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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and how often do I say that as entrepreneurs, we get to be the change that we wish to see in the world, and today's entrepreneur is such an incredible illustration of exactly that, because this is someone who is deeply passionate about education, about students, about technology, about making a positive impact, and that's exactly what he's done with his business.
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He's a former school teacher who has turned all of those passions into a business that is leaving a very lasting, positive change in classrooms around the country.
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So let me tell you all about today's guest Guest.
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His name is Mike Cronley.
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In his 12 years of teaching third grade near Denver, colorado, mike shared the frustrations of many colleagues enduring inequitable classes, for example, classes having an imbalance of low readers or students with challenging behavior, and these imbalances weren't surprising, given the student placement process was done with pink and blue paper cards.
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This is a little bit of behind the scenes.
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I'm curious to hear more about the old school way of doing things from Mike here today.
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Mike received his bachelor's in psychology from the Ohio State University and an elementary teaching certificate from the University of Colorado, in Denver.
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He's no longer in the classroom, but he is an educator at heart who loves making a positive impact on the lives of teachers and students.
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So he's come up with a brilliant solution that combines all of the passions that I've teased with you here in this intro and he's turned all of that into a business that, like I said, is making that positive change.
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So we're gonna hear an incredible entrepreneurial story.
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We're gonna hear behind the scenes of how education is changing for the better, thanks to innovators and pioneers and, yes, entrepreneurs like Mike.
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So I'm excited about this one.
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I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Mike Cronley.
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All right, mike, I am so very 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 a real treat to be here.
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Heck, yes.
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Now, mike, I didn't spoil the really cool backstory to your business, starting about how some ideas are born in the boardroom but others are born in the lunchroom.
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So I want you to kick things off for us by taking us beyond the bio.
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Give us that backstory.
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Who's Mike?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Well, I, as you mentioned, I was a third grade teacher in the Denver Colorado area for 12 years and I'd been teaching for a few years and the genesis of my company, which is called Class Composer, was from a conversation that I had with our incredible music teacher in the teacher's lounge.
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Music teacher in the teacher's lounge and she was complaining about two boys that should have been separated, uh, from the previous year.
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The music teacher she sees all the classes in the whole school and they ended up back together again, uh, the next year.
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And we both started talking at the same time and it was like this seems pretty obvious, like these, this, these type of errors shouldn't happen when students are getting placed in the classes.
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And we both kind of said at the same time wouldn't it be great if there was a software program to kind of catch this or handle this data?
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So that's how the idea for Class Composer started.
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Yeah, I love that overview.
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But, mike, as I teased in the top of this episode, is that I don't think a lot of us understand the old school way of doing things and why these pain points are so real and how it ends up this way.
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So paint that contrast for us.
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What did it look like?
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What, I guess what has it looked like is the better tensing for that question.
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And then, what is your vision of a better way of doing things?
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So the majority of elementary schools across the country still do it in this old-fashioned manner, which is paper-based.
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So essentially, it's the springtime, near the end of the school year, and the grade level teachers I taught for grade you know it was a designated time and you would gather and come to this meeting prepped, so it could be on a sticky note or on the traditional blue and pink paper cards blue for boys, pink for girls and each school has their own kind of data that they want to account for for each student, but some of the general ones are in this book.
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It's written on each card that represents a student gender, academic level, behavior ratings.
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Maybe they need to be separated from each other the next year, just to take a break.
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Maybe they have some identified needs, like English language learners or special ed.
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So all these things get written down on each piece of paper for each student.
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And then you have to imagine laying these cards out on the floor or, if they're sticky notes, or on a whiteboard.
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We used to do it on top of our desk after school was out and essentially what you're doing is making decisions for the grade level teachers above you.
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So we were creating classes for fourth grade for the next academic year and you really are just shuffling cards and laying them out and you're trying to create, in general, equity.
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That's the big goal.
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So you know, the obvious one is behavior with students.
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I don't want one class to be loaded up with challenging behavior students in comparison to the other classes in fourth grade.
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That's one criteria.
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Then there's another one like I don't want all the struggling readers to end up in one class because that's a hard lift for that teacher to try to meet their needs.
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We should even those out.
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So you kind of go down the list of all these factors that really you know, impact the classroom for the next year.
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And with paper it's almost impossible to do it well because at a certain point there's data overload, because you're focused on one criteria, like behavior, but you miss, you can't see the, the other, you can't see the other hidden data.
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That happens when you're shuffling these students around to create classes.
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And the one point I often forget and I don't want to forget here is what makes it really really critical is, unlike middle or high school, elementary students don't get shuffled into other classes or they don't go through a rotation like first period I'm in science, second period I'm in math.
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They're with that teacher in that classroom, with those groups of students for the whole day, for the whole year.
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So if there's any inequity it has this direct impact throughout the year.
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That makes it a real challenge for a classroom teacher and the classroom culture right and for the lives of those students day to day.
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So hopefully that gives you a little bit of background on the problem and the current state of how these classes get created in elementary schools.
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Yeah, it definitely paints that picture of us and it makes sense.
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I mean, I'm thinking back to when I was in school, which feels like ages ago, mike, and I would imagine that you talk about all this data Heck.
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There were so many considerations back when we were kids, let alone today there's so much more access and that's why I was a math tutor in college, so I'll geek out about all things math and I'm just like.
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The human brain can't comprehend these multivariate scenarios and that's why we have math and calculus and today, when we extrapolate data and all the ways we can introduce AI into all of that.
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So talk to us about Class Composer.
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Obviously, this is your solution in the new way that you want to do things, and you wanna make these more equitable classrooms across the entire country.
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You didn't just see this opportunity area.
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I guess I'm asking you this not only from a process perspective, but the fact that you decided to take it upon yourself and say let's actually build something, let's actually launch this into the world through the lens of a business, because businesses drive so much positive change in society and across culture.
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What was that spark that made you say let's actually take action on this and do it a little bit differently.
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That was the hard part.
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I had to cross that bridge at a certain point and I didn't come from an entrepreneurial background.
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You know my family history.
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You know I was quite happy being a teacher and what happened?
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It was almost like the calling to become a teacher.
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That, for me, was a process over time that I kept.
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You know, I kept getting nudged towards being a teacher and I listened to that and I became a teacher.
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Right.
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The same thing happened with being an entrepreneur to make this idea happen and and actually bring it into the world.
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And I liked what you said and I didn't believe this a long time ago, but now I do and I really believe in business can drive innovation and positive outcomes in the world.
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And I really tried to do what I described as far as making equitable classes better within the confines of a district and a school structure.
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But it was impossible to do and I had to go out of that world to devote all my energy to make it a reality.
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So it was a period of time, so I was still teaching full time and it took about six years for me to stop teaching and devote myself full time to making this idea a reality.
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But what was happening in those six years was I kept seeing the same problem over and over again and I kept bugging my principal and say, hey, can we try something different this year?
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Even though it was paper and I was iterating and testing each year.
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And I was iterating and testing each year and I was taking pictures and analyzing it and dreaming up how it would look in a digital software type of world, like what would it look like on a screen.
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So all this was happening over those six years before I actually really decided to take the leap and actually try to make it a business and bring, bring that impact beyond just my school, if that makes sense.
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Yeah, mike, not only does it make sense, but, my goodness, I'm so excited to go deeper into this topic in this conversation with you, because that sounds like a huge revelation for you is that the power of entrepreneurship as the vehicle for positive change and and I always use that word of a vehicle for it, because simply starting a business doesn't do anything, but when you use that business to enact change, whether it's making individual business to consumer lives better or tackling industry-wide problems, like what you're doing in the world of education what is it that makes business and entrepreneurship such a unique vehicle compared to what you said, that it seemed like an impossible challenge to do it from within.
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Talk to me about why this vehicle of business and entrepreneurship is so different than internally trying to tackle these problems.
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I love entrepreneurship right, and I think there is a space for entrepreneurial thinking within organizations right, but what I've experienced is you need really good leaders who are confident and supportive and willing to take that risk with you.
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If that makes sense, it's like, hey, I noticed something that could be better, there's a problem and we're not doing a good a job as possible, right, and to meet the needs of our stakeholders, our customers, whoever we're serving, and let's try something different, let's experiment and try to improve, and my experience has been that isn't really what they're about, right?
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The organization is designed to kind of continue the wheel that's in motion, which is different than being an entrepreneur.
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So at a certain point, it almost requires you to step outside of that structure to really do what you want to do right, and there's no constraints on that.
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And it's also like I'm going to do what I want to do right and and there's no constraints on that.
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And it's also like I'm going to do what I want to do right and no one's going to tell me otherwise.
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Well, actually, the market will tell you otherwise if you're doing a good job right, um, but uh, I I think that's the story for a lot of entrepreneurs.
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It's like they tried to do it, but at a certain point you just have to remove yourself and do it in your own world and make it your own world.
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Yeah, mike, and you said the words without constraints, and I think that that's one of the unique powers of entrepreneurship as a vehicle is that we don't have any boxes, we don't have a boss, we don't have a job description, we don't have anything that's going to stop the way of what we think.
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But, as you said, the market forces will tell us, and I want to go there with you because when you talk about those market forces and change is really a big theme of the things that you're introducing us here today you're talking about a very different way for schools to operate and for schools to put together these equitable classrooms, and I have the luxury of scrolling through your website so I can actually see class composer in action and how it works and I can see really it makes sense of we're talking about.
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This student is great at reading, this one's not so great at math.
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This one's really great at writing.
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Here's what their behavior is like.
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Here's what their work skills are like.
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So it's balancing all of these different things.
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What are the school's reactions to it?
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Because you're a former teacher, so you've got some street cred when you're having these conversations with people.
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But how are schools reacting to this way of putting together their classrooms.
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Once they start using it they're enthusiastic and they do like it.
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But it's still scary for them to make that switch because they've kind of fine-tuned their process right for the blue and pink paper cards.
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This is how we do it year over year and it's working well enough, I guess, for schools.
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So it is a scary process for them to transition.
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And I worked really hard and you were talking about the.
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You know my background in education and I hear that from our new customers that that was one of the reasons they considered us.
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Was that my background in education?
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You know they think there is credibility and say look, I'm not going to put you in a software program that isn't user-friendly or doesn't understand the needs of teachers.
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Like, that was very well thought out over a really long period of time and we're still trying to iterate to make it better.
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But overall our customers are happy and we have a good renewal rate and ultimately it gets down to are we delivering the value that we're promising?
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Right, and there's two big value statements.
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One is doing that paper-based process is really time-consuming and very frustrating, but ultimately what we're trying to do is create.
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Have you use our product so you feel confident that you're creating these equitable classes.
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Well, right, and that has a direct impact on lives of teachers and students.
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So once our customers, who are elementary school principals, and the users who are the classroom teachers, use our product and they create the classes and then the next school year starts, that's the real proof in the pudding is when those teachers are having a conversation, it's like, hey, how'd your class come out?
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And there's four classes in fourth grade and they say, yeah, it's pretty well distributed.
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That's when they're sold on us because we delivered the value right.
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Yeah, I love that, mike, especially because I'll tell you this from the outside, looking in, I'm obviously a business junkie.
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I can't get enough of looking at business and how they operate and their messaging and their marketing and their sales and all of these processes that power successful businesses.
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And when we came across Class Composer, I love the fact that you said the software, and you guys definitely operate as a really great software company, as a tech company.
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I mean, you've got a sandbox school.
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So if I land on Class Composer's website, I have no idea how this stuff works.
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I can try your sandbox.
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You've set up a demo school so I can actually see it in action.
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Because, as you said, the proof is in the pudding.
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It's one thing to hear about it, it's another thing to see it and to use it, and so, with that in mind, I wonder where the marketplace is, because it makes sense to me that your clients are very happy.
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But for the schools that aren't yet on it that you are talking to, are they ready to admit, yeah, there's a problem?
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We're not so great at this.
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The old way of doing things isn't the best way.
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Are they that self-aware in recognizing that problem, or is it a bit of education from your end to say, hey, what you have been doing is the best way that was available to us historically, but here's a new way.
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What do those conversations look like?
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yeah, they, it's a mix.
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Um, you know, I think part of it is just making them aware that we exist.
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But there is a solution and I think you know, in just going in a wider lens, you know our market unique because and I lived it is educators don't get up in the morning to look for new software.
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They get up thinking about kids.
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And how can I do a better job today, meeting their needs, real life, in person, face to face, face.
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What am I going to do in this hour to make a really good lesson?
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Or I know a student, my class is struggling with something.
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Right, I'm going to try to help them today.
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That that's top of mind, right, and like when I, when I do sales calls, it's unbelievable.
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Almost every time I'm talking with a principal or assistant principal at the end of the day and you hear the bell ringing, a student popping in to ask a question.
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It's so busy and they're so involved with the students that we're kind of secondary right.
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So there's a little bit of a challenge to kind of reach them and tell our story.
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But once they see us and once they understand what we're doing, they don't really require a lot of education, like in the beginning of this you know our podcast I was kind of giving the background and story of how classes are created.
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Teachers don't need that.
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They just see the solution and they're like, got it.
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You know, they know how it can deliver value.
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So the big challenge for us is just having kind of a marketing challenge, right, how do we get in front of them?
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How do we, you know, just make them aware of this solution out there?
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And you know we have other competitors and you know, obviously we think we're the best and check us out.
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You know so.
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But it's a unique market because of just the nature of the lives of teachers day to day.
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Yeah, I love hearing those insights and hearing you talk about this.
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Mike, I'm picturing you in a classroom, you know, years ago, imagining yourself on a business podcast saying, yeah, I'm having sales calls.
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It probably felt like such a foreign idea to you and that's why I want to put you on the spot to really pick on the fact that, as an educator, I'm sure you bring a different way of quote unquote sales.
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I'm sure a lot of these I mean even hearing the way you talk about your sales calls it's really just about yeah, we have a solution and we present it in front of educators who already understand it.
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Talk to me about those unique skill sets and I guess the attitude and the mindset that you approach business and sales and marketing with with your educational background, and that hat on.
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How has that uniquely set you up for entrepreneurial success?
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And that hat on, how has that uniquely set you up for?
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entrepreneurial success.
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Yeah, I think the benefit from my background of being a teacher is really listening well and kind of reading the room a little bit and what's happening with people, and I think that is really important from a sales perspective and in the early days and I think obviously people are listening who are thinking about being an entrepreneur and taking that leap and trying something new.
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Guess what?
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You are a salesperson Day one.
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You are selling your vision to people who you need to join your team.
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That could be technical help, it could be support people.
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You have to sell your vision and your idea to those people.
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Then you have to sell to investors potentially.
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Then you have to sell to investors potentially.
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Then you have to sell to customers and you can't look over your shoulder and outsource that in the early days.
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You have to own it and that was really hard for me.
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I didn't want to do it, I didn't think of myself as a salesperson, but my real turning point, reading and understanding this, is I'm not a salesperson, I'm an evangelist.
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I'm telling you and sharing with you that a really good story, right, and I'm here to help you and you should be using us, because the benefits are going to outweigh the cost of what you're going to pay me right to honor us, to, to support us in our mission, right?
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So I think that's a mind shift you have to get to is we have something so great that I cannot wait to tell you about it, and it's in the lens of helping people and that's what teachers do, right, and I and that transition over for me really seamlessly once I got over that hump and said, yeah, I am here to help you and I want to tell a story of how what we do can help you and make a difference in your life.
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Yeah, mike, I love hearing the way that you think about those things, because what I really hear and it's what caught our team's eye when we reached out and invited you to come on the show today is how mission-driven you are.
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I think that, as entrepreneurs, we're all builders.
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We're all builders and we're all learners.
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We love learning things and we love putting them into action.
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To a fault sometimes is that sometimes we build things because we can, and especially when I look at your business a tech business there's so many features that I'm sure you and your team could roll out if you wanted to, and what really stands out to me is how mission-driven you are.
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It seems to me like that mission of building equitable classrooms trumps anything else that you guys focus on.
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Talk to me about that mission-driven, because that's also part of the educator's journey that I don't think we, as students, fully appreciated when we were young is that these teachers not only show up to corral kids and to teach us the material, but they're doing it because of the fact that they are mission driven.
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Talk to me about the importance there, and not only how you found it, but how it continues to drive you and your team.
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Yeah, and being mission driven to me hasn't gone away, and and I I started it because I wanted to solve this problem and I was trying to do it inside my school, right, and I wanted that feeling to continue, even though you are starting a business and other considerations take place, and this is really tough, right, because all of a sudden it's like, hey, we, obviously you need money to keep going in a business, and that's a challenge, right, and then other other voices or other ideas start coming into your head, which becomes a detractor for your mission, because you start making decisions that are not aligned with your mission, and one of those is, hey, we need to widen our product offering or try to reach another market, and it starts to take away from your mission um.
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So I think staying mission driven as much as you can and I know there's market forces that are going to impact that um is really important and over time I've tried to like, make it stay.
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It's hard, right, and it's like we have a good story and maybe our product isn't as rich a feature set, but it's staying true to our mission.
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But it's a challenge, right, because you're trying to make it viable business in the early days right, to make it viable business in the early days right, um, so, um.
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But I think I'm trying to fight that battle and stay mission driven for the long term.
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Yeah, I love that.
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These are real life forces that we're all trying to balance in all the ways, because it's not like any of these things are more important or less important than the others.
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They all work in harmony.
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And so, hearing you talk about growing a viable business while being mission driven, while understanding the market forces that are in play, these are all the things that we all face, regardless of industry, regardless of business size, huge businesses are still balancing all of these things.
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So, mike, with that in mind, I do want to zoom out.
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I want to talk on that more macro level, because this year, here in 2025, you're not only looking at where the world of education is going societally, student wise, what are the problems and challenges that students and teachers are facing but even from a tech perspective, everyone wants to talk about AI this year, and understandably so.
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What's your view on these broader market forces?
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Are you keeping a keen eye on where AI is headed?
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Is that something that you're already looking at embedding, and how can we tap into that?
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Are you looking at macro educational forces?
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I'd love to hear that more visionary, forward thinking mind as well.
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Well, I'm really curious about AI and I'm actually attending the.
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There's a really big education technology conference in Florida coming up in a couple weeks in Orlando and I'm looking forward to just walking around and seeing what's out there.
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And AI is obviously very hot at the moment.
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I just have hesitations about it.
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My first hesitation about it is what is the problem that's being solved, or what is the what is being solved with using AI in education?
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That's my first hurdle to overcome to be sold on it.
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The big thing for me is and this is part of the mission of Class Composer is we don't want to impact instruction, right, we're a software program behind the scenes, it's an administrative tool that has an output of these equitable classes that makes learning more impactful and the classroom culture better, and we don't want to get into the world or step over that line of.
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We're going to start being involved with teaching, right, and I think automation how far can automation go right?
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And I think there's some things that just can't be automated in education and it does require a dedicated, caring teacher who is delivering great lessons and being present for kids and is a good leader for the class are automated.
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But those are my hesitations that I have now and who knows what will happen.
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You know, if somebody asked me about the internet in the early days, I probably would be saying the same thing, but I'm just curious to see how this plays out in education.
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Yeah, I love hearing that.
00:29:18.294 --> 00:29:18.756
Mike.
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I'm going to come back to you 12 months from now and ask you the same question, because it is an ever evolving landscape and I think that's the beauty of all of our businesses that there's so many unknowns.
00:29:27.561 --> 00:29:51.579
And hearing you in real time work this out with us here in today's episode, it's really cool to hear the way that your mind thinks and the things that you balance, the things that you weigh, the things that you're questioning and I think it's healthy to question all the things on all of our growth journeys, because what I wanna bring it back to is the fact that when you're assessing look here we are talking about AI you're bringing it back to does this serve our mission?
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Does this create more equitable classrooms?
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And I love hearing and seeing in real time how much that plays into the questions that you ask, the things you entertain.
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So it's really cool to hear all of that.
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And I love asking this super broad question at the end because, Mike, in your case, I'm excited to hear it, because I have no idea which direction you're going to take this question in, and that is what's your one piece of advice you are not only someone who's at the forefront of making these positive impacts in the world of education, but you're also one of us.
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You're also a fellow entrepreneur, growing your own business, developing your own product as a software company, and so, with all of that in mind, what's that one thing that you want to impart on our listeners that are that are at all different stages of their own business growth journeys?
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yeah, I think you know there's a lot and I know there's a lot of books and materials on the internet for entrepreneurship and I think the one thing that I would want to leave your listeners with is keep talking to your potential customers or your current customers, and don't drop that.
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And obviously in the beginning, when you're trying to start up a new project or a new company, it's critical you have to be talking to them and really understanding what their needs are and the challenges they face.
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But continue to talk to them and continue to have meetings with them and don't lose that touch with your customers Once you launch your business and keep listening to them, they're gonna tell you where you need to go, and I schedule calls today and it's amazing.
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I'm still shocked when I hear from a principal about a feature request that I never dreamed of and when, as soon as they told me, that feature request is like oh, that's so obvious, you know, type of reaction.
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So I think the importance of listening to your customers and engaging with them always is really critical yes, important advice for all of us, not only at every step of our business journeys, but constantly doing that.
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Mike, I think that it's been on full display here in our conversation today that part of your competitive advantage is being an educator and I'm not going to say a former educator, because it's clear that you're carrying that hat with you and that's such an important thing when it comes to the strategy, the decisions, the mission, the execution of all the things that you and your team are doing at Class Composer.
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So huge kudos to you.
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I so appreciate that advice for all of our listeners worldwide.
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With all of that said, I've had the great pleasure of seeing Class Composer in action.
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I think that, from a strategic and a business and a marketing standpoint, you are doing some really brilliant things with the way that you're rolling this out.
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I already teased about the sandbox school.
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