NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
00:35:24 · Jamie Beaton
And I love that because we train these students in our philosophy and our, you know, you know, different tactics for how they can be really effective students. And so they go through it. You know, they have this amazing outcome getting into a great university, so they really love Crimson, and they go become a mentor, and they can really inspire the next generation. There are a couple of different ways we we got that pull. We we learned pretty early on that, you know, building a really strong organic brand, these skills is important. So, you know, I I personally went to Harvard, and then I went to Stanford, I went to Oxford, and I'm Yale. And in each of these communities, you know, I personally go out and build a lot of relationships to get to get that flywheel moving, and then it, you know, sustains and sustains. So we learned early on that, like, paid acquisition of tutors, etcetera, is is not a good strategy for us. That's what companies like, for example, VIPKid in China has to do. They've got to pump lots of money online marketing to try and recruit, like, English tutors. And... But for us, because we're trying to recruit these premier people from these great institutions, the word-of-mouth virality is is very important. And then we really care about their experience, so building good technology that it makes it, you know, easy and efficient for them to work, giving them students they're gonna love. We've got a tutor student compatibility algorithm we use, which is part of my PhD work, to match students and tutors effectively. Things like that make sure that, you know, when somebody logs in line from MIT, they have a rocking time, and they tell their friends, and the thing keeps moving. So that will be a couple of tactics on the recruitment side. Now recently, we've had to evolve because of the Crimson Global Academy, where we have to recruit not only tutors, but also more and more teachers. And so, we started by, you know, bringing on board the the the biggest heavyweight we could in New Zealand, which was John Morris. He was the head of Auckland Grammar School for, you know, more than twenty years. He's been a teacher for forty years. He's a ONZM in New Zealand. So definitely, without a doubt, the most respected headmaster in the country. So we brought him on board, which is a good start.
00:37:05 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
And then we had more than 600 applicants for about 30 roles for our school. And so while many schools have teacher shortages, we're able to get top teachers from, you know, King's, Maclean's, Westlake, know, Rangereau, all these different places onboard quickly, and then get more teachers from The UK, other geographies. So I think starting with quality, just like we did at Harvard, and then with John Morris here, that creates a snowball that then, you know, makes everyone quite excited to be part of that that community. There are a couple of tactics we used on that side. [00:37:30] S1: What what challenges did you have, you know, along the way in that in that process where there, you know, there's always always some learnings and and, you know, things that that don't go so well. Tell us about some of, you know, some of the the the tougher things.
00:37:45 · Jamie Beaton
[00:37:45] S0: It's a great question. I would say tutoring has actually historically been a real strength of Crimson's, but a challenge that that I could think about would be, you know, if you think about tutors, they're gonna have exams at pretty similar times. And when you have waves of tutors having exams while their students are having exams, that can create some irregularity because they might be, like, stressed about their own exams and unable to do as much tutoring for the student just at times where they're most needed. Yeah. Gotcha. So, for example, timing that seasonality is important. And so in certain functions, you move to more full time staff to adapt for that. So if you think about, you know, Uber, when they launch a new market, they often, you know, pay drivers to do almost full time on the road even if if they don't have demand to make sure they are locked in capacity so that the rider in this case is a good experience. Yes. So for us at Crimson, sometimes we have to make these different hacks to, you know, buff supply, I should say, in a in a certain time of the year. At But this point, we've got a really deep network of tutors, so it works quite well. But that would be kind of one move. So we switched, for example, our strategy function from being part time contractors to being, you know, significantly full time, to help really make sure that was super robust, etcetera. And then also, as another example, when kids apply to college, one of the, you know, one of the key deadlines is January 1, which is the day after New Year. So... And it's Christmas, etcetera, Boxing Day. And so lots of students, you know, in the early days, if they procrastinated, they would be trying to get these essays done right when their mentors would be, you know, like, in the middle of eating their, you know, turkeys or something with their family. So, we need to we need to basically set in place a lot of deadlines so that students would get these essays done far earlier. And so, you know, it's better for the student's stress level, and then our tutors can, know, have a nice Christmas day. So there are some different hacks we had to work through over time as well.
00:39:25 · Paul Spain
[00:39:25] S1: Yeah. And have you built some, you know, technology platforms to help, you know, support these processes and and make it easier to get, you know, what you need, something that really is a a really, you know, good fit for the outcomes that you're looking for Yep. You know, without just, you know, trying to use off the shelf tools that that may not may not be, you know, always relevant.
00:39:48 · Jamie Beaton
[00:39:48] S0: You bet. So in 2017, launched the Crimson app, and we've basically been heavily investing behind this. So it really makes student and tutor experience really efficient. So on the tutor side, you log online, you know, all your sessions are tracked. After every session, you fill out a session report, which, you know, gives us an update on how the student's progressing. The student reviews the tutor experience as well. The parents can access analytics and reports on how those interactions are moving. We... The the parents and tutors can access score reports as well for how the kids' testing is going. And then the student can log in to all these other resources on the platform too. And then all of that's synced to invoicing, so the tutors can then quickly get paid efficiently so we can process large numbers of invoice payments around the world, you know, fast. And then there's also community functions as well where people can interact with one another too. And then there's secure chat, etcetera, which is very important for child safety. So, yeah, we've gone pretty hard on those features, and it's been pretty essential for us. And we're adding more and more sophisticated features. So for example, we're adding some, you know, different kind of algorithmic analytic engines so that, for example, saying you and I are speaking in a class, there's five of us in a classroom, and, you know, you're not speaking very much or actually you're speaking a lot. And that's a change because last week in economics, you weren't as engaged. We can, you know, really drive out those trends and engagement from, you know, student to student to student, and also how the the the teachers, you know, classroom style is evolving as well, and uses analytics to inform coaching sessions, pressure development, and also, you know, reports for the parents too. And so
00:41:09 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[00:41:09] S1: Because this is happening in an online context. Which is revolutionary. Yeah. Actually draw all that data [00:41:14] S0: that Totally. [00:41:14] S1: You know, in a normal classroom, you wouldn't have unless you, you know, you initially had some, you know Yeah. [00:41:19] S0: Micro files and, [00:41:20] S1: you know, auditing Totally. Processes. So So that's an advantage. Fascinating. [00:41:25] S0: Yeah. And and think about this. When So you go through school, how much data do you actually know about, you know, your own high school performance? You do a test every so often, you do some exams, but you sit in hours and hours of classes, and you don't know, you know, how you're engaging, how you're participating, what that looks like compared to other successful students. In the online schooling world or the online tutoring world, you know, we have all of these datasets of high achieving kids and, you know, what their, you know, engagement metrics were like. And then we can see when a child's not, you know, syncing with those trends, and we can do that by geography, by personality, etcetera. And so the online analytics, I think, will be quite revolutionary in schooling. Even, students are doing part time online schooling, the amount of insights they're gonna get from, you know, every hour they spend online compared to the physical world in which nothing is recorded or analyzable, will be quite profound. So that's a good example where technology gives you quite a big leg up in the online world.