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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and if you want to hear an entrepreneurial story and some lessons and insights about someone who is making changes not only for the greater good but for all of society because we're talking about a very important sector here today and that is education and we're doing it with someone who is a fellow entrepreneur, she's just like one of us.
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This is someone who is not only incredible at the things that she does.
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I promise you, having gone as deep as I have into her business and read the testimonials that are out there and heard about the change that she's made, not only is she amazing at what she does, she's assembled a team of incredible people together.
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They have over a hundred years of experience in making positive changes within the educational world.
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But this is someone who is so clear in her values, the way it shows up in her company and really the mission that she serves.
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So let me tell you all about today's entrepreneur.
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Her name is Dr Lizzie Johnson.
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Lizzie has served students in Texas public education since 1996.
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She began her career as a middle school history teacher in Denton, texas, and has served students in Texas public education since 1996.
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She began her career as a middle school history teacher in Denton, Texas, and has served in multiple roles throughout her professional walk as an educator in rural, suburban and urban districts throughout the state of Texas.
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The various positions and years of experience at the campus and district level have only prepared Dr Johnson for this journey.
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As the CEO of Transcend4, which isa company that provides support and guidance to school districts, throughout all of her career she has led many initiatives in the arena of forward thinking and future visioning work.
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These experiences led her to develop the collaborative visioning framework we're definitely going to hear more about that in today's episode to support organizations in their strategic future goals.
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Spoiler alert is that all of these values that she's going to share with us from the world of education, they just apply to humanity and business and interpersonal relationships and communication.
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On an even broader level.
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Her clients have ranged from school districts to architects, to construction managers and software companies that make the list for companies.
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She's helped to cast a future vision.
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This is someone who thinks big and, incredibly, makes a very big impact, so I'm excited to learn from her.
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I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Dr Lizzie Johnson.
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All right, Lizzie, I'm so excited that you're here with us today.
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First things first, welcome to the show.
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Thank you, Brian.
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It's great to be here.
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Appreciate you asking me to come on and share some of my story.
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Heck.
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Yes, I am excited to go deep into that story, lizzie, so I'm going to ask you to kick things off.
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Take us beyond the bio.
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You've done so many amazing things and I love that.
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All roads led to an entrepreneurial journey.
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So who's Lizzie?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Okay, so one of the most important things to know about me is I was a child of poverty, and so we lived very much below the poverty line in my early childhood, from about birth to 10 years old, and so it just gave me a lot of hustle and grit and to understand that wasn't something I wanted to continue in my adult life, and so not only were we food insecure, but we were home insecure and a lot of just outside pressures that contributed to some of that.
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And so, as education started to unfold for me and being in school, educators were really my advocates, and so I learned from a lot of them that my current situation did not predicate my future, and they gave me the hope and inspiration I needed to know I could do anything.
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And so I went to college, didn't know anything about even applying for college, but had a great set of mentors and role models in that public ed space who really helped me to understand what that meant and helped guide me through that process, and so got to college, went to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, america, and, you know, got an undergrad there in history and a minor in public or in education, and then I went to teach and I loved it and I thought this is it I'm a teacher and I love students and I love public education.
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And then I went to teach and I loved it and I thought this is it I'm a teacher and I love students and I love public education.
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And then, as in all things, you learn to new skills and you start seeing other positions and other opportunities in that field and I decided I was going to go get a master's degree.
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I was really encouraged by my principal at the time.
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Her name was Barbara Fisher and she said you should go get a master's and you should move into administration and be really good at this.
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So I did and I loved it and you know I was a middle school person.
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I love middle school kids.
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They're so weird and it was just fun being in that space.
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And then I moved into central office and there was a lot of change there.
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I worked in many different school districts around the state, lots of different sizes rural, suburban, midsize, urban and learned a lot from that experience.
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And then, towards the end of my public ed career, I finished my doctorate and I started meeting people in the industry who were you could call them vendors or partners in public ed and one of them in particular.
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He was the principal in an architecture firm at the time, but now he's the CEO.
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He said, lizzie, we've got a problem and we need help, and architects aren't really good at this thing that we're trying to do.
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We're helping school districts plan their bonds and planned what they put in bonds and using community.
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And he said there's a lady that's doing this and she's getting ready to retire and I think you should meet her because I think you'd be really good at doing this, because you love public ed and you love doing good things for kids.
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And so that was kind of how it started.
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And I finished my doctorate and just kind of jumped off the deep end and left that public ed space and decided that I was going to start this company, and that was in 2018.
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And so the name of it's Transcend4.
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And at that point, it was me alone.
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A few months later, I got to bring in my amazing assistant, kim, and she's helped me from the beginning and just over time, we've accumulated some amazing former administrators, former public educators, who all have very similar past as mine.
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And what we really do, our mission, in this company, is to go out and help school districts make the best decisions for students.
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A lot of the things we do is we work with committees and we help build capacity and consensus in within that, and then, on another note, I help vendors and public ed partners be better at what they do.
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We also do strategic planning.
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We do school board training, leadership training, we do program evals and audits you name it.
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We we've got a long cadre of programs and services that we do, but the one thing we always stick to is doing the right things for students.
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Sometimes that's not the most popular thing in a room full of adults, but once you stick to it, it will be the best thing for everyone involved.
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So I had no business experience.
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I've leaned on some others who have done something similar to me and obviously on some CEOs who've been very successful and just kind of jumped in and learned from them and then learned from mistakes and along the way it's just been a great journey so far.
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So we started with just me and now there is 12 of us and everyone's just working and doing good things for kids.
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Yeah, I love that overview, lizzie.
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You have immediately shown me why your work resonates so deeply with me personally.
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So I'm the son of an immigrant mom.
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I'm a first generation college student from my family.
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Neither of my parents went to college and so, for me, I also majored in economics and finance, and I think that when we talk economics, everyone wants to talk stock market, and I think every teenager who majored in economics that's what we thought it would be.
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But I think and we're not going to cross into politics today, but I will confess that what I've mostly been obsessed with when it comes to considering economic climates in a country is class mobility.
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Are there opportunities for people to grow and move upward, which, lizzie, I think both of our personal stories show that possibility, and at the root of it, of course, is education.
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And that's where the blanket statement I'd love to make and I hope most people will agree with this is that I think we all acknowledge the fact that education needs to improve.
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We owe it to kids, we owe it to future generations to have those opportunities available to them.
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But, lizzie, you are an action taker.
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You're not just someone who agreed with that statement, you actually took the plunge and you're part of the solution.
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You're part of the change.
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Talk to us about what made you take that jump.
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Sure.
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So just my opinion too, brian.
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I will tell you, education is the great equalizer, in my opinion I think a lot of people share that as well Everyone starts at the same place when you go into a school, and as much as you want to learn, it's all there to fill you up.
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As much as you want to learn, it's all there to fill you up.
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And so I think that when I look back at this journey and just my whole life in general, it's been about discovery, and I never thought in a million years that I would be owning and running a company.
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That just was never on my mind.
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But what made me take the jump was I'll tell you a little secret I never stayed in a school district more than five years because most of my positions I was the change agent.
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So I went into a situation where they were not doing great and they needed to improve, and so I was the bad guy.
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So I would put in structures and systems to help move towards continuous improvement, and then after about four and a half years I needed to go because I wasn't the most popular person in the room.
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But then whoever came behind me could just continue with those systems and processes and everything just kept running real smooth at that point.
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But so that was my typical mode of operation in my career.
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I never got a five year anniversary pin from a school district, never stayed long enough for that.
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So a lot of different situations, a lot of different experiences in my career.
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And I think that at the end, when I was ending that time and finished my doctorate, I was yearning for something a little bit different again.
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And when this presented itself, it was so radical to me to think that I wouldn't be under the public umbrella from the state any longer and that I would just be, you know, doing my own thing and creating my own narrative.
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At that point and it was exciting.
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And I also knew that if it didn't work I could just return back to my safe place.
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But I've always been that kind of person to think if I don't try it, I would probably regret it and regret that decision of not just throwing myself out there and doing it.
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And you know, honestly, it worked.
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And so even during a pandemic, which was the scariest time for me, because you know, as you know, a lot of schools shut down from that March of 20, all the way, some even through the fall of 20.
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And so I was at a point in sitting in my living room thinking, okay, what's going to happen?
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But, as you know also, kids still had to be educated, and so there were different ways of thinking and different ways of doing things, and so I helped school districts come up with some of those ideas and then, obviously, help them in initiatives that they just had to do.
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There was no getting around it, because you had to do what was right for kids.
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I do agree with your statement that we have to be different.
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You know, when I think of public ed or any school, I think students are the clients and we have to provide them an incredible experience.
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You know, just like when you go on vacation or you go shopping or you go to a nice restaurant to have a nice meal.
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That's an experience, right?
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I think we should think of school as the same, so we're not just opening the door and telling them to come in and just this is what you're doing.
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We want them to lead their learning, lead that experience, give us the feedback we need to know how to do better for them, and I think if more of us would embrace that, then school would be more of a priority for students.
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We have some great things going on in our public schools in Texas and incredible things not just great, I'm going to say they're incredible and we are producing amazing students.
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But I always say there's a gap and that gap is where your continuous improvement is and it's that gap analysis that you have to take and find out how do we do better.
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Because I think when you've decided you're at the top and there's nowhere else to go, you're missing the boat.
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There's always room to improve.
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There's always room to be better, especially when you're thinking about young learners and young citizens.
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Yeah, lizzie, I'll tell you what I love the fact that you injected that little backstory and the importance in your journey of you being that change agent inside so many schools that you were a part of.
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I think that it shows your slightly rebellious entrepreneurial DNA, of course, that that has always been a part of the way that you operate.
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It's something that I felt.
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I only had a quote, unquote real job for 10 months of my life after graduation in the world of healthcare, and I questioned everything, lizzie, if we were doing something and I love technology I was just like why are we not automating this?
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Why can't we create a script that handles this?
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And so what I found, though, lizzie and I hear this in so many entrepreneurial stories is that those change agents, those pioneers, it's a hard sell.
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Sometimes People don't want to change, and especially, you work in an industry that has existed since the beginning of time, of course, education, what's that like?
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What's the reception like?
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Obviously, transcend4 is doing amazing work, but I would imagine, not everybody's comfortable with that sort of change.
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Sure, sure.
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You know, when we go into a school district to work with them, we always do a needs analysis, no matter what the project is.
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We sit down with the leaders and we talk about what are their needs, what are their hopes for the outcomes, and then we always tell them some people are going to be uncomfortable, this is going to make some people in your organization, in your community, in your school board uncomfortable, but I always lead with this.
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We come in as the experts, we're the ones that do this work day in and day out.
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Typically, on the other side, the leaders in the school district.
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They're doing different things.
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They're managing and leading the daily operations of a large organization.
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We come in and fixate on one thing that we do very well, and so I have to always tell them you have to trust the process.
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And they get antsy, they get angst, anxiety, all those things, and then, of course, the superintendent has to, you know, make the board feel better about certain things that we're doing.
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But you know, always tell them if you trust the process and look at our track record.
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It works and we do this all the time.
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And so trust the people that do it all the time.
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I use this analogy where I always say you wouldn't go let your auto mechanic clean your teeth, would you?
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And they look at me and they're like, no, lizzie, I wouldn't do that.
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And I'm like, well, I'm the one that does this all the time, whether it's bonds or strategic planning or process auditing or whatever it might be.
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This is our work.
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Let us come in and do it and trust us that we're going to get the job done for you.
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You know, I always say when you work with a school district, students are very flexible and they embrace change.
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It's the adults that have the hardest time with change, but in all reality, that change is best for students.
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It's going to bring more to their experience and it's going to bring more value add.
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And obviously, you know one of the number one goals as a school district is you want to increase student outcomes and increase teacher effectiveness and that will just add to the overall you know outcomes of the district.
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Yeah, To that point I'm super curious to hear more about just within the world of education.
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Is this something that typically a school district will raise their hand and say, Lizzie, we need some helps with, there's some opportunities for us to grow.
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Or is it something where, just leveraging your vast network and contacts within the world of education because you've been in that world for so long where you have those conversations and you kind of enlighten them?
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I'm curious to hear about that side of it.
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Yeah, brian, it's kind of both, because I'm going to tell you we do not spend a lot of money on marketing.
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I mean, we have had the same website for eight years to this summer.
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We just hired someone to, you know, upgrade it and you know it was good, we used it, but it's better now.
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I will say we finally have some marketing collateral.
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In the beginning I started with business cards and you know that was about it, and a lot of my work is word of mouth and referrals.
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Now you are correct in saying I have a pretty solid network of educators that I know superintendents, school board members, things of that nature but when we do good work in one district, the other districts notice or they'll talk to the superintendent about it and then we just get a constant referral.
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Another thing that happens more often than not is we'll go in and do a big project in a brand new district.
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We've never worked in and I think this is true to a lot of consulting companies but we go in, we do the project, we knock it out of the park.
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It just rocks, it's good, and guess what?
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Another thing comes up that they go.
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Will y'all do that, or can you do that?
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And you know we're always up for it, we're like sure we can, we will do it, we're going to do it a hundred percent.
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And I think when you do a good job, people continue to use you.
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You know it's it's kind of like Apple.
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I always use them as a reference because look at all the iPhones that people keep buying and keep buying.
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I mean I'm on like I don't know 15 at this point and that's just a great example.
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And I think our company is the same.
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We just keep doing good work and we keep being able to do more and more projects for school districts.
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Yeah, lizzie, you bring up your website, so I'm going to pick on it a little bit, because, as I was doing my research, that's what really stood out to me is the consistency in your values and the way that you communicate those.
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The words that rose to the top, no matter how deep I went into your business, is, of course, that concept of what is the best decision for students.
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But, more importantly, I love how deeply these four values are embedded in your brand collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity.
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Lizzie, I know that you have a lot of intention and strategy behind all the decisions that you make to serve the students.
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Why did those four values rise to the top?
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So, brian, those are the four C's of education and those are the four things that educators strive for in their daily work with students, you know, and with parents, I think.
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But those four things just really stood out to me because it's something that was familiar in this world, and I think they are very broad but also very focused, in a way.
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I heard Bruce Springsteen say one time it's simple but complicated, and I think that's the same for those four C's as well.
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They can be very simple, but they can also be very complicated, and it's how you attack them and how you present yourself through the company to show your clients that you can get all four done.
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Yeah, I love that overview, especially because obviously you're an educator at heart, but you're also a CEO.
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So I want to tap into that CEO mindset.
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And you talk about growing your team and it's honestly amazing at what you've done.
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All the profiles that I read about your team.
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Everyone is incredibly accomplished in their own right and when you bring them under one roof, it's really cool to see the impact that you all can make.
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So my question to you, as a fellow CEO, is what's that been like for you to inject those values, to inject a company culture that you've called out a few times in our conversation today?
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It was just you, Lizzie.
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This is something you've built up from the ground.
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What has that looked like to make sure that you set Transcend 4 on the path that you always envision and get that buy-in from everyone around you?
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Sure, sure.
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So one of the.
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So always when I was in leadership in school district I worked in pretty much every area of the central office admin building except superintendent.
00:21:12.544 --> 00:21:20.862
I was never superintendent but I'd been in HR academics, you know leadership, just all the different facets.
00:21:20.862 --> 00:21:38.440
So HR was kind of one of my last stops along the way before I went to my final gig, before I left public ed and or left the state umbrella not public ed, but in HR I realized you're only as good as your lowest talent.
00:21:39.500 --> 00:21:49.180
And so when I started doing all of this, I thought I'm going to be real strategic about who I bring into this fold, this family.
00:21:49.180 --> 00:21:50.742
And I stalked people.
00:21:50.742 --> 00:21:51.590
I'm not going to lie.
00:21:51.590 --> 00:22:03.055
I would meet someone or I'd get a reference and I'd go watch them work or I would stalk them online and see what great things they were doing in their district that was under their leadership umbrella.
00:22:03.055 --> 00:22:05.882
And they all laugh because they know I did that.
00:22:05.882 --> 00:22:11.101
And it's kind of a running joke that you didn't just meet Lizzie and join the team.
00:22:11.101 --> 00:22:16.338
I had to really vet people Now in the beginning that's what it was like Then.
00:22:16.839 --> 00:22:43.352
The people I brought into the fold who did great things, they started saying now, Lizzie, I know somebody who is interested in working after retirement and Brian, I don't want to use that word retirement loosely these are very young retirees because, as you know, in public ed you add up your years of service and your age, that's what gets you to that magic number that you can retire.
00:22:43.352 --> 00:22:45.757
Well, some of us started teaching at 21.
00:22:45.757 --> 00:23:00.738
That was me, and so you know, a lot of us started very young and so we're young in, you know, early to mid 50s, and lots of work experience but lots of just zest for life and ready to go.
00:23:00.738 --> 00:23:12.864
So as I brought in these consultants, they started introducing me to others who were getting ready to retire and wanted to do some work and keep, you know, keep active.
00:23:12.864 --> 00:23:15.371
And it's just worked, it's just been great.
00:23:15.371 --> 00:23:39.794
And you know, the team is so different when you read all of their bios but if you were in a room with them you'd be like, wow, this is a lot of different personalities and opinions and you know strengths and weaknesses, but we all just kind of work so well together and they they just go with it and they just go with it.
00:23:39.794 --> 00:23:55.659
You know, one of the running jokes of my team is if Lizzie calls and says hey, I got a project for you, it's super easy, no big deal, you know, you just go do your thing, it'll be awesome.
00:23:55.659 --> 00:24:12.315
Then that kind of project sometimes turns into a little bit more than what we were hoping for, and so they all kind of make fun of me, because they're like Lizzie just has so much confidence in us that she doesn't even worry about, you know, the bumps along the way because she knows we can handle them.
00:24:12.315 --> 00:24:13.217
And that's the truth.
00:24:13.217 --> 00:24:17.355
They're very professional and they do a great job.
00:24:17.394 --> 00:24:20.702
Now I'm going to go back to one little thing you said in the beginning of this question.
00:24:20.702 --> 00:24:22.816
You know, put my CEO hat on.
00:24:22.816 --> 00:24:23.898
Well, guess what?
00:24:23.898 --> 00:24:33.596
I had no intention of being a CEO or running a company, and that's been the hardest learning curve for me, just understanding how to.
00:24:33.596 --> 00:24:55.752
At first I was doing all the work and over the past few years I've started releasing that work and trying to lead more than actually be in the field, and lead and work to support and market the business and not actually be in the work.
00:24:55.752 --> 00:24:57.477
That's been different for me.
00:24:57.477 --> 00:24:59.161
I'm still learning that, brian.
00:24:59.201 --> 00:25:02.096
I'm still working on it, lizzie, the truth is we're all still learning.
00:25:02.096 --> 00:25:13.262
I'm 16 years into my entrepreneurial journey and it's something that I'm, honestly, I have the coolest job in the world because I just get to learn from amazing entrepreneurs and business owners, and so it's an evolutionary process.
00:25:13.262 --> 00:25:24.161
Even I mean we've had people on the show who have sold companies for over $100 million and they realize, yeah, I'm still learning about this stuff and I love the fact that again, we're talking about education today.
00:25:24.161 --> 00:25:25.761
It is that lifelong journey.
00:25:26.082 --> 00:25:43.383
I wanna ask you this question because, obviously, as a CEO, it's one thing, but within a consultancy role, I've always argued that you all have an unfair advantage because you can quote unquote, read the label from outside the jar, and when you're working in the school districts, a lot of times you just don't see things that might be plainly obvious.
00:25:43.383 --> 00:25:47.385
You aren't just picking on your own experience from your career.
00:25:47.385 --> 00:25:52.297
You're looking at I mean, I'm just looking at your list of clients what you see in the Denton school district.
00:25:52.297 --> 00:25:54.871
You might take it to Allen and be like holy cow.
00:25:54.871 --> 00:25:57.615
You can just do this Like we've seen it work right down the road.
00:25:57.615 --> 00:26:09.115
And so, with that in mind, what have some of those surprising patterns or revelations or observations been now that you're on the outside looking in and gleaning from all that experience.
00:26:09.655 --> 00:26:10.278
Sure, sure.
00:26:10.278 --> 00:26:18.761
So I think the biggest pattern is that when you meet educators, you're not meeting anyone who's in it for fortune and glory.
00:26:18.761 --> 00:26:21.347
You're not meeting anyone who's in it for fortune and glory.
00:26:21.347 --> 00:26:23.874
These people are there, they were destined to be there.
00:26:23.874 --> 00:26:38.338
They love public ed, they love supporting students and they love bringing communities together, and I wish that was more the public opinion than what it's been skewed to be about public ed.
00:26:38.338 --> 00:26:51.202
But we aren't there to earn copious amounts of money and you know, work two hours a day Like these people are in it because they believe in it and they want to see it succeed.
00:26:51.769 --> 00:27:07.523
And so what I've learned going from district to district is there's different leadership styles, there's different ways of doing things, but ultimately they all want what's best for kids and they want to keep their communities happy too.
00:27:07.523 --> 00:27:11.760
And you know that's that's a tough ask.
00:27:11.760 --> 00:27:26.412
Lately, a lot of different opinions, a lot of false truths in society about public ed false truths in society about public ed.
00:27:26.412 --> 00:27:36.474
And so not only are they battling the task of making sure students succeed, but they're having to continue to push this truth and convince people of the truth, which is a little scary.
00:27:36.474 --> 00:27:37.477
Lately.
00:27:37.477 --> 00:27:41.865
I find that going from district to district.
00:27:41.865 --> 00:27:43.513
It's prescriptive.
00:27:43.513 --> 00:27:52.473
You know, everybody needs something a little different, but they're all in it for the same reason and that helps us to do our job better and to produce better outcomes for them.
00:27:53.195 --> 00:27:59.939
Yeah, really well said, and hearing you talk about kind of the more macro landscape it makes me ask you this broad question.
00:27:59.939 --> 00:28:06.034
I love asking this towards the end of these conversations because it's very future focused and I know that you personally are a visionary.
