Full Webinar Transcript

Laura Thompson (00:00:23):

Thank you so much for joining. We’ll get started in about one minute.

Laura Thompson (00:00:54):

Thank you so much for joining us, everyone. We’re going to go ahead and get started today on our webinar, Marketing Your Program: How to Increase Participation in the Fall. Today, we are featuring Maureen Pisanick of Pisanick Partners, and we’re gonna be talking about how to win students back now that they’re gonna have to be paying for meals. So we’re gonna get started as far as a little bit of the agenda today. As far as housekeeping, we are going to be recording this session. So, if you have to step out, or if you want to pass this along to a colleague, we will be making this recording available. You should receive it in an email tomorrow. We’re going to do introductions to introduce our presenters today. Then we’re gonna have the bulk of the webinar about marketing. We’re gonna have about 15 minutes at the end, a Q and A.

Laura Thompson (00:01:37):

If you have any questions, please pass them along. And then we will wrap up at that point. If you do have questions, please type them in at the bottom of the screen, there is a Q and a portion at the bottom of the screen. Chat can get a little unwieldy sometimes. So if you put it in the Q and A, it’ll be easier for us to keep track of and be able to make sure that we get to those questions at the end. We will be referencing some links throughout the presentation. So we’re gonna make sure to put those links in the chat. So keep your eye on that as well. Again, if you have any questions, put them in the Q and A portion.

Laura Thompson (00:02:11):

So, our first presenter today is Maureen Pisanick. She is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation dietetic internship. She has worked in multiple sectors of nutrition to include programs and curriculum at the health museum of Cleveland, clinical in and outpatient dietetics at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the intensive feeding disorder team at the Shaker Campus of the Cleveland Clinic and the latter half of her career in school nutrition programs as a director and a consultant. Maureen has held office positions for the local and state school nutrition association, and is an active member of both SNA as well as the American Dietetic Association. She is also the regional trainer for allergy management in schools for the Institute of Child Nutrition. Maureen maintains an active role in local and state school nutrition advocacy through her work in consulting. We are big fans of Maureen here at Health-e Pro, so we’re excited that she’s here.

Maureen Pisanick (00:03:05):

Oh, you are too kind. Sometimes I get sad when I hear all of that because of how it ages me, but I’m proud and excited to have one of my colleagues and friends here on this call. So I don’t know Laura, if you’re gonna introduce Phil, but I’m just so happy to have you Phil.

Laura Thompson (00:03:19):

I am! So, Phil Herman from the Impact Group is also here as well. He is passionate about helping individuals and organizations become their best selves. With over 25 years of experience in education. Phil has worked as a teacher, coach, principal, director of human resources, assistant superintendent and superintendent for 11 years. Phil focuses on the creation of meaningful relationships to bring community members, staff, administrators, parents, and students together to solve problems. And, Maureen, iIf you wanna add anything else, feel free.

Maureen Pisanick (00:03:48):

He can do a heck of an earthworm. That’s what I’m gonna say. He brings it. He brings the energy. So I’m so happy to have you here, Phil.

Laura Thompson (00:03:59):

And then last but not least, I am Laura Thompson. I’m the marketing manager here at Health-e Pro. This is a webinar that’s a little bit in my sweet spot. So I’m really excited about this as well. I’m a graduate of BYU Marriott School of Business with an emphasis in marketing. And I have a lifelong love of health, nutrition, and wellness. So combining nutrition and marketing is a little bit of my, my happy place. So this is really fun for me. I’ve spent my marketing career primarily at software companies. So we do software. We do menu planning and nutrient analysis software here at Health-e Pro. And I have been here for a little over five years now.

Maureen Pisanick (00:04:33):

Awesome.

Laura Thompson (00:04:34):

So, with that, today we’re gonna cover the following. We’re gonna talk about the ABCs of back to school, a little bit of the vision of what this, this presentation is going to be about, and then talking about menu creation that inspires when you’re trying to win students over again, how can you be creative and how can you be inspirational in the menu that you create? Maureen’s also gonna talk about the highlights of a smarter lunchroom. And then this is what I’m really excited about too, is learn how not to be our own best kept secret – marketing tips and tricks. So Maureen, I’m gonna hand it off to you now.

Maureen Pisanick (00:05:07):

I’m so excited. I kept interrupting you, but I am just so excited to have some really great people together to hopefully inspire and innovate. We definitely had fun planning  this, I’ll tell you that, Laura is not lying. She is very passionate about what we do and, and helps support it. And so anything we’ve done at Pisanick Partners with marketing, I always say it takes a village. And so this year was no different. And actually I had to tap really hard into that tribe because of the fact that we now are back to, in most of our schools, enticing participation, because we are no longer universal free in the state of Ohio. And most states are in some way hybrid, some states are still free. So I don’t wanna confuse anybody if you’re in California, you’re doing free meals, we get that.

Maureen Pisanick (00:05:50):

But the whole idea is it’s not nutrition unless a student swallows it, right? So the idea is not only is it free or are they paying for it? Is it, are they eating it? Are they excited about it? Are you excited about it? And so today we hope to do that a little bit for you. And so, and thinking about what might be beneficial for back to school inspiration, I tapped into what we did here in our own backyard. And so at the beginning of this month, we had over 200 attendees, 28 wonderful vendor partners and 30 actually 40 different school districts come together after, after we did the counts to really think about what it is that we wanted to focus on going back to school. And what we came up with was a mission statement, a vision really for that day, hopefully to incentivize folks to think about what they wanted to do with their program.

Maureen Pisanick (00:06:34):

And so this is just a little snip of how we innovated our back to school training. And that training had the foundation of these three principles. We all love to work and feel appreciated. And so my wonderful partners at the impact group inspire me on the regular and inspired me the last several years, even in times when it was hard to feel inspired. And so I thought what a better way than to introduce my friends, to my greater friends and talk about this book and this concept of appreciology. And so I’m not gonna talk a lot about it because I actually asked Phil to come and he agreed. So you’re gonna get to hear it firsthand from him, but we really wanted to set the stage. And so Phil did our opener and shared with our teams, the concept of appreciation and how people value the place they work and the work they do when they feel they’re in a zone of appreciation.

Maureen Pisanick (00:07:25):

I’m gonna say, I appreciate food. I appreciate the way food looks. I appreciate eating and feeding other people. And so it just really was a natural connection between what we could do to set the stage for appreciating each other in school nutrition, but also appreciating the work we do and the students we serve. Secondly, you know, if we build it, they will come. Right. And so, I did really tap back into that whole behavioral economic theory of smarter lunchroom. And that is if you build opportunities and choices that are visually appealing and really entice students to want to come in and see what you have – they are going to participate. And what I mean by participate is not just walk through the line and get a tray in their hand. I mean, participate in fully the value of what nutrition brings.

Maureen Pisanick (00:08:12):

And again, hungry students can’t learn. So the idea of building programs that nourish and, and are foundational for breakfast and for lunch to inspire and, and really fuel that learning and academic opportunity is what really makes us tick. And we wanted to really focus on that. And then the last is creation because I think for us culinary, you know, food is food is our love language, but it’s also an art, right? And so we looked at beautiful trayscapes and, and landscapes of what food can and should look like when you are setting up your lines and what trays should look like. And so we really just brought it all to the table, literally 28 vendor tables around to show folks possibilities within the current school nutrition program and foods that were available, but maybe just with different tweaks, twists, presentation that really highlights the value of creating programs that people are excited to participate in.

Maureen Pisanick (00:09:06):

And so when I talk about where that starts for us at Pisanick Partners we love our partnership with Health-e Pro. And that is because we use it for our recipe analysis on the regular. And we have created tons of recipes in our own parent database that we share out with our client schools. At this event, we had QR codes everywhere. Meaning that you walk up and you see a concept, you like it, you take a picture, you get the standardized recipes. You know, we are not competitive restaurants in school food service. Another reason I love it. So we are definitely we hope you find us as a resource for free inspiration. And so we, this year, and we’ll continue, we have a new cookbook release. The third edition will be out in September right around September 21st. So stay tuned for that.

Maureen Pisanick (00:09:49):

But we already have two additions of a cookbook with recipes seeming around these four pillars. Harvest of the Month. I am a farm to school girl at heart. We really do like to connect the local farm communities with our schools, not only for the value of that sense of community, but also the impact on the flavor and the nutrition that we optimize when doing those types of recipes. You know, it’s right now in Ohio, we’re talking all things, corn and tomatoes and all fresh stuff. And so really capitalizing on the bounty that is right now for summer feeding and into our early August and September menus. But realizing that we have an abundance of continued harvest items available. In our Midwest region, we definitely lean heavy into hydroponics for our lettuces and other options that are available to kind of extend the growing season, but we also love our root vegetables.

Maureen Pisanick (00:10:39):

So there’s a season and a variety of flavor that helps catapult that Harvest of the Month recipe. Simply Fresh are for those people that get a little afraid. When we say, hey, we’re gonna be cooking and from scratch and they go, whoa that’s a lot of work. So, you know, we don’t, we definitely know it doesn’t have to be a lot of work, but it can be these simple, Simply Fresh recipes that help you get it to the next level. I would be remiss if I didn’t think about all things, diversity, equity, inclusion, cultural sensitivity, inclusion of flavors and, and eating around the globe as even just a connection to the classroom. Our Global Trends Recipes chapters are all for you. You’re gonna love those. And they really do pick up some of the vibe of all of what I just mentioned about keeping it relevant and on trend, but also appreciative of the generous wealth of global cuisine we all have at our fingertips when we’re in schools.

Maureen Pisanick (00:11:32):

And again, it’s not nutrition unless they eat it. So we have comfort classes in there. So most people say, oh, dietitians, is it all hummus and veggies? No, we have some really cool mac bowls and taco kits. And you name it. The other piece about this I love is that, you know, Julia Child says it best here. You don’t have to get fancy, but it’s good food and fresh ingredients. And we hope this recipe book inspires you to think about marketing with your plate, marketing with your menu, by accepting some exciting new opportunities on that menu. If you have a recipe and you make it and it tastes great, you still have to get it across the finish line. And so this is the section where we talk about even some of the best kept recipes in kitchens.

Maureen Pisanick (00:12:15):

If we aren’t thinking about how they visually appeal to the five senses, right? The first is sight. So our students, as they come into our environments, we want them to be excited you know, way back when we went all to hold grain. And we were thinking about what that looked like. You know, I called it like the sea of like a brown, tan orange. So you would have you know, a whole grain dinner roll, maybe a breaded chicken product, maybe a peach or a canned peach or something. And you look across that line and it just looks like a sea of the same color. So when I talk about recipes that inspire and really taste great, we know we have a lot to do to get students to even accept it and try. And so, I think about presentation and trayscaping.

Maureen Pisanick (00:12:59):

One of our slides later is gonna talk about somebody that’s knocking it out of the park. And I was Facebook messaging with Joe Urban earlier. So shout out to Joe Urban and his crew in Greenville. You know, there are great caught doing something good moments. One of the things that I love this past week about Joe is somebody, you know, said, hey, I love the way that looks. What’s the recipe for your veggie quesadilla? And he shot an email out and said, email me, we’ll share our recipe. So again we just wanna inspire you today that there is a village, a tribe, a community in school nutrition that has actually grown silver lining. All this webinar stuff has connected us to, to people in multiple states that are doing great things. And one of the things we like to say is, you know, think about looking and steal this idea, concepts that make it easier for you to make it turnkey for yourself.

Maureen Pisanick (00:13:47):

It might seem overwhelming to think about how you would drop a planogram or put food placement training and, and for your servers as a priority, but there are so many resources out there to help you get there and get that turnkey approach. And again, who wouldn’t wanna eat off a pasta bar that looks this beautiful. And I always say, when I walk into, you know, the pasta bar day, it better smell like garlic and basil and all that good stuff too. So five senses include sight and smell and sound- the sound of your friendly customer service voice, and appreciating each other. You know, all of that, along with the flavor will end up impacting the success of participation in your program and not to mention fruit is just gorgeous. So that’s another example. One of the things I love most about being able to analyze menus, inspire folks to use it is also breaking down barriers.

Maureen Pisanick (00:14:37):

And this slide is all about inspiring ways to break down barriers. And so, our schools really leverage the use of My School Menus, a tool from Health-e Pro that virtualizes the menu on a website and an app. If you don’t, aren’t aware with it aware of it, rather, one of the reasons I love it is cause as a dietitian, you heard my little bio, I used to work in the clinical setting and I would ask people why they wouldn’t eat at school. And one of the main reasons is allergies. And we know one in four children, if you think about that, that’s a chunk of kids in a classroom of 20 to 25, 1 in four, have some sort of challenge. And whether that’s a true anaphylactic allergy or an intolerance that just makes them feel really uncomfortable or really a preference, an attribute that you know, vegetarianism, vegan meatless stuff is big.

Maureen Pisanick (00:15:24):

So what better way to inspire and innovate and tell your menu story by then making it crystal clear and transparent of what is in that menu. So this shows a series of, fey, if you are worried about allergens, we are gonna one hundred percent guarantee. You understand what’s on our menu so you can navigate it safely. The second we talked about global on trend menus, many of us work in areas where English is a second language for families. So if they’re unfamiliar with the types of food or they can’t even read your menu, there is a barrier. This little mini middle section, I always love it. We use it not only as a tool for our families that need it, but also as a connection, making the cafeteria extension of the classroom and vice versa in some of our language classes so that our Spanish classes are looking at what’s on the menu in Spanish and learning and, and again, making that full whole wraparound approach to what school nutrition brings to the dynamic table in education, right?

Maureen Pisanick (00:16:20):

And last but not least, you know, we get we’re marketing, look at how that is a real picture of a salad that is served at Hudson high school. It is a grilled fiesta chicken salad. And so we talk a little bit about it in a description. We show a really nice picture and they don’t even have to walk in to see it. They’re able to see that on an app where their parents can navigate that and talk with them at home about it. And I think it debunks the myth that school food is not good food. And I think it really debunks that old SNL skit. I said this since the time I started in school nutrition, like the sloppy Joes get right, everything’s just processed and, and perhaps not as healthy. I would, I would put that solid up against any salad.

Maureen Pisanick (00:17:01):

I would see a major fast food chain restaurants, and I know our kids love it and they deserve that type of nutrition. Again, allergens are listed straight up, you know, there’s information about carb counts. If you’re a diabetic and you’re counting carbs, there are ways on the menu transparency to do build a meal, which helps folks that are doing any type of monitoring for macros or any other, any other issues. So again, menu transparency. Why I think that’s important. We talk about marketing, is it breaks down barriers of what we’ve heard in our decade of working in schools of why participation may dip or people not participate in school lunch and school meals. So I love this, cause we are our own best kept secrets. And so as I talked about this with Laura, we were kind of vibing off of each other and saying, what do we do, you know, to, to really truly set the stage and the plan.

Maureen Pisanick (00:17:51):

And so I love a good “tell me something good” moment. And it could be meeting your hardworking staff. It could be exercising information about doing something like apple crunch in October for national farm to school month or whatever it is you’re doing. Tell it, speak it out loud and proud. I think marketing sometimes if you’re like me, I don’t consider myself a marketer. I didn’t go to school for it. So I like to drive in my little nutrition lanes and, and contact and help have, have helped like Laura and Impact Group to help me be a better marketer. But what I say is that marketing really is just a form of appreciation. And I think Phil will tie that all together for us, because if I think about it as appreciation, I don’t think it as much as bragging or perhaps, you know, being out of my comfort zone.

Maureen Pisanick (00:18:38):

I think about really just showing a sense of appreciation for the work we do. And so doing things like what we’ve done this past several years, one of my favorites is parent engagement. So on the bottom you see our out og the box cooking series. And so we talk about all the fun recipes we do in schools. This software leverages an ability to scale that recipe down for a family of four. And we found great success running mini cooking classes and engaging parents, even at the Headstart level with the youngers to really get that foundation of, of engaging the family as a unit for nutrition menu planning and cooking skills, nutrition education, all of the ways we can engage with our parent teacher associations, PTA, PTO, PSO, whatever your school calls – it being at those open houses at schools, opening and showing samples of your food.

Maureen Pisanick (00:19:24):

Obviously having a little, you know, we, this is what our menu is. This is how you found out information about us. Some of my favorite ways to boast about the wonderful work in schools is through try days. People like to see themselves highlighted and I think no matter what age you are in schools, we love a good try day for that simple reason. And so again reading on Joe Urban and, and what we’re talking about today, about just everything, getting all the pieces together, 90 different times throughout Greenville School’s year, they do a kind of a concept where they do a try day, but it’s a chef and student inspired menu thing. How cool is that right? And everybody likes to see what’s on there. It’s a good peer pressure, right? The, you know, the, the other students are excited to try.

Maureen Pisanick (00:20:07):

But also the babies get that sense that you respect their choice and you give them a chance to taste and they gain confidence in their culinary exploration. So it starts at the babies, but continues all the way through. And so we do love a good try day and also amplifying that try day in terms of sharing that out with your school community and, and what you’re doing there. And I would be remiss. I told you at the Harvest of the Month conversation in our cookbook, I am a farm to school supporter and cheerleader. And so there are really nice national resources like the National Farm to School Month resources and toolkits that really give you the opportunity to like log in somewhere and download stuff and use it without having to create a ton of novel or new content around celebrating things that are important to you and your school’s nutrition mission. So I’m gonna pass it over to my friend, because again, I say I love the nutrition part. I get super excited. But Laura’s gonna talk on how leveraging technology can be a really helpful tool and an easy tool. I thought it was hard, but she makes it look easy. So Laura, take it away.

Laura Thompson (00:21:13):

Thank you, Maureen. And what I loved about this slide that you were just covering is, so many food service directors are the best kept secret. And one of the things I know I have learned is I have worked with so many and learned from so many of you in this space is there’s so much good of behind the scenes work. And we want to help give you the tools here, or maybe even a perspective here of telling your story of your department of the great work that you do, making sure that it gets out there because it’s an incredible story that you have to share with incredible heart behind it. And we want to help you get it out there with these tools. And I know that these are tools that you’re familiar with, and we just wanna help maybe have a different angle or a different perspective that might help you use them in a different way or in a new way.

Laura Thompson (00:21:56):

So one of the things, as far as leveraging technology. With social media, we see that there are two ways that it can be helpful for you. One, it can be for inspiration. If you are looking to get some new ideas for recipes, if you are looking to make something very presentable, like Maureen was talking about, we eat with our eyes and it’s a food, food is a love language. So how can we make sure that we are showing these beautiful, incredible, nutritious meals that are healthy and giving the students what they need to perform well in a way that is appealing. And so it’s really helpful to get inspiration as we’re looking at other districts, other vendors, seeing different ideas of what’s out there. So social media can be really helpful from an inspiration standpoint and social media can also be really helpful from a communication standpoint, both in a kind of blasting things out there and in engaging back and forth with some of your consumers with your students.

Laura Thompson (00:22:48):

So as we’re going through this, we’re gonna see a few examples of what some of this can look like. And we are big fans of following the districts that have such a really good, inspiring way of going about it. And one of my favorites to follow is the Provo School District. They have, I wanna stay over 30,000 followers on their Facebook group. And it’s because they have these really incredible designs with fruit or foods or different things. I saw one that was in the shape of a turkey. They had assembled fruit in such a way, and a platter that just looked really engaging and really fun. And you could see the love and the heart that was put into it. And I think that’s felt when the students come through the district or come through the cafeteria line. So that’s an example of one of the ways in which you can curate your feed on social media to get inspiration for the program that you’re running. If you’re looking for, okay, I’ve, I’ve got this fruit that I wanna do. What is something creative that I can do with it? If you have a feed that is curated with really great districts around you or, or districts that you know of, you can get some of that inspiration to help level up a little bit.

Laura Thompson (00:23:50):

This is another example… is they were asking for some of their managers to take photos of their delivery at this Provo School District. And they had dozens of pictures of all the beautiful food, and it was really cool for people to see it and just see the care and the thought that went into all of this. So again, it’s another example of social media being inspiration that you can go to these different resources, whether it’s a, a Facebook feed or a Twitter feed or TikTok or Pinterest, you can get ideas that you can then use in your own program and then use the social media to also communicate those ideas out there. So this was another example of I forget which district this was, but I saw this on one of the Facebook private groups. I believe it was Tips For School Meals That Rock a couple days ago.

Laura Thompson (00:24:36):

And just what Maureen was talking about earlier of having beautiful color and how, when it’s not just oranges and tans and browns, there’s something that really pops. It makes it beautiful. It makes it appealing. And if you’re trying to win students over again, this is one way to really do it, is making sure that it’s beautiful, making sure that it’s colorful and making sure that you’re showing the fun that you’re having as you are preparing these meals. There’s something about that that really translates and really comes through. Let the great work that you’re doing come through as clearly as you can, because we see it. We know what’s happening. We just want to be able to see it out there so that the students can see that you are putting all of that love and care and thought into it as well.

Laura Thompson (00:25:14):

This is where it was. So it was talking about the Hawaiian dishes and the fun that they were having with those dishes to make sure that it was, it was visible and it was seen. And when there are these same days, whether it’s national school lunch week or national school breakfast week, or any of the other days that you have, you might have your own themes, might be a barbecue day or different things like that. Whatever theme that it is that you’re doing, that fun comes through and infuses the food with it as well. And that is something that is very appealing to the students.

Laura Thompson (00:25:46):

This was the example that Maureen shared earlier with Joe Urban. Today he posted that they are doing skirt skirt steak salads in the Greenville School District. And so we were just blown away at the beauty of it with blue cheese and corn and all sorts of good stuff. When you have this great, beautiful work it comes through and how, who doesn’t wanna eat that. I almost wanna move to South Carolina just to eat that meal. I mean, that just looks absolutely incredible. So there is something very powerful about these pictures that when they are seen, when they’re communicated, when they’re blasted out there helps sell your helps sell your program, helps sell the great work that you’re doing. And I know that sell can sometimes seem like a four letter word. So come up with a different word that might work better for you. But if you are trying to get this great nutrition into your students, selling is part of it. So use whatever other word you would like, but this is beautiful and this is appealing and this is what is going to help win students back. And I know in your district, you can find what is going to work for your students based on what works well in your district.

Laura Thompson (00:26:48):

So we talked a little bit about recipe inspiration… anything from Pinterest. There are my goodness. We’ve at Health-e Pro we’ve created some boards. So if you wanna go to our Pinterest page, you can look at some of the boards we’ve created, hopefully that might provide some venue inspiration for you. I know one of the places we love to go see what’s going on are the Facebook groups there’s the Tips for School Meals That Rock there’s School Nutrition Professionals. There’s another one Tips for School Meals That Rock that’s for the rural districts. And we love going there too, to see what are the smaller districts able to come up with. We love getting recipe inspiration from other other districts, seeing what’s popular, seeing what’s working well, seeing if you are missing one product, how you’re substituting that with something else. We also have thousands of recipes in our database here at Health-e Pro that if you’re looking for some recipe inspiration as well, you’ve got thousands of recipes that you can tap into here too. I know that there are different TikTok challenges and there are YouTube channels that are powerful. I know Maureen has talked about this in the past where this is again, where you can curate the different inspiration you’ve got based on who you’re following it. Doesn’t always just have to be about blasting the information there, but can also be about curating and sure that you’re getting inspiration based on what you’re seeing. That’s out there.

Laura Thompson (00:28:03):

I’m now gonna cover some of the things that whether you have Health-e Pro or not, can be helpful tools in getting the word out there. Once you actually have the menu that inspires them, that’s creative and that’s beautiful. And you’re getting that out there on social media. How else can you market your meals? And so a website is one way that can really do it. And we’re gonna show this in a slide here as well as widgets, or if you’re doing newsletters and then how else can you, can you promote this? So if you see on this next slide with a website, this is an example of My School Menus that Maureen mentioned earlier. We have this module as part of our software that then parents and students can see what is available in a beautiful format with these great images. It’s colorful, it’s fun, and then they can click on it.

Laura Thompson (00:28:47):

And they can also sort by allergens and attributes as well. If they want to avoid a certain food, or if they want a certain food, they can filter things that way so that they can see what’s available. So this is available both as a website and also available as part of an app. So this is My School Menus. And then also the My School Menus mobile app. We also have a Health-e Living, which is another module within Health-e Pro. And this is what school districts can use when they want a website that is specific to their nutrition program so that they can have the menus there, the payment options there, everything is there in one place. It’s one stop shop for your nutrition department and having that link and having that website that people can go to is really, really a good way in order to help get your program out there.

Laura Thompson (00:29:29):

So you’ve got different tools. As far as the My School Menus, you’ve got the mobile app, you’ve got a website, all of those are really great tools in order to get your word in order to promote your program and get the word out there. This is another thing that we like within My School Menus is these are what we call them side bars. I know Maureen likes to call them widgets. And so that widgets is a cuter word. Maybe we’re gonna call ’em that, but we can create these that are custom for schools. And so that they can see, this is something else that we are promoting through our program. And so this is where we had allergy lessons and language lessons, and when COVID was first hitting and it was home meals, we had this created so that this could go on the sidebar on the right side of the screen, on the menu so that people could see what else your program was offering.

Laura Thompson (00:30:12):

And then these could be linked to something on a page. So if you had a lunch buddy kind of program, that could be promoted as well. So colorful, fun ways of showing what else it is that you’re doing as part of your school nutrition program. Like Maureen was saying, it’s an extension of the classroom. And this is another way in order to show that as far as content management, this is one of the big things in marketing is you want to be able to create content. And that is what posting is. That is what these calendars are. These are what menus are, it’s the content. And then you want some sort of a timeframe in which you’re posting it. So there’s something called what we call evergreen content – content that’s not specific to a certain day or a certain meal, but stuff that you can post at any time and you can post multiple times.

Laura Thompson (00:30:52):

And this is something that Phil is gonna talk about a little bit later, as far as a day in the life ever, the appreciation. There’s certain things you could even just schedule and post that you could post once a month. You could post two times a month, or there might be something that’s very specific to a certain week or a certain meal that you’re doing. So that would be timeline, specific content. And that’s what would go really well within a menu or an app or an online online menu versus the evergreen content that is just gonna be consistent. And you can post it at any time. So as you are bringing in content that you are looking for inspiration that can help you understand, okay, is this gonna be ever again content, or is this gonna be kind of a time sensitive content?

Laura Thompson (00:31:34):

And then there is another option for getting it out there. There are so many tools that help with this. And so one, we love several of the tools, but it seems like one of the tools that has become a lot more popular in the last two years since COVID has hit, as you are not only wearing the hat of a food service director or food service staff, is there also at times wearing the hat of marketing director and Canva is one of the tools that has helped with that. And I’ve seen a lot more people getting a lot more comfortable with these design tools like Canva. You can go in there, you can get a free account. You can make social media images, you can make posters, you can make all these great things that will help promote your program in a visually appealing way.

Laura Thompson (00:32:14):

So we love Canva for images. Anything like that, it’s, it’s less daunting or kind of scary maybe than like Adobe or Photoshop illustrator. And it’s something that you can just easily drag and drop. So we love that for a tool that can help you start to wear that marketing hat and for social media, there are also free programs or free options within programs where you can blast your social media post out all at once. So rather than having to go into each individual social media network and posting individually on all those, which can take some time, you can use something like Hootsuite or Sprout or Buffer;  we use Hootsuite in order to post or schedule once, and then blast it out on multiples. Or then you could schedule, like, I want this one to actually go out once a month.

Laura Thompson (00:33:01):

So that helps make it a little bit easier and maybe a little bit less daunting to be able to schedule things out one at a time, versus let’s just get one day that we’re gonna do our social media calendar for the month, and then you’re done. And so that’s a great way of doing it. And we also have in there an image on the slide before we have these calendars at Health-e Pro, and we’ll get it posted in the chat, the link to it that are in Canva, but we have designed a template that you can then use to put what you are serving for that day, and that week within that calendar. And then that’s what can be sent home or printed. And that’s a helpful way of getting that out there. So these are free calendar templates that we’ve created for you that you can use. And that, that is the link there. Or if you wanna check in the chat, the link will be posted there as well.

Maureen Pisanick (00:33:45):

Well, that was a ton. I’m so excited that those resources are available. And trust me I don’t consider myself very technically savvy and our team has really embraced Canva. So I like to just echo that as a really simple tool, if you all follow us and our what’s up Wednesday series, everything we do in terms of our recipe design we’ve done in Canva. But I’m giving you a little sneak peek here because that’s our miss Sarah setting up a light package that we got off of Amazon. Again, we’re not photographers, we’re not marketers, but we certainly are doing our best to get really good quality pictures so that we can do stuff like these free cookbooks, free wall with economical, you know, way to plan them for you. So if you look at this quick picture, that is one of our recipe development days.

Maureen Pisanick (00:34:31):

So we do like the mise en place, we set out the ingredients. That board actually is a raw edge board that my husband cut and lacquered for me. So again, he got a little piece of wood and lacquered it. We bought a cheap lighting kit and we used our iPhones and all of our stuff really does become a polished look or something that we’re very proud to share without a lot of investment or technical savvy or knowledge. So I just wanted to show you an echo, all that great information. Laura just gave you, we are practicing what we preach at Pisanick and, and that’s just an insight to us. Marketing at a Glance, too. This is something we created several years back, and we intend to do another one. This one was done in Canva as well. I think it’s gonna be great to transition over to talk to Phil a bit before we wrap it up for question and answers.

Maureen Pisanick (00:35:15):

But if you don’t have a map and know where you’re going, you usually don’t get there, at least not in a timely way. And so what we like to say is when you do something like this, you set a plan for the year and like the Hootsuites and the planning. And it’s not like a set it and forget it, but it’s a set it and be efficient because we know time is precious in school nutrition as well. And so marketing can be so impactful and empowering. But one of the other reasons besides, I don’t know the technology is, I don’t have the time. Finding ways to make time efficiencies happen by planning out a year in a glance and scheduling it out on your calendar has been a way we’ve found most of our schools have successful years when they have a year at a glance to kind of shoot towards.

Maureen Pisanick (00:35:55):

And I think this one, you know, one of the things that I talk about is like, when you do all this stuff for participation, you have to inspect what you expect. And so most people say, what is my ROI or return on investment. If I’m gonna do this marketing, you know, what do I see? And so we like to say that and prior to this Lynn and I with Laura’s help with these cute little icons, these little images that we used for our financial fitness training sessions wanted to kind of point back to that. So, Laura, I don’t know if you wanna share where this lives or put that in the chat, but this was also a really good way to say, I’m gonna make this effort. What is the value, and what can I tell my treasurer or my school district on how it’s impacted participation. So I really do like that. So I think we’ll drop the link in the chat. If you wanna look at financial fitness. Here is also a marketing guide. This guide will be dropped into the chat as well. So Health-e Meal Planner Pro, Laura, I don’t know if you wanna type, take this slide and talk a little bit about this one.

Laura Thompson (00:36:52):

Yes. So this was developed a few years ago. We’re updating it right now and we’ll be coming out with a new one, but we thought we’d still, there’s still so much great content in here that might be helpful for you as you’re looking at, how can I develop this marketing hat that I’ve been forced to wear a little bit? So these are, again, some of the tools that we’ve covered already as far as Canva and Hootsuite, but also a little bit about audience and how do I understand which audience I’m communicating to and how do I create the message that will work for each audience? What are some of the best practices? How do I make sure I schedule things at the right time or the right day? How does color play into all of this? There’s like kind of a complimentary color wheel.

Laura Thompson (00:37:30):

We’ve got a lot of tools within this marketing guide that can help you understand might be a good first step as you’re looking for. Okay. How do I, how do I get started on this marketing thing? I didn’t go to school for this. I want to feed kids, but this is now also part of my job description. So how can I do this a little bit better? So this will hopefully help you in that step. And then we’ll be updating that and coming out with a new version as well, but we thought this would still be a good resource as you’re getting started on whether it’s a social media aggregator, like a HootSuite or using Canva for graphic design. So the link is there, but it’s also been dropped in the chat. So, if you’re looking for a little bit of help with some marketing outside of just what we’ve talked about in this webinar here, feel free to download that. And hopefully that’ll be a helpful resource for you.

Maureen Pisanick (00:38:10):

I love it. Laura, you had me at, in 30 minutes or less, like, that’s another thing. Like we just have to capitalize on that. So as we wrap up, I again, I’m just so grateful to work with regionally here in the Midwest the Impact Group. And what I like to do is, you know, I’m a big outcomes, research and pilot kind of person, and I like to be the guinea pig and then share it out with the masses on things that really have worked well. And so what I thought through during the pandemic and most recently is a way to combat that being our own best kept secret. Sometimes people don’t read newsletters, or they might not like go and scroll through a lot of stuff, but they really are apt to learn a lot about you in a short two to three minute video.

Maureen Pisanick (00:38:50):

Most people, adult learners, young learners, like to kind of see they’re visual learners. And so what we’re gonna talk about is kind of like what benefit would be our public service announcement PSA in the form of a short video day in the life of food service. And so I’m gonna introduce, here Phil, and his team here because I’ve seen it, it works, it humanizes food service and, and, and it, and it amplifies the mission. We say food is our love language. It comes through when you let the stars of the cafeteria be the star of the show. And it does talk a lot about the care and creativity. Most kitchens have at the heart of the school building. So we say the heart of the school buildings, the kitchen, you say, the staff are the heartbeat, and you say, you really don’t realize what’s you know, if the heart’s beaten, everything’s going well, you don’t realize that the heart’s beating until it stops, right? So we wanna infuse that continued heartbeat. And, I just love the way Phil’s been able to do that and, and really show that. So Phil, I’m gonna pass it over to you to talk a little bit about your, your story.

Phil Herman (00:39:53):

Thank you, Maureen. And thank you, Laura, for all the tips. I’m gonna reference a few of those components when I talk very briefly here the very first ABC of back to school that Maureen was talking about is appreciation. And so why on this, are we talking about appreciation? Well, ultimately we are relying on the individuals within our organizations, within our kitchens, within our food service staff to do all the incredible things that we’ve just talked about on this webinar and our people or our greatest communicators, they will share their enthusiasm for the work that you do. They will also ultimately fulfill out your goals and expectations. And so at the Impact Group, what we do is we help schools achieve and communicate their most important priorities and goals.

Phil Herman (00:40:49):

And in this particular case, we’re thinking about food service and the work that we do with school districts, Maureen’s exactly right. We had school districts that were saying, we wanna do a better job of telling our story. We want to be able to appreciate and express appreciation for some of our workers and some of our kitchen staff that we know are doing an incredible job, particularly during COVID of providing something that is so essential to our students. And so we continue to work with school districts to say, what are the best ways to do that, and what are the best ways in video. But before I even talk about that video, I wanna talk about building a culture of appreciation. So why is that important to build a culture of appreciation?

Phil Herman (00:41:31):

I want you to take just one second here and think of the person in your life who has appreciated you most… that has made you feel special… that expresses thanks to you on a regular basis, who is that person and what would you do for them? Chances are, you’re thinking of a family member, a teacher, a coach, a coworker, a colleague – someone that inspired you along the way and expressed appreciation for you as an individual, and you would run through a brick wall for that person, you would do anything for them. And when we begin to build cultures, we know that organizations that build cultures of appreciation, we give whole half day multi-day seminars on building cultures of appreciation. But we know that when we focus on building a culture of appreciation, we increase staff morale, we decrease turnover and recruitment costs.

Phil Herman (00:42:26):

We increase public relations. Like we’re talking about I’m here today. We recruit and main retain amazing staff. That’s a huge piece of the work that we do is making sure that our staff feel appreciated and stay with us. We also know that we decrease coworker conflicts. Do any of you ever have conflicts within your kitchens? Amongst workers? Yeah, so we know that when we build a culture of appreciation those are all, some of the benefits that that come out of being deliberate. So organizations that are deliberate about creating a culture of appreciation thrive in those that aren’t or don’t don’t, they don’t thrive. And so that’s important when it comes to all the things that you talked about today, because we wanna build enthusiasm for the work that we’re doing.

Phil Herman (00:43:15):

We wanna share that enthusiasm. It comes with expressing appreciation for those that got us to that place, to be able to do that, and those that are doing it on a day to day basis. And so one way to do that and a very powerful way to do that is through video. So we’ll go on the next slide and we’ll show you a video here in just a minute that we did for a school district locally in Northeast Ohio. That was a food service appreciation video. Videos can also be used to recruit videos can be used to promote the work that you’re doing. And actually if you do the video, right, it can do all of those things in one place. And as Laura’s talking about it being evergreen content, it can be used over and over and over. We’re looking for staff, check it out, what it’s like to work within our kitchen we’re promoting we provide healthy color for meals, check it out. These are the people that do that on a day to day basis and look at some of the meals that we’re doing. And we really appreciate our staff here, they are in a day in the life of the food service, so we can use it for multiple purposes. So let’s check out this video.

Speaker 5 (00:44:26):

I’ll never forget this in March one day. And these two girls come running up to me. These are high school kids, and gave me a big hug and they say, this is our lunch lady. <Laugh>

Speaker 6 (00:44:47):

Eating food and gathering. It’s what makes family and friendship.

Speaker 7 (00:44:53):

When the pandemic hit the community absolutely came together. It was super scary. Everybody was nervous. We didn’t know what to expect. But as a food service department, we just, we, we are like family. So we just made a plan and we were a team and everyone helped the teachers, the board office, bus drivers, custodians, everyone was involved.

Speaker 8 (00:45:19):

Everybody played a part. Everybody here, you take care of this. You take care of that. And we were able to, we were able to get a list out there that from the it to the superintendent, you know, everybody was involved in getting these meals to the kids. So in March, we were very blessed for March till the end of the school year in June, we were able to do remote feeding, each feeding, which was five breakfast, five lunch. So you’re talking 10 meals in one bag and times 600 students. You know, that’s a lot of food to prepare in one week’s time.

Speaker 9 (00:45:47):

Kids love it. They love the food. They’re excited about the food. I like to teach them about nutrition. Like I tell, ’em take the broccoli. It’s good for your bones. It’s full of calcium. And they’re excited about the food. And I’m, I’m very careful of that. I don’t overcook things and make it like, if I would eat it, if I wouldn’t eat it, it goes in the trash <laugh>

Speaker 10 (00:46:13):

Every day we pack one or two things for the lunch that week and everybody, you know, just kind of has their job and we know what we’re doing. So it works out really good.

Speaker 8 (00:46:27):

So the girls would come in, they’d pack all the bags and we would do a five day bag for these students. And we would have parents come in, pick ’em up on the set day. And we even delivered them. You know, we had maintenance, we had the treasurer, you know, we had everybody staff, you know, teachers that didn’t even have to be here, volunteered to come in and help us deliver these meals.

Speaker 11 (00:46:48):

I drive the school bus too. And I haven’t written in my, be the person you needed as a trial. So that’s why I’m here. I’m selling cookies and trying to plant seeds of kindness for them.

Speaker 9 (00:46:59):

I like to feed kids. I just really do. I, I think, I think it’s wonderful that they come in. They’re excited even on the school bus. They want to know, you know, they’re talking to their bus drivers, what’s for lunch today. So my one bus driver friend she tells, and they talk about what’s for lunch <laugh>, you know, and I, I think it’s exciting. They love it. They get excited to come in.

Speaker 7 (00:47:21):

It’s a joy to get up and have this kind of job that I know that I’m coming and doing something that makes a difference.

Maureen Pisanick (00:47:41):

I love that video. It always makes me so happy.

Phil Herman (00:47:44):

<Laugh> and I know we’re gonna get to questions here in just a second, so I’ll be very brief, but let me just give you a few quick tips on video. First of all, some of you are thinking right now, we can’t do that. Yeah, that’s real nice. So you have a firm come in and do a video, but I don’t know how to film a video or edit a video. And of all those things that you heard about today, just start small. You have a cell phone, you can take a very quick video clip of something that is colorful of individuals engaged in their work of someone that you wanna say thank you to and then just post that out, using the tools that Laura was talking about a quick Canva slide or short video clip, or just simply just a photo of someone with your message underneath make sure that there’s good lighting on whatever whatever you’re doing.

Phil Herman (00:48:38):

If you have a video, make sure that there’s good sound. If you’re gonna use that or just put down music underneath it. Feature movement – so when you see people taking things out of a oven, putting things into an oven, slicing and dicing whatever it may be, make sure you’re featuring movement. And most importantly feature people, our community wants to see our students and they wanna see the people that serve them interacting on and doing the work that they do and doing the things that they do. You are a window into the school in terms of what’s happening. So feature people. That’s what they wanna see. And then think about your message. Do you wanna appreciate someone, do you want to inspire, do you want to communicate about what you’re doing? And then, just create a little blurb, start small, do it a little bit at a time. And you’ll become more comfortable with it and become better at it as it goes. So that’s it.

Maureen Pisanick (00:49:32):

Yeah, I’d love that bill. And so just so you know, one of the other things the Impact Group and I, as a group are trying to work on is mini grants, right? And so in the state of Ohio, we reached out to several granting agencies and we’re talking about the opportunity to leverage grant funds, to help pay for some of this for schools. We also did ask our state agency if having a spend down plan, if you could use excess funds, if you are blessed to have them in this way, in order to promote good information. And I know many tools and resources exist today. Now, teaching people that we’re going back to pre pandemic and free and reduced applications, what a better way to kind of wrap it all up and use one video, not only to help people navigate how to best approach and utilize your food service, your menu service your day to day in the life of by doing a short video.

Maureen Pisanick (00:50:24):

And again, talk about evergreen content. If you do it once and doing well, it can tell the story, not only for your open houses, your orientations, but all of your back to school eventing and live on your website, can be reminded out on your social media throughout the year. It could be handed to new enrolled families for information. So I think it is money well spent and, and there are certainly ways that you can get approval for your spend down economics, as well as grant funds to fund something like this. So nothing is impossible, right? We have to figure out a way, but we appreciate and, and the schools around here really do appreciate our blessing of having the Impact Group in our backyard to be able to tap into this resource. So I’m gonna pass it back to Laura.

Maureen Pisanick (00:51:06):

I think we’re wrapping up, you know, we say food is our love language, and boy, we hope it came across today. I don’t know if we have any questions but we are here to be able to continue to leverage this sense of community, this sense of support your vibe attracts your tribe, and we certainly hope you find the vibe today inspiring and one that you would feel approachable. My contact information, my direct email is right here, please. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today no question is silly even like, Hey, where, what was the Amazon link for that lighting kit I’m I’m game. So shoot away, we’re here to help your success. So Laura, I don’t know if there’s any questions that you wanna ask or answer.

Laura Thompson (00:51:47):

Yes, we had some questions come through and if you do have any questions, please go ahead and put them into the Q and A box down at the bottom. But one of the questions that came through, I think I’m gonna tackle it first. And then if you guys have anything to add, but the question of how often should we post and then how do we reach and target multiple audiences, parent students, community? I’ve actually changed my opinion on the question of how often should I post. It used to be for me, I thought no more than once a day. And now that I’m looking around and seeing, you know, this was maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago, that I would’ve said that. And now that I’m seeing the speed at which things get posted on social, I think you have to post, not have to, but there’s nothing wrong with posting more frequently to make sure that you’re staying at the top of someone’s feed.

Laura Thompson (00:52:29):

There are people who will have specific lists that they can curate content that way. And so they might have like, okay, this is my kids’ school soccer, whatever it is, they might have a list for that. My guess is not as many people do that and have kind of specific lists. My guess is most people just have your standard feed. And so there’s nothing wrong with posting more frequently. If you have multiple pictures throughout the day that you’re able to get into Hootsuite, or you’re able to have someone post for you, if you don’t have the time, that would be recommended. If not, that’s totally fine too, but I’m starting to see a lot of wisdom in frequent posting when it’s possible, especially since there are multiple times throughout the day that meals are served. And another thing too, is to look at those that you admire and those that seem to be doing well on social media, whether it’s Greenville Schools or someone else, take a look and see at the frequency that they’re posting.

Laura Thompson (00:53:17):

See if that’s something that you’re comfortable with doing. That’s a completely fine thing in order to copy at this point of copying someone else’s style a little bit, just to see like, gosh, if they’re posting three or four times a day, it’s okay if I do it too. It doesn’t mean that you have to copy everything word for word. That’s not good, that’s plagiarism. But, if you’re seeing that they’re good and good engagement, and you’re seeing that gosh, that looks really appealing throughout the day. Maybe that’s something I wanna do too. Posting frequently is totally good. Considering how many posts get posted into feeds in order to stay at the top or near the top – frequency can help. The other question was how do we reach and target multiple audiences, parent students, community. That’s where we find that different channels can be really helpful.

Laura Thompson (00:53:59):

So we talked about that a little bit earlier, but social media can be great for both the students and the parents. We find things like email newsletters or the website is especially good for parents and community. So the different channels will hit different people differently. And so that’s some of what we talked about in the marketing guide is hitting the right channel for the right audience. You also might find that your school or the principal sends out a newsletter that you could get a blurb added with your program information that within that find the different areas where you can get your content added to it that maybe isn’t your usual space, your usual channel, and that will hit other people as well. So that might be able to hit parents really well. Anything community related, I’ve even been seeing some things lately about like local radio, local newspapers, local billboards. Those are some interesting things that I’ve started seeing lately that are interesting too. And maybe Maureen or Phil might have some additional context on some of these answers, but that’s a little bit of what I’ve been seeing so far.

Phil Herman (00:54:57):

Yeah. And Laura, I would just add on the benefit of utilizing the platforms in concert with one another or together. So if you actually have a blurb in a newsletter make sure that you’re and the newsletters posted online make sure that you’re sending out a few social media tweets that have a link back to that newsletter. So you can put pictures or examples of what you were talking about in the newsletter in terms of it might be something about your farm to table initiative within your own school district. And then you have a few pictures of those on multiple days posts. And then they link back to the article in the newsletter. So you can have those those platforms work in concert with one another.

Maureen Pisanick (00:55:40):

Yeah. I love a simple plan like menu Mondays. This is what we’re having. Like one of the things that makes it easy is just pictures. Tell more stories than just the words, right? We got creative one time and, and named, you know, like a vegetable blend, trees, clouds, and sunshine, and people were like, what the heck is that? Cauliflower, broccoli and carrot coins, come on. Doesn’t everybody know that, but you know, it wasn’t evident. So it was, it would’ve been easier to take a picture of this beautiful, colorful vegetable medley than it would be to try to come up with a quirky name and people not understand what’s on your menu. So telling a story of what’s on your menu in pictures, I think is it has been very impactful. I love a good food fact Friday because again, making the cafeteria extension to the classroom, if kids and parents and community understand the why, you know, produce bars are our big focus this year.

Maureen Pisanick (00:56:28):

And when you do something like an eat the rainbow campaign and a food fact Friday highlighting a, a produce item that you’re serving and why it’s beneficial from a health standpoint, building immunity, hello, that’s a big topic we can talk about and why it’s good to eat whole vegetables. So it’s really not hard. And it, and it really is an easy way to set a frequency goal like menu on Monday food fact on Friday or some variation thereof. But again, I think I would just add that it’s not a plan until it’s a plan, right? So we talk about things like this. We get excited about it, but I really think the rubber meets the road when you build a calendar and schedule it out. And I think that’s, you know, whatever frequency, if it’s once a week, if it’s once a month, if you have a plan for it, that’s more likely to happen. So that would be my only other suggestion.

Laura Thompson (00:57:13):

Awesome. Thank you. We just had a comment coming that I think is a really good one too. So June, thank you for sending this one in food is our love language. Love this, please celebrate national school milk today on the last one in September, September 28th, this year, there’s a fun promotion from cereal milk from General Mills. So that’s really cool. Thank you June. We had another question come through and I’m just trying to find it here. Okay. I don’t wanna lose any students. And I would like to boost my students’ participation level if there’s like one thing you had to focus on first, cuz I know we talked about a lot of different things today and if you had to start with one thing, what would you start with first?

Maureen Pisanick (00:57:50):

Ooh, that’s a good one. Well, I’m gonna defer… I think about it, Phil, what do you think? What’s the best place?

Phil Herman (00:57:59):

Yeah, that is a great question. I feel as though there is incredible power in social media right now to be able to ultimately tell your story and I’m amazed sometimes at the ways that things are shared. So you say we have this many followers within our, in our district, but if some of those that are following you start to share or like then the way this algorithms work in social media starts to pop up on other people’s feeds. And even though they might not be one of your followers and I’m amazed sometimes at how fast and how far spread some of our posts for school districts reach so quickly. And so I would say if you’re not doing anything with social media to promote your food service talk with whoever it is in your district and, or get it started on your own in order to really try to celebrate and do the things that we were talking about on this on this call, I think that’s a powerful place in order to boost the awareness of what you’re doing and hopefully retain student participation.

Maureen Pisanick (00:59:19):

I love that. And I, I will just add, you know, I think I’m a humble warrior in this industry and even so much so as I include my daughter in our last post, we’re doing a eat the rainbow produce bar at her school, and I was able to help collaborate with the local district, but she made me laugh when she said, mom, your YouTube channel. You gotta get, you gotta get more content on there. So like she’s in fourth grade guys. So like, Phil’s right, like it’s starting young, younger than maybe some of us parents wanna know, but you know, she wants to be a star on our YouTube channel talking about the new recipes we do. I just love a call to action. So I just would just echo, if you’re gonna jump on social media, the plan, I think makes it come to life.

Maureen Pisanick (00:59:57):

And so I love a good campaign and what better way than to do a caught doing something good campaign. It’s a caught doing something good way. The food looks, it’s a caught doing something good when kids are trying food, it’s a caught doing something good when you have a new employee that is really trying hard. I think that makes marketing turn into appreciation and it comes off authentic and it really connects your program to your community. So I think a good social media focus with a campaign like that just kind of wraps this whole webinar up to date. We hope in a nice little present with the bow on. And just knowing that you don’t have to know everything I’m showing you two of my best kept secrets, or maybe not now you know, partnering up with good industry people that are your best fans. I mean, they keep me inspired and, they appreciate me and I hope they fill my appreciation to them. As we appreciate all of you that are starting school and we really just wanna continue the good conversations that help us all you know, rise the, the rising tide rises all the boats. We want all their boats rising and, and, and cheering on a good back to school season. So I don’t know if we have any other questions, but I know we’re at time, Laura, I’ll pass it back to you.

Laura Thompson (01:01:07):

We are. Thank you. And we had one more comment come through that I think is the perfect capstone to end us saying social media I agree with, but TikTok is especially strong with students right now. And that’s a good thing to pay attention to what are the students using in your school and how can you use that channel to help get the word out there? So if it’s TikTok or might be something else, pay attention to what they’re doing, and then I’m sure that they’ll be able to teach you a lot about what might be able to reach them. So thank you so much for joining us today, everyone. We hope that you found this helpful. Please check out the resources available, follow up with us. If you have any questions, I would love to be able to answer any questions for you. Thank you again for joining and we hope to have you join us again soon.