Episode 75: Using Design Thinking to Build an Impactful Education Business

When you're thinking about starting an education business, you likely have lots of amazing ideas. And sometimes having so many amazing ideas can be completely overwhelming. Trust me, I have been there. So really thinking about how we take all these ideas and turn them into an actionable business that really helps other people, I find it really helpful to think about design thinking. 

Design thinking as a framework that really centers the problem that you're going to be solving in your business. Because all businesses that solve a problem are all good businesses. And it really centers your users, your clients, the people that you're going to help. It helps you to think through how you're going to help them while also taking action. So in today's podcast, I thought I'd walk you through how to use design thinking when starting or building an education business.

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Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

When you're thinking about starting an education business, you likely have lots of amazing ideas. And sometimes having so many amazing ideas can be completely overwhelming. Trust me, I have been there. So really thinking about how we take all these ideas and turn them into an actionable business that really helps other people, I find it really helpful to think about design thinking. 


Design thinking as a framework that really centers the problem that you're going to be solving in your business. Because all businesses that solve a problem are all good businesses. And it really centers your users, your clients, the people that you're going to help. It helps you to think through how you're going to help them while also taking action. So in today's podcast, I thought I'd walk you through how to use design thinking when starting or building an education business. 


Design thinking really starts with the phase of empathizing. And it has various different phases, which I'll talk through all of them. And maybe I'll give you an overview right away from the beginning. So you know what's coming. It starts with empathizing, then defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping a solution, and then testing a solution. And it's like a circular framework. So then you go back to empathizing again, but again, the main purpose of design thinking is to help you solve a problem and figure out how to solve it well. So if you think about your business, maybe you think: “hmm, I really want to help new teachers,” there are so many ways that you can do that, right. And we automatically go to coming up with all these different ideas. But what we really want to do when building a successful business is to think about the people we hope to serve, and really start by empathizing with them. 


The first phase of design thinking is empathizing. So in the new teacher example, I would spend time in that phase really listening to new teachers, talking to them, hearing what words they use, when they talk about their struggles, I would get out of my own head, and thinking about my struggles as a new teacher, which is definitely a place to start, but not where we want to end up. We want to really talk to other people, and hear how they're describing the problems that they have. This is super important, because it helps us to center the people that we're helping, we don't need to center our own experiences. When we're building a business, though those, those experiences do bring a wealth of knowledge that we bring to the table. But we want to start by really listening to these people who will become our customers. 


In the empathizing phase, you're conducting interviews, you're putting out surveys, you're going into social media accounts, and thinking about how people are talking about the problems that they're having the people who are your target market, of course, right. Like in the new teacher example, I might be following Instagram accounts that focused on supporting new teachers. And I might be really investigating all the different comments that people are leaving, and thinking about trends. And then the next phase of design, design thinking is defining the problem. So if I was just looking at Instagram, thinking about how new teachers are talking about their problems, I would then use that information to define a common problem. Maybe I see new teachers really struggling with classroom management. And so the problem that I would define is that new teachers don't have the resources, so to really effectively manage their classes, and they don't have the time to put in to really get those resources or get that support. 

So it's kind of a two fold problem here. It's important to define the problem after you hear from your ideal clients. You might have an idea from the beginning, but I want to help new teachers with classroom management. Once you hear from them, you'll be able to add those details. They want the resources, they don't have the time to get the support or the resources. And then after defining the problem comes the fun part, I think, which is ideating solutions. The whole goal in the ideation phase of design thinking is to come up with as many possible solutions as you can. And as you challenge yourself to come up with many solutions, you might come to more creative solutions as you get further down your list. That's the goal. We want to start thinking about these things with a more creative approach and really start to think of unconventional solutions to these problems. So going back to the new teacher example, when I'm in the ideation phase, I could think about all the ways that I can help new teachers with classroom management, I could create an online course, I could provide in person coaching, I could provide virtual support, I could create a book or an ebook, I could create a resource library of lots of different approaches, I could make videos of classroom management approaches, I can have a collaborative video library where teachers can put in their own videos of what's working for them. I can have an advice column where people write in and I give advice or coaching around whatever problem they're struggling with. The list goes on and on. 


When you're ideating, don't censor yourself. Allow yourself to come up with as many solutions as you can. Some of the solutions, you'll look at your list and be like, yeah, not that one. But other ones you'll look at and say, yeah, maybe that's a good idea. And so once you've generated a list of at least 10 ideas, then I think you're ready to test one of them. So you're going to choose one of your ideas that you feel particularly compelled by, and you're going to choose that to prototype, which is the next phase of design thinking. We've defined the problems and ideated solutions, now we're going to choose one solution to prototype. Prototyping, I don't want you to spend a ton of time or a ton of money on a prototype, I want you to think about what's called your minimum viable product. This comes from a book called The Lean Startup. And the whole idea of a minimum viable product is that you're creating the least, or what's the best way is this, you're creating a version of your product that does not require a ton of time, a ton of money, a ton of resources, it's the least sophisticated version of your product that will give you the data you need to move forward and testing. I think about this as your scrappiest version. So let's say with my example, with new teachers, maybe I decide that I want to have a group coaching program for new teachers focused on classroom management. 


Down the road, I might have a course platform and all this fancy content, I'm not going to do that right away to test this idea. I'm gonna think about what will take me the least amount of time and the least amount of money to do the thing. So I could just set up a Zoom Room and say, I'm having one live group call this Thursday at six, come join me if you're a new teacher learning about classroom management, I just set up a zoom link, I connect with new teachers, I give them the Zoom link, I don't spend a ton of time, I don't spend a ton of money to test the idea. And the reason behind this is imagine if I went out and I was like, this is an amazing idea before I ever test for this. And I hired somebody to create a website for many 1000s of dollars, I hired somebody else to help me with marketing, I heard somebody else to do Instagram ads. And then after spending all this money and all this time and thinking about this amazing idea, maybe I put it out there and I realized through that test, actually, teachers don't want a group coaching program, what they want is a resource library, or whatever it might be, I want you to find out that information as soon as possible. Because I don't want you to go out and spend a ton of time a ton of resources, a ton of money, creating something that isn't what your audience wants. So it's super important to do a very rough prototype and get feedback on it. Building a business is like anything, right? It's an iterative, iterative process, you're gonna do it in one way. And it's probably not going to be great at the beginning. But you're gonna get data and you're gonna adjust and you're gonna revise and that prototyping process is key to this. You have to put out a prototype, try it out, get feedback, and then revise. So then the next phase of design thinking which I kind of jumped ahead towards is testing. Once you have your prototype, you go out and test it, you lead that Zoom class, you put it in front of the people that you hope to serve, and you get their feedback. And you really, really listen throughout all phases of design thinking I want you to listen. And as teachers, you are likely really good at this, but really listen to what's working for your customers, what's not working for them, and adjust your product or service accordingly.


So as you think about building a business, I really want you to think about walking through these five stages of design thinking, empathizing, defining the problem ideating solutions, prototyping and testing. I want you to move through these phases quickly. Because the sooner you move forward with them, the sooner you have real data to work with. And that data gives you guidance. You're like, oh, teacher signed up for this free class, or Oh, teachers did not sign up for this free class. Both are good points of data that give you ideas about where to move next. And if I've learned anything from running a business over the past decade, plus, it's that you're always going to be adjusting and evolving when you're running a business. And so much of that has to do with empathizing and listening and being open to changing, really finding the solution that works for you, and your skill set and your expertise, and the people who you're trying to help. And building businesses, particularly education, businesses are all about helping about helping people solve problems. building businesses also can be totally overwhelming. And they take a lot of work. But it's so beautiful and worth it to create something that you're proud of, to create something that's your own. 


If you're ready to dive into experimenting with creating an education, business, or maybe scaling a business that you already have, or just thinking through, how do I take this from idea to an actual business, I would love to invite you to join our education business Foundations program, we only open up but enrollment for this program quarterly and quarter two starts on April 1, we would love to have you join the small group program which walks you through everything you need to know in order to start to or scale or grow and education business. We will dive deep into design thinking, prototyping our ideas, testing our ideas, coming up with our offers, and really think about and take action on marketing and getting sales and really getting our business out there. This is a small group program and it's the smallest group program that we actually run so you get direct access to me and my amazing co teacher Allison, who runs an awesome business called tutor tots online and is a virtual school. And so you get access to both of us and a small group cohort to give you that accountability. You need to really make your dreams of owning an education business a reality. We'd love to have you join us and I will put the link in the show notes


Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones