This interview was originally recorded on May 2, 2025, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
Elana Leoni:
Welcome everyone to our podcast, all things marketing and education. I'm Elana Leoni and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately grow their lead. Every week, my guests who range from educators to EdTech entrepreneurs to experts in the field, we'll all share tips, strategies and insight in either social media, content marketing and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy. Hello friends.
Welcome to today's episode. I am so excited to share with you this conversation with Jacob Kantor. He's someone I've always looked forward to talking with because he is literally a ball of energy and optimism. This man is on fire all of the time when you talk to him. He also brings this unique blend of strategic thinking coupled with a big heart and sharp honesty to every single conversation.
A little bit about Jacob. He has been in the EdTech world for nearly two decades. He's worked across nonprofits, major publishers, LAUSD, and now he's a consultant helping organizations navigate the complex processes of connecting with districts in a meaningful way. And we're going to get into what that means in a meaningful way. You may have seen him pop up in your LinkedIn feed under the title Chief Dodo, and you heard me write Dodo DODO, and I don't want to spoil it. He talks about it really well. He'll talk about what he is and what he does in that title, but what you'll quickly realize is that Jacob's real superpower is relationship building, and I can't think of a better topic to pair with what we do in education and ed tech. He's mastered the art of opening doors, not just to district offices, but to real human conversations that are grounded in trust and respect and shared goals.
And I know this all sounds touchy, but it makes a difference and it's why we're all in education too. So in this episode we'll talk about what it truly means to lead with empathy in sales and marketing, how you can build relationships that last longer than a sales cycle and why listening truly, truly listening is often your best strategy. We'll also talk about AI and education because who doesn't want to talk about that and how it is evolving so fast? We're going to talk about the long tail word of mouth influence and really how we can all show up as a thought partner and not just be another spray and pray or a vendor in your inbox per se. So this is a great, great episode. I don't want to keep you hanging, but I want to say do not miss the end. Jacob drops a gem about why most EdTech companies are missing the easiest way to build trust with district leaders. Now let's get into the episode. Welcome Jacob to all things marketing and education. This is exciting. I looked at my calendar today and I'm like, yes, every time I talk to you there's a ball of energy. And so I know after this I'm just going to be the bouncing around and all inspired, so I know our audience will as well. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience.
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, good to be with you. Excited to share some knowledge but also do some learning from you. My name's Jacob Kantor, year 18 for me in EdTech and with the help of some great marketing friends that kind of gave me offhanded funny comments of, Hey, you should name yourself the chief dodo. It just stuck. And I said, that is awesome. I'm keeping it and I'm going to run with it. So Chief Dodo Dodo stands for a district office door opener. As I met a lot of folks over the last number of years, everyone always asks like, Hey, what do you do? And say, Hey, I do consulting and I sold for a long time and I have lots of district partners that want to meet solutions. It was always a very long-winded, this is what I do, and now that I have this dodo title, everyone instantly is like, oh, okay, that's cool. We should talk or That's interesting. We will talk down the line. So spent many, many years selling for some of the largest ed tech companies, publishers, worked for LA USD for a long time, but now kind of doing strategic consulting across a number of different organizations, some in the nonprofit space, some in for-profit, some in ai, you name it. Just kind of lots of interesting projects with great people.
Elana Leoni:
And I think it's clear for anyone in ed tech listening to once you have this elevator pitch and you're like, Hey, I did this and I did that. If you find your attention, waning who you're talking to is never going to remember what you do or more importantly, how to position you or recommend you or think about you and doing business. So what I love about what you do is I lead with what I do and it's catchy and memorable too. But speaking about what you do, can you talk a little bit about what is a district office door opener and what is the need? You've been around enough to know how it's evolved over time in EdTech and the role in particular, but I think a lot of people listening right now are like, whoa, what the heck is even that? I didn't even know it existed.
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, so there's always been kind of strategic consultants. Even dating myself back to when I worked at McGraw Hill, we had a consulting team that were state legislators or policy people that as new things came to light or there was new policy decisions, they quickly said, Hey, there's going to be legislation on this and I think we fit into this, so we should go talk to some folks here. So now a lot of my time is spent really looking through strategically state initiatives that are going on and figuring out the clients I work with, how to really position them for success and positive conversations. I think one thing I state over and over again on all my intro calls is I can open a door with a friendly district, with a friendly CTO, with a friendly superintendent, assistant superintendent, or even a state level person.
That does not mean that person's going to be with their wallet out to pay. I think I like to make sure I hammer in on that over and over again just because they know me and just because we've worked together for a long time, they are warm in a sense where they will listen thoughtfully and give some feedback, and if we can figure out the specific pain point that they're trying to solve for and position the solution for that pain point, awesome. We're often and running, this could be a great collaboration. There could be lots of impacts, students, administrators, teachers, parents, you name it. But for a lot of the orgs I support, it's a lot of coaching to get there. It's saying, Hey, if you go Shark Tank hot and heavy right away without building any rapport, without figuring out what they do outside of their role as an administrator, as a principal, we all have hobbies.
Mine are pretty front and center. I do hot yoga. I live in Los Angeles. My weird weight loss story is featured in a Netflix documentary, and I just weed with that. That's my identity outside of the workday. I have a family, I have two young boys. We're all figuring it out in some way. So I think everybody brings their best self to work, but also outside of work, everyone has their own things that they're pushing forward. Either it's weight loss or being better or moving their body or being a better parent or whatever that is for somebody. I try to get to the meat and potatoes of what that is, and I try to coach a lot of the organizations I work with to really take that approach because if you can get on a deeper level and a deeper connection with some of these administrators, principals, whoever you're talking to, then you can reach out to them again and they will say, that was actually a friendly conversation and I enjoyed it, and sure, I'm happy to meet again. But if you don't build that kind of rapport or do some deep learning about that person on that call, I mean sure you're going to have a one conversation, but when you reach out to them, chances are you're probably not going to hear back from them.
Elana Leoni:
And I like how you positioned it of, Hey, I'm a human. Learn a little bit about me, but I also want to learn about you as a human. And that is people don't buy from brands. They buy from humans in that personal relationship. But you also said, Hey, I help my clients understand what their challenge is and all of the surrounding factors. Do they have a grant? Do they have extra funding? Are they struggling with academic outcomes? Whatever it may be like keeping, Hey, I'm a thought partner, but I'm also a human. That's that beautiful magic that I think a lot of people lose because we're under so much pressure, especially now with some uncertainty and education. Runways may be shrinking and there's this pressure to sell, sell, sell, but ironically, it actually does the opposite of what you want to do. You turn people off
Jacob Kantor:
And that's key as well. You named it around the uncertainty of what's going on in today's time and budget cuts and staff shortages because esser money got put into teachers and now that money's not here. And I think the thing that I try to remind everyone of is everybody knows you would like to work with them. Everyone knows you would like to support their students. Everyone knows you have a product you're trying to sell them, but if you do not lead with the human side of it and hey, what does success look like for you administrator? What projects are you trying to move forward? I always kind of, in a lot of the coaching sessions I do with new partners, I say in the same way we're talking where I ask you, Hey, you brought me in to help you. What does success look? How do you get promoted from this interaction of bringing me in?
That's the same kind of approach I would like my partners to take with the districts that they're trying to work with. If in six months this goes swimmingly and we have an amazing experience and we make the impact that we say we're going to do, does that help you get promoted? Does that help you get into a better position with your board? Does that help you with your student populations, with your parents that are really excited to see what you are going to do for the district? So it's really getting to the heart of what does success look like for them and if they're successful, what is that going to do for them? What's that going to do for their students, for those teachers, for the administrators, for the families,
Elana Leoni:
As we go down this audience centered pathway, I want to dive a little deeper because it's so important that we have them in mind. And when you were talking, I'm like, well, maybe they are just trying to hang in there and they just want sleep. What keeps them up at night? I mean, this is a hard job. And when I think as a marketer I'm like, I better not waste their time. They have negative time. So maybe let's talk a little bit about, and I know it's hard to do because every different stakeholder within the district office is slightly different, but as marketers, as salespeople trying to approach hopefully with a value driven mindset to conversations like this, do you want to just talk a little bit about who they are, what they care about, what do they do, and then maybe how do you gain that intel a little bit to make sure that we're having a beneficial conversation? I always say make it worth their while, but make it like, wow, why wouldn't I have a conversation with that person because it's free and I feel like I can get insight. So how do we position it aligned with who they are, but how do I know who they are?
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, great question. And I think some of that comes down to even so when I bring on a new solution provider that I'm going to be working with for a three or six month sprint, a lot of the pre-work before we even get to, alright, let's go start talking to people is what does your pitch and presentation look like? What does the call look like? Take me through your demo because I'm trying to really dial them into we have 30 minutes with somebody and your biggest goal and the biggest metric I'm setting for you is build a good enough relationship on those 30 minutes. That way when we inevitably at some point based on what we heard they need, reach back out to them again that they will say, yeah, I enjoyed that first conversation. You guys were thoughtful, you asked thoughtful questions. You wanted my input on how your solution could get better.
I'll agree to meeting with you again. So a lot of that comes with the pre-work, right? And when I do take on a new solution provider, I mean it's probably an abundant amount of time, but I spend about a week really thinking about what the message is to my district leader contacts of what's going to get them excited to actually say yes to a meeting. So one example I can give you is from a recent client that came on board. I spent about a week, I got their demo, I reviewed all their info and I just have it here. It's on my computer screen and I have all of what they solve for and I just spent some time thinking about it and I said, Hey, for what they solve for and their story, it's almost like a movie. What am I presenting to somebody who's going to spend less than a minute reading my email and get them excited to say, this is pretty cool.
Yeah, I want to meet with them. I had to paint this story of here's what me, why I got excited with this solution is X, Y, and Z. What they solve for is actually this. Here's a demo, here's an article about them. Also, you're way busier than I am. No hard feelings if you do not get back to me. No hard feelings if I don't talk to you until the next conference. I see there's no pressure whatsoever to ever respond to anything I do. If something here catches your eye, would love to steal some of your time. If not, I'm still rooting for you. It's the end of the school year. Please be well take care of you and your family and when I see you, let's catch up on all things that's going on. So I kind of like to name it upfront. I have a new solution provider I'm supporting, this is why I actually wanted to support them because of X, Y, and Z. Here's all of their contact info. Here's the video of what they do. I like to name all that upfront. That way when somebody is saying yes to me and yes to that company, they have some context for what they do or what they solve for. So it's a lot warmer of a conversation.
Elana Leoni:
And I'm wondering, I knew this would happen when you were talking, I'm like, oh, question, question. When you are sending that email, what do you think does the best job of telling a brand story? And I know it might be the answer might be tailored to specific products, but do you feel like our stakeholders in the district side have enough time to watch a video or is it a quick rundown of atachment or are they not even clicking on attachments? And I know that you might have hints of it and they might give you feedback. So I'm wondering, as you start with these warm intros, what do you think resonates most from a medium perspective to sell that message?
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, great question. I think some of it comes down to is there a demo I can share that's 90 seconds that Wes the app. It's like an appetizer for all of the things that the solution provider solves for. But in 90 seconds, most of the folks I feel like will give me 90 seconds of their attention. Or also a website. I have a lot of district leaders I support that have just become great friends that I feel like we're on text message all day and sometimes I meet with a solution provider and I reach out to them and say, Hey, have you ever heard of these guys? Do they do good work? Is this worth my time or your time? So I think some of that kind of back and forth dialogue with folks who trust me and now we're actually friends is amazing. Looking back five years, would I have thought I would've been in a position where I can send out a text message to a superintendent and say, Hey, these guys just said that they work with you. Are they legit? Or is this a marketing thing that they just told me about? And being able to get honest feedback from folks saying We don't really like them that much or yeah, they're great. They do everything that they say that they are doing in their marketing and they support and they're like great thought partners and great partners for us. So that kind of question can go many different ways for solution providers,
Elana Leoni:
That word of mouth is critical and because we can't measure it and there's no sometimes evidence of it happening doesn't mean that it's not happening all of the time. And if you can get in behind the scenes of not only, Hey, I've worked with some people and they have recommendations or advice and we're legit or not, but in addition to that, what I love about even just content marketing is am I creating things that are valuable to them? And if you do content marketing, people will say, wow, I've learned so much from them. They are legit. I've never even used their product, but I'm going to recommend them. So it can kind of snake around in cool ways. But for anyone listening now know that within our industry it is a small industry, it's based on relationships and people are constantly asking, Hey, are these people legit? Did you work with them? They're also looking at other peers and saying, Hey, you worked with them. I want to work with them. What was your experience like?
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, and I'll tell you yesterday I was on a back to school program, that class link set up. It was the first time I've actually interacted with any of the programs they've put on and three hours of fun. Let me tell you, great energy music as soon as you join. We talked about books about hospitality, we talked about trends and who was on the webinar for three hours? Administrators.
Elana Leoni:
What for those of you watching video, my face is like, ah, three hours for an administrator. They have negative time.
Jacob Kantor:
And there were some great partners where even I was in a lot of the breakout rooms and I said, wow, you're at this district. Your district is massive, but that's how much great goodwill. I don't even know what to call it. That's how Beloved what I took from that was that is how much they love Class Link is. They're a great partner for the, and mind you, I do not work with Class Link. I have no stake in the game. But to me as an outsider, I was like, wow, these are champion districts that love working and all of the things that class rank gets them that they would say, yeah, I'll moderate some stuff for you. This will be fun talking about budgets and AI policies and all of this stuff. And that was really, really interesting to see. But one thing I'll tell you, as you kind of mentioned the reputation side of the house for districts we're coming off of five years of esser dollars and 180 billion into the system of education that have never been there.
LAUSD got 3 billion and some of these districts got more money than they could spend, and students were at home, they were facing some challenges, hotspots and Chromebooks and you name it. Districts spent a lot of money. I spent 10 years selling tutoring personally. So at the start of COVID, I was varsity tutors first hired, sold their first 5 million of sales before the team got added on. And so tutoring was the wild wild west during COVID, right? And why I kind of bring up tutoring is there was definitely some solution providers that were not living up to the hype that they were marketing themselves to be. And the challenge with that is as a district leader who saw the hype, got targeted ads on LinkedIn, went to a conference and met somebody and then met a sales rep and got that same kind of marketing, I don't blame that district leader for saying, Hey, this could make an impact for the students or the teachers or whoever the service provider ultimately helps.
What I do blame them for is once they saw it not working, not speaking up, I don't think enough of them say, Hey, this isn't working. We tried something. I now know it doesn't work and I'm going to actually be vocal about this Doesn't work for us. Doesn't mean it won't work for you. It just didn't work for us. And why I say that is as an EdTech solution provider, which again 15, 16 years I sold selling, how are we taught to sell? Hey, you work with Irvine Unified, you should go tell all 10 districts around Irvine that you work with Irvine. That is just social selling. If that solution provider actually wasn't living up to their end of the bargain for Irvine and Irvine was vocal about this did not work for us, do your own research, then that service provider would actually have a lot harder of a time getting into all of those other districts. And I don't hate on any solution provider, everyone's trying to pay their mortgages and keep the lights on, but there's a right way to do it by being thoughtful. And really, if your marketing says you improve ELA or math scores or whatever you solve for, you better be doing that. You better have evidence of efficacy, you better have the backstory and all of the evidence to support that or your shelf life in this space. And the reputation of the org will be very short-lived short.
Elana Leoni:
And if I could just rewind what you just said and bold it, you really do need to make sure that you're delivering on the promises. But as you were talking, I'm wondering, part of this is a systematic issue. So the buyer isn't necessarily almost always, never the implementer. So the buyer might think things are going great and there's no whistleblower saying, Hey, we don't have enough implementation support, or it looks like only 10% of our users are actively using it because the product's too hard or whatever it is. So I wonder if some of it's structural because we've seen some massive failures in EdTech and left districts high and dry, and I wonder if they would've raised their hands sooner. They might've been able to get out of those deals sooner. And ultimately, who suffers is our community, our learning community? And that breaks my heart. So I don't know, I'm just wondering around.
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, no, I also wonder in that same scenario that you just described, is if there is a whistleblower and there was significant money spent, does that mean that that ultimately goes to the top of the chain for the person who actually said, yes, this is a good idea, and is there enough safe space to say that? Because ultimately we all want everybody to just learn, right? Nobody's tried to get fired for making the wrong decision. And I wonder if that's how somebody feels that they're not speaking up because I made this decision, I thought this was a great idea. We spent $1 million or 10 million on a solution and it didn't work. Is the community going to come after me because I spent that money?
Elana Leoni:
I want to dive a little bit more into relationship building. So good at it. And a lot of people, it may not come natural, and so when they hear you talk, they're like, great, I got a relationship build. Let me get my checklist out of things I need to do. And yes, we need some best practices and some guidance, but I just want to warn people, if you go in of like, I've got a relationship build and it feels inauthentic, people can smell it. So I'm wondering, can you give some ways that you organically just foster relationships over time? Because we know in our industry, if you start a relationship, there's ebbing and flowing, there's moving of districts, it's really the long tail game. And I love what you said about, well, if it's not going to work out, it's not going to work out. I value our relationship more. But can you talk just maybe some tips and tricks of what do you do when you first meet someone versus stoking it a little and creating something meaningful?
Jacob Kantor:
And I think that was definitely learned for me, right? I'm sure my first job out of college at McGraw Hill, it was not as easy. I would sit with the principal and be like, oh, they have a Pittsburgh Steelers helmet back there. I'm going to talk to them about how I played sports and stuff. So I think that just came natural. I was also a communications major, whatever that means in college. I mean no math. I just didn't want to do math after having an immigrant mom. That was very hard on math with me. So I think a lot of it is you learn kind of ebbs and foss. But I read something long time ago, I couldn't tell you the author, but it was if you impact somebody's health, wealth or family or kids that they will forever be indebted or forever be like a champion of yours.
So I try to get to the meat and potatoes around, how'd you get here? You are in X, Y, Z title. What'd you do before this? And what'd you do before that? And a lot of that you can find on LinkedIn now. So I know if I'm meeting with a superintendent in Fresno, I can tell that they came from, I'm just making all of this up. Monterey County before or before that they were in Los Angeles, and I can kind of connect some of the dots beforehand and say, I taking my family to the Monterey Aquarium, that was one of our first trips during COVID. I can weave all this into that conversation with that person to say, did I read correctly that you were at Monterey before? Oh, during COVID, the one place I looked at to buy a house was in Monterey. Quickly, did I realize that I am way too poor to live anywhere near Pebble Beach?
And that just sets the tone of the conversation, just flows from that, right? Then you can talk about real estate, then you can talk about sports, you can talk about kids. I try to, as I'm building some of these relationships but also talking to a lot of the companies I work with, I try to say, if you on that 30 minute call don't talk about your product at all, but you had a great conversation and that person left knowing about you as a person, that is a great call. The next time we asked them to meet about, Hey, I realized we were so deep in conversation about real estate, your kids, your community, that we didn't actually get a chance to actually talk through pain points or what we actually do. That person is going to remember that you had a thoughtful conversation, you weren't pitching them hard, you were building a genuine relationship. And at the end of the day, we're all human. We just want to connect with folks. People would like to help other people.
I have to say that on most calls where sometimes people get very nervous on calls, I don't really get nervous on calls. I'm like, we're just talking to somebody. Either it's going to be a great conversation or we're going to learn. And if we learn and the conversation didn't go well, hopefully we get some data points where, okay, don't spend as much time talking about that. We thought that was important. They did not care at all about that thing that you solve for. So next time, pivot, and a lot of this is boxing and literally figuring it out and ducking and throwing spaghetti at the wall and figuring some stuff out.
Elana Leoni:
But I mean, when you talked and said, if you don't even talk about your product in 30 minutes, I'm sure people listening are like, what is this for real? But hear me out of why I think it's so important too. And sure if it makes sense and is strategic in the conversation, you will bring it up. But ultimately you're trying to do is understand who they are, what they care about, and you need to genuinely think of them as the year progresses. Like, oh, I thought of you in that thing you said about math and maybe we had a really cool conversation around debunking the science of math, which is apparently a thing. It's crazy. But now I know when I see a really cool article, I'll reach out and be like, Hey, have you seen this? I wonder how this impacts you. If you want to jump on a, it's building the foundation for thoughtful interaction, which I love of what you said,
Jacob Kantor:
And I don't know if you're kind of a book nerd. I am, even though I read very slow and now I do audio books, but one of my favorite podcasters slash author Tim Ferris was in Four Hour Workweek talks a lot about how he got invited back to do some lecturing at, I believe it was Yale, and he gave all of the students an assignment or the professor did this might be him as a student. Like, Hey, reach out to the craziest person you can think of. You're a Mark Cuban fan. Send him an email like, oh, you like whatever Incubus, figure out, do some research, find that person's email and reach out to them. And if one person in the class gets ahold of whoever they reach out to and shows it to me, I will book your first class airfare to wherever you want to go in Europe. And he is like, I thought that would've been a no-brainer in that everybody would've went home and literally did it right away the following week. They had a check-in, nobody did it.
I think there's an inbuilt scary factor of reaching out to people that you've admired that you've never met before. And I think as a salesperson that's had thousands of conversations and thousands of reps, I just don't get nervous anymore. And if you can train some of the organizations to approach relationship building in the same way, hey, you're going to either leave this conversation with a new friend that you can reach out to even when we're not working together or you're going to learn something and my goal is for you to be able to reach out to this person beyond our three or six months that we're working together. And if you don't build that relationship, you're not going to be able to, right? Because then they're going to call me and say, give the skinny, are you guys still working together? And I'm going to always be honest with everybody who asks, I'm not, they're great people, but we don't work like that project ended. So if you'd like to proceed, I don't work with them anymore. Not in a bad way, just like that's the truth. And that's the honest nature of consulting and doing three and six month and nine month sprint with the organizations.
Elana Leoni:
And we know within our industry there's such long sales cycles depending on what you're selling, I would reckon it would be at least 18 months. Sometimes we have those quick sales, they're fire sales, I've got extra budget, whatever. But even beyond that, it's so much longer at times like three plus years. And then you just think you're selling it and then the person moves. So there's all of that to consider, and I always just say, you're going to get so many nos in this industry and you're going to learn from it. And every no is a potential yes, three years later. And if they like you, you're going to hang out with them in ISTE or A SCD or FETC, see 'em at a bar and they're going to be like, Hey Jacob, have you met? So this is so key to what you're saying.
I just want to kind of emphasize that. And for those of you that are like, ah, they're just talking fluffy stuff, I still dunno how to do this. We'll put in our show notes. There's some good people that do it. Make sure you follow Jacob Kantor on LinkedIn. You'll see how he builds relationships consistently and has thought leadership constantly in the feed. But you can also look at people like Richard Lamp, Vander Bloom, and look at, he's got social selling techniques if you feel like you need a little guidance. But what I love about those people is they always come in with patience and value and be authentic too. So we'll put that in the show notes as well. Why don't we get into what's moving and shaken in education because you're in the thick of things and I'd love to just get some future forward stuff.
Let's talk ai. There's a lot going on in ai. I learn from a district perspective sometimes from whiteboard advisors and Matthew Tower when he's analyzing deal size and we'll put in the right figure, but it was over 60% of edtechs got funded that related to AI last year alone. And when we have a majority of edtechs that are funded because they had some element of ai, what does that do to the ecosystem of how districts buy? How do we use things? How does it match to the appetite of educators and students? There's so much that AI is blowing up even how we work and how our attention is maybe different too. So I'm just going to throw this bomb to you and whatever you want to talk about AI and education.
Jacob Kantor:
Yeah, I mean it's definitely everywhere and in your face and even over the last couple of weeks with the new executive order around AI literacy, I feel like that's awesome. I'm very excited what happens from that to be determined. But I feel like I've lived in the AI literacy space now for three plus years. I remember three years ago pre-chat GPT, having Alex Coran from A-I-E-D-U tag along to some social events and him kind of really asking the right questions. How do I go talk to districts about AI literacy? This was pre-chat GPT, so I kind of looked at them, I have no idea what you're talking about. This is above my knowledge level of what I'm comfortable with giving advice on. And then fast forward six months later, chat GPT launches and it's all the hype, all the rage, and seeing him a year later surrounded by 25 superintendents where the superintendents are actually going to the bar to bring him drinks.
I've never seen that before, ever at EdTech. So I had to kind of stand back and say, this is weird. Either this will be a weird trend or this is here to stay and credit to Alex, he's been in the space since 2019. They've had curriculum. They're a nonprofit as well. So it's a lot less threatening to a district to say, yeah, I'll talk to you. You're a nonprofit. You've been working in this space than a different organization that's trying to sell them curriculum and sell them pd. So yeah, so literacy I think is here to stay. Every teacher will hopefully be proficient to some level, but I'll give you a quick story even of I live in Los Angeles. My kinder goes to an A USD school and I'm on the parent committee, not the board, but this school's board parent involvement, and I attend these meetings and they were talking about professional development and they were like, oh, what topics do you guys want to cover?
And forever the chatter clearly. So I raised my hand, I was like, can I give you guys some suggestions on what other districts across the country are working on? And they said, sure. I said ai. I was like, if you guys aren't leveraging grading solutions, if you guys are not leveraging ways to save yourself time, that is a missed opportunity. They looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. This was eight months ago. Credit to them, the last meeting we had just two weeks ago. As that same question came up for planning for the rest of the year and summertime and moving into the year, AI was definitely on the agenda and I gave them those props. I said, Hey, the last time I brought up ai, this was not a popular thing and now you guys are adding it. At least we're moving towards the right direction of being able to have a thoughtful conversation. And each teacher can decide, is this something that I would like to participate in and explore on my own?
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, interestingly, maybe full circle and relationships and how it even relates to AI is when I was at the AI show, I went to three district leader panels and I know that these leaders don't necessarily have the opportunity to talk in this depth. So it was interesting to hear that they were all saying the same things on different panels and they were saying, my hope for AI is that it helps us become more efficient. It decreases our time doing more nominal transactional tasks, and it frees up our time to do what matters most. And they said, we want that time devoted to teacher to student relationships, and we don't talk enough about that in general in K 12 education and the impact it has, but that made my heart happy. And who knows if it's lip service right now? Because I feel as humans, we are just forced to be more efficient and when we have extra time, we just do more. But I don't know. That made me happy. Let's
Jacob Kantor:
See, I'm going to double click into that. So I've had a busy 10 weeks of conferences and speaking. I somehow became popular overnight after 18 years, but I spoke at the SIS conference, which is the county superintendent conference for all 58 counties of ed. It was in Anaheim, and one of the district partners that I have, Linwood Unified, spoke with me. So we presented kind of literally exactly what you just said, right? Hey, if your teachers save a bunch of time but you as an administrator then pile more stuff on their plate, then you are effectively canceling out the benefit of the tools that they're using to save themselves some time. And then one of the audience members was Chris from the Los Angeles County office of Ed, and he said, Hey, can I give some comments? I was like, please. And he said he does a lot of principal trainings and a lot of the superintendents, 81 districts in Los Angeles, there's 1.8 million kids, so you can imagine he sees a lot of different scenarios from the suburbs to the heart of downtown where the district office is.
One of the things he echoed, he said, Hey, I talked to all the principals and the biggest message I give them is, if you buy this solution and it's intended to save that teacher an hour, but you keep putting more stuff on that teacher's plate, you are effectively making it worse. And if you would like to burn that teacher out and replace them in a year or two years or three years, that is effectively what you're doing versus getting a solution that saves them time and now they can actually leave 30 minutes earlier. Now they can actually go to their son or daughter's baseball game. Now they can actually go to whatever, a yoga class if that's what they choose to do, whatever they do outside of the classroom, going back to where we started, we want them to do more of that. We do not want their entire identity wrapped up into, I'm a fourth grade teacher and I don't have any time to do anything but that my health is waiting, my family's waiting. Everything's on the wait list because I'm a teacher and I have so little time to do anything that is a terrible world to live it. Versus I have solutions now that I actually can end my day at three o'clock and if I choose to spend the rest of the time with my family or doing hobbies that I enjoy and that makes me a better person for the next day, that is amazing.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, my gosh, thank you for bringing that point out. We work with educators and we nurture communities of educators and they're just constantly burnout. I was listening to a post from Larry Zo and he's about to retire, and he said, gosh, everyone just said, I'm so jealous, all the teachers. And he said he can't remember that being so poignant of, that's the thing. They said, I'm so jealous you get to, and I'm constantly talking and talking teachers off the ledge and saying, Hey, you've got this. Think of all these things, but it shouldn't be like that. And how do we help them prioritize their own wellbeing so they're in it for the long haul? What is it, Nicholas? He said this entire industry is based off of extra hours over time that's not paid and the system would break otherwise. So I'm like goosebumps. Thank you for bringing that up. Let's wrap up. I know that we could talk forever around this stuff, but I'm curious, let's circle back to you McGraw Hill, selling days early. What would be the advice you'd give yourself if you're selling especially right now in this environment? Maybe just a quick, Hey, make sure you do this, buddy, because otherwise you're just backtracking or whatever.
Jacob Kantor:
First, let me say that compared to McGraw Hill days of me being 23 and covering all 550 elementary schools in a rotation because they were all piloting treasures, ELAI physically visited 20, 30, 35 schools per day, four days a week. So I talk to a lot of sales teams. I talk to a lot of VPs of sales or founders where they are. I get the call when they're struggling and nobody's picking up the phone or responding to emails. And I kind of have to say, you are living in a champagne problem kind of world because you guys are sending emails or you're attending a conference and you are not actually out there driving around visiting. And I don't bring that up to say, you need to be doing that. That is a young man's game. But as I hear folks that are kind of struggling that say we've tried everything.
A lot of the times, it goes back to me 23 listening to audiobooks, printing out MapQuest every single night because iPhones weren't a thing when I graduated and Garmin were like $500. So this 23-year-old was not buying that. So that was real work. Getting home at midnight, not getting home at midnight, but at midnight doing, where am I starting? Am I driving to Compton first so I can make my way back to where I live? Am I going to San Bernardino first so I can make my way back to I'm being really strategic, but a lot of it is what I'm finding over and over again as I'm chatting with a lot of these founders is founders. A lot of them have great champions. They have great districts that rave about them. And what I don't see enough of is how do you put that person in a webinar series and highlight all the great work that they're doing at their district and why they're a thought leader and why they chose to work with you as an organization?
What impacts are you making for them? That is a very natural, organic way to highlight the work you're doing, but also highlight one of your partners to say, we are having a thought leader educator series and we're featuring some of our partners on to really give them their roses. And inevitably one of the conversation questions is going to be how did we start working together and what were you trying to solve for before and how does that look now, that is a very natural conversation that will lead to lots of organic warm conversations for the company. If it's L-A-U-S-D, if it's Linwood, if it's San Diego, whoever that partner is of yours, they're bound to have lots of other friends that are in the same position as them in neighboring districts or across the country. So if you're featuring them as a thought leader and they truly are moving the needle and whatever they're working on with you, there's bound to be more folks like them that want to find out what they're doing.
In the same way that you and I are talking and your listeners are trying to find some gold nuggets in this conversation, that's the same thing that happens with some of these learning sessions. And I'm always shocked with sometimes the easiest lift for companies and either think it's very, very hard to do, or they're afraid to make that ask. And that ask is so easy. You're asking to highlight the great work one of your partners is doing and truly, and you can literally say that we're trying to give you all the roses. We want to highlight you and all the work. And going back to how we started, we would like to get you a raise and put you on the pedestal. How do we do that? Does this help us do that for you? Or is this an extra time suck that you don't have? And the answer might be no, still.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, and you see me doing some big head nods because what you're ultimately doing is helping them become, if they're not already or stoking them being this chief storyteller, which by the way, they have to be, I don't care who you are in your organization, if you're a leader and you say, oh, I let my assistant do this or that, you have to tell the story. You have to uplift what you're doing. So if you don't do it, somebody else is going to do it and probably not the way that is accurate or so that has stuck with me, and that's what I do what I do. I remember Chris Lehman at a panel, the CEO of SLA in Philly, and he's like, everyone, every education leader needs to be their own storyteller for the work that you were doing. And that stuck with me because I think a lot of education leaders, they feel like they don't want to toot their own horn as educators.
We're so humble. But if you do it with the goal to really shine a spotlight on the work you're doing, and then hopefully you can create some inspiration. So other, you'll see that's what we did at Edutopia when I was there, is like, let's shine a spotlight on what's working and hopefully someone else can see it and adapt it to your unique circumstances, but it just so much resonates. Thank you for that. Let's wrap up with a fun question. You do a lot. You read a lot, you've got a lot of hobbies. We are all in this industry that we put our heart and soul in. What are the things that you do to kind of rejuvenate or inspire you and kind of put that pep back in your step after you've done those long days and working hand in hand with EdTech organizations?
Jacob Kantor:
Some of it is all the parents will relate to this and the non-parents, you could just fast forward, but a lot of it is I have a six and a 4-year-old. They get home and we're off to the races. We have speech therapy in the evenings. We have karate, we have dinnertime, we have baths, we have homework. Don't let the zen demeanor fool you, right? All the parents know there's good days and there's bad days, and sometimes it's a grumpy, loud voice kind of day and other times it's not right. But I think the time after the kids go to bed and I can kind of decompress with my wife and we just sit there and we talk about what were the highlights of the day and also what happened that was great and what happened that we needed a change or some lesson learned or sometimes we just gossip about what happened with clients and she works in banking, so she has lots of stories like that. But a lot of it is really kind of the same thing I do during the day with clients. It kind of just naturally goes into the same conversations I have with my wife or with friends or great text message crews.
I don't know if you read the article recently about all of the interesting things happens in the group chats. So there's great educators that are collaborative that they might not respond to an email for three weeks, but they will text you back if you text them quite quickly. And that goes for me too, even though I'm an inbox zero type person. But one thing I'll kind of double click on to what you said around it's not really boastful if you're highlighting others. About six months ago I had this idea, I used to journal every single day that kind of fell off last July as I now just use my calendar for all that good, bad, indifferent things that happen throughout the day. I started to reflect on Fridays and say like, man, this week I met Pat from code.org and I was on with Amanda at Bicker staff and I was on with Ben Cornell and I was on with Sunil from Age of Learning, and if I don't give them any praise, they probably will never, ever want to meet with me again.
And I had this idea, I was like, could I recap my week and say, I appreciate the people who spend time with me. You didn't have to do any of this. This doesn't benefit you in any way for your job, but I see you. Thank you. I hope you got something from the conversation I did. And I literally would just recap it. I wouldn't do Monday. I met with this person, but I just had this huge list and I was like, I don't know, this could be the worst thing ever because a different consultant could see who I work with and then just go talk to all of them, or it could be great. And that thing took off no other, and I tagged everyone I met with and the people responded favorably and everybody wrote back and were like, oh, so good to talk.
So glad we got into whatever sports or yoga or whatever we talked about. And that kind of is now a weekly thing. I have it on my calendar to do every Thursday and I recap the week. I don't really recap if we talked about something private, I just say, Hey, I spent some time doing some learning about a new product. Thanks Joe for taking me through it. It also highlights the weird random stuff I do with my son. And we do speech therapy four days a week and karate, because I'm trying to put a human aspect of it too. You're seeing this big list of stuff I do, which cool, I'm busy, everybody's busy, nobody cares. But I'm trying to highlight the folks because ultimately there's people on that list that should be talking to each other as well. And over and over again, I'll get a message from a friend being like, Hey, you posted the same week you talked to me.
You were talking to this other person, and I actually added them on LinkedIn and we're totally working together now. And it's like nothing brings me more joy than hearing that some randomness of LinkedIn algorithm connected to people and now they're working together. Awesome. Nothing brings me more joy than good people working together. And if I can help facilitate some of that while also giving some love and shout out to the people who spend time with me, awesome. So if you're not doing it long-winded story, start posting on LinkedIn more. The harm is not there. There's no negative that can come from you sharing your knowledge of what
Elana Leoni:
Do you know that only 1% of people that have LinkedIn accounts actually post?
Jacob Kantor:
I believe it. I made some group chats with the what?
Elana Leoni:
And you don't necessarily need to post if you want to scaffold it. I'm all about meeting you where you're at in your comfort level, start engaging, start liking, commenting. You can save posts now, so do where you're at. But what I love about what you're saying, it reminds me so much of circa 2008 nine in Twitterland, and I used to always look forward to my follow Fridays, and I would think critically about the conversations I had and who I learned from, and that was that modality of I want to give 'em a shout out because they've changed my thinking on something. And so for educators listening, that could be something you don't necessarily need to do it on LinkedIn. If you're not comfortable on LinkedIn, go over to Blue Sky. But find ways to reflect on your week and really give people shout outs too, I think. And then what you said about connecting others, we live in so many bubbles. We think people are connecting with each other and they're just not. So if you are in a position where you're talking to lots of people or you're learning, make sure you facilitate that connection. I love that.
Jacob Kantor:
Yep, great advice.
Elana Leoni:
Alright, so thank you so much, Jacob. Gosh, we're going to have some great show notes, a great blog post on this. There's so much to unpack on everything you said. If people want to learn from you, obviously they can follow you on LinkedIn at Jacob Kantor. Is there anywhere else you'd like to send them to?
Jacob Kantor:
You can feel free to email me. No worries. It's the Jacob Kantor@gmail.com. LinkedIn is probably my preferred place forewarning for anybody who adds me on LinkedIn. I am very active, so you're going to see me pop up over and over again with recaps or the latest news and funding or if there's a budget cut to some line item. So I ingest a lot of a EdTech news every single day from Matt Towers a great friend. So you do some learning from him. I'm talking to him later today. So hey Matt. But there's so much coming every single day that I try to at least filter some of the things that might be useful to others. So if you follow me there, just warning, I'm active on there, so you'll see me.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, but you're not just active in posting too. So you are an educator at heart and you uplift others and you engage in their posts as well, which is so critical. And for those of you in sales and marketing, it's not about you posting, it's about you engaging and consistently listening and learning from others too. And maybe we'll do a whole episode on social selling on LinkedIn. I feel like it's really necessary in our industry. But thank you so much, Jacob, for coming on and more to come. I am sure that we will continue to collaborate and see each other. And I learn from you every day on LinkedIn, so I feel very lucky.
Jacob Kantor:
Hey, right back at you. Right back at you. And I'll leave this with your audience. If every day we're not doing some kind of brain exercise of adding to our skillsets, then we're moving backwards as an industry, as a people and personally listener, right? So if you're not actively doing better, a little bit 1% every single day, then ultimately at the end of the year, I know we all are going to reflect on the year and see the good, bad, and the indifferent. I challenge everybody to whatever you're into, go pick up a podcast about it. Go read a book. If you're into policy work, there's no shortage of information out there for you to go learn about.
Elana Leoni:
Well said. Well, thank you everyone for listening to this episode of all Things Marketing and education. If you liked episodes like this, please go ahead and hit that five star review, add us a review because it's all about sharing and making sure more people can listen and engage with conversations like these that need to happen more in K 12 education and education as a whole. So thank you so much, Jacob. Thanks everyone for listening. We will see you next time on all things marketing and education. Thanks again for listening to all things marketing and education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes@leoneconsultinggroup.com slash podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter, at Leone Group or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoy today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get, and it helps us reach even more people that need help. So we'll see you next time on all things marketing and education. Take care.
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Jacob Kantor
In my 17 years, I have been THE sales guy who has always captured the top spot.
Places I've worked....
LAUSD
McGraw Hill
C2 Education
Revolution Prep
Collegewise
Spark Education
For the last 2+ years I started JK K12 Edu (Consultancy) & coined myself as Chief DODO - District Office Door Opener. Full-time Consulting Clients Include, but aren't limited to - Stride K12, aiEDU, Outlier (sold to Savvas), Gladeo, Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship, Virtu Academy, IEP&me , Frenalytics , Slyngshot , READ , Physics Wallah , Toddle
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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