Josh Chernikoff is an educational entrepreneur and small business advisor. For the last 14 years, he has founded and grown two successful educational enrichment programs serving hundreds of thousands of students in 85 schools across six states. He now runs Cascade Communications, an edtech advisory. Josh and his team at Cascade are, above all, content and relationship experts in the educational space, leveraging email communication and live relationship roundtables to engage the entrepreneurs and businesses with key education decision makers. He also hosts two entrepreneurship and Edtech podcasts - How I Broke That and Breaking the Grade.
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Josh Chernikoff is an educational entrepreneur and small business advisor. For the last 14 years, he has founded and grown two successful educational enrichment programs serving hundreds of thousands of students in 85 schools across six states. He now runs Cascade Communications, an edtech advisory. Josh and his team at Cascade are, above all, content and relationship experts in the educational space, leveraging email communication and live relationship roundtables to engage the entrepreneurs and businesses with key education decision makers. He also hosts two entrepreneurship and Edtech podcasts - How I Broke That and Breaking the Grade.
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Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies. Josh Chernikoff is an educational entrepreneur and small business advisor. For the last 14 years he has founded and grown to successful educational enrichment programs serving hundreds of 1000s of students in 85 schools across six states. He now runs cascade communications, an edtech advisory, Josh and his team at Cascade are above all content and relationship experts in the education space, leveraging email and live relationships to engage education, decision makers and entrepreneurs. Josh also hosts to entrepreneurship and Ed Tech podcasts how I broke that and breaking the grade. Josh Chernikoff Welcome to EdTech. Insiders.
Josh Chernikoff:Thank you. Thank you for having me. And congratulations on Baby number one. Thank you so
Alexander Sarlin:much. So just give us a little overview of your history and background in edtech. With you've done Ashley tutors, flex academies, and your give us about your current role with Cascade communications in the EdTech ecosystem.
Josh Chernikoff:Yeah, I mean, you can you can really go back to like first grade, second grade, third grade, I was a pre med student. My sisters were very successful in school, I was a pretty bad student, I was the youngest of three, I was the baby, I was the boy, I lived up to everything that you know about babies and boys. So I wasn't a very good student. I went to American University, went on to Northwestern got my Master's in broadcast journalism from Northwestern, and then had a career in sports anchoring, and then went on to work for the Washington Redskins, and all the things you hear about in terms of the Redskins, it was definitely a really, really toxic place to work. I knew it. And so I decided, you know, it's time to do something else. I started tutoring company. And why was I qualified as started touring company because I had a lot of tutors. And I knew as a good tutor and a bad tutor, at least in terms of engaging students. And the tutoring company that I started in the DC area started in October of oh seven. In April of oh eight. We were on the local NBC station here a really, you know, reasonable story to get to get on the air. I wasn't just trying to get on there for no reason. But we did a story story was done about us in terms of summer learning loss, and the company took off from there. And it was a boutique tutoring company, one to one in home tutoring company in the Washington DC area. You know, I started in basically in oh eight and I sold it about 10 years later. In the meantime, I started an after school enrichment company. So what we did is we brought enrichment to schools mainly partnered with PTAs school districts, principals to take care of that one hour after school, you know, where we brought in karate vendors and yoga instructors and cooking instructors. And you know, we have partnerships with over 500 vendors, we had had grown this thing to 82 schools and six days we were doing aftercare, we were doing summer camps, we were doing enrichment, we had a letter of intent to be acquired in February, as the pandemic was bearing down on us, and we signed that letter of intent. And then it was rescinded one month later. And that was very disappointing. But that's, you know, part of the journey, I ended up selling flex academies, which is now called Flex to my COO, who is now the CEO who is a best friend of mine, Michael Fay, and I'm still one of the lead investors, I still actually help him and run the sales for the company. But I've started a company called cascade where I get to work with entrepreneurs and CEOs, kind of tier two companies in the education space that need help with, you know, their logos and their branding and relationship nurturing. I'm not using the word lead generation, but nurturing relationships at the school level. And then also, you know, kind of getting themselves organized OKRs mission vision, make sure that as they kind of get to that $5 million range, that the CEO is aligned with the employees and these guys are ready to kind of get that VC money that every single ed tech entrepreneur seems to be dreaming about all the time.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, so you've been done a lot in the in person tutoring and enrichment space after school enrichment, one to one tutoring, and then have sort of been in the ad tech space in the world of this very recent Very strange pandemic that sort of changed everything about what we were doing in education. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you see tutoring in this moment. You know, you've done many years of tutoring of tutor hiring and recruiting of tutor matching. And we're just coming off of really, landmark years for the tutoring industry based on COVID pandemic. There's a lot of hybrid tutoring, online tutoring, and in person tutoring, to supplement the enormous amount of of learning loss and everything that has sort of been disrupted in the last few years. Give us your take on you know, we're tutoring is at as a business right now. And where do you think it's sort of headed? Post pandemic? Are we going back in person? Are we going hybrid? Or the the online model is going to continue to scale? Where do you think it's all going?
Josh Chernikoff:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. You're exactly right. Both of my two businesses, actually tutors and flex academies were in person, you know, so there was really no tech play that was involved in them. And investors sometimes would say, that's cool. Or they would say, well, where's the tech play? And the ones that said, it's cool. They said, Well, you know, what are you using off the shelf, and I would explain to them that I was leveraging every single thing I could off the shelf so that we didn't, we weren't a tech company. So we focused focus focused on in person tutoring. And then I think it was about 2015 or so I got the opportunity to work with a company in Baltimore that was doing online tutoring. And I thought, okay, like, we can scale with this thing. And so I remember I went out to our families, and I said, we are going to offer free online tutoring for 30 minutes a week to supplement or complement the in person tutoring we were doing, and the majority of the family said, No, thanks. But we are willing to add another hour of tutoring in person. So it was good for the business. But it was very clear that people were not interested in online tutoring, at least not the people that that we were working with. And I remember that like it was yesterday, because now you know, online tutoring is all the rage. And it makes a lot of sense, because I think we've obviously gone through the pandemic, and I think the tools are better. So to me, the future is hybrid, you know, and that makes the most sense. And even for my own seven and a half year old, you know, I would much prefer the in person learning experience in school and maybe even in tutoring, but I am certainly okay, we my wife and I because we talked about this, we are certainly Okay, with online tutoring as an option. That being said, you know, coming from the enrichment space, I don't think I would be interested in her taking, say soccer online, or maybe even a cooking class online. Because those can be done in person, I think they're more effective. So I hope and believe that hybrid is the new normal, because I think having both options will be good for teachers, for families, and especially for the kids who need to learn in person and online. Because there is a lot of ketchup that needs to be done.
Alexander Sarlin:It's really interesting to hear that you know, as you say, in 2015 you already were scaling your tutoring businesses, you know, state to state getting, you know, more and more tutoring clients, but that you were seeing online tutoring as a possible avenue to scale you know, even faster. And at the time, there was just no appetite for it in the market or in your in your demographic
Josh Chernikoff:literally couldn't give it away. Literally.
Alexander Sarlin:No way. Exactly. And you know, you mentioned that the tools have gotten better since then. And I think that's true. I'm curious you know how you think about some of the tutoring tools that have started to come into into existence and into sort of widespread use in recent years from your perspective as a you know, a veteran tutoring operator there's you know, you're involved in tutor student matching a long time ago using technology, there's been adaptive tutoring, there's chatbots and AI based tutoring that's starting to, to come into play and these are all models to sort of be able to scale quality tutoring. Do you think they're working? Do you think there's more more space to go How do you see some of those technologies working so far?
Josh Chernikoff:I hesitate to call them quality yet but everything has to start getting going when we're talking about the AI tutoring but I think it's a it's a you know, a great place to start. I still believe in human powered matching systems when it comes to tutoring. I believe that you should get to know the families and get to know the tutors and make matches based on a lot more than just you know schedules lining up or subjects lining up. You gotta there's got to be more to that connection. You know, there has been so many advancements in the tutoring platforms, but whether you're talking about a tutor sharing platform or registration platform for an enrichment company, it is still true that no platform is perfect. And you are, you know, you're not gonna get everything you need, as a CEO for your company, I have found that, you know, you kind of have kind of three avenues that a registration system or tutoring platform can go down. And, you know, it's the registration module. It's kind of the finance part and the marketing part. And always seems like the makers of these platforms got two of them right, but always left out a third. And in my case, it always happened to be bookkeeping one. So I always had bookkeepers that always pissed at me, because, you know, they couldn't get the data they need needed to do their work. So I think, you know, when it comes to just generic platforms, none of them are perfect. When it comes to the tutoring platforms, I'm working with one now called to be live, they do something really neat. It's low bandwidth. So they're, they're really trying to scale across the world where internet is tougher to access, we're also using to be live in a partnership, because I've restarted a tutoring company, because why not, we have the New Jersey, and we're using to be live in a hybrid sense, where we are doing in person and online. And when we do in person, we are still using the to be Live platform and setting it up. So that the sessions are recorded so that the whiteboard tools are recorded. And so that the directors of the schools or the tutoring programs can actually join us, whether it's, you know, recorded or live. So there's so many great platforms out there that are helping with kids to catch up. I think it's just finding the right one for you that matches up with as many needs that you might have.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, you know, we've had the CEO of paper, which is this, like enormous tutoring juggernaut out of Canada, online tutoring. And we've talked to varsity tutors, and nerdy varsity tutors, and, you know, the tutoring spaces, I was a tutor for years in my 20s. That was my profession. So it's so interesting, you know, back then it was, there were no online options, you'd sign up for Princeton Review, or Kaplan or a boutique firm, or you'd have to go put your shingle out on your own. I never did an online session. And nobody ever asked for it. You know, as you said, right. And I just the world has changed so much in this tutoring space. And I think the hybrid model you're mentioning is very, very interesting. And I like that idea. I think that's really good advice to think about how the live sessions could still be captured in a way that they can be accessed through a platform that's really smart. And something that I think, is a good best practice that tutoring companies should definitely think about.
Josh Chernikoff:Yeah, imagine us, you know, young dads here, seven and a half years ago, you know, you still there wasn't much online tutoring happening. Now, I'm sitting here saying, Well, you know, my daughter could do it, you know, imagine in seven and a half years with your child, you know, where they'll be with it. So they'll continue to advance but you know, there is just no substitute for that one to one interaction, I feel like, there are ways to complement it, for sure. I believe that. But I still think that sitting across from somebody and learning and connecting and getting motivated that way is a different experience.
Alexander Sarlin:You're mentioning motivation. And you named earlier that one of your specialties, in your tutoring companies was making learning engaging. And I wanted to dig into that because, you know, engaging learning experiences are the sort of holy grail for anything. And I know that in a one on one tutoring setting, it's relatively easy to adapt. The, you know, depends on the tutor depends on the kid, but it's relatively easy to sort of incorporate student interests into the learning or to, you know, even just tell jokes and have a casual atmosphere and create a really engaging and fun experience. I'm curious about how you see the role of edtech in supporting the engagement and fun in learning experiences. When you were using out of the box platforms within your tutoring company or in your current thinking with Cascade? what can technology do to make one on one experiences or learning experiences in general, as engaging and fun as possible?
Josh Chernikoff:Yeah, I mean, I should also say there's no substitute for you know what some of these, these technologies can do? You know, so they're equally amazing and helpful. That certainly don't want to take anything away from you know, a lot. We have tons of great clients that cascade who they are in the EdTech space. I spoke with one today, who will hopefully be a client because I would love to work with this company. They are a math company that grew out of Spain, and now they're in Italy, and they're going to Mexico. And they're, they're coming to the US. And they've got a great guy leading the US launch. But they look at math in terms of real life experiences. And this guy was talking to Mac, you know, he said, What do you think about math? And I was like, Well, I was pretty bad at math. And he's like, perfect. You're the perfect person. You know, we're looking for students who are struggling with math that we can give them new manipulatives and real life examples through our platform to feel more comfortable when it comes to math. So, you know, I think you either hinting at or making a good point that, yeah, like, there are some amazing opportunities for kids to learn online, maybe at their own pace, in the comfort of their own home, you know, where it might be a little bit harder to learn math, especially if you're not very good at math, in front of everybody in the classroom, right, we've got a company that we worked with, that does a great job, when it comes to financial literacy, they've got a financial literacy app, where they also teach civics, because the kids have to vote on projects, they're going to fund, you know, that is best done through this app, you know, so languages, we actually live in Mexico now. And our daughter's bilingual, so that's fantastic. And she learned Spanish from her mom, you know, but for kids who, who want to learn languages, I mean, whatever it takes, people should be learning more languages, and learning those online is great, you know, chess, another one is killing it online. You know, so there's a lot of companies in the Richmond space that we've been able to work with, I would say, chess, I would say coding, drawing, you know, that the online space has been really great for them.
Alexander Sarlin:I agree. And it strikes me that, you know, as I hear you talk about this, there's sort of two different almost modes of engagement and interest that are used, at least to for making learning entertaining, there's the the sort of async mode, like, as you mentioned, you're using Duolingo, or using, you know, making learning into a somewhat gamified, or a sort of private environment, making it more authentic, but a little bit more of an asynchronous like, oh, you can go learn on YouTube, or go learn in an interesting way online with one of many, many different edtech tools, including games. And then there's the sort of engagement and fun that comes with having a one on one tutor or having a somebody or a teacher who can actually make things really interesting and adapt what's happening in the classroom to the the interests and needs of individual students or of a classroom. And, you know, those are both, I think, extremely viable, and very interesting ways to make learning more interesting, but they're quite different. They're different in terms of what kind of companies doing them, they're different in terms of how you get them to happen. What advice do you give your ad tech clients about how to make learning more engaging, no matter what model they're in,
Josh Chernikoff:I mean, I would say, in general, what we try and work with them on is we be breakers, you know, be innovators be different, you know, because there are those companies out there that are always going to be there, the big, big, big guns out there, but be something different, you know, and again, most likely, the CEO, the founder is looking, you know, to get VC money at 5 million and exit at 10 million and get a 10x. You know, and I look back on on my two companies, and I think I kind of feel a tug about about, you know, back to talking about kids a little bit, if companies are like kids, you know, my first two kids, I feel like I missed them growing up, you know, because I just wanted to get, you know, acquired, that's all I wanted to do. And now with this company, I'm just looking to have some great clients and enjoy it and help them grow. And, you know, I'm kind of thinking them in terms of cohorts, because we work with these clients to get their branding the right way to make sure that the CEO is coached up. And then we build, you know, email campaigns around their passion, and we build what we call roundtables, webinars around their passion, so that, you know, they can add more clients so that they can get to probably that $5 million range that they want to be in. But I guess I would say to these companies is just try and break shit, you know, in a good way for good, but also enjoy the ride. You know, do your best to enjoy the ride. It's a tough one. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. It can be enjoyable. It can be anxiety inducing, but it can be all those things in one hour. You know, what are
Alexander Sarlin:some of the qualities that you see in entrepreneurs that choose education or educational tech as their field? Do you think they're different than other types of entrepreneurs?
Josh Chernikoff:That's a really interesting one. Question, it reminds me of a question that I actually asked of a mentor of mine on a show that I have called breaking the grade. And this particular company is called Go Manda, and the founder, the CEO, her sister has autism. So I asked it on my show, I said, John, do you? Do you come across a lot of people who, you know, are influenced by a sibling or a parent, or an incident. And that's why they start their businesses. And you said, you know, I can't tell you how many times we see that. So it's interesting, you know, I was, I was a bad student. So I felt, rightly or wrongly, that I was qualified to start a tutoring company, because I knew what a good tutor looked like sounded like, you know, and when they did a good job, so I think, you know, the point is to find your passion, and go with it. No, that fear is a liar, a total liar. You know, try and get going every single day and just stay focused on that passion.
Alexander Sarlin:It's interesting to hear you talk about your journey as an education entrepreneur. And as you mentioned, you have two podcasts, right? There's how I broke this and breaking grade one is great, is Ed Tech specific and how I broke this is about entrepreneurs. And, you know, they're sort of learning from their mistakes is, if I have that cracked, I think, you know, it sounds like you're coming to the tech space with a very interesting and very particular sort of lens on entrepreneurship, and thinking about how can you help entrepreneurs succeed in this environment, and especially if they're mission driven, you know, but also not sort of missed the forest for the trees not be so obsessed with success that they actually don't sort of appreciate and enjoy the journey? Do I have a cracked?
Josh Chernikoff:Totally you have it right? You know, I hope you could see and you and I were talking before, I'm a definitely a glass half full guy. No, I'm, I wake up in the morning with a smile. But at the same time, the reason I started the podcast how I broke that is because I listened to the Guy Raz NPR podcast, how I built that, which was obviously amazing, you know, but I always felt like what was missing was the shit, you know, the relationships that were broken, the bank accounts that were broken, the business plans that were broken, and that, that it was important to tell those stories, too. So yes, for how I broke that we focus more on just general entrepreneurs, or artist or Grammy winners, or, you know, people who write books, breaking the greatest more focused on the entrepreneurs in the education space. And people get to the education space for all different reasons, but to a point that you made, they gotta be passionate, they're not passionate, you know, going from the penthouse to the outhouse in a matter of minutes, is going to eventually break you down, and make you not want to keep working and doing this. And that's okay. You know, I had to had this tough conversation with a client in the ad tech space just a couple of months ago. I was like, Man, I'm just not sure if this is for you. And he had a great job with a great company, he was kind of doing this on the side. And, you know, at some point, you got to figure out if the business and the entrepreneur are going to kind of get married and really try this. And I just had to have this tough conversation that dude, like, maybe this isn't for you. If it is, then you got to kind of take a hard look in the mirror and think about the business that you have here. But if it's not, that's totally okay, too, because it's not for everybody. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:it's a quite a journey. I you know, I interview founders on the podcast all the time, and I've just never had the wherewithal to truly start a company of my own. And I'm always wonder about exactly what you're saying about, you know, I know, it's a roller coaster. And I've seen lots of people really love and live for their entrepreneurial journeys. And I've seen others, you know, just really flail, because it's just such a difficult way to live. And you never and every moment is sort of every dollar is put back into the business. And that is in education as well as other fields. It is,
Josh Chernikoff:it is it's true, and I'm not exaggerating, that you could, you know, be on a call with a superintendent of a top 10, you know, district in the country. And then, you know, five minutes later, you're getting reamed out by a parent. And, you know, I'm sure you were an amazing tutor, but you couldn't please everybody all the time. You're getting reamed out by a parent whose kid isn't getting it, not because you're not doing your best, but because they're not doing their best, you know. And so going from the, you know, the penthouse to the outhouse happens quite often, and it can eventually break down. We do have lots of
Alexander Sarlin:ed tech entrepreneurs who listen to this podcast, I'm sure they're empathizing exactly with that experience, you know, as a communications consultant with Cascade. You mentioned you help edtech companies, you know, brand themselves deliver their messages as thought leaders, and you know, all sorts of different kinds of communication strategies. I'd love to hear some of your sort of advice. I know, you know, don't give away the everything. But some of your advice about what you have seen as some of the particular sort of challenges and opportunities that come with communications in the ad tech space. What's unique about communicating with, with potential clients with all clients? In ad tech?
Josh Chernikoff:That's a great question. It's loaded, it could be long, I'll, you know, I like to believe that what I was best at growing these two businesses was was the relationship nurturing, you know, was the thought leadership, I was kind of building community without knowing it before it became the buzzword, giving before I got anything, you know, trying to write newsletters, you know, back in the day on like, Constant Contact, there were like 3 billion words, you know, and I was just trying to explain to PTAs, how they could run better enrichment programs, safer enrichment programs, try new enrichment programs, and in hopes that they would read that and say, we'll try this ourselves. But if we can't do it, you know, we'll reach out to this guy, because he seems to know what he's talking about. So the companies that we work with, they are cash flowing, so they know what their business is. And they're really kind of looking to update everything, and update everything I you know, I find that a lot of the companies that we work with early on come with a logo that was done by Fiverr, and a website that, you know, was built on WordPress, 10 years ago, five years ago. And we update all that. So we update the content, we update the look, we modernize it, I cannot stand Comic Sans, you know, I can't scan balloons, and like, you know, suns and moons and crap like that, in a logo. I mean, we are in the kids space, but we are professionals. And we also kind of take what they've been doing to sell in that county that they probably been in or that state that they've been in, and then we try and replicate that across the country or take them out of the area they've been in. So we build a really solid list for them, of people that want to reach, we write what they want to say, even though they might not know how to write it or say it we create, you know, personas, the writing is very short. And we do our best to get them on a call with a decision maker. And we do a lot of coaching ahead of time to make sure that that they are patient, that they are persistent, that they are not pains in the asses of these people who have lots of work to do principals and superintendents, we also build these roundtables. And the interesting thing about our roundtables is is that we're really trying to build around their passion, you know, we're not coming on and talking about their product again, give before you get, and we put them in front of big time decision makers, so that they can start to build relationships with them. And those relationships can take many, many years. Or it could take no time. And you know what a principal you're talking to, in June, could be the superintendent of a district in July. And, you know, we really go through with our clients, how to respond appropriately to the responses that we get a negative response, very easy. A positive response, when they book on your calendar, very easy, neutral responses are the most interesting ones, somebody might say, we already have a social emotional learning tool. So at this time, we're not interested. Okay, so let's engage, talk to the principal about who the tool is that they're using. So you can learn more about who's out there and what they're doing. And then ask them if you might be able to tell them a little bit about what you do not because you want to knock off the incumbent. But you just want to get some feedback. And then you start that relationship that could lead to something down the line, but you're giving before you get and that I think is the number one thing that you have to do when you're selling anything, especially in the education space give before you get.
Alexander Sarlin:There's been a lot of talk in education, entrepreneur circles and investor circles about the different types of business models that ad tech companies pursue. And you know, the B to school model or it's the selling to enterprises, especially schools sometimes falls a little bit out of favor with investors because they worry about the long sales cycles and the complexity and the compliance. I'm curious how you have seen you know, you've worked with companies with lots of different models. I'm curious how you see the betta be no business to business selling the schools model versus the business to customer model in edtech. And whether one is significantly easier to communicate than the other,
Josh Chernikoff:I think they're both equally tough to communicate, but you got to do one or the or the other, or both. So my enrichment business, I built it by hitting singles, you know, which investors didn't like when I hit when I mean, singles, I went school to school, you know, because the enrichment business, there is no RFP, you know, so you can't hit a grand slam, you know, if you if you get an RFP, when it comes to say, an aftercare opportunity, that is a Grand Slam, and you are potentially picking up a school district. That being said, I hope this isn't news to anybody, but most of the time, the company that is, is the incumbent wins. So hitting singles isn't always the worst thing, not having an RFP isn't always the worst thing, because, you know, there's really no standard that's been set. So it's kind of a wild, wild west, you know, selling to parents, I think, is now a little bit different game than it was before when I was in the tutoring business, because, you know, Facebook ads were all the rage. And that is a low cost, easy way to reach parents where, you know, we had to be super creative when it came to partnerships. And, you know, I was literally like, putting up those ads that you take down, you know, you rip the piece of paper at like the local supermarket or my JCC. You know, but I think they're equally can be equally rewarding and equally challenging. You know, we we help clients with both of them with all of them, you know, some of them want to reach superintendents and go the Grand Slam route. Some of them are good with, you know, the single route and just getting schools and somewhat parents. And it just kind of, I guess, comes down to the cost of acquisition for that company. But we can help them. And, you know, we can test lots of different things. Again, that's the idea of, of just breaking stuff and figuring out what works.
Alexander Sarlin:There have been a couple of recent reports about the sort of saturation that's starting to happen in edtech, there was a learning platform report that said that, you know, educators use I believe it was 180, something 186 tools in school each year and some interesting work for med surg, just about, you know, the 1000s of edtech tools that are out there, many of which are duplicative, or sort of, you know, cover some of the same area. I'm curious how you advise your clients and how you would think our listeners might think about, you know, entering a space in which there is some level of saturation, there are a lot of companies out there, how do you differentiate? How do you stand out? How do you compete with not only the big dogs, like you're mentioning, but also other startups that may be sort of in adjacent spaces? How do you help your clients think about that?
Josh Chernikoff:First of all, you know, if you have existing relationships, leverage those in a professional and appropriate way, that's always nice. And that might not mean getting the contract tomorrow. Again, that might just mean getting an introduction, and asking for some feedback, and then waiting and learning and getting better. When it comes to email. You know, there are lots of different creative, sometimes different ways that you can do it. And there's some risk involved in some of those. But if you are writing quality content, then you will know because you won't be trapped, you know, you won't be blocked, or you won't hit spam filters in your inbox, email deliverability rates will be high. So I would say, you know, write good short copy and be a good storyteller. You know, to me, that's this new idea of the storyteller. You know, obviously, storytellers aren't anything new. They've been around for, you know, since the dawn of time. But I think people were trying to be better storytellers. Now, because there are so many emails, there are so many products, there are so many people trying to get the attention of superintendents and principals, and your writing can kind of go one of two ways. You know, we've had some of our companies that want to just kind of do very straight down the middle, in terms of the way they describe their company and how we write to these principles, then some people want to have some fun with their subjects, you know, with the first line, and I have seen principals and superintendents say, that's the best subject line I've ever seen. Thank you so much for putting a smile on my day. I can't wait to talk to you. You've also literally seen it go the opposite of you know, I'm a principal, I don't have time for jokes, by the way, it's a pandemic, you know. So, I think whatever you do, you know, maybe test out different ways of writing in succinct patterns for your your readers, and then just try and learn from the data that you are given and you better be getting data Uh, you know, on deliverability, and subject lines and what people are clicking on,
Alexander Sarlin:I love the focus on storytelling and, you know, being data driven, maybe trying some alternative approaches to stand out, but trying to be, you know, to find that balance so that you're not turning off your potential customers, it's a really interesting, nuanced way to go.
Josh Chernikoff:The other thing I would say, is, don't just try one thing. You know, you may and you know, we're all human beings, we've had this happen, you may get caught on a bad day, you know, where you get an email, and you're just like, now, not today, you know, the second one, we may catch you on a good day. I do think, though, that no more than three emails is the way to go. You know, if somebody doesn't respond after three emails, you know, no more. And you know, some people I've learned from some of the masters of writing these emails that if you don't hear from somebody after one email, don't email them again, you know, because you really want to find the right people that want your product that have the same passion that you do. So
Alexander Sarlin:good advice. And I think there's so much complication to communicating and standing out as an ad tech entrepreneur, there's cross cultural communication, there's different channels, there's, you know, different business models of different kinds of customers. So I think what you're doing is really interesting, and I hope our listeners really think about their communication strategies and think about how to evolve them. Because it is a crowded and complex space, we always end the podcast with two questions. So the first is, what is the most exciting trend that you see in the EdTech landscape right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on?
Josh Chernikoff:I'm sure they're seeing this, but I'm just amazed and excited. Especially because I couldn't give away the opportunity to learn online for many years, just the chance to learn so many different things online, you know, and that people are willing to give it away. I know that, you know, we all know that Twitter's filled with a lot of trash. But when you scrape that away, I mean, I'm following so many amazing people on Twitter who give so much of their time to educate people. And of course, they haven't, you know, as well, they're building community, they're selling a course whatever it is, but learning so much online. And I guess, you know, the trend is to continue to be able to do that in just new and different ways. For me, the latest one is Twitter, while I was doing a lot of, you know, learning, you know, online in terms of different courses, and but when kind of discovered, what you can learn and who you can learn from on Twitter, I kind of switched over there. So I guess for me, you know, the aha moment has just been Twitter. And it seems like Fridays, and Saturdays is when I learned the most I get my newsletters and, and I get recaps of what these people were doing all weekend. And they're just so many great people to learn from
Alexander Sarlin:really interesting. And what is one book or you know, you can mention a Twitter feed or a blog or newsletter that you would recommend for someone who wants to dive deeper into any of the topics we discussed today. That's entrepreneurship, you know, tutoring communications.
Josh Chernikoff:Yeah, I mean, I was gonna open up my Twitter feed, but there's tons of people that I'm learning from, but I'll boil it down. And just kind of go back to one book that I read, which is may sound cheesy, but it was the biography of Matt McConaughey. And it was called green lights. I've always thought that that dude is like the coolest in the world. And his book came out and I was like, Oh, this is going to be so boring. But it was really inspirational. And it really kind of went along with my philosophy and theories on John just breaking for good. Clearly, he broke pretty well, you know, and has made it but he also had his bumps and bruises and is is, you know, as he got to where he is today. So I think greenlights is a really neat book you're able to read, it won't take you that long. And you get to learn about an inspirational guy who's also had a shitload of fun in his life.
Alexander Sarlin:Correct. And, you know, we can add additional resources or Twitter feeds to the show notes for this episode, if you wanted to send cool the other Twitter influencers and people you learn from because I think that's an interesting channel as well.
Josh Chernikoff:That'd be great. I will do that because they deserve it because they give so much.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. And it's really, really interesting to hear about the EdTech space right now and how people might leverage communications and think about their own entrepreneurial journeys. Thanks for being here with me on edtech insiders.
Josh Chernikoff:Yeah, man, thank you. And again, good luck with the kid usually got you'll be fine. Thanks.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ed Tech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at Ed Tech insiders.substack.com