In this episode of Build Momentum, we are joined by Doug Roberts, founder, and CEO of Institute for Education Innovation (IEI), as well as Alexa Escobedo, IEI’s marketing coordinator and project manager for the first-ever Supe’s Choice Awards.
Some Questions I Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“The people making the decision have to be authentic about who wins, so you have to really believe in what you're doing, and it has to come from the right place.”
“I would say the setup part was the most difficult. Once it was set, as far as getting the judges in there, getting the scorecards—that ran very smoothly, but there was a lot of front-end work. So I would also say to anybody who's starting off, don't get discouraged if you feel very overwhelmed in the beginning, because really doing all that hard work, in the beginning, is what pays off in the end. Then it becomes a smoother ride.”
“Even if you don't win, you are still seen by so many district leaders that you could get potential leads that way. It really is a conversation starter. And it's a great low-cost way to be seen.”
“You have to have some standing in your industry, you have to have a good network and a list to message to in the beginning to grow from. So [starting an awards program] shouldn't be the first thing you do; you should have something going already. I think that's really important. We were able to build off of our existing brand network membership to grow this.”
Connect with Doug Roberts and Alexa Escobedo:
Institute for Education Innovation (IEI) Website
Doug Robert's LinkedIn
Alexa Escobedo's LinkedIn
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, we are joined by Doug Roberts, founder, and CEO of Institute for Education Innovation (IEI), as well as Alexa Escobedo, IEI’s marketing coordinator and project manager for the first-ever Supe’s Choice Awards.
Some Questions I Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“The people making the decision have to be authentic about who wins, so you have to really believe in what you're doing, and it has to come from the right place.”
“I would say the setup part was the most difficult. Once it was set, as far as getting the judges in there, getting the scorecards—that ran very smoothly, but there was a lot of front-end work. So I would also say to anybody who's starting off, don't get discouraged if you feel very overwhelmed in the beginning, because really doing all that hard work, in the beginning, is what pays off in the end. Then it becomes a smoother ride.”
“Even if you don't win, you are still seen by so many district leaders that you could get potential leads that way. It really is a conversation starter. And it's a great low-cost way to be seen.”
“You have to have some standing in your industry, you have to have a good network and a list to message to in the beginning to grow from. So [starting an awards program] shouldn't be the first thing you do; you should have something going already. I think that's really important. We were able to build off of our existing brand network membership to grow this.”
Connect with Doug Roberts and Alexa Escobedo:
Institute for Education Innovation (IEI) Website
Doug Robert's LinkedIn
Alexa Escobedo's LinkedIn
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 where we help education organizations, blow past their competitors with strategies that make an impact. We think beyond traditional press releases and generic communication tactics, and seek out big, bold ideas create meaningful results for our clients. I'm your host, Sarah Williamson. And I've spent more than 15 years in public relations for the education sector, where our team has learned what works and what doesn't when it comes to PR from launching groundbreaking new industry awards to landing sought after panels at the most prestigious shows. We absolutely love this stuff. But the best part is, we have an opportunity to interview some of the smartest people we know who share their knowledge and strategies for success right here on the show. If you enjoy what you hear, we would so appreciate if you please take a moment just drop us a review on whatever platform you listen. And if you want to learn more about us, visit SWPR-group.com. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Let's dive into the show. Alright, and on today's episode of build momentum, we have two special guests Doug Roberts, the founder and CEO of the Institute for Education innovation, and Alexa Escobado, the marketing coordinator for the Institute, we invited these two dynamos on the show today to talk about a special awards program called Supe's Choice that we created for the Institute for Education Innovation, also referred to as IEI, which we're going to talk about as IEI threw out this episode, we learned so many lessons and best practices throughout this experience that we wanted to share our takeaways with you today. So I don't know if you've thought about this. But creating an awards program might sound pretty easy. But there really is a lot to consider when you're pulling one together. So if that's something you're thinking about within your company, or organization, this episode is for you. So we're going to get into what worked well and what we won't be doing again, as well as some more complex considerations for an awards program. So let's dive right in. Doug, welcome back to build momentum. I feel like you're a regular
Doug Roberts:Hey, Sarah, how are you? Good to see you.
Sarah Williamson:Good to see you, too. Do you mind sharing just a quick overview of IEI? Before we get into the awards program today?
Doug Roberts:Sure. We are a national think tank of school superintendents, we seek to bridge and close the gap between district leaders, investors, entrepreneurs and others in the private sector of the K 12. Industry. And we seek to do that by providing guided coached, and specifically qualified conversations between those different parties. And you know, all of this is about improving outcomes for kids. And we believe that the more communication there is proactive communication between districts and industry leaders, the better solutions will get for kids.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. And you're so good at what you do. It's pretty amazing to watch. Yes.
Doug Roberts:And I'm excited to have Alexa Escobado with us today to who was integral to this. She was here like a couple of days, and we handed her this project of running Supe's Choice. So so glad to have Alexa on our team.
Sarah Williamson:Welcome, Alexa. It's nice to have you on the show.
Alexa Escobado:Thank you. It's great to be here. It's my first podcast recording. So it's pretty exciting.
Sarah Williamson:Very exciting. I feel honored that the first show is my show. So thank you.
Alexa Escobado:Thank you for having me.
Sarah Williamson:Yes. Okay. So, Doug, last summer, I know you, we met and you talked to me about how you were going to elevate your profile for AI and some ideas we discussed. And I wanted to hear from you your take on how we conceptualize the awards program?
Doug Roberts:Yeah, sure. I was wanting to this year for us was about positioning the AI superintendents as thought leaders within this ecosystem and amplifying their voice in terms of you know, what is going to work for districts and what's not part of that, because, you know, we saw with a pandemic, a whole slew of new solutions showed up in the marketplace, whether it was people claiming to be able to clean the air, purify air, remove COVID from the air or solutions that were providing intensive academic intervention services to help with quote unquote, learning loss, or other companies pivoting their solutions to do more around remote instruction. There was a major change happening in the marketplace. And the last time we went through one of these I was concerned that district leaders were not involved in the conversation, partially because I think the industry sometimes likes to avoid the bureaucracy as it were the you know, it can be difficult to go and talk with the school district and learn what they're working on. But because it's difficult does not mean we shouldn't do it. And so the thought was, well, we have this platform, how can we amplify the superintendent voice in this discussion because nobody understands all levels of the system. The way a superintendent does, almost all of them have been teachers, or they've been at least close to teaching. They've run schools, as administrators, they've a lot of them have coached teams or run clubs. They've had to look at the budget. They've had to deal with elected officials and board members so and they do with parents so they understand Every aspect of this and so we wanted a way to position II superintendents as thought leaders, as all of these new solutions come to market. And, you know, we have some nice awards programs in the K 12. Industry, and they come from different places. There's nothing that comes from district leaders. So we figured, let's try it out.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, exactly. And it's also nice for the tech companies to get that opportunity to get in front of those superintendents and to showcase their products, not only to have that time with them, and then also, they could potentially win a new award.
Doug Roberts:Yeah, so I come from K 12. Startups, that's sort of my DNA helped several of them get going both as an employee and then as a consultant. And so I talked to a lot of founders, entrepreneurs who, for whom the kind of relationship building experience we provide, or others like us, is just way out of their price range, you know, a five figure investment, that should turn into a six figure investment, if they play their cards, right. It's just not on the table for some companies. So right now, before Supe's Choice, the only other alternative was to wait until you could afford it and get or try to fight your way in through email campaigns and, or blindly apply to RFPs. And, you know, work your way through what can be a very long and grueling sales cycle. So Supe's Choice comes in and gives a less than $1,000 opportunity to invest in getting your product in front of some really talented and amazing district leaders and get some feedback and insight and coaching from them. I'll be it in small doses in the form of text written responses, and in some cases, video responses to their solution. But you know, these founders, wherever they are on the development cycle of their organization, they just got a bunch of nice input from people who really care about both kids and care about companies being able to build good stuff for schools and who understand the system really well. So you know, it provides a low price point opportunity for this conversation to happen. And that's really what it's about. And that allows our members, the IEI superintendents to be thought leaders for the entire industry, including those who are not yet ready to invest in coming to one of our superintendent summits.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, on that point. So really, this award helped to elevate IEI, and these superintendents and edtech companies, what do you recommend other companies and organizations consider before they embark on launching an awards program like this one?
Doug Roberts:I say just make it authentic, the people making the decision have to be authentic about you know, who wins, so you have to really believe in what you're doing, and it has to come from the right place. And you know, make sure that you're going to solve a problem for folks, I think we solve a business problem with soups choice for a lot of companies, if they wanted to get a quick litmus test on how a bunch of district leaders view what they're working on. You know, we had some kind of very established companies who brought new solutions in a Supe's Choice, and we had others who brought their kind of standard solution in, and so for some, it was validating if something they already kind of knew, like you're already working with 100 districts in the country, you know that you're probably one of the best in class solutions. And then you end up a finalist or winner here, you know, it tracks kind of where you're headed. But some of these companies are upstart companies that a lot of folks haven't heard of yet. So I think you just want to be authentic about who the people are, who are judging. And then you have, what I learned is that we have to walk a line between the because the AI staff, we stayed out of the judging entirely, however, so that truly, you know, it came from educators blindly reviewing these solutions. However, I do think that there are some checks you need to put in place, you need to make sure you have the right categories. I think we're going to tweak that a little bit next year, we got some good feedback from applicants, and then you have to make sure that the applicants are in the right category. And because otherwise, that can cause some problems when they select winners. And if another applicant feels that the winner is not in the right category, it creates a challenge. So I think we're gonna look to just continue to increase integrity around that stuff. And you know, we're all learning as we do this. But yeah, and then the last thing I'll say is, make sure you do the PR work around it, which is something that I have no idea how to do. So it was really great to partner with SW PR, because you guys took care of that for us and this kind of thing. It's not like the other activities we do, where we you know, we work person to person relationship to relationship. We have a network, we go talk to people, we set up zoom meetings, like that's my world of talking about, you know, evangelizing about what we do. Yeah, but make sure you have a good ground game for PR and media, because this is very much in that world. And I think in that way, we were just a good team was a good hybrid approach.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, totally agree. One other final note I might add is don't panic when you don't see any submissions, Midway or even almost to the end of the when you're closing that award, or when you're wrapping up, you want to make sure you just hold on because oftentimes, they will come in at the very last minute. I think we had 90% of our submissions come in the last day. So yeah.
Doug Roberts:One more thing I want to add before you go to Alexa and this is a major thing I learned too is that if you have an in person ceremony for giving out the awards, people are going to want to come especially finalists, which we didn't have a big enough room to invite them We just weren't sure it was a first time. So next year, we're going to get a bigger room. And then we're going to instead of having sponsors for that event, which is what we normally do, we're just going to sell tickets. So anybody can come and participate. It's becomes like sort of a fun industry event. And it actually, we used to have the SA Ed-tech business forum in New York around that time of year, the first week of December. So in some ways, this could at least replace that in terms of a networking opportunity, when people were used to coming to the city to connect with others. So it's, you know, there's kind of nothing else around that time. So we're gonna grow that event. So anybody who wants to come and just be part of it, and network and you know, we had a good time, not for nothing.
Sarah Williamson:That's so true, we shared it. But even still, I mean, think about the opportunity, these companies would have to come and network with superintendents who doesn't want that. So I think that's going to be a win win.
Doug Roberts:Yeah, our members were good. We'll grow with them in terms of popularity, but the ones who came were really, really glad to be part of the process. And I think that they felt that they put in some serious time into this, and they did something really good.
Sarah Williamson:They started Absolutely, Alexa. So yes, you were the mastermind behind the logistics, operations and communication to finalists, to people to the judges, you were the mastermind behind the scenes, so and then also all the communication externally. So I'd love for you to share how you would recommend someone, if they're just thinking about creating an award, where should they start,
Alexa Escobado:I would say you want to start by researching what platform you're going to use for your judging process. Because it truly all comes down to that it becomes all streamlined into that one platform, and you want to make it as easy as possible for yourself, especially because with the nature of this, you know, at first user, you kept telling us Don't worry, they're gonna come in late, everybody does it late, just hold on. And we were kind of freaking out thinking, Oh, my gosh, this is a bust. And then of course, we end up with 93 submissions. So you were onto something. And I think for somebody who's running a program, know that, okay, when it's 20 submissions, 30 is very easy to handle and manage. But when you get up to 7080 90, all of a sudden, it becomes a huge task, and you want to have that system in place already. That's going to make it very fluid for you. As far as managing categories. When you just get to the judging round, setting up your judging rounds, scorecards rubric, all of that stuff, you want to make sure you have a platform that works for you. And we use Judgify this time around. And I will say, at first I was frustrated because I was like, Oh my gosh, this is not as intuitive as I thought it would be. But then once I got going, it ended up being very user friendly, and shout out to Judgify, because we were able to run our program smoothly. By the end, it was Yeah, touching go for a bit. But it worked out in the end.
Sarah Williamson:There's some funny quirks with Judgify when you're setting up your categories, you have to be really careful that you appropriately get everything set up correctly.
Alexa Escobado:Yeah,
Sarah Williamson:and then make sure the pricing is correct on each of the categories. And that's actually harder than it initially appears. So we did have a few hiccups with that.
Alexa Escobado:I would say the setup part was the more difficult and then once it was set, you know as far as getting the judges in there getting the scorecards that ran very smoothly, but there was a lot of front end work. So I would also say anybody who's starting off, don't get discouraged if you feel very overwhelmed in the beginning, because really doing all that hard work in the beginning is what pays off in the end, because then it becomes a smoother ride.
Sarah Williamson:Not only that now it's paid off for us moving forward. I mean, we have this entire thing already built. So it's now going to become a machine that we just say improve upon for future years, which is very exciting.
Alexa Escobado:Exactly. I know. Yeah. It's like okay, we got the first year out of the way. We're good to go now. And you just keep improving from there.
Sarah Williamson:Happy New Year as we recover from 2021 and ease into 2022. We are finding that so many of our clients are still in the process of finalizing their 2022 communications plans. If you're looking for a jumpstart on how to elevate your profile and enhance your presence in the market this year, we can definitely help. We specialize in providing strategic annual planning for our clients to develop comprehensive communications programs for their entire year. We want to help you achieve even bigger goals than you dreamed possible. We do that with plans that leverage big bold ideas but are laid out with executable achievable goals every quarter. Reach out today to schedule your strategic planning session with us and our team. You can reach us at Elise elise@SWPR-group.com. We look forward to hearing from you today.
Alexa Escobado:But I would also go back to what Doug had said about the categories and making sure that you've got the right categories, and that they're explicitly clear on what programs would fit in each category. Because there were somewhere, you know, there were some submissions that were sent in that you're like, Well, I think they would fit better over here. But again, we tried to keep it as you know, in the hands of the judges as possible without us tampering. So we really didn't go in to assign categories or look at them to say, yes, they fit here. So I think maybe a little more front end work on that of being very clear on specifications for the categories. I would also say that we'd want for like the anti racism and equity champion, I love that category personally. But I realized for some, it might be a little harsh or come off a little strong. So I think it's also a bit of having a broad appeal so that you can get more people interested in every category.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, so it's naming the categories. It's not just figuring out those categories, but it's making sure the name is inclusive enough that people feel inclined to respond
Alexa Escobado:Exactly. Because even though the name might not have to be so strong, but the purpose of it can still be there, you know?
Sarah Williamson:Okay, that's great. What would you do differently next year? And what do you think went really well this year? And what would you do different?
Alexa Escobado:I think what went really well, this year was the fact that we got 93 submissions, obviously, you know, good teamwork on our part with you know, SWPR and IEI getting the word out on social media. Clearly, we got people interested in that, I think was the biggest feat of going into this in the first year was like, Is anybody even gonna care? And I think we did a really good job of, you know, I kept trying to use that tagline of like, it's the people's choice of edtech. Because really, the soups are the ones who are buying the programs, and they're the ones that are running the schools and know what schools need. So if you're getting the seal of approval from these judges, then you know you're doing something right. So I think we did a great job with our first year, I was so excited that that's how it turned out. And clearly at the gala, people were so excited about it too, and just seeing on social media, the aftermath of people posting and proudly showing off their badge. It just feels really cool to be a part of that.
Sarah Williamson:I think we're onto something for sure.
Doug Roberts:I was surprised by how it played out on social media. I just, I don't know, I was just surprised at how excited people were.
Sarah Williamson:They were thrilled.
Alexa Escobado:I know. Because I kind of thought, oh, is this just gonna be another one like Ed Tech award that you kind of see floating around on social media? And then it was like, wow, people really care. And I'm so happy, because obviously, we care a lot. But to know that that enthusiasm caught on, it's pretty awesome. Yeah,
Doug Roberts:I think our members care, I think they care to be part of, you know, this conversation about quality. One of the things they tell me all the time is that they appreciate the companies that get in front of them are usually either ready for primetime or ready to roll up their sleeves and listen and work with them and let them provide input. And I think that's an important part of what we do is positioning these discussions to be successful between them. And I think Supe's Choice now could be a way to introduce concepts that can turn into larger discussions.
Sarah Williamson:Absolutely.
Alexa Escobado:Yeah, let's go back to what you're saying about what I would do differently. There's, obviously first year, there's a whole host of things I would do differently, I want to say that I think we did great for our first year. And I'm happy with how it all went. But I've definitely taken notes. And you know, company's been great with feedback positive, and you know, some good things that we can work on. And then same with the judges. So just being open, I would also suggest to anybody doing this, be open to that feedback, don't take it as criticism, take it as, hey, we want to help you be better next time, you know. So that's how I take it. And I appreciate what people have sent to us. And it is all very helpful. Because from the number of judges that we had, I would try to get more so that they ended up having a lot of submissions to go through which you know, we didn't realize because it all came in at the end. So spreading out that workload, definitely, especially because these are superintendents. And so for us in our award program. That was a big thing, knowing that our judges are busy people. And that kind of goes in with also the submissions themselves. The questions, you know, they were short. And that was purposeful, because we didn't want to overwhelm the, the people that were submitting, but we also didn't want to overwhelm the judges who were reading over it. So I would say we need to find a more happy medium where the companies can feel that they can get their purpose out a little more, but then also so that it's still not too much for a superintendent to go through. We don't need five paragraph essays, you know, yeah, you know, giving a little more wiggle room for a company. And you know, for the final round, we had companies submit a video on top of the written portion. And I think I would want to do that from the beginning from the get go. I talked with one of our judges about doing maybe even a screening process where we screen all of the submissions upfront. And you just do a simple scale of like, should they move on, and then that's where you get more in depth. So even just how the judging rounds are going to go look probably look different next year for the sake of hopefully, we'll have even more submissions, but also for being considerate of the time of our judges. And also to get better feedback for the companies. You know, some companies that gave really in depth content, even though it was short, some people did really great, and how they presented themselves. Other companies struggled with the word limit, and were not able to get their point across as clearly or as concisely. And so their feedback kind of reflected that. And I know that that was maybe a bit of a letdown for some of them, where maybe the comments were more focused on their submission itself,
Doug Roberts:right. So that's feedback for us that we've got to coach the judges better.
Alexa Escobado:Yeah I think it's more coaching on us for the judges,
Doug Roberts:And we can coach the applicant. Yeah, we do. At IEI summits, we do the two minute drill, that's sort of our thing, you get up and talk about what you do for two minutes. And we use that to sort into the one on one meetings. So the soups get to hear the two minute talks. And again, I have gotten pushback over the years, from sponsors, partners about you know, two minutes is too short, can we make it longer. And my response is always, I think, for at least for our group of you know, these chief executive officers, two minutes is the right amount of time. And they want you to distill what you do into two minutes. That's what they're asking for. And we have some ideas to coach you on how to do that. But I'm going to say the same thing for the soup Choice Awards, there's nothing worse for me than when you go. And there's some opportunity out there, you know, and districts can be guilty of this with RFPs, right. And it's, you know, 100 pages of submitted material, a lot of stuff you don't have to create from scratch you already have, but you got to go find it and compile it. And when you make it about the busy work, then I think you deter people from applying, and you get away from the real point. So we purposely made it streamlined so that the application itself would not be why people didn't apply. And so I am a person who struggles with brevity and being concise myself. So I get it. And I work at it all the time. And so I think my thought on that is that we'll look at the application. But making it super long, like putting more words in there is not going to improve your ability to tell your story. Instead, reach out to us. And let us help you to figure out how to make it more concise because at least for superintendent to work now maybe different kinds of people can read longer applications. These folks, they need the two minute version, because they gotta move on to the next thing. And they got a million million plates they're spinning at any given time.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, that's true. I also think we should acknowledge the fact that you're getting negative feedback or some complaints about the word submission. That means people care. I think. I mean, that means people want to win. They're competitive. And that means we were successful. Yeah,
Doug Roberts:Yeah, sure. And we got it from finalist winners, and those who did not make the final year we got an equal, we got a lot of positive stuff, too, which we're not talking about. So we're just talking about that too.
Alexa Escobado:It outweigh the negative? Absolutely. Yeah,
Doug Roberts:We're talking about people who were not finalists, they said they really liked being part of it. That was really one of the things I worried about, honestly, because, you know, I hope nobody's gonna hold that against IEI, if our Supes didn't choose them to win a category. Next time, it's time to talk about, you know, they want to come to one of our events. And the two things are very different exercises. But you know, time will tell on that. Maybe we'll do a podcast a year from now where I'm like, Oh, my God, this is the worst idea ever. So and So company doesn't want to work with us anymore. But I truly hope. And that's part of why I want to get back to my original point, maintain integrity, so important the integrity of the process, and keeping us out of it like those of us who work at the business of IEI so that it's just the members making kind of pure decisions based on their belief about what their students need.
Sarah Williamson:Well, and I think that's why you got to just keep communicating that to people who are potential sponsors, or just the industry as a whole, that this is a neutral exercise, you are just the platform for enabling this conversation between superintendents and tech companies.
Doug Roberts:Yep
Alexa Escobado:Right? We're just creating the space for it. And they're the ones having the conversation. We're not making it intimate.
Sarah Williamson:I know. Okay, so Doug do you feel like after this whole thing, after this award program, it was a whirlwind. What do you think? Is this elevating your profile in the industry? Do you feel like this is making an impact? And it might be hard to tell, it might take a while might take a year or two. But I'm just curious.
Doug Roberts:I agree with that. I do think it's a long play. It certainly got a ton of social media love, which is not, you know, the nature of what we do is not native to social media. In fact, it's native to One to One connections in person, right? Where, in some ways, like the space that we're in is extremely old school. You know, like, It predates email, let alone social media. So that was a good win for us to have a strong social media presence around this to like, have a hashtag that actually people are following. You know, that was, that was nice.
Sarah Williamson:props to Alexa for that.
Doug Roberts:And the buzz on baked into it was fun like that, you know that part of it was so we'll see how that plays out long term. I think our members, particularly ones who really kind of dove in on this, who engaged in it, really enjoyed it. And I think that that's yeah, that will spread within our group. People, you know, like at our next summit, like, you know, you should do that next year. It's really fun. I think that that plus the majesty of the actual physical in person event, because our folks love to get together will help spread the word in internally. So I think it's Yeah, I think people are now keyed into, you know, when's the next round? When can we apply? You know, so we're going to get it going again next summer, that several companies who met us through this process who are now part of AI Summit, so, you know, I think it's been all good. And you know, it's been interesting to work with you guys in, you know, to go sit on all these podcasts and stuff and have people usually we're trying to get guests on our podcast, but now people are asking us to come talk about the words like that's kind of cool. It just helps get the word out into spaces and channels where we're not currently.
Sarah Williamson:Absolutely love that love it. Alexa, do you have any final advice or insight to close things out,
Alexa Escobado:I would just say for any company that is looking to apply for suits choice for next year, I just want to throw out that even if you don't win, you are still be seen by so many district leaders that you could get potential leads just from that way. And it really is a conversation starter. And it's a great, you know, low cost way to be seen in that way. And I think I hope and encourage everyone to apply next year, because it's going to just get bigger and better every year
Doug Roberts:And play the long game, right. But so, you know, you got your brand and your solution in front of a bunch of superintendents this year, you could be in an early stage of growing your business. And so two years from now, they'll be like, you know, I've seen this before. Oh, yeah, we were we applied for supersize, Oh, that's great, you know, and especially if they're affiliated with us, they're gonna love that you applied. So it's a great low cost way to get in front of district leaders in a way that no email campaign will ever reach the inbox, but it may reach the inbox of superintendents, but it's not going to get read the way that this got engagement.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. Okay, any advice beyond sips choice for someone who wants to launch their award, any guidance,
Doug Roberts:you have to have some standing in your industry, you have to have a good network and list to message to in the beginning to grow from. So you know, it shouldn't be the first thing you do, you should have something going already. I think that's really important. We were able to build off of our existing brand network membership to grow this.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, you definitely need a built in audience if you're going to launch an awards program. Totally agree with that.
Alexa Escobado:Yeah. And having a very clear vision of the purpose of your award. You don't want to just have an award just to have an award. Right,
Sarah Williamson:Right. Yeah, it's not just promote your own company. I mean, we all make this self serving, please.
Doug Roberts:And it's not also to be, you know, kingmakers like, Ooh, you're the best and you're the best. And you you get an award and you get an award. I think what companies kept telling people I've known for a very long time and people who I only met because they commented on a post on LinkedIn, everybody said that they were really looking forward to getting input and insight from IEI superintendents like that's the hook. It's authentic. It's real information that people need. I think I know this because if I could have any one of my especially my startup clients, when I was running my consulting business could have gotten you know, eight Supes to take a look at something, I would have done it in a heartbeat for 800 bucks or 600 bucks, we're recharging heartbeat like that's, that's a no brainer, it cost you like two grand to buy one of those email lists from one of those companies that you can email everybody, right? Like, this is a way better investment. So that that was what I heard everybody's that the the output, even if you're not a finalist, the output of getting input was something new and unique at that price point. And they were really excited about it.
Sarah Williamson:I love that the output of getting input.
Doug Roberts:That was not too hard for.
Sarah Williamson:You guys. This has been so great. I really can't wait to share this with people. I think we build something awesome. I think we should just give ourselves a little pat on the back.
Doug Roberts:Yeah. And Thank you. Sarah, you guys were I wouldn't have when I suggested this if you hadn't been like, Oh, that's a good idea would have just disappeared. We never would have done it.
Sarah Williamson:Look what happened.
Doug Roberts:You two are on fire. So here we are. We're building momentum.
Sarah Williamson:building momentum.
Alexa Escobado:I like what you did there. Well played.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. I can't wait to have this interview next year after Supe's Choice. 2022. When do you call for submissions? August, right. We're gonna open up the call for submissions in August?
Doug Roberts:We could do it a little earlier.
Sarah Williamson:Okay.
Doug Roberts:Yeah, we'll probably start announcing it like around ASU GSV time in April, May and start Yeah, after the school year flips to July. So we'll put it out there for sure.
Sarah Williamson:Awesome. Well, thank you both so much, and talk to you soon,
Alexa Escobado:Thanks Sarah!
Doug Roberts:Cheers! Thanks, Sarah.
Sarah Williamson:Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed the show, if you wouldn't mind leaving a review, we'd be so grateful. This helps other listeners find and learn about our show. And please reach out if you're interested in learning more about how we can elevate the leaders of your organization with our PR services if you'd like believe even shoot me a direct email at Sarah sarah@swpr-group.com. I look forward to hearing from you and we will see you next time