38. Increasing Enrollment by Viewing Parents as Customers and Schools as Businesses with Antony and Greg Campitelli

Aubrey: Welcome to Mindful School Marketing. I’m Aubrey Bursch. 

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Greg and Anthony Campitelli of Enquiry Tracker. Greg is co-founder and director of Enquiry Tracker. Having spent 40 years in the sector. Greg is one of the most experienced marketing professionals in education. He was a teacher, year level coordinator and director of development. He’s been on several boards for schools and nonprofits. He’s the publisher of a national education magazine. And he’s also the co-host of Ticker Ed education streaming program. He has four children. Antony is the co-founder and CEO of Enquiry Tracker. And they’re related in case you’re wondering. In addition to building a company that people love to work at, Antony is passionate about creating scalable products that are not just about solving challenging problems, but are fun to work with. With over 30 years in Silicon valley, high tech industry, Anthony is an entrepreneur and marketing executive with extensive experience in all aspects of marketing and product management. He’s held executive positions at planet labs, Apple and Macromedia, and several startups. When not building a business, you can bug him about cooking on his big green egg. He has two kids. Welcome Greg and Anthony. We’re so excited that you’re here. 

Antony: We’re great to be here and hopefully Tara and Aubrey, you can understand the Aussie accent.

Tara: Absolutely. Love it. 

Aubrey: Absolutely. We love it. 

Antony: Yeah, no, we’re both. We’re both thrilled to be here with you guys today. So thanks for having us on. 

Aubrey: Welcome and thank you for being a part of our podcast. We can’t wait to dive in, but before we dive in we wanna know a little bit more about you, right? So Antony, can you kick us off and tell us a little bit more about yourself and maybe the story behind Enquiry Tracker?

Antony: Yeah. As you, as Tara mentioned, I spent well crikey, well over 30 years just in Silicon valley. And prior to that, I was had my own company in Australia. And one of the things I’m, like she said, I’m always passionate about building products. And I think around about four years ago, Greg and I were talking, he was out visiting in the states, we’re in San Francisco and we were talking about some of the. Ideal businesses to set up, but I, we would relay in a story about a SAS company and how you deploy software on an agile basis and people can get value out of it. It said that trick is finding a painful problem and he goes, I know exactly what that problem is. He goes, I’ve spent, as you said, 30 plus years, working with schools, developing marketing plans, the big thing they all don’t know is what their funnel looks like, what the cohort patterns look like- demographic patterns, psychographic patterns, things of that nature. So schools can make smart decisions. And I just looked at ’em and said that’s easy to solve. And that’s how it germinated, how we started the company. And that’s only what Greg? Four years ago. 

Greg: Yeah, four years ago, Antony and there was that unique blend. Anthony’s got this sort of engineering and IT marketing mix, which is really an unusual skill set. And I’ve got this kind of, four decades experience in education, not profit and not for profits and, understanding that often they’re really time poor, they’re under resourced they’re focused on next year’s enrollment intake. But that’s not where the decision starts, as we know. The decision starts years out and most people say, Hey, I haven’t got time to do that. I’m too busy doing what I’m doing. So that was a germination of the idea that says this is the problem set. Let’s go out and start building a solution. And actually we weren’t so arrogant to say, Hey, we understand the whole problem set. We sat down with a bunch of schools and said, before we write a line of code, do you agree with this problem set? And do you think this could be a solution?

Antony: Yeah, we certainly did. It was, it was a fun experience cuz we mocked up all these screens and went out there and showed ’em like, I want that. I’ll take that, thanks. I said, this is just a slide presentation right now. So it was, it was funny. One thing we did discover in that process, aside from identifying those challenges was, Greg mentioned that the time poor aspect, because a lot of these admissions marketing folks at schools, especially independent schools as you know, wear a lot of hats- Webmaster, Outback Marketer, Digital Advertiser, Notetaker, Emailer, all of that stuff. And so there, there is strap for time, but they’re also strapped, what we like to say, they’re tech, technology poor. They don’t have those IT resources, especially at some of the smaller schools. They don’t have the bandwidth like, oh, you can just put a, you’ll know this Tara from your business, like a gravity form on your website and make that a conditional field. And then the just look at, I dunno, I don’t even know where to start, let alone everything else that has to happen underneath the hood. 

Tara: Yeah, very true. Very true. And you guys have, you’ve covered the bases there, and I’d love to spend the whole episode talking to you about what it’s like to work with your brother. But I think I wanna talk about schools too, so I wanna ask you about prospective families and current trends that you’re seeing. There’s been a lot of changes over the past few years. Of course, we always have to talk about COVID, but other changes as well that have happened and you are a global company. Although we’re based in the states. And I think a lot of our listeners are here. We have listeners all over the globe as well. Trying to, it may be different. You may see trends different trends in Australia versus in the US, for example. But what shifts have you noticed in the independent school space?

Greg: Well, I might go off first here. First I think there’s been a phenomenal paradigm shift, Tara. You just mentioned COVID so this whole experience of kind of emerging online experiences that schools are engaged with and now in this era now families are more online than ever before. So there’s been a phenomenal shift there from digital lack of experience to digital experience in the whole, I mean, Zoom went from what, 20 million users to 300 million users in about one week. So our experience and our expectation of that is, has changed. The other big shift that’s occurred is when Anthony and I went to school and Anthony is the older brother, Tara. So I have to be respectful. So people have moved. When we went off to school, we had no choice, we went to school. And the parents were the grateful client. Now parents see themselves as the customer regardless, Aubrey of what level of fees they are paying. It doesn’t really matter if they’re paying, a small amount of fees or a large amount of fees. They say I’m paying good money. And I am the customer here, whether they say it or whether they think it, that means there’s a product purchase. There’s a transactional relationship occurring. And so they’re viewing education now as a product. And that’s probably the biggest single change that service to product change is a really big deal. And a lot of schools are not sensitive and are not appreciating that dynamic change. Antony, what do you think? 

Antony: That and also I’ll add that I think the children, obviously, depending on their age are having a say in some of this as well, where once upon a time that didn’t happen, but now is, oh, what do you think Johnny? Is this a school you want to go to? Do you like the facilities? And they’re gonna play, they’re gonna play a role in it. It might not be as a huge role, but they will play a role. Cause if they don’t want to go to that school, I guarantee the parents will go, okay we’ll probably find another one for you. They play that, that part in that thing as well. So something to consider. 

Aubrey: I think this is such an important topic because when I’m talking to school heads or talking to administration, and I use the word customer, there seems to be, you know, a Ooh, a customer? No, no, no. These are our families. No, but they are customers, right? And they’re savvy too now. They do their research before they make a selection. And now those older children definitely have a say as to where they’re going to school. So I really appreciate you sharing that because a lot of times we’re not thinking about that in independent schools. I’d love to talk to you a little bit more about kind of the enrollment and admissions process, especially for smaller schools. As a small school, or even a school where you’re wearing many hats. That whole process can be complex and very overwhelming. But yet these perspective families that we talked about that have higher expectations, they’re customers- potential customers expect like quick responses, like tailored information, personalized interactions and communications now, and these schools still have the same resources they had, five years ago. So what are some strategies schools can use to navigate this situation effectively? 

Antony: I’m gonna back up just a little bit. The first thing we tell our, when we’re talking, if we’re presenting or we’re doing webinars ourselves, the first thing we always tell schools about- I like to tell ’em about is you’ve gotta start thinking more like a startup. You’ve gotta start thinking more like a business. Yes, you’re in the business of education but you’ve gotta make sure that you’ve got a pipeline of families that are interested in sending their kids to your school, because that is the lifeline of the future. And we’ve all seen schools go outta business. Greg and I witnessed one in Melbourne that was how old, 150 years old. And it’s no longer it’s gone, right? Because it wasn’t run like a business. So when you start to think that way with that mindset, you start to focus on- who is my target audience? What do those customers look like? What are their personas? You guys develop those for schools and you understand why it’s so important. The other thing we teach ’em is the number one goal of your website is to attract leads is to communicate the unique value proposition and don’t find things that are, that, that are difficult. So your website is the first tool that you have, people will do research. So make sure when you, they come to their website, the messaging is clear. And we’ve also noted that the number one- during our research, the number one way people, the schools get inquiries is online, right? They’ve gotta search online, they’re gonna look on Facebook and eventually they’ll get to your website, they’ll be reading and then they’re thinking I’m gonna make a decision here. I’m gonna request something. I’m gonna ask a question. Do I have to be Catholic to go to your school, or could you please send me an information pack and you don’t wanna just put your phone number and email there because people will call it, put a form in there and start using technology to automate it. So you have a form for a information pack request. They fill it out- key thing here is make sure you ask the right questions and not too many questions. So you’ve gotta find mum or dad’s email. You’ve gotta get that information. We always encourage schools to get things like the student name. And when they’re thinking about starting at the school, is it next year in kindergarten or is it in five years in grade five? You’re gonna talk to them differently if you understand that information. So when they fill out that, what do you do? Normally in the well, I’ll say old days, a few years ago, people would just get an email. They’ll see all the fields that were filled out. They’ll hit reply. They’ll attach a document and they’ll forget some they’ll miss some because their centralized database is their inbox. It shouldn’t be that it should be a system that does automation, where the- thanks for you interest in, Sorento Grammar, and we’d love to talk to you about our upcoming events, et cetera. And that’s the last thing I wanted to point out is that when we look at it, we say about, we have hundreds of thousands of records in our system now. I know that about 94% of those are all online leads that are coming in. I also know that over 60, about 65% are for events. So one of the tips that I’d love to give your listeners is that make sure. You have a sticky header on your website. So Tara fix that forum and make sure you’ve got “book a tour” right there. And that should go to a form they fill out and that automatically sends them a calendar invite and email things of that nature. And you can do that. Certainly can do it with our software, but if you’ve got some technical saviness, you can figure out how to do it, and it really will make your lives so much easier.

Greg: I think you guys work with a lot small, independent schools, right? They’re often really, as Anthony said, they’re really time poor, so they’ve gotta use tech to try to solve their problem. I’ve yet- I’ve written dozens of marketing plans and Aubrey, you’ve done this too in your space. Hey, I’ve got plenty of staff. I don’t need any more staff I’ve yet to meet one school in that experience. They all need more staff, so you can do three things. You can ask for more staff. Good luck with that one. You can do nothing and hope, which is what most schools do. I hope it will get better next week, next term, next semester, next year. Or I can investigate technology. And if I spend a little bit of time investigating technology, a website’s technology, social media is technology. We understand that part of it. But as Anthony said, when people are filling out stuff, it’s normally at night and often on the weekend and often in school holidays, and they want a personalized reply and you are on holiday. I was chatting Antony to a school at an international conference recently and a big girl’s school. And it was in Boston and they said to me, oh yeah, our head expects us to be answering personally answering emails up to 10:00 PM at night. I said that’s not expect that’s not acceptable. Your school day, doesn’t go from 8:00 AM in the morning to 10:00 PM at night. That’s not fair. That’s not reasonable. Look at technology to help you. 

Tara: Yeah, for sure. As someone who, me, who works with technology all the time, I, I highlight what you’re saying very much. And I also, getting away from technology a little bit in terms of, but still related to websites, I think. And what you do is that the idea of storytelling and it’s become more and more important. And I know I talk to my clients about it all the time that setting yourself apart today means telling stories about your community and your school. So how do you think that schools can effectively tell their story and use it as a way to connect with prospective parents in addition to the things that you’ve described with in terms of their funnels and their processes and their communication? 

Greg: Well, I might go off first here. The storytelling is so important. You’ve just nailed it, Tara. You, unless you’re good at telling a story, then, people are just hearing a kind of a brand campaign. The old notion of, build it and they will come, we are here, they should come into us, has gone. The brand loyalties are breaking down. Change is dominating the marketplace. So you’ve gotta define your unique selling proposition and suddenly schools go, ah, what’s that? I dunno what you’re talking about, well, just imagine united Airlines and American Airlines, they would be aghast if you said, oh, they’re just buses that fly in the sky. They would say no, no, no. We’re, we’re uniquely different. And then they would tell you their story. Schools have got a lot more to talk about than airlines have and their point of difference, what are their strengths? What do they do really well? Are they a small boutique school? Are they a co-ed school? Do they offer a high school education or an elementary in a 13 year education? And what sort of programs define that? Talk to your staff, talk to your families and talk to your students about what makes your school special, unique. I know Antony, you love this one: survey the reasons why people choose your school. From this list of 20, what are the top three reasons why you chose to come to our school? And what about surveying the people who don’t come to your school, the nons selectors, they’re just as important aren’t they? 

Antony: Yeah. Hey Greg, I remember one time you told me a story and I’m gonna ask you to, I’m not gonna put you on the spot, but do you remember the one about the orchestra you were working for a school and they were had a, you identified a unique value prop that they didn’t really, they had. I think that’s a good one to share, cuz it’s a storytelling solution might be right under somebody’s nose. 

Greg: Yeah. Like a, a big school. And I said, so tell me about your music program. I said, oh yeah, we offer a big music program. We’ve got some orchestras and stuff like that. And I said, could you just dive into that a little bit more? They had 41 different music, ensembles, orchestras, quartets, jazz pieces, modern day. I said, guys, tell that story, give me a brochure on your music program. Oh, we don’t have one. Develop one. That’s just a really sad example. Look, the tools are there, people are online, Terry, you know, before more than anyone else. You’re the expert here. The website, the is your retail shop. You gotta talk to them in the coms that they’re using and they’re using so many different coms now, not just email, they’re using Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter. But if I actually mentioned this earlier, the key to having a big voice in where they go to school. So do you have an Instagram account? Are you on TikTok? Dare I say? You’ve gotta have a clear campaign. With a clear call to action that uses a diverse range of mediums. So yeah. Yeah, that’s it for me. 

Antony: Yeah. Let me add the other thing is your best brand ambassadors, believe it or not, are the kids at the school, right? They are out there affect whether it’s a uniform based school or not, but the way they behave, the way they look, the way they dress, the way they communicate. The outcome of that’s gonna be word of mouth advertising and what we like to educate our schools on is to understand how you leverage those either through student ambassador programs or community programs that you do, but tell the story. So make sure you’ve got a regular cadence of blogs that are going out there that each one should have a call to action register for a tool, requested information back, et cetera, but have your kids write them. Have some kids write these articles because families know what the school’s gonna say. They’re gonna say what they want to hear. Sort of thing. The kids will be honest. What’s a day in the life, like at, Johnson elementary and. You’ve got two kids that write the blog post and it’ll be great. And then tell a story and I think that is great education, but it’s putting them in a position of leadership. The family’s gonna love it. They’re gonna say, oh, my kid wrote a blog post for such and such. Let me forward it around to all my friends. Let me post it on LinkedIn. Next thing you know, halo effect, and you start getting more leads. It works. So storytelling, Tara. Awesome. Keep it going. 

Greg: That’s so true. That’s so true. Parent ambassador programs, student ambassador programs, just imagine coming in for a tour, Antony, Tara, Aubrey you’re at an open house, are you greeted by a student? Yes or no. No, I got greeted by a staff member or maybe put a student to do the meet and greet. And what about instead of ticking their names off in a spreadsheet? Oh, we don’t even do that. We don’t even record who comes really? Yeah, I know we got a spreadsheet at the table. We what does that say spreadsheet at the table says you’re not very innovative. What about a student holding an iPad? What about a student saying, thank you. Welcome to Chicago Independent, lovely to see you here. And your name is Tara. Lovely to see you, Tara. And you’re here with your daughter. Tina lovely, Tina, welcome. Really looking forward to seeing you and you are starting next fall. Oh, wonderful. That’s so nice. Come up the road. And you’ve got a student talking to our family. What does that say? That says we put students in positions of leadership. We are digitally savvy and innovative because we are holding an iPad and swiping and doing things. And we are forming a bridge between us and a family to set us up for segmented marketing. Wow. Wow. Wow. And hey, wow- look at my experience when I went up to Chicago Independent today, it was amazing. And they’re at the water fountain now, which is social media telling these stories. 

Aubrey: That’s so true. I’m so glad you brought that up. It is people talk the people talk about how they were treated, how, the experience was and the little thing, like the little tweaks to that process and the suggestions you gave really make the difference and really help schools stand out. So thank you for sharing those. I definitely wanna take advantage of asking you some questions because you are international. And we are, we have listeners who wanna know what’s happening around the globe. So could you kinda tell us some common challenges and you’ve mentioned a few, but some more that you think schools are facing globally right now in relation to enrollment and admissions and even retention if you have some of that as well?

Greg: Yeah, thanks Aubrey. Absolutely. We are an international company selling it to Southeast Asia, Australian, New Zealand, Canada, US, et cetera. And what, the one thing that is the common challenge everywhere I look is education is super competitive. It’s a major investment for families- that, that earlier comment I made about, Hey, we pay good fees here. Look, if people pay a lot of money or a little bit of money for them, it’s still the same. It’s a lot of money. It’s an investment. So I like to speak to schools to really understand or agree that lifetime value of one enrollment. And how do you work that out? If you’ve offering six years of education at your school or 13, you say, okay, what is the fees for year one? Well, it’s- it’s whatever the number is, let’s call it, you know, $10,000 or $5,000. And if there’s any government grants associated with it that you get for every student that you get some money or not regardless, you can add that into it. Then you multiply it by the number of years that you offer. Let’s call it 6 and let’s call it 10. So that’s now $60,000 investment. Most people still have more than one child in their family, so you could multiply it. 2.5 kids or three kids let’s do three. So it’s suddenly $180,000. We haven’t CPI adjusted that number over six years, and then most people tell a friend or a cousin, so you could add a couple more in. So suddenly it might be a $250,000 conversation, not a $10,000 conversation. So it’s really important to understand lifetime value. And if you need more, assistance in the marketing admissions office, speak to the business manager and the head about lifetime value of one enrollment. And that’s what we are representing to our school. So make sure they understand that the other big, couple of big things I’ve noticed globally, Antony, is families are making their decisions earlier. They’re doing their research online, away from the party line that the school is expressing, RateMySchool.com. And that earlier point about, you know children have a huge voice in where they go to, as Antony said, make sure you are speaking to them. If you’ve got a, some videos on your website, one for the families, what about one from the kids to the kids? So that’s what I would say, Anthony, what do you think? 

Antony: Well, yeah, just to tack onto that- the challenges, I think they all are, is enrollments. Like even the ones that have got waiting lists. There’s two issues. You’ve got the management of it and then you’ve got the actual flow of leads coming in. And I think some schools, especially smaller schools might be challenged with getting enough kids to start at the school. It’s a, the pattern is the same everywhere. They all tell us either I’ve got, Hey, I’ve got a waiting list. It’s great. But the problem is how do I manage it? And how do I nurture that? Even if it’s a 10 year waitlist or something, they’ve got these massive people, starting, as soon as the child’s born, they put ’em on the list, right? So you gotta communicate with ’em. You gotta make sure you do it. And the way I like to explain to people is don’t communicate in corporate speak, communicate in conversation style. It’s like when someone, when a school sends out a, like an autoresponder email or an email that gets sent automatically, I said, put it in plain text. Don’t put the big banner across it and don’t put Dear Parents. Say, Dear Alice, thanks so much. Because that’s how I would speak for inquiring about our school today. And you build that relationship. So the challenge I think, is to make sure you are nurturing, like you, you’ve got to take advantage of every inquiry and you’ve gotta maximize it. And I think a lot of schools lose those and they don’t use technology to pick up those crumbs and turn them into, as Greg said, it could be a two and a quarter, $250,000 lifetime value for one lead because it has that halo effect. So that to me is one of the most critical things. The other challenges they have is it’s all in the data, right? You can’t make smart decisions without knowing what’s going on. Greg mentioned about surveys. Why’d you choose our school? Why didn’t you choose our school? But if you know the data, oh, I’ve 800 inquiries, for next year. And we seat 200 kids. My question is, okay, what’s your conversion rate and what’s your yield rate? Are you able to take, get 200 on those 800? Are they the right families? Do they have the right interests? Are they expressing interest in the programs that you offer at the school that you have a higher probability of thinking you’re gonna convert? So the other challenge is that is capturing and reporting on the data to the executive team. So they have confidence in the admission staff actually know what on earth, what they’re doing and they feel, yeah, I’m gonna hit my numbers next year and the year after and the year after- why? Cuz I know the flow of inquiries and I know the volume.

Tara: Yeah, that’s great. I love your passion for what you guys do. It’s clear that you really are, you know your stuff and you have great ideas and you really are encouraging to schools to stick with it and pay attention to some of these things. And speaking of paying attention, we talk about mindfulness, cuz this podcast has mindfulness in its name. And Aubrey and I are super geek out on that topic. So we wanna ask you that through the lens of this podcast that we have about mindfulness, how you define it and how you see it lived out in schools. 

Greg: Well in simple terms, mindfulness, as you guys know more than me is being present, being in the moment, being there and thinking about there and schools, really this kind of mouse wheel of, always running around in circles and guilty of doing the same thing that they did before. If you want a different result, you actually have to do something different. And many people are sort of change resistant. So my first sort of answer to that really is being focused. And it’s really challenging for that sort of admissions and marketing professionals is there’s so many- they’re understaffed, so as Antony said, the solution is investigate technology. The other thing for me is that schools speak too much and wise man once told me, Aubrey and Tara, Hey, Greg, you got two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion so start listening more to what your families are seeking in their education. So if you understand that the child loves music or robotics or whatever, don’t go and start banging on about the sports precinct, because guess what? They love music and robotics. And so then you can reach out to them and engage. You actually likes to say, turn those future families into your biggest raving fans before you started at your school, you do that by engaging with them and listening, be a good listener I say. 

Antony: Yeah, I think the other thing I’ll add to that, Greg, I love that, that’s exactly what I was gonna talk about. Just listening, cuz that’s really the most important thing, but I’m gonna add a couple things to this and these again, these are tips, I think, for your listeners. So in Silicon valley when you benchmark a product, you develop, what’s called the a net promoter score, an NPS, right? An NPS is simply as asking the following question. Would you recommend a friend or a colleague to our school for your child- would you do that? And they have to answer from zero to 10 and that’s the way the question’s structured and it’s zero to 10. And basically there’s a formula. You can just Google it and look it up, but it’s basically, you come up with a score where you take the top two, the nines and tens are your promoters. And anything like seven, I think it’s yeah. Seven and below are your detractors. And the negative word of mouth will propagate much faster than the positive word of mouth. But establish a benchmark by listening to these people, what they would do. And then you’ve got something to have a goal yearly. My goal is to improve my NPS. That’s the first thing, the other thing we like to do is, we do these sort of micro surveys. And let’s say you have an open day and you’ve got a couple hundred families come to it and you send them the automated email. It’s gonna be automated to say, thank you for attending our event. It was great. If something happens at a that event, that’s unique modify that email to be personalized. So they realized, wow, this is on context. And then always, never send an email that doesn’t have a call to action. And so if it was like, thanks for attending, we’d love to hear what you thought about our event. Here is a three question survey that you could fill in and tell us what we did. What we could do better. What else you’d like to see then what I would do to being mindful of your brand- your students, I would have your students analyze the results and I’d have your students report back on the recommendation and then I would implement one or two of those things. So this is being mindful, not only developing your brand and what you do for your school and how you listen to get like a benchmark, but how you’re leveraging your ambassadors to be smart and to make decisions and demonstrate that you are mindful of them not just here to get an education, but you are having them involved in that in a way to make it better for everyone. And guess what? The last thing you know, Greg what’s gonna happen is parents are gonna go, Hey, my kids are involved in these surveys. They find, and they make, they’re telling us that over the dinner table, and guess what? They actually made the change at the school word of mouth and it will just, it will pay off in spades is what we say. 

Aubrey: I love what you just shared. I’m a big proponent of gathering information and data, and I love how you even brought the students into that. So thank you for sharing those and those other mindful tips. I’m gonna transition us into a question, the questions we ask all our guests. So we’re gonna kick it off with the first one. What are the most important things you do to grow professionally and personally?

Greg: Probably get more scheduled me time. I’m probably guilty as charge. I don’t do any of that. Cuz when you’re running your own businesses, you two know you’re on call 24/7, there’s not much me time. For professional development. I attend conferences. And so you guys do too. We go to conferences, we speak at them, but we also listen to other speakers. That’s how I do it. Antony, what do you do? 

Antony: I do that. I also, might go on or run on a certain podcasts every now and then. If I’m going for a long walk or whatever I’ll put in my headphones and I’ll pick a podcast that I think is interesting. Sometimes they’re around marketing, sometimes they’re business, or they’re just things that I might as topic that I might look right, cooking on my big green egg, for example. And I find a lot of these give you insights into other things on how you focus. That’s the sort of thing that that I do. And I guess I’ve learned a lot over the years, been around a while. And one of the things I learned early on in my career, I had the really good opportunity of working with some people you would all know, people like Steve jobs at Apple, which was a great experience, but what I really learned is you can always do better and you’ve gotta have faith like in yourself and your own skills and just to do it and really focus on something and execute against it really well. That to me comes with just experience just doing this over and over again, watching people do it, watching people succeed. I always like to say, you’re a product of your environment. If you hang around successful people, there’s a good chance you’ll start to be successful, right? 

Tara: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. Okay. We are gonna jump into our rapid fire questions. So these are quick answers. Just a few questions. The first one I love is what is a book that has had an impact on you that you would include in a high school curriculum?

Greg: That’s an easy one for me, because it’s The Woman that Changed Her Brain by Barbara Arrowsmith. If all educators, seriously, Tara read this book and if all medical professionals read this book, it would profoundly shift the way we teach and learn across the globe. So that’s the one for me. Antony, what do you reckon?

Antony: Oh, , I’ve been in with online and online marketing and moving pro- one of the things I found very interesting when I read the book, I just found it amazing. I don’t know how well it would go on a school curriculum, but it would definitely be, is it has to be on every marketing curriculum on any MBA program or business school program. And that’s a book called The Psychology of Influence by a guy by the name of Robert Galdini. And if you ever interested in that sort of, it’s a great it’s a great book. It’s easy to read. And I just found it like, oh yeah, that’s why I do those certain things. That’s why I subscribe to that magazine because they really know how to convince me to do it. And you look at it and you go, oh, okay. Now I know what’s going on. And I just thought it, oh, we’ve been tricked all these years by these master marketers, but it’s all about how you think and what makes you do things. So I thought that was one of the things for me was interesting. 

Aubrey: I’m excited to add those to our list. It’s growing and I will personally put those on my reading list as well. So thank you. What are you reading right now? 

Greg: Well, We know the answer to this one, our brother, Stephen our younger brother. He’s a really talented writer. He’s got a three part series called The Fall. The first two parts are published on Amazon and I’m reading book three at the moment. Trying to provide all, be some editing response to what’s working. What’s not working, but it’s, instead of what’s an amazing book. If you wanna ride The Fall by Stephen Campitelli, check out Amazon. That’s what I’m doing. 

Antony: Yes it is. He’s a good writer. The one other book that I read, I just finished it not too long ago. Again, it’s a business book. It was a Blue Ocean Strategy. It’s really about- you’ve read that one, Aubrey? It’s, you know, it’s about focus and understanding your market. And there’s some just great stories about companies and you go, oh, I hadn’t didn’t realize that’s but it’s well written.

It’s really well written. And I did, if you’re into that stuff, I’d encourage people to read it. 

Tara: Fabulous. Okay. What is one app you could not live without? 

Greg: Easy. Google Maps. 

Antony: I was gonna say my online banking app because I find it so useful to take pictures of checks, deposit them. It’s great. I love it. 

Aubrey: You guys are so practical. I love it. You’re like Google Maps. Banking. Probably you use it a lot. 

Antony: It’s not gonna be Candy Crush or Solitaire or anything like that. No, I tend not to. Yeah. I just tend to use my phone for practical purposes, but that’s what I, that’s what I like. 

Aubrey: That’s great. Thank you. What is one great piece of advice you’d like to leave us with? 

Greg: I’m interested in transformational change. So if you work at a school- buy Enquiry Tracker.

Antony: I’m not as blatant promoter as Greg is, but what I would, and I really do mean this sincerely. We’ve given you some good tips in today’s podcast. Pick one, take action. Just pick one. Don’t try to think. Oh, I’ve gotta do NPS. I’ve gotta have these programs for advance. I’ve gotta do all my automation. I’ve gotta do these forms. Just pick one of them. And take action and do it. And I think that you’ll feel a lot of reward when you actually accomplish something and just do it, put the book into a button on your website, make sure it’s there.

Tara: Thank you. Great. Thank you. Well, This has been so chock-full of information. Thank you so much for sharing all of the things that you’ve shared with us. People can find you online where? Go ahead and I know. We know it. Go ahead and tell us where you can find you online. 

Antony: At Enquiry with an E N Q U I R Y tracker.net. You can get there. We’ve got some great free stuff for people on how to run amazing events, brand guide books, all sorts of great stuff that we can provide. Anyone who’s interested. 

Tara: Thank you. And thank you also, you are sponsors of, and have been sponsoring this podcast for a while, which we greatly appreciate. So there’s also information in a variety of places in each episode notes and on the sponsor page on our website as well. You can find Enquiry Tracker there as well. So thank you for joining us so much. Thank you. Take care. 

Antony: Thanks so much.