ETC’S CEO AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND GULF COAST MONTESSORI TEACHER EDUCATION CENTER AND ETC CONSULTING CEO TALK ABOUT PROBLEM SOLVING

SEIZE YOUR STORY

Every company has a story. Those that have a really good story also have a mindset that accepts challenges and focus on what makes them unique, different, and special. By focusing on those things, we use a full head-on approach, where we embrace who we are, how we got here, and more importantly, those that helped us get here. The more we focus, the more in touch with our humanity we become, the more positive attention we get as a brand, and the more the brand continues to grow.

—Aki Margaritis

FIND BALANCE

The delight of the Montessori training center, or the consulting side of our business, is personal discovery. Maybe you came in to talk about opening a school, or having your teachers attend a refresher course, but you end up leaving with a full understanding of what it means to think like a Montessorian. The desire to push the business on a daily basis has a way of sending you back to the basics. So, we’re constantly reminding ourselves, we are here to teach, explain, inform, and develop a thought process. … That’s the difference in our brand. Ultimately, it is our responsibility to develop this understanding for our clients.

—Erika Ohlhaver

LEVERAGE CONVERSATIONS

We spend a lot of effort on our advertising and communications. But the real power of this dialogue is education. We are all educators at heart, and if we are not educating the customer on a concept or tenant of Montessori pedagogy, then we are educating them on the way to connect with others. We’re not going to spend as much as our competitors, even though we’ve got some pretty healthy advertising budgets, ... but we are going to out-talk, out-communicate, and out-educate them so we can connect with people. I believe our format has allowed us to have those conversations.

—Aki Margaritis

FIND REALITY

We could advertise a lot, we could talk about a lot of things, but nothing is real until it becomes real in the lives of those who trust us. Enabling our curriculum, marketing and operations teams to work together to bring our brand promise to customers is somewhat unique. Sometimes it takes six months or a year of planning to launch a particular item, so we’ve all got to be on top of things. We give our best to our customers, and in the end it’s our personal pride that drives us forward.

—Erika Ohlhaver

USE EMPATHY TO PROBLEM SOLVE

Almost everything we work on is connected to the multiple parts of our operations. We all need to be agile and have the ability to be somewhat conversant across different functions. If you come up through only one silo and you only know that silo, it becomes difficult to apply your skill set to solve the company initiative, which is ultimately to educate. We know we need to be tighter in connecting product definition, to sales information, and to customer service information. This requires people who have some empathy or sympathy for the multi-facets of this company. In this way we can all help solve problems that face our customers, and ultimately provide the best experience for them.

—Aki Margaritis