Myth-Busting for EdTech Marketers: A Conversation with Lawrence Korchnak

Elana Leoni:

Welcome, everyone, to our podcast, All Things Marketing and Education. I'm Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately grow their lead. Every week, my guests, who range from educators, to EdTech entrepreneurs, to experts in the field will all share tips, strategies, and insight in either social media, content marketing, and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week, I got to chat with Lawrence Korchnak. He's the founding partner of Bloqq, and that's spelled B-L-O-Q-Q. It's a consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations scale specifically in the education market. So I was just thrilled that he said yes to my little invitation of coming on our show and sharing his specific advice for EdTech in education organizations. Lawrence is a friend, and I could instantly tell from our conversations that he just really cares about making a difference in education, and doing it in a way that matches his expertise. So he's all about how do I use proven strategies? How do I teach people to do things around best practices that typically do work in EdTech, to grow and scale education businesses?

So you might remember Lawrence from our last episode with him where we covered the challenges of EdTech go-to-market strategies. And if you haven't listened to that, take a moment, go back into your Apple iTunes or wherever you listen for podcasts and star that, save it for later because we get into all of the good stuff around what a marketing plan is, what isn't channel strategies, and so much more.

In this episode, Lawrence and I did something a bit more lighthearted, and honestly, I just asked Lawrence, I said, "Hey, are you game for this?" Because it's fun, and beyond it being fun, it is very, very helpful. It's the things that people don't talk about in EdTech that should. So we talk about, in this episode, the myths in EdTech and we do a little myth busting and have some fun at it as well. So we talk about myths like marketing to a single decision maker in EdTech, what is a premium model, and does it guarantee B2B sales cycles, and product market fit? We talk about the nuances there and the myth.

And the good old myth of once you sell to schools, the churn is low and you are in forever. It's good as gold, right? So there's all sorts of fun myths that we were able to myth-bust together. The conversation is just so, so good. Lawrence does not sugarcoat things and I love that about him. He does not hold back, and this was just so much fun to talk about. So please enjoy the episode everyone.

Welcome, everybody, to All Things Marketing and Education. Today I am speaking with Lawrence. So glad to have you here, Lawrence.

Lawrence Korchnak:

My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Elana Leoni:

So today, we're going to talk about something quite broad and big, but I thought our two minds together could talk about something fun. And one of the things I like doing on this show is talking about the unique characteristics of selling within K-12 and higher education in particular. And a fun way to do it is really dispelling some myth around it. So I'm going to throw some things at you, and you can add some more if you'd like, but I think this is whether you are an educator in the classroom. I think that this fundamentally speaks to your importance if you're ever thinking of jumping into EdTech, because you can be that voice of, "Hey, no, it doesn't really work that way, and I didn't realize that people thought that, potentially," or on the other side, if you are just jumping into EdTech for the first time, this is a great episode to get started in too, because whether you know it or not, you might have some biases, you might have some assumptions based on your previous work experience that may be outside of education technology.

So here we go. Why don't we jump into the first one that I think is the biggest one. Whatever channel you're marketing in, wherever you're going to, and this isn't unique to education, but the stakeholders in education are quite unique. But there is a myth that I market... Where I market to, a hundred percent, that stakeholder is going to be the sole decision maker. You see what I'm saying? In education, there's a big complex ecosystem of people, and depending on the type of school and your product or service, you're never just talking to a decision maker.

Lawrence Korchnak:

Yeah. You put it up on a tee for me. I appreciate that. No, you're absolutely right. You're not selling to a single person or a single individual. One of the things I'm fond of saying is nearly everyone you meet in education can tell you no, but no one is going to give you an unequivocal yes, and understanding that selling in the education space is not a single point of sale, it doesn't work like the consumer market, that it's literally an exercise in coordinating and helping people who are interested in your resources, your products, your services, your intellectual property, bringing those people together in a way that unites them, and that is typically done from top down and bottom up.

ities and families [inaudible: 00:06:44

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I took a design thinking class in MBA school, and the first thing... I was working on prison reform, and the first thing they had me do is map out all of the stakeholders in the ecosystem and what their relationship is. And if you all listening to this don't know, I think it's a really good foundational activity to get your internal team involved on too. Who are all these players? How do they change based on the different institutional type, and maybe your different product lines too. Because it's kind of cool, I don't know, I nerd out on that stuff, but you have to make sure that your marketing planner, when you're talking to them, really involves all of those stakeholders. You can't leave them out because it is somewhat of a consensus. It's not like I'm sitting out at a bar at AASA and I see a superintendent, and I'm like, "Hey, buy my stuff," and he's like, "Great." Like, he needs-

Lawrence Korchnak:

Yeah. Done. Not a problem.

Elana Leoni:

... [inaudible: 00:07:45

Lawrence Korchnak:

And I think you just touched on a really important thing, and this is something that I've seen lots, and I had to learn sort of the hard way in some respects. I had the advantage of being... I'm still a recovering classroom teacher. My father retired as a superintendent of school, so I had a little bit of some background working knowledge because education was the family business. My mother graduated or retired from the classroom, so that's what we talked about until I left the house for college.

But this idea that a superintendent is going to say yes to what you do, that just doesn't happen. There might've been a time and a place when it did, it doesn't any longer. Understanding what success is to and for the folks that you are speaking to is critically important. So a few-minute conversation that, you know, success, and this might be hard for folks to get their head around when we have pressure around the business, success, if you bump into that superintendent somewhere is, "Oh, I see what you're doing. That's really interesting. That's a critical area of at my district. Please call on my director of English language arts."

"Oh." That's success. Getting that nod of approval from a superintendent, that's about the best you could ask for until it comes time for board approval or some level of equivalency. So just understanding that no one's going to give you an unequivocal yes. It's going to be a process of one person saying this looks interesting, or one person saying this is changing the lives of students, and bringing those people together in a way where they're talking and listening to each other meaningfully is part of the art of working in the industry.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. I'm excited to send you this next myth, and I'm not going to give it away this time. How about the myth of people saying relationships are overrated. If my product truly improves student outcomes or future effectiveness, everyone should just buy it. I actually don't even need to do marketing. And I don't really need to know anyone in the industry because this works, product works.

Lawrence Korchnak:

I would ask those people, have you ever bought a product or service from someone that you didn't know, like, or trust? Probably not. Whether it be a car, and you walk into a car dealership, how many people hate that process and they hate that process because they don't know, like, or trust the person they're talking to? I would say when you have a favorable experience buying a car in your personal life, you probably have established a real rapport with that salesperson, or you at least like them and trust them to some degree.

No different than in education. Education probably, as much or more than any other market or industry that I know, it's imperative that people trust you, that you come across as somebody with a degree of authenticity. Your company should demonstrate its authenticity, the people who represent your company should demonstrate their authenticity in the market. And there's lots of ways to do that, but understanding that or being able to engage people and have them understand that you are sympathetic and empathetic to what they're doing and their situation and their circumstance is going to be really, really critical to success. This is a person-to-person business. That's just the reality of it.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And I'll link to our show notes, but I got to talk to Dan O'Reilly who runs a business around really training sales representatives, specifically B2B and K-12, and he said it best too. He's saying that it's very relationship-driven, obviously, and they're connecting individually to people. And in education, a lot of the times, the consortium of people making decisions are basing it on emotion and gut. And very rarely, a lot of the times, it's not this ROI-driven thing. It's do I like the person? Do I trust the person? Do I have a word of mouth market around me that I trust? There's all of these concentric circles going around, but they're all based on relationship, going from like-

Lawrence Korchnak:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And there's an impact. This is a qualitative aspect of working in the market, but there's a quantitative aspect to this too. People buy from people that they know and trust. It is a person business, and the corollary to that is they don't always purchase a product or service from the lowest-cost provider. There are mechanisms in the business or in the market that facilitate purchase for the lowest-cost provider, but very, very rarely is it strictly a purchase based on this is the cheapest, least expensive thing that satisfies our needs. It is a combination of understanding, authenticity, person-to-person interaction, and value, and there's lots of ways to demonstrate value. So within that human dynamic, there's a corollary around... That human interaction supersedes and trumps being the lowest cost provider in what it is you do.

Elana Leoni:

All right, here's another one. So this one myth is really about sales cycles and product market fit. And sometimes, I see people come in that may be working with a similar type of product, but now that product is for the EdTech market. And they may come in and say, "All right. This is what worked for me over here, my sales cycle. This is what worked for me in terms of my channels. Here's how I can create budgets and figure out my expected outcomes." And they use that as a base. I know I'm setting you up here for a home run, but what's the myth in that?

Lawrence Korchnak:

The education market doesn't behave and act like a consumer market. And I'm not sure if this is the answer you're going for, but this is how I go after it. Someone who came from another industry, education doesn't behave like healthcare, doesn't behave like finance, doesn't behave like real estate, and it certainly doesn't behave like a consumer market. The education, it's about demonstrating authenticity. It's about human touch, and it is largely about quality. It's not a quantity gain. You shouldn't come to market and thinking about go-to market strategy. Develop a go-to-market strategy that incorporates all of these things, but think about it in terms of quality of opportunity, not necessarily quantity opportunity. You're looking to drive high conversion rates that support your business. Very, very difficult to go at from a consumer standpoint of a massive body of people who have signed up for a free trial and a very small percentage of them who actually convert to purchase. You want to create mechanisms and process and structure to identify the quality in that quantity and focus your time and attention on the quality, and perpetuate that cycle.

Elana Leoni:

Your answer leads me to another myth. If I just have a really great freemium model that, say, teachers can use in their classroom, that'll be the building blocks to have all of the districts sign on. If I just have a great freemium model that teachers can use free, that'll immediately be something that'll translate into big B2B sales with the top districts.

Lawrence Korchnak:

Yeah, probably not. And I'm saying probably not because with enough time and with enough money, you could literally make anything happen with enough time and with enough money in the market. So if you have an incredible amount of money and lots of patience, maybe that will play out for you. I've worked in and on businesses where we had hundreds of thousands if not millions of users, and were confronted with difficult decisions about this freemium model isn't working. The conversion rates are nearly high enough to support the business. We have to move this to a paid model in some way. Having to re-engineer that strategy and that decision is a difficult one to make.

So anyone who's in the market and thinking about freemium, yes, you need to give... There's an expectation in the market that users have the ability to test what you do, but you're going to want to limit that in some way, not in perpetuity, maybe not everything that you provide, but you don't want to limit that in some way because ultimately, you're going to need for them to pay for your product.

And you're going to need them to pay for the product, and when they purchase your product, there's a necessity and imperative for them to use it too. And so it becomes a symbiotic relationship of you want to support them well because they want to use your product to meet the needs of learners or students or families or communities. So how do you do that in a complimentary way? And that also plays back into the point we made earlier about you don't do that stuff with people you don't know, don't like, or don't trust.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And when we think about freemium models, I think you can look at the models in EdTech, the startups in EdTech, and you can say, "Oh, so and so, they did start from a freemium and they are successful." So to your point, there are ways to be successful with a freemium model. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of runway, and in this market of less investment, I don't see it being the most practical approach, like you said, and the people converting, the users, and say the users are mostly teachers, the people that are converting to potentially paid are teachers with the lowest amount of disposable income around, and that's never a good business model.

And then I see sometimes EdTech people pivoting to go, "Okay, well then parents can do it." And I'm like, "Whoa, slow your roll there," because that's a completely different marketing strategy, and a completely different product to the consumer market. So there is a misalignment of stakeholders sometimes when we get into the freemium model.

Lawrence Korchnak:

tion to the market [inaudible: 00:18:17

Elana Leoni:

Yes. I'm going to sneak in one more question and then we'll get to a fun question. But this one's kind of hard because it's kind of true, but it's kind of not true, is once I sell into schools, and sometimes people would call this B2G, so I'm business-to-government a little bit. Once I sell into a government entity, I'm golden. They're never going to get rid of me. There's going to be really low churn. All I need to do is get in. And schools really have a hard time reducing their tech and things like that. I just need to get in. So I know it's a little bit tricky on that one, but what would you say to that?

Lawrence Korchnak:

So, yes, if you're... What I'm hearing there is a couple things. The first thing I'm hearing is the single biggest challenge in the market is getting in, is getting into the walled garden. But it's also a challenge to stay there. Schools have shifting priorities, schools have shifting budgets. There is always money in schools to purchase things. They're consistently turning the lights on, buses are running, teachers are being paid. There's money flowing in and through schools, but you can quickly find yourself below a priority line of funding if you are not supporting teachers, you're not supporting students, and you went out and you over-promise and under-deliver. You're far better off under-promising and over-delivering. That will keep your renewal rates at a level that will consistently support your business. But yes, it's tough to get in, but it also takes work to stay in. It is not a set-it-and-forget-it in cruise control. It does take some of that human touch, or of course in some cases a considerable amount of that human touch after you've sold to stay a part of their decision-making and their solutions for students in schools.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And I think in the market, we're seeing continuous acquisitions. So if we're seeing a brand that they already have a contract for, an LMS or an SIS or throwing a fun school acronym, but say they have a technology around that and they purchase a similar technology under their umbrella of brands, we're also seeing a consolidation of the tech stack within school district. Although schools move very slow, so that may take some time for them to consolidate, but I think some of the industry in terms of acquisitions can help fuel that too. And then we also saw that pandemic bloat of all the tech too, that they're like, "Oh, we don't really need this anymore or that anymore."

Lawrence Korchnak:

Yeah, that's right. There was a huge pendulum, a huge shift in the market relative to EdTech, both in terms of schools purchasing EdTech and then purging EdTech on the other side of COVID, but also investment in EdTech from the investment in the education sector and companies in EdTech because they saw and understood that there was an unprecedented flow of money from the federal and state government to spend on these things to address the educational needs and an unforeseen emergency catastrophe with COVID. Things have shifted back now. So some of those monies are... We can see the horizon of when those monies are going away. Schools are already being confronted with making difficult decisions about well, what stays, what goes. And to the earlier question, being involved with them hands-on and being part of what they do is going to give you a much better chance of remaining part of the solution.

On the VC side, I think things are still shifting a bit. The rush to invest in the education market I think has... All of the data shows that it has slowed massively. Investors, private, institutional, et cetera, are really looking for folks to have a proven-out solution, a proven-out business model, an understanding of the market, and they're really being much more discriminating about where they allocate investment dollars. They're looking to add accelerant to your rocket, not help you build a launching pad. And that's a really important distinction and something I would encourage folks to really think critically about when they come into the market, if seeking investment is part of your strategy.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. We should do a whole nother episode on that, because there's a lot of nooks and grannies on that. But I want to thank you, Lawrence, for your time. I have thrown every question at you that are super hard, and really, I just said, "Let's go with it. Let's talk about the myth." So I thank you for being at the good sport on all of this and just jumping in with me. And for those of you going, "Gosh, there's so many other myths," maybe I'll do another episode of some other myths that we forgot, because there certainly are. And the goal is just for you to pause and think critically about the assumptions you are making as we're jumping into education technology and specifically in the education market. And again, what we're saying now changes all the time because the market needs are changing. The investment landscape is changing. There's a lot of things ebbing and flowing, and it's just important that we talk about them. And hopefully, we've gotten you to pause before making assumptions, or just thinking critically about what are you doing and why.

Lawrence Korchnak:

Indeed.

Elana Leoni:

So to end this, I'd love to just ask you one question, Lawrence. I know you work hard. You are running a business just like me. You're also kind of doing that double bottom line that you talk about. You're making money, but you're doing it in a way that has that impact. You get to work with really great companies that make a difference in education, and I feel very lucky I get to do the same, but it doesn't mean it's not challenging and that you don't have those days where you're like, "Don't talk to me. I just want to stare at a wall," or those draining moments. Because our heart and souls are in this industry and in our work too. What do you do when you are just totally drained? What recharges you?

Lawrence Korchnak:

It's really interesting. I've got a variety of answers. The really simple answer is, and this is something that I was not really aware of, thought about, on my horizon. I'm of a generation that this wasn't a thing. But just this general idea about self-care. And some days for me, that's just unplugging. Some days for me, that is taking an hour out of my day and killing all the notifications on my devices because if I answer it now or I answered an hour from now, there's maybe not that big a difference. It can be different things. It can be silencing my notifications. It could be prioritizing getting to the gym today because I know I'm just going to feel better if I do that. It could be prioritizing making sure the dogs get two walks, because getting out and getting that fresh air and just moving around a little bit is good.

But understanding, embracing, and making time for some self-care when I realize that I'm running myself a little ragged is how I handle it. Sometimes I have to be reminded by, I almost always have to be explicit and purposeful about like, "Okay, I'm going to take a few minutes for myself here." And I would encourage anybody in a stressful situation or even not a stressful situation to prioritize taking care of yourself. It's very much a put the oxygen mask on yourself first because it's really hard to take care of others if you're not at your best.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. Sometimes ironically, I think about if I'm really stuck or I'm just feeling low, I have to completely detach, like you said, so then come back and then it's a whole new picture. It's a whole new productivity. You might get inspired, and even though in your head you're saying, "I'm losing time walking the dog," or whatever it may be, you can come back and go, "Wow, that really made a difference."

Lawrence Korchnak:

Yeah. I've never expressly done it and regretted it. Every time I've been like, "Okay, that was what I needed. I needed to take that hour at the gym this morning. I needed to take a few moments for myself and listen to some music or something and come back to this thing, and think about it differently with a slightly different lens. This idea that work is always sitting at your computer banging away, or responding email or on the phone, I think is, for me, not always the most productive. For me, I find I have breakthroughs on the other side of taking time for myself. I think more clearly about something. I have a revelation about something I've been pondering, but I've just given myself the opportunity to clear my mind a bit. So just reorienting myself about what is and how I define work for myself too has been an important step.

Elana Leoni:

Great. Well, thank you again, Lawrence. I've learned a lot. It's been fun to kind of go back and forth on these myths with you and learn and see what truly is a myth, what truly is fact, and what is that in between, as if there's no right or wrong answers. So thank you for spending time with us in our audience, and for all of you listening, have a good day, and we'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education.

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