Using Storytelling to Make Your Education Marketing More Meaningful and Effective

- Hello, and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Ilana Leone,

and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness

and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, ed tech entrepreneurs,

and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share

their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content

marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to

transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and

ultimately improves the lives of your audience.

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of All Things Marketing and Education.

Today, I have the pleasure of sitting down with the inspiring Ms. Katie Tess Davis.

She is the founder of Forthright Advising, and she's going to talk to you a little

bit more about that, but it's a national PR and communications firm that works just

with organizations that love kids. So she'll talk to you a lot more about that. And

Katie, be prepared.

And for those of you going to see the video, she's laughing. As a founder of

anything, we don't get compliments much or at all. And we don't give ourselves

credit for all of the things we do, pretty much ever.

And every single time I do something, I say, great, we got it done, but we could

always do it better. And so it's this vicious cycle. With that said,

I want to talk to you a little bit about Katie. Katie was recently selected by

Forbes as their next: 1000

And she can talk to you a little bit about that, but she might not. She's humble.

Katie and I met pretty much a lifetime ago, it feels like I was running marketing

at Edutopia. Katie was running all things PR and comms at ASCD and I got to meet

up with her probably once a year in person and went to her press room and really

would just go there to steal all of her cool stuff like we got power banks and

things like that. Those were great days. Those were. But in all seriousness I really

admired you from afar for so long. Katie is warm. - The feeling is so mutual. Stop

it. - Katie is warm and bubbly and you'll get that from this. She's also very

assertive and incredibly intelligent. As the CEO of Forthright Advising,

she's also attracted an awesome team. And I hope that people say this about me too

'cause I love my team so much, but your team really compliments you and I've been

nothing but impressed by them as well. And I admire your protection and guidance of

them and just utmost respect for them. So Katie is one of those people you want to

follow on LinkedIn as well. So look her up, Katie Tess Davis, because she inspires

me when I log in and she talks about how team culture is important, how, you know,

work -life balance is important, so much things that really align with LCG Um,

anyways, I could go on and on about Katie, but I really feel truly blessed to have

you in my orbit. Katie, I feel like you are a Slack message away, and I feel very

blessed to be able to collaborate with you and have your support with our crazy

journeys of trying to figure out what we're doing starting our own thing. Um, so

I'm going to let Katie introduce herself. Um, but After that, we're going to get

into some great stuff about the power of storytelling. So welcome, Katie, to all

things marketing and education. - Oh my gosh, that was an amazing introduction. Thank

you. Yeah, it was going to make my weekend. So yes, I think you touched on a lot

of things for my background. So I grew up the daughter of two special education

professors, both of my parents taught at UNC Charlotte and so equity and doing the

right thing for kids like how was our kitchen table conversation every night and I

think that Apple just doesn't fall far from the tree so I fell in love with doing

PR and marketing in college but um I was always drawn to doing it for education

right and so I worked yeah at a couple different public school districts and then

also at ASBD But then have worked for a lot of nonprofits in the child and family

space as the communications director for Children's Law Center. And so when my

husband got a job down in North Carolina, and we were making our homecoming, or I

was making my homecoming back to my home state, I couldn't find quite the right

job. And so I very brazenly decided to invent one for myself, not realizing how

hard it is to start your own company, but you're right. It has been like quite an

amazing journey and certainly a real way to live my values.

And I think you touched on that a little bit with the things that I care most

about. I think it's weird when you start a company, you don't realize it's going to

be such an expression of who you are, right?

Yeah. And for me, when I started LCG, I thought I would get the most,

like, I would be most rewarded for the work I did with the brands.

And that still drives me. And it still drives my team. And I feel really humble to

be able to work alongside education brands that are doing good things. But the most

rewarding thing honestly is my team itself and being able to like curate and a

passionate team that I get to take care of too and they take care of me and like

it has been so Rewarding and I just it's funny what the assumptions you come in

when you build a company Yeah, I mean our eye a

Adore every single one of our teammates and think that they are geniuses.

It's nice to be able to not be the smartest person in the room, right? And that

was the goal of the team. It's like, we all have really deep backgrounds in the

same things. We all have the same passion. So we all have incredibly different lived

experiences, which reflects the communities that we serve, right? But that is like a

genuine, that's maybe the best part of the whole thing, right? It's like, you get

to like pick all the people that you hang out with and work every day. Right?

Yeah. Your brand, your tagline is you like to work with organizations that absolutely

love kids. Can you talk a little bit about the type of organizations that you work

with and maybe just the type of work you do? Because I think that'll give context

for the topic we're going to dive into is about storytelling and how whether you're

an educator, an an EdTech administrator or somebody in an EdTech brand,

whether you're running marketing or comms, this will be really helpful for you. But

Katie, you wanna give a little context of your work and your team's work? - Sure,

so we work, like you said, exclusively with organizations that love kids. So that's

about maybe 70 % non -profit foundations and for -profits that work in the child and

family focused or education space. And then probably the other 30 % of our clients

or school districts themselves. So we work for superintendents, especially in

innovative school districts that are doing really interesting things, having interesting

programs or trying something new for students. And that's the work that we do. You

will not find polar bears or Velcro on our client list. and that allows us to have

a really deep background when we come to a client. You don't have to explain the

jargon to us, right? We get it, we live it, we're with you. And our specialty is

thoughtful communication strategy. It's really about helping organizations and leaders

think about what their vision is of a brighter world and then we help you identify

like who can make that vision a reality and then where do those people get their

information and how can we get your brand mission campaign issue in front of your

target audiences and then meet them where they are and that's like what I love to

do. I like to get people the information that they need. Yeah. And I love this

because we're going to build on top of each other. But what we talk about is how

to make your brand matter for your target audience. And we say that over and over

again. But the way you make it matters, you make it valuable, you make it timely,

you make it relevant and you show up consistently. And so I know that you and I

have like very similar philosophies, but they really complement each other, which I

love. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. - There's times where I am like, "Oh, nope, that's LBG

strength, not ours." Because there's so much about, I think when you talk about

consistency, you're so good at that. And you and your team are so valuable about

community building and thinking about how people can stay engaged,

which is just such a great compliment to the work that we do, which I think is

oftentimes helping a client for the first time ever, or for a large campaign,

think through those pieces. And so, yeah, I think you're right. Our brands are very

interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's their brand. It's like really overwhelming for a new

brand to come in and say, "Gosh, you know, who are we? How do we talk about

ourselves?" Or even, like, sometimes you're starting from scratch for a new campaign.

Oh, yeah. I think this This dovetails really well into storytelling, because it's

bringing it back to the foundation and the roots. So everybody, we're going to be

referencing a blog post. It'll be directly in the show notes. It's

leoneconsultinggroup .com /10. I'll say it again a couple of times in the podcast.

Don't worry. And then if you follow us on social, we'll be bombarding you with it.

But to start off around storytelling. I think I've used storytelling in a way to

when I work with ed tech brands is to get them back to their why a little bit.

And then when I talk to ed leaders, I almost do it in a guilt trippy way and

say, you are almost selfish to not share your story, to not share your school

story, your students journey story. Like that is your job. And I know Chris Lehman

over shout out to Chris Lehman over at the Science Leadership Academy. He always

talks about the number one role of an educator admin or any type of leader, whether

you are an instructional technologist or even if you're a teacher leader in the

school, whatever it may be, tell your story. Tell your student's story. No one else

is gonna do it but you in your authentic way. So I think this is a really

powerful topic. I'm very excited to get into it. When we talk about this blog post

you wrote, "I loved it. I'm gonna highlight a couple of points about it just so

this audience has a little bit of context and we'll jump into some questions." But

one point you said is so spot on, you said, "Humans are wired for stories.

We all are. I can't stop watching reality TV." (laughing) - We're married. - We're

serial reality TV. (laughing) - I'm a love Island person myself, so. But research

shows that, you know, stories elicit very real biological reactions and will link to

the research in there, but that I mean, you are physically experiencing stories and

different areas of our brains light up and process stories. So that's amazing.

It's going to be more powerful than any stat you do. And then the last one, So go

ahead. - But I mean, it's thinking about brain and the way that we process

information. I think the reason that we're seeing storytelling trending right now as

like a: 2022

people are pulling it out. And I think that that's because people's brains are

pandemic -ified. That's not a word, I just made it up. But I think we are all so

overwhelmed with processing so much ever -changing information. And people's brains are

like sieves, right? And so stories, the fact that they interact with our brains in

a different way and really feel personal, you take an emotional journey when you

hear them. It's like the only thing breaking through right now. This is the most

crowded media market we have ever worked in and it's been like this for, you know,

a couple of years. And stories seem to be the way to still connect with people

when you're not retaining a lot of information.

Agreed. I mean, you tell me a thousand people maybe got injured in a railroad

accident. And you're like, oh, that sucks. But you know, another-- - Could you even

imagine a thousand people? - No, I can't even imagine. But then you take me on a

journey of a kid that was going to school and it was his first day and he was on

the train and then this horrible thing happened and here's his journey of what

happened to him specifically. You're like, oh my God, where can I donate money? How

can I help this kid? You are emotionally attached to them. - 100 % and I think

that's because it's hard to visualize what a thousand people look like.

Like, I don't even know what that is. It's maybe like a couple school buses worth

of people. Like that doesn't, or like a lot of school buses worth of. Oh yeah, I

don't even know how many school buses. Like 40 people on a school bus and I don't

mess. So that's a confusing thing as a communicator. You're giving this big number

and then you're relying on like the shock of the thing when instead you can be

making emotional attachment and in your example to this one person in their

experience and you using empathy can put yourself in that person's shoes and if the

world needs anything right now we really need empathy and so I think when we're

able to identify with somebody's details those little things like I'm imagining that

boy with a backpack and maybe one of his shoelaces untied and maybe he has crumbs

all over his sweater from breakfast like those things it just brings to life

something in us that is really human and really empathic and that's a really

important thing for us to all be doing right now. Agreed and I think it goes

without saying when we have stories that affect us emotionally, physically, we're

going to remember them. And you link to some research around that. We'll link to it

in our show notes as well. But a well told story. And, you know, in the nonprofit

space in particular, I've been to so many nonprofit conferences where they're trying

to list at donations, right? So maybe if you are a school admin, or if you're a

teacher trying to raise money about certain things. You never start out with those

big numbers. It's those stories that really get people and move them to action. I

mean, it's also about how people, oops, sorry to interrupt you. It's also about how

people absorb information. Like if you're an auditory learner or a visual learner or

just even the way that your brain processes information coming in, that story stories

accessible to multiple types of people. Like I'm a visual learner. Like my team can

be talking to me about something. I'm like, can I just look at the doc you're

looking at while we're talking about it? Like I have to see it. And so when you've

got a story that has a person and you can see their head, their face, and you've

got, I mean, it's just, it brings to life a lot of things for a lot of different

types of humans and human brains. - Yes. And We're already really talking about it,

but I would love to hear just how do you go about incorporating storytelling into a

framework? It sounds a little overwhelming to start with, but it actually might be

more simple. It's the idea of like maybe limiting, like you can only tell a story.

What is your story that might be more powerful, but it still feels slightly

overwhelming, probably for ed tech brands listening. And even If you are an educator,

you are a school leader, what's the story you're trying to tell? Or what is the

story? Not trying to tell. But how do they begin to incorporate storytelling into

their everyday activities? I mean, I think that if you pick a main character for

your campaign or your brand, I think it should generally be a character that's

experienced a transformation because of you or because of the need of the thing that

you're working on. And telling that story and you already touched on it, just pick

one, pick one person or one child or one teacher. And in picking one,

then once you've got this robust story, and this is how our team does it, right?

We'll interview the person, and I think it's really important to be thoughtful about

the way that you get consent. Anytime you're doing storytelling, making sure that

somebody understands intimately, and you tell them multiple times how their story is

gonna be used and allow them to agree or not agree, but say we're gonna use it on

our website, we're gonna use it on Instagram. Tell them everything that you're gonna

do and tell Um, you're going to use it, but once you've got this like pretty

robust story, we call that a core story, right? Once you've got a core story, then

you can use it in so many places. You've got this success story or transformation

story that you can put on your website. You don't even need to tell the whole

thing over again. It could be four sentences. It can be one sentence that is just

featured on your homepage that link to the longer story or you can tell it on

social once you've got a couple of these one or two of these like stories that are

success stories the ways that you can repurpose that content are endless.

Yeah I think that's kind of where we come into play too is like you've got this

amazing story now what channels like what and how what are the different mediums and

formats that we can bring it to life and then use data to say, okay, what works

and what doesn't. But say you're a brand just getting started and some actually of

our clients are readjusting to storytelling and realizing that they don't have any

like case studies or they don't have any like profiles of people and how it's

changed their life or their way of being. There, tons of them just tend to go out

there and grab as many stories as they want. But how do they know which one's

better? And what are the characteristics of looking for their main character, rather

than their-- what's the other character that's like the non -important character? The

sidekick.

The best friend. The non -sidekick or the chubby best friend,

you know? I I love that question. It starts to me with target audience and what

you're trying to get people to know, do, or think differently after they read your

story. Your target audience is going to have a bias towards people that are like

them, that understand what they're going through, that understand their struggles,

so that they can see themselves in that story, so that they can relate to that

story. And so if you're going to pick out a story that you want to tell so that

people can say, ah, I get it, then that's a story that you want to tell about

somebody that looks and is like your target audience that does those same sort of

things every day that has the same challenges. If you of using storytelling as a

way to bridge a gap or change hearts and minds and exhibit understanding,

then I would be thoughtful about choosing a main character that of course is

relatable, but also can explain and bridge those lived experience gaps.

They can help bring someone along and say, "Oh, I've never thought about it that

way." Or that's really different from my...

And there's so many relatable characters and I mean, they're people that tell their

own stories about how they got to football or basketball, and I don't forkball,

and I'm not a teenager, but the fact that they share their stories and their

struggles like our gap is bridged, right? I can understand why they care about the

things that they care about because they've been able to share, even I worked out

on it like yeah, I think a hundred percent what you said and it just reminded me

every time I talk to like in particular the ed tech space I'm a mentor to a

couple of accelerators and I talk to them and it becomes clear within the first

minute that they don't know their audience and I think fundamentally that's what

we're both saying because you obviously can't do storytelling if you don't know your

audience. And you can't even narrow it down to your target audience if you don't

know your audience. But I think just to get started, it's, I always tell people,

go out and interview as many people as you can. And sometimes in the beginning when

you don't have a product that has traction, start talking to people about the real

need, right? So you might talk to somebody else in the space, talk to educators

that have tried other products or whatnot. So really understanding the challenges and

the pain points, then you can start understanding, okay, if another main character

comes in and comes with those challenges and pain points, like for me, I'm like,

ding, ding, ding, that's her main character. Yeah, that's, that's that like me that

I talked about. Like we have the same challenges and that's important. I hear when

I like, you know, at the beginning of the podcast, you talked about how we're both

founders, right? That allows us to have a connection and sort of start at a level

of understanding. And to that point, I think you're right that if you understand

your target audience and what they care about, what their values are, and then what

their challenges are, you can choose a really powerful main character for a story

that's gonna resonate with them. But if you don't know that, then you have to ask

ask yourself, "What is my vision of a brighter world and who is my decision -maker?"

Who can say yes or no to making my vision of this world come true? And if it's

purchasing a product, who needs my fulfilling? Who's problem am I solving with what

I'm putting out into the world? And if you can answer that, and you can think

about it like a target, Your decision -maker is at the very center of the target

the people who have the ear of the decision -maker are on that next ring out of

the Target that can influence we call them influencers that can influence that

decision -maker to say yes or no to you what your vision is And so for example

like if we're working on a like expanding early childhood support We've got a

decision -maker. Let's pretend as President Biden. I don't personally get to call

President Biden on the phone ever, but I may know people who do,

right, who are in his sphere of influence, who have his ear and can help make my

vision of a better world reality. And so when you're thoughtful about like, who's

your decision maker and who are their influencers, then you can start to build a

story that speaks to those target audiences and what their values and barriers are.

- No, you are so good because my follow -up question was gonna be like, especially

in education, we're talking to multiple stakeholders. Usually brands will say,

here's my primary stakeholder. And if you are an ed tech, it's usually your decision

maker is your primary one you wanna talk to. But at the same time, you wanna

groundswell movement and talk to your users because if you don't have user adoption,

you don't have anything, right? So you were talking a little bit about how does one

story and think about it, how does it really affect all of the stakeholders? But do

you recommend maybe having multiple stories that talk directly to each stakeholder

down the road? - Yeah, if you can, absolutely. Decisions, especially for ad tech

adoption, aren't made in a vacuum, right? They're made in a conference room, or now,

you know, these days on Zoom, with a lot of different people bringing their own

values to the table. So if we can have multiple stories that speak to different

stakeholders, then that's even better, right? It's, if you have no stories,

let's get you one or two. If you have one or two, let's get you five that all

speak to those influencers, right? So I think entry level, you want a story that

speaks to that core audience. What'd you call it, the primary purchaser?

Yeah, let's get that one, let's do that. And then once we've done that,

then let's think about who else is in the room where it happens, if I'm gonna

quote Hamilton.

Then let's think about who all those other decision -maker influencers are and make

sure that we've got stories that speak to their values. Yeah and this is getting me

a little nerdy because I feel like as a marketer I think about communication methods

and email being one of them right and sometimes we have one story but that story

doesn't talk to your entire email list because your email list is full of multiple

stakeholders so you most people when you do get on their email list,

they do ask like what's your role in education or that kind of thing, that's your

thing that you can filter by. But imagine sending an email and having, you could

have a dynamic email, I know it's a sounding nerdy, but dynamic content and you

send the same email but a user story that talks directly to that stakeholder.

Wouldn't that be amazing? Well, even just pull out, yeah, I mean you, once people

contain multitudes, right, - Yeah. - And you might be able to have the same narrator

or the same main character that has all these amazing quotes that would speak to

different values. If you're looking for, I'm making this up, if you're looking for

doughnuts and you've got one person who is like all in on icing and the other

person who's all in on the dough, like a funny example for an education podcast,

but I'm hungry. So we've got, we've got somebody who cares about icing, and then

you've got somebody who cares about the like donut itself, like cake or flop, you

know? Then I would be thoughtful about seeing if you can use that same narrator,

but speak to those values. And then when you're speaking to somebody who cares about

the icing, like pull out, you know, we've got chocolate sprinkles. But when you're

talking to the person who cares about cake, you can also pull out the thing about

how fluffy and light your donuts are.

- Nice, just out of curiosity, what's your favorite donut?

- As a North Carolina girl, I'm a crispy cream person.

Classically, straight for it. - I think a side note for me is I just don't like

donuts at all. Donuts are ice cream. - You don't? - No, I've never. - What is your

dessert of choice? - I don't know, like cheese? (laughing) - Oh, sorry. - Yeah,

- I mean, salty, we'll dance it all day. - Horrible stuff.

So we talked about storytelling of how you should have a powerful story for a main

character, but then also think about the other people at the table and then

eventually expand to other stakeholders.

Once you have a story, I think we need to think about, how do we get it out

there? I mean, your team's out there pitching it in a PR realm. You're also making

sure you're doing op -eds. They're getting covered. They're doing guest blogs. There's

a whole world of PR and comms. Do you want to maybe just talk through how you see

storytelling trickling out in your world? Yeah, absolutely. We often use stories like

you said in the media. But also, I think in video,

I mean, especially in today's like digital world video and audio for stories are

really doing well.

I would even transform those stories if you can and the things like social media

graphics or infographics or ways to visualize that story. Because if you think about

all the different types of ways people absorb information, let's get the most we can

out of that one story. Let's repurpose it in all the ways we can. We've been

recommending that clients do photo shoots. And we've been able to get some pretty

amazing photography lately for clients. And that goes really far, too. Being able to

pair a quote with a picture in a graphic, just having those visuals can make all

the difference in a story. And then I think being able to pull, like I said,

pull quotes, but you can pull quotes for your website or in your case, your email

newsletter, but making sure that you are seeing the whole story,

but then also seeing the disparate parts within the story and being able to use

them in a ton of different ways. Yeah, and I think what you said was really

powerful because sometimes we have in our mind what storytelling is and it's this

like beautiful produced video that this film crew has to go to the person and see

them in action and this whole thing and Actually, there's so many ways to do low

-budget storytelling I mean beyond getting it into media and whatnot But I mean you

can have a simple what we call audiogram Or you're just doing a little bit of a

voiceover with their image of their picture and put that on social We can do a

couple of tiktoks that get people to watch to the end and say wait for it. Let's

see what happens at the big reveal Just an image and doing a quote We can get

really great. It doesn't have to be that serious and I love that about it, right?

It doesn't need to be this like yeah, you're right like, you know, $90 ,000 video

production. It can be you for a couple of hours talking to people,

getting their stories, writing it up, and then thinking of ways to piece it apart.

- Yeah, and if I do work with brands that do have that beautiful video,

unfortunately, I cut it up. I cut it up and I make it look a little more

realistic because in education, we're talking to people on the ground that value

authenticity. They don't value polish generally. And so how can I cut up some things

that are micro bits and that can be in your feed daily, right? Or how can I just

do something that, you know, if an educator is talking, you can hear a little bit

in their background because that's an everyday life of an educator. How can we be

relatable?

- Yes, 100%. I think the more digestible and easy to read or easy to consume,

you can make a story the better. We have really short attention span. You know the

old marketing rule of seven, which is you have to hear something seven times in

order to remember it. I'm saying to clients these days with pandemic brain, we're up

to 14 times, like double that. When you are first sick of saying your message or

sharing a story, that is when it is very first starting to resonate with your

audience. So when you know sometimes we have clients come to us and say just really

bored of our messaging like great keep going because you're bored that means it's

finally starting to land with your audiences. So don't be afraid to take that one

story and repeat it. Oftentimes people are worried that they're going to bore their

audiences or you've used that content one time. No, no, the more we can repeat it

and the more you can use that in multiple ways, the better, because people will

finally start to associate it with you, right? Like if I see a brand story on

their website, then I bump into it on Instagram and then later I see it on Twitter

and then I hear Radio ad, all of that finally starts to paint this cohesive picture

for me. And I say, oh, yeah, that's that story. That's that brand. Yeah.

And that as we talk about characters and really kind of slicing and dicing this

story to make it to different mediums, I also want to mention that this isn't a

finite process. This isn't like, all right, we found our main story and then we're

good. Maybe we'll find some other, you know, other stakeholders we talk to and we're

good. But we know that especially now organizations are changing strategies,

especially in the foundation world and the pandemic. We know ed tech products are

evolving to meet all these crazy needs. We know educators are pivoting left and

right to find out what really engages kids in the midst of all this administrators

are scrambling. So how we all tell our story is changing or how we're telling

stories of people using our stuff is changing because their needs and behaviors are

changing. So please don't walk away saying we got our one main character done. Let's

slice and dice it for the rest of the year. It's an evolving process. It keeps

going. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have a story, you should get one. If you have a

story, maybe you should have a few more and then a few more, right?

Yeah, so in your blog post you talked about just like what's that script like a

little bit and it kind of reminded me of like the Homer's audience or the Homer's

Odyssey where Odessius is going on his journey, right? And he has all these

challenges, but when you craft a story and you have this main character, they have

some type of challenge, they have some type of conflict. And then they get over it

and it's like a before and after. Maybe, can you watch, do you have any examples

of people you've worked with or things that you've liked out in the industry that

really resonate to bring that home? Because I'm trying to think of, you don't want

to ever tell someone a script, but you want to be able to recognize a good story

and how it will resonate and tell the impact of what you're doing. Yeah,

We recently partnered with the National Head Start Association to tell a lot of

powerful stories about early head start and the impacts that early head start had.

And we got to interview parents, and we got to interview child care workers and

staff members and advocates, and it was so inspiring. And being able to talk about

why early had start really supported families and how they were supported,

made for such a powerful campaign. And I will share it with you for the show

notes. But being able to find that, like you said, like before and after,

that's aligned with the overarching, like your vision back to your vision of a

brighter world. What is your vision of a brighter world? When were kids how the

supports that they need to thrive. So how can we tell a story about a family who

needed the support, got it, and then thrived, right?

- Yeah, and it's, I don't know if you like this metaphor, but it's like, it's

almost like extreme makeover a little bit, like you come in and sometimes in

education, most of the time people don't even know they have a problem, right?

They're not looking for things like project based learning because maybe they've never

heard of it, you know? Or what the heck is social -emotional learning and how can I

integrate? I'm not looking for those things, right? But it's almost like a before

and after for an extreme makeover where they, you, here's what their everyday is,

here are their challenges. But at the end, here is this result. We did actually a

physical makeover in a classroom once at Edutopia and we took - I remember, I

remember it. - And I remember being in the room where I was like, hey, can we

splice this video up and do the beginning where it sets the stage? And then we did

one or two videos in the middle to show the work and then the end. And can you

guess which one was the most popular video of all the series? - The end, The Vision

of a Brighter World. - The end. Yeah, 'cause people wanna know what it looks like,

right? But the second popular one was the beginnings, like the foundation of what

was it before, because you can't truly appreciate the end unless you know where they

came from, too. - Totally. - But the middle is kind of like, okay, here's what you

do. But you can drag an audience on in the middle because they want to get to the

end. And that's what TikTok is known for, right? (laughing) - TikTok is a beast of

all of its own with an them no one can crack. But I do think that that you're

right. But like a beginning, middle and an end, just like they taught us in our

like five paragraph essays and, you know, school, is a pretty solid formula.

I think, you know, we typically start with the need, sort of what is what's

happening. Then we move into the overview, like how, how is your product or your

solution to the need, what's it look like at the high level, just so people

understand. And then we have you move into sort of the nuts and bolts,

like how is it getting done? And that sort of like you said, like, you know, we're

ripping up the carpet and we're putting in new chairs and we've got a table and

we've got these bouncy balls for wiggly kids. And then the end is back to that

vision of a brighter world. I'm telling you, it's the key to everything. So then

you've got this vision of like how is life better? How do we meet the need? And

that is a really important piece. But I like that flow of like the problem,

the overview, the nuts and bolts, and then that like nice like rainbow birds are

chirping, woodland creatures are running around vision. I love it. I think I'll just

put another little bug into our audience's ear is that we're talking about a story

and a story doesn't have to be a five -minute video or anything like that. It

actually can be episodic content. And when I say episodic, I mean, don't think about

any reality show you like. You're on the journey with them. And so I have seen

success with brands giving their audience actual cameras and documenting their journey.

It's ugly. It's hard. It's everyday grunting. It's things you never expect, but

especially on YouTube, it's been really, really successful. I go to a conference

called Social Media Marketing World. And last two years ago, they did an episodic

content series on how to even make this conference work. And all the struggles they

went through, they just aired it all out. So that stuff can be addicting as well.

It's like, it's the real world. Yeah, we call that working out loud. We work with

an amazing foundation that's on a racial equity journey. And they do such a

phenomenal job of saying, these are the hard parts. This is what we're struggling

with. This is what we're considering. And it's brave. But to your point,

it's also authentic. And it's so helpful to watch somebody go through a journey that

you're about to embark upon. And I think that people have a lot of grace and

respect for somebody who is able to show that it wasn't all easy.

This wasn't something that came naturally to me. And it's always a work in progress.

And I think allowing yourself to have that permission to be human makes for a great

>> Great. I think we've talked a lot around how we can use storytelling if I'm an

ed leader, if I'm an education organization, a foundation, a nonprofit, an ed tech

brand. But I'm wondering for the educators listening how we can talk directly to you

as someone who is doing amazing things on the ground every day.

And unfortunately, your story is not being told. And it's sometimes being told in

the wrong way. Do you have any advice to the educators listening around just how to

incorporate storytelling? I know that educators that you're listening, you're like, all

right, I have no time for anything else. You want me to be a storyteller on top

of everything else? But I'm wondering if we can't convince them about the power of

it and how it potentially might give them joy in there every day and bring it

back. But you know this as well as I do. It can be a tweet.

It could be three tweets. It could be a three tweet thread that just talks about

like a classroom activity you did this morning with your kids or something funny

that one of your kids thought over lunch, right? Something that helps you reconnect

with your why. Back when I was at DC Public school, we were launching a new

nutrition program. And, you know,

I could, I could talk to the, I could talk to the operations people, I could talk

to the school nutrition professional. The best thing that I did was be able to go

walk to an elementary school nearby and sit and eat lunch with first graders and

ask them how they liked it, right. And you know, there were kids who like had a

strawberry for the first time hanging out with me and being able to just tell those

micro stories, those little moments where you're like, you know, that, that was the

thing that kept me teaching today. That's the thing that keeps me in the classroom,

saying those things out loud. I think other educators will be able to relate, but

also it will remind everyone of the true joy that it is to get to do the work

that you get to do. Yeah, I think you're right. It's the little tweaks. It's being

aware and any kind of behavior change. The first step is really being aware, like

recognizing, right? So how do we recognize that this is an opportunity to potentially

tell our story and can give us joy and spread joy to others and say,

wow, you know, so and so over in that classroom is really doing this cool activity

and she's having a lot of fun. And I think when we get a chance to reflect on

our own story, our own path, educators are constantly trying to figure out what's

potentially what's next, where do I see my career evolving, whether that be a

different grade level, subject level, and some of them are even considering a jump

into the world of ed tech. If you don't know who you are in your story, and

you're not constantly telling it, how do you know where to go? Right? And I think

a lot about, like Marie Kondo's concept of spark joy. What sparked joy for you

today in your work? Like, just tell people, say that thing out loud. Or like,

what was the challenge today that you had? You can say that thing out loud too. I

think you're right, the practice makes perfect. And the more that you try it, the

more you'll see what feels right to you. You were talking about follow me on

LinkedIn. It's been like a journey of trying to figure out like what parts of

fourth rate do I work out loud, right? Do I take people on the journey for? And

I've finally sort of gotten this like little radar of like if it's sticking with

me, oh, then I should probably just like write a post about that 'cause other

people will have smart things or it's like, I'm hung up on this one thing about my

business right now. I'm gonna write about that. And so I think the more practice

you have, the more you can hone that little radar that says, oh, that's the thing.

That's the thing I should write about. Yeah. And I still struggle with it too. I

think we all do is I, a lot of the things that you write on LinkedIn, I'm like,

oh, yeah, I struggled with that. But I silently struggled with it because in my

head, I was like, I don't want people to know I don't know. And guess what? We

all don't know. So I struggle with I'm like, "Oh, that's right." But it's the

little things and it might just be one behavior. Like maybe after you do an

activity in the classroom or after you get out a big product meeting in ed tech,

like go, "Oh, that is something I'd be interested in hearing what other people have

to say or maybe I wanna share what we're currently struggling with." And get people

involved. - And it can be a small, it can be as small as like, I don't know, I

posted the other day about like, what are your favorite kickoff questions for a

meeting? And, and I loved the comments, you left a comment that talked about fun.

And I think it's just crowd sourcing sometimes, just something small that's playing

on your mind. We're putting together a benefits package for our team. And I've been

thinking a lot about, like, what benefits actually return on employee happiness and

so being able to sort of put those things out into the world and say like you

know what do you guys think what are you what do you do that works is really

helpful too and so I think the same can be true for teachers you know I had this

like challenge today what did you do what would you do what do you think because I

think it's what's hard about the time that we're living in is so much happens alone

and behind closed school doors. I think one of the things that's hard about being

an educator always is that it feels lonely in the classroom because you're the

leader. And then at the end of the day, you get to go see other teachers and say,

okay, how was that for you today? But if you're doing virtual learning. That's even

harder. It's hard to take the time. And if you're a school leader, you're not

having parents and community members come into your schools often, right? And so it

just gets lonelier. So the more you can find connections in telling your own story,

the better it's gonna be for everyone, especially for everyone's perception of what's

happening in our schools right now.

Yeah, this is so good. I feel like we could talk about this for a very, very long

time. And it was funny because when I was prepping for the show, I'm like, we're

just going to be talking about storytelling. I don't know if we'll have enough

questions. And we get going, and we're just talking and talking. And I'm just like,

you can do that, right? Or at least another hour. But I hope for everyone listening

that whoever you are, whether you be in education or actually not, my mom listens

to all of these. Hi, mom.

But I hope you walk away with just different perspective of what storytelling can do

and the power of it in your own personal life, but also in your messaging and how

do we, we all come into education because we're passionate about improving something,

doing something. I believe storytelling is the number one way to do that. Do you

wanna add anything about wrapping a bow on the storytelling before we ask you a

couple of fun questions?

- No, I mean, I think it starts with audience. It always starts with audience. And

then it starts with what your vision of a brighter world is.

- Yep, well said. So we always ask our audience one last question.

And it's really about inspiration. And there's so much going on in the pandemic

that, Gosh, I have to actively connect with my team say how are you doing? How are

you keeping going? How am I keeping going? What gets you personally inspired right

now? Is it something you're watching or reading or maybe you're taking a run or a

walk? Like how do you keep going in all of this?

When I when you sent me this question ahead of time to think about I was laughing

with my team because I was like, I have a hard time after work consuming anything

of real substance. And so I like, I'm in this Facebook book club called 5e's book

club and it seems like there's like two camps. There's people who can read like

horror novels and like thrillers and then there's people in my camp, which is like

romance novels only. So I think like I'm just consuming like a ridiculous amount of

fluff. But my like go to most favorite

book that has been like my North Star has been happiness for beginners by Catherine

Center, which is not exactly a romance, but it's a little bit of up lit And then

like my favorite romance lately has been Boyfriend Material by Alec Lopal. But really

like, that's my fluffy light, like I can't consume anything,

pandemic answer. - I mean, that's awesome. Because some people might need to get

energized with like a different podcast or something. But like in the reality, a lot

of us, including myself, I like just zone out. I was telling Katie before the

podcast, I've been getting into puzzles, just like mindless puzzles. Yeah,

we puzzled the other day. My parents got us an escape room puzzle for Christmas.

And if you have not tried one, it was very fun. Oh, I'll have to try that.

It's complicated. And I was worried about it, but it was great. Well, thank you so

much, Katie for joining. I know how incredibly busy you are. So I appreciate your

time and just your wisdom and inspiration when I don't get to talk to you. I get

to learn from you on LinkedIn and Twitter and whatnot. So I want to thank you, but

I'd love to have people figure out how to get a hold of you first and foremost.

So maybe the social rules and the website and all that we can put on the show

notes, but you want to say a couple of them. - Yeah, we are @coms4kids on Twitter.

The numeral four comes for kids. There's an @coms. And then on LinkedIn,

I'm Katie Tess Davis and we're forthright advising on LinkedIn. And then of course,

it's forthrightadvising .com. - Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Katie.

We really appreciate your time. And I'd love to hear from the rest of So as you

digest this, what are some things you're taking away? And maybe there's just one

simple habit that you've decided to do as a result of this podcast. Please tweet us

and Katie. So Katie's team is @coms4kids. We're @LeoniGroup, or you can just stalk

me on the Twitter is @AlanaLeoni, but I'd love to know.

So thank you all for listening. I really appreciate the time and the The audience

is what really drives us. Every time I look with my podcast editor,

more and more people are listening, we are sparking a trend that we don't have to

just talk to educators. We don't have to just talk to ed tech marketers. I believe

there's a space that we can all talk together and stakeholders should be talking

together to really make change in education. So thank you again all for joining us.

You can access this episode's show notes at LeonieConsultingGroup .com /10,

the number 10. For detailed notes and then everything, all the resources we're going

to be putting in there that Katie mentioned as well. So we will see you all next

time on All Things Marketing and Education. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for

listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive

deeper, you can visit LeonieConsultingGroup .com /podcast for all show notes,

links, and for all of us here at LeonieConsultingGroup .com /podcast.

education.