Greg Smith always saw himself as an educator rather than a classroom teacher. He left teaching to found his own outdoor education enterprise.
5 years later he sold the company and started yet another business helping others connect and appreciate their clients.
He remains an educator and student of life.
To find out more about Greg and his unique marketing proposition, visit:
Greg Smith always saw himself as an educator rather than a classroom teacher. He left teaching to found his own outdoor education enterprise.
5 years later he sold the company and started yet another business helping others connect and appreciate their clients.
He remains an educator and student of life.
To find out more about Greg and his unique marketing proposition, visit:
Elizabeth Diacos: 0:01
Welcome to the get out of teaching podcast presented by Larksong Enterprises. I'm your host, Elizabeth Diacos. On the show we'll look at the who, what, why, where, when and how of moving out of your education career and into a life you love We'll meet ex-teachers delve in to what we love about teaching and how to translate that into something new. We will talk to people who can support and inspire us as we make the transition and work on identifying the legacy we want to leave in the world. So come along for the ride as we "Get out of teaching."
Elizabeth Diacos: 0:39
Episode 15. Well, welcome to the show, Greg Smith, who is the founding CEO of "Send Hand Written" and an ex-teacher. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Greg Smith: 0:49
Yeah, nice to be here Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Diacos: 0:50
So Greg tell us what got you into teaching in the first place?
Greg Smith: 0:56
Um, actually, what got me teaching in the first place was the suggestion from an ex school principal of mine who saw me have a crack at the world of science when I first left school and that all fell in a heap pretty quickly and he saw the potential in me and really invited me to have a look at what education would look like for me as a career. And I was in a family where particularly my dad didn't really rate teachers. They were smarty pants know-it-alls who always had an answer for everything
Elizabeth Diacos: 1:33
Sounds familiar.
Greg Smith: 1:35
So he discouraged me from pursuing that. But there was something in me that wanted to, I don't know, I think take the best of what I had learned as a young man from a really solid and healthy home life and a really solid and healthy, um, engagements with people around me solid friendships, um, not not too much of the nasty stuff. The sex, drugs and rock and roll wasn't part of my scene. It was outdoors. It was healthy. It was water. It was people. And I wanted to take that and do something with it and add that.
Elizabeth Diacos: 2:15
So whereabouts did you grow up?
Greg Smith: 2:17
I grew up in Sydney. So in the western suburbs. In the western suburbs, had a private school education. Uh, and the quote about me is that at 3.5 years of age I asked my mum and dad 4000 times it began and just kept going to please take me for the rocks and trees, which was my, um, infant way of saying I really need to be away from all this smoke and noise of living on a main road in Sydney and please back to the bush,
Elizabeth Diacos: 2:50
Right, to the rocks and trees. Nice one. And so now you've managed to make that happen.
Greg Smith: 2:58
Well, I certainly made that happen for my career in the finish, yeah. So I spent 20, 25 years. um ah, again sounding and being CEO of an outdoor education company.
Elizabeth Diacos: 3:10
Fantastic. Okay, so when you first started teaching, um, where were you working and how long did you do that for?
Greg Smith: 3:19
Uh, the funny story about me was that I lined up at Teachers College, at Strathfield in Sydney in 1984. And I spent an hour in a queue and I got to the front of the queue and the person said, Okay, name, address, etc, I said hang on, hang on, am I in the right line here, am I enrolling in the correct course. If I want to run my own outdoor education- the language at the time outdoor education, reflection or retreat center and corporate training come conference center. And the answer was no. This is the primary school line, go and line up in the high school line. So I went lined up over there, so for me and I enrolled, of course, for me it was never about teaching. For me, it was about educating and and for me there's a difference in teaching and educating. And I guess that came from my dad's attitude. For me, being an educator is about facilitating the growth of young adults rather than telling or being the font of all knowledge or um being the depository of information to be shared. That's not what it's about for me
Elizabeth Diacos: 4:33
Well we've got the Internet now for that anyway, haven't we?
Greg Smith: 4:36
Yes, and you got to remember that, you know, that's what is that 30 years ago now, and at that time that was what I thought I knew, without really knowing diddly squat. So what I ended up doing was I did enroll, I did complete the three or four years, got the degree, left, and my first engagement as a teacher was in a private school in the Southern Highlands. And I taught at that school because at 1/3 of my weekly gig was in the wilderness department. So I was an outdoor education teacher before outdoor education was a subject to be taught or learnt. So that was Chevalier College and they had a wilderness department. So in my first year out, I managed I can't remember, I think it was a year 11 and 12 class and, you know, we went to the snow. We did a 12 or 14 day expedition across the Blue Mountains from Katoomba to Bowral and there were all sorts of fantastic learning in that for me. I did, I was a master in the boardinghouse, I think that year. So I spent a couple of years doing that and then I got invited to join a team running discernment processes for year 12 students all over New South Wales. So I left. I left the confines of the classroom, really in my first year? Yes, I had a Maths class and an economics class and whatever it was in my first year out. But my passion was always for not being confined like a chicken with his wings chopped. That feeling of being confined by the four walls of the classroom because that's not where for me, that's not where kids energy and interest, then that's not how they express themselves. Young men, they want to be out there experimenting, trying, testing, um, expeditioning, uh, interacting, crashing and bashing and smashing their way through, but at the same time taking on the learning that comes from all that crashing and bashing and experimentation.
Elizabeth Diacos: 6:51
Fantastic. Because so many people who would absolutely love that job. Okay, so so so then it sounds like you really fell on your feet and had a great experience in your first few years of teaching. But you got out. So what was the tipping point for you to actually leave traditional education?
Greg Smith: 7:15
I think the tipping point was for whatever was injected into me metaphorically when I was three or four years of age, that said," You know what? The real world doesn't happen on a screen. The real world doesn't happen indoors. The laws of the planet drive what happens for us and around us. We can't plant the corn today and eat it tomorrow. The law of the planet, says that takes a period of time." And so very quickly as a young man- and it was because of the experiences I had in the people around me and the nurturing that I got in the coaching that I got, um, the mentoring that I got as a young man, uh, we- so I spent two or three years, if you like in and out of classrooms. Then I traveled for a couple of years with my wife, and then when I came back, I secured a job working with one foot in the outdoor space and one foot in the social justice area, and really pioneered a program in Melbourne on behalf of Edmund Rice camps, which is that well known brands to lots of people particularly in Victoria, where we took youth at risk and used the outdoors as a healing, healing/recreation modality.
Elizabeth Diacos: 8:34
So I'm familiar with where you're talking about Amberleigh there. Is that right?
Greg Smith: 8:39
Yeah.
Elizabeth Diacos: 8:40
So, uh, when I was on my way out of teaching, actually did did some work with Edmund Rice community and Refugee Services as running one of their homework clubs in Sunshine and we went to Amberley a few times for, you know, professional development and also for some of the stuff with the kids as well. That's a beautiful property there with a river and mud- fabulous place,
Greg Smith: 9:03
I was very lucky. For five years I ran that organisation and took it from a happy go lucky let's help a few people Christian brothers doing, doing the right thing. And there were some magnificent forward thinking clever men in that space, and we took it from something feel good and doing good, to something that had some significant structure and standard operating procedures and educational and recreational philosophy around it. So that was a terrific time in my life, and I got invited to really play a leadership role within the church, come education, come Social Justice face, and got invited in and was talking about how to generate energy in young adults so that they could, in a fun context, help, I used to call them, the snotty nosed brats, kids that are on the streets that otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity for recreation. Yeah, I had a young a young man. He would have been 8,9,10 years of age. I was the bus driver first day of school holidays one year. He's sitting next to me as I drive the 22 seater bus from Melbourne to we were going to Anglesea and we came over the brow of a hill somewhere outside of Geelong, I don't remember the geography and he gasped, sat back in his chair and he said, What is that? And I said, What is what, mate? What? What? What can you say? And he said, All that. And I said, That's the ocean. And he said, No. And I said, Yeah. So he was saying nine years of age and he'd never seen the ocean.
Elizabeth Diacos: 10:54
Yeah. Wow. And I mean that I know I know where you're talking about. It is breathtaking as you, you know, rise over the crest. You can see this beautiful part of the world's that's facing Antarctica, but it it is quite spectacular beachfront there. OK. So So it sounds like you even as you left teaching you had this amazing experience. Um, was there any fear around that for you transitioning out of the classroom, or was it just compelling? That you had to.
Greg Smith: 11:28
uh, it was It was really, really compelling. It was I am, uh, it was a vocation or a need rather than a fear. Though there was plenty of fear attached to it, don't worry. The real fear if your like or the tipping point, was the phrase you just used, was when I left the security of being an employee in that space. Um, and there's quite a fun story as to how this happened. But I ended up standing on a 3500 acre property in the Tweed Valley one morning, and from a vantage point on that property, saw in my mind's eye, what was possible in terms of that outdoor education space that I had already been looking for. So that 3500 acre space became for 20 years-wasn't quite 20 years- um, my way of expressing who I was as an educator on the planet. And so standing in an empty paddock to nearly 20 years later, having a company that was turning over a couple of million dollars helping develop the potential of young adults using high ropes and abseiling and canoeing and expeditioning and abseiling and all of that adventure stuff. So from a standing start from nothing to something highly prized by a community between Noosa and Coffs Harbour. Um, yeah. So that was a mighty mighty scary thing to have $1000 in my pocket to be able to see it and build it into what we built it into. And it wasn't there. There was a whole team of family and friends and committed colleagues around me that made that happen.
Elizabeth Diacos: 13:17
So you created this- it sounds like an adventure park like this amazing space. What was what was the purpose of it?
Greg Smith: 13:27
The purpose of it was to do three things. First thing was to help mainly young adults. The corporates were common on our property as well. The first, the first intent was to help people, mainly young adults, connect with their own story: who they were, why the hell it is that we're here, um what's the purpose for me in my existence to help them discern who it is or was they are or were as individuals. The second purpose was to answer the question, who are we when we get together and we form a team or we form a community or we form a class or we form a pod of people with a common goal. And if the common goal was to put on the backpack and end up, you know, 120 kilometres over there under our own steam, you know, canoeing and bush walking and cycle touring, whatever it was, who are we and what does it take to create that community and team of people to achieve that physical outcome, that psychological result, that connection that's going to allow us to get there and what are the behaviours that we need to put in place to make that happen? So that was the second thing. And the third thing was once we have a sense of who we are as individuals and we fess up to some of our own stuff- and that's challenging for 17 year old- but but to recognise their own behaviour, consider how our behaviour and attitude impacts others. And then the third thing is to ask the question, What is the impact of us on the planet that sustains us when we do these things? So we're dealing on the planet at the moment with covid 19. So how am I- so this is a theme for all of us. How am I as an individual dealing with this and what's it's saying about me? What does my behaviour say about me? What does my mindset say about me? And how can I improve that given lockdowns at the moment? How do I connect with people around me to achieve whatever it is that we want to achieve? So you and I connected on this podcast whether that whatever we want to call it this morning to achieve a value added proposition for some of your watchers or listeners. And the third component is, under these circumstances, when we form a connection, what is the difference or the value add we want to make on the planet right at this moment? So so I don't know if it makes sense that those three things that drove that business, are actually the three thing that for me drive education. Who am I, who are we and what's the impact that we're having on what we want to have?
Elizabeth Diacos: 16:25
No. So I feel like you've jumped to the question I usually save for the end, which is what's the legacy that you want to leave in the world.
Greg Smith: 16:34
I think that just answered that..
Elizabeth Diacos: 16:36
So so helping people to really understand and connect with that purpose.
Greg Smith: 16:43
Ah, yes. And, uh, I my driver, is how do we build healthy, meaningful, authentic relationships that actually add value and help nurture and grow this planet into something that is healthy and long lasting and driven by a legacy that we want to leave - how do I leave the world a better place rather than be involved in things that are just money making money?
Elizabeth Diacos: 17:22
Yes. Yeah. So part of the reason I wanted to invite you onto these podcasts today was because I wanna share with people- teachers who want to get out of teaching- I want to share stories of other people's transition out of education or out of teaching into whatever it is that they have chosen to do, because I think we get stuck in our stories of I can't do this are it's not possible for me or I don't have the resources, and often that's a belief. But it's not actually true. And so hearing other people's stories like who did get out for in whatever capacity that actually helps people to see it is possible, there is hope, and that could be me. And so that's so thank you for coming on the show. It's not over yet, though, because I wanted to backtrack a little bit and just ask you, Was there any kind of training or extra skills that you needed to leverage as you were as you were creating your new venture? And and also what what skills did you bring out of your education career into this new, new space?
Greg Smith: 18:32
Yeah, I think for me the very clear delineation or distinction between teaching and education. That was my first distinction that I really made and that helped me, because where all we are all whether we're teacher trained or not we're all educators one way or another, we're parents, we're friends, we're family members of extended families. And we have the capacity to help nurture and grow and coach and advise and see the world from a different point of view to help others achieve whatever it is that they want to achieve. So in terms of my, uh, coaching and training, I reached out to all sorts of people to nurture me and who I was. So you know in the early days, and it freaked me out at the time I took on a spiritual adviser. Now, in actual fact, that that lady happened to be a Nun. But oh my god, was she good for my personal development... Because she shook my tree, and I got it that I'm okay as I am. I don't know everything, but who I am has the, um, potential, the capacity to make a real positive difference. So I didn't need the information I needed the who I was to step forward and take on the challenges of making that difference that I wanted to make.
Elizabeth Diacos: 19:59
When you say she shook your tree. What do you mean by that?
Greg Smith: 20:03
Ah so as a y'knownyoung 20, 25 year old young man, you know, 20, 22, 23 year old men know everything, you know.. So when you take on a mentor who is a lot more experienced and understands human psychology and they...I remember. Ah, I remember her in a one on one session or laughing her head off when I put it to her that I was absolutely right and she was wrong and she said, Of course you are. Yes, because you're 22 or 23. and you do know everything, you think. When you put my 60 year old hat on and you view your 22, 23 year old view of the world, you're only partly right. So let me shake your tree and give you this perspective on it. Let me let me into or let me give you an insight into how somebody else would see that topic that you're currently so correct about in your head
Elizabeth Diacos: 21:03
Right. Yeah. Okay, that's what. So back to the transferrable skills or the things that you you had already developed in your journey up to the point where you set out on your own. What did you take with you that that was in useful in in the next phase of your career? I guess.
Greg Smith: 21:23
Yeah. If I think about what it was that I I learnt and I took on as a young adult, male teacher, it was about how to empathise with the people that were in front of me in a classroom. It was about learning how to engage and appreciate the people that were around me as colleagues and as students in my classroom. It was about figuring out ways to actually create surprise and, uh, wow, and something that would make people you know, tick and go, Whoa! I didn't say you that coming. And so now I'm engaged because I don't know what's coming next. It was about creating experiences that actually led to some lifelong learning, and it was about being loyal- not- it was about being loyal to the human being, not about being focused on the behaviour that often was not so good in a Year 9 classroom. It was about being focused on the human being who, one way or another, he or she was dealing with their pile of poop, their challenges. And it was about being focused on underneath that dodgy behavior there's a valuable, loveable human being who has so much to contribute. So taking that's insight and the practicalities of being able to crowd control 30 kids in a small space, or how to grab the attention of somebody, you know, by using their name rather than saying hey you in a playground. About how to collaborate and get a project done with a bunch of colleagues. About how to facilitate- these are all the things I took with me- how to facilitate some learning. How to move forward when the next part of the process you don't really know what the right thing to do is, but staying in motion is clearly the only option at the moment. So don't stop...keep going!
Elizabeth Diacos: 23:31
That sounds like good advice for the current situation with Covid19 for sure.
Greg Smith: 23:35
Okay, so if I think about what I learned during my teaching or education career those themes are actually driving my current business.
Elizabeth Diacos: 23:45
So tell us about what you're doing right now.
Greg Smith: 23:48
So I founded a company called Send Hand Written and we send hand written greeting cards all around the world for two purposes. One is to help our clients who have businesses either with lead generation or with client retention. So the cards are hand written by human beings. That image behind is one of our team writing a card for a client and we're of making millions of dollars for our clients. Why? Because we're connecting in a genuine authentic, wow, experiential way. So I've picked up all that that educational period taught me, and I have injected it into a different context. And that's the fantastic thing about teaching: teachers are people people. So whatever those people people skills are, that you've picked up in your teaching career, pick them up and transfer them to any context. But it takes a little bit of imagination to make the transfer, and it takes some promotional labour to make the transfer. Do that emotional labour. Get the transformable, transferrable skills clear in your mind, pick 'em up and put 'em into a new context. It's an exciting process.
Elizabeth Diacos: 25:09
So So if someone's feeling stuck, that's often where where I meet people. Is they're feeling stuck they're feeling disempowered? They're lost. I've had one client describe that feeling as the wheels are spinning. In that context what advice would you give someone who feels that way?
Greg Smith: 25:30
Um, my first question is, Are you really stuck, or does it just seem like you're stuck. So are your wheels really spinning, or does it just feel like they are? And is it, are your wheel spinning out of fear? Or are your wheels spinning for some other, some other reason. So if your wheels are- let's run with that metaphor- if your wheels are spinning, what would help get some traction for you. My answer to that would be : experiment. Do what you, do what you encourage the kids in your science classroom to do when their wheels are spinning. Get some traction. Try it out. What happens if you put that chemical with that chemical? Let's see, what happens - does it blow, does it fizz or does it do nothing. Same thing, you know. So if you're in a teaching career where you feel stuck my advice is get clear on what you're stuck-ness is about. My guess would be the stuck-ness is in your head more than anywhere else. So try little things, start a little business. Do a weekend job. Volunteer somewhere. Um, try anything that's going to keep you in motion, going forward and experimenting with what's possible for you with your transferrable skills.
Elizabeth Diacos: 26:56
Excellent advice. Thank you. That's really very helpful, I think to people who feel that way. So Greg tell us now if someone wanted to work with you because you're that you're doing right now is quite niche, I think. And also it's a business to business, ah, model What, what would that look like if someone wanted to work with you. Like what, what would be the process?
Greg Smith: 27:22
To work with me as, a Send Hand Written team member, you mean?
Elizabeth Diacos: 27:26
No, no, no. I mean, like, use your service.
Greg Smith: 27:30
Um, so it
Elizabeth Diacos: 27:33
This is an opportunity now for shameless self promotion.
Greg Smith: 27:36
Ah ok. I mean If anybody listening to this wants to have a conversation about any... anything that I've just shared, right, I'm happy to have a conversation. That's I think a given as an educator and as, ah, coach and a mentor and a mentee and a coachee right. Let's... people want to have a chat, right? If people are in a situation where that I would like to use the Send Hand Written service, it's just a matter of making an email or a phone connection with me, and we can explore how it is that we can help you with your lead generational client retention using hand written greeting cards that arrive in a gorgeous designed-for-you hand written envelope what whatever that happens to look like for your particular brand. I mean this, this is a pretty fancy design, what we came up with for a brand, that lots of people in Australia are aware of in fact around the world for the YMCA. So we made that little not for profit hundreds of thousands of dollars on a very small spend.
Elizabeth Diacos: 28:45
So just for the listeners who can't see- Greg's held up a a circular card that looks... on the front is printed a compass like a um, looks like a compass that you find direction with. Oh, and it comes in the envelope. Got it. And the envelopes got a map on the outside...Ohhh... that is so cool
Greg Smith: 29:07
So the message, the hand written message on the inside is Hi, Elizabeth I've sent you a map and compass to help you find your way to the YMCA. That was the client.
Elizabeth Diacos: 29:16
Oh, nice, yeah. Really clever. Okay. So, so there's some really creative, um, and very personal... a really creative personal service that you provide to your clients that helps them to connect with their potential clients.
Greg Smith: 29:33
Yeah, that helps them grow their business in a real tactile experiential way.
Elizabeth Diacos: 29:40
Hmm. That's a big jump from where you began with outdoor Ed. What happened? How did you get? I'm curious now. How did you get from there to there? You know, briefly
Greg Smith: 29:52
Good question. So the Cliff notes on that are that when I sold that business that had been my baby, I stood in a paddock in 1994 I saw the possibility of building, uh, my outdoor education centre. I built it for many, many years. Blood- literally- blood, sweat and tears went into that when I sold that business. The entity that took it on, uh, ended up allowing the business over the pursuing or ensuing seven or eight years to halve in terms of size, and that disappointed me greatly. So my baby didn't grow, it deteriorated. Not because that entity was not extremely professional at delivering the service. Their educational outcomes are fantastic and remain fantastic, their budgets are beautiful and easy to read, their standard operating procedures are world leading. In my opinion, what allowed that deterioration was their lack of focus on customer experience. So what? I am not an educator. I'm an experiential educator, and the experience ball was dropped when that entity forgot to look after and care for our clientele. I then realised that in the Australian market place, and I think this is common around the Western world, I'm really bored with being transacted. I'm really bored with being processed. So if you fly Singapore airlines and Jetstar and they both use A320s to fly you from A to B, and they both do it safely, and I am very appreciative of how safely they get me from A to B the experience of flying a full fare paying airline versus a budget airline is completely different. You get processed with one and you get engaged with, cared for and nurtured in the other experience. So the key delineater in the market place in 2020 is those businesses that can provide high end, not necessarily expensive but high end empathy, engagement, and appreciation, some wow and an experience that actually leads to loyalty. And loyalty in business terms is lifetime value, lifetime customer value. So here is my baby, now half the size of what it was. I'm bored with being transacted. So I started a consultancy called the Masters of Client Retention that answered the question, How do you Velcro your existing clients, whatever it is that you do. What came out of that was a common common request or a distillation of requests from my clients and it was, Greg- Stop talking! Give me- I'm a business owner- give me the most cost effective impactful tool that I can easily understand that's going to maximise my ROI in the shortest time possible. And after a number of years of distilling an answer for that question, what percolated to the surface in the context where there was way over a billion- $100 billion, sorry- spent in digital marketing in 2019 and in 2020 they reckon that could be $250 billion spent on digital marketing around the planet- how do you stand out as a business person in all of that digital noise. So human beings cope with that noise by left swiping- delete, delete, delete delete delete. That means that if you're a business person, you are all day, every day being deleted. How do you stand out? You're got to create a wow, What's the wow that Greg and Sent Hand Written create? Something beautiful wax sealed, personalised and hand written to you appears in your mailbox in amongst all those boring and nauseating window envelopes. That's an experience. What am I? I'm an experiential educator. So I'm not educating in this. I'm, I'm cutting through the digital noise and saying Woohoo, have a look at this. Here's a way to stand out and get eyeballs on your business? Experientially. That's the link. So experiential driven, people driven outcomes. That's the common theme.
Elizabeth Diacos: 34:35
Nice one. Well, I think we might wrap it up there. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I think that's a really lovely way to end. It's been great to have you with me today, Greg Smith. Thank you
Greg Smith: 34:45
Thank you very much Elizabeth. Really appreciate it.
Elizabeth Diacos: 34:49
You've been listening to the get out of teaching podcast presented by Larksong Enterprises with your host, Elizabeth Diacos. Do you know someone else who could benefit from hearing more stories of hope and transition from teachers all around the world? Please take a moment to share this and other episodes via your podcast app. Each share helps me reach listeners just like you who can benefit from this content. The "Get out of Teaching" Podcast is proud to be part of the Experts on Air Podcast network. For show notes and other resources, please visit Larksong.com.au/podcast.