This interview was originally recorded on March 7, 2023, 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:
Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, ed tech entrepreneurs and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education.
This week I am so excited to be sitting down with Austin Rhodes. He is the president and co-founder of Rhodes Branding. He's going to tell you a little bit about what they do, but as a little bit of a spoiler alert, they are a K-12 marketing communications agency and they partner with schools, districts, and organizations serving K-12 education. He lives and breathes this space that all of you are in, that I am in, that we all love, and I'm excited to pick his brain. Today, we are going to be talking about all things branding, and it's okay if you don't know what that means, because I feel like the more marketers you talk to, they spin it in different ways anyways. We're going to hear from Austin about what it means.
If you're an educator, what does it mean to start your own brand? If you are an ed tech organization, what does it mean to invest? How do you know you successfully created a new brand, and what does it do? There's lots of questions to unpack here, and I'm excited to get started. But before we do, we're going to talk a little bit about Austin, just so you understand the breadth of his knowledge, which is really exciting. In addition to driving the growth, culture, and strategy for Rhodes Branding, so he's at the top, kind of like me, and we joke we have 10 million hats. We're doing lots of things all the time, but what I like about him is he's also a successful early stage investor.
He spends a lot of his time investing into businesses of what works and making sure that they are sustainable and successful, too. As I was stalking you on LinkedIn, Austin, I love that you're on boards. You are not just saying you want to improve education, you are spending and volunteering and rolling up your sleeves to actually do it. You are on the board of, and you can correct me, but the Social and Emotional Learning Alliance for South Carolina, so SEL for SC, is that correct?
Austin Rhodes:
Yup. Yeah, that's right.
Elana Leoni:
Then, the South Carolina Association of School Administrators. You get to hang out with the admin folk and roll up your sleeves some of the challenges there. Lastly, he holds a bachelor's degree in education from Clemson. Welcome, Austin. I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's a great treat.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, so let's jump into some things. Let's start with just talking a little bit about more about you. Why did you decide to start Rhodes Branding? I know you are a serial entrepreneur. I saw all the businesses that you've started, but why in K-12 education? It's probably good to know that you started this with your brother, too.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, everything, it all goes back to family. I think there were a few moments where a light bulb went off. It really, I know, happened in a front office of a school where I heard some interaction between a parent and a student and a faculty member, and just sitting there kind of a fly on the wall. I thought, "What could I do to help this situation?" Obviously, not stand up, I'm going to stay seated. But as a interested in business and interested in trying to figure out how to solve problems, that's really what gets me so jazzed about business in general is, as long as you're using it for the right reasons, you can solve some of the biggest issues in our society.
That is where the idea for creating a strategic agency that brings people to these clients and not another software system tool. It's really, I think, needed more than ever, especially in this space. But education as a whole, really a lot of folks wear 10 different hats and usually the branding and the marketing component of it is that tenth hat. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, and that's cool. I would say a lot of us that come to education say, "I want to make a difference." Maybe one of our current expertise that we can improve and jump into the dialogue and not just add to the noise. That's what I love about what your team does, is really how do we become authentic? How do we jump in a way that adds value and not ... I think when we were talking previously to this call, you said not be predatory or not be aggressive and things like that. This industry has so much pressure already. How can we truly make a difference in the way that is close to our hearts and how we live and breathe our world?
Austin Rhodes:
Right. Yeah, with any business venture, you have to do your research, you have to ask a lot of questions. Going into this, we heard a lot of reasons why it wouldn't work and couldn't work and shouldn't work. For me, that's just fuel to the fire. But knowing that it's needed, knowing that a lot of people haven't focused a lot of time on it, because it was going to be difficult. I see obstacles as opportunities. Going into this, we selfishly threw our name on it because it was a little bit of a challenge to ourselves, "Hey, let's throw our name on it. Let's put a sign on the outside of the office. Let's own this. Let's stick it out."
Of course, three months into launching it, COVID hit. Through the thick and thin we're seeing this out. We are really seeing great traction. The market is really accepting us for what we're doing, and it's really such a massive need. I'm diagnosed, I'm ADD, so to have such a massive market and to not really know where to focus, it's tough for me. Fortunately, I'm surrounded by a great team that says, "Austin, that's a squirrel right now. No, we have to go in this direction." Yeah, and we come from a long line of educators. My mom taught and she was in a Title 1 school district as a special ed teacher. Got into administration, just seeing her passion for it.
Spending my summers in the classroom scraping chewing gum off the bottom of desk and pulling desks out to the hall to paint classrooms. It's just in my blood. I feel like as a business person, as an entrepreneur, if I can provide a decade of my life to this market and to provide value and to really make a difference, that's what legacy I want to lead for my daughters. Pretty simple.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, and speaking of branding and telling your story, when I go to your website, it really comes through. When I talk to you, that also comes through. It's like, I was raised by an educator. I wanted to make a difference. We saw an opportunity. We saw schools not really understanding their own narrative and their own story, and the power of branding and education organizations as well. Why don't we get into branding? We've talked about the B word many times here. What is it and maybe what is it not? Because I think we have different conceptions, and I think when people also think about branding, if you're an educator listening, you're like, "Oh, those are people that are narcissists and they just talk about themselves." It's more than that, too. Why don't you start? I'm going to kick it over to you, what is it?
Austin Rhodes:
Well, it's again, a term that is definitely tossed around a lot. We like to say what it isn't. It's not easy. That's the first thing. It's not easy. It is something that is not just visual. A lot of folks do think that they will skim the front office, they will change their logo and all of their problems will go away. That's a pipe dream. It really boils down to leadership taking charge of this, it's culture. You hear all the time about culture and climate, climate culture. It really is about owning those parts of your culture and sharing it with your audience so that you stand out. That is what we feel like is very much needed in K-12, especially the traditional publics.
They have a real uphill battle with this because they have to be a little bit of everything to everyone. When it comes to branding, that is extremely difficult because you can't go after one specific audience. They're fortunate to have programs and departments that all have their own value and their own competitive advantage in the market, but to say, "Hey, let's create this messaging just for this massive district and win over the hearts and souls of everyone." When you're competing against smaller institutions that do have a special offering and can go after a special audience. Getting off topic of your question, branding Chick-fil-A, for example, when they say, my pleasure, when you say thank you, that's something a lot of these schools are already ... They're already incorporating a lot of this into their day to day.
They just don't call it branding. They aren't owning it. Obviously, at Chick-fil-A in the training is when someone says, thank you, say my pleasure. That's part of their brand. Everything down to the cleanliness of your internal and external spaces has a lot to do with it. If you go into a school and just go walk to the teacher's lounge, if it's this space for misfit furniture and hodgepodge coffee maker, that's part of your brand. You can own it or you can improve it, but that's really all the little things. The little things are really what your brand is. Then, of course, you have all the visual, the logos, the creative aspects of it, but a lot of it is the small things.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, so what I'm hearing from you is branding is not just changing a website and changing your color palette. It's so much more. It's how you yourself as leadership within the organization, but ideally how your entire staff and your culture permeates and talks and positions themselves. It's like mission, vision, but it's all the other little things that add up. Is that correct?
Austin Rhodes:
Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right. Honestly, cheapening the brand is done by only focusing on the visuals and saying, "Hey, this is our brand. We did a branding exercise. This is it." It's so much deeper, you're leaving so much on the table. It is just a great honor for our team to be able to be in the room with these educational leaders when they're having these discussions and figuring out what do we want to own, how do we want to compete? Who do we want to go after? What metrics are we trying to just blow out of the park? It's just a great honor to just be in the room with these discussions happening.
Elana Leoni:
Do you feel like when you're in those rooms, because it's really cool to have a seat at the table when you're with these school leaders saying, "Who are we?" But sometimes the word, the phrase trickles into who ought we be, to win the business or to get the enrollment. Because sometimes there's that pressure of saying things that maybe that's not even who they are, but they know people have keywords associated with them. Do you find there's a little group think sometimes that you need to say, "No, embrace your differentiation, embrace your uniqueness as well."
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, yeah. Everyone's different. Own that difference and be honest with your community about it. Charge your community to be a part of owning it as well. The brand loyalty, you hear a lot about in the private sector, how do we get consumers to come back and buy our product again? How do we upsell and get them to buy more of our product? It's been very taboo in education, especially K-12, mostly K-12, to talk about consumer experience, customer experience, it really to a lot of purest educators, my mom included, it feels like it's cheapening what you're doing. It feels like you're just blurring over into retail or private sector, and that is something that shouldn't happen.
But just the mindset of, how do we finesse these experiences to get people to want to tell people about it and want more and tell their cousins they want to be in this school, they want to be in this school district. That kind of attitude trickling down, trickling up, side to side is beautiful when you see it. Because when you have it, the retention of the faculty and staff is through the roof. The student engagement, the community engagement is through the roof. We've all, as a country, I feel like lost our way a little bit in terms of focusing on what matters. We all fell in the trap of going after that shiny object. I'm pretty sure that it's going to get maybe a little bit worse before it gets better, but the pendulum will swing back.
I feel like focusing back on community, back in our school systems, really identifying, that is a massive need for improvement. I'm not saying that it's not doing what it should, but if everyone just gave a little bit of their time and a little bit more of their love to their local school systems, it would make a massive difference. Yeah, just honored to be a small piece of this pendulum shift.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, so there's lots to unpack with branding. There's a lot of elements within it. I guess let's talk about how do we make it less overwhelming? Either I'm an ed tech brand or I'm a school rethinking, or even I'm an individual. How do I even start thinking about, "Gosh, what is my brand?" How do I prioritize these elements that you talked about within branding?
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah. Excuse me. The focusing on what you want to get out of it. Let's start at the end and let's figure out for an ed tech company, if it's engagement from their clients, if it is new customers, if it's revenue, looking at little things you can do. You don't, a lot of times, see a massive rebrand in terms of everything gets overdone just overnight, redone overnight. Starting somewhere and just beginning to have those conversations, it's not that overwhelming. It really isn't. Don't take yourself too seriously in this process. People are trained on this, but don't take it too seriously. Let it be fun, but be metric focused. Make sure you can track what you're doing, you're getting some value out of it.
Yeah, just start small. That's one thing that we always recommend to clients, is just start small. Don't come out and redo everything. First off, that's extremely expensive. It's very stressful. Test and start small.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, and maybe on top of that, as you were talking, I'm wondering, there are so many elements that come into branding. As you are in your day-to-day, you're like, "Oh, maybe I say this and we don't say this." Or, "Gosh, I keep saying this phrase, this must be something we care about collectively. Have we ever written this down? Do we have talking points about this?" I think the first step to anything probably is just awareness, right?
Austin Rhodes:
Right. Yeah, it is. That is something that is exciting right now. We're being asked to present at all these regional and national events. It is definitely a topic of discussion right now. Really, the cultural relevancy in getting people to take it seriously, the big brands of the world, the Dunkin' Donuts and the Starbucks', those two entities competing with one another. Multinational, multi-billion dollar entities, huge teams, a lot of resources. They're finessing what they're doing from a branding perspective and setting the bar so high. As a consumer, you don't even realize it that your expectation is Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts or Southwest Airlines or Panera Bread, or you name a big brand that has a lot of competition.
They're setting the bar so high that when you as a consumer experience a brand that is not as teased out and not as finesse as those, you have this gut feel of, this isn't relevant, this is outdated, hesitation. That is one of my biggest fears within K-12, is taking it seriously because my generation, millennials, Gen Z's, parents that are coming into this space, you could have a really great school that does not take all those little touchpoints seriously and could possibly turn off a parent who just didn't have time to research it. That is my biggest fear, is that we have students in schools that there's a better school for him or her right down the street.
Elana Leoni:
We've talked a little bit about how important it is, but branding lives in our world too. At LCG we do organic social media management, we do content marketing, we do community building. These are all things that are very important that really relate to branding. A lot of the times if clients come to us and they don't have the fundamental branding elements, I say, "Well, let's start from the beginning. You need some foundation. I need to know what you stand for." It carefully intertwines with storytelling. It's like their why, why did they start? What do they hope to accomplish? They've potentially done some competitor research and said, "Here's how we stand apart.
This is what really pulls at our heartstrings." Because I know you talk about the heart a lot in branding. If you do that well, you will attract the right people. You work a lot with schools. I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about how you use branding within schools. I think a lot of it has to do with enrollment, where they're trying to attract different students and up their enrollment. How do they begin to say, "Gosh, we could do better." What do they focus on? Can they see that difference between, I know it's hard because it's a dotted line, it's not like, "Hey, because of this logo change, I now want to be your student." But can you talk a little bit about that experience and what you see generally as a result?
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. We're a third party, so we come in a lot of times not knowing anything about a community that we're working in. We don't come in with any bias towards any school, any part of town. We just want to look at what the situation is, what are the test scores, what's the retention rate of students, but also faculty. Something that we get tapped for a lot is, of course, marketing. It is a lot of times involving the adults. Recruiting the faculty and staff for these institutions. As we see tighter labor markets, you have companies like myself that are out recruiting and I'm going after. Sometimes we have teachers apply and we have half hired from school systems in schools.
As you see a labor market tightening, more schools coming online, more specialized programs, the competition for the adults are really ramping up. Yeah, a lot of times we have clients come to us and they just want to jump into digital marketing, and have never spent any time focusing on really what their ethos is and how we can get that across in a way that folks would digest it and then make a decision. Yeah, competitive analysis is key. Then, also the beautiful part about our role is that we can be a little bit of an instigator and say, "Really? Is that all you're doing?" "Oh, well, I forgot that we're also doing this." It's like, "You forgot you're doing that. That's unbelievable. We have to capture that."
That's the beautiful part about our role, is we're not a lot of times creating anything. We're just being there instigating what already is happening and getting it out of them.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, I love that point though because especially in education, whether we are educators in the classroom coaching other educators or education leaders at schools, there is a sense of humbleness. There also is a sense of isolation, that they don't know what they're doing. What they are doing is actually really great comparatively. They do so much every day. It's just like, "Okay, another day went by." I think if you're an educator or a school leader listening, if you can take away one thing, is start small like Austin said, but have that awareness. Really think about it and almost be that Austin on your shoulder of like, "Wow, you are doing this. Wow, this is cool."
Start documenting those things too. As parents come to you, other stakeholders in education, and they bring things up and you're like, "Oh, you really like that? Okay, let's record that too." It's a little bit like detective work, right?
Austin Rhodes:
It really is. Yeah. Something else too, you're right, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, it has its highs and its lows. It has a lot of drudgery in between. I think I know the most beautiful part about being in education is seeing the outcomes of these young people years down the road. Something that our agency is really focused on, again, instigating this and being the antagonist, is figuring out where those stories are that need to be shared with the community. A lot of folks, especially in rural areas, if they "make it", they don't come back. Folks don't know those stories. We need to help try to find those, dig those up, and produce content that, again, the audience expects.
They expect Netflix quality now, an original series is the quality everyone expects. Tell a story in a way that people see. They say, "Wow, that individual grew up down the same bumpy road that I grew up down 20 years ago and is now off in Chicago as a district attorney or as a surgeon, or as the founder of a nonprofit doing massive good in their community. Never had any idea that they were in my shoes 20 years ago in this same small community." That's a big emphasis on us. It not only helps the students, but it helps the folks working in those institutions. The school systems stay motivated and remember why they're there.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, we just did a workshop on my team around storytelling as it relates to social media, but storytelling intertwines with branding and intertwines with PR and comms. It intertwines with social media on the ground, community, content marketing. But when you are a school leader, the one thing, when I used to train a lot of school leaders around social media, I would talk to them about all the benefits. The only thing that would resonate with them is saying, "It is your responsibility to be a chief storyteller of what the awesome things are going on in your district or school." They're like, "Okay, I can get behind that. Everything else, I'm really uncomfortable with, and I understand the benefits."
But once I spun it that way, their role was, it wasn't selfish for them to tell their story or even understand what their story was. It was, let's get it out as much as possible, and to tell the stories of their teachers and their students and their parents. That stuff just makes me smile.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, it is unbelievable how much greatness is happening every day behind those doors and in those hallways. That's what we're out to change the narrative around. If you look at the funding cycles and how much resources are allocated towards marketing when it comes to K-12, and you compare that to the private sector, to higher ed, it's dismal, it's so tiny that you wonder why there's a negative spin on what's going on. Of course, you're already going to be battling the media and what you read, it's usually negative. But then, you look at a lot of our friends that are the communications offices in these schools for the size of the institution, for the size of the entity that they're working for, the amount of resources they have are so small. That's what we're up against.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, for sure. I want to selfishly bring up design a little bit and its role in branding.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, let's do it.
Elana Leoni:
I love design. I am blessed to have a wonderful designer on my team. I know you all just hired a director of design that I was very jealous of. I was like, "Wow, they get a senior full-time employee around design." But let's kick off a conversation around the role of design with branding, because if you're a school and say maybe you haven't paid attention to your WordPress site circa 1990, and you have the same colors, your school colors, and you say, "Oh, it's good enough. It gets the information across that it needs. It's very tactical." Or, if I'm an ed tech organization, and maybe I'm just starting out, so I don't have a lot of design resources at my disposal.
I think right now design has moved so much forward to DIY that you can do it in a tasteful way too. Do you want to just talk about the role of design and how do you approach it intertwining with branding?
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah. Again, I think starting small, making sure you know who is "in charge", making sure that there's at least one person that things have to go through to get published. That's a lot of times what we find is a pain point. There's 10 different social media accounts. We don't really know who has access. It's just stuff getting pushed out. Sometimes less is best. If you tell a bunch of stories that everyone, they know the end of the story two words in, a lot of times that ends up becoming noise. Finding those very impactful stories are key. But when it comes to design, it's really about creating a bank of resources that you can use.
Again, the Canvas of the world have really changed the game in terms of templating for social media. But that also you want to make sure you have a professional look over what you've templated, and/or making sure it aligns with the brand guidelines of your institution because it's so easy to get away with. Yeah, so design is key. Again, it's that cultural relevancy. You're not going to see Starbucks pump something out that just has a funky template or off colors and fonts.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, I think what I look for in branding is, and I tell people specifically in social media, is if I took away your logo, is there a way that people would understand that this is you? That it looks and feels like you all of the time, and it's cohesive. Within social media, I try to push brands to go a little bit extended pass to their guidelines. We almost redefine them per each social media channel to cater a little bit towards what the algorithm wants. But that's really important to have this cohesive, mature, and when I say mature, I can easily spot design and say, "Oh, there's a mature brand behind it. They've made some design choices."
It's a cohesive entity across all social channels, across all of their website. It makes such a big difference. Sometimes people judge you and will make the big decisions just based on what you look like. Are you modern? Are you easy to read? Those kind of things, right?
Austin Rhodes:
I know. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's true. It's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't. I tell the story all the time. My mother will be extremely upset with me when I tell this story and it's recorded. But she was an English teacher after working in the special ed department for a while, and she is the queen of really eight fonts, highlighted, bolded, italicized, one-pagers, and an unbelievable educator. If she gave that one-pager to someone, they're going to think, "Oh, I'm trusting my child to this educator?" It should not be judging. It should not be a judging component, but it is. Unfortunately, again, we're living in a world where the standards are set so high by these big institutions and big brands that your gut will just tell you something just feels off about that. Yeah, you're right. It has to be taken seriously.
Elana Leoni:
Yup, so I would say one of the things that resonated is less is more from what you said, so really make sure. If you don't have brand guidelines or don't even know what they are and you're an educator, just think about what are the colors you want to be associated with, what are the font types? Canva makes it super easy where you can load in your color palette and your fonts too, and have really just a cohesive look. I keep saying that word for a little bit of bingo action here, but it's really important that it looks and feels like you, and it aligns with you telling a story, but it's not like jazz hands, comic songs, eight different fonts like you were saying.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, the confetti bombs.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah. I would say, just for a recap on design, people always say, "Oh, that's a nice to have." I would argue it's a must have. It's a must have when in the world of images and creative is where you stop the scrolling, is where people go to your website and judge you immediately. They go on your social and judge you immediately. If you can't stop the scroll or stop them from bouncing off your website, you've lost them. Design plays such a critical part in that.
Austin Rhodes:
Yes, it is. Well, I think you see a lot of, so the career technical education sector, previously known as the vocational schools, trade schools, they're really taking this and running with it. They know that they need to drive participation in their programs. They know that they are up against a stigma that has been around for 50 years. Creating content, owning their brand, there's really cool stuff happening in that, the CTE space. But yeah, the whole environment is really becoming more competitive. It's the pressures that we're seeing today. Fortunately, a lot of the ed tech friends of ours, the power schools of the world, they're implementing into their software and their offerings, making sure those brand guidelines are taken seriously.
A lot of times if they don't have brand guidelines, they're recommending them to go have somebody help you formulate what those are and bring those back. We'll set you up while we can, but you really should have this done. Really hats off to almost all the ed techs out there right now. We see you at all the conferences. You're great to us. We're just honored to be asked to be in the room and to help their clients because we're in this together.
Elana Leoni:
One of the questions I asked right before was, gosh, how do I know when it's really time to prioritize branding? If I'm a school, I'm sure the signs are different if I'm a school versus or if I'm an ed tech organization, but when should I prioritize it? Are there things that I was like, oh, that's the sign I need to do it. It's probably different for everyone and it's a very hard question. But I would say, what are the signs and what are the perceived ROI that we can ... because you said start with your goals first. I want to be able to make sure that people walk away and go, here's how branding can help us with these goals.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah. You teed it up perfectly. It's a tough question. If there's leadership changes, and that could be board, the head of school, head of district, leadership change, it could be going into a new market. You have a new product or you have a new initiative that you want to really focus on, so K-12, CTE, real big focus, workforce development. It could be that you had maybe a bad event happen that you are wanting to let calm down and then re-energize your community around your brand. It could be just the fact that you realize you've never done anything and you know that now you need to focus on it. That could be for a multitude of reasons why you have that. You could have listened to this podcast, you could have heard a session, somebody may have mentioned it to you.
You may have new competitors entering into your space. The metrics, again, every department, the institution will have different metrics that they're really focused on. Student performance, faculty retention, recruitment, those vacancies, keeping people longer, filling that pipeline of top talent, community engagement. Seeing an uptick in people wanting to volunteer, wanting to give off their time and money, and students knocking the doors down to be at your school, showing up on time, showing up early, attendance, graduation rates. These are all things that our internal motto is, we want to get kids to run the school. If we're doing our job right, then we're creating a brand. We're creating really gravitating and inspiring content, and people want to be a part of that.
Hats off to my university, Clemson, a plug to them, they've really focused a lot on it. They've really spent a lot of time 15 years ago on owning their brand, a little small school up in the northern part of South Carolina, but huge turnaround. Not saying they were going in the wrong direction, but that's really where I started to focus on and was really, I wouldn't say indoctrinated with it, but where I found out how important it was.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, I think that as people are hearing Austin speak and go, how does branding do that? Know that branding is more than just what we are talking about design, branding is all of the things that encapsulate who you are. What Austin and his team and other organizations do is they just help you point it out and make sure you're consistent and that it echoes into everything you do. If you do that consistently, you're going to attract those type of people that are attracted to it, too. I just want to connect the dots because in my head I'm like, "Okay, changing a color is not going to do all the things that Austin said."
Austin Rhodes:
No.
Elana Leoni:
But it's the whole shebang, but also starting small and building upon it with all of those elements, like you said.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, it's a mindset. It's a mindset to finesse the little things, because a school as a whole is a great entity. It's not producing trash product that's going into a landfill. It's not giving people illicit highs. It is creating an environment that allows young people to thrive. You already have so much greatness. To have the mindset of finessing the little things really just says a lot about you as a school, as a entity, is that you're focused on the little things. Again, the little things in today's society will separate you from the masses, if you just focus on the little things. They've got the big things pretty much taken care of and some of the stuff is out of our control.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, and the little things are what make you you, too. I like how you talked about, it's not just a school leader's decision or if you're in a C-suite, in ed tech, get everyone involved. Get everyone owning. This is yes who we are, and we love it because it really does represent us. That's what breaks my heart in education, is when school leaders leave the culture tends to die, that the school imposed on.
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah.
Elana Leoni:
Branding, I never thought about it, could be a way to carry on really cool, effective culture that people are bought into.
Austin Rhodes:
Right, yeah. You just have a flashcard. What are the three things that everyone can rattle off about your school that sets you apart. If everyone is speaking that same language when I bump into you at a grocery store and you just moved to the community wondering where to send my child. Well, what's the difference in that one and that one? Well, I know that this one has blank, blank, blank. Having everyone speak the same language and really making sure those messages have been thought through and not just off the cuff will be beneficial, massive beneficial asset to you long term.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, and I know that we wanted to talk about all the other things that your team does and we'll have you on as another guest, but to tease out some of the cool things that you're working on that I was like, I don't know anything about that, I want to learn. You do enrollment marketing for school.
Austin Rhodes:
Yes.
Elana Leoni:
That's something I want to have you on at some point and really talk about, because a lot of schools are struggling with differentiation and enrollment, and it all just comes down to branding. Let's talk about that later. I think that we could talk about branding for days and days. I would love to be able to talk to you and more. But in the meantime, why don't you send any branding resources that you have, anything that if you're talking on any panels or you have any recordings you think might help this audience soak it in a little more. I feel like branding is one of those things that people need to listen to and think about and let it marinate and go, "Okay, now it's time. I've heard it enough. We need to up our game."
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, I was in that boat. Again, as a serial entrepreneur, you have to pick where your priorities are and what you're doing today, wearing a bunch of hats. Early stage startups where I have a passion is very similar to education. It is, you're wearing a bunch of different hats. It's a whack-a-mole season. Again, being that ADD child that likes to solve problems, it's extremely enjoyable for me being in this environment. But yeah, I'll send you over any assets and everything we have that you can share with your audience.
Elana Leoni:
Okay, and we have show notes. At the end of the episode, I'll let you all know that are listening that know that if you're taking notes, we usually take notes. You can access the transcript, you can hit the audio and have all the resources around branding, too. We'll have those in the show notes. But Austin, one of the questions we like to ask all of our guests is around inspiration. This is a very inspiring industry to work in. It can also be a very challenging and draining industry to work in. I don't need to tell you that, enough said, but how do you recharge from those long days? Because you are running this company, you're also advising other companies, and you're on the ground at schools. When you're feeling drained, what recharges you? What gets you excited about just tackling the next day?
Austin Rhodes:
Well, I believe happiness is moving towards your full potential. I'm happy when I see improvement day to day. I call Monday my favorite day of the week because it's an opportunity to start over fresh. But to recharge, it's extremely difficult at my stage because I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old daughter at home. My recharge looks like 8:00 PM to 10:30 watching Netflix. But I think getting out in nature is so key. Getting out and walking and hearing the birds chirp, it's key. You have to take care of yourself if you plan on helping others, so it's critical. Don't look at it as being selfish. Just take care of yourself.
Because last week I was in bed for three days. I had a terrible sinus infection that you can probably still hear through the audio today. I just wore myself out. I was no good for anyone for three days.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, thank you for that. I think our audience, especially talking to you educators that are burning the candle at both ends, ed tech leaders, is it's not selfish to take care of you. Because if you don't take care of you, you can't even take care of anyone else anyways, if you want to treat it like a means to an end. I love your perspective on Mondays too, because it made me reframe, gosh, sometimes I just drag into Mondays and I go, "Oh, there's so much to do." It gets overwhelming, but I love your perspective. It's a cherry, "Hey, we have an opportunity to do a lot this week. Let's do what we can and then look back and go, 'Wow, we did a lot.'"
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah. It is extremely annoying, and that's part of the comedy of it. It's like, it's my favorite day. It at least makes people laugh on a Monday because they don't know if I'm telling the truth or not. But yeah, you got to take care of yourself. Recharge, take a break. This is a marathon. It's not a sprint. We'll all have probably six jobs in our lives, so just take a chill pill. It's going to be okay.
Elana Leoni:
Awesome. Well, Austin, how can people get ahold of you? If they're like, "This guy, he knows his branding." How do they get ahold of you? How do they follow Rhodes Branding?
Austin Rhodes:
Yeah, rhodesbranding.com, hit our contact form. Feel free to follow us on any social media. You can find those at the bottom, in the footer. My email is austin@rhodesbranding.com. I would love to hear from anyone, ed tech, higher ed, K-12, parents, students. We're all in this together. Believe it or not, we're all in this together. The more folks I can have conversations with, the better we can do our job and accomplish our goals. Please reach out. Yeah.
Elana Leoni:
Agreed. Well, thank you so much, Austin, for joining us. Everyone, the show notes I've been talking about, so I'll throw in some branding resources. Austin and his team will throw in some resources as well. There will be links to the transcript and you can listen to the audio from the show notes as well. That is Leoni Consulting Group. That's Leoni, L-E-O-N-I, Consulting Group, two Gs, so consultinggroup.com/48. That's the number 48. Thank you, Austin, for your time. I know a lot of you that listen to this podcast are waiting for it, but I would say, try to find one thing that Austin said or maybe even I said around, it might be a mind shift, it might be one practical thing to go look at your style guide, look and see if you have branding guidelines.
Look and see if you can go on your socials or your website and see if it clearly describes who you are and has a look and a feel. I don't care what it is, it can be super small. It can just be a mindset of like, "I'm going to pay attention." But I do this to make sure that you are making change in schools. I have experts on like Austin to help facilitate that. That is your homework, and I will see you all next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode.
We always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter, @LeoniGroup. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.
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.
Austin Rhodes, Guest
Austin Rhodes is a driven entrepreneur and problem solver with a passion for improving the education system. As the co-founder of Rhodes Branding, a K12 marketing and branding agency, he has dedicated himself to creating inclusive and culturally relevant campaigns that address the diverse needs of students, educators, and communities. With a focus on excellence and growth, Austin and his team aim to cultivate a culture of competition that drives positive change in education. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a commitment to innovation, kindness, and success, and is dedicated to making a lasting impact in the world of K12 education.
In addition to his work at Rhodes Branding, Austin Rhodes is also a successful early-stage investor. He has invested in over 12 businesses, using his expertise and business acumen to identify and support promising startups and entrepreneurs.
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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