Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students,
leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration,
we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools.
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
All right, welcome back to the Classroom Narratives Podcast, everyone, where we continue to explore the power of teaching and mentorship.
Today's guest, Rob Durant, has spent his career bridging business and education, first at Disney, then in sales leadership, and even as a high school math teacher.
Now, with the Institute of Sales Professionals, he's bringing education to the world of sales, proving that teaching happens everywhere.
So let's dive into the conversation, and Rob, thank you for joining us today.
Joey, thank you so much for having me here.
It's great to have you. So, Rob, I wanted to begin by having you give us a little bit of a background as to who you are and what your relationship is to both education and marketing.
Well, thank you for asking. I love to share to anyone who asks. At my core, I'm a teacher at heart.
Son of a math teacher, my dad has taught in public schools for over 50 years now.
Even in his retirement, he's still teaching at the local community college.
But when it came time for me to go to college and choose a career, he discouraged me from going into teaching.
And I understood why. I saw how difficult it was for him to raise a family as a teacher.
So instead, I went into business. But everything I've ever done, I've gravitated towards helping, mentoring, guiding, leading, training, teaching.
I started off with the Walt Disney Company, where I learned the art and science of customer service from the company that literally invented the field of customer service.
And would have rode off into retirement from the Walt Disney Company, except that they're in Orlando and my family is predominantly in Boston.
By family, I mean extended family, hundreds of family members. They all wouldn't just pick up and move down to Orlando.
Can you believe that? So instead, we moved back to the Boston area where I landed a job at the phone company.
And that's where I like to say I was tricked into my first sales job.
It was advertised as a customer service role. But after six weeks of interviews, batteries of tests,
I still remember to this day, the HR representative on the line offering me the role.
She says, "Rob, we want to hire you as a customer service representative.
But please know, there is a sales quota with this."
I swallowed hard, but I took the job anyway. Up to that point, I had the same perception of sales that I would expect many of those listening right now have when it comes to sales.
Sales is icky! Sales is yucky! Sales is evil!
In customer service, we would say if sales didn't screw up somewhere, we wouldn't even need customer service.
What I've learned is I could not have been more wrong.
And what I've learned is the best sales job out there.
The best performers in sales would equate to nothing more than adequate customer service people.
And how does that relate to teaching? Because teaching and customer service are very much the same as well.
It's the same mindset. It's the same core drivers. We just want to help.
Great salespeople help. There are three things that you need to do to provide what I would consider adequate customer service, table stakes, customer service.
You need to ask questions. You need to uncover the root cause issue.
And you need to provide solutions so that your customers can make an informed decision.
Teachers, great teachers do that, too. We ask questions.
We work with our students to uncover the root cause issue.
And then we challenge our students to present solution.
There's just one more thing that outstanding salespeople do that most people in customer service cannot bring themselves to do.
And frankly, I can say this as a teacher as well, could not bring myself to do. Ask for the sale.
Yes, that's it.
I want to tell a quick story. When I was first hired at one of our local universities,
I had a very, very strong leadership team. But I remember that in one of our first faculty meetings,
the chair brought us into just while I was on Zoom at the time, but he brought us into our Zoom meeting room.
And he said that each of you are here as our faculty to play the part of the customer service representative.
And it was a metaphor that I had to wrap my head around. And I was trying to think about at the time, what does this mean for morale?
But I also kind of understood what he meant in terms of our interactions with students.
And I know that possibly our listeners may have heard this metaphor before that in education,
we have educators who are on the "front lines" of customer service reps.
And whether we agree with that or not, the metaphor is an open discourse that has existed for us to take in.
And I wanted to ask Rob for someone who is in the world of sales, can you help us break down that metaphor?
And what exactly is the good that we would be attempting to sell as teachers in that type of model?
As I see it, teachers are not customer service representatives. Teachers are salespeople.
Because remember the difference between customer service and sales.
Customer service does three things, sales does four. And it's that fourth thing that salespeople do
that make the most effective teachers. And I want to point to Dan Pink's To Sell as Human for a moment.
In that book, Dan says that these days, nine out of ten people are in sales.
Now, in his book, he more or less expands the definition of sales to mean influence.
Nine out of ten people need to influence someone else these days.
And that tenth person probably does as well. So if you take sales to mean influence,
I think your audience can absolutely relate to that. You stand in front of a classroom.
In my case, it was 10th grade geometry. How many have ever heard, when are we ever going to use this in life?
I have. Exactly. How many have ever said it? Now, pointing fingers, Joey, we'll just pass that one.
But here I am trying to influence them to understand the importance of geometry.
Not just because I need you to know the Pythagorean theorem, not just because I want you to know how to solve groups,
but I need you to develop the logic that goes behind those things.
So it's my job to influence you, the students, to take that on.
How do you involve theorems in your day to day life anyway?
Well, have you ever driven to someplace and not known how to get there?
You use your GPS tool. Well, the GPS tool is very much like a theorem.
It knows the start, it knows the end, and it figures out each piece in between,
generally starting with the end in mind and working your way backwards.
We do that very often in geometry. So there, I've just influenced my classroom to acknowledge that,
well, yeah, maybe I will use this in life. Teachers have three audiences, really, when it comes to influence.
They have their students, of course, which is a very challenging audience indeed.
A captive one, also. Absolutely. Yeah. If they are lucky.
And I want to emphasize this because I've worked in systems where it's been one extreme and I've worked in systems where it's been the other.
If they are lucky, teachers have the parental guardian audience to address as well.
And yes, I will grant you that parental involvement can sometimes be an extreme and be challenging in its own right.
But you're lucky to have it because I've been in those systems where it's not part of the equation at all.
The third group that teachers need to influence is the administration.
Remember, they might be your boss, but they have bosses of their own as well.
And those bosses have bosses. And ultimately, the boss is the general public and the perception of the school system to the general public.
So we need to remember our audiences as we are speaking with them.
It's almost like the circle of life. And we're not really supposed to talk about this with students listening, but it is the truth.
We're supposed to teach to our students that our students are a product of their parents.
The parents are a product of who's influenced by, let's say, the superintendent and the school board, which in turn goes back to the function of the administration.
And the course goes back down to the teachers. So in a way, it's almost like a circle of life again, where it's a food chain, where everyone is there to influence each other.
And if you break down the factor of that equation, ultimately, those that have quite a bit of power that they don't even realize that they have are indeed the students.
So we do want to make sure that we are selling to them as educators as best we can to make sure that they're communicating our goods and services effectively.
So tell us a bit more about the idea of a teacher as a salesperson. What is being sold within the model that you're sharing?
Again, if we're extending the definition of sales to mean influence, what are you trying to influence for your students?
Well, I could sit down and break down Shakespeare with them.
And there are absolutely applications beyond just high school when you talk about Shakespeare, just the common culture understanding.
So to be a well-informed member of society, you need those types of things.
But that's not really going to influence the 17 year old. They could not care less about something that predates them by 300 years.
I could just walk into the room and say, "this is what I have to teach.
This is what you have to learn." And I could try and command influence.
It just doesn't work like that. Right. It might have in the past, but it certainly does not work like that now.
So let's get to why. Why are they even here? Well, they're required to by law. Sure, they are here, but they're giving you their attention.
Sometimes reluctantly, but sometimes enthusiastically.
What you are trying to influence them on is not just the lesson itself, but learning how to learn, learning how to communicate, learning how to be a valued member of society.
And we can do that through geometry. We can do that through Shakespeare. We can do that through history.
I was a terrible history student in high school because I had teachers that did exactly what they were supposed to do as history teachers.
"Here's the textbook. We're going to have a test at the end of the week and then we'll work on the next chapter the next week and have another test again."
And I had no interest in reading about something that took place and had no impact on me.
My freshman year of college, I had a fantastic history teacher.
In fact, that teacher was so good, I regretted not paying better attention in my high school classes.
What that teacher did was he took literature from different periods.
We were studying American history and we didn't have to read an entire book.
We read this chapter from this book and this chapter from this book.
And together, I learned about the stories of the period aligned with the textbook and the facts and figures of that period as well.
And it came to life for me. That's when I was sold. That's when I was influenced.
That's when I understood why history matters.
What we need to do as teachers is sell our audience on why what we're saying to them matters.
And it needs to matter for something more than, "well, this is going to be on the test."
And it needs to matter for more than something beyond, "well, this is how you get into college."
Sure, it is how you get into college.
College is all about GPAs and SATs and ACTs and extracurricular and all of that great stuff.
But if you're not developing in them the ability to study, the eagerness to learn, you're probably doing them a disservice.
In some ways, I've just made the job of teaching exponentially harder.
In some ways, it becomes incredibly more enriching for all.
And that's what I love about teaching is when I can see the impact that I'm making.
That's a really powerful anecdote. And I love how you're saying that education comes from teachers trying to enrich students with learning how to learn and trying to connect two worlds together.
And I know that when I'm teaching my literature courses as well, I always add some sort of trauma element not to exhaust the students and make my class this therapeutic discourse where emotions are always dripping into the center of the classroom.
That's not the intent at all, nor does that happen. But I say to my students, listen, when I was 18, 19, 20, I was on this fantasy that I'm going to have the perfect adulthood.
Everything will be wonderful. Everything will be fantastic. And then by the time I'm 23, the Stoneman Douglas shooting happens and impacts how I function in my first job the next year because I'm still dealing with the grief and the baggage from that.
And it caused a series of circumstances like that in terms of switching my mindset with attempting to build a trauma-based toolkit.
And I'm sure many other community survivors of trauma or community witnesses of trauma might be trying to develop the same or similar toolkit as well.
So I say to my students, "where you are today may not be where you are in five, ten years from now."
So I'm preparing them with the skills ahead of time to say that you now have this, as one student named it very nicely, a break the glass if needed sort of toolkit for after they exit the class.
And it's making me think about, because you mentioned it already, Rob, the Golden Rule versus the Platinum Rule.
The Golden Rule, you say, is to treat others how you want to be treated. But the Platinum Rule is to treat others how they want to be treated.
How does that Cardinal Rule influence us as educators within academic settings?
Absolutely. So the Golden Rule is what we all knew growing up. And lo and behold, the Golden Rule is just downright wrong.
The Golden Rule was great in a homogeneous environment. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
You're presuming everyone wants to be treated the way you want to be treated. You're presuming everyone is just like you.
And that's how we behaved. Everyone talks alike, eats alike, has the same style, has the same background.
We were never a homogeneous society. We are a heterogeneous society with a multitude of backgrounds, all sorts of culture and tastes and so on.
So for me to treat you the way I want to be treated might work if it just so happens that Joey wants to be treated the way Rob wants to be treated.
But what if Joey wants to be treated the way Joey wants to be treated and it's not aligned?
It's not necessarily dramatically different, but it's different and it should be respected.
So treating others the way they want to be treated is not only a better course, it is also more effective.
Because if I were treating you the way I want to be treated and it didn't align with the way you want to be treated, you'd probably just ignore it.
But if I'm treating you the way you want to be treated, you might not overtly be aware that I'm doing that.
You might just be aligned to it because it is in line with your beliefs, your behaviors.
The challenge then becomes, well, how do I know how someone else wants to be treated?
I contend that the way we communicate to others is a strong indication of the way we want to be communicated to.
Some of us ask lots of questions.
Some of us prefer short statements.
If I can identify how you want to be communicated to and communicate to you in that way,
you are more likely to be receptive to my message because you're more likely to even just listen to it.
Now, I'm not here to tell you in a classroom of 40, 50 students, you need to convey to them information in 40 or 50 different ways.
I realize that's not tenable.
I was in a math class once where I was responsible for teaching students where English was a second language.
And it would see, well, you know, just speak to them in their native language.
For one thing, there were five different native languages in the classroom.
I need to speak to them in the way they want to be spoken to.
Students might not necessarily be receptive to long-winded answers.
Students may be more receptive to short questions where they come up with the responses.
Now, I will contend that that is my preferred teaching style.
I prefer a Socratic classroom.
I like a lot of conversation going on.
High school students generally want to be seen and not heard.
Now, I realize that's a generalization and there's an exception for every rule.
But if my preferred method is to have students speak, but their preferred method is to just be lectured to, one of us is not going to get our way.
Right. So that's what I mean by the platinum rule.
Identify how your audience best receives information and then convey it to them in that way.
In a classroom setting, it's more challenging.
It's absolutely meeting them halfway.
As I was saying, in a classroom setting, it can be more challenging because there are multiple personalities all at once.
But even on a one-on-one conversation, when we go back to how are you influencing, how are you selling to those parents, how are you selling to that administrator,
convey what you need to convey to them in the way that they best receive information.
And I guess the most important mindset to think about with that is just keeping flexible mindset.
And I was thinking about that as well when it comes to treating others how they want to be treated.
What can you say in terms of helping out teachers with classroom management and maybe even communicating with their administration, what that means for them in those scenarios?
So administration, for example, I can talk to them about the situation I had in the classroom.
I had this student, it was challenging, and I ended up I sent them down to the principal's office.
That's fine. Sometimes you just need to get off of your chest what you need to get off of your chest.
If I am putting myself in their shoes, now I'm thinking of the principal who received this student,
I need to try and remember what it is that they are dealing with and how they can best address it.
So I might send that student down to the classroom, but it turns out the administrators are held accountable for the number of students that are not in their designated classrooms at a given time,
whether that's detentions, suspensions or whatever the case may be,
the metrics that they're held accountable by might not be aligned with what I'm advocating for.
I need to remember these things and I need to figure out how to convey to my administrator that this particular situation, yes, might not be ideal for your metrics,
but it's because I'm aware of your metrics that I do not make a regular habit of this.
And that's why when it does happen, I expect your full support behind it.
And then we can work on solutions for mitigating future incidents like this with those students as well.
So it sounds like this cardinal rule is really working to strengthen partnerships between people in all roles and dynamics, which I think is great.
And I think that leads us to the conversations about what you're currently doing as well.
So Rob, I wanted you to talk to us a little bit about your text, "The Social Enablement Blueprint, Stop Pitching, Start Selling."
Sure. Thank you for asking.
I wrote a book. I published it and it came out last June.
The idea behind it is to help, well, predominantly salespeople because that's who I work with.
But really, it's not specific to salespeople.
It's designed to help anybody who's interested in leveraging social media not to become the next influencer, but to have influence.
I want to connect with more people in my profession.
I know that a LinkedIn profile can help me do that.
That's how we met.
Exactly. But I don't know where to begin. I don't know what to do.
I'm overwhelmed by it. And frankly, everyone else out there is better at it than me.
With this Social Enablement Blueprint, it's teaching you three basic principles.
Be approachable, be sociable, and be generous.
If you are somebody who is approachable on social media, if you are willing to strike up conversations on social media,
and if you are there to give, not sell, but give, give freely, give generously, give back to the community,
whether that's on LinkedIn, whether that's on Twitter, it doesn't matter where you choose to engage with your peers,
with your chosen community, that's the key to success is be there, be present, be helpful.
What Rob is attesting is that in order to broaden our circles,
we just need to be approachable and know that there are others even beyond just our four walls and our own schools that can help us feel successful in our workspace.
Mostly in part because teachers are not islands.
That's one of the greatest things about the teaching community is their support for each other and their generosity towards each other.
By being an active member of your community, where your community is most active,
you are setting yourself up for opportunities that you cannot even foresee right now.
Joey, as you said, you and I met through LinkedIn.
Neither of us had the intent of seeking the other out.
I did not say, "hmm, I wonder which education podcasts I could guest on this week."
And Joey, I don't think that you thought, "well, I wonder which sales leaders could I connect with?"
We happen to connect. We happen to have a great conversation.
And we saw some opportunities where not only is there overlap between the things that we do,
but there's overlap between the audiences that we engage with regularly.
And that's what brought this about.
That alone proves the entire point of your text and what you authored to our audiences through the ability to network and be approachable.
We can always grow our circle of influence as well.
So, Rob, what would be one takeaway that you're looking to have our guests come away with from our conversation today?
I would say this. There's a lot of gurus out there telling you do this, don't do that, don't do this, do that.
Find your own path. 80 percent of success in life is just about showing up.
Show up regularly. Contribute in the way that you best can and be a part of something without any ulterior motive.
You won't need one. Opportunities will find you once you start putting yourself out there.
Definitely. And what we've also heard from other speakers as well is that the authentic value that we want to offer matters the most.
Just being true to ourselves and authentic to our work is what's going to bring other people on board.
Absolutely. So, Rob, thank you again for joining us on the podcast today.
And I hope that our listeners can see that the idea of selling is more about inspiring than leadership, business and even just everyday conversation in order to become the best influencer possible.
So, of course, if you enjoyed what you heard, go ahead and subscribe and keep the conversation going.
And until next time, remember that your stories matter.
Thank you very much, Joey. It's been a great experience.
Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast.
If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you.
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Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars in education, one conversation at a time.