Ep 34: How a Strong Culture Led to a 97% Retention Rate with Caitlin Mitchell of EB Academics
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How a Strong Culture Led to a 97% Retention Rate with Caitlin Mitchell
Are you curious about how building a strong community culture can increase retention?
With a membership of over 3000 people and an impressive 97-98% retention rate, Caitlin Mitchell, co-founder of EB Academics, has some valuable insights to share on creating a thriving community. She shares how the culture and identity of EB Academics have played a crucial role in their success. Plus, she reveals one essential mindset piece that you need to have in place to implement the three strategies she shares. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation about building community and fostering a sense of belonging.
Favorite Community
What is your favorite community that you've ever been a part of that isn't your own? Tell me what that community and what you loved about that community.
The Peloton app is my favorite community for numerous reasons, but the primary reason is the way it fosters an innate change in who you are. It's not merely about working out; it's also about your mindset, mental toughness, and pushing yourself to the next level. Peloton speaks to my identity as an athlete, a person, and someone who exercises. It's not only about giving exercise routines; it's much more than that, which is what I love about Peloton. I just love Peloton!
What’s Unique about EB Academics
Tell me about EB Academics and then tell me a little bit about what's unique about this community.
At the core of it, our goal is to assist teachers in loving teaching, particularly now as we're emerging from a difficult two-and-a-half years. Education has been a challenging field to work in. Before we developed our membership and program, we had two separate things: a monthly membership and a program that required a one-time payment. Before that, we had individual teaching resources priced at $5 each. While those resources were beneficial, they didn't fundamentally alter teachers' beliefs in themselves or their ability to enjoy the profession. They were quick fixes that addressed immediate issues, rather than an overall shift in self-belief and identity that would allow them to love the profession.
One day, I was listening to Stu discuss memberships, and I turned to Jess, saying, "We need to start a membership. Supporting teachers every day and every month on a continual basis is the best way to make a difference in education." That's how it all began: the desire to make a significant shift in education beyond merely providing resources here and there.
Teaching is a significant part of people's identity. When someone identifies as a teacher, it becomes all-encompassing, and they may lose sight of other parts of themselves. Many individuals feel called to this profession and believe they can make an impact in the world by changing kids' lives. Teaching is a purpose-driven profession, which is why it can be difficult for educators to receive feedback. Giving feedback on someone's teaching can feel like giving feedback on who they are because teaching and identity are so deeply intertwined. Our focus is on fundamentally changing teaching and teachers through their identity, which is the core of who they are as teachers and individuals.
We work on solving this issue and helping teachers by supporting them in their roles as mothers, partners, sisters, daughters, and individuals. We aim to help teachers find hobbies and passions outside of their teaching careers, something that is often overlooked when teachers are so focused on their profession. This is a crucial part of what we offer in our community.
Online Teaching Community Culture
Talk a little bit about what the typical culture is for teachers, especially in the online space. What would people typically find inside of a teaching community online?
Unfortunately, what we often see outside of our EB teacher bubble or community is negativity, self-doubt, dislike for the profession, burnout, and feeding into the negative narrative. No one is denying that there are unrealistic expectations from districts, and parents can be challenging, but those things are a reality. We encourage our teachers to look at moments like these as an opportunity to respond positively and take control of the type of system we create to insulate ourselves from the system we're up against.
Teachers who aren't a part of our community often find themselves in a negative culture, where teaching is viewed as awful and impossible to change. It's essential to acknowledge that those feelings are valid, and we've been there ourselves. I left teaching three and a half years into my career before returning later. However, having a supportive community makes all the difference, and we strive to show educators that there are different ways of looking at and approaching teaching.
EB Teacher Identity
Tell me about the culture that you and Jessica have worked so hard to create inside of EB Academics. What makes somebody an EB Teacher?
As part of our onboarding experience for EB teachers, we spend a considerable amount of time helping them shape a new identity of what's possible for themselves. As someone who played high-level high school basketball and coached varsity girls' basketball, I know firsthand how important the principles of teamwork, community building, and culture are to sports. We've taken these principles and integrated them into our community, where we all work together towards a common goal: making teaching enjoyable and a part of who you are, not the entirety of your existence.
When teachers join our community, they become part of something much bigger than themselves. They're part of a movement to improve education, and they quickly realize that they're not alone in this endeavor. The first few onboarding videos are essential as they set the tone for what it means to be an EB teacher. We talk about our core values, and we ask our teachers to embrace them as part of their identity. We no longer complain about teachers but work together to find solutions and a growth-oriented mindset.
Our core values include the wow factor, positivity, growth-oriented, getting stuff done, integrity, and honesty. We spend time upfront with our teachers, shaping them into the teachers they want to be. It's an integral part of their experience with us and helps them see what's possible for themselves as teachers. They learn how to approach challenges positively, with a growth mindset and a focus on finding solutions.
By fostering this community of support, growth, and positivity, we empower our teachers to take control of their own professional development and wellbeing. We celebrate their unique strengths and experiences, and we help them find joy and fulfillment in their teaching careers.
At EB Academics, our culture is grounded in our core values, and this extends to everyone who works for us, from our community managers to the rest of our team. Our community managers are in the Facebook group every single day, and they embody what it means to be an EB Teacher themselves. When they interact with teachers in our community, they bring a deep understanding of the challenges teachers face and a genuine desire to help them grow and succeed.
Being part of the EB Academics team is a sacred thing, and it's a privilege to impact teachers in such a meaningful way. We have a clear expectation of how we interact with our community, and what it means to work as a team. We understand the importance of living out our core values, not just saying them as CEOs.
Every Monday at our team meetings, we take time to discuss our core values and celebrate team members who exemplified them during the week. It's foundational to the culture we're creating at EB Academics, and it emanates from our team to our community of teachers. We believe that building a culture of support, growth, and positivity is the key to helping teachers love teaching and find joy in their careers.
About the EB Academics Membership
How many people are in your membership, what is the price of your membership?
Currently, we have more members than ever before, and this means we have the opportunity to impact more teachers and their students' lives, which is one of my favorite parts of this work. We are proud to have 3,700 members in our EB Academics membership program, with a price point of $33 per month.
But our impact goes beyond just our members. Our Facebook group has over 5,100 teachers in it, as we have both our membership and standalone program in the same place. Some of our teachers are in our standalone program, some in just our membership, and some in both. This means we are sharing our culture and community with a wider audience, and the ripple effect of our work is truly inspiring.
Each of our members teaches anywhere from 30 to 120 students, so the impact we have on the world is immense. We are grateful for the opportunity to support teachers and help them love teaching, ultimately benefiting their students and creating a better future for all.
How to Cultivate Culture in Large Communities
I have had people ask me, “when a membership grows and you have 5,000+ members, How could you possibly cultivate culture? How could you control that?”
It's also the teachers that we attract. You know, we spend a lot of time at the front end of our marketing, emphasizing that we can help any teacher, as long as they are willing to show up and be open. But if they're not, we can only do so much coaching. At some point, they have to step up too. I think this message comes across beautifully in our marketing, such as the workshops we do and our pop-up Facebook groups during launches.
Another great thing that happens behind the scenes, especially with a large community, is that we have teachers who have been with us since the beginning and identify themselves as EB teachers, even if they don't teach English anymore. They refuse to give up their membership because they want to stay in our community. This speaks volumes to what Stu always tells us: they come for the content, but they stay for the community.
If a teacher posts a negative comment in the Facebook group, our team doesn't even have to respond. Sometimes, other teachers will come on and say, "Hey, how about we look at this situation from a different perspective?" No one judges them or says they can't leave negative feedback. It's more of a supportive approach that asks, "How can we look at this differently? What kind of questions could you ask yourself to have a better experience?" Our EB teachers are doing community cultivation for us, beyond just our team.
How Culture Impacts Retention
Talk to me about how your community culture piece has impacted your retention inside of your community.
Throughout the school year, it's interesting. I've been talking about our group in the Impact Mastermind, and how can I strengthen our retention? You guys have said there's a point of diminishing returns and I should probably stop, but I always want that extra one percent, you know what I mean? I want people to stay with us. I want them to only leave if they're retiring or switching grade levels. I really don't want there to be any other reason for them to leave our community because there's something we could do to help that teacher and make them want to stay with us.
So, our retention throughout the school year, sorry, our churn rather, is less than 3%. Generally, we're less than two and a half percent, sometimes less than 2% (97-98% retention rate). June and July have the highest turnover rates, especially this year, teachers are leaving the profession. We looked at our numbers from June and July, and 50% of the people who canceled simply weren't teachers anymore. They were leaving.
Creating an Identity in your Community
What do you think are some key tactics, some key strategies that they can use to create this kind of identity for their community?
There are three things that I want to speak about that I think, if there's anything your listeners can take away, it's what they can implement. Because I'll be fair, when we started this three and a half years ago, I mean our retention, honestly, I wasn't even tracking it for the first year. I was just barely trying to survive and keep my head above water.
Over time, we've been able to get to this point and we've learned so much from you and implemented so many of your strategies. Brooke, who's my executive assistant and also a membership manager, and I just eat up everything that you say. We're like, whatever Shana says, we're just gonna do it. You know, and clearly it works.
I think one of the most important things that we do from the outset is, the moment that they join, we help shape their new identity. A very simple thing that we do is we immediately start to identify them as EB teachers. We have that name and our teachers wear their t-shirts proudly that they buy from our website that say "EB teacher" on it, which means nothing to anybody else but to them, it's such an identity piece, you know?
So, in those onboarding videos, we have a welcome video where our team and members from our community are saying, "Welcome EB teacher, welcome." Immediately we are shaping this identity. So, that's one thing in terms of onboarding - the very true sense of who you now get to become.
In our welcome call, we talk a lot about what that means. Jessica and I will spend 30 minutes working through our core values as these now become a foundational piece of who you are as an EB teacher. Like, this is what it means to be an EB teacher. We won't just say that means the "wow factor". We'll give you examples of what the "wow factor" looks like in the classroom, what that looks like for you and your planning, what that looks like for your family.
Because as an EB teacher, an EB teacher doesn't work on Sundays. And so the "wow factor" for your family is you get to go on a bike ride and you don't have to cut it short because you have to go home and grade papers. Growth-oriented, an example of that would be X. So we spend a lot of time truly showing them what our expectation is of them and what their expectation gets to be of themselves now that they've said, "Hey, I'm in, I'm here. Teach me your ways, I'm ready." So I think that's one thing that your listeners can start with.
I think it's so interesting because as owners of businesses, if any of your listeners have employees or have a team who works for them, that's a huge part of my interview process is sharing our core values and giving them examples of people on our team who exemplify those core values. Here's an example of Jane getting stuff done, which is one of our core values.
One of the things that is really valuable that we have are our two community managers. And it took us a long time to get here, you know, for a while, it was me, it was Jessica like, you know, when we were in the trenches, everything, but we now have two community managers, and in their role, they are 100% in sync with our audience. Meaning they are both classroom teachers, they are both EB teachers, they both use our resources, they both fully believe in our mission and our vision.
And so I think that that was incredibly valuable in having people who work for us be in the community and be cultivating intentionally this community that they came from our community. They were like our community A players and they just happened to write in an email one day, 'Hey, if you ever want me to work for you, like I'm super interested.' And that's how we found them and hired them.
So I think finding someone, perhaps from your audience, those top-notch members, to be your community managers, they're relatable, they're bought in, they are already a part of your mission and your vision. As opposed to, I think hiring an outsider for that type of role might be a disservice to your community.
Community Managers
Do you have these community managers in your community, are they both full-time or are they both part-time? What does that Look like?
We have two community managers who really just operate in the Facebook group. They're both part-time, they're still in the classroom, they work anywhere from five to 10 hours per week just in their pockets of time as moms, as teachers, as wives. For them it was like I just want to be a part of something cool, which I think is really powerful.
I love hiring people who believe so much in what you're doing that they're like, I don't even need to get paid. Of course we pay them but they just so believe what you're doing. And then we also have our membership manager and our membership manager is Brooke who you've been in communication with and she manages all the backend stuff, you know our retention sh So there are two very different roles in our business in the way that we're doing things.
So our community managers are really just there in the Facebook group answering questions, providing support, making sure that every single member feels seen. Which kind of ties into the next thing that I was going to talk about, which is really just making sure that for us, customer service is the number one thing. I don't know if it's because I've worked in customer service, but I used to answer phones for my dad's company when I worked for US sports camps. I was always in customer service in some capacity and I just know how important every single touchpoint is for every single person.
And so when we didn't have a community manager and people would post in the Facebook group and they wouldn't get a comment for 2, 3, 4 days, how does that make that person feel? They feel forgotten, they feel unseen. "Why did I even put that question? Was that a dumb question? Should I not have asked that?" And so they go into all of this narrative to themselves because that's just what we do as humans and I don't ever want somebody to feel that way.
For me, I felt like the biggest return on my investment for the company was to have a community manager, was to have somebody in there because I couldn't be in there at all hours of the day making sure that our members feel heard. And I would say if there's the number one thing that we do, it's make sure that our members 100% feel supported 100% of the time.
No one comments in our Facebook group. We have 5,100 members, and I don't even know how many posts today, probably hundreds. No one posts in our group without receiving a comment from at least someone on Team E within 24 hours ever. And that, to me, is so, so important because I've been in Facebook groups where there are a hundred people, and I comment, and no one responds to me. I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to come back. I'm just going to go somewhere else to find the answer to my question."
Our whole goal is to be here to support you, is to help you, is to change your life, and we're not doing that and we're not doing right by you, or we're not doing that mission justice if we're not responding to your messages. So, I think that that is incredibly, incredibly important.
I want to give you an example and tell you a story. We had this teacher last week, Shauna, who sent us probably five emails and we responded to every single email, but it was showing that they weren't being read. Her complaint and frustration was that she was not getting our emails. I'm like, okay, how can we help this teacher? So our entire team of 10 members on EB got together and were like, how can we reach out to her? We tried to Facebook direct message her, nothing. We're like, do we have a cellphone number from her? Can we text her?
And finally, I was able to post in the Facebook group like, "Hey Shauna, we're trying to get ahold of you. We've sent you a couple of emails and messages over the last couple of days. Can you let us know that you've seen at least this post?" And to me, this is one member, one teacher of 3,700 teachers in our membership of 5,100 teachers in our community. But every person matters. And I think that is the perfect example of our core values as a team, as a community of what it means to be a part of EB academics, 100% living out the expectation of what that means.
Advice from Caitlin Mitchell
If you were to give just one piece of advice to somebody who is venturing into this concept of how do I create a really incredible experience for people in my program or how do I help them really establish an identity? Is there one thought that you would leave them with?
Well, two things, one, I would work with you because you're fantastic. (I didn’t pay her to say that..I promise!) But two, I think it starts with you. I think what you just said speaks exactly to that. It starts with you as the leader. And I think it starts with who you are as a person and what you think is possible, and what your "why" is and why you're here, why you're showing up, why it matters to you.
I think a lot of people have great ideas. I was just working with my brother, who is working with a company that has a struggling membership site, with a churn rate of 15%. And I'm like, "Well, there are a lot of things that we could work on, you know, and this is great because it's an opportunity. We can only go up from here."
And I think it all stems from great leadership. And I think that as the leader of your company or the leader of your community, what does great leadership mean to you? What does that look like? Because your community is going to be looking to you for what it means to be a part of what you're doing. And if you aren't living up to those ideals and you aren't living up to those core values, they're going to be able to see right through that.
So I think it starts here, just like with anything, it starts with who you are. And I would spend a lot of time really nurturing what you think is important to that identity piece and then sharing that with the masses with your communities.
How to Connect with Caitlin
Caitlin’s Website: https://ebacademics.com/
Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast: https://ebacademics.com/category/podcast
Teaching Middle School ELA YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWezgZ_BNFaF-IURmTTN_dA
Stay Connected to Shana Lynn on Community Creators
Caitlin mentioned a couple of times how she has worked with me and that's how she's gotten a lot of the results that she's talking about today.
Now you may be wondering how she has done that? Well, surprisingly she wasn't one of my one-on-one consulting clients. So the results that she's talking about have actually come from putting her membership manager through my Cultivate Community training program. So that's something that's within reach for you. You can put your team or yourself through that program to learn these same concepts and strategies around culture and customer experience and learn to be a Cultivator just like Caitlin.
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*This article has summarized the interview to the best of our ability. To hear the exact words shared, listen to or watch the full episode.
