This interview was originally recorded on August 27, 2021, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
Elana Leoni:
[00:00:00] Welcome, everyone, to another episode of “All Things Marketing and Education.” I’m your host, Elana Leoni. Today I have a really awesome pleasure to chat with Chris Walsh. I’m sure we’ll get into a ton of things EdTech because he is a master of everything.
Chris Walsh:
[00:00:24] [laughs] I think it’s more like – what is it? – jack of all trades, master of none.
Elana Leoni:
[00:00:32] Master of none, yes. But beyond being into all things EdTech, he also has a lot going on on the marketing side, the growth, the business development side of EdTech from the advisor and investor side as well. We’ll get into a little bit of that with him, too. I just wanted to talk a little bit about how I met Chris because I feel blessed in life. Sometimes I have people that just continue to pop up in my life. I feel like, Chris, you were one of those people.
[00:01:02] If you think about when we first met at Edutopia, this was circa 2004 maybe.
Chris Walsh:
[00:01:12] Really? I thought it was more like 2008.
Elana Leoni:
Oh, wait. No, no, you’re right, 2007, 2008, yes, circa around that time. Regardless, it makes us sound old. We were hanging out [unintelligible 00:01:27].
Chris Walsh:
[00:01:27] I am definitely old. I don’t know about you.
Elana Leoni:
So we’re hanging out at Edutopia, and I came in to manage their new membership program where, at the time, we were starting out webinars, because those were the new thing; and doing other fun things for membership and trying to gather a community of people together for Edutopia. I came in for that, but Chris, you were managing the grant-funded project, “Digital Generation,” which I always say was way before its time.
[00:01:58] I thought it was some of the coolest stuff coming out, and it still holds up. I don’t think it’s on their website anymore, but I just thought it was the coolest stuff. Remember that? Yes.
Chris Walsh:
[00:02:06] Yes.
Elana Leoni:
Anyways, fast forward, I always tell people; when I meet other people, and Chris is in the room; I say, this is the man that taught me how to tweet. I know you always say that’s not true, but it actually is true. I can remember the time, when I was sitting in front of a computer, and he started a Twitter account for the “Digital Generation.” At the time, Edutopia didn’t even have a Twitter account; but you were just talking to people.
[00:02:37] I was just in awe, and like, “how is he talking to people? He seems to know people online, and they’re talking back to him. This is amazing.”
Chris Walsh:
[00:02:47] Yes, and I probably had, I don’t know, 500 followers, maybe 1000 followers, at the time, or something like that; not that I have that much more now, but the volume wasn’t even that high, right? It tells you how actively the educators wanted to use that platform, to have some sort of communication that was outside the walls of their schools.
Elana Leoni:
[00:03:13] Yes. I may have, probably, gotten into Twitter regardless of that experience; but you certainly just mesmerized. I was like, “how is he doing this? Why are educators so active on this platform? They’re so selflessly talking to each other and sharing and collaborating and learning from each other.” I was hooked. I definitely wanted to mention that. Our first meeting is us hanging out at Edutopia, and Twitter popped up.
[00:03:42] You went on to other things after that. You founded a start-up called Zaption, which was an interactive video-learning platform that, I think, was acquired by Workday, right? Yes, and then you went over to abl. That’s where our paths crossed again. abl is a master-scheduling tool; and Chris said, “hey, I think you’re into consulting now.” I started working with him, building up his organic social media spaces, so our paths crossed again.
[00:04:12] Then now, we’re just continuing to collaborate. I always learn so much from you. When I started a podcast, I said, we need to get Chris on. He has so much to tell other people; plus he is a podcaster himself, so it’s slightly intimidating, me talking to you.
Chris Walsh:
[0:04:28] No, not at all.
Elana Leoni:
He has a great podcast, by the way, called School 180, and it features conversations with educators, parents, coaches, and basically anyone who’s helping kids thrive during this crazy uncertainty of the pandemic, of what it’s like to be a teacher right now. I like it because you interview all different stakeholders, and it’s like our podcast, where I talk to people deep in EdTech and then educators on the ground, too.
[00:04:58] Anyways, last thing around Chris, and I’ll get him to talk about himself, and we’ll get into the meat of this podcast; but after ABL, Chris decided to go back to the classroom; and now he’s the director for the Center of Innovation at Carondelet High School in Concord. I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of his students, and they are very, very inspiring ladies. That was such a fun time, to do that hackathon with them [unintelligible 00:05:23].
Chris Walsh:
[00:05:23] Yes. It was great having you. In fact, your team won.
Elana Leoni:
I know.
Chris Walsh:
You were the winning mentor that year, so that was exciting.
Elana Leoni:
I know. I can’t imagine that. As an educator, people get hooked, and I was hooked; because in the beginning of that project, they were not into it at all. They were trying, but they didn’t know each other. This was a hard assignment. Then you could just feel it, addictive, and they were like, “yes, this is cool. All right, cool.” Then they just went above and beyond, and their eyes turned bright. They just went for it. That’s the stuff that gets exciting.
Chris Walsh:
[00:05:59] Yes. I think you provided them with great guidance. Talk about having the ideal mentor. They just got so lucky, because you just brought all of your business acumen. I think you were only a year out, maybe, of finishing your MBA. You brought all of that knowledge with you, plus all your marketing knowledge. When it came to pitch, these kids were ready. They couldn’t have a better mentor, real-world mentor. That’s why we do it, so it was incredible. It was incredible you got to collaborate with them.
Elana Leoni:
[00:06:30] Thank you. I was like, “we’re going to do a TAM SAM SOM, market analysis.” They were like, “what?”
Chris Walsh:
What? Yes.
Elana Leoni:
Anyway, this is my pleasure, to introduce you, Chris Walsh, to the “All Things Marketing and Education” podcast. Welcome, Chris.
Chris Walsh:
Thank you so much.
Elana Leoni:
Is there anything else you want to tell the audience about yourself before we get started?
Chris Walsh:
[00:06:51] No, that was way too much about me. Probably the less I talk about me, probably the better. That was a lot.
Elana Leoni:
[00:10:30] Yes, and I think one of the things, when I was first getting into EdTech, I would talk to a lot of educators. They would be very excited about products like yours, like Zaption and all the other EdTech start-ups, that were blooming at the time. They had a little distress, because they said, “well, what if I start using this product; and then I rely on this product, and then they get either bought or acquired, or they just go bust? Then, all of a sudden, I have to redo all my lesson plans, and that technology was non-replaceable.”
[00:11:02] There’s a little bit of hesitation, a lot of educators, as it releases to edtech. I had to understand that as I navigated my career in the beginning, and go, “oh really? How interesting.” We saw a lot of that. You’ve seen a lot of that, where it’s just a natural rhythm.
Chris Walsh:
[00:11:16] Yes, yes for certain. Exactly, and I would say too, we were very, very mindful of that, because again, we sensed where Workday wanted to take it. What we did, as a way to be a bridge, is, we built tools, actually, into our platform, that allowed teachers to migrate their content either into another platform – in this case, it was Edpuzzle. We built actual connectors.
[00:11:47] You could click a couple of buttons, and then you could take it right into Edpuzzle. That was a competitor of ours; but we said, “hey, we want you to keep using the content, not lose what you lost,” right? Then secondly, we built tools that [unintelligible 00:12:00] download it, and we built our own custom player. You could actually take the content, if you didn’t want to use it in Edpuzzle, and upload it to a website; and it would still work. Now, it wasn’t quite the same. The data went into a spreadsheet rather than our nice analytics and all that sort of stuff.
[00:12:17] But we did everything we could, in a short amount of time, to make sure that the people that were really passionate about our product could get value out of the time they had spent investing in it. That was really, really important to us.
Elana Leoni:
[00:12:33] Yes, and I heard nothing but great things. I remember hearing about your pitch. What was it, at South by Southwest EDU, when you guys won that a long time ago?
Chris Walsh:
[00:12:44] Yes. That was fun. Yes, we won the pitch competition there. That was fun.
Elana Leoni:
[00:12:48] [Unintelligible 00:12:48]. All right, well, let’s rewind slightly. You had the pleasure of starting your career as a middle school teacher, right, a long time ago. When you were in school, was it initially something that drew you to education? Was it by happenstance? How did you start this journey? I think, in so many podcasts, we don’t really talk about the roots, the initial why. It certainly morphs, especially with you going into EdTech in the classroom, out of the classroom.
[00:13:19] What was that initial spark, that you’re like, “I want to be here in education?”
Chris Walsh:
[00:13:24] Yes, this one’s easy for me, because I’m one of those people that was just born to be a teacher. There’s just no doubt about it. Although I considered other paths – I considered going to law school and other things – it was pretty certain that my path was related to working with kids and, in particular, teaching. I’m from the classic summer camp counselor mold. I spent the better part of my teen years and youth not just attending but working at a number of different camps.
[00:13:58] I think I worked at five different camps, everything from the church camp where I got started to outdoor ed camps for sixth graders to family camps for kids with cancer and their families. This was embedded in who I was, and if anybody out there has ever been a camp counselor, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m the corniest, cheesiest guy in the world because of all of that, and I value the relationships I developed so deeply as a result of that.
[00:14:29] For me, just working with kids was something that I became very, very passionate about, at a very young age, and got good at. It was very natural for me to want to extend that into teaching; and of course intellectually, I loved the concepts of not just the subject matter that I might be teaching, but also the pedagogy. I got very much into pedagogy and really figuring out interesting ways to engage with students and to get them to do meaningful, deep work.
[00:15:04] That was really who I was from the beginning. I just rolled right into teaching. I wanted to be a high school teacher; but in 1992, when I was coming out of my master’s program at UCLA, it was a recession, and there were very few spots for white 22-year-old male history teachers in high school. In fact, I even got told that point-blank, by a number of districts. That forced me to actually go and apply at middle schools, and I’m so grateful for those circumstances because I loved middle school.
[00:15:38] It’s one of those places where you’re either born to be a middle school teacher – you love it – or you hate it. I loved it. You could be corny. The kids soaked it up. They’re still kids, but they want to engage more intellectually. I just had a ton of fun teaching middle school for six years in the classroom at two different schools, and [over the course of? 00:16:00] that, I had always had a passion for technology, but really got deeply into technology along the way, really thanks to Roger Wagner. [00:16:10] If you know Roger Wagner, he was on the board of CUE for a number of years. He built the most popular product in the ’90s. Was called HyperStudio. It was the very first [product that? 00:16:22] really allowed [unintelligible 00:16:24] students to create multimedia with a Mac in a meaningful way. I saw that tool. I knew exactly what I could get kids to do with it. We had so much fun with that, over a number of different years. It was really my gateway into EdTech, and from there I just blossomed and grew in a number of ways.
[00:16:45] At the school I became the tech mentor, eventually the tech coordinator. That was right as the internet was about to take off. Many of you might remember, in 1997 or so, we had these net days – maybe even ’96 – [unintelligible 00:17:03] a day where private foundations and government money were put together, along with the business world, to actually wire schools, physically wire schools because schools didn’t have the internet.
[00:17:17] These net days were set up where professionals would come in and help a school get wired, and I was in charge of net day at my school and getting us onto the internet. That was a big deal. Then it became, well, now that you have it, what are you going to do with it; and everything just steamrolled from there.
Elana Leoni:
[00:17:34] Yes. Would you say that opportunities like net day were things that had opened up your eyes to say, “maybe there’s time – this is the time, potentially right now – to explore what’s outside of the classroom to make an impact?” What were those moments when you were considering getting out of the classroom? There’s a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are educators, that are dipping their toe into the water of entrepreneurship; and then, on the other side, the marketers, too, just understanding, how do we engage with educators that are dipping their toe in the water in that space.
Chris Walsh:
[unintelligible 00:18:07] Yes. Well, I have a lot of thoughts on educators turned entrepreneurs, but from my story, at least, I’ll say it wasn’t actually net day that pushed me over the edge. What actually happened was, before we wired the school – this was Crocker Middle School in Hillsborough, California, here in the Bay Area; wonderful school, wonderful district in so many ways – they let me tinker with tech. I was the tech guy from, almost, the day I stepped in the school.
[00:18:43] It probably was ’95 or early ’96. One of my students came to me and said, “my dad’s starting an internet company in our spare bedroom, and he wants to know if the school needs anything. You’re a techie, so do you want to talk to him?” I ended up talking to the guy, and not only did we hit it off, but I ended up working for him, moonlighting for him, the summers that I wasn’t teaching as well as during the schoolyear, at his internet company.
[00:19:13] He was a very early internet service provider, hosting company, and domain registrar white count which meant I learned everything about that. Everything you need to know about getting content on the internet, I learned almost overnight. I didn’t know anything about servers. I didn’t know anything about Unix and how to FTP into places and drop stuff, let alone do any programming or HTML. I learned all of that almost within six months.
[00:19:41] It was just a fast, fast learning curve, because I actually wrote their help site for this company. If you write the help stie, you have to learn everything. I felt like I didn’t know what I was writing about. Then I was providing customer support, and before you knew it, I was designing websites for corporate customers. This was when the Netscape Navigator browser had just come out. I was doing all of this really before the school ever even got wired. When the school got wired, of course then I started doing it for the school, and so on.
[00:20:10] Being exposed to the business world and entrepreneurship, right as the internet was launching, was really what made me go, “huh, I’ve got a few ideas here.” We’d bat them around with different people I was working with. We even approached some people at the time who were big names in tech and wanted to do stuff in education, and just conversations started. That’s really when I decided, I have to do more with this.
[00:20:39] I was living two lives, and my wife and I were talking one day. I just said how stressed out I was. I was working, moonlighting, with this internet company. I was doing all the EdTech coordinator stuff at the school in the district, and I was still teaching, and I was running a summer camp in the summer for kids around the internet and coaching. I was doing way too much like I still do today. She says, “why don’t you do one thing?” I was like [unintelligible 00:21:09].
[00:21:11] That’s when I decided that I would apply to the Stanford Learning Design and Technology program, which was only in its first year; and that I would see if I could start to specialize in education and software, or learning software, as a specialty. That’s really what turned me from leaving the classroom officially because I was at Stanford literally during the height of the first internet boom. I was [unintelligible 00:21:42] right before the bubble burst.
[00:21:46] Of course everybody at Stanford, whether you were in the Education Department, or whether you were at the B school – and I was going between the two – everybody was talking about what sort of internet business they were going to start, and so on; so wrote some business plans, talked to people; and then after that went into an existing internet company that was more on the development side that wasn’t education-based; and quickly learned my lesson that I should never do that again because I needed to be focused on learning and kids and so on.
[00:22:14] That’s how it happened. I don’t think those circumstances are going to ever come about in the same way for anybody else ever again, but it wasn’t a switch that flipped. It was an evolution over a few years, but I will say it was fairly fast, because I was deep in it, and I was learning so fast. They talk about 10,000 hours. I compacted 10,000 hours into about three years to learn everything I could in this area. Then that’s where I decided I needed to build on that expertise.
Elana Leoni:
[00:22:51] When you say “flipping the switch,” it reminds me of one of my favorite articles from PBLWorks when it talks about PBL. It says, “it’s not a flipped switch with PBL, project-based learning, in the classroom. It’s a dimmer switch.” It felt like, when you were talking about it, OK, I can move a little more. It’s a gradual increase of exposure, excitement. That’s cool, because I think a lot of people can relate to that and look at their environment and just be able to look and say, “OK, this is intriguing.”
[00:23:20] I think, when educators come to me and say, “what should I do; I love the classroom, but I want to be guided by impact in education;” I just tell them to their heart and pay attention to signals, and pay attention to things that give them joy. I know that sounds hokey, but I know educators in particular, we’re all in this profession not for the money but for the impact. You got to make sure, especially in this time of burnout – which I know you have some thoughts on – that we’re continuously thinking about that. What fuels us? What gives us joy?
Chris Walsh:
[00:23:54] Yes. One more thing about the transition: I agree with you completely. I will say this, that because my entire teenage and adult life was focused on school and learning and kids, the moment that I left the classroom was a very, very difficult moment for me; first going into being an edtech coordinator full time, and then eventually going to grad school and realizing I wasn’t going to go back to the classroom. Those were difficult transitions for me.
[00:24:25] I’ve told this story to a lot of different people, but one thing that just hit me in the face was about time, about scheduling. I still remember one day, sitting in my little closet of an office as an edtech coordinator, realizing I could do anything with my time. There wasn’t a period one, two, three, four. I didn’t have a lunch. I could go to lunch whenever I wanted.
[00:24:53] I even remember going to lunch at the Safeway, driving during school day, thinking I was playing hooky; and then seeing all these people out driving around; going, “what are all these people doing? Why are they out? Who would be out during this time? Don’t they have a place to be, like a school?” Just the schedule, having lived in a school schedule for 30 years between a student and a teacher, it literally changes your brain to think that this is how the world operates.
[00:25:25] To realize I had complete control over my schedule was a huge aha and a huge transition to make. Then, once I realized what I could do with that freedom and that flexibility, I never wanted to go back, and I never have since then. You have to be prepared for little, tiny things like that in switch from school; and you have to prepared for some uncomfortability [sic] with it, too.
Elana Leoni:
[00:25:52] Yes, and you’re kind of back, but you’re not a slave to the schedule itself, right? You have such a –
Chris Walsh:
[00:25:58] No, I have all the freedom in the world.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, you have a great, flexible – actually, do you mind talking about what you’re doing right now? I think, as we look at the evolution of your path, you coming back to the classroom but understanding what you need to thrive and how this [unintelligible 00:26:12] –
Chris Walsh:
[00:26:12] Yes. I took a 20-year break from the last time I was on a campus to the current position I’m holding on a campus. Even though I can’t believe it was 20 years, I always intended to go back to some sort of school environment, whether that was a school I started or whether that was a school that I was really passionate about and could make a big difference in, or a district, or whatever.
[00:26:40] I knew that I would go back, because that was always part of who I was. I always envisioned taking the things that I learned back into a direct-impact environment. To be honest with you, I didn’t think it would be at 50 years old. I thought it would be, literally, my retirement. I’d do all these great things, and then at 60, I’d go back; and for a few years, I’d enjoy life with kids, be chill, and then ride off into the sunset.
[00:27:12] The reason that I made the switch when I did was because I got burnt. I got really burnt out on start-ups, EdTech, and, even though I was in nonprofits for a lot of that 20 years, as well as for-profits, it was a very similar sort of pace. I was in nonprofits that were very entrepreneurial and moving very quickly, and I just got burnt out on the pace of things. I also just got burnt out on the pressure, to be honest with you.
[00:27:42] I realized that, when I take investment money from other people – and you and I have had this conversation – that I feel a lot of responsibility to those people; probably more so than I should, because even [unintelligible 00:28:00] may not work out. At the same time, they really want it to work out. I really take that pressure onto myself in a lot of ways, and I feel the weight of that expectation.
[00:28:14] As a result, if I’m not really careful about taking care of myself, it’s very easy for me to get burnt out; because I have such high expectations for myself, as well. After about six straight years, between Zaption and abl, going to San Francisco every day with a commute on top of that, and also doing some things that didn’t really fulfill me – I had to do a lot of things as the CEO of Zaption that I don’t remember love, a lot of things at abl as the head of marketing that I didn’t really love.
[00:28:48] That, combined with the pressure and the time, all that, just really burnt me out. I got really intentional about, what do I want to do now; not 10 years from now, but what do I want to do right now. I made a list. I made a list of all the things that were nonnegotiables for myself. One of those was, I didn’t want to commute anymore. That was huge. I didn’t want to go to San Francisco, in particular, anymore; just because I was just burnt out.
[00:29:18] I love San Francisco, but I didn’t want what I was experiencing on a daily basis in San Francisco to make me not love San Francisco. I didn’t want to be in a situation where I was reporting to investors. I wanted to have a lot of autonomy around not only my time but also around what I was doing; not having to necessarily work with a team or coordinate with a team or collaborate in the same way that I was in the business world.
[00:29:55] I wanted to get back to working with kids and teachers directly. I remember I talked a lot about a skewing scale. For 20 years, I worried about scale. Every thought I had was about scale. Here’s a great program or a great school that’s working really well. How do we scale it? Here’s a great product we have. How do we scale it? I found, after a lot of reflection, that every thought I had about [unintelligible 00:30:25], and that was keeping me from having a deep impact.
[00:30:32] I flipped it and said, “in order for me to have scale, I need to first have deep impact, and then scale that impact.” That sounds so obvious now, because that’s how almost every [great? 00:30:43] company has ever been built, or every great project has ever been built, or every great [unintelligible 00:30:49] built [unintelligible 00:30:50] go deep first and scale out of that depth, and you get the opportunity to scale from that depth.
[00:30:57] My head was just so involved in scale, scale, scale, that oftentimes I was forgetting the deep-impact part. That’s why coming back to a school was very intentional. When I got the opportunity to meet with the folks here at Carondelet, who were building this new Center for Innovation, and they shared their vision for it, and they basically said, “how can you help us meet that vision,” I knew that I was going to be in a place where I could go deep, deep, deep as I wanted to with just 800 students; and then figure out, OK, what about that experience do I really think is important; that maybe, maybe I could scale later on.
[00:31:34] I wasn’t going to force it, and in fact I really wanted to be in deep connection with students and teachers and build programs that just impacted this community. That’s what I’ve been able to do.
Elana Leoni:
[00:31:46] Wow. There’s a lot there. I would say, reflecting back on your nonnegotiables is key, and those will change over time, but that is a really good tip for anyone who’s thinking about just where are you at right now. What are your nonnegotiables? What is not being met on that list, and how can you explore other opportunities or advocate for yourself within your current situation? That’s a really great practical piece of advice.
[00:32:15] I know it seems commonsense, but we very rarely take the time to do those things. Here’s what’s fueling me. Here’s what I absolutely know will help me thrive, because in education, it’s not about, OK, this year. It’s about, how can I really make an impact over decades, potentially; whether you’re in the classroom or out of the classroom. What fuels you? That was huge. I was trying not to bust up laughing when you were talking about scale. I feel like half of my conversations in the edtech world are all about, does this scale; does this scale. Give me some research on how it will scale.
[00:32:51] I’m literally about to create an infographic on scalable things. I’m like, “oh my God. Just stop.”
Chris Walsh:
[00:32:57] It’s all we talk about. It’s not just education, right? It’s all we talk about in business, as well.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, everywhere, tech. But when it comes to scale in particular, when you think about depth, do things right; do it deeply. That, from our team at LCG, we do as a value-driven approach around community in particular. You were talking about product, and it’s certainly true for product; but if we’re building a community of educators, let’s go deep.
[00:33:26] Let’s make sure we’re making a huge impact in educators’ lives, build upon that; make sure that, as we grow, we continue to have the impact, but be very cognizant around the signals as we do grow. That was such a important point I just wanted to bring up, is the depth.
Chris Walsh:
[00:33:42] I agree with you, and we both know how hard that is to do, to go deep; especially with the online community, when we live in a time when you can be distracted by so many different things. People start a lot of communities, but it’s very rare that they go deep in them. That’s very, very difficult to do, and that’s why I love the work that you’re doing to help organizations think deeply about what they really want to get from their communities.
[00:34:10] A lot of people just say, “we need a community, and community’s going to drive growth.” Well, it’s not quite that simple, as we know. A lot of people start communities that just fizzle out because they’re not authentically engaging with their community, and they don’t really want to do anything with them except for just shill their product. I think that’s one of the things we learned at Zaption. We had a very intentional purpose of trying to have conversations with educators.
[00:34:40] We did it on Twitter, but we did it in other places as well, by not talking about the benefits of our product, but by literally talking about the things they were making. They were making these interactive video lessons, so that’s what we did. We highlighted them. We promoted them. We shared them. We’d give them kudos. We told them when we really thought something was exceptional. We highlighted it in our newsletter. We had a group of ambassadors that would also create a lot of content, and also talk about what they were creating, but not necessarily just talk about how awesome Zaption was.
[00:35:14] It was very purposeful that it was a content-driven conversation. I know that, oftentimes, that’s what you suggest, as well. That was one of the challenges we had at abl early on, that we didn’t have a lot of content to ground the conversation in. Even though we had this great project, funded by the Gates Foundation, called “Unlocking Time,” we were building content; but how to structure our conversation about it, how to really engage people in that, that’s tough work. You don’t hit it out of the ballpark the first time.
[00:35:43] You strike out a dozen times before you finally figure out what’s valuable to really talk about, and what do people really care about, that you can then build on. It takes time.
Elana Leoni:
[00:35:53] Yes, and it requires you to talk with your audience and, hopefully, community, if you end up forming a community; talking with them and not at them, collaborating with them to really understand their needs. A lot of us at LCG, we talk a little bit about the magic in the middle. That applies to community, to content, whatever you’re doing; but one of those big Venn diagram circles is your audience needs. The only way you understand your audience needs is, you actually hang out, listen, and collaborate with them.
[00:36:25] The other one really is, what are your strategic priorities as an organization. Then the realistic one, that overlaps, is, what are our organizational capabilities, our budget. How much can we actually devote to this? When you find that magic overlap in the middle, whether it be content creation, community, social media, it all applies; but you got to listen and build community authentically.
[00:36:50] If you tell me, Elana, I want to build a community to leverage them into sales, it’s the new reg-flag tweet [unintelligible 00:36:58], but you don’t leverage people, ever. You don’t ever start something with and end goal as inauthentic as that.
Chris Walsh:
[00:37:06] Yes, the authenticity is so key. There’s so many companies, in education and not in education, that start a community just because they know that they have to do it; and therefore, if they do it, it’s going to lead to increased sales. I think the nice thing about the folks in the education space is, almost everybody, to a T, is extremely passionate about learning and about kids and about teachers and teaching.
[00:37:39] It’s not hard for them to build really authentic communities, because it’s who they are; but oftentimes they forget that. They skip that step, because they just knew they’d have to do it. You have to remind them to come back. You’re good at this. You’re passionate about this. Let’s dive deep into that passion. That’s what’s going to build your community. That’s what we found at Zaption, as well.
[00:38:06] The more we just connected with individual teachers and talked to them about what they were doing and how we could help and how we could leverage video in new, engaging, interesting ways, that’s what they wanted to have conversations about, too. They didn’t want to have a conversation about how you buy Zaption or the business model or about how many people across the country, whatever. The didn’t care about that. You have to engage with them about what’s meaningful.
Elana Leoni:
[00:38:36] Yes, and it’s never about the product. It’s about what challenges your audience is encountering, and potentially how you can help and listen. It’s taking you away from your product-centered. A lot of times I work with founders that, because of all the things you talked about, scalability, extra investing, lose their why. They lose their beginning why and passion. A lot of using social media, community, and content is bringing them back to that, so we can attract educators that are passionate about the topic, too, and are struggling with things that they could help with.
Chris Walsh:
[00:39:11] Yes. To be honest, it’s also one of the reasons why I’m no longer the best person to use social media. This is one of those classic examples where the student has well exceeded the original teacher here in your case, the work that you do. I know that it’s a tremendous effort to get that right, to strike the right tone, to strike the right content messaging.
[00:39:43] That takes time and effort. As an entrepreneur, what I realized is that I’m much better at the deeper conversation; that, pull you aside, and let’s have that deeper conversation, that’s more than 140 characters. I need somebody who can translate that deeper conversation into 140 characters and is really, really good at it. That’s why I really am impressed so much by what you guys do, and other people.
[00:40:12] There’s lots of people who do this really, really well. It’s not the way that I can engage with people as authentically as I’d like. That’s how I know. It’s like, OK, I got to get somebody who can.
Elana Leoni:
[00:40:26] Nice. Well, I know we can talk about community so much in education, all the time, but I think I would love to hear from your vantage point. I know this is a bigger question, but there’s not many people that have been so deep in the edtech world, been in the classroom, boots on the ground, and now are back in the classroom; and you’re experiencing, just like a lot of educators, a pandemic firsthand; what it’s like to be in the school classroom environment.
[00:40:54] Can you talk to me a little bit about just what it’s like for you now, but almost high-level view, too? If we’re at a cocktail party, and people are just saying, “hey, Chris, what’s it like in education right now,” I think it’s particularly helpful for marketers who are jumping into EdTech. They don’t know where to start. They don’t know what it’s like. I know you could talk about this forever. How do you get that conversation started?
Chris Walsh:
[00:41:18] Yes. Well, the first thing I’d say is, I have, currently, an embarrassment of riches in this situation that I realize is not the situation that most educators around the country are in, being at a private school. By the way, I never thought I would ever work at a private school, not once. I’m a huge [unintelligible 00:41:42] public education. All my products, services, everything I’ve ever done in my life, has always been associated with public education.
[00:41:51] But I wanted to use this opportunity to at least understand what are some of the benefits and challenges of private education. Then for the pandemic to come into that midway, there’s no doubt that the resources of a private school give you huge benefits. I’m not just talking money. I’m talking lots of community support, et cetera. In addition, in this particular moment in time, private schools had it much easier in terms of the flexibility that we had to make decisions around hybrid learning and in-person learning.
[00:42:24] Public institutions had to really [unintelligible 00:42:27] deeply, on a community-by-community basis, on board levels and [unintelligible 00:42:32] we have followed every public health guideline out there, but there are more variables that come into play with public schools that enabled us to move a little bit faster with things like hybrid and in-person learning. What I will say is that it, unfortunately, created a much bigger schism than we ever imagined it could have.
[00:42:58] We already knew there was a huge schism between the haves and the have-nots, in our country and in our world; but I think the pandemic has exacerbated that. Everybody has said the same thing. I’m not saying anything new, but by seeing it, literally seeing it on a daily basis, the students at my school, what we were able to do for them and with them by being in a private school, versus what my son experienced in a public school right down the street, literally night and day; entirely different experiences, and yet we’re both in the same household.
[00:43:32] Same thing with my older kids who are in college: What they experienced in a public institution, in college, during this time, was very, very different. That’s the first thing, just pointing out the inequity of the moment; and then recognizing that this inequity is not going away anytime soon. In fact, if anything, it’s going to continue to probably get bigger and wider; which is something we absolutely have to address head on.
[00:44:02] I know that’s the conversation across the country and across the world, but for me, when I think of what EdTech folks need to think about, they need to be dramatically aware of that. If they are not addressing that inequity in some way, they are becoming more of the problem than the solution. That even comes down to understanding the dynamics of schools today.
[00:44:32] We are still in a pandemic. Even though schools are back in session, is a weird, wild world right now. Private school, public schools, everybody’s burnt out, massively burnt out. Everybody is still dealing with not only the personal effects of the pandemic; but also, on a daily basis, life is not back to normal. Of course, we all say, “what is the normal; we don’t know a normal.” Agreed to all of that.
[00:45:00] But we just have to recognize that the burnout is coming from the fact that we all want it to be over, and we all are moving as fast as we can to have it be like normal; but it’s not normal. That’s making us work 10 times faster, as well. If you’re not aware of that, and you work in EdTech, and you’re trained to get your product in front of educators, and you’re not aware of what they are currently feeling, you are risking alienating all of those potential customers from the outset.
[00:45:33] You cannot market to them like you marketed pre-pandemic. It’s impossible. I still get cold emails. I get tons of cold emails all the time, sometimes cold calls. I know. We did that in my EdTech companies, as well; but there’s not even a moment to finish that voicemail. It’s delete, delete, delete. It was like that before, but now it’s every single one. You can’t, also, reach educators the way you could before with some of the in-person events.
[00:46:02] It’s a very different time to be trying to reach educators. Here’s what I’d say. Here’s my only advice. You don’t need to work so hard. If your product is valuable, especially at this moment in time, we all know. Look at all the products that thrived during this. Educators are in high need. They will find you. They will come to you. All you need to do is support them. I think the good EdTech companies today know that, because their volume went way up.
[00:46:33] They’re just scrambling to support them; no need to over market, no need to oversell; in fact, no need to even improve your products dramatically. It’s all about customer service, stability, and supporting those customers at this moment in time. That’s your best marketing. The teachers will market for you. That’s what we found at Zaption. The more we just let the teachers market for us – I can still tell you the best day.
[00:46:58] The best day for us was, we had just put out a new website. We had been launched for about maybe six months, but we revamped our public website. We came up with an intro video that talked about, essentially, how you shouldn’t just watch videos. You should learn from them. That became our slogan: Don’t just watch. Learn. I can tell you exactly. Within weeks, we started seeing educators post their own videos online about how to create Zaption.
[00:47:28] We didn’t have to create our own support materials. Teachers were doing it for us, and they would all use our language. We said, “don’t just watch; learn.” They said the same thing. “Don’t just watch. Learn. Make sure you get some value out of these interactive videos and use data that’s meaningful.” They used all our language. We didn’t have to do anything, and it was because it spoke to them.
[00:47:52] We providing a solution that solved a big problem for them around video, that they couldn’t use it meaningfully in the ways that they wanted to and know what students were learning from it. Once we gave them the right language to talk about it, it just exploded; and we didn’t have to do anything.
Elana Leoni:
[00:48:11] It brings back to, be a human first. Be empathy-driven, especially in this time of educators. You talked about all the things that are going on, but on top of that, there’s a severe anxiety of just the uncertainty; but, beyond the uncertainty, safety. I have educators break down and have first panic attacks that they’ve never had before, because they’re worried about their own safety in the classroom, just on and on and on.
[00:48:40] Imagine someone coming to you with a hard sell in the middle of it all. Like you said, your product will shine through all of this, if it’s truly making a difference. Connect with them. Care. Be human first, and the rest of it will lead. I know that sometimes in the sales, they tell you that in order for a means to an end. What if you just authentically connected to them and listened to them? They will eventually [unintelligible 00:49:04] for you.
Chris Walsh:
[00:49:06] Yes, absolutely. The last thing I would just say is, I think everybody recognizes – you, me, everybody – that we’re all burnt out on online interactions. We’re burnt out on Zoom. We’re burnt out on just being online. You have to recognize that. You have to know that, what you could do a year ago at the beginning of the pandemic, or March, April of 2020, where everybody was on Zoom, and it was the only way that we could connect with people, and it was still interesting, and people were doing webinars and blah, blah, blah, that moment has passed.
[00:49:44] We’re all burnt out on Zoom, and what everybody wants is really, human, authentic interaction, like you’re talking about. That’s why Clubhouse is taking off, because it’s audio. It’s not video. It’s a different mode, because we’re burnt out on the video, rightfully so. Now, I’m not a huge fan of Clubhouse. That’s a whole different conversation, but I will say that you have to know the right methods for the right moment in time. It’s a challenging moment.
[00:50:13] You can’t see people at conferences. Conferences are virtual, but people are burnt out on virtual. You can’t hold as many webinars. You’re going to get low volume on webinars, because that moment has passed. Now, it’ll all come back, right? But it’s going to come back in moderation. You’ve got to find where teachers are willing to engage with you today, knowing that you only have them for a few minutes, and don’t expect more than a few minutes out of them. They only have a limited amount of time anyhow, and now it’s even less; so don’t push it.
[00:50:45] It’s an invitation to engage, but don’t invite them every week. Don’t invite them every two weeks. Maybe it’s once a month you invite them to engage with you. Know that they’ve got a million other invites for the same thing and a million other responsibilities. There’s no way that you’re going to get a huge critical mass at this point.
Elana Leoni:
[00:51:04] Yes, really helpful. As marketers, we’re always trying to figure out just where our audience is at. Like you said, it’s sometimes not even changing the medium, but now you interact on the channel as well. Not only are new mediums and channels popping up, but it’s how you use it as well. We’re constantly tweaking that if you’re audience forward, and you’re trying to build a community, and community-centered as business.
[00:51:30] Anyways, I could talk forever with you. I get so inspired every time we talk together. I thank you so much for your time. I think, to close out, I’d like to ask you one question that we tend to ask all of our audience around inspiration. Especially in this time of anxiety and burnout, I’d be curious. What do you do, potentially, that inspires you? Is it something that you’re currently reading? Is it a Netflix show? Is it an exercise routine? What gets you going when you have those days that you’re just like, “wow, I’m just going to count the hours because I’m feeling overwhelmed?”
Chris Walsh:
[00:52:07] I wish I could say it was exercise, although I did recently buy an electric bike. I’ve been riding it to school every day, and even though it’s cheating, and I fully recognize that an e-bike is cheating, it’s just enough to get me outdoors. That does inspire me, but it’s not exercise. My first thought was the interaction with students and teachers; and, in particular, students. I can have a terrible day.
[00:52:38] Every day in the classroom, you have the opportunity for it to be awesome, to be a hero, or to be a villain, right? Every once in a while, when I have a bad day, then the next day comes around, and I have a great interaction with a student or two students, or what have you. For me, it’s about students; and then I’ll add onto that that it’s about when I see students deeply engaged in something meaningful. Right now we’re building a tiny house with 30 young women.
[00:53:08] It’s an amazing project. I learn something new every single day. I make mistakes every single day. So do they, but it’s an incredible project. When you see them engaged in working on this tiny house and designing it, collaborating, and literally putting bolts into steel and cutting steel, that’s inspiring. That’s completely inspiring in so many ways.
[00:53:32] The last thing, though, to be honest – I won’t be the last person to admit this – I find Ted Lasso really inspiring. Now granted, he’s a white male, around the same age, and all that stuff. I recognize that there’s lots of bias in this, but just the positivity of the show, the second season was a little different than first season, admittedly; but I just love that. I think anybody who is a coach or has to rally people, whether it’s students or teachers, around something; and also has to be human and authentic and fail; it’s pretty inspiring.
[00:54:14] I’d be lying if there weren’t so Ted Lasso-isms that haven’t showed up on my big media wall here at the school, or brought him into my class, or even in my coaching, because I coach basketball, too. I find that inspiring at the moment, and I’m just really thankful that there’s people out there who brought something enjoyable like that into the world.
Elana Leoni:
[00:54:34] Yes, it reminds us all. Kindness is a choice that you can choose every day, optimism. The first season was interesting, because there were so many opportunities for him to be pessimistic. He was just doing his own thing and being optimistic. I loved that, his cheesy “believe” sign. Do you have one of those?
Chris Walsh:
[00:54:55] Right, yes. I love it. That’s what keeps me going, but I’m also just one of the crazy people. I’m interested in learning something new, and there’s a school out in San Francisco. It’s one of my favorite schools, called brightworks. Everybody should go check it out. It’s a micro school, started by Gever Tulley, just like unbelievably amazing. Their tagline is, “everything’s interesting.” I realized when I heard that. I was like, “yes, that’s how I find the world; everything is interesting.”
[00:55:28] Some things are more interesting than others, but that’s how I approach life. Whether it’s a conversation with another person, where I can delve deep into what they’re interested in; or whether it’s just finding something I’m interested in and having the freedom to go and explore it, and then figure out how to bring it to teachers and kids or my family; then that’s just how I approach everything.
Elana Leoni:
[00:55:51] Awesome. Well, we’ll put links to everything you’ve talked about in our show notes. Our show notes, you can find them at leoniconsultinggroup.com/5, making it super easy for you. It’s just our would, backslash five. You’ll get all of the links that Chris is talking about. In addition, we’ll show you how to get in contact with Chris. Chris, for vocal reasons, do you want to just talk about what’s the best way for people to follow you, get inspired by you, maybe to look about the tiny-house project, if that’s online?
Chris Walsh:
[00:56:23] Yes. I would say, I’m the worst at sharing all the stuff that I’m doing. You’d think that I’d have a website that had it all, and I don’t. You can follow me on Twitter. I don’t post there very often, but it’s @fitzwalsh. I’m on LinkedIn, too, of course. You can also look at my podcast, which is school180.com. For me, that’s a passion project around having great conversations with other educators and learning from them, learning together, and also using it as a way to get back to them. If you listen to the podcast, you’ll see. You can check that out.
[00:57:00] I’m also open. I love talking to anybody about all this stuff, so you’re welcome to just email me at cwalsh@carondeleths.org, or my personal email. You can find that as well [unintelligible 00:57:12] online pretty easily. Hit me up. I’d love to learn from you and have conversation about how we can continue to change the world.
Elana Leoni:
[00:57:22] Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for sitting down with us today. I learned so much.
Chris Walsh:
Yes, thank you.
Elana Leoni:
I know our audience learned so much, and there are many times where you were talking where I literally had goosebumps, and I hope the audience does as well, as they start figuring out. This is just a hard time we’re all living in. We’re all trying to figure it out, but I hope I can provide people like you, that have had decades in the school system, out of the school system. We’re all just here, mission driven, trying to make an impact.
[00:57:51] Hopefully we share some words of wisdom for you all, as you all navigate the wonderful world of edtech.
Chris Walsh:
[00:58:01] Thank you, Elana. Thank you for the opportunity to chat. I always love talking with you, and I’m always inspired by the work that you do that’s amazing but, more importantly, the [unintelligible 00:58:10] own particular passion around education and your desire to make the world a better place. I’m glad that you’re doing this, and I’m glad that, maybe, one or two people out there might find some value in it.
Elana Leoni:
[00:58:25] Yes, hopefully, one person beyond my mom, who gives me notes on this, every single episode.
Chris Walsh:
[00:58:31] I know the feeling. I know the feeling.
Elana Leoni:
All right, and again, you can all access the show notes at leoniconsultinggroup.com/5, and we will see you all next time on another episode of “All Things Marketing and Education.” Thank you all.
[End of recorded material at 00:58:47]
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Chris Fitzgerald Walsh, Guest
Chris Walsh is an experienced educator, media producer, and entrepreneur passionate about using digital tools to bring large scale innovations to teaching and learning. Chris started his career as a middle school teacher, and since then has held leadership positions with
In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with family, traveling, walk-n-talks, and searching for the perfect (gluten-free) chocolate chip cookie. His daughter, Kathryn, graduated Carondelet in 2018.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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