Who doesn’t want to save time and make more money in the process?
In this two-part series, we dive neck deep into the 8 things you should automate right now to create more time and make more money.
In Part 1 we talk about:
- Automate with Online Registration
- Automate Payments
- Automate Scheduling & Rescheduling
- Automate Taking Attendance / Class Check-In
Ready to save some time and make some money? Let’s go!
Watch it Here
Listen to it Here
Or Scan the Show Notes Below
0:00:04.5 Tyler: Welcome to another episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. Chris, tell everybody what today’s topic is.
0:00:13.5 Chris: Today we’re gonna be talking about the eight things that you, that’s right you, should automate right now in your lesson or class business so you can create more time and make more money. And so let’s remember, money is not bad. Money is a metaphor for providing good in the world. So the more people you help, the more money you make, the more resources you have, so you can help more people. It’s just this cycle, right. So eight things you should automate right now. So Tyler, you and I just talked about it. We’re gonna do this in two parts. So the first part… So basically, there’s eight things, so guess how we’re gonna split it up, Tyler? Should we do four?
0:00:54.0 Tyler: Four…
0:00:54.9 Chris: Yeah, I think we should.
0:00:58.1 Tyler: Four. And we’re coming in hot off of recording a bunch of DigiNotes to help you all with some other stuff we do with the software. And they are related, so we’re on fire right now. Ready to go. And I think the first one is registrations in your business. Like for instance, let’s say… I don’t know, whatever industry you’re in, maybe you have a summer deal going on at your jujitsu academy and an ad just really… Just kicked in and you have 103 people that wanna come to your academy, that’s a lot. And your administrator or maybe you, or some of your instructors might be in charge of this… But either way, 103, how are you gonna sift through that efficiently? Well, registration in an automated fashion can clear all of that up, right Chris?
0:01:56.7 Chris: Yeah. By automating it, what we mean is, is that you can have different ways that others can access your online registration. So it’s basically first implementing online registration. So if you haven’t implemented online registration, you really need to. And so… Because obviously there’s a myriad of services out there, but by putting it online, what you’re now saying is that when I’m sleeping, someone can register. Right. They don’t have to wake you up, “Hey Tyler, wake up I wanna register for that class or that… “
0:02:30.8 Tyler: So that’s… We’ll call that one access. So access from anywhere. That’s I think what you’re getting at. Whether you’re sleeping, whether your admin’s on the phone, whether an emergency happened, you’ve now delegated this automated registration, widget, link, whatever it is you’ve chosen to use. Teacherzone.com has a great one. That’s now… Everybody has access. Whether it’s Facebook ads. It could be anything. Now there’s access.
0:02:58.5 Chris: Well, and what’s great about that too, is instead of the old school, like having to manually do it where people are calling in and drowning your admins, now what’s cool about doing it online is that… As Tyler said, you can have all sorts of things embedded in your website. So literally from your ads, it lands straight on the landing page for registration. So when we say automation, we mean that a human doesn’t need to be involved in that beginning part of the process. So there’s lots of options, but for instance, a waitlist.
0:03:27.7 Chris: If you have groups, what’s great is that you can even have the software that you use, have caps on the groups, and then put people on a waitlist after they’re over a certain number too. So automating registrations, putting them online is massive. It’ll save your admins alot of time, it’ll gather better data, and most importantly, it gathers… If you do it properly, then upon registration, they’re either paying or at least you’re capturing their payment info, so they’re ready to go.
0:04:00.9 Tyler: Right, and not to mention the last little thing that… And payments… Hello, that pops them right into your payments, that’s done. But sorting and qualifying your customers. So a good registration software automation, you can pre-program indicator questions to help sort them into groups. Because otherwise your admin may not have the mindset that you have to place and connect and get your tribe in the right spots. These registrations can automate your mind and the way you think to make sure that they land where they’re supposed to land as customers. So that… I wanted to bring that up as well.
0:04:41.5 Chris: So qualifying questions are important, and your staff may not be trained or may not be consistent in asking those questions. I know some of you are using… You have still… We did for years. You still have the pen and paper questions that you ask folks. That is a system, but it’s not accessible any time anywhere, 24 hours a day globally. So your customers could literally be signing up for private or group classes while laying on the beach in the South of France.
0:05:08.6 Tyler: Speaking of laying on the beach in the South of France, Chris, the next bullet point we’re gonna go over for today’s four out of the eight things you should automate right now is tuition payments. It’s perfect. It’s a perfect segue. Registration, awesome. Anywhere access, filtered, qualified. And then that leads to, well payments should be automated as well, whether they’re recurring or maybe right off the registration to get in. And if you have a really great software, you can not only register, right Chris? But it can be a one-time registration or set up for recurring billing or semester billing or whatever, so you’re literally done.
0:05:48.1 Chris: Yeah, what’s cool… I heard it mentioned years ago, and I’ve said it… Wake up money. Because you didn’t die in your sleep, right? Today, you’ll wake up to a deposit. I know it’s morbid, but it’s a fun term to think about because it doesn’t require any effort. Basically, you can be laying on a beach, you can be anywhere and that money is still gonna be collected, it’s still gonna go into your bank account. So if you want wake up money, right? I woke up today, so that means there’s money in my bank, I didn’t have to put any effort out. That’s what automated tuitions are.
0:06:25.2 Tyler: All joking aside. And we love having fun on this podcast, you guys know this. You also know that we’re preaching to the choir. Many of our listeners have been automated for years and have automated many systems, and so we’re bringing these up just to recap. If there’s some listeners out there that are still in the wilderness, you’re gonna be hearing this for the first time, you need to get off your butts and start now. And those of you that… The choir, if you can hear our wonderful voices again, hey, thanks for listening, right Chris?
0:06:57.0 Chris: Well, it’s kinda like we had the podcast with Robbie about delegation. If you haven’t listened to that, go look for delegation on the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. And that one, he had to be in a hospital before he delegated. So he knew about it from three years ago when we talked about it. So if you’ve not done one of these eight automations yet, we’re trying to re-point them out, so it just reminds you. ‘Cause we all need reminders. And it’s a never-ending battle in business to always try and get better.
0:07:26.2 Tyler: And Chris, doesn’t it make it easier to delegate if you’ve delegated many of your repeated actions? If actions are being repeated every day anyways, and then you delegate that into a system then isn’t it easier to lead humans at that point to run it?
0:07:45.7 Chris: Yeah, so there’s an interesting fact, guys, is that when they do the maze tests with mice, as an example, their brains, when that first time they go look for the cheese, especially their prefrontal cortex, which is focus and… Just lights up. Their brain… In fact, the whole brain lights up because they’re literally confused and they’re trying to make sense of this whole where… And then it takes them a while, and then they finally find the cheese. And then Tyler, the second time the brain lights up a little less. After a while, it becomes a habit. In other words, automated. Once it becomes automated, their brain doesn’t even light up anymore. You literally drop the mouse and it runs right for the cheese. And so that’s what automation can do for your staff, because it means their brains don’t have to light up in stress…
0:08:35.6 Tyler: Exactly.
0:08:37.1 Chris: Trying to constantly feel like they’re solving problems. They can actually focus on the more important things. Automation, which Tyler said, any repetitive task is perfect to try and consider automation. So feel free also to let us know in our private groups or anything, we’d love to hear from you if there’s automations that we haven’t included in this list. So tuition payments are one. We talked about registration. With tuition payments, the one last thing I would say with that, Tyler, is that some of you have half way done it. And you said, “Well, in my market, people still wanna pay by check… ” Or… They wanna pay when they want to. I’m sorry, but you need to be stronger than that. They don’t get to decide. Your job as a leader is to protect your staff and protect your business from things that can weaken it, and not collecting payments will weaken your business. We did it, right?
0:09:31.4 Tyler: Yup. And you’ve heard it here before, $4,000 behind, $2,000 behind. Even if it’s only for five or six days. Okay, cool. Let’s flip it around. That customer who’s dictating your life on how you should run your business and whatever, what if all of a sudden they couldn’t go to your school anymore, how bad of a detriment would that be to their lives? It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t harm them at all. If all of a sudden they had to stop paying you… Do you see the side of the street it is. So why are we worried about that anyways. We add value with them other ways. That’s not one of the ways we choose to do it. And I suggest you don’t either. We choose to value our employees and our…
0:10:15.1 Chris: Yeah, you know what that’s a great. That’s a great point. Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. That’s a great point. Like we add value in other ways. Why are you trying to add value on the payments side? You’re a business, you’re not a charity. Now, some of you are a charity, but even those have to be run well.
0:10:29.8 Tyler: You know what we mean by that. [laughter]
0:10:31.4 Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Okay. Number three. So number three on the things you should automate.
0:10:36.9 Tyler: ‘Cause some of you are a charity.
0:10:39.4 Chris: Yeah. But you need to run it soundly or either your board of directors is not gonna be happy.
0:10:44.2 Tyler: I hope you forget to edit this out.
[laughter]
0:10:48.2 Tyler: That was just funny. Maybe it’s just me. So anyways, great point, Chris, great point. What’s our next one after automated payments?
0:10:55.8 Chris: But again, even if you’re a charity, your point sounds true. In other words, part of your unique selling proposition isn’t necessarily giving away the service. You’re still having it funded, you still need to be organized, you still need to automate it. So the number three is scheduling. So this idea…
0:11:15.8 Tyler: And re-scheduling.
0:11:18.2 Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s so much aspects… Let’s face it, we’re in a busy world, people are so frenetic. You hear all the time… It’s so funny, because now that we’re a global society, we hear from our partners and friends around the world all the time, “Well in my area… Well in my area.” It’s like, well, in a modern world that is homogenized so much more than it ever has been, everyone’s busy, everyone wants to re-schedule or cancel or what have you because of their million and one commitments. It’s just part of the global society right now…
[overlapping conversation]
0:11:55.0 Tyler: And what else are we finding out though, Chris?
0:11:56.0 Chris: We’re also finding out that more often than not, the customers, they don’t even have time to re-schedule.
0:12:05.5 Tyler: Like… That’s like, yes, they want what they’re owed and they want their value, but they’re like, “Shoot, where are we gonna put it?” It’s just… Their schedules are insane.
0:12:17.2 Chris: So we have other podcasts on that topic, but one of the things that we often suggest is you could provide value for the lesson or class without allowing re-schedules. But if you are gonna allow re-schedules then at least don’t burden your staff with it. So you can use software for rescheduling. Obviously, TeacherZone does that, but there’s lots out there. Automation is the main point of this, is that you allow people to access a cloud-based schedule so they can see what’s going on, and then they can make changes. In other words based on your rules; cancellation, drop into a class, reschedule, reschedule old lessons, like bank lessons or credits. So what’s really cool is that scheduling nowadays from a cloud-based perspective, allows your customers to have freedom all over the world.
0:13:05.2 Tyler: Right. You can also sync to your calendar. So the personal calendar that your wife and you share or whatever. And all of a sudden you’re part of this new entity or something as a customer, and they come to your school. Boom, sync it. If you’ve got the software sync it and all of a sudden those one or two items a week, which aren’t a huge deal to them, but it’s one of your million that you have going on, all of a sudden, boop, it’s just populated. And I mean, one of our bullet points later is notifications as well. Some softwares will also notify you ahead of time that, “Hey, are you coming? Are you coming in?” Are you coming in to get…
0:13:43.4 Chris: Well, so actually I have a share on that. So last week we had our senior… Dax graduated high school. And so he had an insane week, graduation week. And so he got the notification about his lesson coming up, and he literally went in, canceled his lesson put in there, “I’m graduating.” And then I got the notification and asked him, “Hey, did you cancel your lesson?’ And he goes, “Oh yeah.” And in other words, it was so nice because the student who’s… In this case… In other words, both… I’m involved as a parent too. I didn’t have to do it.
0:14:23.7 Chris: So what’s really great is that in the circumstance that you have a responsible enough student, it takes the burden off everyone. It’s so easy and so seamless.
0:14:35.5 Tyler: Cool.
0:14:35.6 Chris: Yeah. So that’s an automation. And then the last one in this episode is attendance or checking in. And we think that that should be automated as much as possible. And if you don’t know who’s with teaching with whom or who’s in your buildings, then I would say in a modern world that’s probably not safe. It’s probably not a good idea, culturally. It’s probably not a good idea for you to not be keeping track. Attendance is an imperative aspect in today’s day and age. And Tyler tell them how we automate attendance or, how we do it, and I know there’s some other softwares do it.
0:15:16.7 Tyler: Well, first of all, the automated side of it is our students can actually check in. So within a 30-minute period, they show up and then… Let’s say they’re part of a big group and there’s 14 kids. The director is getting ready to handle all this, he can just say, “Hey guys, pull out the app and check in.” And then double check it when he’s ready to get going and see who didn’t check in, and then check there. And it saves a little time there. So the kids or our students at our school are kind of automating that for our directors, ’cause they’re so busy anyways, herding cats, right.
0:15:56.0 Tyler: But also for private lessons. So they’re just showing up for whatever they’re there for on their own, let alone the group. And they can do the same thing as well. So that’s kind of how we’ve automated that. The teachers can still take attendance if they want, but it’s allowing that extra layer. Kind of like going to a gym and then hitting your scan code… Boom, they know you’re there, you’re paid and whatever. So that’s how we’ve added it to our actual lesson academy and performance academy.
0:16:25.6 Chris: Yeah, so regardless of whether you’re doing group or private, allowing the students to check in will take a big burden off your teacher. And then all they have to do… So let’s say you have a group class and you have 20 and you’re like, “Okay, everybody… ” If they haven’t yet… If you don’t have a front desk. Everybody check in right now. Pull out your phones and check in. And then four of them are like, “I don’t have mine.” Well, you can just quickly mark that for them, but you’re only having to do four not 20. So you can take the burden off an instructor greatly. And then it also allows… That way for roll call, you know who attended that actual class, in the example I just gave. So huge for automation.
0:17:00.9 Tyler: Right. And I’m gonna add one more thing here too. So those businesses that are already in our community with the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler, that are already very, very successful, we’re talking in the millions gross lesson academies. They already know that there is no gray area when it comes to knowing when and where someone was at all times.
0:17:28.2 Tyler: Today, it’s just with technology and the cloud and everything, there’s just no excuse. And so the… We’ll call them the big dogs. The big dogs, they already know. They’ve got their Department of Justice… If they teach minors, they got their Department of Justice code, they’ve got their live scans codes and all that kind of stuff. They have these things in place. So what I wanna say right now is to the people that wanna get there. Do you have the vision and growth in your mind? I mean, I think you do, you’re listening to this. If you’re listening to to this ’cause we’re some sort of Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, I know we’re extremely funny and we’re two of the funniest guys ever in podcast. But otherwise, you’re probably listening to this for growth, for something bigger.
0:18:11.6 Tyler: Bigger than you are by yourself. And that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’ve grown. So, if you’re listening to this and you’re not up at a million a year gross or something like that, know that you can be, but you’re gonna have to start paying attention to these little details, lock arms with people who’ve already done it and get there. And these little things matter. For people who say, “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Sure, entrepreneurs say that sometimes because we don’t have the time to get there ’cause we’re building sill. But know that it has to come. Eventually, you’re gonna have to pay the piper on these little things and get them set up and sooner…
0:18:46.9 Chris: Well, and… You made me think about one of the things that’s… Scheduling automations that we think is important is the no-show.
0:18:57.9 Tyler: Ah, yeah. Right.
0:19:00.9 Chris: Because if you are not making sure you that your students are safe… Your families, especially if you’re dealing with kids…
0:19:07.2 Tyler: And that’s just one thing.
0:19:07.8 Chris: Will really appreciate that.
0:19:11.0 Tyler: No-show… Safety, no-show, red alert, are we gonna lose a family and potentially $5,000 a year for the business, and is that gonna affect my employees and my family and everything like that. No-show… There’s a lot of things tied into the metrics of something tracking where everybody is at all times. And if there’s a way that makes it a no-brainer on every person involved, then why aren’t you doing it yet? So that’s for those of you that haven’t automated yet.
0:19:41.5 Chris: Yeah. Automating like the no-show alert. So for instance, if a student doesn’t show up and they didn’t notify you first or cancel first, as we talked about, then are they okay? And so what’s great about the no-show alert is that you can actually… There are services out there, or in TeacherZone, you can actually enable… It’s almost like an Amber alert. And our families just love this because they’ll call and be like, “No, she’s fine. I’m so sorry. I… ” You know?
0:20:09.4 Chris: And Tyler, we’ve had a couple that, “Wait, I dropped them off.” And so then it’s like, “Okay, let’s make sure that that… ” Oh, you know, I remember one time, “Oh now, now she’s back in the building,” but the teacher had already marked “No-show.” So it’s super important that you know that. And then also it’s super important that you have transparency overall. So as a parent, I just pulled up my son that I spoke about earlier. And I just looked at… So we’ve been using TeacherZone for a number of years. So for the five years that we’ve been using TeacherZone, he has had… He’s attended 188 hours of private lessons and 221 group lessons. How cool is that?
0:20:56.8 Tyler: It’s insane.
0:20:57.6 Chris: So I can actually tell, as a parent, all of the lessons that my son has had. And I just looked it up Tyler, guess how many hours of lessons Dax has had since we’ve been keeping track at our school.
0:21:12.4 Tyler: How many?
0:21:15.9 Chris: 590.5 hours of instruction.
0:21:19.8 Tyler: That’s a lot of his life. And this is a little sneak peek to the continuing episode for these eight things we’re going over. That’s a lot of progress. I’ll say that. That’s your little foreshadowing. That’s a lot of progress. So, you’re gonna have to stay tuned for the next episode to see how progress can be automated and change the lives of your teachers, students, families, and the owners and everything. So I think we covered a lot today, Chris. Like this is… We’ve got repeat listeners that already have this in place. Hey, you guys, you need to get folks into the know, okay.
0:22:02.3 Tyler: So our veterans out there that have been friends with us for years and have already been automating, there’s nothing like giving back. And so if you want people that you know to get involved, we have a new Facebook group for non-TeacherZone customers, Okay? Get them over to it. Invite it… If you’re not in it, get in it as well. And it is called Accelerating Studios, Academies & Schools.
0:22:29.0 Tyler: So it’s all those words. Just search Accelerating Studios, comma… Academies &… Ampersand sign… Schools. Accelerating Studios, Academies & Schools. Have them answer the questions, jump in. It’s a very active group, and there’s a lot to learn in there. So don’t leave them hanging out there on their own. We don’t need to be alone anymore, and we appreciate all of our listeners. And Chris I think we’re gonna have a fun follow-up to the other of the eight things in the next episode.
0:23:00.5 Chris: So, yes, that’s your first four, so… Thank you Tyler. I think that as we start to systematize our businesses… As Tyler kinda mentioned early on, it’s directly correlated to your revenue growth. And as we said at the beginning, the more money you make, the more people you help. It’s that simple.
0:23:20.5 Tyler: That’s right. So… And that’s it. So we’re gonna conclude today’s episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. We appreciate everyone coming out to listen, and we’ll see you on the flip side for the following eight things coming up on the eight things you need to automate now! Now! We love you guys. We’ll see you soon. Sayonara. Bye Chris.
0:23:44.0 Chris: Bye.