In this episode of the TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler, we discuss the fifth and final part from their five part series “From Chaos to Culture”.
This episode covers some of the ways we can define and improve “Culture” in our learning and lesson businesses.
This is the point where kids and adults alike are gonna remember moments for the rest of their lives.
It will be those moments that caused them to raise their kids a certain way, look for creative outlets for their kids down the road, caused them to come to your 80th birthday party barbecue. Because you made that big of an impact.
Are you ready for that? Then let’s go!
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0:00:10.2 Tyler: Welcome to another episode of The TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler. I’m your co-host, Tyler Marolf, and I’m here with Chris Bates. How are you, sir?
0:00:36.4 Chris: Well, Tyler, we made it. This is episode five. And so, for those of you that I have listened this is where we’ve been sort of building up, and some of you brought it to our attention that some of the earlier items are a part of the journey to keep revisiting and just to reiterate, we get it all right, five of these elements are a part of running a business, we like the ascension model, simply because we wanted today’s episode about culture to resonate as the most important for all of us.
Tyler: this is the point where kids and adults alike are gonna remember moments and we’re gonna get into that right, Chris? for the rest of their lives, and it will be those moments that caused them to raise their kids a certain way, look for creative outlets for their kids down the road, caused them to come to your 80th birthday party… Barbecue. Because you made that big of an impact. That’s this section, or this is the Edith birthday barbeque moment. I love… This Is exactly it. And Drew, I’ll be at your baby, Drew Story is one of my favorite guys from when I was younger and a mentor, and I’ll be at his 90th birthday party is probably gonna make me learn how to do a speed canoer, whatever that is. So yeah. Well, Chris, what if everybody’s getting excited right now, but they haven’t heard the other episodes. So how do they get it? Yeah, so everyone right now who just tuned in and have… No, I do. You who we are. That’s okay. You’re about to know, but first, go to Teachers on dot com chaos, Download Our Free E-book, and it’s called the five stages as a business owner. You must grow through. Number one, are you in chaos or not… Number two, getting organized and getting out of that chaos, number three, engaging your students kind of remembering, why did I wanna do this in the first place? Oh, yeah. Let’s make an impact, right?
0:02:36.8 Tyler: Number four, this is Big Four and Five go together for last episode is fueling growth, and now we’re on to building culture, and it says lives are being changed, communities, the community is being built, and people can’t wait to be a part of the transformation that others are already being a part of inside, whatever it is, you built. So, Chris, where are we gonna start? Where do you wanna start with this?
Chris: Well, you really bring up a good point with the idea at that 80 90th… Well, with the modern technology. That’s called 150th birthday maybe. Yeah, right. ’cause you know what you made me think of is one of our friends, fathers down in the South, when he passed away, he was so impactful that they actually threw a parade and at the Razorbacks… ’cause it was an Arkansas where he was a big fan. They actually had a tribute during the game, so they had a parade and attributed the college, all this stuff for this guy, and Lee, he would have probably turned over in his grave if he knew everybody even did that form. In fact, when he was in the hospital, the family immediately started calling and handing out to anyone that wanted tickets because they knew that he would be so upset since the family wasn’t at the game, that someone wasn’t using their seats over…While he’s dying, he’s like, make sure those are reviews, although the family knew him so well… Right. He didn’t request that, they’re like, Dad would freak out if he knew that those tickets weren’t getting used, let’s make some calls and do a solid… And so the point is, is do you wanna be the person, a type of person that creates that much love and energy that people just have these memories and are so grateful for all that you’ve done that is…
Tyler: And it doesn’t matter if you’re more of an introvert, silent altruistic ninja, and true altruism is doing things for people and expecting zero in return. Okay, that’s what true altruism. So if you’re quiet giver or you’re a connector and a people person, and you’re just elevating around the country trying to help people, everything in between. It doesn’t matter, we all wanna hopefully be remembered as a positive light in people’s eyes, and if you don’t… I stop listening right now because this is totally the wrong podcast for you, but I really don’t think this is for everybody, so… Yeah, I’m excited.
0:05:33.2 Chris: If you’re in any type of learning business, right, so if you’re teaching any kind of topic, skill, talent, you’re passionate about what it is you do, and just like you talking about… Drew your seventh grade science teacher. Social Studies. Yes, just like you’re talking about Drew, it doesn’t matter what you’re imparting as far as skill, knowledge, talent, as an instructor is someone that’s… Your job is to literally inspire someone to action, inspire someone to learn, inspire someone to actually practice and do whatever it is you’re teaching to get better in life, so we know that you rise by default, and
Tyler: I 100% agree. Or we inspire someone at the very beginning to find out if this is the path they even wanna be on, so we’re an open-minded, open-hearted mentor, waiting to see who will be received into what we teach and how we help people become better at something, because news flash, someone helped us. Yeah. Does everybody want it? Sometimes, no. So it’s also our job to help them discern, hey, man, like at our lesson business, literally, we were just talking about this, the only real rule is that you have to wanna be there, and on top of it, that kind of means, you just need to care… We care 120%. Please care at least 100%.
0:07:19.7 Chris: That’s it. So what you just said is Why we put culture at the top of this mountain, because if you are building a business that doesn’t have a transformational element to it, then at some point it feels kind of hollow, people naturally want to grow because growth is a natural part of the world that we’re in. And so the idea of transforming our community is what service businesses are really all about because we’re serving others to help them live a better life, and in learning a lesson business… It’s a whole another thing. So the first thing that you and I were just kinda talking about different company cultures, ’cause it kinda starts inside out, isn’t it? So culture starts in the building, or if you’re all virtual, it starts with how you actually train, how you connect, how you…
0:08:22.7 Tyler: How do we view the part of our culture, if you’re the owner, or you’re like Chris and I were the owners, we walk around and the inception was with us, and so we didn’t have 12 guys we hired and then said, Hey, what should we build? No. We had an idea and we had some standards and a couple of things we were certain about, like if we did this, it would work, this is not being done, whether it’s extraordinary results instead of linear regular results or whatever it is, then those standards start to grow, so that’s where when you said inside out earlier, Chris, I went all the way there, I think, to the light that we burst into the idea and then
Chris: it gets masked by the other levels is why we put this at the top, because when you’re in chaos, you don’t really at that point remember, like you said, that spark that got you really excited, you don’t remember that moment that made you wanna do what you do, what we’re trying to do is re-invigorate the fact that that spark is the most important… And if you get the other parts of your business handled, you can impact more lives and you can actually have more fun and live more enjoy because you’re actually doing what you’re meant to do,
Tyler: and in theory, that spark Chris can be duplicated or emulated by each customer’s journey or each student’s journey, it doesn’t have to be the identical one, but the same thing in theory, why would that same spark… If we created the culture together and we grew it, and then all of a sudden the first 20 kids were having that amazing of a time. Okay, well, where did that come from? Can we can do better to…
Chris: You know the Cali vigil metaphor came to my mind where you take one candle and then you like someone else is in the light, someone else’s and they like someone else’s it. That’s a great… Before, what we do, you’re imparting that knowledge. And so, a first way to start inside out, if you haven’t done it already, yes, and for a lot of lists, you may not have… Is a mission vision values. So what is mission? Vision Values, you hear all about corporate cultures that do it, you’re all about this stuff, it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s very simple vision. I’m gonna start there is where the heck you’re headed, so your vision statement can be lit by whatever you want, it’s… Where are you trying to take everybody… Mission is what are the strategy and tactics you’re using to get to that vision, so a mission is, Here’s what we’re about, because it’s going to get us eventually to the vision, so the vision is where you’re headed, the Mission is what you’re doing to get there and then what the values are, is the values are basically what are the rules or the ethics that we embody to make sure that we’re keeping those parts pure, total…You brought something up a Google… What was their visit for a long time… Everybody needed to watch the social dilemma, if you haven’t already..
0:11:21.8 Tyler: . Google’s been around a long time. We’ve all used it. And their big thing was, Don’t be evil. That was redone. Don’t be straight did you cannot be more simple than that, and part of the reason was, is the algorithms for tracking what we consumers like, ’cause we’re basically the products when it comes to them, they started to become demigods with information and behavioral, persuasion and control, straight up just instantly, you saw things in front of you and they had that, so they’re like, Guys, this is a big deal, we’ve basically created a monster, so don’t be evil, and I always thought that was really… You know where I heard, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that they crafted that out of sort of wanting to be an anti-Microsoft… Okay, team, they saw Microsoft, it was sort of almost like an elbow at Microsoft, realise they were just less pursued and they’re like… They’re like, We don’t wanna be like that. We want to be more thoughtful and giving, but here’s the funniest part about it, they just changed it to not say
0:12:54.8 Chris: You know where I heard, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that they crafted that out of sort of wanting to be an anti-Microsoft… Okay, team, they saw Microsoft, it was sort of almost like an elbow at Microsoft, realise they were just less pursued and they’re like… They’re like, We don’t wanna be like that. We want to be more thoughtful and giving, but here’s the funniest part about it, they just changed it to not say It there that you’ll kinda see… I did we already fall off that cliff because Alexa shipping me stuff now before I even order it.
0:13:08.8 Chris: So that he be knowing what they changed it to, ’cause he… Toadie, just talking about the cuff here, but… I’m gonna pause it, I’m just gonna say it. I think it’s now… It’s scary in the sense of It… Portions the fall of Google, I’m just gonna say it, because for them to change something that they were so known for speaks volumes, because it doesn’t mean the fall of them monetarily purchase, what you mean is they almost like fell from grace, neither culturally, that speaks volumes that basically says that That is no longer as important to them as something, or
0:13:50.6 Tyler: Why would they have changed it? Why ask? Why did they change that? Why would anybody ever say, You know what, we should change that. Don’t be evil. We should change it to, What do you do? What did you do? To me, you’re on the giroud, the US. What did you do? It’s like, why did they want? Yeah, Joe Rogan, if you wanna find that podcast, had the guy from the social dilemma on there, and they talk all about…
0:14:27.6 Chris: Oh, I gotta listen to that. Yeah, that’s great, great movie. If you haven’t seen social dilemma, the reason it’s great, I’m gonna tell you guys right now, I have a firm belief that if you are in the lesson learning business, you are not only a hero as an entrepreneur, like we’ve talked about, but you are actually on the cutting edge of the next 100 years, because we’ve moved so fast as a society that we’re actually moving towards as you hear about biotech and automation and artificial intelligence taking away everybody’s jobs, so rawat, if that’s true. And that means all of you listening to this anyway, in the learning or less on business, that means that you now hold the keys to the kingdom, because that means that in there humans will have more time to level up their skills, their intelligence, they’re learning. And you’re at the crux of that, that major… And the thing about social dilemmas, it talks about distraction and all that, and so what you’re providing is medicine.
0:15:33.7 Tyler: You may use some of the targeting like and fuel your growth episode, and we’ll use the Taranto, get some students, but gosh, darn it, we’re transforming their lives once they get here… You know what I mean? So I know the deal Facebook happened right at… We all got on Facebook. I grew a business out of Facebook and YouTube, and back then there was no ads, it was all free, everybody saw it, and at the same time, my life was getting better because of it, I have friends from high school getting divorced because of Facebook.
0:16:09.1 Tyler: So there’s an ebb and flow, there’s always a yin and a yang, and we are that positive side to this insane algorithm culture shift that’s going on in our society right now, because people need people…
Chris: Well, attention is the commodity that everyone’s buying for, and anyone that’s listening to this, Your business, you’re selling, just like we talked about, you’re not selling whatever it is you’re teaching, you’re actually selling engagement, so you’re selling, you’re selling attention. So the more you can keep people’s attention on something positive, on something that’s growth based… Oh my gosh, so that culturally right there, and it’s in today’s topic, culture, you and I are gonna go down a social wormhole, that culture is all based on what do you want people focused on it? And so in other words, if we’re talking inside out, that goes to the cleanliness of your operation, it goes to your brand awareness in your colors, it goes to everything from what sort of events you have, do you sell merchandise? It goes to how that all is present at all, are proud of… Are they proud to where your stuff… Do they wanna wear your stuff, do they want the badge? Do they want the thing…
0:17:27.8 Tyler: Is there that much of an impact where people want to present and be part of what was built, ’cause they’re invested now, so that’s a trust in the relationships that were formed. So design, branding, mission vision values, trust between staff and owners, staffing, clients, and environment, which you just brought up… Exactly. Is it clean? Do you have a janitor?
Chris: Argue the standards, if you do. That’s when we talk about leadership last time, it’s time to actually be a leader, because as the person that’s listed as I assume you’re in a leadership role or the owner of the company, and bottom line is people are counting on you to actually have standards, because if you don’t… If you just let everybody do what you want, that too is a standard that to is a culture.
Tyler: You have now drawn the line in the sand, way over on the side of the client, so they make all the rules, which… News flash, that creates chaos. You’ve now let the, What do you call it? You say, the inmates run the asylum.
0:18:36.2 Chris: Inmates are Running the Asylum.
Tyler: And we say that in love, by the way, and you know it’s true, but another thing, Chris, when you think of all of this and making an impact and having these standard set, it scares people and guys, leadership is courage. You didn’t get here by being scared, you did something one day to get into the position you’re in, whether it’s chaotic or whatever, it doesn’t matter, you did it congratulations, but to stay in fear once you get comfortable or to a spot or whatever it is, monetarily. There’s what, 7 billion, 8 billion people on earth right now, and I know in the county are lesson business is in, there’s 4 million people now. We don’t need all of them. We want the ones that believe what we believe, so that’s a huge part of culture, are… And who are our people? And it’s nothing against the people that don’t fit.
Chris: and filtering out the cancerous elements, if you’ve got this in a staffer… Okay, right now, heart-to heart. I want you to look inside right now at everyone that works for you, and who are your people that are invaluable that you would go to bat for all the way to the end, ’cause by the way, Netflix actually has this in their cultural or… In fact, you can just Google Netflix culture Slide Share, and there’s a whole slide share on a 100-page Netflix culture document for the stuff in there. Yeah, and what they basically say is, in leadership, you should be analyzing your team constantly and saying, Am I willing to go to bat for everybody? In other words, is everybody indispensable? So to speak… Anyone that you’re like, get rid of them, right? The rule of thumb is higher, slow fire fast, having someone that is not good for your culture, we’ll do way more damage long term then you just trying to be nice because, well, they’re my cousin’s friend or… Well, we were good friends 10 years ago, and I wanted to give him a break.
0:20:50.3 Tyler: Stop doing a disservice to the people that love and care for your leadership, because this is a big deal when we rip off the band-aid here real quick, and then we’ll put some Neosporin on right after this. So for instance, customers or staff, shoot Chris in my partnership, we’re working on stuff all the time, we know we are fallible, we know that we have to renew our minds daily, how many cells are dying every day, and Chris… We have to eat healthy, exercise, be in gratitude, there’s All these things that lead to the heart beat of our culture at the top, so now we can have some clarity, right, Chris, we can discern like, I’ve worked on some stuff. I’m not new to this PS, I’m not reacting to everything in my life anymore, so now we can set some standards
0:21:49.5 Chris: You bring up a good point, I’m sorry. But before you talk about standards, I just want people to know that we’ve messed up a lot, and we’ve let our staff know that we know, and we’ve apologized and like everything from throwing a fit…
0:22:05.5 Chris: We don’t repeat the behavior, if we can learn from it right Chris?, and it never happens again. And we own it, stream ownership, patient
0:22:16.3 Tyler: have to disagree, but let’s face it, you and I have repeated some things where if we get frustrated about certain things and we didn’t have the reaction that we wanted to, ’cause we weren’t coming from gratitude, where we weren’t coming from extreme ownership, we had to walk through those moments and we… To work on ourselves. So there might be some interior work that you need to do to as a leader to realize, Hey, do I have avoidance issues, or do I have to… Do I have a steroid? Dance issues, do I not… Or short fused.
0:22:49.7 Tyler: And what are those, Chris? Those are just byproducts to something inside of yourself anyways, like Why am I so mad that someone isn’t happy with everything I gave them? Well, out, go talk to them, they’re a person, they’re a staff member that probably cares about their job and the people… They’re teaching it.
0:23:09.2 Chris: I like Extreme Ownership, people are drawn to you with honesty, so when you simply state, hey, you know what, I yesterday, I hadn’t eaten and I acted in a way that isn’t… With the culture I’m trying to create here, I just wanna apologize to you guys, I appreciate it. ’cause I do, our boss is human.
0:23:31.9 Chris: And actually admit when they’re wrong. That’s such a big deal. You guys, you are so much better off admitting when I say that to my kids all the time, that everybody messes. In fact, challenges investing up is the adventure, and The only time that you can truly Mess up is not owning it, that’s true.
Tyler: Moving through into the solution feels like you’ve accomplished something pretty big, even if it was an unplanned mistake when you move through it and it’s uncomfortable, usually moving through it with transparency and truth and honesty and own ownership. It’s the easier, softer way. Even though it looked hard, it felt like it was gonna be so hard if you didn’t say anything or if we didn’t say anything and we just moved, and seven months later, all of a sudden an instructor’s out of here one of our good ones or something.
0:24:33.8 Tyler: That’s where Chris, means you would have messed up, so that leads us to standards, so this is all culture building stuff, you guys… These are all attributes and pillars of who you are that translates down and helps the staff understand your intent and the mission and vision of values, so that they can disseminate and give that out as well and be maybe once that members like he had too weird. I just wanna be a contractor, I’m out of here. I don’t like it.
0:25:15.1 Tyler: Cool. It worked out that US customers every year. So customers, we’re really big on and this, I learned this from a mentor in a different industry, Todd Duncan. Todd Duncan changed my life in the real estate industry a long time ago before I started doing music full-time, and he told me in the mortgage industry that I needed to separate my customers and where I got my business from, and he has four categories. And this changed the culture, and I took the same thing and Chris and I apply it to our lesson business, and not just that teacher’s on… Anybody can use teachers one, but we’re not gonna let people just push us around, we believe in something amazing that’s gonna help thousands and thousands of people, millions. And so here’s the deal. It starts small. Four types of customers, right, Chris? We’ve got high maintenance, high profit.
0:26:05.0 Tyler: We have high maintenance… Low profit. We have low-maintenance, high profit, and we have low maintenance… Low profit. So Todd told me to figure out which ones of my partners, realtors that were sending me business were under which category, and I had two realtors given me business that I couldn’t sleep three to four nights a week, at least because they were so intense and me and that I was leaving my late 20s, didn’t even know how to handle it today I had to fire the high-maintenance… Low profit and the high maintenance. High profit. So in the lesson business, that might mean a crazy family that has seven kids in your program, but they literally are a cancer on your whole team, your ops team, you have an ops director crying or something, because these people, these personalities…
0:27:06.1 Chris: Are you not helping 30 other families because of the seven?
0:27:10.0 Chris: Right, exactly. So here’s what happened, I did it all I had to do, my business went down by over 50% when I got rid of the two realtors.
0:27:21.7 Tyler: Chris, for four months, Melissa and I were sort of in trouble, it was like… It was like, we’re back in time seven years for about almost a half year, but the low maintenance one low maintenance high profit realtor I had, and then the few other low maintenance low profit realtors, I told them what I did. And they thought it was I at a lunch with them, those people, birds of a feather flock together. Hey, they knew the other realtors, everyone knew each other, so they understood… They sent me… Their grandparents, their mother’s realtors were sending their immediate families for re-finances and purchases to me because I took a step and learn something from a mentor,
Chris: and then they doubled down on the people you wanted to work with.
0:28:18.7 Tyler: People were calling and saying, Hey, you know so-and so said, I have to use you. And then Todd Duncan also told me, You know, Tyler, at that point, if your service is that good, you can charge a premium as long as it’s fair, and so I also got to slowly charge a little bit more, but safe fair and it patched up our income and then it went up 300%. Now, that was the refinance boom too, so we’ll take that into consideration, but are it launched? We went into the stratosphere, Melissa and eyes, life changed, our home life changed
0:28:54.1 Chris: By changing who you choose to work with, changes your trajectory, and that’s culturally, you chose to create a new culture, and in fact, you may be… You reminded me, we were talking about vulnerability, I spoke at an event with Todd years ago, and he had experienced the death of his wife and some really horrible times because of that personal tragedy and with his kids and stuff, and he showed up to this event and he got on stage without a pet speech for the first time ever in 40 years, and he just cried, and it was like the heaviest hour of our lives, ’cause all Todd did a… He said, I have nothing to say because I’m just here because I don’t wanna be here. But I realized that I just wanna do the worst thing ever made me… But one of the reason I bring it up is because that vulnerability is why everyone… And you’re still talking about it 15 years later. It’s why everyone loves a todo.
0:29:57.9 Tyler: Many… Do we have Chris, you mentioned a teacher that saw you sitting and study hall at the very beginning of one of your high school years, that kind of knew you, but aren’t you crispa and you’re sitting and you could have had another class, but you’re like, Nah. And he pulled you out of that class. Tell us about that quick.
0:30:17.5 Chris: Just… It was Mr. McCLure, and I was sitting, I decided to take a study on my junior year, and he walks in and he goes on to… Chris packages, why are you sitting here? I go study hall, and he’s like, yeah, no, there’s a waste of your time because come with me, and he forced me to be in logic and debate, and to this day.
0:30:37.8 Tyler: On one of the hardest classes… ’cause of the teacher at the school. Right, and
0:30:42.0 Chris: I loved it. And it changed everything. So just know that you guys are changing lives when you’re making decisions, when you’re impacting culture matters, your vulnerability matters, your ability to push yourself towards growth matters to build a great culture, takes all these things, it’s not as a you up top…
Tyler: Chris, you left ou the The cool part though, he put you in this class and the teacher said, No, I know him, he’s a good student, but he won’t put in the work and he…
Before you in there, anyways, I said to you, I about the one… Got this guy from study hall for nothing, you’re doing this. And it ended up working. And you’ve never forgotten. And the very last ad of the year, my friend Mike and I debated the teacher and our valedictorian and we want…
0:31:27.5 Chris: Before you in there, anyways, I said to you, I about the one… Got this guy from study hall for nothing, you’re doing this. And it ended up working. And you’ve never forgotten. And the very last ad of the year, my friend Mike and I debated the teacher and our valedictorian and we won!…No. See, I didn’t know that part. They are
0:31:32.6 Tyler: Those stories. And by the way, what Chris just mentioned was an O.I.L. moment, that part of it, it was all special, there’s a moment by moment that teacher helped glue things together for Chris getting to that point, and then each day and debate, there was more moments and momentum, but the oil moment, probably what? That was one of them. Wouldn’t you agree?
Chris: . And that is an oil moment, so it stands for once in a lifetime, and if you guys haven’t read, there’s a book out there called The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath, and those guys are… Some of you, there’s been me to stick, there’s been some great books, they’ve eaten, but that one, what I love about the Power of Moments is it sort of outlines some really great stories about how to create impact, and what they basically say is that we as humans can’t remember everything and we don’t… We actually remember the highs and the lows of the most impactful moments, I… So when you think of a wedding or you think of graduation.
0:32:41.1 Tyler: Or when my wife thinks of how everything that I do wrong is the only thing on the list sometimes that’s like, Oh, she’s not a yes. Every time I’m like, We’ve been married almost 20 years, every time. And she’s like, shut up! . You know what I mean?
0:33:06.0 Tyler: But we go there, our brains, our brains aren’t wired to keep the middle, our brains are wired to keep the extreme, so we remember the highs and lows, we just do it, that’s how we prune, and then we don’t have great experience to back learning. That’s why you can’t speak at your students, that’s why asking questions actually makes them learn more, because when you speak at your students, you’re speaking to the part and they’re not gonna retain it by asking them, you’re forcing them to have a higher low, so oil moments Tyler brings this up at reasons
Tyler: real quick, wouldn’t it be also just as impactful to a student if you ask the question and you truly listen, ’cause I know that goes without saying, but I wanna bring up the listening part one last time, if Chris, you were my teacher and you asked me what I thought about life and what I wanna do in regards to something, and I got to speak about it… I would never forget that you asked that question. Never, ever. Because guess what, when I was… Especially when I was younger. That didn’t happen that often. It wasn’t a big part of my life.
Chris: I’m gonna bring up an oil moment that that happened. So I walk up one day to talented Performance Academy, and one of our reconstructs Morgan, we had this conversation with our teachers that you guys are mentors, you’re not teachers, you guys here, I walk up and he and this student of his are lying in the grass up front. I’m like, Remember the…And the teachers have their own offices, he’s got his own apartment in there is beautiful, but he’s in the grass outside. So later on, I go, Hey buddy, I go, What was that? Was on there. He goes, Oh, and we do 60-minute private. So you gotta realize that’s a long time that they instead laid in grass for 60 Minutes, straight would go, Oh, that… I would have people say, Oh, that was a disservice, you should have refunded the money or whatever… No, he said, My student was having a really bad day, and all I needed was someone to talk to and someone to listen, that was so much more impactful, I guarantee you, then a music lesson that he probably in some way, he created an oil moment and change that student’s life forever. Wherever, I’ll never forget it, it merits like forget the music lesson people, or forget the karate test or whatever it is, if there’s a moment that to be had because someone needs you, listening often is the best part of it, and having a culture that embraces that tells people that you care.
Tyler: So people are being transformed, like that Chris, from sticking moments to moments to moments, smaller moments based on those standards and filters we put into place to protect our cultures to cause it to thrive, to cause it to have energy and excitement and passion. Okay, so how do we… Can we systematize, for lack of a better word, right now, with all this organic happiness we’re talking about, can we systematize to cause oil moments to happen more often is so that we can take all the character building, the team building, the rehearsal, the skill building, the… Oh my gosh, I finally got my purple belt in Jujitsu and now what? Yeah, I have great friends. Whatever. Hey, Chris, do you wanna go compete… There’s a local tournament. Holy crap, I don’t know about that. That would be an oil moment were in or to lose at a tournament… I see that. What, I mean, that stat.
0:36:33.9 Chris: Yeah, so a lot of you, brag alert! we’re just now… We’re going into our 12th year, and we’re feeling like we just have started, Feels like I just figured it out Yet because we’re just starting to make an impact, we’re just starting to actually have real deep moments, but I don’t know, for those of you to know us, you know, last year, we did a project, our teachers and students did a project that was nominated for two Grammys and is a big boys Pet Sounds, you can Google it on just tap in Los Rios Rock School Beach Boys Pet Sounds, and the full length albums there and we didn’t know that was gonna happen. Well, we just… So the reason I brought it up is ’cause you talked about system Ting, and so what we’ve done over the last ten years is that we’ve slowly tried to get our culture and our systems better and better and better and better,
0:37:29.9 Tyler: They could go to our YouTube channel, we’ve never removed a video ever, and just click videos and go to the channel, youtube.com/losriosrockschool click videos, and that’s literally the order that all however many videos have for the last 12 years have been put in. And you can watch, just skip every 20 from way back, and you’ll see the systems must have been for me, you’ll even recognize kids a year later in a different performance, that’s that same kid, and he’s better and crap, there’s 700 people at that concert compared to the first one.
0:38:11.3 Chris: Very first concert was in Tyler’s backyard with a hay bale stage. Yep, it was awesome, but it was totally different than our… Household blue is Disney. It totally different than that. We work with Make A-Wish and all the other things we do. Bottom line is, I’m not trying to brag, I’m trying to say that the systems we put in place have now enabled those moments to emerge, which now become part of those 22 kids on that Pet Sounds project will never, ever forget. It’ll change their life, it’s part of their resume now, ’cause they worked on that project and got to Grammy nods
0:38:47.9 Tyler: Cemented. It’s there, they’re in the credits, it’s legit.
0:38:53.9 Chris: And it’s also something that none of us will ever forget, but it predates the fact that systems matter because we created a system, for instance, for our classic album series that created that, so I don’t wanna just talk about our business to end this, but I wanted to just bring up the point that what you said… Can you systematize? Yes, we keep going deeper, our systems are actually behind the scenes, which you don’t see is the amount of communication with our staff, our staff has communicating with one another constantly. Have we even have project management software, Smartsheet that we use to manage our projects privately, we’re pinging each other and they’re making notes and all this… So to herd the cats that we do looks like magic, but gosh, a, it’s not…
0:39:50.8 Tyler: We even had to teach the families once… And I set up the, what do you call it? Time labs. So when we do these concerts, it takes eight people to load our whole stage out in Beehive, and then there’s even time lapse of the whole drive, I time-lapse every second of the process, and it ended up being six minutes, it’s a telling… It’s like they did that much more, six hours and that was not including tear down, and so we’ve sent it out and at the very end, it showed… No, it did show because it showed us bringing it back, it showed Clint, Dr. Hey, craft, who helped do all the Pet Sounds, it showed him sitting in a chair by the door, remember he finally just fell by the Dar, and we put a little note that says, Please hug your teacher today, and the parents we got probably out of 200 families 20 responses that said, I had no idea. They thought we were pouring Disneyland in a cup, which is part of the trick, we want them to be the heroes, but at the same time, on occasion there’s an apparent like, hey, they might complain a little bit because it’s an intense process and maybe parking sucked.. Because whatever I think the problem is so solved is all compared to what we’re doing, it’s insane, so people really…
0:41:08.5 Tyler: And then here’s the funny part, Chris, this is where I was going with it. When you start to create that, people talk. They wanna be a part of it. And guess what? Yes, where you end up after you succeed again, they use… And this is what we wanna tell you to, Chris, how many times the five stages you much grow through in your entrepreneurial life, which you’ve been doing it even longer than me, how many times have you gone through all five stages total, or even within each business? Do you think on average.
0:41:42.4 Chris: Three to five times per business, and I’ve done it seven businesses, seven business. So yeah, so it’s like 21 to 40 times and counting, because you and I are in a constant process of revisiting these elements, censors of saying, Where’s all our friction points? So we call brechin, the chaos moment, because friction basically means that there’s something that’s a challenge in getting in the way of you being your best, then it moves into getting organized, what are ways that we can be better organized, what are ways that we can have better systems, what are ways that we can actually employ an outside system or internal to make things flow? Then we get it to engagement, how can we create a deeper impact, how can we engage our staff and students more, How can we have better training, How can we have better ongoing education for everybody? \
Tyler: We never brought up surveys, by the way, survey monkeys, and I’m sorry to interrupt it in all five episodes, apologies, what better way to find out if your music instructor is having a hard time with his rehearsal on Saturday mornings is one of four rehearsals, because there’s cables missing or something, something small from that small to…Where was that kid? So those systems, surveying the teachers or your employees is just as important, or staff meetings, you can do that in staff meetings, or you can do an anonymous survey and you can get some great feedback from families and teachers and just were to the wives… Keep the survey short, if you do make one, you don’t need more than two to four questions probably to really get you some good results, and Chris, don’t you believe that we’ve grown from that alone,
Chris: you can’t grow what you don’t measure, and surveys is a part of it as with lots of different things, but if you don’t ask Often it’s so funny because just in the act of asking, you will get sometimes so much more valuable input and feedback then you ever possibly imagine. And then so that goes from engagement to fueling your growth, which feeling your growth, as we talked about in the last episode, is not just about sales and marketing, fueling your growth is also about a mindset of, I’m going to make sure that our company has a better culture each year, I’m gonna make sure that all our systems get a little bit better each year, I’m gonna try and make our facilities or the way that we do things a little bit leveled up each keep my employees feeling more secure and safe and happy each year, how can we have them just the better standards you have… In fact, something came to mind, and I don’t know how you know this anecdote, but something that came to mind with regard to parenting, I was singing on one of our friends, doesn’t believe we have this Life 360, and by the way, as parents, if you’ve got teenagers it’s the most amazing thing. It tracks everybody in the family where they are, if they’re speeding in the car, all that…
0:44:51.4 Chris: Exactly, so one of my friends that has kids, teenagers like me, totally against, thinks that’s way too much oversight and not that he’s wrong, because certainly there’s that debate… Absolutely, I don’t disagree. However, when I look at both of our kids, my kids know that we might look at it and they… Instead of worrying about that, they connect in and are constantly checking in with us constantly, I happen to know what my friend’s son is up to… And he’s up to no good. A lot. Okay, and so my point is, is just the fact that my kids know that they’re being potentially track, we never looked at it much, but just the fact that they know we could… They are making themselves more accountable, we get random tech random calls all the time, Hey, gonna go get a bit, and they’re at a friend’s house, I did want to tell me that, and I’m not saying I’m not into helicopter-ing or please. That wasn’t what the analogy was meant to be, it was the fact that when your staff or your kids or your students know that they’re being measured or know that someone cares enough, people tend to rise to that expectation
0:46:15.8 Tyler: unless they’re not a fit, and if the employee decides that, you know what, I’m not taking this crap anymore or whatever, it’s absolutely fine. You can come from a place of love, not confrontation or animosity, that is all perception, that as the way I decide to behave as a leader is up to me…
0:46:29.3 Tyler: Right, I wanna lash out. Well, hopefully, I apologize later because that probably wasn’t very beneficial, and unless someone’s harming me or my family, I don’t need to ever do that, it’s never… It’s like cussing every other word when you’re talking to someone… Not necessary. Right? There’s just things I, as a leader, I don’t have to do. And when we’re measuring in love and growth and fueling growth, like you just said, Chris, the teachers through Extreme Ownership, they know that’s why we’re doing it. And maybe the newer ones or maybe… Here’s a practical, real-world situation, maybe you start measuring now and you’re a five-year-old business with a bunch of employees you’ve had for a while…Just take it one day at a time. They’re gonna be like what… For instance, our school was around six years before TeacherZone.com came out and then we implemented TeacherZone.com into the school, and all of a sudden we do, there’s a little bit of monitoring going around… They had to get used to it. Point being is, is to be consistent, right Chris? don’t stop.
0:47:37.5 Chris: Well, for those of you that have independent contractors, Tyler and I, we talk to all the time, and you’re like, Well, I can’t tell them anything wrong, you get to dictate the standards with which your contractors operate, so don’t think that you can’t build a great culture, just ’cause you have independent contract, do you wanna be negligent because you were scared to talk to a contractor about how to treat people or have a… It’s like people do say ostrich in the sand that I can just let the independent contractors do whatever they want, and by the way, that is a culture, and it’s not a good one, it’s a… Well, you know, the reality is, is that what you’re saying with no standards is that too is you made a choice on how you’re representing your company.
0:48:27.7 Tyler: Now, this doesn’t include the folks that have successful contractor cultures, they… Because those, they lucked out and have contractors that love the place so much in the owner so much that they’re almost acting like employees anyways, like it’s a family, but that’s…
0:48:44.4 Chris: No, I’m not disparaging business models, it doesn’t matter, I don’t really… I’m not a tax attorney, I could care less how you run your… but what I do care about is that you have standards and that you display leadership regardless of your model, because you have to know that you’re doing it anyway if you’re choosing to pretend like you’re not, so… Own it, take responsibility, know that your culture is a direct reflection of you and your standards and care to create the type of culture that actually creates the vision that you’re trying to head towards. So I think towards the end here, we should… With the oil moments, ask yourselves, What are the oil moments? Week two, week. So make a list of all the things throughout a year that you do, or that your instructors or that your organization does, just sort of create an impact to create more of a community, to create a deeper connection, ’cause those are the things that culture embodies… It embodies community, it creates people that feel… That come to you. We started with the 90th barbeque, people that come to your 90th barbecue,
0:49:57.5 Tyler: Summer slam! Chris. We talked to schools and less on businesses around the world, and some of the things we bring up, I think a lot of people are doing and half of them have never even thought of it, and that somehow getting people together for some sort of a pre-culture your business’s appreciation, like, why shouldn’t the Monday crew who you teach and mentor, not know the Thursday crew who loves you, like Why can’t they know each other? And so we in TeacherZone we make group chats and they get to chat where it’s safe and they don’t have to like… Introverts don’t have to talk to someone right away, they can warm up, and then we… And with hopefully pandemic and summer coming and vaccine opening up, you can start doing this. So we did a summerslam, had a dunk tank, and all the kids… We raised so much money for charity for the teachers… The teachers were in the dunk tank every half an hour. You know how much fun it is to dunk your teacher? So there was food, a band was playing on our stage inside, we built a stage outside. And what do we do? We actually funded the first 100 families that could RSVP, they didn’t have to pay for their meals, they got their food tickets all covered, but the money came back to half a went to charity, I think, and so anyways, point being is those kids were not even doing…
0:51:35.5 Chris: That a creation oil moment is about some of you shout out to Dan Thompson. Now, I know he promoted a lot of that, for instance, even just having popcorn when people arrive, and some of you have a coffee shops actually in your facility, and there’s all sorts of ways that you create a culture and you create impact… It’s so cool. One of them also that as just kind of the stupidest thing, but it comes to mind in that Power of Moments book was a popsicle Butler. There is a hotel that’s in the magic of reinstate magic castle, there’s a really junky hotel, it’s not even a good hotel by the way, but it’s rated like the highest of the
0:52:19.2 Tyler: One in LA where there’s magic shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was…
0:52:24.8 Chris: Your brother used to go to that, I think, yes. He had a membership to learn magic.
0:52:34.2 Chris: So if you have a magic teaching business, let us know! haha!
0:52:36.0 Chris: but the cool thing is that this hotel is renowned for creating all moments, and so one of those, umm… Is there a popsicle Butler, sir. You’re out by the pool. There’s a red phone, and the only thing that red phone does is bring you popsicles. So you pick up the phone. Yes. Or flavor would you like… You say pineapple, great. And then a butler comes out in a tuxedo with a tray with a pineapple popsicle for you, in Talking about oil moment, it has nothing to do with a hotel. Right, but so memorable. So how can you create a better culture that’s in alignment with your values, your mission, vision values, or were you…
Tyler: we all get to make it up, it’s part of our fabric of who we are, we just have to have courage to design it and do it… That’s it. There’s no secret
0:53:40.7 Chris: You miss 100% of the shots, you don’t take. So if you’re not taking any shots, Hey, congratulations, you didn’t miss any, but should I make one either.
0:53:52.9 Tyler: Right, and then you die. And that’s the end. Job, good job. Yeah, let’s not die. That’s good.
0:53:58.8 Chris: Yeah, having the courage to try and create a better culture and then get it wrong is part of the game too, and so as you’re leveling up your business, as you’re trying to create a greater impact and as you get into cultural ways of thinking of What are my standards. So when people think of us as a business, what do they think about those, that kind of thoughts that you should be having as far as what you’re trying to present to the world, and if you’re not there yet, actually, you shouldn’t be ever… You should never fully arrive because that’s part of the journey is trying to make a greater impact, trying to have a better adventure, trying to… It’s an adventure. Challenges, like I said in another episode, can you imagine a James Bond film without any challenges or villain, right?
0:54:51.3 Tyler: He’s like getting to you stuff like, No, you’re not even getting groceries, they’re delivered, so there’s no challenge there either.
0:54:57.2 Chris: So are you playing it to say that you are like the most boring film ever… But that’s actually a problem, I think for a lot of folks is like all our business is good enough, and if I stretch and change it all, but see, that’s why you keep it small, you’re playing small ball. What if they inherited the business and they’re like, But it’s already does its thing. If you’re there now, its thing has changed.
0:55:28.1 Chris: Change Or Die. So, great analogy for that is I read Richard Branson book The Virgin way. It’s great, by the way. And he’s got a lot of great things in there. He’s on hundreds and hundreds of companies. But do you know that his Virgin Records, which went bankrupt in the 80s, he did… Steve Jobs saw an ad that he ran for April Fools, Richard Branson added ran an ad in the 80s for April Fool’s Day, for Virgin Records that said, We have cataloged every music that’s ever been in history, and you can now get it with whatever… Just one thought. It was like a joke. Right, ’cause it was the 80s and there was nothing digital to speak of, he had basically the mindset of the iPod, but it was just a joke in apropos joke. Richard tells the story, just cracking up at how dumb he was, Because Steve Jobs said that was the inspiration for the Ipoh.
0:56:34.1 Chris: Remembered it, and I eventually put Virgin out of business. So Richard was cracking up going 25 years earlier, I’m the one that had the April Fool’s joke, I have the idea, but didn’t have the courage to keep changing my culture in my business to match…
Tyler: Well, the CD listening bars had to come first, Chris, before the death… For the total death, this remember the CD listening bars a… I miss that. They’d have to sanitize so much now.
0:57:05.7 Chris: But the experiential side is coming back, and so for a lot of you that actually have storefronts, the experiential sites, everything and so creating great experiences, but it should be a message to all of us that even the greatest fall when they don’t continually think about how they can better their culture, better their business, sometimes throwing away your entire model, like I talk to some of you and your business just sucks, like I’m sorry, but you really… You’re a charity for some of you.
0:57:34.7 Tyler: I In the beginning, the teacher zone, we coded a whole scheduling system and realized we… We did it wrong, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, we scrapped and recoded, like we had to learn from that.
0:57:51.9 Chris: Like being willing to pivot is an important part of building a great culture, because if people know that you actually have the… People are expecting your leadership to have their needs in mind, and if they know that you’re constantly trying to better that and that you’re willing to change directions if it means something better, trust goes even deeper. Now, follow you through the fire, if something adverse happens to your company, they will come out of the wood work to help you, you will get private messages or a text or a call from, let’s say… I don’t know, some global attorney or something that his kid goes to your school and all of a sudden they walk through the fire with you and everything’s fine or something like that, and so you net… I’m telling you guys, this is real, if your business feels average or adequate, it doesn’t have to stay there, you move, then it’s up to you.
0:59:20.1 Tyler: Is fine. We gotta wrap this up. Hey, you guys, we just went through the five stages of what you have to grow through as a business owner, get the e-book if you haven’t already teachers on dot com chaos.
0:59:34.4 Chris: Also, if you wanna know who we are as well in regards to creating these systems that help people get out of chaos and what not, schedule a demo, the
0:59:42.1 Tyler: Most exciting demo you ever have with our team, and just go to teacher on dot com, click the demo button, it will be a live demo that you schedule.
0:59:51.3 Tyler: Also remember, if you’re not following our podcast… Yes is good. Thank you. Wherever you listen to podcast, apple, or on Android or whatever. We’re everywhere, so follow the teacher with Chris and Tyler and Spotify, it doesn’t matter, we’ll pop up and do we have a bunch of other episodes prior to these as well? And don’t think we’re done. Okay, this five-part series was the new chapter and we’re coming at you with more content and more conversations, and hopefully some great guests in all the lesson business industries in the very near future, and we wanna tell you all… And Chris, I know you feel the same way, we appreciate you, and we do think you are the heroes 100%
1:00:36.3 Tyler: So if you have any questions, reach out teachers on dot com, or Tyler at teacher on dot com or Cristero dot com, tell us what you think, your thoughts or topic ideas. We’re all for it. And Chris, do you wanna say any last words before we finish this wonderful five-part series?
Chris: No, I think you just said it. Okay.
1:00:59.9 Chris: We love you guys. And Chris, thank you so much, you were the nugget master. Every time I learned something new, just talking with you and I love you as my partner, let’s…
1:01:11.3 Tyler: You and I, we are on a mission to make things better and more impactful, we want to affect millions of students around the world with our software and with conversations with locking arms with people that are experiencing the same stuff, we do not have to be alone. So tell your friends about us, send this podcast to whoever you can send the e-book to whoever you can, have an email us and say Hi. We wanna know who you are. So thank you for tuning in to the teachers one with Chris and Tyler, and we’ll see you on the flip side.