In this episode of The Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler, they discuss what will be covered in their five part series taken from their eBook “From Chaos to Culture”.
If you own. or run a lessons-based business, you will not want to miss this series or any content from The TeacherZone with Chris and Tyler!
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0:00:18.4 Tyler: Welcome to the Teacher Zone with Chris and Tyler. My name’s Tyler Marolf, and I’m here with the famous Chris Bates. How are you, sir?
0:00:26.7 Chris: I’m awesome. Great to see you today, Tyler, how are you doing?
0:00:31.4 Tyler: Doing great. I can’t wait to start talking with you… What are we talking about today? Today we’re gonna do an overview for a really cool five-part series on your new book.
0:00:47.2 Chris: If you haven’t read it yet or you haven’t gotten it, it’s meant to sort of inspire all of us to adjust every year. We should be leveling up every year. We should be trying to get better with our businesses. So our hope is that with our e-book, there’s something in there that inspires you to make a little bit of a change so you can make a greater difference and hopefully you can relate to some of the stuff. There’s five categories in the e-book, and it’s called from Chaos to Culture.
0:01:19.0 Tyler: A lot of it should be very familiar, whether you’re past step one and two, it’s gonna be familiar, and that’s where in our industry, Chris and I have had the pleasure of locking arms with so many of you from different industries in the lesson business arena, and I’m not gonna ever say we’ve heard it all, Chris, but we’ve heard a lot, especially these last 10 months.
0:01:45.4 Chris: And I know if you as a founder, or if you’re in leadership at all with your business, you know that it’s been a time unlike any other… And for many of us, we’ve been very fortunate that technology is around and been able to help and save our business, so hey, we gotta be grateful for that.
0:02:08.3 Tyler: Let’s get into the teaser, by the way. You might think this is a whole podcast episode, it’s not. We’re gonna go over the five steps from the e-book, have a little conversation with you, and then we’re gonna get into a podcast episode for each of the five chapters of the e-book.
0:02:25.6 Chris: Go ahead and show the outline real quick, and we’ll just show that and then we’ll get you excited and get on to the episode. So we’ve got the five stages you must go through in a business. So from a culture encapsulates these five stages, and obviously there’s a lot that goes on in being an entrepreneur, being a lesson business owner. Tyler and I are trying to basically help all of us codify it and make the changes you need to make. So Tyler, what is Numero Uno?
0:03:06.0 Tyler: Well, number one is very personal, and it’s, Are we in chaos or not.
0:03:14.7 Chris: And that is only a question that you can answer yourself.
0:03:18.7 Tyler: Chris and I can stand on the sidelines, peak into your business and identify all the chaos in your life. That’s what we do, we help people every day, but that doesn’t matter. So you can’t avoid it or go around it, but there are things you can do to get out of it. So the first episode is gonna be great. And Chris, what’s number two, after we’ve identified some chaos or not.
0:03:45.7 Chris: Number two is all about getting organized, and so for a lot of us, some of you are amazing at this one, by the way, and we’ll talk about that, but it’s really… It takes a little bit of time, but once you have done it, you have your sanity back. And so really, in running a business, it’s kind of like the 100 arm octopus, there’s a lot of moving parts, so getting organized is gonna help you to get a handle on all that, and then we’ll transition to number three. Number three is one that’s near and dear to Tyler and that is heart. Tyler, talk about number three.
0:04:27.7 Tyler: Number three is engaging our students. So whether you have your professor at a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy or you have a dance academy, we have a lot of experience with music ourselves as well. We have a performance Academy. Any lesson business whatsoever. We got into this not just to pay the bills, because many of us did other things in our lives or whatever, we could have gone different routes; we got into the industry we’re in to teach people and engage students and give them what was given to us somehow. What we got good at, whether it’s guitar, Kung Fu doesn’t matter, and then we built a business around it. So we got some help, and now we have this… There’s people everywhere now, and they like us, but it’s crazy, back to chaos, but the reason we got into it was to engage the students, so it says here, this is where the lights come on, and you remember why you started teaching in the first place. Yeah, so number four, Chris, what’s number four?
0:05:42.5 Chris: Number four is something that’s fueling growth. For all of us, it starts with just trying to make a difference for instructing students, teaching lessons. Basically at some point, you have to realize that as you build a business, your staff, your community, your students, everybody’s sort of counting on you to keep that business healthy and thriving. So that episode is really about feeling a growth engine that allows you to keep the business healthy, thriving long-term… So fueling growth, number five, Tyler, and that one is, by the way, something that Tyler and I are kind of obsessed with.
0:06:28.2 Tyler: The trick is getting there now, building culture. If you started a business and you have your first 20 students and then a year later you’ve got two teachers and now you’ve got 60 students, guess what? You’ve built a culture. Now, it might be chaos laden, we’ve all been through the growth process of getting systems in place and whatever, but regardless… There’s a culture there.
0:06:54.3 Chris: Good. Yeah, not to cut you off, but I think you just said something that’s so true. It’s just that we need to talk about it as a town. And I go through all five of these. This is cyclical. In other words, as you grow, I don’t care if you have 30, 40, 50 locations, it doesn’t really matter. You’re constantly revisiting all five of these, so just know that these five aren’t necessarily related to your business size. It’s something we all have to constantly revisit. So building a culture is really kind of what it’s all about.
0:07:30.2 Tyler: That’s what we’re trying to get to, right, Chris? We’re trying to get there, so… okay, so man, I have my culture, I wish the vibe and the tribe had a little extra here, but I can’t… I don’t have an ops person yet, and I’m doing all this myself, chaos, and I can’t build that thing I know would make the club house even cooler. Well, it says, lives are being changed, community is being built, and people can’t wait to be a part of what you’re doing. Okay, well, that can actually grow exponentially once we get through those first four categories, and that’s gonna be exciting. So each of these categories, just know this going into the next episodes, when we start on the chaos episode, we’re gonna break it down into a system on how to look at it, what list to make, and then how to identify things. Then we’re gonna jump right into category number two, which is the next episode. So you can have a wonderful e-book by the way, go get it, it’s on our website. And you’ll do a little homework, be prepped, and then get ready to jump in with us because we’re gonna go to town so that we can all create the best cultures we’ve ever dreamed of…
0:08:44.6 Chris: Yeah, and you can use it on our website, teacherzone.com/chaos.
0:08:55.1 Tyler: Chaotic culture is like Chris, like he’s pretty Zen, but man, if he can get a system built around something so it’s fixed, he’s on top of it.
0:09:08.4 Chris: Even you and I are struggling with it. The reality is, though, when we think of great businesses, like the first one that comes to my mind always is Disney. When you think of a great business like Disney, they’re constantly working on their culture. You’re never done… So we’re talking about all these elements, and then you kind of circle back each year and you’re leveling off.
0:09:37.5 Tyler: At our Performance Academy, we had the pleasure of… One of our students who had been with us for six years, and our front-end sales with the pandemic changing a little bit and a bunch of people trying to come. We weren’t getting to them as quickly as we’d like, well, lo and behold, the most well-spoken, articulate drummer, student that we’ve had forever, who’s 19 now, is now on the team, just like that, and by adding that system, we’ve already gotten out of chaos, How many times now, Chris and I cycled through… Well, all of a sudden, there is a new thing, something that fixed a little unmanageable situation, something that made me watch that extra Netflix episode at night, so I didn’t think about it, something that made me feel a little extra tired or wake up an hour early, or whatever, that’s the chaos. That’s the feeling. It doesn’t have to be the one time that you had it. We have to renew our minds as human beings and look at the landscape and see if something needs to be touched up.
0:10:49.0 Chris: Yet, it’s an adventure. And what it is really as we go through these stages over and over again; the reason I’ve become a serial entrepreneur for all these years, the best way that I’ve come to know it is, can you imagine any adventure film or any action film like a James Bond or something. Can you imagine it? If there weren’t any challenges.
0:11:12.1 Tyler: The most boring thing ever, it’s like the cliche when they said, Hey, if everybody on the planet was like you, it’d be boring. Or if everybody’s like me, we don’t kill each other, and so we have a dance party. You would absolutely have a dance party. Yeah, gosh, so guys, we are so glad to get the series going to share it with your friends, teacherzone.com, also TZpodcast.com is where our podcast episodes from the past are and where these are gonna be placed. Going forward, we’re gonna keep doing these video episodes as well, so there’ll be a couple of places you can view. We’re excited to be back, Chris. I’m glad to be talking with you again. Are we ready to start digging in?
0:12:06.9 Chris: I think so. Let’s get to it. And thank you for listening, everybody.
0:12:12.1 Tyler: Alright, again, this is Tyler and Chris with Teacher Zone, and TeacherZone.com is the main sponsor of all of this. Go visit it, get the e-book, and we’ll see you soon!