In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by Carl Hooker and Kevin Hogan. Carl is a speaker and consultant for HookerTech in Austin, Texas. He is also the co-founder of K12Leaders, a social network built for educators by educators, and a seasoned author whose latest work is “Ready, Set, FAIL! Using Failure & Risk-Taking to Unlock Creativity.” He hosts the UnDisrupted podcast and the Learning UnLeashed podcast.
Kevin is an acclaimed writer and editor for The Hogan Report and eSchool News, respectively. He is the host of the podcasts Innovations in Education, which focuses on K-12, and Getting There: Innovations in Education for higher ed.
Some Questions We Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“I can write all day, but I need editors to help clean it up. And if you read any of my blogs, which are not edited, you can see sometimes I kind of go off down tangents and I have to pull myself back in.”
“I want kids to always have the opportunity to know what's most important. Is it about following directions? Or is it about showing your understanding of a topic and demonstrating your learning?”
“For exhibiting thought leadership, authenticity is going to be key.”
“As a leader, you don't have to say you have failed or you're a failure, but you have to be real. And I think that's a hugely important aspect that may not have been in place before [the pandemic].”
Connect with Carl Hooker:
LinkedIn
Ready, Set, FAIL!: Using Failure & Risk-Taking to Unlock Creativity Book
Podcasts
Connect with Kevin Hogan:
LinkedIn
The Hogan Report
Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn
Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn
About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook
In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by Carl Hooker and Kevin Hogan. Carl is a speaker and consultant for HookerTech in Austin, Texas. He is also the co-founder of K12Leaders, a social network built for educators by educators, and a seasoned author whose latest work is “Ready, Set, FAIL! Using Failure & Risk-Taking to Unlock Creativity.” He hosts the UnDisrupted podcast and the Learning UnLeashed podcast.
Kevin is an acclaimed writer and editor for The Hogan Report and eSchool News, respectively. He is the host of the podcasts Innovations in Education, which focuses on K-12, and Getting There: Innovations in Education for higher ed.
Some Questions We Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“I can write all day, but I need editors to help clean it up. And if you read any of my blogs, which are not edited, you can see sometimes I kind of go off down tangents and I have to pull myself back in.”
“I want kids to always have the opportunity to know what's most important. Is it about following directions? Or is it about showing your understanding of a topic and demonstrating your learning?”
“For exhibiting thought leadership, authenticity is going to be key.”
“As a leader, you don't have to say you have failed or you're a failure, but you have to be real. And I think that's a hugely important aspect that may not have been in place before [the pandemic].”
Connect with Carl Hooker:
LinkedIn
Ready, Set, FAIL!: Using Failure & Risk-Taking to Unlock Creativity Book
Podcasts
Connect with Kevin Hogan:
LinkedIn
The Hogan Report
Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn
Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn
About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook
Hello, and welcome to build momentum, a show where we explore thought leadership and education. I'm Sarah Williamson, the founder of SWPR Group.
Katie Lash:And I'm Katie lash, the director of the East Central Educational Service Center.
Sarah Williamson:Together, we explore how to leverage key partners, your constituencies, and the media to authentically impact your organizations and the leaders who champion them. We can't wait to get started. So let's dive into today's show. Kevin Hogan and Carl Hooker. It's so fun to have you on the show with us today. Thank you so much for joining Build Momentum with Katie.
Kevin Hogan:Absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Carl Hooker:Yeah, thank you for having us.
Sarah Williamson:I think there's so much influence in this room right now. It's pretty exciting. Carl and Kevin the combo. And then Katie man I feel like we've arrived on Build Momentum. This is a real show now.
Carl Hooker:Or this could be your last show with us as your guests. You never know.
Sarah Williamson:I can tell you something. Rod Berger called me the other day. And he said, Sarah, so you have a real show now. And I was like, What are you talking about? I've had a podcast for two and a half years. It's like, no, no, no, you're real now. It's actually legitimate. And maybe I'll look at you as a competition. I'm like, wow, you were even on my other show, if you don't recall. So apparently, we're legit it now. Okay.
Katie Lash:I'm excited. Because when we were at ASU-GSB we were trying to get ourselves into their show, but instead they came to ours. Sarah.
Sarah Williamson:I know that's so true. Well, hopefully this will encourage them to invite us on their shows. Right? Like,
Kevin Hogan:Absolutely.
Carl Hooker:It can't hurt. That's for sure.
Kevin Hogan:This was the road to the Eagles Super Bowl podcast.
Carl Hooker:Yes. Go birds.
Sarah Williamson:So funny. Okay. All right. So we would love to talk about today. First, I want to get updates on what you guys are working on. You are so busy. I constantly see amazing things on the socials. And I also want to dig into some thought leadership because that's what the show is about. Because you guys are both masterful at building your own audiences, growing your platforms and just sharing with the world what's going on. So Kevin, will you start us off and tell us about your new podcast and substack and everything you're working on?
Kevin Hogan:Sure, yeah. So very busy working as editor at large for eSchool news, I do two different podcasts for them. One is Innovations in Education. And the focus is on K-12. I do that weekly. And I have an Innovations in Education for higher ed, which goes out once a month. So basically, just as the title suggests, that go through and I look at the various pieces of content that the school news is posting up to their two sites, I pick up the highlights, I kind of tried to pick out some trends very much what I've always done, you know, and three pieces of content, there are kind of similar equal trends. And we'll talk about that, I'll take excerpts from the pieces and put them out there. And also sometimes try to interview the writers of the pieces as well as the subjects of the pieces. So basically, it's just what I always just love to do is talk about the latest and greatest in tech in K-12. So that keeps me very busy. As well as my substack. It's called The Hogan Report basically the same thing. Except I do a lot more writing on there. And also, there's much more of a focus on the B2B aspects of edtech. Right? So the eSchool news stuff focuses on I would say, themes of professional development for educators, and specifically education leaders, right, looking at strategies, looking at post pandemic strategies on how to kind of integrate the best innovations that came about during the past few years into the day to day business of schools. The Hogan Report is more of a traditional business to business newsletter. So if you're old enough to remember Nelson Heller and the Heller report, I kind of I wouldn't say rip them off. But it sounds very similar in terms of the title, and where you would just go and say, you know, company A just bought Company B. And what does it mean? I just had a great conversation with Hardeep Gupta, who's the CEO of PowerSchool, talking about some of their latest and greatest releases, they had probably, I would say, one of the first truly valuable datasets in terms of the survey of their customers coming out of the pandemic, and what districts have retained. And basically what is the state of play in edtech coming off of their data. So again, this is what I like to do is like talk and write about what is happening in the world of edtech. So and as you asked, I use a platform called substack. I've been using it since about January. It's been around a while I was in substack reader, it came to me from a number of different reporters, Matt Taibbi who used to be Rolling Stone, a politics writer left Rolling Stone started his own substack, a number of different journalists have kind of left traditional publications to go and start their own thing. And specifically, when you get into kind of niche, b2b sort of topics. I think you see that more and more so people like don't necessarily say read Bloomberg, because they're interested in their entire coverage of microchips in automobiles. They read it because that particular reporter knows everything there needs to be known about that thing.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah.
Kevin Hogan:And I find it to be intriguing. It's a really easy, it's WordPress, it has audio and video components that are also into it, it's so boring that even I can use it. It's also another element where they handle your email list for you, you own the list, but they manage the list. Okay, and there's also a level where you can list subscribers, and then they handle the financing, which is also something else, which you know, as a content producer, you don't want to do, right, I mean, you want someone else to handle that. And then they take 10% of whatever your subscription revenue is. So the idea is there, and I'm finding it slow and steady wins the race. But you know, as you begin to build that list, it seems like a pretty good way to generate revenue, as well as content. So that's what substack is.
Sarah Williamson:That's great. So it's helpful for companies and marketing people to think about those people like you, Kevin, who are on substack, sharing ideas with them. It's a very interesting channel to communicate and get their message out. So keep that in mind, folks, when you're thinking about reaching out to people. Awesome.
Kevin Hogan:You can subscribe.
Carl Hooker:Yes, subscribe to Kevin
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, and you can subscribe and you could Yeah,
Carl Hooker:THR
Sarah Williamson:and pay him
Carl Hooker:go to the THR I just saw that the top 10 writers
Kevin Hogan:Yea around 13-14? Is there a bottom of that list on substack generate a $20 million in the last year in annual revenue. So where are you number 11 Carl?
Carl Hooker:I know you're right above the bottom. I mean, you're doing okay.
Sarah Williamson:It's so interesting how media has changed. So I love that the new landscape that's coming out. So that's fascinating. Carl, what's cooking with you? I know you have a book. Thank you for your book, by the way. I'm reading it. I love it. And yeah,
Katie Lash:I'm excited to hear about this. I'm so excited.
Sarah Williamson:Okay, how is ready, set fail doing? This is Carl's book.
Carl Hooker:This is good. This is my seventh book. So you talk about traditional publishing and kind of non traditional publishing just like Kevin was talking about what the space of when it comes to writing and journalism. This book or the other books I wrote through a publisher ISTE probably heard of them pretty big publishing press. They do all their so totally different. Yeah, ISTE let me spell it out. It's a completely different model, because they're more of a traditional publisher. This is I'm doing this with X Factor edu and Matt justice outfit. He's got lots of great authors now that he's lined up, and it's printed, published through Amazon. So honestly, the first book, when I first put it out on the market in January, there was my dad who's a proofreader found, like 82 errors in it, I went back that was after my editor got through it, went back and I changed it. Because it's non traditional, quick, right after that anybody who purchased after that day, got the edited version, so there's a few copies lingering of those would be worth millions of dollars on substack at some point. It's
Kevin Hogan:like the upside down airplane on the stamp, right?
Carl Hooker:That's exactly right. Yeah, the whole card that's off center. So the books been going great. Yeah, so sales and to work with a smaller kind of a lean publisher, I would say, a big advantage of that is you get a lot more insight into the sales, the marketing revenue. There's also I feel like a lot more support, because they are an up and coming house in terms of publishing house. So it's the process itself has been so clean and lean. I've just enjoyed every step of the way. But so yeah, for me, getting the story out there was great, and not having to necessarily have to align it to, let's say, a particular standard from a company. I'm not gonna say which company, but sometimes they want their standards and everything. And with Ready, Set Fail. I mean, there's ways I could do that. But to be honest, it would model the story and model the purpose of the book.
Sarah Williamson:No, I love it. So I was gonna ask you, what do you think about self publishing work versus using a publishing house?
Carl Hooker:Well, now that I've seen it, I think there's definitely and I almost went that route to like fast pencil or a couple of the other tools you can use out there. Now that I've seen how it works, I think it's definitely doable. I personally, I've written some books, but I'll tell you what, and I write blogs all the time. Like Kevin, I'm a writer. However, I need an editor. I can't I mean, I would have to outsource that. I had Christine on this last one, she was my editor. And just and she was great about she may miss some of the proofreading things like my dad picked up on but what she was great about was saying, like, I don't know that your audience understands that you're assuming a lot by this phrase, or maybe this should go ahead of this paragraph. And it floats so much better. And she makes me sound so good. So again, I can write all day, but I need editors to help clean it up. And if you read any of my blogs, which are not edited, you can see like sometimes I kind of go off down tangents and I have to pull myself back in. So as much as I think it is possible and doable. You'd have to have some sort of editor in the process too. And then to have a marketing group like you, Sarah, someone behind that that can help run it properly. Push that out there. I think that also helps because not just you doing the public. I mean, you have other people actually going out there and doing the work for you trying to get people to buy your book. So for me, it's worth it. And the cut rate on the smaller publishing house is so much better. If you've ever been an author of a book, you probably know what I'm talking about. It's you don't get a lot. You don't make a lot of money selling books. I'll just say that but with these newer leaner houses Oh, yeah, no, you get a bigger cut. You get a much bigger cut on the smaller houses because again, it's not traditional, you don't need a warehouse to store 1000s of books and then deliver them you know, it's it's the second they hit so okay, I know Yeah. But it's funny that we still I mean, that's still what people gravitate to towards. And I understand that and that's what I did at the beginning. So, yeah, I mean, self publishing, definitely doable, but with an author and with a team and marketing team would be great. I'll concur
Kevin Hogan:with the editor. I actually have the luxury of having one built in here at the house. My wife is a brilliant copy editor. So she breaks through all my stuff. I mean, you can use the automated editing, right, Grammarly. Yeah, yeah, great. and it catches a lot of stuff. I know. I get so many more dashes in my writing now since I use Grammarly, right, it just seems like every other thing. You want to put a dash and everything. But yeah, you know, you can't get the niceties. You can't get the intangibles of writing. And just as you said, like another Christine, you're talking about like she can, another human can just help you find those holes, right?
Carl Hooker:Yeah,
Sarah Williamson:yeah
Carl Hooker:Next I'm gonna report the thr is going to have hyphens in it now. T dash H dash R.
Sarah Williamson:I never remember how to make that. That's like the M dash M dash. It's, I always forget how to do it. And then I'm doing like two hyphens next to each other never looks right. skill set. Okay, skill set. Yep. Working on it. So that's interesting, because we have an amazing book editor. And right. We have amazing writers on our team. And we've just been self publishing. And I thought, gosh, you know, should we, but it sounds like we have the recipe, we have the recipe for success, we just need to more. It's just it's literally like grassroots for books. It's a lot of work. Oh, yeah, it's a lot of work. So more of that.
Carl Hooker:And to be fair, to be fair, I will say I'll add that also, like I've been doing a talk around this topic for several years. So like honing all of the different parts of my different talks and going out and speaking about it, and then tying it into an actual book topic. Now, I have to be careful, because I've seen people and I won't mention any names, it'll go up and say, Oh, by the way, if you read page 34 of my book, I'll tell you the story. Like on their slide, I don't want to do that. Instead, I'm like, Here, I'll give you all this bits for free. I'll let you listen to some of the stories. And Sir Ken Robinson was really great. And whenever I got to meet with him and actually see him speak, like he was coming right off the page, like he literally pretty much was saying the stories are in his books. But I didn't care because I loved every bit of it. And I was like, I got a snippet of this chapter and snippet of that, let me go buy the book. And so he was really aren't full of that when he was around speaking it before he passed away a couple years ago. But for me, I think that's kind of what I'm doing now. So I'm trying to tie that moment in and, and then of course, you know, the art of the upsell, like, how do you hey, you're bringing me in anyway? Why don't you grab a few copies, you know, give me your leadership, or I'll bring it for you too, and just hand them out. I'm a terrible salesman on that sense. I'm always like, Here, here's some free, you know, I just figured out the credit card machine thing where I can do with my phones, I did sell some books recently at an event, they said you're gonna you can set up and sell them and that was great. But then carrying, again, carrying 30 100 books in a suitcase does not make a lot of sense. So I'm all for. Yeah, here's a few freebies or buy it on Amazon whenever you're ready.
Sarah Williamson:You know, what's kind of great is one strategy we're using with our book is okay, we'll get a speaking gig for Quintin at a conference. And then we'll invite people to sponsor his session, and then they pay for the books. So a limited number of books to sponsor 50 to 100 books, and then they can help us ship them to location. That's awesome. Usually the books show up sometimes they don't. Yeah, that's a whole. That's a whole nother thing.
Carl Hooker:We're doing an event in Virginia. I think in October 350. Staff, they bought a book for every staff member before I get there.
Sarah Williamson:So awesome
Carl Hooker:which is awesome. So I mean, that's it's extra revenue. But it's also nice, because then they can refer to if they want to dig in deeper into the stories. I mean, I'll give them highlights, of course. But they have a right there in front of them.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, we're also looking at authors doing Author series with companies where they buy so many books, then Quintin will join them for talks. So it sounds like we're doing the right things. We just didn't do more of it. Any other advice, Carl? I mean, you're pro with this
Carl Hooker:giving away pieces of it as always. I'm a big fan of giving away stuff. Obviously, in education. That's the thing. So whenever I can have opportunities to give it away, your partnership idea is a great one. And I've started I've had companies come and ask me to do a webinar or a talk or something online virtually. And of course, those companies will usually say, we don't have any money, can you just do it for free? And I'm like, Well, how about this? How about you buy 50 books, and you give them to give it to the listeners? I love that. Yeah. And that's awesome. Because to me, it's like they walk away with something, I get a little bit for it. But it's like a win win for everybody concerned, and the company doesn't spend necessarily a lot of money on it, but it's a way to get them to. And again, it keeps spreading the message. So it's, I've had a lot of class like has done this for me a couple of times Book Creator like wakelet Over the summer, they just gave away some extra ones on Twitter like a week ago. So those types of partnerships. I'm starting to figure that out. I did not immediately do that with my first six books very much. I didn't know what I was doing. Really.
Sarah Williamson:You're making me feel better? No, it's a big learning curve. When you're it's not like doing PR it's a little different. I mean, you do PR for a book, but you also it's grassroots sales and figuring out the strategy. So that's been helpful. Yeah. Whenever someone approaches us about the webinar, sure. It's 50 bucks minimum. And so we're doing the right stuff. Yes, check. Okay, so I would love to talk to you guys. Well, first Carl, will you just share the story out of your book about the recipe, creating a recipe just for our listeners?
Carl Hooker:Yeah. So this actually was The key moment in my educational career when I was 12 years old, I got the homework assignment that was the typical homework assignment, go home and make a recipe over something at home. It could be like some kids that have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, like you know, pick out the bread, put on the peanut butter, make a sandwich, which by the way, would not be a great recipe because you forgot to actually spread it, put the jelly on it and all that stuff, you have to go step by step. And so me being fairly innovative at the time as a 12 year old thinking, I'll just think outside the box here. And I was always my parents always encouraged me to do that. And they had one of those old Panasonic beastly VHS over the shoulder recorders that weighed about 40 pounds. And my dad's like, hey, we'll record you if you want to just do it that way. And he's like, Yeah, let's try it. So I recorded this particular recipe about this giant massive like cookie brownie thing that had like butter and sugar and chocolate and everything else in it, you could think of, I threw it on this pan and stuck it in the oven, burned my hand when I was actually taking on the actual recording. And you can see me picking it out with one glove, but it was too heavy. And I had to grab it with my other hand and burn. I still have the scar like 30 years later on my hand, which is weird. Most of it's gone by now. And so I do it, I'd record it. We messed up a few times. And we recorded it because back then, you know, there wasn't editing software, it was the editing software was rewind, let's rerecord the whole thing from scratch. And so I don't know how many eggs and sticks of butter I went through. But and we ate a lot of the mistakes. If you've ever seen me in person, you could tell a lot of those mistakes. But what was interesting was, the next day comes and we go to school and everyone turns on their recipe cards and I turn in this VCR tape and she's like, Okay, what does this and I was like, you know, I recorded it all. And she like, Alright, so we go, she's a little frustrating, but she doesn't ask the librarian, like, bring that one. The one TV VCR combo that we have in the entire school. You remember that? And the 1980s. And we'd wheel it down the hallway and they brought it in the classroom, plugged it in, put in my tape, we get to watch this little three minute four minute thing of a cooking and the class went crazy. The kids were laughing they were I had a weird accent I had a funny hat on. And it just they cheered. And I was sitting there like bowing, I was like, oh my god, this is like my shining moment. And then I got my grade. And it was turned out there was a first F I'd ever received in school in my life. And I asked why I was in tears. Honestly, I broke down I had never had an F in my life was straight a kid up to that point my life. And I asked the teacher why she said you didn't follow directions. It floored me. And at that moment, honestly, that stuck with me. I'm always motivated by negative things sometimes, like if I had a bad leader, I'm like, I want to be different than that leader. So for me that was like, I don't want that to ever happen to a kid, I want a kid always have the opportunity to it what's most important? Is it about showing following directions? Or is it about showing your understanding of a topic and demonstrating your learning. And in that case, she decided it was more important to follow directions which I think it is important somewhat to follow directions but not to the detriment of learning because to be honest, I still remember that recipe. Like I memorize it. If I just got home and did the recipe card turned it in, I would never have any idea. I knew it because I did it so many times I had a practice so many times. So that was the story. And I actually have in the book a link to the actual video that my sister somehow found somewhere and digitized and put on YouTube. So it's out there as me as a 12 year old trying to make this a crazy cookie. But flash forward to just as a career as a Director of Innovation in a school district. And I'm walking the halls and it's almost like it's like me right in the face. This moment happened again, but it was different. A teacher was a Latin teacher at our high school here at West like Austin. And she had had her students could you report about a Roman bathhouse and Latin and every kid did their PowerPoint like they were told. But one kid decided to come in and he had a recording on Minecraft where he had recreated a Roman bathhouse and Minecraft spent 20 hours building this thing over the weekend, recorded his voice and Latin doing directions, every little part of it and played it for the kids. And I was like, oh, it's like I get goosebumps on this story. Because it reminded me of I was that same kid. And the kids clapped. And it was crazy. And this difference was the teacher gave him an A that's it. That was above and beyond. That's amazing. That's masterful. And he did it in a platform that he loved and enjoyed. And then a few years later, when he graduated, I told him I I've shared that story a few times. And he was like I said, Do you remember any of that? And he goes, I remember every bit of that because I spent hours working probably too many hours but building in Minecraft. I mean, that's what's important. Like how do we remember those experiences and and if school is just about checking boxes, then forget it, which is also kind of why I wrote the book.
Sarah Williamson:I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. That's awesome. Are you looking to build brand awareness and expand your impact as an organization. But maybe you're struggling to find the ROI with your general marketing and PR efforts, it could be time to try something a little different. At SW PR group we approach every organization through the lens of how we can help them add the most value to the conversations that are happening in education today for one of our clients, the Institute for Education innovation. This led to the launch of soups choice, an award that we co created to build incredible brand awareness and his firmly established organization as an industry leader driving impact, growth and awareness on every level for Ed mentum. This meant the launch of thought leadership panels at education conferences and a new webinar series featuring influencers and partners that are making a difference in education. What will your success story be? Let me know when you're ready to get started. Reach out at Sarah with an H sarah@swpr-group.com We look forward to hearing from you Okay, Kevin, what do you think? And can you chime in here? I want you to ask him questions to you, you get an on this juice. Come on, Katie. Okay.
Katie Lash:Well, I just love listening, because today is so interesting. This is our conversation tonight. Today, I spent the morning with a bunch of aspiring superintendents. And it was interesting to hear what the season superintendents were sharing as advice that so I was telling this one gentleman who has been an amazing mentor to me, he was just talking naturally, he has this list of things everyone needs to know. And I was like, let's write a book, I'll help you write a book, because he needs to write that down. But anyway, so I find this all very fascinating. It's very timely, and but then furthermore, with a consistent piece of advice about what they were giving to aspiring superintendents was to fail, like you are going to fail, like, or you're going to not know the answers, and you're going to have to be okay with that. And so, this was just very, it's like, the theme of my day.
Sarah Williamson:That's interesting. Oh, go ahead. We're gonna say something Carl.
Carl Hooker:Oh, it's good. I always ask this question of audiences now. Like, how many raise your hand if you've ever failed in your life, and everybody raises their hand. But if I say, How many of you are failures? Nobody does? Oh, the one time at one event, someone did raise their hands like, oh, sorry. Yeah, I was like, Come here, come over here, come up and talk. And I think it's interesting how it's just a quick turn of a phrase, you can adjust that and be like, we've all failed. I mean, I feel every day. I mean, my wife reminds me, but like, Kevin, I'm married to an editor, but in a different way. So I think that's an important message that has to start with leadership. And I think one of the messages at the end of my book says that students won't take risks unless teachers take risks. And then I flipped that on its head and say, teachers won't take risks, and lets leaders take risks. So those leaders are afraid to do it, no teacher is going to try it. And if the teachers aren't gonna try it, the students are gonna, like stay in their lane and just make sure they're doing everything to get the A not really about learning or innovating. So that's a big message to in the book.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. I love that. Katie. So what do you guys think is the key to successful thought leadership? What companies are doing it? Well? What do you like to see? And tell some stories? We want to hear about this?
Katie Lash:This is our like, core thesis statement of the podcast is like, we have to know, we have to make a conclusion at the end of the season,
Sarah Williamson:the secret sauce,
Kevin Hogan:I'll start I mean, the one thing I've done more than 100 interviews, since the beginning of the pandemic, with CEOs of ad tech companies, and one of the big changes, I've noticed, and hopefully it will stick around. That's what I keep doing it. Keep taking notes. It's like, okay, what do I want to go away forever? Now that COVID is over? And what do we want to kind of keep stick around? And I think the authenticity of conversation that started with the Zoom calls, right? I mean, three years ago, we've had this technology on our computers for 10 years, right? I mean, and in the ed tech space, I've been reading about the potential of it for 15 years, and teachers like not, I'm not going to do it not going to do it. We all had to do it. Everyone had to do it Ed tech CEOs had to do it. And the only way they could talk about their companies and get their messaging out is by doing a zoom with me. Right? But in that they were doing it from their office at their home. And I won't name names, but it was a pretty big time CEO. And somebody was hammering in the background. Now, of course, they're probably adding on like, you know, a 15, room addition maybe to the house. But nevertheless, they still had construction workers in the house and things were making noise. And he's like, Oh, can you hold on a second? And then he's like, No, I never got the tie on the top of the shorts on the bottom sort of thing, or no toddlers came running in or caps across the keyboard. But everyone just got really authentic. I mean, they were just their real selves in all these conversations, because the conversations were also completely mind blowing, right? I mean, this. My first interviews were in April, May of 2020. And they all began before we recorded but like, are you okay, how are you? You know, like, you have this together. And then my first questions, were always Where were you on Friday the 13th. Right. So and they gave very personal anecdotes, and really, no one escapes this trauma. Right. And there are a couple that were some really terrible traumas. There are other ones were like, We got stuck in a Roomba for 10 days, you know, that didn't really mean that bad. But yeah, that's a long way around of saying that, I think for exhibiting thought leadership, authenticity is going to be key. You're not going to be able to put your PR team in front of you. I will not take a list of scripted questions, suggestion for any conversation. I have. I mean, you could take them but I'm not going to use them. I mean, I'm going to have a comfortable try to give you that. Yes,
Carl Hooker:sure. Yeah. Imagine that. Sarah.
Sarah Williamson:Oh, yeah, I did. Yes. Okay. Are you calling me out Carl, are you calling me a--; The North Star this.
Carl Hooker:It's okay. I just I'm sure he can just open it to if he's like me, you want to keep it conversational. So yeah.
Kevin Hogan:I saw what the script that you send is not a script. But as a milestone. Yeah. I mean, to be fair be like, Look, we're going to talk about your news. But then we're going to talk about this bigger trends. And to begin it. We're going to talk about, you know, you as a person, right, right. Yeah. to humanize it. As a leader, you don't have to say you have failed or you're a failure, but you just have to be real. Right. And I think that's a hugely important aspect that may not have been in place before. I mean, I think the tech space is better than a lot of other verticals when it comes to that. But there was still a lot of like, people trying to protect images. And, you know, unfortunately, some people are just not made for having conversations. But again, this technology takes away a lot of those things that used to make people nervous, right, yeah, bright lights, oh, I'm, I sweat under the lights, you know, I have all these sort of issues. The Zoom kind of hides a lot of those imperfections. And oh, yeah, just, yeah, we have no choice. Right. And I think leaders have no choice except to be authentic.
Sarah Williamson:I will add a note to that. Don't if you're a VR version, or marketing person working for a company, I've never shared proposed questions with the reporter that seems totally inappropriate. Do not do that. That's my recommendation.
Kevin Hogan:But yeah, but they do.
Carl Hooker:Say there are companies that Kevin knows, and I know there are companies that want to know what you're gonna say before you say it.
Sarah Williamson:Okay, if you ask that question, you've seriously never worked in journalism ever. Right? And that's totally offensive to a reporter.
Carl Hooker:I mean, as a podcaster, it's my most favorite response is Oh, my God, that's a good question. Let me think about like, when I stumped the guest, that gets me I'm like, Ooh, okay. Like, I don't want them necessarily to sweat. But I mean, that tells me that I'm asking the right question. It's not a layup. In other words, I mean, because I could do some of those do, I'm gonna set you up.
Sarah Williamson:This is supposed to be a layup by the way, this is supposed to be a softball interview.
Carl Hooker:We're making it harder. I mean, I see Kevin sweating now, but and Katie's in her car hopefully not driving but
Katie Lash:I am parked. I'm living the mom life
Carl Hooker:She's running up that hill. No, that's a different song, Katie? No, I think that is I mean, just to piggyback on what Kevin said, I think authenticity to me is number one. And I think the failure part, that's, of course, the angle I take on it is, you know, tell the truth, be transparent. Share your failures, but also share, how do you reflect on the failures? And then what do you learn from them? And then how do you improve going forward? Because I think that's a big part of it, too. Oftentimes, leaders and especially with social media today, and politics and everything around that. They're afraid to say like, here's where I messed up. But if you say like, Hey, I messed up here. And here's how we fixed it. Here's what how we acknowledged it. And here's what we're doing going forward. Most of your audience, not all of them, admittedly, some of the parents will still get mad at you. But that shouldn't be a reason not to try something. And I think what ends up happening is, in a world where we're feeling the pressure not to take risks, it's pushing us towards conservatism in terms of our ideologies. And so now we're like, well, we're gonna stick with this one formula that everyone knows, and it really works I talked about in the book, too, with what's his face, the guy, the CEO, Pixar, who talked Ed Catmull, who does a great book, by the way, Creativity, Inc. has a great book, and he talks about this, like, you make a great movie, like Toy Story, then there's a lot of pressure, that the next thing you do better be like Toy Story two, and just don't ever change the formula. Because if you do, you could really mess up. So there's a pressure towards conservatism because you've been successful. So I think in schools where they've had successes, you'll see that happen a lot, where they're just kind of like, Okay, we're gonna stay in our lane and not try new things versus schools that maybe have to blow stuff up and try new things. Maybe they get to be a little more innovative that way. Unfortunately, it's not always the case in public education, because what ends up happening is those lower econ schools get, oh, now here's the scripted system that every kid must be on for 22 minutes or whatever. And it shouldn't be that way. But I think in some cases, it is. So a long way to answer your original question, which is Yeah, I agree with Kevin, it's, it's authenticity. For me, that tells me about leadership. And I'll add one more thing. It's not necessarily about a title. There are people that are great thought leaders that don't have CEOs or title or don't have director or superintendent, that does make a difference, usually, and people will listen with more sway when they hear a title. But I mean, I stuff coming out of the classroom has been amazing to me. I've seen students say stuff that has blown my socks off. So it can come from all sorts of areas.
Kevin Hogan:Yeah, I guess one thing I failed to mention the other work I'm doing with the school news, I'm moderating their webinar series. So there are at least four of those a month, and they involve both industry but as well as educators. And when I help put those together, I try to insist on having an educator who was a thought leader, but who might not necessarily be the superintendent, you know, actually, I mean, we are right now in the presence of a former leader of the year for tech and learning in 2000. Or was that century or last century Carl? I can't remember. It's in
Carl Hooker:this millennial. I got the framed cover somewhere. Oh, it's in my desk drawer right here. The wastepaper basket 2014 I was just a young buck.
Kevin Hogan:14 Okay. Yeah, yeah, Atlanta, Georgia. Yep. But When we did those awards we do, you know, we've given a word to Superintendent as well as someone at the principal level, but as as well as the teacher, and always tried to emphasize to have one at each of those levels. The school news just finished wrapping up their eSchool news, Hero Awards, where and this came out of the pandemic, where we had educators write in, and it's not about how this district superintendent, you know, save the district, it's about how the teachers got together and figured out a way to get the hotspots out to students in rural areas or, you know, various others, true stories of heroism that continue to happen in schools and hearing it from those folks is more important, I believe, than a year from the higher ups necessarily. So you know, it all depends on what your definition of leader is.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, that's awesome. That's what I think it is to authenticity. Yeah.
Katie Lash:Something that at our service agency, this is so interesting, too. We have a large geography, a lot of rural schools. And when I was kind of new to this role, and trying to get out there, and schools weren't letting me and I was stranger. And so it was interesting. To your point, Kevin is like, Zoom has been here a long time, I had been on zooms sometimes. But in this moment, you know, sending people zoom links to chat, and it was still very, like, uncomfortable, which is crazy to think about now. And the frequency in which we click on a zoom link. But nonetheless, you know, folks were generalized, the educators are ready to come to a meeting for like the objective, which obviously, we need those. But these conversations that we were hosting, we came in with no script, we came in with no objective, it was genuinely like you all are talking about curriculum today, where that conversation goes, we will discover that together. And again, it's a little uncomfortable to some folks like, Okay, what am I supposed to do, though, but I'll tell you, as that evolved over some months of just meeting, that's singularly the thing that people care about the most right now is just creating the space. And we don't know where it's gonna go. So interesting that you're saying that because this again, this has been around forever, we could have been doing this for years, but would have created the space.
Kevin Hogan:This was the biggest forced beta test in the history of person can't, right? And just like, had these technologies, they were sitting there, and now it's like, alright, well, you've got to use it. And everybody had to use it, you know, and you know, that CEO was sitting in their home, didn't have the IT guy to be able to come in and help them set it up for him. Right. He had his set up. I don't know how many interviews I had, where, you know, there was a good 1015 minutes of fumbling, before it got started. And nothing humanizes a person. Other than not being able to find their microphone, right, Katie?
Katie Lash:Oh, yeah. Like, using? Yeah, precisely that in my car, I promise. I'm normally a little more but to get there. But my husband started working. He's he's working for an edtech company now. And so I realized how much that I was not cut out for like single moms status. And so that's part of this right now is, he could have helped me with carpool. That's not happening right now. So
Kevin Hogan:Katie, you're being your most authentic self.
Carl Hooker:That's it. You're a thought leader.
Katie Lash:This is really me really me.
Kevin Hogan:But there's no way I'm going to take this background off behind me to be the true authentic self. Because right, right behind me is our laundry room at my house. Yeah.
Carl Hooker:Yeah. Back to my camera. If I tilt my camera this way, there's actually a pile of clothes and boxes over there. And my kids playroom is behind that door. And they're actually back there right now making noise, which has happened several times on podcasts and webinars. Now, I feel like Kevin, I feel like we should, there should have been a shirt at some point. I think someone didn't make a shirt that said, you're still on mute, because that was also the other half of the day when I was doing a webinar with that search. I was like, Oh, you're stuck. You're on mute. Oh, yeah. Sorry.
Sarah Williamson:All the time. Let's be authentic selves. Two of my kids have COVID
Kevin Hogan:Oh, no.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, it's like stomach bug on top of no good. COVID. So that's Yes bummer. You guys, super fun. I look forward to booking our time on your shows right after we get off this call. Looking forward to that. Just let us know your schedules. And anything else you want to share with the audience build momentum,
Carl Hooker:I have some. So a few months ago, I started a platform called K 12. Leaders. It is a social community. I will not call it a social media company. Because it is not a social media company. It is a social spot educators. It's a space for educators built by educators. And we're trying to keep it as spam free as possible to get LinkedIn but not with the spam and a little more educational focus instead of business focus. So we're up to 700. And something members, we've actually signed a couple of good deals with some conferences coming up. Our hope is to continue the conversation. That's kind of our mantra. So when you go to a conference and you connect, you get a little app, you pop it up, there's a QR code there. We're connected on K 12. Leaders and we continue to move and by the way, anyone's a leader, it doesn't mean you have to be a leader and title like I said, teachers are leaders, we want them in the platform to and so yeah, so we've had that going and it's free, obviously for teachers and educators forever our ideas like let's continue to build this community continue the conversation because I hate going to conference, downloading an app connectivist Have it on that app. And then two weeks later, like, Why do I even use this thing and deleting it. So keeping us going throughout all the conferences that we go to and interact with and kind of keeping those hallway conversations in a space where we can continue them after we've left a physical event. So that's the platform. Check it out. Kids, world leaders, speak for nobody, because it's all our own time and make any money on it right now.
Sarah Williamson:Michael's working on changing that though. He's working on.
Carl Hooker:Mike Rhonda is hustling his rear end off he is trying he's trying we're building some courses in there. Some little sneak preview of things to come. You never know Sarah, myself, who knows? courses? So yeah, it's I'm excited. And there's a big conference that we just partnered with, and that we're going to announce in about a month. So that'll be fun.
Sarah Williamson:Awesome. No, that's a big one that you got going on. I heard about it. Exciting. Okay. Well, look forward to having you back. Thank you for joining. And
Carl Hooker:Thank you.
Kevin Hogan:thanks for having us
Sarah Williamson:We're excited to hear your thoughts on this new format of the podcast and to share it with all your friends and colleagues.
Carl Hooker:Absolutely.
Sarah Williamson:Thanks, y'all.
Kevin Hogan:Absolutely.
Sarah Williamson:Okay. Bye.
Kevin Hogan:Thanks, guys.
Sarah Williamson:If you're looking for more of this thought, leadership goodness for your organization, you're in the right place. Visit us at swpr-group.com To learn more about how we work with education organizations and their leaders, superintendents and influencers to increase your impact. Again, that's swpr-group.com. Thanks for tuning in today and we will see you next time on build momentum.