In this episode of the TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler, they discuss the second part from their five part series “From Chaos to Culture”.
This episode covers the all important “Getting Organized” which will really help free up your time to allow you to start focusing on more impactful activities.
If you own. or run a lesson based business, you will not want to miss this series or any content from The TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler!
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0:00:09.7 Tyler: Welcome to the next episode of the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. I’m Tyler Marolf your co-host, and I’m with co-host, Chris Bates. How are you, sir?
0:00:31.3 Chris: I’m excellent, I hope you’re doing well today, Mr. Tyler, I’m excited. I’m ramped up for this episode and we’re gonna be working on stage two of Chaos to Culture. Stage two is getting organized. And so I’m gonna get my sheet and just read what we put here. But it takes a little time. Once you’ve done it, you have your sanity back.
0:00:44.0 Tyler: Right? We want to tell you guys who are just tuning in and don’t realize we have a couple of episodes prior to this, please, this is what you do first. You get the e-book at teacherzone.com/chaos, download it. By the way, it’s free. It has the five stages you must grow through, and those stages are: Stage one is chaos, whether you’re in it or not. Stage two is getting organized. Which we’ll be discussing today. Stage three is engaging students, stage four fueling growth, and then stage five is where really the rubber meets the road. That’s where you build a community and change your culture inside your business. That’s the e-book. Go get it. Back up to episode one. If you missed it, stage one of chaos, catch up with us. Do your homework, and we’re excited to move on with
0:02:28.2 Chris: Stage Two, getting organized. We talked last time, or we had everybody sort of look at your rules and roles. Hopefully, you guys did your homework and you made a list. like an organizational chart. Basically, what are all the roles? I’m an accountant. I’m a marketing person. For a lot of you, you’re the instructor, janitor, accountant, plumber…etc.. For instance, I’m really good at taking out the trash, Tyler, I know you’ve even repaired the roof.?
0:02:33.7 Tyler: The chaos that he’s talking about, we put those roles in order. It doesn’t mean you have to like the role, so if you don’t like me in the janitor role, that’s what this episode is about. Getting organized. So your homework, like Chris was saying, was to list your roles, all of them, and then find out which ones you’re terrible at. You have to do it, and then find out the ones you love and that you’re good at. That might be your super power because we are all entrepreneurs.
0:03:06.4 Chris: Entrepreneurs are heroes. I really, honestly, honestly think there is no greater hero in the world than an entrepreneur, a small business owner, that becomes even a large business owner. At the end of the day, if you’ve created something from nothing, or for some of you that have taken over a previous business but you had the strength to do so, you’re a hero.
0:03:31.3 Tyler: On top of it, the busiest.
0:03:34.7 Chris: Give applause for the heroes of the world.
0:03:39.2 Tyler: Also, if that business is helping the community and helping others grow, which is kind of our whole community that the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler is all about. We are talking to anybody in the industry who has a lesson business or is in the business of teaching someone something that their team does, that changes our civilization and society moving forward, and that’s why Chris is coming on so strong. If you’re like, I’m not superman, you need to take another look and act like you’re doing something out of this world.
0:04:15.8 Chris: Yeah, if you’re new and let’s say you have your first 30 students, you’re making an impact. You’re making a difference, and so you’re a hero for multiple reasons, because you had the courage to do.what no one else has done before. So even if someone’s had a lesson learning or teaching business similar to what you have, they’ve not done it your way. The great thing about services, for those of you that didn’t study business, which is almost all of us, business 10, there’s two things we can sell, which are products and services. That’s it, right? We are not selling products. in the lesson side of things. I know some of you actually do both. Cool, no worries. On the service side, however, there is no competition. You are your own entity because services are value-driven, and we’re writing that script each day as we keep increasing our value proposition. So by being a hero, we’re saying, you’re a hero in multiple ways.. Number one, for the impact you make, and then number two, you’re a hero for all of the drama and stress and courage that you have to do what no one else has done.
0:05:31.1 Tyler: Speaking of that drama and stress. Chris. When you do create something out of nothing that’s helping others, that’s when the storm brews. Sometimes when we’re in the thick of that, ’cause we have to go back to that, and this is a cycle, so we’ll feel this again. At Year 12, you don’t feel like it feels familiar because we grew again or something, and it’s like, okay, there’s some unmanageability, like some chaos going on. The point is, in the beginning, we might think that the chaos equals that utter success we were looking for. We think that the explosions around us and the people asking and needing things from you, and the phone blowing up, and all the unplanned work and phone calls that you did not plan means success.
0:06:22.3 Chris: Right? For a lot of you that are still in chaos, I’ve been there too. We all do it at first. For a lot of you that started literally from nothing, you went from having a dream to having a thing.
0:06:37.3 Tyler: And so the pace from having a dream, then having two students and going, hey, I’m doing it, and then there is turmoil all around you.
0:06:45.5 Chris: The turmoil became chaos, but you may not define it as that. You might actually define it as your business. For a lot of you, we see it every day, you’re literally calling us and you’re saying, this is my business, and it’s the most candid thing we’ve ever heard.
0:06:58.5 Tyler: We do this yearly ’cause we were there too, but to all the times that we were in it or have gotten out of it, that’s the best part about what you’re gonna get out of this series. It’s not just about us, it’s about the people we’ve locked arms with, and these are not unique stories. The first step is admitting that you’re in chaos, it’s admitting that you don’t have the systems in place to where you’re not having to wear every single hat of the business. What is getting organized? ‘That’s what this episode is about.
0:07:34.5 Chris: Getting organized. Tyler and I talked about this before the show, and we’ve talked about it before. Something that he and I really wanted to be clear about is that the most simple way to define getting organized is what you repeat daily or often or weekly. Something that you can create a system out of. That system can be everything from just rules or it can be things like software or Cloud-based software. A system is a pencil and a piece of paper. So in other words, there’s lots of ways to create systems.
0:08:12.8 Tyler: So if you’ve got scheduling, billing, communications and learning and all this in your lesson business, that’s what we’re speaking about right now. We need solutions to those. You know what? We still talk to a school, I won’t say where, that had a chalkboard, and their whole lesson business was still run on the chalkboard. This was not a new business. That chalkboard had miles on it, years and years. And guess what, Chris, that piece of chalk and that blackboard is a system, 100%. And it works.
0:08:42.8 Chris: So having any kind of system is getting organized. The question is, what is the most sustainable long-term. Also what’s going to allow you to free up more and more time for not just yourself and your staff and everybody. We’ll segue into the four things that I think are important, which are the scheduling, billing, communication and learning. Let’s get into that with regard to getting organized. Okay, I’d like to start, Tyler, with you, and we’ve talked about this in the past, but something that the Michael Gerber book, If you haven’t read it yet, it’s called the E-Myth, read it. The reason it’s important for you to read or listen to it is because he really spells out the distinction between being a technician, which means you’re really good at something, like the chef opens the restaurant, the guitar player opens the music school, or the piano concert, or violinist or whoever. The third degree black belt opens the karate dojo. Basically, whatever you’re good at. You tend to open that passion into your business. It’s very natural, and so it’s a natural transition into entrepreneurism and into owning a business. The challenge is the chaos part tends to keep people mired for years. You really start to grow and you start to build something, and then what happens is you get stuck just like quick sand. I like the idea. Let’s just use water. You’re swimming now in the pool, and so you’re in the business, you’re in deep, and you’re in the pool, and so there’s a definition that Michael Gerber uses: Working in your businesses, versus working on your business. So I want everybody to write this down right now. Which one are you…someone that works on or in your business? So I want you to look at it as if you are still doing homework on the first episode with chaos. If you’re still wearing a lot of the hats, you’re in. If you’re still the go-to person on every challenge that arises in the company, you’re still in. If you’re still the one making all decisions and they have to go through you, you’re still in chaos. That’s a news flash for a lot of people. They think, Well, I’m the boss, I have to.
0:11:16.9 Tyler: And that the company hasn’t gotten bigger than me if that happens, and if we truly wanna get to that unbelievable life-changing culture and a brand or a business in a community, we can’t stop at us. We cannot be the ceiling.
0:11:37.6 Chris: Right, it’s actually you’re doing your community a disservice ’cause you’re now in the way. We’ve owned businesses. We own our own lesson business. We’ve been in the way too. We get it. We still sometimes have to go over, get in the way again, and then back off. It’s a CoStar process of revisiting, especially as a business owner, because we tend to be so energetic.
0:12:06.0 Tyler: It’s like, okay Chris, what if we create two new things in the business. Most of the time, if you’ve got a great team, they will think of things and even maybe R and D, even maybe on their own time. Wow, that would be amazing. Because by example, they watch us do it. We just took our time. We took nothing else, no fun sometimes, and we made something, got social proof of it, videoed it, and then launched it. So if you’re launching new stuff, guess what follows it? There’s no systems for the new stuff. There’s the new two things you made and the 10 you built systems on for the last 10 years are fine. You might have taken away most of your hats except for two that you love. Then all of a sudden you’re like, you guys, we can build this whole new thing because the pandemic taught everybody how to learn online and now we’re gonna make this, and all of a sudden you need to build everything again to hand it back.
0:13:12.0 Chris: The constant cycle of chaos arising again, is natural and cool. It’s just that you have to ask yourself, number one, are you always gonna be the one that jumps back in the water, or you’re gonna have your talented team members help. Number two, when you do jump back in the water as soon as you realize, as we predicted in the beginning of the episode, creating a system is about things that you repeat, figuring out a way to systematize that. So as soon as you realize, okay, now this is becoming a thing that’s repeating, that’s the point. To step back out of the way. If you’re too in your business, then for a lot of businesses, you become the actual bottleneck that’s causing the greater impact in your community. It doesn’t mean you can’t work in your business. Oh my gosh, Tyler and I have some amazing friends around the world that we help with Teacher Zone. Some of our friends, freeway music, shout out to Dan and Sara back east. go hand in hand. With all the freeway groups, what I love about this music is that a lot of them do both. They’re incredible business owners..
0:14:25.9 Tyler: Oblast happens to be a music school, obviously, and they don’t wanna stop playing, One of the ways they get to keep playing and give back to the community is, we’ll play with them, and do it with them. That’s what they choose to do. It’s awesome to watch..
0:14:44.8 Chris: So you can still take certain components of it and say those are my superpowers. That’s what fuels me. I wanna maintain. I still wanna do that part. For me, I pretend like I actually enjoy doing plumbing, why not? If you enjoy it, than you can always be the plumber for the business. I know for some of you, a lot of you actually, that we talk to that own stores and stuff. You really enjoy doing repairs, and so if you enjoy doing repairs, and it actually gives you solace, you could still be the person for that. We’re not saying you can’t. You’re simply seeing by not being the go-to person for everything, it’s gonna get you out of chaos.
0:15:27.5 Tyler: It’s gonna let you get organized and by getting organized, you’ll get to do more, and the next stage is engaging students. Oh my gosh, that’s why we wanna do this in the first place. You’ll have more time to look into the culture we’re creating. Are these kids being treated right, or are these yoga students getting the experience we want? Well, without getting organized, we don’t have a lot of time to adjust those things unless you’re working 20 hours a day.
0:16:03.5 Chris: Not my thing, I don’t wanna work 20 hours a day. I just don’t. Well, it’s not sustainable. We’ve all done it. I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur and you haven’t worked crazy hours, then you’re the anomaly for most of us. That’s been a thing at some point, and it’s great to actually be able to organize not only your business, but your time better, and so it’s part of getting organized. Let’s talk about in the learning lesson teaching business, what are the four things that we’ve defined? There’s more than that, there’s many more, but just to dumb it down, there’s four things I mentioned earlier that we think are very important. The four things that we kinda built teacherzone.com around, that we have our community around the world helping us get better at. Basically, you guys are the heroes, that Teacher Zone’s plight is to give better tools so you can go fight crime. So you can actually do what you do. So what are the four things, Tyler, that we like to help with, or we think are important for organizing?
0:16:54.8 Tyler: The four things that really free up an unbelievable percentage of time if you remove your hats and start to use the system based on these four. It’s unparalleled the results you’ll get in your personal lifestyle and your business lifestyle. They’re the biggest time sucks and stress points. Chris and I starting using ACE systems based on scheduling, billing, communications for families and notifications, so that people don’t have to chase things, find things, all that stuff. And then the last one is learning. We’re in the lesson business, everybody, so scheduling, billing, communications and learning are the four pillars.
0:17:56.2 Chris: If you tackle those four things and are getting organized, it’s going to free up your time to get to where this whole five-part series is headed, to building a culture. It’s super important. So let’s just go through them real quick. Scheduling if you’re teaching anything. It’s one of the biggest in talent. I’ve kinda seen it all over the years, and locking arms with you around the world, we’ve kind of seen a lot. There’s a myriad of ways to do things right. There’s a mix of group classes and/or private lessons, and there’s all of the scheduling herding of cats and nuances and rules and things.
0:18:54.1 Tyler: Now Schools have gone fully virtual because of the fact that the whole world is learning how to go virtual overnight. And that’s ever-changing as well, but what doesn’t change is that a business needs to survive, especially a lesson business. So we can keep our lights on. Scheduling how much the money is building and then the communications like, hello, you need to know this is happening. Are you happy? You need to be able to communicate to us. And then lastly is the learning part, and it’s 2021, Chris. Yeah, solutions with that now, content is king, people are killing it right now with just thoughtful content. Yeah, so those four pillars are just where we want to be. Where to start?
0:19:37.7 Chris: Yeah, I mean, cloud software. When covid hit a lot of you told us that it changed, that you were so grateful that you were part of a cloud-based system, so we know a lot of you have some other systems out there, and that’s fine. We’d highly encourage you to get to a cloud-based system. What that basically means is that any device anywhere, any time you and your staff can access and parents can access student connects, everybody could access. Usually it’s browser-based, and we’re app-based, and so what’s great about scheduling it? If we take that as an example, there’s all sorts of scheduling and rescheduling. There’s lots of nuances within that, like attendance taking, so if those of you that are listening are not tracking when people are in and out of your lessons or classes, it’ll change everything ’cause it actually gives you metrics. It also provides safety and security. You can tell when you might be losing customers or students might mention they want to quit.
0:20:34.1 Tyler: Now, if you only have 30 people and it’s just you, sure you can track that with a spreadsheet, but if you have 30 instructors and they have 30 people, that’s not sustainable or scalable without a system. If you don’t know who we are because you’re just meeting us. Hello, first of all, nice to meet you. Thanks for joining in with us. We are the creators, co-creators of teacherzone.com, that actually solved the experiences we personally have felt over the years, and the people we’ve locked arms with through teacherzone.com around the world that are using the system to solve those four pillars. We’re gonna tell you really briefly today how Teachers Zone does solve those issues and allows you to free up that time. So Chris, why don’t we just tell how it works now. Whether you use our system or not, is not the point. We’re gonna tell you what we know, what we created and how helpful it is. And so let’s just get into it.
0:21:47.2 Chris: Well, we’ve talked about the scaling part, and so the other aspect that I know bugs a lot of folks is collecting a college tuition or collecting money for a lot of you is hard. I was just gonna say for a lot of people, I think it’s actually a sore spot. I think a lot of people actually feel guilty charging for what they do. So they kinda let people barter with them. They have all sorts of rules. They’re not automated because they let their customers tell them what to do, make the actual rules that causes the business to stay in business. Right? It’s madness from the standpoint that to get out of that chaos, if you’re literally letting the inmates run the asylum, you’re never gonna be organized enough to actually create a great impact. You have to dumb it down. So what we often suggest is automated billing and don’t have more than three options, and we know some of you have a lot of offerings, so you can have three options per offering, but only three options. Here’s why humans have been shown to not be able to make decisions past three.
0:23:02.2 Tyler: When given four choices. they kind of stopped reading or walked away. Right.
0:23:09.2 Chris: Do you know why, Tyler?
0:23:10.6 Tyler: No, you told me before, I forgot.
0:23:13.2 Chris: Remorse. Most humans assume, if there’s too many choices, I’m gonna pick the wrong one. So you’re doing your customer a disservice. We had one customer once in New York say, oh, I’ve got this, and when we actually drilled it down, they were offering 32 different options. 32 options to take the lessons somehow with their instructors. That’s a billing nightmare and trying to track it, trying to keep track, trying to collect, and trying to make sense to your customers. A lot of people aren’t signing up ’cause they’re so confused. It’s similar to when people do the restaurant makeovers. Wasn’t one of the first things you see Chef Ramsey and those folks do, is take that 20-page menu and pair it down to two or so? Right?
0:23:58.3 Tyler: Well, how many menus have you read? How big are your favorite restaurants? Usually the bigger restaurants like that one that has the picture menu with the 15 folds with all the omelettes. Okay, I like this, but in reality, can you give us a second? I’m still deciding which of the 73 omelettes I’m gonna have.
0:24:23.6 Chris: I hate to say it, but there’s a local diner here that you had had a menu forever and the owner who we all loved who created that menu died, and so the new owners dumb down the menu.
0:24:38.8 Tyler: I like it better, but I only pick three things.
0:24:56.7 Chris: What’s great about software and systems is that there’s unlimited possibilities, so you’re welcome to design your business however you want. You’re the heroes. When we’re trying to tell you how to get organized, for us, getting organized means a repeatable, something that you do all the time needs to be repeatable and simple. So you need to have a way that you help manage scheduling, and then something like Teacher Zone. What’s great is that students can actually reschedule themselves. They can cancel lessons if they’re sick, all that kind of stuff. You can also convert to online really fast. In other words, if someone needs to (like in a pandemic) you could easily go to virtual from a billing standpoint. What’s great about automated billing is it’s wake up money, because you woke up this morning, you’re gonna get paid. You literally don’t have to chase tuitions. It’s super simple, and then it allows you to come up with whatever variables you want for what you charge and how you charge, but at least you’re getting that money instantly. You’re not having to spend a lot of time. We’ve heard that you can save somewhere between 2500 to 5000 a month on administrative costs just on that.
0:26:06.6 Tyler: That’s a fancy number you just put out there and a very familiar one. Before we automated back in the day, well before Teacher Zone, we found when we really looked at the books and started getting better with our books, we were consistently four to five business days behind, at about an average of $2800 to $5000 a monthly membership tuitions. This is because we were trying to find them. You know we need systems, and so do the people that pay. And you know what, even at that time, people were already getting used to the membership economy anyway. Even your car payments are automated. Mortgage payments are automated. Those did not used to be, but now all of a sudden, everybody wants to be automated. Now they’re asking can I just pay the rent and have my bank pay you directly? Or can I use my credit card? And that part alone, being at a deficit at any point in your business of that many thousands of dollars, if that’s still happening to you, you gotta stop that.
0:27:09.5 Chris: Makes paying the bills hard. Like your electric bill, rent, and payroll. And so when you’re getting paid consistently, it changes everything. Let’s jump to the next one, which is communication. So for a lot of you, you’re still letting your teachers text, you’re still letting your teachers communicate, and we understand a lot of you run independent contractor businesses and you think, oh, that’s what I have to do. We’re here to tell you that that is super challenging. You’re adding an extra piece to this puzzle that we just aren’t a fan of. We’re a fan of say it and forget it, communications. Have a one-stop place where everybody’s communicating in the same portal, where people are getting notified before a lesson, where people are getting notified if their credit card declines, where everything is just simple, and you actually have the ability to customize all those notifications. But once you set them up, you’re not having to worry about, oh, do I need to set a reminder to let the people in this class know that the class is coming up Tuesday? No, because you have an automated system, like Teacher Zone, and there’s others out there. There’s SMS and email notifications that go out automatically.
0:28:28.5 Tyler: Or if a teacher cancels ’cause they’re sick, or a student cancels, or there’s a new student added to the roster, usually administrators need to send out something to everyone that it’s been done. If you drag it on to this system in Teacher Zone, it immediately sends a custom communication to the teacher and the student. For instance, if a student doesn’t show up, and the teacher marks no show, the administration gets an SMS text and an email, and so does mom and dad that says, hey, your child was a no-show to Kai dojo for karate lessons, and please contact this email address and let us know everyone’s okay. Or whatever.
0:29:15.0 Chris: Our parents love that because they know their kids are safe. And essentially, we call it our no show Amber Alert. Best thing that we really love about having an internal system is that you actually can have our internal chat, Tyler, where teachers, groups, classes, everybody can have communications that are transparent so parents can see it. If your students are minors, everybody has access. Also school administrators can see what’s being talked about. You can share files, all sorts of stuff like that, so communication is massive.
0:29:53.3 Tyler: And the technology of the actual students being able to have together as a tribe in those chats that are safe. By the way, kids can’t make their own chats and ln Teacher Zone, teacher security levels are higher. But in those chats, we’ve found kids that don’t even know each other or adults or different yoga classes, that teachers can create a group with all the students to send out messages. Like awesome material on new yoga moves or a live performance that they saw and sent it to their group community or multiple groups. Maybe they have adults in this one, maybe they have teenagers in this one. So on and so forth. What’s happening is whether they’re responding to the teacher’s content or not, it doesn’t really matter because they’re in there together and they’re talking and they feel like they’re part of something. So the communications are very clerical and administration-based. It’s a system that we’re refining and we’re organizing, but it’s also magical, depending on how you wanna set it up.
0:31:01.6 Chris: Community and social communication is massive. We’re gonna get into that in the culture episode, because humans are so community-based that if we feel like we belong to something, we kinda don’t wanna leave it. We wanna stay. So if you’re looking to retain students and want to try harder, you do. You wanna put in more effort. We’re big on talent or big proponents of goal-based learning. When you’ve got a team and you’ve got a group and you’re all trying to work hard, and you have goal-based learning, it really helps build that sense of community that makes retention higher, and increases whatever skill or whatever the thing is you’re trying to learn. You don’t give up, keep trying. So communication is big. The last one we wanna get into is learning, ’cause we know the other rabbit hole of other parts of systems. Once you’re taking attendance, for instance, now you’ve got one click payroll and other things. I’ll just simplify your life. It’s like whatever you measure now, you can take those metrics and do things. You can look at retention reports, where you can look at all sorts of different things that you measure. One of those things that we measure at our business that we think is really important is what are your instructors leaving the students with for when they actually aren’t with you. Whether it’s six days before they’re in their group classes or right before the next class. What are you wanting the students to learn?
0:32:29.4 Tyler: When they’re not with their teacher, what’s happening? Yes, usually there’s different types of lesson businesses out there. Like for instance, my jujitsu. I wish I could get there four nights a week ’cause I have an unlimited membership and each night there’s something different being worked on, but I can’t make it. With that business, it would be awesome to be able to talk to my friends outside of class. Maybe if I get a phone number or something, but how cool would it be to have my level blue belts and whatever be able to have a place to just talk and stuff like that.
0:33:11.5 Chris: So there’s different types of businesses that this comes into play on, but the learning and what happens the other six days a week is custom tailored to what your company wants to do. For instance, to us, your group class is something, if you guys were learning a certain technique and there was a multimedia lesson that was assigned, then what would be so great is that when you’re not there, you guys are able to pull up any device and pull up the apps and actually watch your instructor showing how to do that.
0:33:46.4 Tyler: I misheard. They’re teaching our bars, I missed it and it’s literally in order, and I’m gonna have to re-learn it. They do review it, but guess what, it’s populated. It landed in my Teacher Zone app and I can practice it on my eight-year-old. Cool.
0:34:01.6 Chris: Perfect. So givin the learning side is imperative, ’cause we need to know what our instructors are teaching, number one. Because the better we can get those systems, the more impact we’re making in our businesses. Also getting the learning side really kinda honed in is gonna create a higher retention. You’re gonna have students quitting less because any time we can engage them in any way is important. So I’ll just go so far to say the four months we just covered scheduling, building communication, and learning are all retention tools. If I’m not having to remind them to pay every month, they’re gonna stay longer. What if in scheduling you and I actually picked up a student in our business where the family said they left a competitor because they didn’t have a system for scheduling, and it was just such a nightmare that they couldn’t take it anymore. So that’s a retention tool
0:34:55.5 Tyler: People want to feel secure. If it’s a youth facility or institution, they wanna know that. They wanna set it and forget it too. They wanna be so comfortable with your brand, that they only need to tune in maybe every now and again after they get used to your culture. There’s a lot of businesses that are in such chaos, they don’t get to really give their parents that benefit. At first the culture is so fun, they don’t care, but if those systems aren’t in place, they get weary and they learn of something else and the grass is greener. All of a sudden they’re gonna go to the place that does have systems.
0:35:40.1 Chris: It’s very rare that students stay with you guys forever, let’s face it. Some of you will tell us I’ve had students forever. Of course, you have…
0:35:46.2 Tyler: That’s because everybody’s had those 10 year students. We’ve all had this, and you know what, you deserve praise. We should be proud of it.
0:35:54.9 Chris: There is no staff member that’s permanent. There is no customer that’s permanent. It’s always in flux. Our goal is to create a bigger impact to try and lengthen those relationships. If we can keep our teachers and instructors longer because they’re happy and our systems are better, and if we can keep students longer because they’re learning more and they feel connected to their community, and it doesn’t feel chaotic then we’ve reached our goal and students have a consistent experience. That’s what getting organized does. It helps give you more time. It helps give your community and your staff a more consistent experience.
0:36:32.2 Tyler: How many of you feel like the communications with your staff aren’t where you would like it to be. Maybe it’s fine and very amicable and all that, but how many feel like there are stones left unturned, like there’s some wish list you wish would be clearer. You want to be more transparent with your staff. If you did the first four pillars we talked about, and put that system in place, you would have a whole extra hour to reconnect with the staff and find out what their goals in life are. How are they doing? When you free up your time, you strengthen every aspect of your business. If you’re in chaos, you do not, and guess what, the staff just thinks chaos is either normal or that you are unapproachable.
0:37:29.4 Chris: Right, yeah, I love that. When is the last time you had the time to just go see how your people are doing? It’s because you’re running with your hair on fire. You don’t have the time right now to do that.
0:37:41.1 Tyler: Our employees on occasion, sometimes I’m not gonna say it’s a system because it’s just coming from my heart… I’m a fairly sensitive guy under the beard, and so every now and then my heart will go, Oh, how… And something will happen, remind me of something and go, You know what, I need to call so and so employee. I will call them, make sure they’re free and they’re not teaching. I will connect with them. These are the people that Chris and I interviewed, learned all about and have had great experiences with. I’ll call them and I’ll say, Hey, and they’ll be like, What? I’m just checking in, man, how are you? How’s everything? How’s your mom? There was a span of time for different circumstances and different reasons that I wasn’t doing that at all.
0:38:35.0 Chris: I know why because 10 years ago, we wouldn’t wanna hear this, and a lot of you may not wanna hear it, but it’s because you’re selfish. What I mean by that is if you’re in chaos and you’re not working to get out of it, you’re selfish. You’re saying, I’m gonna take all the work because you see you think you are a martyr or you’re being selfless. I would posit that it’s the opposite by not trying to get out of this because you feel maybe trapped. We respect that, but just know that you have to ask for help. You have to work to get organized. You have to try and figure out your roles and whether they can be delegated to people that are better suited for those roles. You have to get systems in place for things that are repeatable. By getting organized, you’re actually serving others better, and like Tyler said, now he has time to do other things. When he has the thought, he can actually reach out and connect with our Staff and because of the important connections they make, people wanna stay with you for a long time.
0:39:38.8 Tyler: One reason to want students to stay for a long time, is not just because their money is coming in, but I want these people here. I want these people to be happy. It’s important. So, Chris, how do we make the plan? Well, step one. I’m gonna throw this in there right now. If any of what we talked about hit home with you, go to teacherzone.com right now and sign up for one of the best demos you’ll ever have in your entire life, or live demos with our staff are a riot. They’re fun. They’re informative. They check the boxes off for you, and our onboarding is unreal. The service side of getting you implemented into Teacher Zone to get those, especially those four pillars off the ground. That is one way to make a plan. Go demo it and see who we are, and discover what are other ways we can help you ’cause we wanna make a plan. The book even says, make a plan to improve all these things. I’m pointing it at the camera for those listening to the podcast. That doesn’t have you at the center of all these new systems you put in place. You cannot recreate and have these great ideas. Make new systems. These are awesome, I’m gonna do them. There’s gotta be a different way. And you know what, you’re using your org chart and using the talent around you in your business. It’s just an example of what we’ve done. We’ve found that some amazing genius musicians that are at our lesson business, where one’s really great at social media and editing and post-production, and very extroverted in getting people comfortable, and we were not. He did not help us with any of that for many long years.
0:41:23.7 Chris: The more you try to work on your business, you’re forced to identify the superpowers of those around you and look at how they do things. Maybe they aren’t quite as good as you. We know you’re a hero. We know you’re amazing, but you can only wear so many hats. You can only be a superhero for so many things. By picking your roles, you’re looking like Tyler said at those that actually have it figured out. And in this case, Spencer, who we have doing our social media right now. He’s perfect for that. He’s the perfect person to take that off of our plate.
0:41:59.3 Tyler: Someone may be under your nose and you can just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re awesome at the teaching side, but how would you like X amount of dollars in salary per month to help you with these three items. Would you be interested? I think they all say no, automatically. Some assumptions have debilitated us and locked our hands up.
0:42:28.8 Chris: Take two hours a week or one hour a week. That’s what we’re talking about. It can be that simple. You can literally say, you know what, if I just had someone who could do this one thing. Right, and when you really look at it…We have a whole episode in the past where we talked about all the different roles, like the delegation of roles, and then we looked at a lot of the rules in your business. If it’s only an hour, so can you afford to spend one hour rather than find someone that’s better at it and pay that person for one or two hours a week.
0:43:08.1 Tyler: Imagine if you did that three to four times a week for a total of eight hours. How much would that cost you? Eight hours a week for a month. Put that bill in your hopper, and I bet you it’s minuscule compared to the time you’re spending on it in your life. For you to stop and start constantly, it’s not just taking you an hour. It’s probably taking you two hours. It’s not good on a car engine…it’s not good on you either.
0:43:38.7 Chris: It’s 100% like that. So getting organized, hopefully that was helpful. Do your homework, make a plan as to how you gotta start improving these things. Start looking at some of the elements of your business that we discussed today. Start looking at delegation. Start looking at systems. What is it you’re repeating constantly that you can get better organized, and how can you find help? That help can be in your staff. That help can be in cloud-based software. Stop being the end all hero, because we all know that you guys are super heroes out there and because you’re an entrepreneur. You’re a business leader, and we’re just asking you to not do everything.
0:44:18.6 Tyler: A quick note in the book that I have printed out here. It says, chaos and organization. That’s what we just went over in the last two episodes. They are the first two stages, and these are stages you will actually grow through. With the next two stages, you will not grow through Stage Three and Stage Four. They will be the parts of your business that you’re always learning, adapting and improving. They are a continual part of your journey towards building a thriving culture, and it says, let’s go on to stage three. We did chaos, and we did get organized. Stage three is engaging your students. This is where the lights come on, and you remember why you started teaching in the first place.
0:45:03.0 Chris: Stage four is fueling growth. You’re no longer just teaching lessons.
0:45:08.2 Tyler: You own the fact that you’re a thriving business owner, so those are our next two episodes and I just got chills. We’re gonna have a lot of fun talking about that with you, and,Chris, thank you so much for all your insight as usual. You were the nugget master, and everybody, thank you so much for tuning in to the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler, and we will be with you again for stage three, engaging your students.
0:45:33.8 Chris: Thanks for tuning in. Thank you too Tyler. I have to say one last thing, if you’re listening to this, thank you for having the courage to be a superhero.
0:45:46.5 Tyler: You’re special. Don’t forget that. Good-bye everybody.