This week, in the very first episode of our podcast, we play some inside baseball with Elana’s partner in crime Porter Palmer. Although we are all life-long learners, we would say Porter is an expert in community building and authentic communications. Porter is in her third year of working with Leoni Consulting Group (LCG), most recently as the Director of Joy.

Porter spent her early career as a special education teacher for nearly a decade. Elana and Porter discuss the circumstances that developed her career from the beginning, from societal pressures limiting the options of what a woman can be, to a deep love of “seeing the light come on” in her students, to being able to support teachers and students as a community builder now. Porter and Elana also tell the story of how they met while working two other positions at other companies and then working together at LCG.

As a community builder, Porter discusses the nuances between engagement, audience, and communities. To her, caring is an essential part of any kind of community. Porter discusses how powerful that care has been in some of the communities she has developed. For marketers trying to develop that care in their brands, Porter reminds founders to return to their passion and tell their stories. 

The bullet points/episode skeleton:

• [2:45] Porter’s introduction
• [5:15] “My parents told me I could be anything, but society really told me that I only had a few choices as a female. And that was I could be a stay-at-home mom, but I never wanted to birth a single thing. I knew I didn’t want to be a secretary so I didn’t take typing. And I felt like my other options were to be a nurse or a teacher, and I didn’t want to be a nurse, and I was really good with kids.”
• [7:13] “It’s not an accidental path, but the path I’ve taken and the things that I get to do now are not things in my wildest imaginations I thought that I’d ever be blessed to do.”
• [9:22] How did Porter and Elana meet?
• [12:03] Define what hiking is, for us, please. “The idea of walking in the heat for fun?”
• [12:29] “One of my first times in a slot canyon in Texas.” “I am not wearing hiking clothes at all.”
• [13:30] “You need to hire Porter.”
• [14:52] “We just had a conversation and decided we wanted to do good work together.”
• [15:50] What is Pinterest? 
• [17:50] Everything you need to think about to build a community.
• [18:16] “At all levels, everybody needs to know you are a community-focused organization. And that starts internally with how you treat each other at work, and how you treat your customers, your potential customers.” 
• [19:56] How do you turn an archive of information into a community?
• [21:43] The difference between community, audience and engagement.
• [22:32] “A Community happens when you don’t even have to be there as the brand.”
• [22:51] Community is like a campfire.
• [23:56] Community is a mindset and a commitment. 
• [25:05] “In order for it to be a community, the members have to care for each other.”
• [26:15] “Is it caring, is it belonging, or is it both?”
• [27:11] In a community, there is a give and take, but in a network, there can just be a lot of take.
• [28:51] Why educator communities are so great.
• [29:18] Do you want to share a story about community building that gives you goosebumps? // four marriages, surviving cancer, changing careers, and giving courage
• [33:10] Educators are so isolated that they don’t know what they’re doing is amazing.
• [35:05] “Community gives educators courage to take risks in a safe enough place.”
• [36:11] Advice for edtech brands trying to reach and engage with educators.
• [36:46] Sharing your passion as an edtech brand. What are you trying to solve for teachers?
• [37:10] “Work is love made visible.” from Khalil Gibran.
• [38:17] “Educators don’t care about your products. They care about the challenge they have and if your product can solve it.” (Elana)
• [39:37] You have to be consistently providing value.
• [40:10] If you were to be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
• [41:07] “I hope people remember me for seeing the good in them.”
• [41:37] “I hope people will always remember I did my work with a great deal of love.”

Resources:

• Steve Dembo: @teach42
• The difference between community and audience: “So You Think You’re Building a Community… But Are You Really?”
• 4th grade educator mentioned by Elana at 33:30 (maybe link her blog post)
• “Work is Love Made Visible” from On Work by Khalil Gibran

Elana: Welcome, everyone, to this week’s episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This is our very, very first episode, so we’re really excited. In this podcast series we’re going to be talking to some of the leading experts in the land of education and education marketing. We’re at that beautiful intersection where we might have educators on the show that you can learn from, we might have ed tech marketers, we might have marketers, we might have community professionals, but we’re all going to be living in the world of how to talk and engage with educators and parents in an authentic way. So my name is Elana Leoni, and I have devoted my career to helping education brands build brand awareness and engagement. And I am excited to start this episode off with our very own Porter Palmer. Porter Palmer is our Director of Joy – and she can talk to you what that means – at LCG. She is an – I don’t use this word lightly, but I do feel like the word expert is very finite, and we’re always learning, we’re always lifelong learners.

But I can say with confidence, Porter, I know you’re very humble, you are an expert in community. It is something that you need to continue to learn and attain to, but she is one of the most knowledgeable people you’ll ever meet in connecting with people in an authentic way. I’ll let Porter introduce herself, but just for some context, she’s been with the Leoni Consulting Group for about three years now. Before that she spent a decade developing engagement strategies and overseeing all of the awesomeness in DEN – and if you know DEN STAR Educators, Discovery Education communications. So I’ll let Porter talk a little bit about her background just to get started, and then we’re going to talk a little bit about what she does. What does community mean? What does authentic community mean? And then just go into the twists and turns, and we’ll take it from there. So, Porter.

Porter: Hi, guys. I’m Porter Palmer, and as Elana said, I have the joy of working with her. I’m on year three of this journey together. I was recently given the opportunity to have the title Director of Joy. I am obsessed with joy, not just about choosing it or finding it, I’m really obsessed with seeking it out. I think it’s really a choice that you make for yourself, and you have to seek it out. That’s been a driving force for me for a number of years now. And that sort of explains probably vaguely why I would consider myself a community scientist. I have – since the first time I learned about community I realized that was what I was supposed to be doing.

And specifically in the area of teachers and educators I have a lot of passion around connecting educators to one another and improving their lives. I was a classroom teacher in South Carolina for nearly a decade. I taught students with disabilities across every grade level and every topic you might think of, from kids with the most significant disabilities to kids with very mild disabilities. I love them; to this day I still consider myself an advocate for people with disabilities. And I hope that they consider me to be an ally as well.

Elana: Yeah.

Porter: Go ahead.

Elana: Not to cut you off, Porter, but I don’t – I know we’ve talked about it a little bit and I’ve talked to you about some of my journey in education, but talk to me about Porter coming out of school. What do I want to do? How did I even get into education? And then what continues to fuel me to stay in this space? Because we know that education is challenging in so many ways, and you’ve had the ability to put your foot in the education, like in the classroom, boots on the ground, but also in the policy and developing assessments. And then also now you’re on the other side working with brands in the ed tech world. So what fuels you? What started that education journey too?

Porter: Sure. It’s not been – it’s probably not the beautiful story people hope to hear when I talk about how I became an educator. I’m a little older now, and so I was raised in a time and in a place where my parents told me I could be anything, but society really told me that I only had a few choices as a female. And that was I could be a stay-at-home mom – and I never wanted to birth a single thing from the time I learned –

Elana: Except communities, right?

Porter: Yeah, I’m having to do that, but from the time I learned how babies happen I was a no to that. So I didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom. I knew I didn’t want to be a secretary, so I unwisely refused to take typing, because I could not predict that we would be moving into a digital world. So that has been a bit of a burden in my life because I am not a good typist.

I felt like my other options were to be a nurse or a teacher, and I didn’t want to be a nurse. And I was really good with kids, and I love kids. And I’m even that person that – you know, there are people who love dogs, like they’ll walk up to you and they don’t pay you any attention, they pay your dog attention. I really care about what kids think of me, because kids – they will tell it like it is. There aren’t the filters that we as grownups have. And a lot of times people would call me the green M&M to kids, and I guess that means that they liked me, and I – that fueled me as a young person, was to – just like every other teacher you meet, to stay – seeing that light come on fueled me. And so I pretty early in life, like very early, keyed in that I was going to be a teacher, and that is what I imagine my whole career would be. When people ask you, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I always saw myself as a teacher.

And it’s not an accidental path, I don’t want to say that it’s an accidental path, but it is not – the path I’ve taken and the things that I get to do now are not things in my wildest imaginations I thought I would ever be blessed to do. The ways that I get to help teachers, and then students as a result of that, has been something that 20-year-old Porter, who – I was in high school and already in the Teacher Cadet Program. I just always knew that my path was education. I did not anticipate that I would outgrow my small town at 30 and move to New Hampshire, and learn – get a deep understanding of curriculum and assessment, and then start working with teachers. And then the moment I started working and doing professional development for teachers, realizing they need each other and they need connection so badly. How can I help make that happen? And so that’s really where the passion came from for the community work that I do.

Elana: Awesome. And I think just for context it’s a fun story to just tell everyone how we met. So Leoni Consulting Group is about five years old, but for the first couple of years I was just a solo entrepreneur really just trying to figure out what I love doing and what unique thing I could bring to the table that I felt I could do better than most people. And, more importantly, what fueled me? What gave me joy? And I could continue to see myself doing it over and over again for multiple brands. So I was wayfinding a little bit when I met Porter. And I think she can tell the story a little better, so [laughs] –

Porter: I love this story. This story makes me so – happy.

I’m so happy to put this down on paper. I know that it’s a recording but this makes me so happy. When I was at Discovery Education with the DEN, Discovery Educator Network, Elana was at Edutopia, the George Lucas Foundation. And we – I had a colleague at the time, Steve Dembo, who went to a lot of conferences and things like that, and I am more of the behind-the scenes kind of person in general, and he was the upfront person that – everybody knew Steve, nobody knew Porter. Even in meetings sometimes our boss –

Elana: That’s not entirely true. If you walk Isty with Porter, everyone stops her. So she’s being very humble. She knows more educators than I think I do, so [laughs] –

Porter: That could be true.

Elana: But I see what she’s saying. Not keynoting like Steve and things like that.

Elana: Keynotes are terrifying for me.

Elana: Oh my god. Yes. OK. I didn’t even remember this until you brought it up. And then I asked you to talk to Sammer, right? Is that correct?

Porter: Yeah.

Porter: Then you send me – this was not my first but as a thank you I got a nice journal that I’ve already filled up, and this one I stole from Sammer.

Elana: How funny.

Elana: Let me tell you, Porter, about when I met educators from sometimes the Midwest. And I kid you not, I have to define what hiking is. They just – the idea of walking in the heat for fun, like for long periods, were like whoa, no, I drive my suburban to places, and air conditioning. We don’t do that.

And Steve says, “I know who you need to hire. You need to hire Porter.” And so I had set aside money to be on my little adventure for like two years, and the money was running out. And I’ll just be honest. People don’t want to – back then people didn’t want to hire you when you said your non-negotiable is that you are a remote employee. That has changed, I think due to the pandemic that we are – or should I call it the Panini? Due to the Panini we’ve been living through. That I think perspectives on that have changed some. But I was – I wouldn’t say I was pushing myself but it was like beautiful timing. So I was in Maine visiting our friends in the time that Elana – and I always say yes, in the time that Elana picked we had planned to go blueberry picking in July at a blueberry farm. And I had what I might would call an interview, but I’m not even sure. We just –

Elana: No, it was more of a conversation. And I just was excited to reconnect with an awesome person. It was definitely – in my view – I guess I’m a softie, but if you come from people that I really respect, and I know your background already, it’s never an ‘interview’, right?

Porter: I agree. I just felt like we just had a conversation and decided that we wanted to do good work together. And I started part-time, just a few hours a week.

Elana: Yeah, but I think you’re missing – the funnest part about this whole thing was, “Hey, Porter. Do you know anything about Pinterest?”

Porter: [Laughs]

Elana: And at the time, I did Pinterest for Edutopia but never to the depths of the level that we’ve got to doing it as an agency. And I didn’t know much, I was just – I think that you have to learn when you’re running your own show is be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Be comfortable with the unknown. So I said yes to this contract knowing that if I dove in I could really make a difference and do it, but I didn’t have that on the ground, intense, advanced expertise in Pinterest. And Porter was really honest. She’s like, “No, but I’ll try it.” [Laughs]

Porter: I mean, I had done Pinterest, and now like –

Elana: Yeah.

Porter: – adding to the funny part of the story, is I swear to you, it was not a week before that one of my R – it became – Pinterest became very popular in the RV’ing industry. And one of my friends was talking about Pinterest, and I kid you not, a week before this I looked at her and I said, “Is Pinterest even relevant anymore?”

Elana: I remember –

Porter: Like is it –

Elana: – you saying that.

Porter: It’s not social. It is – since we’re on the topic of Pinterest, Pinterest is a search engine, it is a visual search engine, it is a powerful search engine. When I used Pinterest way back when it – I’m an early adopter to anything technology, in general. Pinterest was social. It was social bookmarking, and it was fantastic. Now it is a powerful digital marketing tool. If you have a catalogue of things and you have the ability to make images or videos, it is a powerful tool. But it’s not so social anymore.

Elana: No, it’s not.

Porter: So it’s relevant.

Elana: So I guess fast forward, she said yes. We baby stepped our way into life at LCG, and now we – primarily at LCG we do organic social media marketing, and we also do community building. And we had to way find, although we had that expertise, really kind of just jump into what can we do in a repeatable way that I know in my heart that we can truly make a difference every single time. And so we landed on those two. Porter now leads the community building efforts as it makes sense to do so. So she works with many clients in education technology building some very, very exciting communities that just every time I talk about them I can’t believe this is our job to be able to do it.

Porter: Can I tell you one of my favorite things?

Elana: Sure.

Porter: I love – one of the things that we offer people is training on community. And we pretty much – I mean, I do, I sort of put my foot down and say we don’t do work with you unless you take training, basically. I’m not going to build a community for you. Because over, and over and over again, one thing that I know is that without buy-in across an organization you will fail. And so for me, making sure that an organization understands at all levels, from your highest position to however you rank, everybody needs to know that you are a community focused organization. And that starts internally with how you treat each other at work, and how you treat your customers, your potential customers. And so I pretty much insist on – we will all learn the bare minimum.

You don’t walk out of these trainings that we do with expertise or becoming a community scientist like I am, but you come out understanding how it impacts all of your organization, or that it actually does. That it doesn’t live in a silo. You leave understanding the cycle. How to think about finding the magic in the middle, which is that overlap of what you’re capable of doing as an organization; what the people who are in your community actually need. And then your business objectives on top of that. And I love helping companies find that magic in the middle, and use it to do good for teachers, parents, which leads us to doing good for kids.

Elana: Yes. And it kind of brought me back to – at Edutopia I came in right when we were putting efforts in onto the website. And before then the website was just used as like a plopping place – I don’t know how to say that in a more eloquent way. But like when we did magazines we would plop all of our stuff on the web all at once. We wouldn’t promote it, we didn’t really – maybe we had a newsletter, but it would just all go there. And so how do you turn something that’s a platform for just like here’s a repository or an archive of information into a community? And we had some experts come in, but now that I think about it, not one of them got everyone in there and talked about what community is, what it could do to transform your organization. And Edutopia had embedded community inside already because people – I’ll let you define what community is after this. And there’s a great blogpost that Porter wrote between the difference of community and audience, and we’ll put that in the show notes as well.

But I really just wished someone would’ve come in and said, “Here’s what you’re trying to do.” So we ended up building an internal community on Edutopia, and it honestly ended up failing because we didn’t know – we didn’t understand the resources it would take. And we completely underestimated it, and we didn’t have dotted line KPIs of what are we trying to achieve, and how did it fundamentally connect to our operations plan. We didn’t do – all of those boxes weren’t checked. And that’s why we are so passionate about let’s get everyone in the room. And as a business leader you have to know what may be coming down the pipeline too. How can community potentially affect your organization and its objectives, and transform who you are as a brand? I want to know that. And so it just brought me back, so sorry for taking that over.

Porter: No, I love that.

Elana: Why don’t you talk about the difference between community and audience? I think this is a good –

Porter: Sure, sure.

Elana: – teaser to what Porter ends up talking about in a lot of her trainings too.

Porter: OK, so I really love to talk about the difference between three things, and that is community, audience and engagement. In social media we talk a lot about getting engagement. And engagement, a lot of times, is one-way or two-way, back and forth. Audience is the potential people who see your stuff on the internet. That’s it. That’s all your audience is. And they may be extreme lurkers. I am an audience in a lot of places. I am not engaged in a lot of social spaces. In terms commenting or posting, that’s when you think about when you think of engagement. But audience are the people who see your stuff, just like in a concert, the audience, but a community happens when you don’t even have to be there as the brand. That the people – it’s not transactional, it’s not back and forth between the brand and your audience. It is amongst your audience.

I like to think of it – remember, I said I’m a fulltime RV’er, so I think of a campfire. And if you are in – on a community team, in a company, your goal is really to create the atmosphere of that campfire, and the thing that brings people together. And then they have conversations that benefit their lives, improve their lives, and they give you the credit as the company for that. That’s what community really is, is you creating the space for your desired group of members to have a conversation, for them to have their lives improved because of the effort that you’ve put in. I’ll add this – community is a commitment. It is much more of a commitment than a lot of organizations think it is. They think that it’s easy. It is not. It is a mindset and a commitment.

Elana: Yeah, I mean I would say the majority of clients that come to us say, “Oh, we tried to this, and then three months later no-one was talking to each other, and we shut it down.” And you might be listening to this podcast now going, “Oh, yeah. That happened to us.” So a lot of the times we want to come in and manage expectations. And it’s perfectly normal – and Porter talks about this pretty eloquently too, is just I want you to have all the information at your disposal so you can make the best, most strategic decision for your organization. And that might be, “Hey, we’re not ready for community yet.” Because you have to do it well. And that’s why I love working in the space of social media and community in parallel, because social media is the same way. It’s a commitment. It’s a marriage. You’ve got to do it well, and every day there’s lot of sweat, there’s a lot of rolling up your sleeves to get it done. And it’s sometimes not sexy, but the end result is transformational on both fronts.

Porter: Somebody that Elana was reading a blogpost about was talking about how you don’t have to – people don’t have to care for each other in a community. And I was like yes, they do. In order for it to be a community, the members need to care about one another. If they don’t, that’s a network. And there’s nothing wrong with a network. A network is fine. But a community is – and I’ll use the Discovery Educator Network as an example. It was founded as a network, so a way of connecting teachers to one another, but it turned into a community. So on Twitter that’s a wide network. I have a network of ed tech people, marketers, community people that I follow, and I learn from. And so that’s a network of people; people that if I see them at an event or a conference I’ll be excited to see them, meet them, learn from them. But only once you care for one another does it become a community.

Elana: Is it caring or is it a sense of belonging, or is it both?

Porter: I think you can feel like you be – I mean, we can discuss this for days, and days and days [laughs].

Elana: Yeah, yeah.

Porter: I feel like you can feel like you belong to a network. You can feel a sense of belonging. It’s when somebody is sick or something tragic happens to them – there was something on – I think it was on Twitter this week – that said if you want to judge how a friend is going to be, deliver some good news to them about you and your life and see how they react. And based on that you’ll learn what sort of friend they’ll be. And I almost think that that’s how I differentiate a network from a community, is in a network there is a give and take, but there can also just be a lot of take. Like I’m a taker in a lot of networks because I am lurking and I am learning. In a community you also give, and take.

And you do get that sense of belonging. Like you’re – I was just talking with somebody today about social identity theory, which is one of the grounding pieces of community, where, as I was telling you earlier about people sitting around this campfire, after a while they feel like they belong to that campfire, and their identity is associated with it. And when you have your identity associated with that group of people that you’re sitting around that campfire with, when your identity is impacted by it – and that can be negatively or positively. There are communities that don’t do good. There are benevolent communities and then there are communities that are not good.

Elana: I would say, though, in education –

Porter: Oh, they’re good. [Laughs]

Elana: Yeah. They’re great, and that’s why I love the space that we’re in, especially even with social media too, is just we use this to … At the core of it all – Porter, you always say – community improves people’s lives.

Porter: That’s right.

Elana: And I see that firsthand with even just social media, which may or may not have sense of community in it, but also in communities 100 percent, because educators are one of the most selfless people I know. They will go above and beyond to help others, even if they’ve been working 10, 12-hour days. And I don’t ever want to take advantage of that, but I want them to connect and inspire others as they naturally do, and communities can help facilitate that. So that’s just one of the joys we get to do, is work with communities like that. Porter, do you want to just share – you’ve been working in communities of educators in particular, you’ve also had experiences building communities of parents. Do you want to just share maybe like a story that just – I don’t know, gives you goosebumps, like yes, this is why I’m in community? I mean, you have so many life-changing stories. Does one pop out at you of just –

Porter: Sure.

Elana: – how can I imagine what a community would be like for my brand? What are the types of things that may or may not happen?

Porter: I think that my work in community may be responsible for four marriages. And that’s not even the one that comes to mind, but that’s like just a – like the work that we do that brings people together creates lifelong relationships. And there are marriages. I am certain that communities that I have worked in have – and these are not – these are very tangible but not things that you expect when you as a company say, “Oh, I’ve heard community will be good for my business. Let me get into community.” Which happens a lot. But you all, this is lifesaving work. I know people who have had cancer that they should not have survived, who give credit to the support that they received from the community as their survival. And are living and thriving to this day. There are careers that have taken on paths that they didn’t anticipate.

People tell me privately sometimes that they think because I was a special education teacher I have a talent for seeing – not the good in people but seeing their talents or what they are capable of that they don’t see in themselves. And that is a thing that helps a teacher have more courage than they – they’re already courageous people, but more courage to step out on a national stage and have their voice and their experiences elevated, and have their story told. And so I’ve seen a lot of those opportunities in people’s careers. People who went into administration as a result of feeling as though they had the power of a community behind them to support them in that process. They don’t – teachers don’t feel alone anymore because they have these connections. The same with parents. The same with RV’ers. I’m in RV communities as well, and you don’t feel alone or unsafe on the road because you’ve got your people that you can reach out to virtually.

Elana: Yeah, I mean–

Porter: Combatting loneliness.

Elana: Yeah. I think when I first got into education from – I’ve always been on the marketer side, and maybe community building side as well, but when I remember my moment – and at the time we were building community but we didn’t even know we were.

Porter: That’s right.

Elana: So I remember just lurking on Twitter and getting involved in ed chats way back in the day, and I would just hear educators spout out the most amazing, innovative tips and strategies, and things they were doing, and they were so competent and sharing with each other. But I do remember I ran across an educator named Pernille Rip, and she’s a fourth grade educator, and at the time I DM’d her, and I said, “Hey, you are amazing. We’d love to have you blog at Edutopia.” And I remember getting on a telephone call with her back in the day when we always used to call each other. And she said, “You know, Elana, I don’t feel comfortable because I don’t think what I’m doing is innovative.” And she might not have said it in that way, but I got that feeling that she was just like, “Are you sure” – I remember her saying “Are you sure you want me?” And –

Porter: I hear that a lot.

Elana: “I’m not” – you know, because they are so isolated too, they don’t know what they’re doing is truly amazing. And elevating their voices, and inspiring others to adapt what they’re doing for their own unique circumstances is what gives me goosebumps. And what we did at Edutopia for so many years, and they still do, is elevate educator voices. Because we don’t need to hear from consultants, we don’t need to hear from politicians about what we should be doing in education, we need to really spotlight what’s truly working in education from the people with the boots on the ground. And that just fueled me when I heard Pernille say, “Hey, I’m not sure what I’m doing. Are you sure you want me?” And fast forward, she’s keynoting all around the world, she’s–

Porter: Created a full movement. I mean, just –

Elana: I mean, she’s so inspiring now. But it breaks my heart that educators are told in society that what they do is not important, it doesn’t matter. And not to that extent but it does feel like they have – “Oh, I’m just a teacher, I’m just doing this thing,” or, “Are you sure this is actually innovative?” And again, it probably speaks to the silos that they’re in and the isolation, because they cannot gauge what they’re doing compared to others.

Porter: I think community gives teachers courage to take risks in a safe enough place, and then they experience – just like any of us, they experience success or appreciation for the sharing that they do, and then that fuels more courage to go to a broader audience. And that’s really how good is done, is by empowering people to share their talents.

Elana: Agreed. I know we’re reaching about time here, Porter, but I have a couple of last-minute questions for you. You, like I said, have had boots on the ground in classrooms, in special education. You’ve designed assessments, so you’ve gotten into the administration world. You then had a lot of time in the ed tech world. Now that we are in the consultant space working with ed tech brands, do you have any advice for ed tech brands as they’re trying to reach their audience? Do you have any – what is the most important advice you would give them to be able to reach and engage with educators? Because so many people come to us and say, “Hey, I need educators to know about us. I need them to know about our product.” How would you advise them for the best way to do that?

Porter: I’ve rarely met a business owner, a brand owner, like the founder or whatever, who wasn’t passionate about the thing that they created, and who doesn’t believe that it impacts lives, makes lives easier or solves some problem. And so I would beg you to keep that at the heart of what you’re doing. What are you trying to solve for teachers or students? Is the first thing. I use this quote kind of frequently. It stuck with me a long time ago. Khalil Gibran says in “The Prophet” that work is love made visible. And I would add to that around keeping that focus on this thing that you love so much that you created or chose to lead a group of people around doing a certain type of work. Make love visible, and make that in everything you do. Amongst your employees, your staff, amongst your team members. Work is love made visible. Make sure that your audience feels that love that you have for them that made you create the thing that you created or the thing that made you join a company. You joined that company because you believed in what it was doing. So spread that love.

Elana: Yeah, and I would say that the number one thing when I advise ed tech startups, and when I talk to prospects and current clients, is a lot of the times we don’t even realize we’re doing this, but sometimes our job is to orient them back to the why. Orient them back to the passion that they started – and it’s not that they lost it, it’s just sometimes you get so distracted with maybe your product and its features, and all of the things, and they don’t realize that educators don’t care about your product. They care about potentially the challenge they have, and if your product can solve it. But what you are doing as an individual and as a company is so much bigger than your product, and you care passionately about, say, project based learning, or school scheduling, or making music and integrating it in a technology effective way in the classroom.

Whatever your passion is and what your company started with, that’s what you center on. Your product is only one little part of it. And I think what Porter has been talking about too is being a part of their lives you build relationships, you build trust, and the beauty of community, the beauty of social media, is after you talk to them over and over again and have these relationships, they don’t even care about your product, they will recommend your product based on the value you give them.

Porter: That’s right.

Elana: – outside of their product. So the third thing we tend to do a lot for our clients is we create content for them, which creates value on top of it. Because you have to be consistently providing value in a relevant and timely manner, and that could be for your product but there’s so many ways to do that. And it all revolves around that why. You know? All right. Well, Porter, it’s been – I hate to say this is a pun but its joy. It’s been an absolute joy working with you. I feel –

Porter: Mission accomplished!

Elana: I feel blessed to always have conversations like this, because it inspires me and it keeps me going. I think maybe as a parting remark/question is I know that you are very mission driven, you are very impact driven. If you were thinking about this, you know, maybe at retirement, down where you’re hanging out on your rocking chair in front of your RV in North Carolina, and you’re looking back at your life and your career – I know this is a really big question, but what do you hope to be remembered for? And what maybe could apply to other people in your field of community building?

Porter: Thank you. That’s –

Elana: I just dropped that bomb.

Porter: Yeah, right, thanks for the prep on that one.

Elana: [Laughs]

Porter: Yeah. I feel like I am already remembered this way, and so I hope that people remember me for seeing the good in them and encouraging them to share it with others, and then delighting in their sharing of it. I hope that when I retire people will think of how they came to me with ideas for things and I said let’s figure out how to make that happen, and worked with them. That’s the thing that I like to say, is let’s make it happen. So that’s what I hope. I hope that people will always remember my work was done with a great deal of love.

Elana: Yeah, and sometimes that’s not necessarily like – it’s not what you do but how you make them feel. And I – you know, there’s that famous Maya Angelou quote of people will always remember how you make them feel over what you did. And I think, Porter, we have the honor, because you always make us feel loved, and you make everyone that you interact with feel loved, and feel like they matter. And I cannot say that phrase without crediting Angela Myers, but you matter so much to the field of education. So – and the world. So thank you. And I think that’s all the time we have for today. Every episode we will be following up with show notes, so you can go to our website, leoniconsultinggroup.com/1, for our very first episode. It will have links to some of the things that we talked about, and additional resources to dive into community a lot more as it relates to the education field. So, Porter, thank you so much, and –

Porter: Thanks for having me.

Elana: You’re our very first guest, and it was just a real fun way to kick off this series. Bye, everyone.