Transcript: The Power of Storytelling in EdTech

This interview was originally recorded on January 28, 2022, 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:
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, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failure 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.

Hey, everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of All Things Marketing and Education. Today, I have the pleasure of sitting down with the inspiring Ms. Katie Test Davis. She is the founder of Forthright Advising, and she’s going to talk to you a little bit more about that, but it’s a national PR and communications firm that works just with organizations that love kids. She’ll talk to you a lot more about that. And Katie, be prepared. This is where I get to gush about how awesome you are. [Laughs] And for those of you going to see the video, she’s laughing. As a founder of anything, we don’t get compliments much or at all, and we don’t give ourselves credit for all of the things we do pretty much ever. And every single time I do something, I say, “Great, we got it done, but we could always do it better.”

Katie:
Yeah.

Elana:
So it’s this vicious cycle. With that said, I want to talk to you a little bit about Katie. Katie was recently selected by Forbes as their Next 1,000 Class of 2021, which is a huge honor. And she can talk to you a little bit about that, but she might not because she’s humble. Katie and I met pretty much a lifetime ago, it feels like. I was running marketing at Edutopia. Katie was running all things PR and comms at ASCD. And I got to meet up with her probably once a year in person and went to her press room and really would just go there to steal all of her cool stuff, like we got power banks and things like that. [Laughs]

Katie:
Those were great days.

Elana:
Those were. But in all seriousness, I really admired you from afar for so long. Katie is warm.

Katie:
The feeling is so mutual. Stop it.

Elana:
Katie is warm and bubbly, and you’ll get that from this. She’s also very assertive and incredibly intelligent. As the CEO of Forthright Advising, she’s also attracted an awesome team. And I hope that people say this about me, too, because I love my team so much; but your team really complements you, and I’ve been nothing but impressed by them as well. And I admire your protection and guidance of them and just utmost respect for them. So Katie is one of those people you want to follow on LinkedIn as well, so look her up, Katie Test Davis. Because she inspires me when I log in, and she talks about how team culture is important, how work/life balance is important, so many things that really align with LCG values.

Anyways, I could go on and on about Katie, but I really feel truly blessed to have you in my orbit, Katie. I feel like you are a Slack message away. And I feel very blessed to be able to collaborate with you and have your support with our crazy journeys of trying to figure out what we’re doing starting our own thing. So I’m going to let Katie introduce herself. But after that, we’re going to get into some great stuff about the power of storytelling. So welcome, Katie, to All Things Marketing and Education.

Katie:
Oh my gosh, that was an amazing introduction. Thank you. That’s going to make my weekend. So yes, I think you’ve touched on a lot of things from my background. So I grew up the daughter of two special education professors. Both of my parents taught at UNC Charlotte. And so equity and doing the right thing for kids, that was our kitchen table conversation every night. And I think the apple just doesn’t fall far from the tree. So I fell in love with doing PR and marketing in college, but I was always drawn to doing it for education, right? So I worked, yeah, at a couple different public school districts and then also at ASCD, but then have worked for a lot of nonprofits in the child and family space as the communications director for Children’s Law Center.

So when my husband got a job down in North Carolina, and we were making our homecoming, or I was making my homecoming, back to my home state, I couldn’t find quite the right job. So I very brazenly decided to invent one for myself, not realizing how hard it is to start your own company. But you’re right. It has been quite an amazing journey and certainly a real way to live my values. And I think you touched on that a little bit with the things that I care most about. I think it’s weird when you start a company; you don’t realize it’s going to be such an expression of who you are, right?

Elana:
Yeah. And for me, when I started LCG, I thought I would get the most – I would be most rewarded for work I did with the brands. And that still drives me, and it still drives my team, and I feel really humble to be able to work alongside education brands that are doing good things. But the most rewarding thing honestly is my team itself and being able to –

Katie:
I agree.

Elana:
– curate a passionate team that I get to take care of, too, and they take care of me. It has been so rewarding. And it’s funny what the assumptions you come in with when you build a company.

Katie:
Yeah. I adore every single one of our teammates and think that they are geniuses. It’s nice to be able to not be the smartest person in the room, right? And that was the goal of the team. It’s like we all have really deep backgrounds in the same things. We all have the same passions, but we all have incredibly different lived experiences, which reflects the communities that we serve. But that is a genuine – that’s maybe the best part of the whole thing is you get to pick all the people that you hang out with and work every day.

Elana:
Yeah. Your brand, your tagline is you like to work with organizations that absolutely love kids. Can you talk a little bit about the type of organizations that you work with and maybe just the type of work you do? Because I think that’ll give context for the topic we’re going to dive into is about storytelling, and how whether you’re an educator, and EdTech administrator, or somebody in an EdTech brand, whether you’re running marketing or comms, this will be really helpful for you. But Katie, do you want to give a little context of your work and your team’s work?

Katie:
Sure. So we work, like you said, exclusively with organizations that love kids. So that’s about maybe 70% nonprofit foundations and for-profits that work in the child-and-family-focused or education space. And then probably the other 30% of our clients are school districts themselves. So we work for superintendents, especially in innovative school districts that are doing really interesting things, having interesting programs, or trying something new for students. And that’s the work that we do.

You will not find polar bears or Velcro on our client list, and that allows us to have a really deep background. When we come to a client, you don’t have to explain the jargon to us. We get it. We live it. We’re with you. And our specialty is thoughtful communication strategy. It’s really about helping organizations and leaders think about what their vision is of a brighter world. And then we help you identify who can make that vision a reality, and then where do those people get their information, and how can we get your brand mission, campaign, issue in front of your target audiences and meet them where they are? And that’s what I love to do. I like to get people the information that they need.

Elana:
Yeah. And I love this because we’re going to build on top of each other, but what we talk about is how to make your brand matter for your target audience. And we say that over and over again, but the way you make it matter is you make it valuable. You make it timely. You make it relevant, and you show up consistently.

Katie:
I love that.

Elana:
I know that you and I have very similar philosophies, but they really complement each other, which I love.

Katie:
Yes, yes. There’s times where I am like, “No, that’s LCG’s strength, not ours.” [Laughs] Because there’s so much about – I think when you talk about consistency, you’re so good at that. You and your team are so valuable about community building and thinking about how people can stay engaged, which is just that’s a great complement to the work that we do, which I think is oftentimes helping a client for the first time ever or for a large campaign think through those pieces. And so yeah, I think you’re right. Our brands are very – [crosstalking]

Elana:
Yeah. It’s like really overwhelming for a new brand to come in and say, “Gosh, who are we? How do we talk about ourselves?” Or even sometimes, you’re starting from scratch for a new campaign.

Katie:
Oh, yeah.

Elana:
I think this dovetails really well into storytelling, because it’s bringing it back to the foundation and the roots. So everybody, we’re going to be referencing a blog post. It’ll be directly in the show notes. It’s leoniconsultinggroup.com/10. I’ll say it again a couple times in the podcast. Don’t worry. And then if you follow us on social, we’ll be bombarding you with it. But to start off around storytelling, I think I’ve used storytelling in a way to, when I work with EdTech brands, is to get them back to their "why" a little bit. And then when I talk to ed leaders, I almost do it in a guilt trippy way and say, “You are almost selfish to not share your story, to not share your school’s story, your students’ journey story. That is your job.”

And I know Chris Lehmann – shout out to Chris Lehmann over at the Science Leadership Academy. He always talks about the number one role of an educator admin or any type of leader, whether you’re an instructional technologist or even if you’re a teacher leader in the school – whatever it may be, tell your story. Tell your students’ story. No one else is going to do it buy you in your authentic way. So I think this is a really powerful topic. I’m very excited to get into it. When we talk about this blog post you wrote, I love it. I’m going to highlight a couple of points about it just so this audience has a little bit of context, and then we’ll jump into some questions. But one point you said is so spot on. You said, “Humans are wired for stories.” We all are. I can’t stop watching reality TV. [Laughs]

Katie:
Reality TV, OK. I’m a “Love Island” person myself, so –

Elana:
But research shows that stories elicit very real biological reactions, and we’ll link to the research in there. But you are physically experiencing stories, and different areas of our brains light up and process stories.

Katie:
Exactly.

Elana:
That’s amazing. It’s going to be more powerful than any stat you do. And then the last [crosstalking] Go ahead.

Katie:
Thinking about the brain and the way that we process information, I think the reason that we’re seeing storytelling trending right now as a 2022 trend – I mean, first of all, it’s always been a trend. But a lot of people are pulling it out, and I think that that’s because people’s brains are pandemicified. That’s not a word. I just made it up. But I think we are all so overwhelmed with processing so much ever-changing information, and people’s brains are like sieves. So stories, the fact that they interact with our brains in a different way and really feel personal, you're taking an emotional journey when you hear them, it’s like the only thing breaking through right now. This is the most crowded media market we have ever worked in, and it’s been like this for a couple years. And stories seem to be the way to still connect with people when you’re not retaining a lot of information.

Elana:
Agreed. You tell me a thousand people maybe got injured in a railroad accident, and you’re like, “Oh, that sucks.” But another information –

Katie:
But you can’t imagine a thousand people.

Elana:
No, you can’t even imagine. But then, you take me on a journey of a kid that was going to school, and it was his first day, and he was on the train, and then this horrible thing happened, and here’s his journey of what happened to him specifically. You’re like, “Oh my God, where can I donate money? How can I help this kid?” You are emotionally attached to them.

Katie:
A hundred percent. And I think that’s because it’s hard to visualize what a thousand people looks like. I don’t even know what that is. It’s maybe like a couple school buses worth of people or like a lot of school buses worth. I don’t even know how many school buses. There’s like 40 people on a school bus, and I don’t math. So that’s a confusing thing as a communicator. You’re giving this big number, and then you’re relying on the shock of the thing, when instead you can be making emotional attachments, and in your example, to this one person and their experience.

And you, using empathy, can put yourself in that person’s shoes. And if the world needs anything right now, we really need empathy. So I think when we’re able to identify with somebody’s details those little things, like I’m imagining that boy with a backpack and maybe one of his shoelaces untied, and maybe he has crumbs all over his sweater from breakfast, those things just bring to life something in us that is really human and really empathic. And that’s a really important thing for us to all be doing right now.

Elana:
Great. And I think it goes without saying when we have stories that affect us emotionally, physically, we’re going to remember them. And you linked to some research around that, and we’ll link to it in our show notes as well, but a well-told story – in the nonprofit space in particular, I’ve been to so many nonprofit conferences where they’re trying to elicit donations. So maybe if you are a school admin or if you’re a teacher trying to raise money about certain things, you never start out with those big numbers. It’s those stories that really get people and move them to action.

Katie:
It’s also about how people – sorry to interrupt you – it’s also about how people absorb information. If you’re an auditory learner or a visual learner, or just even the way that your brain processes information coming in, that story is accessible to multiple types of people. I’m a visual learner. My team can be talking to me about something, and I’m like, “Can I just look at the doc you’re looking at while we’re talking about it?” I have to see it. So when you’ve got a story that has a person, and you can see their face, and you’ve got – it brings to life a lot of things for a lot of different types of humans and human brains.

Elana:
Yes. And we’re already really talking about it, but I would love to hear just how do you go about incorporating storytelling into a framework. It sounds a little overwhelming to start with, but it actually might be more simple. It’s the idea of maybe limiting, like you can only tell a story. What is your story? That might be more powerful, but it still feels slightly overwhelming, probably, for EdTech brands listening. And even just if you are an educator, you are a school leader, what’s the story you’re trying to tell? Or what is the story that I’m trying to tell? But how do they begin to incorporate storytelling into their everyday activities?

Katie:
I think that if you pick a main character for your campaign or your brand, I think it should generally be a character that’s experienced the transformation because of you or because of the need for the thing that you’re working on. And telling that story, and you already touched on it, just pick one. Pick one person or one child or one teacher. And in picking one, then once you’ve got this robust story – and this is how our team does it. We’ll interview the person. And I think it’s really important to be thoughtful about the way that you get consent any time you’re doing storytelling, making sure that somebody understands intimately, and you tell them multiple times how their story is going to be used, and allow them to agree or not agree. But say, “We’re going to use it on our website. We’re going to use it on Instagram.”

Tell them everything that you’re going to do, and tell them how you’re going to use it. But once you’ve got this pretty robust story, we call that a core story. Once you’ve got a core story, then you can use it in so many places. You’ve got this success story or a transformation story that you can put on your website. You don’t even need to tell the whole thing over again. It can be four sentences. It can be one sentence that is just featured on your homepage that links to the longer story. Or you can tell it on social. Once you’ve got a couple of those, one or two of these stories that are success stories, the ways that you can repurpose that content are endless.

Elana:
Yeah, I think that’s where we come into play to is you’ve got this amazing story; now what channels like what, and what are the different mediums and formats that we can bring it to life, and then use data to say, “OK, what works and what doesn’t?" But say you’re a brand just getting started, and some actually of our clients are readjusting to storytelling and realizing that they don’t have any case studies, or they don’t have any profiles of people and how it changed their life or their way of being. Tons of them just tend to go out there and grab as many stories as they want. But how do they know which one’s better? What are the characteristics of looking for their main character rather than their – what’s the other character that’s the non-important character?

Katie:
The sidekick.

Elana:
[Laughs] Yeah.

Katie:
The best friend.

Elana:
How do you know who’s the non-sidekick or the chubby best friend.

Katie:
I love that question. It starts, to me, with target audience and what you’re trying to get people to know, do, or think differently after they read your story. And your target audience is going to have a bias towards people that are like them, that understand what they’re going through, that understand their struggles, so that they can see themselves in that story, so that they can relate to that story. So if you’re going to pick out a story that you want to tell so that people can say, “I get it,” then that’s a story that you want to tell about somebody that looks and is your target audience, that does those same sort of things every day, that has the same challenges.

If you are using storytelling as a way to bridge a gap or change hearts and minds and exhibit understanding, then I would be thoughtful about choosing a main character that, of course, is relatable, but also can explain and bridge those lived experience gaps, that can help bring someone along and say, “I’ve never thought about it that way, or that’s really different from my life, and now I understand.” So, someone who can be thoughtful and careful. I think about – I’m going to be a nerd for a second, but we’ve gotten really deep into Last Chance U and Cheer on Netflix, which are sports documentaries. I don’t sportsball, but I like sports documentaries. And there are so many relatable characters. They’re people that tell their own stories about how they got to football or basketball. And I don’t sportsball, and I’m not a teenager, but the fact that they share their stories and their struggles, our gap is bridged. I can understand why they care about the things that they care about because they’ve been able to share, even though we’re so unalike.

Elana:
I think 100% what you said. And it just reminded me, every time I talk in particular the EdTech space – I’m a mentor to a couple of accelerators. And I talk to them, and it becomes clear within the first minute that they don’t know their audience. And I think fundamentally that’s what we’re both saying, because you obviously can’t do storytelling if you don’t know your audience. And you can’t even narrow it down to your target audience if you don’t know your audience. [Laughs] But I think just to get started, it's, I always tell people, “Go out and interview as many people as you can.”

And sometimes, in the beginning when you don’t have a product that has traction, start talking to people about the real need. So you might talk to somebody else in the space, talk to educators that have tried other products or whatnot, so really understanding the challenges and the pain points. Then you can start understanding, OK, if another main character comes in and comes with those challenges and pain points, for me, I’m like, “Ding, ding, ding, that’s our main character.”

Katie:
Yeah, that’s that like me that I talked about. We have the same challenges, and that’s important. At the beginning of the podcast, you talked about how we’re both founders. That allows us to have a connection and sort of start at a level of understanding. And to that point, I think that you’re right that if you understand your target audience and what they care about, what their values are, and then what their challenges are, you can choose a really powerful main character for a story that’s going to resonate with them.

But if you don’t know that, then you have to ask yourself, “What is my vision of a brighter world, and who is my decision-maker? Who can say yes or no to making my vision of this world come true?” And if it’s purchasing a product, whose need am I fulfilling? Whose problem am I solving with what I’m putting out into the world? And if you can answer that, and you can think about – I think about it like a target. Your decision-maker is at the very center of the target. The people who have the ear of the decision-maker are on that next ring out of the target that can influence – we call them influencers – that can influence that decision-maker to say yes or no to what your vision is.

So for example, if we’re working on expanding early childhood support, we’ve got a decision-maker. Let’s pretend it’s President Biden. I don’t personally get to call President Biden on the phone ever. But I may know people who do, who are in his sphere of influence, who have his ear and can help make my vision of a better world reality. And so when you’re thoughtful about who’s your decision-maker and who are their influencers, then you can start to build a story that speaks to those target audiences and what their values and barriers are.

Elana:
You are so good, because my follow-up question was going to be, especially in education, we’re talking to multiple stakeholders. Usually, brands will say, “Here’s my primary stakeholder.” And if you are in EdTech, it’s usually your decision-maker is your primary one you want to talk to. But at the same time, you want a groundswell movement and talk to your users. Because if you don’t have user adoption, you don’t have anything. So you were talking a little bit about how does one story – and think about it – how does it really affect all of the stakeholders? But do you recommend maybe having multiple stories that talk directly to each stakeholder down the road?

Katie:
Yeah, if you can, absolutely. Decisions, especially for EdTech adoption, aren’t made in a vacuum, right? They’re made in a conference room, or now these days on Zoom, with a lot of different people bringing their own values to the table. So if we can have multiple stories that speak to different stakeholders, then that’s even better, right? If you have no stories, let’s get you one or two. If you have one or two, let’s get you five that all speak to those influencers. So I think entry level, you want a story that speaks to that core audience. What did you call it, the primary purchaser?

Elana:
Yeah.

Katie:
Yes, let’s get that one. Let’s do that. And then once we’ve done that, then let’s think about who else is in the room where it happens, if I’m going to quote Hamilton. Then let’s think about who all those other decision-maker influencers are and make sure that we’ve got stories that speak to their values.

Elana:
And this is getting me a little nerdy because I feel like, as a marketer, I think about communication methods and email being one of them. And sometimes, we have one story, but that story doesn’t talk to your entire email list because your email list is full of multiple stakeholders.

Katie:
Right.

Elana:
Most people, when you do get on their email list, they do as, “What’s your role in education?” or that kind of thing. That’s your thing that you can filter by. But imagine sending an email and you can have a dynamic email – I know this is sounding nerdy – but dynamic content. And if you send the same email, but a user story that talks directly to that stakeholder, wouldn’t that be amazing?

Katie:
Or even just pull out – yeah. People contain multitudes, right?

Elana:
Yes.

Katie:
And you might be able to have the same narrator or the same main character that has all these amazing quotes that would speak to different values. If you’re looking for – I’m making this up – if you’re looking for doughnuts, and you’ve got one person who is all in on icing and the other person who is all in on the dough – it’s like a funny example for an education podcast, but I’m hungry. So we’ve got somebody who cares about icing, and then you’ve got somebody who cares about the doughnut itself, like cake or fluff. Then I would be thoughtful about seeing if you can use that same narrator but speak to those values. And then when you’re speaking to somebody who cares about the icing, pull out, “We’ve got chocolate with sprinkles.” But when you’re talking to the person who cares about cake, you can also pull out the thing about how fluffy and light your doughnuts are.

Elana:
Nice. Just out of curiosity, what’s your favorite doughnut?

Katie:
As a North Carolina girl, I’m a Krispy Kreme person, classic glazed straightforward.

Elana:
I think a side note for me is I just don’t like doughnuts at all, doughnuts or ice cream.

Katie:
You don’t?

Elana:
No, I’ve never –

Katie:
What is your dessert of choice?

Elana:
I don’t know, like cheese. [Laughs]

Katie:
Sure.

Elana:
Salty, cheesy –

Katie:
[crosstalking] all day.

Elana:
– herbal stuff. So we talked about storytelling about how you should have a powerful story for a main character, but then also think about the other people at the table and then eventually expand to other stakeholders. Once you have a story, I think we need to think about how do we get it out there? Your team’s out there pitching it in a PR realm. You’re also making sure you’re doing op-eds. They’re getting covered. They’re doing guest blogs. There’s a whole world of PR and comms. Do you want to maybe just talk through how you see storytelling trickling out in your world?

Katie:
Yeah, absolutely. We often use stories, like you said, in the media, but also I think in video. Especially in today’s digital world, video and audio for stories are really doing well. I would even transform those stories, if you can, into things like social media graphics or infographics or ways to visualize that story. Because if you think about all the different types of ways people absorb information, let’s get the most we can out of that one story. Let’s repurpose it in all the ways we can.

We’ve been recommending that clients do photo shoots, and we’ve been able to get some pretty amazing photography lately for clients. And that goes really far, too, being able to pair a quote with a picture and a graphic. Just having those visuals can make all the difference in a story. And then I think being able to, like I said, pull quotes, but you can pull quotes for your website or, in your case, your email newsletter, but making sure that you are seeing the whole story, but then also seeing the disparate parts within the story and being able to use them in a ton of different ways.

Elana:
And I think what you said was really powerful, because sometimes we have in our mind what storytelling is, and it’s this beautiful, produced video that this film crew has to go to the person and see him in action, and this whole thing. And actually, there’s so many ways to do low-budget storytelling, beyond getting it into media and whatnot. You can have a simple what we call audiogram where you’re just doing a little bit of a voiceover with the image of their picture and put that on social. We can do a couple of TikToks that get people to watch to the end and say, “Wait for it. Let’s see what happens at the big reveal.” Just an image and doing a quote, we can get [crosstalking].

Katie:
Right, it doesn’t have to be that serious. And I love that about it. It doesn’t need to be this like – yeah, you’re right – $90,000 video production. It can be you for a couple hours talking to people, getting their stories, writing it up, and then thinking of ways to piece it apart.

Elana:
And if I do work with brands that do have that beautiful video, unfortunately, I cut it up. [Laughs] I cut it up, and I make it look a little more realistic. Because in education, we are talking to people on the ground that value authenticity. They don’t value polish generally. So often, I cut up things that are micro bits and that can be in your feed daily. Or how can I just do something that if an educator is talking, you can hear a little bit in their background? Because that’s the everyday life of an educator. [Laughs] How can we be relatable?

Katie:
Yes, 100%. I think the more digestible and easy to read or easy to consume you can make a story, the better. We have really short attention spans. You know the old marketing rule of seven, which is you have to hear something seven times in order to remember it. I’m saying to clients these days, “With pandemic brain, we’re up to 14 times, like double that. When you are first sick of saying your message or sharing a story, that is when it is very first starting to resonate with your audience.” So sometimes, we have clients come to us and say, “I’m just really bored of our messaging.” I’m like, “Great, keep going. Because you’re bored, that means it’s finally starting to land with your audiences.”

So don’t be afraid to take that one story and repeat it. Oftentimes, people are worried that they’re going to bore their audiences, or you view that content one time. No, no, the more we can repeat it, and the more you can use that in multiple ways, the better, because people will finally start to associate it with you. If I see a brand story on their website, then I bump into it on Instagram, and then later I see it on Twitter, and then I hear a radio ad, all of that finally starts to paint this cohesive picture for me, and I say, “Yeah, that’s that story. That’s that brand.”

Elana:
As we talk about characters and really kind of slicing and dicing the story to make it to different mediums, I also want to mention that this isn’t a finite process. This isn’t like, “All right, we found our main story, and then we’re good. Maybe we’ll find some other stakeholders we talk to, and we’re good.” But we know that especially now, organizations are changing strategies, especially in the foundation world in the pandemic. We know EdTech products are evolving to meet all these crazy needs. We know educators are pivoting left and right to find out what really engages kids in the midst of all this. Administrators are scrambling. So how we all tell our story is changing, or how we’re telling stories of people using our stuff is changing because their needs and behaviors are changing? So please, don’t walk away saying, “We got our one main character done. Let’s slice and dice it for the rest of the year.” It’s an evolving process as well.

Katie:
Yeah, keep going. Yes. If you don’t have a story, you should get one. If you have a story, maybe you should have a few more and then a few more.

Elana:
Yeah. In your blog post, you talked about just what’s that script like a little bit. And it kind of reminded me of Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus is going on his journey, and he has all these challenges. But when you craft a story, and you have this main character, they have some type of challenge. They have some type of conflict. And then they get over it, and it’s like a before and after. Do you have any examples of people you’ve worked with or things that you’ve liked out in the industry that really resonate to bring that home? Because I’m trying to think of you don’t want to ever tell someone a script, but you want to be able to recognize a good story and how it will resonate and tell the impact of what you’re doing.

Katie:
We recently partnered with the National Head Start Association to tell a lot of powerful stories about early Head Start and the impact that early Head Start had. And we got to interview parents, and we got to interview childcare workers and staff members and advocates, and it was so inspiring. And being able to talk about why early Head Start really supported families and how they were supported made for such a powerful campaign. And I will share it with you for the show notes. But being able to find that, like you said, before and after that’s aligned with the overarching your vision – that’s your vision of a brighter world. What is your vision of a brighter world? One where kids have the supports that they need to thrive. So how can we tell a story about a family who needed the support, got it, and then thrived?

Elana:
I don’t know if you like this metaphor, but it’s almost like Extreme Makeover a little bit. You come in, and sometimes in education, most of the time, people don’t even know they have a problem. They’re not looking for things like project-based learning because maybe they’ve never heard of it. Or what the heck is social emotional learning, and how can I integrate? I’m not looking for those things. But it’s almost like a before and after for an Extreme Makeover where here’s what their everyday is, here are their challenges, but at the end, here is this result. We did actually a physical makeover in a classroom once at Edutopia, and we took them on that journey.

Katie:
I remember. I remember it. [crosstalking]

Elana:
And I remember being in the room where I was like, “Hey, can we slice this video up and do the beginning where it sets the stage?" And then we did one or two videos in the middle to show the work, and then the end. And can you guess which one was the most popular video of all the series?

Katie:
The end, the vision of a brighter world?

Elana:
The end, yeah. Because people want to know what it looks like. But the second popular one was the beginnings, like the foundation of what was it before. Because you can’t truly appreciate the end unless you know where they came from, too.

Katie:
Totally.

Elana:
But the middle is kind of like, okay, here’s what you do. But you can drag an audience on in the middle because they want to get to the end. And that’s what TikTok is known for, right?

Katie:
[Laughs] TikTok is a beast all of its own with an algorithm no one can crack. But I do think that you’re right that a beginning, middle, and an end, just like they taught us in our five-paragraph essays in school, is a pretty solid formula. I think we typically start with the need, what’s happening. Then we move into the overview. How is your product or your solution to the need? What’s it look like at the high level, just so people understand? And then we have you move into sort of the nuts and bolts, like how is it getting done?

And that’s sort of like you said, like we’re ripping up the carpet, and we’re putting in new chairs, and we’ve got a table, and we’ve got these bouncy balls for wiggly kids. And then the end is back to that vision of a brighter world. I’m telling you, it’s the key to everything. So then you’ve got this vision of how is life better. How did we meet the need? And that is a really important piece. But I like that flow of the problem, the overview, the nuts and bolts, and then that nice rainbow, birds are chirping, woodland creatures are running around vision.

Elana:
I love it. I think I’ll just put another little bug into our audience’s ear is that we’re talking about a story, and a story doesn’t have to be a five-minute video or all right. It actually can be episodic content. And when I say episodic, I mean think about any reality show you like. You’re on the journey with them. So I have seen success with brands giving their audience actual cameras and documenting their journey. It’s ugly. It’s hard. It’s everyday grunting. It’s things you never expect. But especially on YouTube, it’s been really, really successful. I go to a conference called Social Media Marketing World, and two years ago, they did an episodic content series on how to even make this conference work and all the struggles they went through. They just aired it all out. So that stuff can be addicting as well. It’s the real real.

Katie:
Yeah, we call that working out loud. We work with an amazing foundation that’s on a racial equity journey, and they do such a phenomenal job of saying, “These are the hard parts. This is what we’re struggling with. This is what we’re considering.” And it’s brave. But to your point, it’s also authentic. And it’s so helpful to watch somebody go through a journey that you’re about to embark upon. And I think that people have a lot of grace and respect for somebody who is able to show it wasn’t all easy. This wasn’t something that came naturally to me, and it’s always a work in progress. And I think allowing yourself to have that permission to be human makes for a great story.

Elana:
Great. I think we’ve talked a lot around how we can use storytelling if I’m an ed leader, if I’m an education organization, a foundation, a nonprofit, an EdTech brand. But I’m wondering for the educators listening, how we can talk directly to you as someone who is doing amazing things on the ground every day, and unfortunately, your story is not being told? And it’s sometimes being told in the wrong way. Do you have any advice to the educators listening around just how to incorporate storytelling? I know that educators, that you’re listening. You’re like, “All right, I have no time for anything else. You want me to be a storyteller on top of everything else?” But I’m wondering if we can’t convince them about the power of it and how it potentially might give them joy in their everyday and bring them back?

Katie:
But you know this as well as I do. It can be a tweet. It could be three tweets. It could be a three-tweet spread that just talks about a classroom activity you did this morning with your kids, or something funny that one of your kids said over lunch, or something that helps you reconnect with your "why." Back when I was at DC Public Schools, we were launching a new nutrition program, and I could talk to the operations people. I could talk to the school nutrition professionals. But the best thing that I did was be able to go walk to an elementary school nearby and sit and eat lunch with first graders and ask them how they liked it.

And there were kids who had a strawberry for the first time hanging out with me. And being able to just tell those micro stories, those little moments where you’re like, “You know, that was the thing that kept me teaching today. That’s the thing that keeps me in the classroom.” Saying those things out loud, I think other educators will be able to relate. But also, it will remind everyone of the true joy that it is to get to do the work that you get to do.

Elana:
I think you’re right. It’s the little tweaks. It’s being aware. And any kind of behavior change, the first step is really being aware, like recognizing. So how do we recognize that this is an opportunity potentially to tell our story and can give us joy and spread joy to others and say, “Wow, so-and-so over in that class is really doing this cool activity, and she’s having a lot of fun.” And I think when we get a chance to reflect on our own story, our own path, educators are constantly trying to figure out potentially what’s next. Where do I see my career evolving, whether that be a different grade level, subject level? And some of them are even considering a jump into the world of EdTech. If you don’t know who you are in your story, and you’re not constantly telling it, how do you know where to go?

Katie:
And I think a lot about Marie Kondo’s concept of "sparks joy." What sparks joy for you today in your work? Just tell people. Say that thing out loud. Or what was the challenge today that you had? You can say that thing out loud, too. I think you’re right that practice makes perfect, and the more that you try it, the more you’ll see what feels right to you. You were talking about following me on LinkedIn. It’s been a journey of trying to figure out what parts of Forthright do I work out loud, do I take people on the journey for.

And I’ve finally gotten this little radar of like if it's sticking with me, then I should probably just write a post about that because other people will have smart things. Or it’s like I’m hung up on this one thing about my business right now. I’m going to write about that. So I think the more practice you have, the more you can hone that little radar that says, “Oh, that’s the thing. That’s the thing I should write about.”

Elana:
And I still struggle with it, too. I think we all do. A lot of the things that you write on LinkedIn, I’m like, “Yeah, I struggled with that.” But I silently struggled with it because in my head I was like, “I don't want people to know I don’t know.” And guess what? We all don’t know.

Katie:
Right.

Elana:
So I struggle with it, too. [Laughs] I’m like, “Oh, Katie’s right.” But it’s the little things, and it may be just one behavior. Like after you do an activity in the classroom or after you get out of a bid product meeting in Ed Tech, go, “That is something I’d be interested in hearing what other people have to say, or maybe I want to share what we’re currently struggling with.” And get people to talk.

Katie:
And it can be small. It can be as small as – I don’t know. I posted the other day about what are your favorite kick-off questions for a meeting? And I loved the comments. You left a comment that talked about fun. And I think just crowdsourcing sometimes just something small that’s playing on your mind – We’re putting together a benefits package for our team, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what benefits actually return on employee happiness. So being able to put those things out into the world and say like, “Yeah, what do you guys think? What do you do that works?” is really helpful, too. So I think the same can be true for teachers. “I have this challenge today. What did you do? What would you do? What do you think?”

Because I think what’s hard about the time that we’re living in is so much happens alone and behind closed school doors. I think one of the things that’s hard about being an educator always is that it feels lonely in the classroom because you’re the leader. And then at the end of the day, you get to go see other teachers and say, “OK, how was that for you today?” But if you’re doing virtual learning, that’s even harder. It’s hard to take the time. And if you’re a school leader, you’re not having parents and community members come into your school often. So it just gets lonelier. So the more you can find connections in telling your own story, the better it’s going to be for everyone, especially for everyone’s perception of what’s happening in our schools right now.

Elana:
Yeah, this is so good. I feel like we could talk about this for a very, very long time. It was funny because when I was prepping for this show, I’m like, “We’re just going to be talking about storytelling. I don’t know if we’ll have enough questions.” And we get going, and we’re just talking and talking. [Laughs] [crosstalking] at least another hour. But I hope for everyone listening that whoever you are, or whether you’d be in education or actually not – my mom listens to all of these. Hi, Mom.

Katie:
Hi, Mom.

Elana:
But I hope you walk away with just a different perspective of what storytelling can do and the power of it in your own personal life, but also in your messaging and how do we – we all come into education because we’re passionate about improving something and doing something. I believe storytelling is the number-one way to do that.

Katie:
Yes, I agree.

Elana:
Do you want to add anything about wrapping a bow on the storytelling before we ask you a couple of fun questions?

Katie:
I think it starts with audience. It always starts with audience, and then it starts with what your vision of a brighter world is.

Elana:
Well said. So we always ask our audience one last question, and it’s really about inspiration. There’s so much going on in the pandemic that, gosh, I have to actively connect with my team and say, “How are you doing? How are you keeping going? How am I keeping going?” What gets you personally inspired right now? Is it something you’re watching or reading, or maybe you’re taking a run or a walk? How do you keep going in all of this?

Katie:
When you sent me this question ahead of time to think about, I was laughing with my team because I was like, “I have a hard time after work consuming anything of real substance.” I’m in this Facebook book club called [unintelligible] Book Club, and it seems like there’s two camps. There’s people who can read horror novels and thrillers, and then there’s people in my camp which is romance novels only. [Laughs]

So I think I’m just consuming a ridiculous amount of fluff. But my go-to most favorite book that has been my North Star has been Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center, which is not exactly a romance, but it’s a little bit of up-lit. And then my favorite romance lately has been Boyfriend Material by Alexis Paul. But really, that’s my fluffy, light, can’t consume anything, pandemic answer.

Elana:
That’s awesome. Because some people might need to get energized with a different podcast or something, but in the reality, a lot of us, including myself, I like to zone out. I was telling Katie before the podcast I’ve been getting into puzzles, [Laughs] just like mindless puzzles.

Katie:
Yes. We puzzled the other day. My parents got us an escape room puzzle for Christmas. And if you have not tried one, it was very fun.

Elana:
We’ll have to try that.

Katie:
It sounded complicated, and I was worried about it, but it was great.

Elana:
Well, thank you so much, Katie, for joining. I know how incredibly busy you are, so I appreciate your time and just your wisdom and inspiration. When I don’t get to talk to you, I get to learn from you on LinkedIn and Twitter and whatnot. So I want to thank you. But I’d love to have people figure out how to get a hold of you first and foremost. So maybe the socials and the website and all that we can put on the show notes, but do you want to say a couple of them?

Katie:
Yeah. We are @Comms4Kids on Twitter, the numeral four, Comms4Kids. And then on LinkedIn, I’m Katie Test Davis, and we’re Forthright Advising on LinkedIn. And then, of course, it’s forthrightadvising.com.

Elana:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Katie. We really appreciate your time. And I’d love to hear from the rest of you as you digest this, what are some things you’re taking away? Maybe there’s just one simple habit that you’ve decided to do as a result of this podcast. Please tweet us and Katie. So Katie’s team is @Comms4Kids. We’re @LeoniGroup, or you can just stalk me on the Twitter as Elana Leoni. But I’d love to know. So thank you all for listening. I really appreciate the time.

And the audience is what really drives us. Every time I look with my podcast editor, more and more people are listening. We are sparking a trend that we don’t have to just talk to educators. We don’t have to just talk to EdTech marketers. I believe there’s a space that we can all talk together. And stakeholders should be talking together to really make change in education. So thank you again all for joining us. You can access this episode’s show notes at leoniconsultinggroup.com/10, the number 10, for detailed notes and then everything, all the resources we’re going to be putting in there that Katie mentioned as well. So we will see you all next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Thank you so much.

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. And 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.

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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.

Katie Test Davis, Guest
Katie Test Davis is the Founder of Forthright Advising, a national PR and communications firm working exclusively with organizations that love kids – nonprofits, public school districts, foundations, government agencies – to create real systemic change for children and families. Having worked in three public school districts, four family-focused nonprofits (including ASCD and Children’s Law Center), and a PR agency, Katie's superpowers include anticipating roadblocks around the bend, making complex topics accessible and relatable, and communicating tough subjects with kindness and empathy. Her thought leadership has appeared in Education Week and SmartBrief, and she's a frequent podcast guest talking about how to build trust with our communities. In her free time, Katie serves on the Board of Directors for The Hope Center at Pullen, helping youth in foster care successfully transition to adulthood. On Friday mornings, you can find her reading to first graders through WakeEd’s Partners Read Program.

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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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