leadership. Anybody that’s ever gone from rubble to Amazon or Elon or whatever, someone had to get out and lead and they couldn’t. At some point I could imagine them all. I think Chris you showed me an old picture of Bezos in his office in Amazon like a million years ago and it looked like ours, just crap everywhere and a tiny room. Well, we all are there but sometimes you gotta fly 1000 feet up and go, “Okay, so how did those big dogs happen?” For instance, Phoenix Project, that book we read, Chris, it was a great story about bottlenecks and unplanned work and I just needed to see the hustle and bustle of a big Fortune 500 company failing. You know what I mean? When there’s not supposed to be failing and it took me a second and then it goes, “Okay, so wait a second, if they had the same problems at a Fortune 500 company with 38,000 employees that my 11 employees had no different when the chaos was at Los Rios rock school or Teacher Zone or whatever, there is no difference.” The bottlenecks, the unplanned work, it’s all the same except leadership. Has to happen.

0:25:54 S1: Yeah, and there’s actually something that they found out when it comes to potting up and it’s really interesting but you know what’s it called the…

0:26:05 S1: The mathematical principle, Robby, with the shell, like the conch shell. It’s the…

0:26:09 S2: Oh, the Fibonacci sequence?

0:26:15 S1: Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence, oddly enough, has been shown to be the right number for kinda group pods. And once you get over a certain number, so what it is, is like there’s five, and then… Because two plus three is five, and then four plus three is seven, and then… So seven is a really good number, for instance. And then, what comes after that? It would be five plus four, so nine. And then it would be six plus five, so 11. So in other words, like you said, Tyler, 11, nine, seven. It’s actually been proven that in our staff, so even if you have 30,000 employees, you should still have teams that are smaller. So leadership, at a super high level I imagine, I don’t have any idea what business goes through those guys, but they’re basically leading a country or a small, small country. [chuckle]

0:27:10 S2: But they’re just delegating, Chris. They’re doing the exact same thing, except they’ve got three pods of CEOs or four, seven pods of CEOs.

0:27:19 S1: Exactly, and then those leadership pods then have pods underneath them, and then they have… So it’s like once you start the delega… Go ahead.

0:27:23 S2: Can I interject? I wanted to tell you this, ’cause you talk about leader. I never thought of myself as a leader. I bought this book last winter called “How to Be a Great Boss” by Gino Wickman, who’s the person who has a little traction that I’ve heard a great… I have it on my desk.

0:27:39 S1: Yes, I’m reading that now.

0:27:40 S2: Yeah. So how to be a great boss, right? And there’s a test you take halfway through on how to be a great boss, and I remember being with my mother, ’cause I visit her in Saint Louis. I’m taking this. I said, “Mom, apparently, I am not even a… I am the worst boss. I scored like a zero on this test/” I’m like, “Should I quit? Should I quit?” And I had a new employee thank me for being… He was like, “There’s another way of saying it, a great boss.” And that was like the biggest compliment. ‘Cause I have a new employees for… I have lots of employees now with this [0:28:13] ____. And that’s just a crazy thing. I literally got a book, “How to Be a Good Boss” and…

0:28:20 S1: So what were the elements in that book that you, at that time, what made you a bad boss? What are some of the things…

0:28:28 S2: It was like 27 metrics, and I failed every metric.

[laughter]

0:28:29 S2: It was like… I [0:28:30] ____ think about a metric like ability to delegate, ability to look at the good in people, ability to coach, ability to manage the work you delegate, seeing solutions to problems like… I was honest with myself, and it was like, “If you’re unsure… It’s either a one or a zero, and if you’re unsure, it’s a zero.” So I used to like… I have none of these qualities. I’m just not…

[laughter]

0:28:55 S2: And my mom was like, be like, “We’re gonna stop… I stop the book halfway through, I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m gonna quit my business if I keep reading this book.” So…

0:29:02 S1: Yeah. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

0:29:06 S2: Right.

0:29:07 S1: It’s funny, ’cause I… Guys, I, years ago… So there’s two types, Tyler and I learned learned recently in a coaching group we’re in, we learned recently about the term “transactional leader” versus “transformational leader.” And a transactional is your typical old school boss that we all have had, and it’s that like, “Do this and do it like this, and then I’ll check up and make sure you’re doing it. And it’s like, you’re just… Everything is like, I’m telling you, I’m telling you.” It’s a transaction, it’s like… Transactional leadership is basically you still in charge. You’re still… You’ve delegated kinda…

0:29:39 S2: Right, and your employee, they’re there waiting for that to happen. So it’s very reaction-based…

0:29:47 S1: Shout to delegation, because it still requires you to sort of… The staff member doesn’t feel like they have the freedom to truly act, they’re waiting for your approval before they finish that project. And so transformational leadership. in the other hand is about truly empowering our teams to be able to feel and own, like you say, Tyler, with Jocko’s book, “Extreme Ownership,” to be able to have extreme ownership in their work. Also, you enjoy it more when you own it. So we’re taking that away when we’re not transformation leaders. And so I would… This is probably 15 years ago or 12 years ago, something. I’m in a meeting with 10 other business owners, and I’ll never forget the look on everyone’s face, ’cause I was like… I think I had like 40 on staff at the time, and I’m like, “I don’t believe in transformational.” And they’re like, “What?” And I’m like, “You’re either born with it or you don’t. I hire people that are already awesome. I’m not training anybody.” And they were like… They all looked at me like I was crazy.

0:30:45 S1: And now, I’m embarrassed of myself 12 years ago that I actually thought that all of us, including myself, don’t constantly need assistants, leveling up, support. All of us need it. And as things change, we need new training, and we need new assistants, and we need new systems. So what this delegation thing isn’t… Robby’s now created a system, and he can go lay on a beach in Aruba. Now, you get to truly be a leader, which means, next year, maybe we’re finding the systems further.

0:31:18 S3: Right.

0:31:20 S1: Yeah, what’s your next step Robbie? What’s your… Now that this is happening, have your goals changed? Has your perception changed?

0:31:28 S2: Yeah, they’ve gotten real clear now, obviously. And I really hope anyone listening, I used to think to myself, “The only thing that’s gonna get me to change is trauma because I’m so comfortable.” And I really hope that’s not what it takes for you. I liked your idea, Tyler, of just lying and pretending like you got in an accident, and then you’re like, you have to act. But in the end of the day, I’ve… Through all this, right now, we have a folder that’s like a concert folder. Next concert that happens, guess what we’re doing? Calvin’s running that folder and everyone else is gonna do it, I’m not gonna be there.

0:32:07 S1: I’m.

0:32:08 S2: I think there’s a bit of transactional leadership when you’re training at the beginning, before you just… ‘Cause I have teachers coming in who are experienced coaches, and I’m trying to like… I run my programs. I’ve stolen everything, by the way guys, from Los Rios. So I run my band program very similar, I have a couple of tweaks, and we just had our first big meeting last night, I ran it from Zoom, but…

0:32:30 S1: Awesome. Awesome. Congrats.

0:32:34 S2: Yeah, thanks. I have teachers who have been teaching and I have to de-program them. I’m like, “Guys, this is not five 40 year olds in a room, where you spend 45 minutes talking about a cool thing Les Paul did in 1968.” We have 10 minutes per song, and they’re working on the enrichment with their teachers. They’ve gotta be better musicians, this is why we have great shows. Oh, and let me finish the show thing, ’cause we got tangented, ’cause… So yeah, if you don’t mind.

0:32:57 S1: Go ahead and…

0:32:58 S3: Go back.

0:33:00 S2: I just, so people know, I cried with all these emotions. I’m gonna miss him, I’m proud of myself, I don’t know what it feels like to be proud of myself. But after that long cry to my mother, talk to her all the time, I slept, woke up, people are… I got calls, face times, and people were like, “This was the best show ever.” 250 people showed up. We grossed $2000 from the venue. We had expenses, but we still made money off it, and of course I had to record live… Not live, but I recorded video messages of me in the hospital, ’cause I am a narcissist at some level [laughter] But people liked it, ’cause they got the…

0:33:37 S1: Wait, wait. Did they play it on like a screen at the venue?

0:33:41 S3: With audio?

0:33:42 S2: Oh, yeah. I took these videos one take, I had them shower me and comb my hair. “Hey guys, It’s Robbie. I’m here from the hospital, and I just wanna thank everyone, thank Herman’s for staying in business”, and it was just a little heartfelt all blemishes message. And I’m sure some people thought it was redundant, but most people know me, and I think that it added a little bit of authenticity, but… Yeah, but I woke up at 9:30, by 10:00 I’m getting calls. This was the best thing ever. The bands were tighter than ever, and the sound was better, and we had 250 people. The most we ever had was 180. So by every metric, it was the best show, and I was so happy. I was like, this is the best compliment, because I don’t need to be there, and I was getting in the way. And this just proof of concept, and so…

0:34:35 S1: And you said something important, I think a lot of people will relate to, is that many of us in small businesses… I’m sorry, but if you’re a small business owner, and you’re listening to this, you’re obviously a genius [laughter] But I think small business owners are really energetic folks typically, and like you said, “You’re winging it.” So the fact that you’ve forced yourself to sit down, and write it down, so you weren’t just gonna delegate and say, “Hey, you got it, I’m off the clock”, you took the time to actually create the systems and the planning. How much, moving forward, do you think that you’ll implement that part too? Because I think that that probably contributed quite a bit to the success of the night.

0:35:21 S2: Well, yeah, that’s what I plan to. When I had the debriefing, when I couldn’t think of anything to say, I’m like, “Guys, and I’m trying not to micro-manage you, I know I do that.” And Calvin goes, “Robbie, you just literally told us to turn the gain to two, and the volume to 2.5, on one guitar pedal during a debriefing.” So I still clearly… So I wrote them stupidly detailed, [0:35:45] ____ systems, still managed to talk about tweaking one guitar pedal during the debrief. But point being is, I joke about it with them, I’m trying, but…

0:35:54 S1: You normally woulda ad-libbed. You normally would have just done it like that.

0:35:58 S2: Well, I would have done that. I would. have walked around with my headset. I had a headset. I’d MC, I’d tweak pedals, I’d talk to the sound guy, I’d slap customers on the back, I’d direct point, I just did it ’cause I’ve been doing it so long. But this is the way it’s gonna go in the future, ’cause I’d rather do that. It’s better, it worked better, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. And now we just take this, we change the dates, we adapt it. So we’re talking about… It took me hours, but now it’s gonna be two hours before the next show, we go through the documents and update them. I already know what people are doing what roles, and Calvin can help make sure that happens. Calvin’s the most amazing dude ever. He’s 26, he’s a drum instructor. He’s gonna be in my GM, and I love that guy.

0:36:41 S1: Real quick, for the people that are listening, when did you start musical life Denver? Let’s get the audience a little bit of a timeline. We’re not gonna go too far back, but just… What’s the start date of musical life Denver?

0:36:54 S2: 2016, I got a building and I stole a business model of, I’m gonna rent out space to other teachers and we’re all gonna do our own thing, ’cause I got my own students. But no teachers ever came. I… Interesting enough, it was through Facebook groups, that I found fans, then I found TeacherZone, and I was like, delegate. Here’s all these ideas I’ve never heard. Be a boss, hire people, get employees. That was the big target.

0:37:20 S1: So that was 2016, now we’re at 2021, and we already heard the story here. And you didn’t consider yourself a good boss or a leader, quote, unquote, that’s what you just said. You failed the boss test, with a 0%…

0:37:35 S2: Yeah, it couldn’t have been worse.

0:37:37 S2: Maybe with this new success, and I know I’m speaking rhetorically here, but do you think… And I’m not speaking to narcissism for you either, this is supposed to be inspiring. Do you think that you might have more to offer yourself and your community than you had before now? Do you think that there’s something bigger out there for you because of this recent transition? Do you think that maybe you weren’t doing your best work, while you were [0:38:12] ____?

0:38:13 S3: When I’m trying to do everything in three hours of admin and coaching, I told them I couldn’t be the best coach, I was slacking. Now we have… Coaches are just coaching. We have systems, we have weekly practice reports we’re gonna be doing, but the main thing is I can grow the school. That means all my teachers have more hours, they’re happier, all my teachers have more direction and free time, ’cause I’m not… Three hours… Six hours a day are gone. I can help the coaches, be there to support them. I can be there for the needs of people, and I could just make more sales calls, advertise more. I can plan more for the future. So the plan… You asked, “What’s the plan moving forward?” Well, it’s I have 24 months left on my lease. My plan’s to grow the school in the structure we have, max out this place, get a new spot.

0:39:03 S1: I don’t have put together, hopefully find some investors, buy a building in two years from now and be having 350 students running 800 a year revenue and being able to pay myself well, have my general manager and have a couple of assistants and eight teachers and everyone’s happy. I wanna raise my teacher pay, I wanna make sure I’m paying my teachers more than any other school in town. That’s important to me.

0:39:33 S2: What it sounds like, is it’s really opened your vision and you reminded me of a metaphor that a success coach gave me years ago about… ‘Cause I was struggling with planning and I was struggling with systems and I was like, Oh, I just… I like the freedom of being creative, I like doing stuff on the fly, man. I don’t really wanna do all these systems and stuff, and Clement Pepe, Hey, Clement, he’s a great success coach, but he goes, Chris, let me explain something. He goes, you’re on the tallest building in Chicago. It’s a really windy day, and there’s no guard rails on the top of the building. You’re on the roof, and it’s really windy. What are you gonna do? You’re gonna lay down probably in the center of the roof. And so your whole perspective is from that position laying on the roof because you’re scared and you don’t wanna get blown off the roof. That’s not having systems.

0:40:28 S2: He’s like, now imagine that you plan for the winds and you plan to be on the roof and you actually built a really thick plexi. That’s like a four and a half foot high plexi around the entire perimeter of the roof. He’s like, now you can actually walk the roof, you can get up on the plexi, you can hang over, and so your entire vision, everything you see is different and also you’re relaxed. Whereas before you were freaked out, and so I thought that was a really cool way of thinking about the fact of you taking the time to have the systems. That now your vision, it sounds like, is really opening up and you’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m actually now starting to have this possibility of super growth, of affecting even more lives, of going deeper with my staff, of imagine this paying them more because we’re having more success. That’s amazing to me. So, I’m so proud of you for pushing yourself through this moment and having that. So what advice would you give yourself if you go back even six months?

0:41:36 S2: Okay. Hard to say. I was gonna say something about the motorcycle, but I was…

[chuckle]

0:41:44 S?: Freak accident. I wasn’t going fast. I was wearing a helmet. I did everything. I took… I would still ride my motorcycle, shit happens sometimes like…

0:41:57 S1: You gotta get back on the horse. You cannot finish your life…

0:42:00 S1: [0:42:00] ____. It’s not like people into the World Trade Center to change the world like, Oh, maybe I would have… Whatever, I can’t do anything about that. I would have told myself that life’s gonna happen. And the sooner I do the systems, and maybe if I had put off a couple of sales calls or I had put off a couple things and have maybe kind of a slack week in the office, where even if I pissed off a couple customers and teachers for one week to sit down with somebody else, that’s huge. Finding someone whether they’re employee, I have an accountability person I pay who’s like a per day partner. I have coaches, but find someone who will sit down with you. You make a meeting and you say, today we’re going to write down everything I do in a band class. And just force yourself, ’cause I felt I had no time, I have to get these Trello cards done, we have to onboard, I have to hit this prowess… Oops, so fucking what? What if I wanna pissed off a couple of parents and a couple of teachers for one or two weeks? Slightly to be able to get the stuff done ahead of time.

0:43:08 S1: Then if the crash happened, I wouldn’t have had to do this. I could have totally just spent my time recovering, or I could have spent my time… I was like 30 calls behind. So calling people, how many people I called, and then call another school, how many more students could I have had? If I had been able to feel that, so just your brain’s gonna tell you I have to. And you tell your brain, screw off, what’s the worst? I’m gonna piss some people off. I’m gonna slack for one week, but I’m not gonna slack doing nothing. I’m gonna slack on the fires of the day, and I’ll be able to go back and talk to everyone later and apologize and it will be fine ’cause I’m a good person. And they’re good people.

0:43:52 S2: So worst case, worst case is you got a couple of weeks down time, your business might dip a little, but the…

0:44:00 S1: Yeah, I might lose a couple…

0:44:00 S2: The reaction… The result is increased enhancement to everything including business growth.

0:44:07 S1: ‘Cause I’ve had these on my agenda for two years now, scale up, get systems. I don’t have to do everything, delegate. But I, for two years straight, was rationalized. And it’s not like I was sweeping the halls. I wasn’t doing nothing. But I rationalized, I gotta do this. I tried getting a… I tried getting an administrator, it didn’t work. I gotta stay lean. I got time in the day, I can do these cards. Why lose an extra couple of hundred a month when [0:44:36] ____ so thin.

0:44:36 S2: Well, in the lesson business, the biggest challenge that we all face, I believe, is the operational challenge. It’s like, we all wanna be really busy and change lives. But as soon as that starts happening, now you’ve got all these people. And now you’ve got all these circumstances and scheduling and drama and all these things going on that takes your attention. Let’s not pretend like it’s just a simple thing. I mean, gosh, you built it a wonderful school before the accident, this just helped you level up and wake up to the reality of [0:45:07] ____ calls it sharpening the saw. It’s like, okay, you sharpen the saw before you go to cut. You don’t to build the boat right before the flood, you’re working on it and making it better and testing it and making sure it’s buoyant and all this kind of stuff. It can’t happen without planning, it can’t happen without delegation. It’s so important that we all get out of our own way and spend time sharpening our saw. Robbie, I gotta ask you. How are you feeling? Are you still feeling okay to go a couple more minutes? Are you getting tired? How are you feeling?

0:45:45 S1: No, I’m fine, man. I’m grateful to be talking to you guys and of course, it’s always fun being on a podcast, it feels cool.

[laughter]

0:45:58 S1: You know what? You are cool, man. And everybody listening to this, so this is good for everybody, everybody loves good stories, they love success, they love… I mean, every movie and show we ever watch, there’s that… If you’re watching a 10-show Season, Episode 7 is always the pits. It’s like, Oh no, this is depressing. They’ll never get out of this, and then they do. And so that part of this, even though it was intense for you, this is a life lesson story for many people, whoever listens to this, this is a win-win for everyone at your expense, and I think the moral of the story is, like Chris said, sharpen the saw before you have to test out your boat, build the boat. Don’t be afraid for change, like a lot of people… And we learn how to sort our customers because customers come to teacher zone and they’re not ready, and we shouldn’t be onboarding them ’cause their mindset’s not even freaking there, and then they’re three months later, they might not even wanna do it anymore, because we tried to make them fit, but they’re not ready because they don’t understand what it means yet.

0:47:10 S1: So there’s a lot of things we can do to really harness the energy of what your story is about, so the main thing I heard was open your mind, start sooner than later and get a mentor, get an accountability partner, get systems, sooner.

0:47:30 S2: Yes, schedule meetings with people and say, I’m gonna do this, and then show up, and then also put off to put on. That’s what I would tell myself. Tell yourself in your head, I’m putting off sales calls, I’m putting off getting back to this person, I’m putting off filling out this registration, it’s gonna be a day late and a dollar short, but not ’cause I’m lazy, ’cause I need to get these fucking… Yeah, again, had I had these going into this, I would have maybe 10 more students because something else would have been… I mean right now I’m thinking about…

0:48:03 S2: Yeah, no. It’s [0:48:03] ____ a threesome to being an entrepreneur, man, especially in lesson business. There’s always a fire. There’s always something. Have you guys heard of the Pomodoro? It’s basically the 20-minute timer, and the Pomodoro’s timers, I think that means tomato in italian, right, so it’s like an Italian timer, but it’s a 20-minute cooking timer, and the concept is, is that block 20 minutes because we can all focus for 20 minutes, hopefully, but it’s much easier to focus, let’s put it that way, for 20 minutes, than it is to say, “Oh, I’m gonna block three hours,” no, no, no, no, hold on. Start with 20 minutes, and then if you wanna go another 20 cool. So if you Google it, there’s all sorts of… It’s kind of a movement out there, the Pomodoro movement, and there’s the Pomodoro timers, and you can even just tell Siri or your timer on your phone to be a 20-minute deal, but I highly suggest if you’re listening to this and you’re struggling with time management, chunk it down. I think it was Henry Ford or someone, they asked him why they were so successful, and he’s like, Because I could focus for hours on end and all of my peers can’t focus for more than five minutes. That’s the one distinction that he had for his success, I think it was Ford…

0:49:21 S1: Yeah, shiny object syndrome is what Chris and I have started to be more diligent and not be so susceptible to is shiny new systems. Shiny new. Oh, look at that, look at this, look at that ’cause we’re trying to…

0:49:35 S2: Who’s done that? I’m gonna make a new system and you spend three hours working on it and you have a staff meeting and it doesn’t get implemented and you’re like, “Well, that never happened.” That’s why The Smartsheet sheets, this time, I had this big thought of like, “Am I gonna use Smartsheet like Los Rios?” And actually Chris, we like decide if it’s gonna be something you’re gonna follow through or not, and I said, “Not this time.” And we have another system, I think will work for us on a smaller scale, but it’s something we can do and it’s gonna be implemented, so to…

0:50:07 S1: Smart, man, that is so smart Robbie. Because the fact that you’re saying, “What can we own?” It’s so easy to pay lip service to it and be like, “Oh, we’re gonna do all these systems,” and then you don’t do anything about it, it’s not worth it. You’re better off having just a couple of systems and then over time…

0:50:25 S1: Credibility to Chris if…

0:50:26 S1: If you say a bunch of stuff and nothing ever happens, or staff here is you saying a bunch of stuff that never happens, that’s more…

0:50:34 S2: I’ve tri

Enjoy!

Watch it Here

Listen Below

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:04.9 Tyler Marolf: Welcome to the next podcast episode of the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. I’m Tyler Marolf and I’m here with Chris Bates, and we will be continuing our two-part series on the seven things we wish we did in the beginning of our lesson businesses. Chris, how are you doing today, man? 

0:00:22.0 Chris Bates: I’m doing good. We were on a roll, and then we realized that our last podcast would have been two hours, and we were like, “We’re not gonna torture you guys with that.” So hope you got some value out of the first one. Second one, we’re gonna jump right in on this one, and so it’ll be a… We can get through the four items.

So the next one is number four. So you might remember, just as a quick recap, Tyler, number one was basically automation, especially with your payments. Number two was, “I wish we would have reconciled make-ups better, sooner, systematically.” Number three is attendance, which equates to payroll, equates to the historical history of a student, all that. So one, two, three; automation, make-ups, and then of course, attendance. So number four, what is number four? We’re gonna jump right in, Tyler. Tell us about number four.

0:01:19.8 TM: Alright, well, number four is, “I wish I would have set written expectations in the beginning for both customers and staff.” That’s a big one. That’s a big one for us, but Chris and I…

0:01:33.4 CB: To me, that’s a biggie.

0:01:36.0 TM: Yeah, and we’re gonna get into that right now. And so there’s things in hindsight that… And that’s where many of you who’ve been listening, that the book Extreme Ownership came into my life, thanks to Chris, and I read. And that’s when, all of a sudden, I’m like, “Chris, clear and simple commander’s intent, our team doesn’t have it.” They know what my heart wants and what I’ve said, but things keep slipping through the cracks with my staff and expectations because it’s not written down. And so…

0:02:10.2 CB: Explain commander’s intent, and just in case someone hasn’t heard it before in our podcast.

0:02:15.7 TM: Okay, so we’re not psychic. On our best day, we feel maybe like we are like, “Ah, I knew what you were thinking,” and then we finish each other’s sentences. And you know what? That’s a great synergy, enjoy it. But that is not a prerequisite to run a business off of. And so I can’t be upset when an employee fails and failed in a way to where, okay, maybe I thought common sense, he should have been not doing whatever that thing was, but he did it. So the book… If I had given him clear and simple, simple commander’s intent of what I would like the vision to look like, and even better, it was written down, and even more, even better, better, he’s like, “Cool, that’s basic. I’ll sign that,” and there’s an employee agreement in place. Oh, my gosh! The book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, helped me and Chris get to the point where we could get those, get that intent clear.

0:03:16.0 CB: You know, one of the things that you just brought to my mind is for those of you that are Covey fans, The Seven Habits, or… Oh! We’re doing seven wishes, though.

0:03:26.6 TM: Right.

0:03:27.0 CB: Seven Habits guy. And I remember from years ago, Tyler, he had a thing on this, where he talked about doing chores with his son. And he said, “Alright, son, your job,” and I forget how old he was, so we’ll call him 11, 12 or 10, even. “Your job is the front yard, right? I expect you to get the yard done.” So he said he waits all week, he wants to yell at him, but he’s not, he’s gonna let him own it. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t. Finally, Sunday comes along and he goes, “Son, you were supposed to do the yard and it still looks terrible. There’s leaves everywhere.” And then all of a sudden, his son starts crying, and he’s like, “What is your problem? What’s going on?” And he’s like, “I don’t even know where to start.” [chuckle]

0:04:07.0 TM: Right.

0:04:08.0 CB: So he goes out there and he dumbs it down. He said, “So here’s the deal. Every week, by whatever day, Wednesday, I want green. I want clean. That’s it. I want you to see green, I want it to look clean. Can you do that?” “Oh, yeah,” he said. The next thing you know, obviously, it became a habit and then became his chore. So by having clear commander’s intent, his son now knew what to do. Before, the intent was just, “Go do the yard,” which is too fluffy for someone that does know.

0:04:35.9 TM: Right, right. Great example, great example. So when we figured that out, the by-products are also the culture and synergy of the staff getting along with each other, or the owners, remember, ’cause we’re not there to make friends; we’re there to run a successful place where people can have amazing lives for their families, etcetera, etcetera, and for the customers and all that. So when there’s a little animosity, or it’s usually pent up anxiety based on expectations. So if I could go back in time and set some standards that made me smile, that were maybe three or four line items, I would have had my very, very first employees sign that and say, “Hey, man. Hey, Spencer Askin! What do you think of these? You and I are both teaching right now, it’s a new company, how about we sign these, and do we agree?” And it could have grown from there. And then you can always update as you grow.

0:05:43.1 CB: Right.

0:05:43.4 TM: That would have been amazing because now, my staff felt like they were a part of it because I always said, “Hey, guys, this school is us. It’s our minds together, it’s whatever.” But then, I’m always mad because they’re doing things different ’cause I didn’t make it clear. That’s not as fun. So that, I would have changed it right out the gates.

0:06:00.5 CB: So is that you… So let’s suggest that part. So we’ve had it, Tyler and I have had it happen about 100 times where there’s been some challenge day-to-day, that he and I started to get frustrated at our staff about, and then we had to go, “Yep, we never asked for that.” So they had to just assume.

0:06:15.5 TM: So it’s our fault. Extreme onus is at the top. We can’t be mad, and it gets easier and easier, by the way, ’cause it is frustrating at first, but it gets easier. Now, when I know it’s my fault, and it’s something that needs to be fixed and addressed, and then you go to that employee and say, “Hey, you know what, my bad. How would you think about this if we wrote this line item into the process? Do you think that would fix it with the parents from now on?” “Yeah, I think that would work.” “Awesome! Let’s do it, I’ll update it.” And I go… I don’t even get upset anymore, but at first, it was tough because it was a change, Chris. I had to get used to getting…

0:06:53.0 CB: Right. Well, what you think, it’s similar to a marriage or anything. It’s like what you think is the obvious, there’s so many different ways to look at things. Everybody’s busy, everybody’s on different thoughts. They’re not necessarily tracking at the same place that you’re wanting them to go. So you have to lead. And my friends in a business group I was in years ago, they all make fun of me still because about 10 years ago, I’m sitting in a meeting, and I had a big staff at the time, we had almost 40 on staff at the time, and I said, “I’m just not a fan of having to level up staff. I’m a fan of hiring talent from the get-go and getting rid of people that don’t get it.” And that was so naïve, is I was under this assumption… It was lazy, bottomline. I wasn’t owning my own stuff, and I was lazy to just want people to do the right thing. And we, as leaders, can’t be lazy. We have to be responsible, we have to own it by owning it.

[overlapping conversation]

0:07:58.6 TM: Well what’s funny, Chris, is you didn’t even know that that’s… Oh, sorry. You didn’t even know that that’s what it was at first, either, that’s the beauty of it.

0:08:05.2 CB: No, no.

0:08:05.7 TM: So your guys, them laughing at you about it, “Oh, that’s cute, Chris.” Still might not have like, “Hmm, why’d they think that’s cute?” And then maybe two months, three months later, the epiphany, and then the growth, and then, “Oh!” And then the learning, and then the book, and then… So guys, sometimes, we don’t even know we need to work on something. If you can’t identify it kind of like our chaotic culture, if you don’t think you’re in chaos, if you can’t identify it, then you’re kind of, in your mind, you’re not.

0:08:31.3 CB: Right, right. You can’t fix what you don’t own.

0:08:37.8 TM: Right.

0:08:37.9 CB: And the first step is saying, “Oh, wait a second, I’m avoiding creating a contract, creating expectations, creating rules, for what reason?” Well, several reasons. Number one, you have to follow through, and you have to own it, too. It’s like that anecdote in the Gandhi biography, there’s a great… If you haven’t read it, it’s interesting, but Gandhi basically trained himself to be Gandhi. He wasn’t… He’s obviously… He was an Indian attorney.

0:09:07.9 TM: Yeah, didn’t know that.

0:09:09.3 CB: Yeah. [chuckle] He studied in Britain, so I assume he had a British accent. So he’s an English attorney. But Gandhi, basically, had a mom come to him and say, “You know, I’ve said this before, but the sugar thing, you know, tell my son not to eat sugar.” And he said, “Great, come back in a week.” She comes back in a week and he goes, “Don’t eat sugar.” And she’s like, “That’s it? That’s it?” And he goes, “Well, a week ago, I ate sugar.” [chuckle] So he didn’t wanna tell someone to do something he wasn’t embodying.

0:09:39.0 TM: Right.

0:09:39.1 CB: And so we have to embody it first. So as we get through this, Tyler, number four, set written expectations into our contracts. Now, you can actually get your teachers to agree to contracts in TeacherZone for those of you that are using it. But either way, whether they’re just written in a Google Doc and you print them out and have them sign it, or DocuSign, or you have a system like TeacherZone, doesn’t matter. Bottomline is get your instructors to know what their… What are your expectations, rather, for their job.

0:10:06.4 TM: Right. And you might wanna have a fun workshop with your co-owner or your ops manager or whatever. Maybe you write the student and parent contract first because that’s a separate contract. That is an agreement between two parties that, “We’re gonna be successful together.” And if you don’t have one, it’s the same thing. Now, you can do both, you could be like, “Dude, I have this amazing dream of a dream team teacher team. Let’s write that first.” You could do that. But your mission, vision, values might be more parent-student-centric, so you might wanna say, “What’s the perfect world for them first?” And then write your teacher contracts.

0:10:43.9 CB: Good point.

0:10:44.9 TM: Yeah, you can do it either way. We did teachers last only out of pain. [chuckle] We had our other one written.

0:10:50.6 CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which really… That motivates all the good things in the world, right? 

0:10:56.0 TM: Yes! 

0:10:58.0 CB: Humans will do whatever to avoid pain, but when pain has a future benefit, then… And so, reward yourself because we only change if we see some kind of reward in it. Reward yourself.

0:11:10.9 TM: Chris, tell us about the rewards that we have gotten since those contracts. So we’re in year 12 in our lesson business. Contracts went out about five, six years ago, and that’s right around when I read the book and you did, and what it… Describe how… Some of the by-products of putting those…

0:11:28.2 CB: So one of the things I’ve noticed is we happen to have employees, and I know some of you don’t. But however you outline your employee agreements, I notice on our meetings, we have monthly meetings, and on our meetings, we’re able to actually reference back certain line items in those contracts as we remind them on expectations. We’re also able to use it to protect our staff. So a lot of the wins are like, “Hey, mom, remember line 27 in this contract?” So I know Melissa will like email somebody and say, “Hey, by the way,” and then reference the contract to the student parents that, “remember we said that this is how we operate? This is a friendly reminder.”

0:12:11.7 TM: Friendly reminder.

0:12:14.2 CB: Right. Yeah, yeah. And you know what, no one’s ever pushed back on us because it’s like, “Hey, just so you know, we did… ” People, all the divorces… Nietzsche had a cool quote I used to know it was something like, “All disagreement comes from a lack of understanding.” Basically if you think about it…

0:12:35.7 TM: Or lack of communication.

0:12:37.9 CB: Yeah, it’s like, I’m seeing it one way, you’re seeing it another way, we’re both probably right, but because we’re seeing it so differently, we think the other one’s just wrong, and it’s like, no, the other one is not wrong from the way they’re looking at it, so by having it clear, you’re ensuring that you’re wearing the same glasses because it’s just not fair if you’re not and we actually… What’s funny is that we try to get people to adhere to our contracts as far as students and parents, even before they become a customer, it’s a way of really sort of locking in a…

0:13:10.6 TM: Well, our contract starts off with a paragraph about how exemplary our character is at our school, and how excited we are that they wanna be part of this way we are. So the first paragraph is like a, it’s a why, and then there’s what’s after it. So the contract is even the why, and now they are almost like them reading it, is them reciting it, the vow or something like it’s personal, and so that’s helped with the parents… The employee agreements have helped greatly, having everybody on the same page has been, it has caused 90% of strife to just disappear, 90%. It was very, very different before we did this because we were reactive to all sorts of unplanned work and personality issues because there were holes, there weren’t expectations to find. So if guys, you haven’t done that yet, that’s something we wish we did earlier.

0:14:05.8 CB: That’s creating a standard. And so by creating your standard, that’s helping you to slowly know who you’re serving better, so you’re able to actually give better service to the customers because you’re actually more clearly defining what you do and how you do it, it’s also helping you define your management style with your staff, because by coming up with the rules and things, you start to realize that. So great one, number four, we could talk on and we will again in the future forever, so what… Oh, number five is kind of a funny one. So a lot of learning businesses out there, we all… Let’s face it, we often teach how we learned, and so a lot of us learned with pen and paper and books, ’cause that’s all there was.

0:14:49.9 TM: Right.

0:14:50.3 CB: But kind of like IT’s sheet music, for instance, is that there’s lots of merits for music lesson companies, but if Mozart had had an iPhone, would he have really written…

0:15:03.2 TM: I don’t even know what would have happened.

0:15:05.0 CB: Would he have written everything down or would he have just recorded the parts and been like, “Here guys, learn this for Saturday”? Basically, what I’m getting at is that…

0:15:14.4 TM: That’s an interesting question. Would there even be…

0:15:19.4 CB: Yeah, yeah. So pen and paper is a technology, let’s face it, it really is, and it’s a great technology and it served us for many, many, many years. What we like on this one is we wish we would have gotten off pen and paper sooner is what this one is. And the reason we say that, is because the problem with pen and paper is scalability. This idea with the Cloud number one, is a special idea because it literally means that anyone that you give access to can access to whatever it is. We heard from so many of you when Covid hit that told us, “Oh my gosh, I am so grateful that I’m not gonna lose my business because I’m already Cloud-based for a lot of my systems,” and that just made us… We are so fortunate to be able to all band together that way, but that’s something Tyler, I know that a lot of people struggle with, is getting rid of the archaic technologies they’re using and upgrading to more modern technologies.

0:16:13.4 TM: Well, part of that is also a leadership thing too, so you’ve got this mixture of whether you’re teaching yoga, you’re teaching karate, you’re teaching music, you have… You might have multiple instructors for… Maybe you’ve got a couple of old school instructors that have a huge student count and are a big part of your revenue stream, and you like don’t wanna mess with it, so it causes people to be reluctant to… I mean, this is gonna happen. Those two amazing teachers are gonna die one day, and it’ll be 40 years from now, and whether your business is still going or not, some do by the way, we have people that have been in business 60-70 years in our teacher zone community, but the point is, it’s traveling, so the light bulb was created in the car, remember, and Chris, you showed me those pictures once where a year later, the same street was like one horse and buggy and cars, it happened over…

[overlapping conversation]

0:17:09.7 CB: I think it was 1918, if you wanna Google it, I believe it was… And if you… Peter Daemon talks about this, but if you…

0:17:18.3 TM: It took a second, took a little while, social proof, they were expensive, there wasn’t enough yet, there are factories that everything had to come into place, but then it hockey sticked.

0:17:29.0 CB: And one of the biggest thing was horse manure, everybody was so just sick of it, that they all changed over to cars as quick as they could because of that, they wanted to…

0:17:37.0 TM: They don’t have to scoop it anymore.

0:17:38.3 CB: Right. It was stinky and flies, they wanted it out of the street.

0:17:42.1 TM: Right.

0:17:42.4 CB: So it was a big motivation. So with this stuff, a big motivation should be wanting to get the parents involved, wanting… So the upper level of management, staff and admins can know actually what a teacher’s assigning and what students were actually accessing, giving students more multimedia content that actually engages them further and makes them wanna stay longer.

0:18:01.5 TM: Access to notes in an area that everyone has… Admins and teachers can now, if a teacher, God forbid, he goes in the hospital for an appendectomy or something and is out, there’s notes, there is recent practices, it’s not written down, it’s not stuck on their laptop somewhere, it’s in the Cloud, so the administrators aren’t lost for a week with 40 students.

0:18:29.0 CB: Yeah, you could tell when someone doesn’t have a cloud-based system, we’ve all experienced it, similar to… Doctor’s offices have gotten much, much, much better because of privacy and stuff, but having to keep re-filling stuff out is just silly, everybody has your info already. Or, you know when you make that call to a customer service and they’re doing that fake typing…

[vocalization]

0:18:53.7 CB: And then you’re like, “Come on, you’re not really typing that much, seriously, what are you doing?”

[laughter]

0:18:58.5 CB: And then they don’t have the notes from the last call, and you’re like, “You guys are in the same system, are you not cloud-based? How is it that you… “

0:19:04.9 TM: Yeah. One time… Chris, I told them one time, I’m like… The previous call before they transferred me, Chase Bank probably, and I said, “Cool, can you put this in the notes?” “Sure.” “Alright, I want it to say this.” And then I got to the next guy, I’m like, “Hey, can you do me a favor and pull up the notes?” “Oh, sir, I don’t have those notes.” And I’m like, “Wait, am I still talking to Chase? I just told her to put… “

[overlapping conversation]

0:19:31.6 CB: “Are you passing stickies?” Yeah. “Are you passing sticky notes? Is that how we’re getting… ” [chuckle]

0:19:39.4 TM: Anyway, you guys get the drift, you guys get the picture.

0:19:43.3 CB: Get out of pen and paper as much as possible. Now, I still use pen and paper for simple mindmap, note-taking type stuff, and then I transfer it to cloud-based. For instance, I actually did that the other day, I did a new org chart… Which is another episode we can do. I did an org chart for us the other day, Tyler, and I did it on a piece of paper first, and then I went to the cloud…

0:20:05.4 TM: My brain for that type of stuff, it works great, but I have started to use my notes more. Or for intake of anything, like if I need to write down something and let’s say you got off a call and you wanted to get me to paraphrase something, I’m now where normally I’d get my notebook, I’m now like, “Okay, I can type almost as fast. I just need… “

[overlapping conversation]

0:20:25.7 CB: And you can share with everybody. Yeah, you can copy and paste all of it.

0:20:27.6 TM: Yeah. And so now I pop a drive up, it takes no time, it’s just something I used to not do, my note… Look, look, Chris, it’s still here. I always have one. You never know, but I don’t need to use it most of the time.

0:20:42.9 CB: So is mine. [laughter] But you’re right. I mainly do it for ease and speed, but the reality is, is that we’re running a business, and so in a business as much as you cannot be on paper, we would highly advise that because it’s going to really help you.

0:20:54.6 TM: Right, especially if it’s things you’re repeating anyway, if you can systematize anything at all and take steps away and then make it normal, then it’s easy. No big deal. What’s number eight? Or excuse me.

[overlapping conversation]

0:21:05.9 CB: That’s the rule of thumb… Yeah, that’s the rule of thumb for systems, anything that you repeat, put it into a system. So, yeah, number six…

0:21:14.9 TM: We’re almost there, guys.

0:21:16.1 CB: Oh, I got it. I wish I had prioritized the need for engagement, safety, communication, it’s that need for consistency. And I was thinking about this…

0:21:26.9 TM: Transparency.

0:21:29.0 CB: Transparency. Tyler, I was thinking about this. And if you guys think about what makes great businesses, it’s trust. And if you want your customers to trust you more, then I highly advise you have a consistent communication strategy, like we talked about, our no-show alert. Right, the Amber Alert where if a student no-shows it goes to the family, stuff like that. Getting consistent reminders for a class, or a lesson.

0:21:57.9 TM: Right.

0:22:00.4 CB: Just your consistency in communication rather than the modern world that’s like, “We communicate… ” You and I got that going on with different teams, but we’ve got Slacks going on and we’ve got Basecamps going on, and [chuckle] we’ve got WhatsApps going on, you’ve got emails going on, and then you got DMs in social media going on, and people are all over the place by not having a centralized communication system, you’re doing your customers and staff a disservice because everybody feels frenetic. So, number six is really focus on getting a centralized communication, focus on engagement, and that, because it all does matter. And then lastly, I think you may have put the word in there ’cause it’s so important to us, but Tyler especially, safety’s been a big one for you.

0:22:50.8 TM: Yeah. Safety. You do not want your teachers texting privately to minors ever. If your school works with minors at all, doesn’t mean you’ve got bad teachers. Please do not be insulted. We were surprised a long time ago, he was a great guy, and something happened off-site, he got arrested.

0:23:14.4 CB: And we have a podcast episode the worst day.

0:23:15.6 TM: Luckily everybody survived and is okay. Yeah, there’s a podcast on security, so you can go back and find that one. Point being is if you set the standards of communication that everyone gets used to, maybe even enjoys, such as group chats and camaraderie and all of that, so there’s a lot of good. Or a snow day, boom, “Oh my gosh, we just got the snow alert, the schools are cancelled, I need a quick way to have all 400 students to know at once we will not be here, ’cause the snowplows are gonna snow us in, and blah, blah, blah.” You hit a button, it’s done, everybody gets it, you can still send an email out from your email service if you want as well, just to double-check, but that’s there. But being able to send a note safely to an adolescent and have the parents know that you care about that, there’s a precedent being set, because here’s the alternative, you don’t have a system about it, you did not care about it. Direct messages on Instagram from teachers to a student is sort of okay or something. Now, if they’re renting an office, I’ll quasi say, “I guess you couldn’t really do anything, they’re renting an office, but they’re still doing it on your property.”

0:24:24.8 CB: And you can still dictate how you want them to operate. Absolutely.

0:24:29.7 TM: How much do you want your families and your staff to know that you care? 

0:24:35.5 CB: That’s really what it comes down to…

0:24:35.9 TM: That’s a question for yourself.

0:24:37.4 CB: And I’m gonna say something that I don’t think, a lot of small businesses owners don’t think about, but because I’ve owned larger businesses in the past, I have been in lawsuits, luckily, they were always instigated by my team, not the other way around. But I have been in three lawsuits, and every time the judges were so on our side, because we just had such incredible internal cloud-based communication, and we could literally show all of our communication, all of it. In fact, in one circumstance, the lawsuit was against a company in North Carolina, they were claiming jurisdiction ’cause we’re in California, and the judge actually laughed and he wrote this hilarious thing saying, “Well, I saw the,” whatever it was, “127 emails that you sent them, clearly you didn’t care about jurisdiction then.” [laughter]

0:25:34.8 TM: Right, right. Right. Ding dong.

0:25:39.9 CB: So, communication will help you in more ways than we can articulate in this short podcast. Let’s get to number seven, Tyler, the big seven. What is it? 

0:25:52.0 TM: I wish we had worked to create a tribe and community from the start. So, I’m gonna just be honest, we threw that in there ’cause it’s freaking important. When Chris and I, when our school… The inception of our school was based on tribe, [laughter] that’s just the way Los Rios started, but we’ve talked to so many people around the world that it was like a breath of fresh air when we described how we just started with this tribe and group and creating things together, and a student body creating stuff instead of linearly one student just designing their linear lesson on their own and that’s it, and not meeting the other kids, etcetera, etcetera.

So, this is really important, we just didn’t wanna not bring it up. We were lucky enough, I’m gonna just say it, to have started a tribe from student number one, because I’m just built that way. And so is Chris. So I had to say it, Chris, we said… I wish we had worked but in a tribe community from the start.

[overlapping conversation]

0:27:01.7 CB: How did that… Okay.

0:27:02.9 TM: We did. [chuckle]

0:27:03.9 CB: Right. But the reason we did is because humans value connection, and we are tribal creatures by nature, we feel more safe, we feel more connected, we don’t want to give up something that we feel a connection to, and…

0:27:21.8 TM: We want so much more of it. We miss them. We are looking forward, the light of a… Part of the light of our week is seeing… Not only just working on music with Chris, or one of his teachers, but it’s to see those other people as well that are part of our lives, and then it grows and you get more excited in a different way, the next month, the next month. I remember by the third year of Los Rios, when I… Third year, I think, three and a half, four years, when there was a pool party for one of the groups, and I wasn’t invited. One of our ensembles…

[overlapping conversation]

0:28:00.6 CB: You were hurt… Yeah. You were hurt ’cause it was connecting to the tribe.

0:28:02.5 TM: I was like, “Dude… ” I was like… I do those. They became their own tribe, they didn’t even need me anymore, they had their group leader, they had been playing together for a couple of years, mom’s like, “You should have your kid… ” Whatever, it’s not rocket science.

0:28:17.7 CB: It was actually… Yeah. It was a sign of maturity in the business. And so, I would almost throw this one in reverse too, either maybe you were too business-minded when you started, but I think for a lot of us in a lesson business, probably your kindred spirits in that you started with the tribe initially. However, if we reverse this, instead of the other six items where we’re saying, “I wish I would have,” with this one we can almost say, “I need to maintain awareness of this because it is one of the most behavioral driving aspects of what we do, the more community you create, the more culture, the more of a tribe,” the longer people will stay, engagement increases, the more friends they’re gonna refer, the deeper they’re going to learn, and then of course, the healthier the business is, which then means your staff stays longer, which means they get pay raises, which means you’re more profitable and you can enjoy a greater lifestyle. So number seven really speaks to the fact of creating a cohesion in your community, even if you started that way, like Tyler said, maybe you’re not there anymore, and you’re like, “Wow, I’ve kind of drifted, I’m just basically running a business now.” Get back to that too, the business stuff should be under the hood and hidden, the tribe stuff should be screamed to the world, lock arms…

[overlapping conversation]

0:29:36.6 TM: And remember, guys, our ebook teacherzone.com/chaos, there’s a whole episode that we get into this ’cause it’s chaos to culture, the five steps on what you go through to get there, so go have fun, and we talk about that and you’ll hear us, we’re gonna talk about culture in a business, probably a lot. So every now and then you’ll hear a different rehash of it, because someone’s done something cool or new that has either impressed us, and maybe we’ll have some guests on soon and talk about their culture and how they grew it. But if you’re sitting there wondering, “What in the world would… I thought I had a culture. Or can I make mine better?” You know what, listen to the podcasts, reach out, join our Teacher Zone group on Facebook, it’s called The Teacher Zone, ask questions, find out, reach out. Don’t just be an island on your own if you think that there’s more, because people have done it, probably, and if you have questions, write in to us. What is it? Hello@teacherzone.com? It goes to Chris and I.

0:30:43.4 TM: Seriously, the culture side, if you’re sitting there thinking there’s more, there probably is. And if you’re reluctant or there’s creative writers block on how to get that next thing, that group environment, you can start as basic as getting an electronic drum kit in the morning, in the corner, if you’re a guitar school only, this is just an example, I’ve seen it done. And you get an electronic drum kit, put it in there, invite the kids over in groups and have pizza, and you sit on the drums and they try out their guitar parts, and they all take turns, like they’re at the skate park, dropping into a pool. They’re all waiting in line. You can’t all skate in a pool at once, right? Well, three guitar players can play at once, all of a sudden the parents are like, “Brilliant, Bobby just met Johnny.” It is so easy, it’s not funny, and it’s based around… That particular one is based around the most powerful language on Earth, which is music, but if there’s jujitsu options, there’s yoga options. I know yoga groups, Chris, that they have barbecues, and…

[overlapping conversation]

0:31:43.0 CB: Yeah, pizza night…

[overlapping conversation]

0:31:43.9 TM: [0:31:43.9] ____ and it’s not even yoga.

0:31:46.9 CB: Yeah, we’ve done those too, we all probably have at some point, but keeping that going, like the movie nights, the pizza nights, the parents night-outs. I know a lot of gymnastics do parents night-outs. So like that, it’s a great thing to do ’cause you’re keeping your… You’re making a cohesion…

0:32:00.5 TM: Oh, the parents night-out where, you drop them off at the facility, and they get to play and do great stuff for 90 minutes or two hours, and mom and dad gets to go eat, it’s a win-win, and it usually only costs you maybe two employees worth of work, and you’ve added so much value. And it didn’t cost you much, and…

0:32:23.9 CB: And the kids would much rather be at your facility than they would be at home with some old grandma babysitter they don’t like. So… [laughter]

0:32:32.6 TM: Yeah. “Get them off my [0:32:34.9] ____”

0:32:37.1 CB: Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah, that’s probably even the worst thing, at their home…

0:32:40.9 TM: That’s a whole different topic we can talk about.

0:32:42.8 CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh.

0:32:44.9 TM: And we get some of their digital footprint per week to be with your lesson business content. That we should do a whole topic on that, like can we take them… Can we just get 20 minutes a night to be digitally involved with their lessons and then your lesson business, when they’re not with you, since that’s all they’re [0:33:05.4] ____ to get your device.

0:33:05.6 CB: Great future topic. Great future topic, because attention is everything, and for the learning businesses that we’re all in, if you want people to learn that skill, talent, trade, knowledge, you have to get their attention, and so, great topic. Alright. Well, there’s the seven things. Thank you so much, Mr. Tyler…

0:33:24.2 TM: Yeah, thank you, Chris.

0:33:24.3 CB: And thank you all for listening.

0:33:26.5 TM: So there were your seven items. We will see you next episode. Remember teacherzone.com/chaos is our free ebook, jump in and catch up on those episodes in the podcast as well, and reach out to us. If you want a demo of what we’re talking about, the software is just a conduit to the community. So again, thanks for joining us on the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. Sayonara.

If you are a new business or have been around for years, you’ll enjoy this discussion on the things we’ve learned, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes we did along the way.

Watch it Here

Listen Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:06.0 Tyler Marolf: Welcome to the teacher zone with Chris and Tyler. You’re in for another great podcast right now, and… Chris, how are you, sir? What’s our topic today?

0:00:15.2 Chris Bates: I’m excellent. So great to be with you today, Mr. Tyler, and I love our topic today. All of us. We all love lists. Right. So Tyler and I came up with the seven things I wish I knew before we started our lesson business, and let’s face it, it might be 40 things, but these are the seven that were like top of mind, one of the first things that… these are things that Tyler and I dealt with in our own lesson business, that’s now going on what? Tyler, 11 years.

0:00:48.9 Tyler Marolf: We start year 12, or are we starting in year 11? I think we started your 12… I can’t remember…

0:00:56.4 Chris Bates: We just had 11th year. Yeah, yeah, and so what’s great is that we’ve also obviously connected with so many of you globally over the years, and so I think these are things that resonate with all of us in the lesson business… Right, but please know that. No, it is not definitive. So if you got other ideas, ping us on the private Facebook group or any way that you wanna reach out to us, you can just feel free to email this to… You can just email hello at teacherzone.com. It goes to both of us. So, alright,Tyler.. Well, let’s get into it. So the seven things I wish I knew before we started our lesson business…

1) I wish I had automated every payment that ever came in in my lesson business the very first day

0:01:35.0 Tyler Marolf: Well, let’s start with number one. I wish I had automated every payment that ever came in in my lesson business the very first day, and I don’t know about you guys, but in the beginning, I don’t know how long it took me to realize that I was constantly… Four to five business days behind on multiple people’s tuitions, and then I was running to the bank with checks or whatever, and this was a while back, and I know a lot of people have come a long way, but the bottom line is, I don’t care if you’re using Venmo.  If you’re having to track them down and get them to do something without being automated, that’s what we’re here to talk about on number one, which is, I wish every payment I ever accepted in my lesson business was automated. What do you think, Chris?

0:02:25.2 Chris Bates: Yeah, for those of you that have younger businesses that still aren’t automated, I think a lot of us do it because I think we’re excited to just be getting paid at all… 

0:02:41.3 Tyler Marolf: Absolutely, 100 Percent. I would walk in and show Melissa our stack of checks because it was becoming a business, and I’m excited, I’m gonna go put it in, and I’m like, Oh my gosh…

0:02:57.8 Chris Bates: ’cause you’re getting gratification from the validation that comes in the payments, so when you’re first starting a business, you’re… Especially in the loss of business, because all of us are so proud of what we teach, and so you’re helping change lives, you’re helping mentor and teach, and you’re so proud of it, and here you are getting paid to do what you love and affect lives, and so the delay in it at first doesn’t feel too scary, especially when it’s just you and a couple of others, but for those of you that are now mature businesses and have myriad of instructors and are really crushing it with hundreds of families is enough… This is that one thing that we all wish we would have changed at the beginning, but if you haven’t changed yet, once you get past, it’s literally a 30-day pain point and then you’ll never have to stress again.  I think now how everything’s automated. Basically, we get most of our tuition, so folks do it differently all over the world. Some do it per lesson, some do the monthly recurring, some do it on the first, like we do, we take all our tuitions on the first, so it allows us to make payroll and all that good stuff.

0:04:07.4 Chris Bates: We also, though have a lot of friends around the world that do flat tuitions on the 25th of the… And that’s a really interesting thing because now you can actually, pre-collect for the few declines you have. You can get that money and you’re literally starting the first with next month’s tuitions already in order. Right, so that might be something for even we’ve discussed changing our method to the 25th 

0:04:57.8 Tyler Marolf: and we can’t forget, Chris, the retention aspect of automated payments, so you have a family, Billy decides, Mom, I just… I don’t feel like it. I don’t wanna go today. Well, mom’s payment isn’t already in your bank, so she’s like, You know what, I’m done with your crap. So anyway, bottom line is, now mom has the power, that young man might have just had a rough day and been fine once he got there, and if mom’s money was already collected because of your cancellation policy or whatever, and it was already automated in, they’re gonna finish out the month, and who knows what will happen. They came there to get something amazing to happen, and one simple life circumstances of laziness, reluctance and regret, and it’s over. So anyways, I know that’s out of very dramatic, but really, that’s human nature, sometimes an automation prevents that as well, so everyone is proactive, it’s not reactive, everything is… And guess what, Chris? I know you agree with me, ’cause you bring this up a lot…

0:05:56.2 Chris Bates: People are used to it. Yeah, you have… I’m trying to think if we have any… We do one of those, we support a child overseas kind of things… I know we do checks for that, everything else.

0:06:15.7 Tyler Marolf: Everyone is used to it now, so lesson businesses, whether you’re doing a group yoga classes, karate jujitsu or whatever, automation is key, because people… Human nature is flighty and it takes work and change to give

0:06:32.1 Chris Bates: So listen, if you’re in the lesson business, stop invoicing, the only time that invoicing should be a thing is if you are in the type of Enterprise Services where you’re doing… You’re invoicing 25 grand, if you’re invoicing a massive amount from a large organization, then you need time for their accounting department to cut the check. Right, we get… Invoicing is powerful for that type of model, for those of us that are doing this, like 30 bucks a class or whatever you’re doing, come on, automation is the way it’s easier on your customers and you’re not reminding them every month where they should quit, so that’s number

0:07:19.1 Tyler Marolf: One, guys, I think that was a good kick off, Chris. So number two, What’s number two

2) I wish I knew how hard it was to keep track and reconcile lessons

0:07:24.2 Chris Bates: Two… I wish I knew how hard it was to keep track and reconcile lessons… The dreaded make-ups. 

0:07:37.0 Tyler Marolf: You could think your customers like them because they’re running after you, asking for them all the time, you need to reflect on that thought again, they hate them, all they are is an instance of remembering that something happened… That they didn’t get what they were supposed to get. Those expectations in a lot of businesses, that’s just the way the businesses are designed, and everybody’s supposed to expect that, and you know what? It’s redundant.That’s all. Everyone’s busy. The customer is super busy, if you’re a school that’s the in that’s the challenge of juggling your rosters.  Where are you gonna put them?

0:08:19.5 Chris Bates: It’s a scheduling pretzel, and so a lot of you have actually done different things for this, right, so some of you actually give money back rather than give them a makeup, which… That’s one way to do it. Some of you have a really great group offerings as a way to give them the class or lesson that they paid for, what we often suggest is being a little bit more bold and saying that, Hey, you’re paying for that moment and we’re gonna give you… Instead we’ll give you a digital lesson that you can access after the moment, right, either way, regardless of how you do it, whether you’re accrediting them in a package type situation, or you’re giving them an automated learning solution, you need a system. And by not having a system, we were pulling our hair out, and…

0:09:07.8 Tyler Marolf: So I… Now, if you’re listening and you’ve got a very group-orientated business such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu with four or five different levels, little kids and all that, even you guys do one-on-one or one-on two or one on three private lessons, sometimes I know you do that’s how you can make a little extra bread and butter, and those are your kind of extraordinary students that are like, they’re hungry, they wanna learn this thing more, and they’re getting their butts kicked, and when they’re rolling in you genii or something. Those are the ones too, you guys deal with this as well, people are like, Hey, I’m not feeling too great, and you block the time, you gave them that hour of your time, and then you’re supposed to give them one more hour of your time later because, Hey, it didn’t work for them. And so I don’t believe there’s value in that, in fact, they should be paying me because they missed… I don’t want people to take that too serious, but it is true. Those two hours for the price of one. That’s not fair to your mentor.

0:10:23.6 Chris Bates: Right, and it’s not fair to you… Basically, if you think about how over-scheduled everyone is, like you said initially, no one’s happy about it.

0:10:34.3 Tyler Marolf: So if you are gonna do it, make it easy.

0:10:38.1 Chris Bates: Have systems in place. We’ve built a system where we actually have it where customers can literally just handle their own make-ups and reschedule them into open times that you dictate, make it simple, keep track of it, have systems for it. So however you do it, just know that we understand that’s a large pain point for a lot of you, and if we were all gonna start over, we would either not do it, which we’re not seeing you have to… There’s other ways to add value. More B, have an automated system for it, so it’s not this pretzel-ing or that you have to face, did tell her, you know the Tasmanian Devil, This will date me, but the cartoon… Don’t remember that.

0:11:16.6 Tyler Marolf: No, that’s not good to… No, come on, that Tasman sounds like this. Now, Noah’s make-ups, by the way, guys, reconciling the word reconcile in this topic, keep track and reconcile make-up lessons. Let’s back up, let’s not talk about the philosophy of make-ups for a second, just having a way to know what your parents are thinking if you are not tracking it in a very easy and simple way, even if you are gonna give them back… You’re not gonna sleep at night if it’s gonna feel like you’re zippers down or something’s undone, and if it’s sticky notes or a chalk board or whatever that you’re trying to keep these… All these like, Okay, we have a teacher at our lesson business that’s leaving for three weeks to build something for this film job in Germany, like it’s insane opportunity. He’s our busiest teacher. It’s like you guys out there having 50 students, 50 students times three weeks, that all of a sudden we need something that doesn’t make us cry and go to the pillow because that’s just that one teacher leaving is an instance that that’s gonna make us… Our business admin, either not like her job and leave or something, If enough stuff piles up, you guys, your operations team, not just you, because if you read our “Chaos to Culture”, you shouldn’t be doing that stuff anyways, but let’s say your person is…We’ve seen it before, people don’t wanna disappoint you, but your system suck and they leave.

0:13:07.2 Chris Bates: So that’s great to segue into the next one, but to finish this off, I love that example that you just gave, so what we’re going to do as an example with that particular instructor as we bank the lessons in our system, and then the students just log into the apps and can reschedule and to our dictated open times, it super simple. Just bottom line is, if we were gonna all revisit this, we would simplify it and we would have a system, so I make sure to make sure you do that with it.

0:13:36.9 Tyler Marolf: Chris, thank you for bringing that down a notch, ’cause I got excited there for a second and let me

3) I wish I had known how critical keeping and tracking attendance really was back then

0:13:49.0 Tyler Marolf: Number three, What super retailer number three, we might have to make this episode a two-parter, which is not a big deal, we’ve got a little bit of time left, so if we do cut off before the final three things we can always make the next episode part two, but I’m having fun with this one, number three, I wish I had known how critical keeping and tracking attendance really was back then.

0:14:32.2 Chris Bates: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, a lot of folks that we talk to around the world, I would say nowadays, it’s gotten more common, didn’t used to be… I’d say nowadays, with all of those that we talk to you day in India, probably about… I think it’s about half probably taller that are really good about that, and I can tell you guys that it’s one of the most irresponsible things you can possibly do as a lesson business owner, if you’re teaching something and you’re not verifying whether or not you’ve got butts in the seat or eyeballs on the lesson or however you wanna define it, if you’re not somehow dictating whether or not that class was taught… You’re responsible. 

0:15:21.2 Tyler Marolf: You’re a technician and owner that this is going to apply to you eventually, do you wanna grow… Well, at some point, you may be the one, well, hey, that doesn’t apply to me, I’m teaching the class, I know what it’s happening. In five years, you might not be teaching the class, you might be over yoga at that point, I know it’s a lifetime thing, but maybe you wanna just take a class or go to a different studio and have your people… This is the big picture. So for you to Mersey right now, this is the perfect time to build a system around it, because it is just you, it’s test time, you could do it.

0:16:02.9 Chris Bates: And a lot of you are… You don’t wanna bother the teacher, so let me just explain how easy it is to actually track attendance.  There’s systems like ours where the students can actually just check themselves in when they arrive, and then the teachers can simply look and say, Okay, there’s only… some names here, Johnston didn’t check in or you hear. So you can to take a role on that and also have the students help with checking themselves and in the apps. Also, we’ve found, Tyler, tell them what we found with regard to teachers cancellation versus their students cancellation. 

0:16:40.9 Tyler Marolf: Inside TeacherZone.com, there is a reporting, a whole bunch of fun reports to drill down with, but when you go into the retention report or the attendance report and search it by either a whole roster or… Let’s figure out what’s going on. Why is this parent upset that this gal is not performing in the same amount of productions as her friend who started at the same time, why is it so… Okay, cool, you know what?

Let’s find out, we pull it up, it says exactly in teachers own how many lessons she’s missed, but here’s what Chris is talking about, so in that case, you can say, Hey, she’s only made 47% of her lessons, maybe we can help you guys find a better private lesson time, so that she can get more out of our program, so that’s a great tool. That’s an obvious tool. It will even tell you when she’s under 70% attendance and give you a red flag, like it does all these wonderful things, but here’s the thing we’ve noticed, a teacher that has a lot of teacher cancels, their student almost has a mirror amount of student cancels because they’re actually behaving like each other because that student is looking up to them, so this isn’t just a student retention report, this is a teacher’s behavior report as well in regards to how often…

0:18:02.8 Tyler Marolf: Cause guys, bottom line, all you are remembering is that so and so missed… remember so and so is worked for you for two years, well, wouldn’t it be great to look at the whole two years or one year, you will see exactly. It doesn’t lie, the metrics are there, and that tool, it’s not a micro-managing tool, it’s… My business needs to be healthy tool… That’s all it is, it’s a coaching tool to edit up and go in and hit Chris on the head withthat… That’s not what you do, that’s not what this is for. We still want people to enjoy teaching their arts and all that, this is so that the big mission can still be clear and life-changing, that’s what this is about

0:18:46.4 Chris Bates: When your instructors to your point Tyler, care…what we found is as soon as we brought it to their attention… So we saw with our own instructors, we only had about three of the 13 instructors that were basically training their students this way, now we have seen this same thing repeat itself literally across the globe, and every learning business, it’s crazy how much the student and teacher cancellation numbers match, like Tyler said, your instructors are actually mentoring your students on how to behave, and so their actions actually embed in the student’s own behavior. Yeah, once we brought it to the attention of our personal instructors, they changed…

0:19:28.6 Tyler Marolf: Well, we brought it out, it was a memo in base camp, I think, or something like that, where we just kind of very all encompassing, Hey, this is what we found. Isn’t that weird? And we didn’t name any names, and then we didn’t even check for another quarter, so I can say safely within 90 days, we did the report again and it was gone, it was like… We were like at 85% plus.

0:19:55.2 Chris Bates: A couple of other really cool benefits of tracking attendance, number one, I can go pull up, for instance, my own kids, ’cause we’ve been tracking attendance at our organization for some years, I can actually pull up one of my oldest is getting ready to graduate, and Tyler and I… It’s gonna be so fun Tyler to pull that report and see how many lessons and hours he’s had at our program as a parent, to be able to give that summary of like, Wow, that’s a lot of learning, that’s a lot of moments. That is so cool. And so what’s so neat about having that data… As you could do things with the data.

The other thing is our daily view, a lot of our customers will actually watch attendance throughout the day as it’s coming in for classes and things, and it really lets them know, number one, for security purpose as well, who’s in the building, and then lastly, we have sort of our no-show Amber Alert, if you will, that you can turn on and the… Tell about that one, we’ll move to item number four. So when you have an organization where you have souls coming in, and some of them are young people, not everybody that’s listening right now has young people, some are all adults.

0:21:13.8 Tyler Marolf: So this more applies for that, if in fact there is a no show and that young person didn’t show up at all or an adult, ’cause you don’t take attendance the same way, but the point being is we have a job, especially when there’s young people in the room, if we’re not on paper mandate reporters looking out for these people. Like our organization’s, an accredited supplemental learning school for what we do. So there’s things that go along. Every teacher automatically becomes and is trained that if they see something, they may have to report something, well, a lot of lesson businesses don’t even wanna go there or think about that, they’ll send an email out and the lesson coordinator will say, Hey, we missed you today, and that’s about it. And then who knows what really happened? Well, that’s not great for retention, people are disappearing on you, that’s not good. So what we’ve done at teacherszone, if you hit no show, it is an Amber alert, it fires off right away and texts and emails the parents and the administrators instantly as soon as the teacher hits no show.

0:22:21.6 Chris Bates: So if Johnny got a new car and a new girlfriend and went to the beach instead of his guitar lesson, everyone knows right away. And you are covered. And so as a child, if you think about it, what if something bad is about to happen.

0:22:35.4 Tyler Marolf: You’ve now instantly almost automatically alerted everybody and you’re good, and if you wanna make sure it went out, go into the communication log and teachers home everything that ever gets sent out via email or SMS ever, is in the communication log and you can go see, Nope, nope, I went there. Yep, this practice is assigned… Yep, and there’s the no show alert. It’s all there. So from a legal perspective, I am not an attorney, I

0:23:03.7 Chris Bates: From a legal perspective. You are not negligent. And that to me is very important to run a tight ship, that people can have huge trust points with what’s happening, building a great culture is all about optics, and I’ll tell you so many of our family, especially on Saturdays when we have large group classes, I can’t tell you how many parents… Because it’s each roll marks and I know show… ’cause they didn’t let us know. And I can’t tell you how many parents immediately reach back look like, oh, and they immediately reach back, and so it’s sort of a culture building tool as well, and let them know you care and you’re just like… And I think we customized our to be like, Hey, is everything okay?

0:23:48.2 Tyler Marolf: Are you alright? So like, No, don’t know, everything’s fine. It’s really funny when people are using it as a tool to find their virtual students, so our software allows kids to hit a little green camera and appear in the teacher’s meeting room with a touch of a button, and they don’t have to get a mom’s email find link or anything. So this pandemic stuff has caused families to be at home and they’ll go do things, a lot of families took liberties and like, Well, school’s done. It’s noon. Where do you want? Let’s go… You know, they go to go to the park… Well, that’s when these lessons were starting to be missed… Oh, we totally forgot. It was today. Well, the teacher is like two minutes in, they were just hitting no show instead of the chat, and it was sending that your child no show text alert. We would in a couple of minutes, guess what? No, reschedulingt. It was their fault. They don’t have to try to have the, you know what to ask you for a re-schedule even though it was their fault, like Come on, this is those friction points we’re trying to get rid of for you guys.

0:24:54.8 Tyler Marolf: So that’s just another way to look at it as well, Chris. Yeah.

0:24:58.0 Chris Bates: The bottom line on this item is tracking attendance is paramount, if you’re not, then don’t let it go pass this podcast episode, start tomorrow. So, Tyler, I think I agree with you. I think the next four are media enough that we should go ahead and say To be continued to the next episode… Hold on.

0:25:20.7 Tyler Marolf: We need to vote on

0:25:21.3 Chris Bates: You know, my concern is the next one is gonna be pretty meaty.  Interesting to a lot of folks, so I think… We save that for the next episode. We’ll start with it. Well, now I can’t say, I don’t think that because you just said that, and

0:25:56.9 Tyler Marolf: Then it was not really like, there’s conflict. Well, ahead. And tune in to the next episode. And we’ll just start there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t even tell you, you’ll have to find out, maybe we’re gonna skip something completely irrelevant like Minecraft or someone… For those of you that already done with the white paper, you already know what we’re talking about, but if you’re getting this podcast for some weird reason in your inbox from a friend or whatever, please go to teacher one dot com, chaos and get our free e-book and it’s the five stages of growth, how you grow through them, from chaos to culture, so go grab that if you don’t know what’s going on and you’ll get in tune with us really quick, so Chris, I guess we will… So let’s go for next week and we’ll see what cartoon characters arrive and all sorts of stuff, and we will finish our seven things I wish I knew before we started our lesson business, so everybody out there and teachers own land. Thank you for tuning in, Chris, thanks for being here. And we will see you in the next episode.

This episode covers some of the ways we can define and improve “Culture” in our learning and lesson businesses.

This is the point where kids and adults alike are gonna remember moments for the rest of their lives.

It will be those moments that caused them to raise their kids a certain way, look for creative outlets for their kids down the road, caused them to come to your 80th birthday party barbecue. Because you made that big of an impact.

Are you ready for that? Then let’s go!

Watch it Here

Listen Here

Or Scan the Show Notes Below

0:00:10.2 Tyler: Welcome to another episode of The TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler. I’m your co-host, Tyler Marolf, and I’m here with Chris Bates.  How are you, sir? 

0:00:36.4 Chris: Well, Tyler, we made it. This is episode five. And so, for those of you that I have listened this is where we’ve been sort of building up, and some of you brought it to our attention that some of the earlier items are a part of the journey to keep revisiting and just to reiterate, we get it all right, five of these elements are a part of running a business, we like the ascension model, simply because we wanted today’s episode about culture to resonate as the most important for all of us.

Tyler:  this is the point where kids and adults alike are gonna remember moments and we’re gonna get into that right, Chris?  for the rest of their lives, and it will be those moments that caused them to raise their kids a certain way, look for creative outlets for their kids down the road, caused them to come to your 80th birthday party… Barbecue. Because you made that big of an impact. That’s this section, or this is the Edith birthday barbeque moment. I love… This Is exactly it. And Drew, I’ll be at your baby, Drew Story is one of my favorite guys from when I was younger and a mentor, and I’ll be at his 90th birthday party is probably gonna make me learn how to do a speed canoer, whatever that is. So yeah. Well, Chris, what if everybody’s getting excited right now, but they haven’t heard the other episodes. So how do they get it? Yeah, so everyone right now who just tuned in and have… No, I do. You who we are. That’s okay. You’re about to know, but first, go to Teachers on dot com chaos, Download Our Free E-book, and it’s called the five stages as a business owner. You must grow through. Number one, are you in chaos or not… Number two, getting organized and getting out of that chaos, number three, engaging your students kind of remembering, why did I wanna do this in the first place? Oh, yeah. Let’s make an impact, right?

0:02:36.8 Tyler: Number four, this is Big Four and Five go together for last episode is fueling growth, and now we’re on to building culture, and it says lives are being changed, communities, the community is being built, and people can’t wait to be a part of the transformation that others are already being a part of inside, whatever it is, you built. So, Chris, where are we gonna start? Where do you wanna start with this? 

Chris: Well, you really bring up a good point with the idea at that 80 90th… Well, with the modern technology. That’s called 150th birthday maybe. Yeah, right. ’cause you know what you made me think of is one of our friends, fathers down in the South, when he passed away, he was so impactful that they actually threw a parade and at the Razorbacks… ’cause it was an Arkansas where he was a big fan. They actually had a tribute during the game, so they had a parade and attributed the college, all this stuff for this guy, and Lee, he would have probably turned over in his grave if he knew everybody even did that form. In fact, when he was in the hospital, the family immediately started calling and handing out to anyone that wanted tickets because they knew that he would be so upset since the family wasn’t at the game, that someone wasn’t using their seats over…While he’s dying, he’s like, make sure those are reviews, although the family knew him so well… Right. He didn’t request that, they’re like, Dad would freak out if he knew that those tickets weren’t getting used, let’s make some calls and do a solid… And so the point is, is do you wanna be the person, a type of person that creates that much love and energy that people just have these memories and are so grateful for all that you’ve done that is… 

Tyler: And it doesn’t matter if you’re more of an introvert, silent altruistic ninja, and true altruism is doing things for people and expecting zero in return. Okay, that’s what true altruism. So if you’re quiet giver or you’re a connector and a people person, and you’re just elevating around the country trying to help people, everything in between. It doesn’t matter, we all wanna hopefully be remembered as a positive light in people’s eyes, and if you don’t… I stop listening right now because this is totally the wrong podcast for you, but I really don’t think this is for everybody, so… Yeah, I’m excited.

0:05:33.2 Chris: If you’re in any type of learning business, right, so if you’re teaching any kind of topic, skill, talent, you’re passionate about what it is you do, and just like you talking about… Drew your seventh grade science teacher. Social Studies. Yes, just like you’re talking about Drew, it doesn’t matter what you’re imparting as far as skill, knowledge, talent, as an instructor is someone that’s… Your job is to literally inspire someone to action, inspire someone to learn, inspire someone to actually practice and do whatever it is you’re teaching to get better in life, so we know that you rise by default, and 

Tyler: I 100% agree. Or we inspire someone at the very beginning to find out if this is the path they even wanna be on, so we’re an open-minded, open-hearted mentor, waiting to see who will be received into what we teach and how we help people become better at something, because news flash, someone helped us. Yeah. Does everybody want it? Sometimes, no. So it’s also our job to help them discern, hey, man, like at our lesson business, literally, we were just talking about this, the only real rule is that you have to wanna be there, and on top of it, that kind of means, you just need to care… We care 120%. Please care at least 100%.

0:07:19.7 Chris: That’s it. So what you just said is Why we put culture at the top of this mountain, because if you are building a business that doesn’t have a transformational element to it, then at some point it feels kind of hollow, people naturally want to grow because growth is a natural part of the world that we’re in. And so the idea of transforming our community is what service businesses are really all about because we’re serving others to help them live a better life, and in learning a lesson business… It’s a whole another thing. So the first thing that you and I were just kinda talking about different company cultures, ’cause it kinda starts inside out, isn’t it? So culture starts in the building, or if you’re all virtual, it starts with how you actually train, how you connect, how you…

0:08:22.7 Tyler: How do we view the part of our culture, if you’re the owner, or you’re like Chris and I were the owners, we walk around and the inception was with us, and so we didn’t have 12 guys we hired and then said, Hey, what should we build? No. We had an idea and we had some standards and a couple of things we were certain about, like if we did this, it would work, this is not being done, whether it’s extraordinary results instead of linear regular results or whatever it is, then those standards start to grow, so that’s where when you said inside out earlier, Chris, I went all the way there, I think, to the light that we burst into the idea and then

Chris:  it gets masked by the other levels is why we put this at the top, because when you’re in chaos, you don’t really at that point remember, like you said, that spark that got you really excited, you don’t remember that moment that made you wanna do what you do, what we’re trying to do is re-invigorate the fact that that spark is the most important… And if you get the other parts of your business handled, you can impact more lives and you can actually have more fun and live more enjoy because you’re actually doing what you’re meant to do, 

Tyler: and in theory, that spark Chris can be duplicated or emulated by each customer’s journey or each student’s journey, it doesn’t have to be the identical one, but the same thing in theory, why would that same spark… If we created the culture together and we grew it, and then all of a sudden the first 20 kids were having that amazing of a time. Okay, well, where did that come from? Can we can do better to… 

Chris: You know the Cali vigil metaphor came to my mind where you take one candle and then you like someone else is in the light, someone else’s and they like someone else’s it. That’s a great… Before, what we do, you’re imparting that knowledge. And so, a first way to start inside out, if you haven’t done it already, yes, and for a lot of lists, you may not have… Is a mission vision values. So what is mission? Vision Values, you hear all about corporate cultures that do it, you’re all about this stuff, it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s very simple vision. I’m gonna start there is where the heck you’re headed, so your vision statement can be lit by whatever you want, it’s… Where are you trying to take everybody… Mission is what are the strategy and tactics you’re using to get to that vision, so a mission is, Here’s what we’re about, because it’s going to get us eventually to the vision, so the vision is where you’re headed, the Mission is what you’re doing to get there and then what the values are, is the values are basically what are the rules or the ethics that we embody to make sure that we’re keeping those parts pure, total…You brought something up a Google… What was their visit for a long time… Everybody needed to watch the social dilemma, if you haven’t already..

0:11:21.8 Tyler: . Google’s been around a long time. We’ve all used it. And their big thing was, Don’t be evil. That was redone. Don’t be straight did you cannot be more simple than that, and part of the reason was, is the algorithms for tracking what we consumers like, ’cause we’re basically the products when it comes to them, they started to become demigods with information and behavioral, persuasion and control, straight up just instantly, you saw things in front of you and they had that, so they’re like, Guys, this is a big deal, we’ve basically created a monster, so don’t be evil, and I always thought that was really… You know where I heard, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that they crafted that out of sort of wanting to be an anti-Microsoft… Okay, team, they saw Microsoft, it was sort of almost like an elbow at Microsoft, realise they were just less pursued and they’re like… They’re like, We don’t wanna be like that. We want to be more thoughtful and giving, but here’s the funniest part about it, they just changed it to not say

0:12:54.8 Chris: You know where I heard, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that they crafted that out of sort of wanting to be an anti-Microsoft… Okay, team, they saw Microsoft, it was sort of almost like an elbow at Microsoft, realise they were just less pursued and they’re like… They’re like, We don’t wanna be like that. We want to be more thoughtful and giving, but here’s the funniest part about it, they just changed it to not say It there that you’ll kinda see… I did we already fall off that cliff because Alexa shipping me stuff now before I even order it.

0:13:08.8 Chris: So that he be knowing what they changed it to, ’cause he… Toadie, just talking about the cuff here, but… I’m gonna pause it, I’m just gonna say it. I think it’s now… It’s scary in the sense of It… Portions the fall of Google, I’m just gonna say it, because for them to change something that they were so known for speaks volumes, because it doesn’t mean the fall of them monetarily purchase, what you mean is they almost like fell from grace, neither culturally, that speaks volumes that basically says that That is no longer as important to them as something, or

0:13:50.6 Tyler: Why would they have changed it? Why ask? Why did they change that? Why would anybody ever say, You know what, we should change that. Don’t be evil. We should change it to, What do you do? What did you do? To me, you’re on the giroud, the US. What did you do? It’s like, why did they want? Yeah, Joe Rogan, if you wanna find that podcast, had the guy from the social dilemma on there, and they talk all about…

0:14:27.6 Chris: Oh, I gotta listen to that. Yeah, that’s great, great movie. If you haven’t seen social dilemma, the reason it’s great, I’m gonna tell you guys right now, I have a firm belief that if you are in the lesson learning business, you are not only a hero as an entrepreneur, like we’ve talked about, but you are actually on the cutting edge of the next 100 years, because we’ve moved so fast as a society that we’re actually moving towards as you hear about biotech and automation and artificial intelligence taking away everybody’s jobs, so rawat, if that’s true. And that means all of you listening to this anyway, in the learning or less on business, that means that you now hold the keys to the kingdom, because that means that in there humans will have more time to level up their skills, their intelligence, they’re learning. And you’re at the crux of that, that major… And the thing about social dilemmas, it talks about distraction and all that, and so what you’re providing is medicine.

0:15:33.7 Tyler: You may use some of the targeting like and fuel your growth episode, and we’ll use the Taranto, get some students, but gosh, darn it, we’re transforming their lives once they get here… You know what I mean? So I know the deal Facebook happened right at… We all got on Facebook. I grew a business out of Facebook and YouTube, and back then there was no ads, it was all free, everybody saw it, and at the same time, my life was getting better because of it, I have friends from high school getting divorced because of Facebook.

0:16:09.1 Tyler: So there’s an ebb and flow, there’s always a yin and a yang, and we are that positive side to this insane algorithm culture shift that’s going on in our society right now, because people need people… 

Chris: Well, attention is the commodity that everyone’s buying for, and anyone that’s listening to this, Your business, you’re selling, just like we talked about, you’re not selling whatever it is you’re teaching, you’re actually selling engagement, so you’re selling, you’re selling attention. So the more you can keep people’s attention on something positive, on something that’s growth based… Oh my gosh, so that culturally right there, and it’s in today’s topic, culture, you and I are gonna go down a social wormhole, that culture is all based on what do you want people focused on it? And so in other words, if we’re talking inside out, that goes to the cleanliness of your operation, it goes to your brand awareness in your colors, it goes to everything from what sort of events you have, do you sell merchandise? It goes to how that all is present at all, are proud of… Are they proud to where your stuff… Do they wanna wear your stuff, do they want the badge? Do they want the thing…

0:17:27.8 Tyler: Is there that much of an impact where people want to present and be part of what was built, ’cause they’re invested now, so that’s a trust in the relationships that were formed. So design, branding, mission vision values, trust between staff and owners, staffing, clients, and environment, which you just brought up… Exactly. Is it clean? Do you have a janitor? 

Chris: Argue the standards, if you do. That’s when we talk about leadership last time, it’s time to actually be a leader, because as the person that’s listed as I assume you’re in a leadership role or the owner of the company, and bottom line is people are counting on you to actually have standards, because if you don’t… If you just let everybody do what you want, that too is a standard that to is a culture. 

Tyler: You have now drawn the line in the sand, way over on the side of the client, so they make all the rules, which… News flash, that creates chaos. You’ve now let the,  What do you call it? You say, the inmates run the asylum.

0:18:36.2 Chris: Inmates are Running the Asylum. 

Tyler: And we say that in love, by the way, and you know it’s true, but another thing, Chris, when you think of all of this and making an impact and having these standard set, it scares people and guys, leadership is courage. You didn’t get here by being scared, you did something one day to get into the position you’re in, whether it’s chaotic or whatever, it doesn’t matter, you did it congratulations, but to stay in fear once you get comfortable or to a spot or whatever it is, monetarily. There’s what, 7 billion, 8 billion people on earth right now, and I know in the county are lesson business is in, there’s 4 million people now. We don’t need all of them. We want the ones that believe what we believe, so that’s a huge part of culture, are… And who are our people? And it’s nothing against the people that don’t fit. 

Chris: and filtering out the cancerous elements, if you’ve got this in a staffer… Okay, right now, heart-to heart. I want you to look inside right now at everyone that works for you, and who are your people that are invaluable that you would go to bat for all the way to the end, ’cause by the way, Netflix actually has this in their cultural or… In fact, you can just Google Netflix culture Slide Share, and there’s a whole slide share on a 100-page Netflix culture document for the stuff in there. Yeah, and what they basically say is, in leadership, you should be analyzing your team constantly and saying, Am I willing to go to bat for everybody? In other words, is everybody indispensable? So to speak… Anyone that you’re like, get rid of them, right? The rule of thumb is higher, slow fire fast, having someone that is not good for your culture, we’ll do way more damage long term then you just trying to be nice because, well, they’re my cousin’s friend or… Well, we were good friends 10 years ago, and I wanted to give him a break.

0:20:50.3 Tyler: Stop doing a disservice to the people that love and care for your leadership, because this is a big deal when we rip off the band-aid here real quick, and then we’ll put some Neosporin on right after this. So for instance, customers or staff, shoot Chris in my partnership, we’re working on stuff all the time, we know we are fallible, we know that we have to renew our minds daily, how many cells are dying every day, and Chris… We have to eat healthy, exercise, be in gratitude, there’s All these things that lead to the heart beat of our culture at the top, so now we can have some clarity, right, Chris, we can discern like, I’ve worked on some stuff. I’m not new to this PS, I’m not reacting to everything in my life anymore, so now we can set some standards

0:21:49.5 Chris: You bring up a good point, I’m sorry. But before you talk about standards, I just want people to know that we’ve messed up a lot, and we’ve let our staff know that we know, and we’ve apologized and like everything from throwing a fit…

0:22:05.5 Chris: We don’t repeat the behavior, if we can learn from it right Chris?, and it never happens again. And we own it, stream ownership, patient

0:22:16.3 Tyler:  have to disagree, but let’s face it, you and I have repeated some things where if we get frustrated about certain things and we didn’t have the reaction that we wanted to, ’cause we weren’t coming from gratitude, where we weren’t coming from extreme ownership, we had to walk through those moments and we… To work on ourselves. So there might be some interior work that you need to do to as a leader to realize, Hey, do I have avoidance issues, or do I have to… Do I have a steroid? Dance issues, do I not… Or short fused.

0:22:49.7 Tyler: And what are those, Chris? Those are just byproducts to something inside of yourself anyways, like Why am I so mad that someone isn’t happy with everything I gave them? Well, out, go talk to them, they’re a person, they’re a staff member that probably cares about their job and the people… They’re teaching it.

0:23:09.2 Chris: I like Extreme Ownership, people are drawn to you with honesty, so when you simply state, hey, you know what, I yesterday, I hadn’t eaten and I acted in a way that isn’t… With the culture I’m trying to create here, I just wanna apologize to you guys, I appreciate it. ’cause I do, our boss is human.

0:23:31.9 Chris: And actually admit when they’re wrong. That’s such a big deal. You guys, you are so much better off admitting when I say that to my kids all the time, that everybody messes. In fact, challenges investing up is the adventure, and The only time that you can truly Mess up is not owning it, that’s true. 

Tyler: Moving through into the solution feels like you’ve accomplished something pretty big, even if it was an unplanned mistake when you move through it and it’s uncomfortable, usually moving through it with transparency and truth and honesty and own ownership. It’s the easier, softer way. Even though it looked hard, it felt like it was gonna be so hard if you didn’t say anything or if we didn’t say anything and we just moved, and seven months later, all of a sudden an instructor’s out of here one of our good ones or something.

0:24:33.8 Tyler: That’s where Chris, means you would have messed up, so that leads us to standards, so this is all culture building stuff, you guys… These are all attributes and pillars of who you are that translates down and helps the staff understand your intent and the mission and vision of values, so that they can disseminate and give that out as well and be maybe once that members like he had too weird. I just wanna be a contractor, I’m out of here. I don’t like it.

0:25:15.1 Tyler: Cool. It worked out that US customers every year. So customers, we’re really big on and this, I learned this from a mentor in a different industry, Todd Duncan. Todd Duncan changed my life in the real estate industry a long time ago before I started doing music full-time, and he told me in the mortgage industry that I needed to separate my customers and where I got my business from, and he has four categories. And this changed the culture, and I took the same thing and Chris and I apply it to our lesson business, and not just that teacher’s on… Anybody can use teachers one, but we’re not gonna let people just push us around, we believe in something amazing that’s gonna help thousands and thousands of people, millions. And so here’s the deal. It starts small. Four types of customers, right, Chris? We’ve got high maintenance, high profit.

0:26:05.0 Tyler: We have high maintenance… Low profit. We have low-maintenance, high profit, and we have low maintenance… Low profit. So Todd told me to figure out which ones of my partners, realtors that were sending me business were under which category, and I had two realtors given me business that I couldn’t sleep three to four nights a week, at least because they were so intense and me and that I was leaving my late 20s, didn’t even know how to handle it today I had to fire the high-maintenance… Low profit and the high maintenance. High profit. So in the lesson business, that might mean a crazy family that has seven kids in your program, but they literally are a cancer on your whole team, your ops team, you have an ops director crying or something, because these people, these personalities…

0:27:06.1 Chris: Are you not helping 30 other families because of the seven?

0:27:10.0 Chris: Right, exactly. So here’s what happened, I did it all I had to do, my business went down by over 50% when I got rid of the two realtors.

0:27:21.7 Tyler: Chris, for four months, Melissa and I were sort of in trouble, it was like… It was like, we’re back in time seven years for about almost a half year, but the low maintenance one low maintenance high profit realtor I had, and then the few other low maintenance low profit realtors, I told them what I did. And they thought it was I at a lunch with them, those people, birds of a feather flock together. Hey, they knew the other realtors, everyone knew each other, so they understood… They sent me… Their grandparents, their mother’s realtors were sending their immediate families for re-finances and purchases to me because I took a step and learn something from a mentor, 

Chris: and then they doubled down on the people you wanted to work with.

0:28:18.7 Tyler: People were calling and saying, Hey, you know so-and so said, I have to use you. And then Todd Duncan also told me, You know, Tyler, at that point, if your service is that good, you can charge a premium as long as it’s fair, and so I also got to slowly charge a little bit more, but safe fair and it patched up our income and then it went up 300%. Now, that was the refinance boom too, so we’ll take that into consideration, but are it launched? We went into the stratosphere, Melissa and eyes, life changed, our home life changed

0:28:54.1 Chris: By changing who you choose to work with, changes your trajectory, and that’s culturally, you chose to create a new culture, and in fact, you may be… You reminded me, we were talking about vulnerability, I spoke at an event with Todd years ago, and he had experienced the death of his wife and some really horrible times because of that personal tragedy and with his kids and stuff, and he showed up to this event and he got on stage without a pet speech for the first time ever in 40 years, and he just cried, and it was like the heaviest hour of our lives, ’cause all Todd did a… He said, I have nothing to say because I’m just here because I don’t wanna be here. But I realized that I just wanna do the worst thing ever made me… But one of the reason I bring it up is because that vulnerability is why everyone… And you’re still talking about it 15 years later. It’s why everyone loves a todo.

0:29:57.9 Tyler: Many… Do we have Chris, you mentioned a teacher that saw you sitting and study hall at the very beginning of one of your high school years, that kind of knew you, but aren’t you crispa and you’re sitting and you could have had another class, but you’re like, Nah. And he pulled you out of that class. Tell us about that quick.

0:30:17.5 Chris: Just… It was Mr. McCLure,  and I was sitting, I decided to take a study on my junior year, and he walks in and he goes on to… Chris packages, why are you sitting here? I go study hall, and he’s like, yeah, no, there’s a waste of your time because come with me, and he forced me to be in logic and debate, and to this day.

0:30:37.8 Tyler: On one of the hardest classes… ’cause of the teacher at the school. Right, and

0:30:42.0 Chris: I loved it. And it changed everything. So just know that you guys are changing lives when you’re making decisions, when you’re impacting culture matters, your vulnerability matters, your ability to push yourself towards growth matters to build a great culture, takes all these things, it’s not as a you up top… 

Tyler: Chris, you left ou the The cool part though, he put you in this class and the teacher said, No, I know him, he’s a good student, but he won’t put in the work and he… 

Before you in there, anyways, I said to you, I about the one… Got this guy from study hall for nothing, you’re doing this. And it ended up working. And you’ve never forgotten. And the very last ad of the year, my friend Mike and I debated the teacher and our valedictorian and we want…

0:31:27.5 Chris: Before you in there, anyways, I said to you, I about the one… Got this guy from study hall for nothing, you’re doing this. And it ended up working. And you’ve never forgotten. And the very last ad of the year, my friend Mike and I debated the teacher and our valedictorian and we won!…No. See, I didn’t know that part. They are

0:31:32.6 Tyler: Those stories. And by the way, what Chris just mentioned was an O.I.L. moment, that part of it, it was all special, there’s a moment by moment that teacher helped glue things together for Chris getting to that point, and then each day and debate, there was more moments and momentum, but the oil moment, probably what? That was one of them. Wouldn’t you agree? 

Chris: . And that is an oil moment, so it stands for once in a lifetime, and if you guys haven’t read, there’s a book out there called The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath, and those guys are… Some of you, there’s been me to stick, there’s been some great books, they’ve eaten, but that one, what I love about the Power of Moments is it sort of outlines some really great stories about how to create impact, and what they basically say is that we as humans can’t remember everything and we don’t… We actually remember the highs and the lows of the most impactful moments, I… So when you think of a wedding or you think of graduation.

0:32:41.1 Tyler: Or when my wife thinks of how everything that I do wrong is the only thing on the list sometimes that’s like, Oh, she’s not a yes. Every time I’m like, We’ve been married almost 20 years, every time. And she’s like, shut up! . You know what I mean? 

0:33:06.0 Tyler: But we go there, our brains, our brains aren’t wired to keep the middle, our brains are wired to keep the extreme, so we remember the highs and lows, we just do it, that’s how we prune, and then we don’t have great experience to back learning. That’s why you can’t speak at your students, that’s why asking questions actually makes them learn more, because when you speak at your students, you’re speaking to the part and they’re not gonna retain it by asking them, you’re forcing them to have a higher low, so oil moments Tyler brings this up at reasons 

Tyler: real quick, wouldn’t it be also just as impactful to a student if you ask the question and you truly listen, ’cause I know that goes without saying, but I wanna bring up the listening part one last time, if Chris, you were my teacher and you asked me what I thought about life and what I wanna do in regards to something, and I got to speak about it… I would never forget that you asked that question. Never, ever. Because guess what, when I was… Especially when I was younger. That didn’t happen that often. It wasn’t a big part of my life. 

Chris: I’m gonna bring up an oil moment that that happened. So I walk up one day to talented Performance Academy, and one of our reconstructs Morgan, we had this conversation with our teachers that you guys are mentors, you’re not teachers, you guys here, I walk up and he and this student of his are lying in the grass up front. I’m like, Remember the…And the teachers have their own offices, he’s got his own apartment in there is beautiful, but he’s in the grass outside. So later on, I go, Hey buddy, I go, What was that? Was on there. He goes, Oh, and we do 60-minute private. So you gotta realize that’s a long time that they instead laid in grass for 60 Minutes, straight would go, Oh, that… I would have people say, Oh, that was a disservice, you should have refunded the money or whatever… No, he said, My student was having a really bad day, and all I needed was someone to talk to and someone to listen, that was so much more impactful, I guarantee you, then a music lesson that he probably in some way, he created an oil moment and change that student’s life forever. Wherever, I’ll never forget it, it merits like forget the music lesson people, or forget the karate test or whatever it is, if there’s a moment that to be had because someone needs you, listening often is the best part of it, and having a culture that embraces that tells people that you care. 

Tyler: So people are being transformed, like that Chris, from sticking moments to moments to moments, smaller moments based on those standards and filters we put into place to protect our cultures to cause it to thrive, to cause it to have energy and excitement and passion. Okay, so how do we… Can we systematize, for lack of a better word, right now, with all this organic happiness we’re talking about, can we systematize to cause oil moments to happen more often is so that we can take all the character building, the team building, the rehearsal, the skill building, the… Oh my gosh, I finally got my purple belt in Jujitsu and now what? Yeah, I have great friends. Whatever. Hey, Chris, do you wanna go compete… There’s a local tournament. Holy crap, I don’t know about that. That would be an oil moment were in or to lose at a tournament… I see that. What, I mean, that stat.

0:36:33.9 Chris: Yeah, so a lot of you, brag alert! we’re just now… We’re going into our 12th year, and we’re feeling like we just have started, Feels like I just figured it out Yet because we’re just starting to make an impact, we’re just starting to actually have real deep moments, but I don’t know, for those of you to know us, you know, last year, we did a project, our teachers and students did a project that was nominated for two Grammys and is a big boys Pet Sounds, you can Google it on just tap in Los Rios Rock School Beach Boys Pet Sounds, and the full length albums there and we didn’t know that was gonna happen. Well, we just… So the reason I brought it up is ’cause you talked about system Ting, and so what we’ve done over the last ten years is that we’ve slowly tried to get our culture and our systems better and better and better and better, 

0:37:29.9 Tyler: They could go to our YouTube channel, we’ve never removed a video ever, and just click videos and go to the channel, youtube.com/losriosrockschool click videos, and that’s literally the order that all however many videos have for the last 12 years have been put in. And you can watch, just skip every 20 from way back, and you’ll see the systems must have been for me, you’ll even recognize kids a year later in a different performance, that’s that same kid, and he’s better and crap, there’s 700 people at that concert compared to the first one.

0:38:11.3 Chris: Very first concert was in Tyler’s backyard with a hay bale stage. Yep, it was awesome, but it was totally different than our… Household blue is Disney. It totally different than that. We work with Make A-Wish and all the other things we do. Bottom line is, I’m not trying to brag, I’m trying to say that the systems we put in place have now enabled those moments to emerge, which now become part of those 22 kids on that Pet Sounds project will never, ever forget. It’ll change their life, it’s part of their resume now, ’cause they worked on that project and got to Grammy nods

0:38:47.9 Tyler: Cemented. It’s there, they’re in the credits, it’s legit.

0:38:53.9 Chris: And it’s also something that none of us will ever forget, but it predates the fact that systems matter because we created a system, for instance, for our classic album series that created that, so I don’t wanna just talk about our business to end this, but I wanted to just bring up the point that what you said… Can you systematize? Yes, we keep going deeper, our systems are actually behind the scenes, which you don’t see is the amount of communication with our staff, our staff has communicating with one another constantly. Have we even have project management software, Smartsheet that we use to manage our projects privately, we’re pinging each other and they’re making notes and all this… So to herd the cats that we do looks like magic, but gosh, a, it’s not… 

0:39:50.8 Tyler: We even had to teach the families once… And I set up the, what do you call it? Time labs. So when we do these concerts, it takes eight people to load our whole stage out in Beehive, and then there’s even time lapse of the whole drive, I time-lapse every second of the process, and it ended up being six minutes, it’s a telling… It’s like they did that much more, six hours and that was not including tear down, and so we’ve sent it out and at the very end, it showed… No, it did show because it showed us bringing it back, it showed Clint, Dr. Hey, craft, who helped do all the Pet Sounds, it showed him sitting in a chair by the door, remember he finally just fell by the Dar, and we put a little note that says, Please hug your teacher today, and the parents we got probably out of 200 families 20 responses that said, I had no idea. They thought we were pouring Disneyland in a cup, which is part of the trick, we want them to be the heroes, but at the same time, on occasion there’s an apparent like, hey, they might complain a little bit because it’s an intense process and maybe parking sucked.. Because whatever I think the problem is so solved is all compared to what we’re doing, it’s insane, so people really…

0:41:08.5 Tyler: And then here’s the funny part, Chris, this is where I was going with it. When you start to create that, people talk. They wanna be a part of it. And guess what? Yes, where you end up after you succeed again, they use… And this is what we wanna tell you to, Chris, how many times the five stages you much grow through in your entrepreneurial life, which you’ve been doing it even longer than me, how many times have you gone through all five stages total, or even within each business? Do you think on average.

0:41:42.4 Chris: Three to five times per business, and I’ve done it seven businesses, seven business. So yeah, so it’s like 21 to 40 times and counting, because you and I are in a constant process of revisiting these elements, censors of saying, Where’s all our friction points? So we call brechin, the chaos moment, because friction basically means that there’s something that’s a challenge in getting in the way of you being your best, then it moves into getting organized, what are ways that we can be better organized, what are ways that we can have better systems, what are ways that we can actually employ an outside system or internal to make things flow? Then we get it to engagement, how can we create a deeper impact, how can we engage our staff and students more, How can we have better training, How can we have better ongoing education for everybody? \

Tyler: We never brought up surveys, by the way, survey monkeys, and I’m sorry to interrupt it in all five episodes, apologies, what better way to find out if your music instructor is having a hard time with his rehearsal on Saturday mornings is one of four rehearsals, because there’s cables missing or something, something small from that small to…Where was that kid? So those systems, surveying the teachers or your employees is just as important, or staff meetings, you can do that in staff meetings, or you can do an anonymous survey and you can get some great feedback from families and teachers and just were to the wives… Keep the survey short, if you do make one, you don’t need more than two to four questions probably to really get you some good results, and Chris, don’t you believe that we’ve grown from that alone, 

Chris: you can’t grow what you don’t measure, and surveys is a part of it as with lots of different things, but if you don’t ask Often it’s so funny because just in the act of asking, you will get sometimes so much more valuable input and feedback then you ever possibly imagine. And then so that goes from engagement to fueling your growth, which feeling your growth, as we talked about in the last episode, is not just about sales and marketing, fueling your growth is also about a mindset of, I’m going to make sure that our company has a better culture each year, I’m gonna make sure that all our systems get a little bit better each year, I’m gonna try and make our facilities or the way that we do things a little bit leveled up each keep my employees feeling more secure and safe and happy each year, how can we have them just the better standards you have… In fact, something came to mind, and I don’t know how you know this anecdote, but something that came to mind with regard to parenting, I was singing on one of our friends, doesn’t believe we have this Life 360, and by the way, as parents, if you’ve got teenagers it’s the most amazing thing. It tracks everybody in the family where they are, if they’re speeding in the car, all that…

0:44:51.4 Chris: Exactly, so one of my friends that has kids, teenagers like me, totally against, thinks that’s way too much oversight and not that he’s wrong, because certainly there’s that debate… Absolutely, I don’t disagree. However, when I look at both of our kids, my kids know that we might look at it and they… Instead of worrying about that, they connect in and are constantly checking in with us constantly, I happen to know what my friend’s son is up to… And he’s up to no good. A lot. Okay, and so my point is, is just the fact that my kids know that they’re being potentially track, we never looked at it much, but just the fact that they know we could… They are making themselves more accountable, we get random tech random calls all the time, Hey, gonna go get a bit, and they’re at a friend’s house, I did want to tell me that, and I’m not saying I’m not into helicopter-ing or please. That wasn’t what the analogy was meant to be, it was the fact that when your staff or your kids or your students know that they’re being measured or know that someone cares enough, people tend to rise to that expectation 

0:46:15.8 Tyler: unless they’re not a fit, and if the employee decides that, you know what, I’m not taking this crap anymore or whatever, it’s absolutely fine. You can come from a place of love, not confrontation or animosity, that is all perception, that as the way I decide to behave as a leader is up to me…

0:46:29.3 Tyler: Right, I wanna lash out. Well, hopefully, I apologize later because that probably wasn’t very beneficial, and unless someone’s harming me or my family, I don’t need to ever do that, it’s never… It’s like cussing every other word when you’re talking to someone… Not necessary. Right? There’s just things I, as a leader, I don’t have to do. And when we’re measuring in love and growth and fueling growth, like you just said, Chris, the teachers through Extreme Ownership, they know that’s why we’re doing it. And maybe the newer ones or maybe… Here’s a practical, real-world situation, maybe you start measuring now and you’re a five-year-old business with a bunch of employees you’ve had for a while…Just take it one day at a time. They’re gonna be like what… For instance, our school was around six years before TeacherZone.com came out and then we implemented TeacherZone.com into the school, and all of a sudden we do, there’s a little bit of monitoring going around… They had to get used to it. Point being is, is to be consistent, right Chris? don’t stop.

0:47:37.5 Chris: Well, for those of you that have independent contractors, Tyler and I, we talk to all the time, and you’re like, Well, I can’t tell them anything wrong, you get to dictate the standards with which your contractors operate, so don’t think that you can’t build a great culture, just ’cause you have independent contract, do you wanna be negligent because you were scared to talk to a contractor about how to treat people or have a… It’s like people do say ostrich in the sand that I can just let the independent contractors do whatever they want, and by the way, that is a culture, and it’s not a good one, it’s a… Well, you know, the reality is, is that what you’re saying with no standards is that too is you made a choice on how you’re representing your company.

0:48:27.7 Tyler: Now, this doesn’t include the folks that have successful contractor cultures, they… Because those, they lucked out and have contractors that love the place so much in the owner so much that they’re almost acting like employees anyways, like it’s a family, but that’s…

0:48:44.4 Chris: No, I’m not disparaging business models, it doesn’t matter, I don’t really… I’m not a tax attorney, I could care less how you run your… but what I do care about is that you have standards and that you display leadership regardless of your model, because you have to know that you’re doing it anyway if you’re choosing to pretend like you’re not, so… Own it, take responsibility, know that your culture is a direct reflection of you and your standards and care to create the type of culture that actually creates the vision that you’re trying to head towards. So I think towards the end here, we should… With the oil moments, ask yourselves, What are the oil moments? Week two, week. So make a list of all the things throughout a year that you do, or that your instructors or that your organization does, just sort of create an impact to create more of a community, to create a deeper connection, ’cause those are the things that culture embodies… It embodies community, it creates people that feel… That come to you. We started with the 90th barbeque, people that come to your 90th barbecue, 

0:49:57.5 Tyler: Summer slam! Chris. We talked to schools and less on businesses around the world, and some of the things we bring up, I think a lot of people are doing and half of them have never even thought of it, and that somehow getting people together for some sort of a pre-culture your business’s appreciation, like, why shouldn’t the Monday crew who you teach and mentor, not know the Thursday crew who loves you, like Why can’t they know each other? And so we in TeacherZone we make group chats and they get to chat where it’s safe and they don’t have to like… Introverts don’t have to talk to someone right away, they can warm up, and then we… And with hopefully pandemic and summer coming and vaccine opening up, you can start doing this. So we did a summerslam, had a dunk tank, and all the kids… We raised so much money for charity for the teachers… The teachers were in the dunk tank every half an hour. You know how much fun it is to dunk your teacher?  So there was food, a band was playing on our stage inside, we built a stage outside. And what do we do? We actually funded the first 100 families that could RSVP, they didn’t have to pay for their meals, they got their food tickets all covered, but the money came back to half a went to charity, I think, and so anyways, point being is those kids were not even doing…

0:51:35.5 Chris: That a creation oil moment is about some of you shout out to Dan Thompson. Now, I know he promoted a lot of that, for instance, even just having popcorn when people arrive, and some of you have a coffee shops actually in your facility, and there’s all sorts of ways that you create a culture and you create impact… It’s so cool. One of them also that as just kind of the stupidest thing, but it comes to mind in that Power of Moments book was a popsicle Butler. There is a hotel that’s in the magic of reinstate magic castle, there’s a really junky hotel, it’s not even a good hotel by the way, but it’s rated like the highest of the

0:52:19.2 Tyler: One in LA where there’s magic shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was…

0:52:24.8 Chris: Your brother used to go to that, I think, yes. He had a membership to learn magic.

0:52:34.2 Chris: So if you have a magic teaching business, let us know! haha!

0:52:36.0 Chris: but the cool thing is that this hotel is renowned for creating all moments, and so one of those, umm… Is there a popsicle Butler, sir. You’re out by the pool. There’s a red phone, and the only thing that red phone does is bring you popsicles. So you pick up the phone. Yes. Or flavor would you like… You say pineapple, great. And then a butler comes out in a tuxedo with a tray with a pineapple popsicle for you, in Talking about oil moment, it has nothing to do with a hotel. Right, but so memorable. So how can you create a better culture that’s in alignment with your values, your mission, vision values, or were you… 

Tyler: we all get to make it up, it’s part of our fabric of who we are, we just have to have courage to design it and do it… That’s it. There’s no secret

0:53:40.7 Chris: You miss 100% of the shots, you don’t take. So if you’re not taking any shots, Hey, congratulations, you didn’t miss any, but should I make one either.

0:53:52.9 Tyler: Right, and then you die. And that’s the end. Job, good job. Yeah, let’s not die. That’s good.

0:53:58.8 Chris: Yeah, having the courage to try and create a better culture and then get it wrong is part of the game too, and so as you’re leveling up your business, as you’re trying to create a greater impact and as you get into cultural ways of thinking of What are my standards. So when people think of us as a business, what do they think about those, that kind of thoughts that you should be having as far as what you’re trying to present to the world, and if you’re not there yet, actually, you shouldn’t be ever… You should never fully arrive because that’s part of the journey is trying to make a greater impact, trying to have a better adventure, trying to… It’s an adventure. Challenges, like I said in another episode, can you imagine a James Bond film without any challenges or villain, right?

0:54:51.3 Tyler: He’s like getting to you stuff like, No, you’re not even getting groceries, they’re delivered, so there’s no challenge there either.

0:54:57.2 Chris: So are you playing it to say that you are like the most boring film ever… But that’s actually a problem, I think for a lot of folks is like all our business is good enough, and if I stretch and change it all, but see, that’s why you keep it small, you’re playing small ball. What if they inherited the business and they’re like, But it’s already does its thing. If you’re there now, its thing has changed. 

0:55:28.1 Chris: Change Or Die. So, great analogy for that is I read Richard Branson book The Virgin way. It’s great, by the way. And he’s got a lot of great things in there. He’s on hundreds and hundreds of companies. But do you know that his Virgin Records, which went bankrupt in the 80s, he did… Steve Jobs saw an ad that he ran for April Fools, Richard Branson added ran an ad in the 80s for April Fool’s Day, for Virgin Records that said, We have cataloged every music that’s ever been in history, and you can now get it with whatever… Just one thought. It was like a joke. Right, ’cause it was the 80s and there was nothing digital to speak of, he had basically the mindset of the iPod, but it was just a joke in apropos joke. Richard tells the story, just cracking up at how dumb he was, Because Steve Jobs said that was the inspiration for the Ipoh.

0:56:34.1 Chris: Remembered it, and I eventually put Virgin out of business. So Richard was cracking up going 25 years earlier, I’m the one that had the April Fool’s joke, I have the idea, but didn’t have the courage to keep changing my culture in my business to match… 

Tyler: Well, the CD listening bars had to come first, Chris, before the death… For the total death, this remember the CD listening bars a… I miss that. They’d have to sanitize so much now.

0:57:05.7 Chris: But the experiential side is coming back, and so for a lot of you that actually have storefronts, the experiential sites, everything and so creating great experiences, but it should be a message to all of us that even the greatest fall when they don’t continually think about how they can better their culture, better their business, sometimes throwing away your entire model, like I talk to some of you and your business just sucks, like I’m sorry, but you really… You’re a charity for some of you.

0:57:34.7 Tyler: I In the beginning, the teacher zone, we coded a whole scheduling system and realized we… We did it wrong, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, we scrapped and recoded, like we had to learn from that.

0:57:51.9 Chris: Like being willing to pivot is an important part of building a great culture, because if people know that you actually have the… People are expecting your leadership to have their needs in mind, and if they know that you’re constantly trying to better that and that you’re willing to change directions if it means something better, trust goes even deeper. Now, follow you through the fire, if something adverse happens to your company, they will come out of the wood work to help you, you will get private messages or a text or a call from, let’s say… I don’t know, some global attorney or something that his kid goes to your school and all of a sudden they walk through the fire with you and everything’s fine or something like that, and so you net… I’m telling you guys, this is real, if your business feels average or adequate, it doesn’t have to stay there, you move, then it’s up to you. 

0:59:20.1 Tyler: Is fine. We gotta wrap this up. Hey, you guys, we just went through the five stages of what you have to grow through as a business owner, get the e-book if you haven’t already teachers on dot com chaos.

0:59:34.4 Chris: Also, if you wanna know who we are as well in regards to creating these systems that help people get out of chaos and what not, schedule a demo, the

0:59:42.1 Tyler: Most exciting demo you ever have with our team, and just go to teacher on dot com, click the demo button, it will be a live demo that you schedule.

0:59:51.3 Tyler: Also remember, if you’re not following our podcast… Yes is good. Thank you. Wherever you listen to podcast, apple, or on Android or whatever. We’re everywhere, so follow the teacher with Chris and Tyler and Spotify, it doesn’t matter, we’ll pop up and do we have a bunch of other episodes prior to these as well? And don’t think we’re done. Okay, this five-part series was the new chapter and we’re coming at you with more content and more conversations, and hopefully some great guests in all the lesson business industries in the very near future, and we wanna tell you all… And Chris, I know you feel the same way, we appreciate you, and we do think you are the heroes 100%

1:00:36.3 Tyler: So if you have any questions, reach out teachers on dot com, or Tyler at teacher on dot com or Cristero dot com, tell us what you think, your thoughts or topic ideas. We’re all for it. And Chris, do you wanna say any last words before we finish this wonderful five-part series? 

Chris: No, I think you just said it. Okay.

1:00:59.9 Chris: We love you guys. And Chris, thank you so much, you were the nugget master. Every time I learned something new, just talking with you and I love you as my partner, let’s…

1:01:11.3 Tyler: You and I, we are on a mission to make things better and more impactful, we want to affect millions of students around the world with our software and with conversations with locking arms with people that are experiencing the same stuff, we do not have to be alone. So tell your friends about us, send this podcast to whoever you can send the e-book to whoever you can, have an email us and say Hi. We wanna know who you are. So thank you for tuning in to the teachers one with Chris and Tyler, and we’ll see you on the flip side.